Dear Parishioners,

Last week I gave the two principle points of work that Bishop Morlino wants us to accomplish in the next year or so. As Fr. William has already begun teaching about the importance of kneeling to receive Holy Communion on the tongue; I will start with this one. So first we will look at the most important legislation of the Church concerning the proper reception of communion: “Memoriale Domini”. It is a document produced by the Vatican dicastery called, “Congregation for Divine Worship” on May 29, 1969. Even though mostly written by theologians in the dicastery, Blessed Paul VI participated in the redaction of the document and various paragraphs of it are word for word from his pen. He completely approved of the document and had it disseminated throughout the Church. The document acknowledges that for a brief time in the early history of the Church in a limited region of the Near East, communion in the hand was practiced, but the document emphasizes that it was abolished shortly thereafter in favor of the practice that has perdured in the Church for more than 1,500 years, receiving the Eucharist kneeling and on the tongue. Then Blessed Paul VI sent a questionnaire to all of the Bishops of the world and reports their exact votes in the document. They overwhelmingly disapproved of the practice of receiving in the hand. Then he mentions that changing the mode of reception to this new manner (in the hand) includes dangers. Here Blessed Paul VI says prophetically that these dangers, “… are a lessening of reverence toward the noble Sacrament of the altar, its profanation, or the adulteration of correct doctrine.” We have seen all of these over and over again as the practice of communion in the hand has proliferated. (to be continued)