Attention to hygiene

Anent my previous post about Holy Communion on the tongue, and how strange it is that our hierarchy seems to have successfully indoctrinated the majority of the faithful in the hygienic myth that on the hand is safer, and in honor of the new collection of some writings of Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ (more to come -- one edited by my husband and another by another friend of Father's), I reproduce here in full an email conversation of note*:

From Fr. Mankowski to three friends, circa August 2020:

"Receive this mask as a sign of craven submission, and future docility, before the moral faddisms of profane elitist authority.  May CNN, Disney, and Under Armour, who have begun this work in you, bring it to fulfillment ..."

From me to three friends:

That is a nice effort at parody, but in future I suggest that you try something not so close to reality -- the effect is better. I realize that things in the parody business are getting more difficult, but try harder.

I can't help remembering that some years ago (I've lost track), the sanitizer bottle made its way onto the credence table. Now at our parish (which truly is one of the better ones), there is a bottle on a pedestal -- yes, a small pedestal -- in a few places in front of the sanctuary and at the entries.

We call this "organic development of liturgy" and "authentic inculturation."

The sanitizing of the celebrants' hands is a nice addition, as is the paten with the hosts to be distributed placed some inches away from the main one, and the positioning of the concelebrant 6 feet away from the altar (specifics are on file at the diocesan offices). **

I heard last night from a friend that in his diocese (Joliet?), Communion was distributed through a slot in the plexiglass -- it made it difficult but not impossible! for him to receive on the tongue...

Future historians and archeologists will have a fine time documenting all of this when the remains of our faith are dug up...

 

From Fr. Mankowski to three friends: 

I can't help remembering that some years ago (I've lost track), the sanitizer bottle made its way onto the credence table.

When you think of how many hundreds of millions of hosts were placed on hundreds of millions of tongues in Catholic churches, the practice itself should have long served as an epidemiological benchmark -- from the very beginning of epidemiology, in fact -- if transmission of disease thereby ever reached the faintest statistically measurable level.  Given the attention to hygiene of the average priest over the past centuries, the insignificance of the morbidity stats points, if anything, to the miraculous properties of the consecrated host. 

*Sorry for the shock value that readers might find herein, but Fr. M was not a tame servant of the Lion. 

**For Fr. M's parody of this careful, Covid-aware placement of the paten, go here.

Why so committed to Holy Communion in the hand?

I have a simple theory about why the Church today is so committed to the laity taking Holy Communion in the hand -- so committed that although HC on the tongue is, as a norm, the proper way, and in the hand, the dispensation, it is quite difficult to find accommodation in your normal Novus Ordo parish -- especially now in the Covid age. 

Why?

Why so rigid an adherence to an alien practice? 

What is so important to our contemporaries about this way of receiving, when up until recently, relatively speaking, on the tongue was the only way (very primitive practice notwithstanding)? 

Well, I was observing priests concelebrating and noticing that they held the Host until the main celebrant communicated, at which time the others too consumed theirs. Of course, I have seen this thousands of times. But suddenly it struck me that the versus populum (towards the people) posture of the priest makes his consumption of the Host visible to the congregation, and concelebration (also a Novus Ordo innovation) prolongs and emphasizes the gesture.

In a flash I saw -- and perhaps others have written about this, but it's a real revelation to me -- that in the Vatican II ecclesiology, the priest is not meant to be as separate and set apart as in the old. He is dislodged from his hierarchic role. As the years from the Council rolled on, the lines became blurred, intentionally. Many observers have commented on this trend. James Hitchcock put it well here:

Lay and clerical roles have been redefined in a way which almost seems like a simple reversal: lay people press forward eagerly to discharge formal liturgical tasks previously reserved to clerics, while priests and religious aggressively crowd into what were previously considered lay professions, even (as in the case of certain nuns in politics) renouncing their religious status in order to do so. Devout lay people seem to say that they cannot fully live their faith unless they perform recognizably priestly tasks, even as priests complain of being confined in the sanctuary. It may occur to the disinterested observer that such reversals betoken not so much deeper understanding or creative redefinition as simple confusion and formless discontent.

Well, after years of watching priests self-communicate (and maybe it didn't take too long; these things often don't), the laity, or perhaps I should say certain opportunistic innovators, felt a need to do things just the way the priest does them; in short, to self-communicate rather than to receive the Host on the tongue, kneeling. In fact, one serious sacrilege that I used to observe is Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist (that is, laypeople) going around the altar and taking the Host directly from the paten -- the way a concelebrating priest does. For a long time now I have taken care to stay away from such churches if possible, so I don't know if this abuse is still occurring.

The more I think about it, the more I see a straight line from the priest turning to face the people to the concelebrated Mass to the people (or unwittingly, their agents) insisting on Holy Communion in the hand. Counterfactually, this mode is the preferred and normal one. And yet, it's the result of a distortion of the roles of priest and laity. 

I really urge any reader who does not already receive Holy Communion on the tongue to pray and read about it. I believe that our Holy Communions need to be as reverent as possible.