WHAT'S BEHIND THE BAN ON COMMUNION ON THE TONGUE?

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"Curiouser and curiouser" said Alice in Wonderland. And "sillier and sillier" she might have added today, in the Wonderland of St Peter Chanel Hastings, where not only has the holy water gone, but now the fonts as well. 

This curious deed is done just as the pandemic is declared over and the vaccine unnecessary - by the former Vice President of Pfizer, whose vaccine 'St Jacinda' has bought on behalf of all NZ's 'useful idiots' who want it, for God alone knows how many taxpayers' dollars.

 https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/health/no-need-for-vaccines-the-covid-pandemic-is-over-says-former-vice-president-of-pfizer

                                        

I say 'St Jacinda' because that's what The Spectator calls her in The Myth of St Jacinda  (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-myth-of-saint-jacinda), but as you see above, a reader of this blog, Bob Gill, sought the help of St Michael the Archangel to remove her halo - however ironically earned. 

"As the psychologist Jonathan Haidt revealed in The Righteous Mind, we wish for things to be true, and no amount of counter-evidence will change our minds.

"Ardern is lucky that humans have this mental bug because on practically every single metric her administration has failed. In the 2020 election campaign, Ardern should have struggled to explain why her grand promises had so utterly failed. 

"Except no one demanded any accountability, and Ardern cruised to an absolute majority based on her saintly image. Ordinary Kiwis, unused to being the global centre of attention, also desperately want this internationalist narrative to be true. 

 http://juliadufresne.blogspot.com/2021/01/hamilton-cathedral-no-communion-on.html

The Church of Nice in New Zealand fell for "this internationalist narrative", and still fervently believes it. So fervently, that not only have some priests emptied the holy water fonts, substituting plastic bottles of 'sanitiser' for sacramental blessing, but are still denying us our right to Communion on the tongue, or at least making the faithful who refuse to risk profanation by receiving the Lord of lords in the hand wait till last in the Communion queue, receiving Him often from hands that have just patted unwashed shoulders, or even heads.

Readers may remember a recent post - http://juliadufresne.blogspot.com/2021/01/hamilton-cathedral-no-communion-on.html - which reported a chap being refused Holy Communion on the tongue at Hamilton Cathedral. 

I was emailed soon after by one 'Father Danny Fraser-Jones Parish Priest' at St Pius X (how ironic), Melville, Hamilton.  "Hi Julie", he wrote. He was wondering if I'd "caught up with the latest from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments."

Fr Danny Fraser-Jones

Father Fraser-Jones seemed to think that Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Congregation's Prefect, was all for suspension of Communion on the tongue. However, in referring to the "pandemic" and the "upheavals" it has produced, the Cardinal actually stated that "it is necessary and urgent to return to the normality of Christian life"; that "liturgical norms are not matters on which civil authorities can legislate"; that "liturgical celebrations should be facilitated ... in full respect of the norms." 

Cardinal Sarah puts "obedience to the norms of the Church" ahead of "obedience to the Bishops" and "provisional norms which must be obeyed ... which expire when the situation returns to normal". Cardinal Robert Sarah, as would be expected of an orthodox, faithful prelate, was supporting a return to Communion on the tongue.

In his letter to Bishops' Conferences (way back in August!) he stated that "bishops were prompt to make difficult and painful decisions, even suspending participation of the faithful in the celebration of the Eucharist. He refers to the bishops as "trying to respond in the best possible way to an unforeseen and complex situation. He does not say they succeeded.

Should we be surprised, however, that the Vatican managed to wheel out Cardinal Sarah in support of its decision to uphold a US bishop's forbidding Communion on the tongue? The dicastery quotes +Sarah as saying "bishops can give provisional norms which must be obeyed ... even to suspend ... Communion on the tongue." 

That's putting a spin on the cardinal's words, to put it mildly. And that was in December. Cardinal Sarah wrote his circular letter to bishops back in August. Tempus fugit, especially in times of so-called pandemic!  Do try to keep up, one might say to the Vatican - but the dicastery was dissembling. 

'Dissembling' is a word we would do well to familiarise ourselves with: it's become a blunt but effective instrument in the woke fascist truth-concealment toolkit.

However, the good Fr Danny Fraser-Jones felt that the Vatican documents he referenced in his email - https://dioknox.org/news/vatican-issues-support-of-bishop-stika-decisions-regarding-holy-communion - "maybe show a development that needs to be taken into account."

Fr Fraser-Jones was being very nice about it (of course, this is the Church of Nice) but it's pretty clear that Bishop Stephen Lowe sooled him on to me. It's equally clear that in distributing Communion only in the hand, Fr Fraser-Jones was acting under instruction from his bishop.

It was like being sooled by a labrador. So being 'nice' back, I wrote Fr Fraser-Jones an email in reply.

Curiouser and curiouser: I could not make contact with Fr Fraser-Jones. I couldn't even make contact with his Melville Parish office. So I ask you, what else could I do but make a public response to his email, on this blog? And here it is: 

"Dear Father Fraser-Jones

To call a spade a spade, what Cardinal Sarah refers to is not "COVID-19" but the Wuhan virus. Furthermore, there is no “pandemic”. I’m sorry to see Cardinal Sarah subscribe to the mass hysteria surrounding what amounts to no more than a seasonal flu and its manipulation by global influencers, including Pope Francis, to create a new world order.

Cardinal Robert Sarah

Cardinal Sarah is very kind in acknowledging the Bishops' "commitment and effort in trying to respond in the best possible way to an unforeseen and complex situation". Note that +Sarah is not saying the Bishops succeeded in doing so. He does say that "rigid social distancing was necessary" (my emphasis) but nowhere in his letter to Bishops' Conferences does he support withholding Communion on the tongue.

