Papal Masses [Archives:2008/1171/Community]

I wish to commend Pope Benedict XVI for mandating that communicants kneel and receive Communion on the tongue during papal Masses. This is not a return to tradition, but rather an affirmation of current church norms.

Receiving Communion in the hand while standing is what church middle management abusively and hurriedly introduced in the 1960s as an ecumenical gesture to Protestants and others who don't believe in the actual presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Pope Benedict XVI previously has pointed out that “the one who learns to believe also learns to kneel, and a faith or a liturgy no longer familiar with kneeling will be sick at the core.”

St. Thomas Aquinas and Pope John Paul II also have stated that only a priest, who stands as an intermediary between God and the people, should touch the sacred host because only his hands are anointed especially for this task at his ordination.

Kneeling and receiving Communion on the tongue assists the devotion of the faithful and introduces the sense of mystery of the Mass more easily. Hopefully, all Catholic bishops and priests will follow the pope's lead in helping to restore in the faithful a more profound sense of the sacred.

Paul Kokoski

[email protected]
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