Bishop Says we Should All Kneel For Communion

Tip of the hat to the First Things Blog and their post Liturgy & Politics which discusses this Catholic News article Bishop says Catholics should kneel, receive communion on tongue.More on the First Thing's article in a second.

The Catholic News Service Reports:

Bishop says Catholics should kneel, receive communion on tongue
By Cindy WoodenCatholic News ServiceVATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The reverence and awe of Catholics who truly believe they are receiving Jesus in the Eucharist should lead them to kneel and receive Communion on their tongues, said a bishop writing in the Vatican newspaper."If some nonbeliever arrived and observed such an act of adoration perhaps he, too, would 'fall down and worship God, declaring, God is really in your midst,'" wrote Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Karaganda, Kazakhstan, quoting from the First Letter to the Corinthians

.In a Jan. 8 article labeled a "historical-liturgical note," Bishop Schneider reviewed the writings of early church theologians about eucharistic reception and said the practice of laypeople receiving Communion on the tongue was the predominant custom by the sixth century.

The article in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, appeared under the headline, "Like a nursing child in the arms of the one who nourishes him."Bishop Schneider said that just as a baby opens his mouth to receive nourishment from his mother, so should Catholics open their mouths to receive nourishment from Jesus."Christ truly nourishes us with his body and blood in holy Communion and, in the patristic era, it was compared to maternal breastfeeding," he said."The awareness of the greatness of the eucharistic mystery is demonstrated in a special way by the manner in which the body of the Lord is distributed and received," the bishop wrote.

In addition to demonstrating true adoration by kneeling, he said, receiving Communion on the tongue also avoids concerns about people receiving the body of Christ with dirty hands or of losing particles of the Eucharist, concerns that make sense if people truly believe in the sacrament."Wouldn't it correspond better to the deepest reality and truth about the consecrated bread if even today the faithful would kneel on the ground to receive it, opening their mouths like the prophet receiving the word of God and allowing themselves to be nourished like a child?" Bishop Schneider asked.

In 1969 the Vatican published an instruction allowing bishops to permit the distribution of Communion in the hand. While at papal liturgies most people who receive Communion from the pope receive Communion on the tongue, they also are permitted to reverently receive the Eucharist in the hand.

Now let me say I agree with a lot of this. I really have no clue why the powers that be were so insistent Catholics get away from kneeling from at Altar rails to take communion. I can't imagine that there was a general uprising from the laity for it to happen.

I recall I was at the last Chance student's mass at LSU one time when I engaged the good sister on this topic that was one of the campus ministers. I was reading the Church father's before Mass and I read the most beautiful writing on how the early Christian's worshiped and took communion. Now I had been told that the reason we stand to take Communion is because that is what the early Christian's did. Well perhaps they did in many cases. However I pointed out to the good Sister that the attitude we Catholics had today was nothing like this:

"Approaching, therefore, come not with thy wrists extended, or thy fingers open; but make thy left hand as if a throne for thy right, which is on the eve of receiving the King. And having hallowed thy palm, receive the body of Christ, saying after it, 'Amen.' Then after thou hast with carefulness hallowed thine eyes by the touch of the holy body, partake thereof; giving heed lest thou lose any of it; for what thou losest is a loss to thee as it were from one of thine own members. For tell me, if anyone gave thee gold dust, wouldst thou not with all precaution keep it fast, being on thy guard against losing any of it, and suffering loss?" (A.D. 390, Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 23:22).

Well to say least I told her not many were acting with that type of reverence or even thought of it appeared to me.

Needless to say I am a big fan of kneeing to take communion and I so much wish it would come back. I think the Laity would love it!!! I think we need it as come more to a appreciation of the sacred and especially the real presence admist this American society in which we live. Also as Western Christians I think kneeling for Communion is sort of in our DNA.

For instance I have never been to a American Episcopal Church where the people are standing for communion. They are all kneeling . I have no idea what Lutherans do but I suspect it is the same. Now the Episcopal example leads back to the First Things article Liturgy & Politics that in turn cites a Lifesitenews Editorial on the subject that says the issue " is a significant fault line in the culture war". Now like the First Things Blogger I am not sure I am not buying that yet.

As I said I have attended numerous Episcopal services. Now I have not taken a poll there , but even among the conservative Episcopal Churches down here where people are kneeling and being reverent I suspect many are on the other side of the culture war than I am. I have been to some very liberal Anglican Churches and they are at times even more reverent in service

The First Things blog then goes into a post that is at one one of my favorite sites , Mirror of Justice, that comments on the lifesitenews Editorial:
It’s the latter that has drawn in Richard Stith, the smart legal commentator from Valparaiso. Stith points to the LifeSiteNews editorial and, generally accepting its line that the sides in liturgical debates correspond to sides in the cultural debates, offers an explanation: “This (frequent, certainly not universal) connection lies in a common lack of perception for dignity or sacredness, and with it the loss of respect or reverence for life, on the one hand, and for the Host on the other. This absence of awareness of the great or holy is a result not just of becoming friendlier and more informal, but of the reduction of the whole world to the banal categories of ‘fact’ and ‘value.’ This reduction endangers not only the unborn and the liturgy but any firm recognition of the human individual.”

Is that right? Or, at least, is some similar explanation right? This is a claim that the relation between post-Vatican II liturgical reformers and the left end of the American political spectrum is not adventitious, or cultural, or even political. It is, rather, logical, and though Stith admits it is “not universal,” the implication is that those who don’t join the stripping of the altars and the murder of the unborn are simply failing to follow the logic of their own positions.
Well, probably I’m overstating Stith’s view. But I’m not overstating the editorial on LifeSiteNews, and I find myself very uneasy with this line of analysis.

I think it is a interesting discussion. I have to admit some of the more radical liturgy types seem to be the type on the far left of the spectrum in the Catholic Church as to these matters. So is there a connection between the adovcates pro and con of this Liturgical practice and the culture war. I am not convinced yet but it something to ponder