CORONAVIRUS AND COMMUNION: COMMOTION AND CONTAGION

To comment, please open your gmail account, use my email address, Facebook Messenger or Twitter. Scroll down for other comments.



Holy Communion on the tongue - the 2000-year old practice of the Catholic Church - has been banned. Because of  CORONAVIRUS. 

This is simply nonsense, evil and insane. 

• Nonsense because Communion on the tongue, properly done, is safer than Communion in the hand, properly done. 
• Evil because it will lessen reverence for the Eucharist
• Insane because it's living by the logic of the world, not by the truth of Christ and His Church. 

One might add that it could be demonic. Satan knows how to turn our excessive zeal for physical safety (because of our fear of death and ensuing spiritual reparation) to his advantage.



At St. Peter’s Basilica on November 3, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI distributes Holy Communion on the tongue to the kneeling faithful.

What does the Magisterium of the Church have to say? A canon lawyer consulted by Dr Peter Kwasniewski states that:

"From my perspective, a bishop cannot require anyone to receive in the hand. Even in the Ordinary Form, the prescription is communion on the tongue, with the right to approach and receive in the hand. The norm is the norm, and it is based on the right of the faithful to choose how to worship God at a moment in the Mass that is deeply personal and not communal in nature. My opinion is based on the repeated jurisprudence from the Holy See upholding the rights of a Catholic to receive communion on the tongue while kneeling during an OF Mass, even if his or her bishop has issued a particular law to the contrary. Such laws are considered suggestive in nature and in no way binding."

 https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/priests-bishop-reveal-rashness-in-banning-communion-on-tongue-after-coronavirus

If the priest knows what he's doing, as priests always used to - and as SSPX and indult Latin Mass celebrants still know - there's no touching involved. Father holds the edge of the Host, the communicant kneels with chin up slightly and tongue out on the lower lip. Job's done.

Receiving on the tongue, provided priest and communicant have been instructed, is far more hygienic than the insult offered to the Body and Blood of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by dropping the Host onto a possibly grubby palm - and if the communicant is jostled or loses balance, possibly dropping It on a grubbier floor where It could fracture and/or be trodden on.

"It's all there in a notice in the porch," said Father, this morning. And it was: the best part of three A4 pages. I did not have time or inclination to read them. Instructions for priest and communicant in the correct way of receiving on the tongue would have taken three lines.

However, thank God, the bishops have also temporarily banned the carry-on at the 'Lamb of God', when we're trying to prepare to receive Our Lord, meditating on our need for His mercy and love, but are told by Father to give 'each other' a Sign of Peace. If only Father meant 'each other' it wouldn't be too bad. We'd give some sign to the person nearest us and that would be that.

But we take Father to mean 'one another' and as a licence to turn our backs on Our Lord exposed on the altar, and frolic about from pew to pew hailing everyone within coo-ee, because if we didn't we might hurt their feelings.

Perhaps the bishops might take the temporary ban on kissing, hand-shaking and the rest of these goings-on as an opportunity to reflect and implement the idea mooted years ago, of moving the 'Sign of Peace' forward to some other less inappropriate moment in the Mass.

Either our NZ bishops have caught the mass hysteria so evident on the nightly 'News' or they're capitalising on same hysteria and seizing the opportunity to force traditional Catholics to take the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Saviour in our fingers. 

The Amurrican 'Father Z' (Fr John Zuhlsdorf) concurs: "Chanceries and parishes are sending out notices and/or edicts. In some cases" (like in countries like NZ, ruled by Modernist bishops) "I suspect that is an excuse to prohibit Communion on the tongue ... Most are sincere and founded on a real belief that will help lower the risk of contagion ... I don't think Communion in the hand is safer than Communion on the tongue."

Fr Z goes on to cite nearly 3 decades experience of distributing Communion both ways, hand and tongue, and to state, "Rarely - rarely - do my fingers come into contact with tongues but ... nearly always there is contact (with Communion in the hand) with my fingers and hands ... and the communicant's fingers or palms ... proper Communion on the tongue is safer."  

