Cardinal: No Communion in the Hand!

It is rare that I find good news in the The Tablet (aka the bitter pill). They do however try to make the worst of a a good situation.

The Tablet reports that Peruvian Cardinal Cardinal Luis Cipriani Thorne has banned communion in the hand in his diocese.

[Cue sinister music] Opus Dei Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne told Petrus: “I maintain that the best way to administer Communion is on the tongue, so much so that in my diocese I have forbidden the host in the hand.”[/Cue sinister music]

The cardinal, who is Archbishop of Lima and a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, said that “the relaxed attitude of many priests” was to blame for a decline in reverence for the Eucharist among the faithful. “In Masses with great attendance, in the past we even found hosts thrown on to the pavement of the church,” he added.

A missionary priest working in Lima told The Tablet the ban “would only apply to his jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Lima”. “The remainder of the dioceses around Lima would not go for such a practice,” he said.

Thanks to the Tablet for including an anonymous quote from a missionary priest that the surrounding dioceses would not go for this. Who cares?!? The Cardinal, apparently unlike the anonymous priest, has the courage of his convictions.

I think that a return to communion on the tongue received kneeling would be a wonderful change in the Church that would be a tremendous boon to belief in the real presence. I for one hope that this is the beginning of a trend.

ht to NLM.