In fact he says: "Due attention to hygiene and safety regulations cannot lead to the sterilisation of gestures and rites, to the instilling, even unconsciously, of fear and insecurity in the faithful."

Because, as has been well explicated by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, Bishop Athanasius Schneider and other defenders of the faith, in reality withholding the Eucharist is a betrayal of Catholic doctrine and of Jesus Christ Our Lord. 

In regard to +Sarah’s appeal to obedience, which you kindly highlighted for me, the words of St Peter immediately spring to mind: “We ought to obey God, rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

May I quote from OnePeterFive?

“Bishop (Athanasius)Schneider (Auxiliary Bishop of Kazakhstan) explicitly proposes that priests may resist the orders of their superiors, for the sake of preserving the Catholic Faith.

With reference to the question as to whether a priest may refuse to give out Holy Communion into the hands of the faithful, Bishops Schneider quotes John Paul II’s Instruction Redemptoris Sacramentum (2004).

 According to this document, a priest has a right not to give Communion into the hands when he sees “a danger of profanation” (or worse!), explains Schneider. As an example, the prelate mentions that fragments of the Holy Eucharist can be lost on the ground or that there is a danger that the Host might be stolen. A priest, in such a case, “can refuse it [to give Communion in the hand].” +Schneider proposes that the priest should also then proceed to give a good catechesis to his parish, explaining his decision. And he believes that the majority of the faithful would follow that priest’s instruction.”

 

(T)here is no evidence that the normative and traditional manner of receiving Communion — namely, on the tongue — is less sanitary or in any way more dangerous to public health than Communion in the hand. A canon lawyer wrote to me: “Many have pointed out that germs are spread as easily by frequent hand contact as by placing the host in the mouth (which, if the priest knows what he’s doing, should not involve any transfer of saliva).”

https://onepeterfive.com/bishop-schneider-if-a-bishop-or-pope-commands-me-to-sin-i-have-to-refuse/

From OnePeterFive, again: 

“The General Instruction of the Roman Missal, issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments on November 12, 2002, in its 2011 U.S. edition, reads at n. 161:

If Communion is given only under the species of bread, the Priest raises the host slightly and shows it to each, saying, The Body of Christ. The communicant replies, Amen, and receives the Sacrament either on the tongue or, where this is allowed, in the hand, the choice lying with the communicant. 

“In support, the important Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum — Instruction on Certain Matters to Be Observed or to Be Avoided Regarding the Most Holy Eucharist, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, March 25, 2004, reads in art. 92:

Although each of the faithful always has the right to receive Holy Communion on the tongue, at his choice, if any communicant should wish to receive the Sacrament in the hand, in areas where the Bishops’ Conference with the recognitio of the Apostolic See has given permission, the sacred host is to be administered to him or her [in that manner]. 

“The Congregation for Divine Worship has expressed its mind at least three times in response to situations where attempts were made to enforce Communion in the hand. A letter of April 3, 1985 to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (later renamed USCCB) [Prot. 720/85] reads in part:

The Holy See, since 1969, while maintaining the traditional manner of distributing Communion, has granted to those Episcopal Conferences that have requested it, the faculty of distributing Communion by placing the host in the hands of the faithful[.] … The faithful are not to be obliged to adopt the practice of Communion in the hand. Each one is free to communicate in one way or the other.

“Here is a response from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, published in Notitiae (April 1999):

Response: Certainly it is clear from the very documents of the Holy See that in dioceses where the Eucharistic bread is put in the hands of the faithful, the right to receive the Eucharistic bread on the tongue still remains intact to the faithful. Therefore, those who restrict communicants to receive Holy Communion only on in the hands are acting against the norms, as are those who refuse to Christ’s faithful [the right] to receive Communion in the hand in dioceses that enjoy this indult.

 24 July 2009:

“This … Dicastery observes that the Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum (25 March 2004) clearly stipulates that “each of the faithful always has the right to receive Holy Communion on the tongue” (n. 92), nor is it licit to deny Holy Communion to any of Christ’s faithful who are not impeded by law from receiving the Holy Eucharist (cf. n. 91).

 “(A) canon lawyer wrote the following to me:

“From my perspective, a bishop cannot require anyone to receive in the hand. Even in the Ordinary Form, the prescription [i.e., norm] is Communion on the tongue, with the [rescriptive] 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.

 

“A layman may not be denied the Blessed Sacrament unless he is a notorious public sinner. A priest who, on his own initiative, told the people they must receive in the hand would be violating the law and leading the people into the violation of it.” https://onepeterfive.com/bishops-communion-hand-tongue/

 

Father, please forgive me for burdening you with all the foregoing, but it clearly demonstrates  that Communion on the tongue is the norm and that Communion in the hand is certainly no more hygienic. 

Furthermore, any restriction on the reception of Communion is futile to stop the spread of a virus which according to Worldometer statistics has had a mortality rate in New Zealand of 1.09% (and every one of those persons were either elderly or with other health issues or both).  And that’s even with the effective treatment, hydroxychloroquine, banned. 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v3#:~:text=Infection%20fatality%20rates%20ranged%20from%200.00%25%20to%201.63%25,done%20in%20pandemic%20epicenters

 

All things considered, Father, one has to wonder what is the real reason for banning Communion on the tongue. 

I’m not a canon lawyer. I have no qualifications in regard to the Wuhan virus and the Church’s response beyond common sense and faith. 

I hope you will accept all this bumf in the spirit in which it is offered - a spirit of love and reverence for the priesthood and Holy Mother Church.

Julia