Back here in New Zild, Father delivered the good news of this physically unnecessary and spiritually harmful procedure after Mass this morning, at length, rather haltingly, and shot me a look when he got to 'no Communion on the tongue'. 

I don't know what other rad trads think, but I will not receive Holy Communion in the hand. Neither will I put Father in the embarrassing situation (for him and other communicants, not for me) of challenging the bishops' edict by kneeling to receive on the tongue. No, for me this will mean spiritual Communion, and a long drive on Sundays to Ashhurst to St Columba's for the Traditional Latin Mass.

Because the legislation of Summorum Pontificum is for the universal Latin Church and bishops cannot override it. They cannot require Communion in the hand at the Traditional Latin Mass. 

Did the bishops think of this? Did they even know about it? Do they realise this ridiculous ban may be a real shot in the arm for the SSPX and the indult Mass, especially as CORONAVIRUS hysteria has people worried about crowding at Sunday Masses, which according to a reader had 400 congregants in St Mary's, Palmerston North, last Sunday "breathing down one another's necks". There's plenty of space in St Columba's Ashhurst still, but I suspect not for long.

And - thank God again -  the bishops' collective temperature has been raised by CORONAVIRUS  to such a degree as to ban distribution of the Precious Blood from the chalice. This was always stupid. 

It's unnecessary, because in receiving the Host we receive the Blood also. It prolongs the Mass and induces Father to speed things up in other departments, in a Mass which is already denuded of by far the greater part of its ancient, glorious texts and opportunity for silence. 

Communion under both kinds was first "permitted" by the Vat2 regime, then seized on in the craze for 'active participation', and seen by Father, I suspect, as a reward for good behaviour, and so became a ministry awarded to the good guys and gals, people to Father's liking who toe the parish line and belong to the 'in' group (most often Modernists or simply unaware).

Anyway, to be consistent with their own 'best practice' re Communion to avert the danger of CORONAVIRUS, shouldn't the bishops be telling their priests to substitute hospital-grade hand sanitiser for holy water in the fonts, and the cleaning ladies to wipe down all the pews with disinfectant?

Perhaps they should go the whole hog and ban communal children's toys from the crying rooms, and cups of tea and bikkies from the 'gathering spaces'?

As Bishop Athanasius Schneider points out, " Many people who come to church and then receive Holy Communion in their hands have first touched door handles or handrails ... in other buildings. Thus, viruses are imprinted on the palm and fingers of their hands. And then during Holy Mass with these hands and fingers they are sometimes touching their nose or mouth. With these hands and fingers they touch the consecrated host, thus impressing the virus also on the host, thus transporting the viruses through the host into their mouth." 

That makes this hoo-ha about what happens after we get inside the church door seem quite ridiculous. Which it is. 

Once again, the NZ bishops are dancing to the tune of the world. It should be the other way round: the Church possesses Something eternal and precious beyond the world's imagining, which she should preserve in all her original integrity of belief and liturgy for the benefit of mankind, rather than tossing out her age-old practice in the rush to #metoo, bowing down to WHO's  best practice and denying Catholics their right to receive the Blessed Sacrament on the tongue.

As Bishop Schneider says, "We would be justly condemned for seeking first ourselves and not the Kingdom of God:

If the Church in our day does not endeavor again with the utmost zeal to increase the faith, reverence and security measures for the Body of Christ, all security measures for humans will be in vain. If the Church in our day will not convert and turn to Christ, giving primacy to Jesus, and namely to Eucharistic Jesus, God will show the truth of His Word which says: 

“Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Unless the Lord keep the city, he watches in vain that keeps it” (Psalm 126:1-2).

Post Script:
to put things in perspective, the case fatality rate for Wuhan Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is 2%. For seasonal flu in the US it's less that 0.1%. Not such a colossal risk then after all, specially when you compare your chances of catching Coronavirus and the flu.r