Liturgy Guy on Communion in the Hand

Liturgy guy has an excellent post today on the dangers of receiving communion in the hand. A point I have reflected on before, a practice that actively teaches against the true presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist.

Two quotes caught my eye, First from Bishop Athanasius Schneider,

"There is the grievous fact of the loss of the Eucharistic fragments. No one can deny this. And the fragments of the consecrated host are crushed by feet. This is horrible! Our God, in our churches, is trampled by feet! No one can deny it.
[…]
A priest and a bishop cannot say this practice is ok. Here is at stake the most holy, the most divine and concrete on Earth."

How many Saints have been martyred for the simple fact that they would not trample an image of Our Lord or Our Lady, but here we have many Catholics, physically trampling our Lord in a practiced condoned by our priests and Bishops.  It is in my opinion a great disgrace in our Church that we are not asked to stand up and live our Faith.

The Second quote is from Brian Williams himself:

"Indeed, a defense of Communion in the hand requires us to believe one of two propositions. Either:

• The Vatican and Bishop Schneider are being dishonest when they say that fragments of Our Eucharistic Lord are lost when Communion is distributed in the hand; or…

• Particles are lost but we simply do not care because Catholics are used to this modern practice and we cannot ask them to change now. In other words, fear of Man instead of fear of the Lord."

"Fear of Man instead of the Lord" This is the heart of why we don't see more widespread adoption of Ad Orientem worship, Traditional Latin Mass, and Holy Communion Kneeling on the tongue.  It comes down to fear.

Read his full article here