Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Another Manifesto on Reception by Hand


This article, written by David Gray, rebuts an apparent attempt by Voris to promote the reception of Eucharist by tongue.

Boy, the claws really come out when a Catholic tries to spread a deeper respect for the Eucharist.

The discussion always takes on a preternatural quality...as if the demons are summoned from every corner of the earth.  It never fails to get creepy and weird.  And, from sources that can surprise you.

David (on Facebook) said while he appreciates people who promote reception of the Eucharist by mouth, he's sick and tired of it because it makes people who receive by hand feel demonized.

I'll bet you know what Carol has to say about the people who feel demonized when they are reminded that their manhandling of the Eucharist is leaving particles of the Divinity of Christ on the floor, onto shoes, where He is carried out into dog poo?

Cry me a river.

David claims it is not about whether Christ is dropped onto the floor, but rather, it is about how holy the people feel about themselves as they paw the Eucharist.  It is about the reverence as you do it, he says.

I'm not sure how much success I had explaining to him that the feelings of the Deity involved in the interaction are excluded from his hypothesis, but I offered to God a valiant effort.

I learned a lot of things from a Fr. John Higgins I'm willing to bet you never heard before.

He first tried to tell me that the Church teaches that the Divinity of Christ is not in the substance of particles that fall from the Eucharist.  Only a whole piece of bread has the substance of Christ's Divinity.  The rest is dust.   Worthless dust.   He told me folks like us who believe that the Divinity of Christ is in pieces that break off of the Eucharist are like the people who worry about the fumes of the 'wine'.

He switched up the story a bit when he realized he wasn't talking to your average Catholic idiot when I asked him why, if the Church taught that Christ's Divinity was not in particles broken off of the Host, why then would they provide a Corporal and other linens which are, according to protocol, handled as if they carried particles of Christ's Divinity?   He said the Church teaches the Divinity of Christ is only in particles broken by the priest but not in particles that break off in the Communion lines.

When I asked him why the Romans would then use a paten for the distribution of the Eucharist which is only permitted by mouth, he got the big violins out.     Poor Fr. Higgins, the victim of a modernist vicious woman who simply will not listen to her superior.    He and all the Bishops and the Pope touch the Eucharist with their hands and receive standing up.   Why, Pope John Paul even gave him the Eucharist in his hands.   The paten is just for people who receive on the tongue because they are irreverent, fumble and drop the Eucharist.

He and others in the thread divulged several more of their screwball ideas, but you get the gist.

A number of pathetic sappy sorts with misplaced empathy chimed in.  Poor Fr. Higgins.  Stupid, insane woman with a filthy mouth that is a source of sin.  Blasphemer.  Shame on me for being disrespectful to Fr. Higgings (crumpled in the corner with his wounded self-esteem).   I am a modernist.  Others claimed I was a RadTrad (the use of which I explained is a perverse insult to the communion of the faithful who practice a Rite approved by the Church).  A heretic.  I need a team of psychiatrists and an exorcist.

The poor, poor lambs.

I was on my best behavior until Fr. Higgins chimed in again with more news.  The Altar rail is/was only for keeping wild animals out of the Sanctuary.   Whilst I did have the fortitude not to say what I wanted to say, i.e., it is a crying shame they don't have a gate like that at the seminary admissions office - it got a bit ugly.

In between chores, I persisted in backing Fr. Higgins into the corner about the substance of Divinity in particles of Christ and after several hours, he reversed himself by claiming I was a liar and twisting what he said and confirmed that what breaks off during the handling of Communion by people, gets dropped onto the floor, trampled upon, taken out into the dog poo IS the Divinity of Christ.

While I praised God for His victory, numerous people comforted Fr. Higgins by hurling salvos and insults.

Here's the kicker: after a few hours of slander and insults for promoting the practice of Eucharist on the tongue, one of the women said she was just wishing me peace.    HA.

Shortly thereafter, Fr. Higgins said he had just about enough of me and just like that, POOF, he disappeared.

Proving once again, when one resists the devil, he will flee.

Wait.  What was the subject matter of David Gray's article again?

Oh yeah.  The demonizing of people who receive Communion in the hand.

LOL.

ADDENDUM:   The best was yet to come.  A psychic woman who saw me as sitting in the corner sucking her thumb because a) the people attacking the promotion of reception by mouth were not attacking Christ but rather, attacking me, and I, you see, was catatonic (am I the Christ in this scenario?)  b) my Christmas was without family and friends (I'm guessing sorta like Lucy Ricardo on her birthday, I think?) c) I am trolling the internet to hurt people because I am hurt - (hurt people hurt people - was that on Oprah?) or finally; d.) I'm trolling the internet for relationships in the comments section of people who despise Communion by mouth.

HA.  What is next?

Pining for love from Fr. James Martin?

Rocking back and forth in the despair of from being among a group of highly esteemed colleagues who are a featured insult on the Cardinal's blog and newspapers across the continental US?  

Pigs would fly before I could ever I give a dimes worth of my self-esteem and self-worth to a group of people who go on a rampage of insulting and attacking Catholics who promote the reception of Divinity without trampling Him into your shoes.

What a testimony to the shallow nature of faith that is out there.

Do these people even see Christ, know what it is all about?  When you speak to them, they don't see Christ as a separate being from themselves.   They cannot grasp the concept that when we speak or act or receive -- whether the Divinity of Christ or insults -- we are focused on Christ and not ourselves.

It isn't about us.  It never was and it never will be.

44 comments:

Anonymous said...

Per David Grey's blog posting "However, special care should be taken to ensure that the host is consumed by the communicant in the presence of the minister, so that no one goes away carrying the Eucharistic species in his hand." This often does not happen. Twice I have seen different young people carry the consecrated host back to their pew and one boy (with his parents present) started playing with the host (his mother stopped him). In the other case, an older man admonished a girl to put the host in her mouth. The reverence when Communion is received in the hand is barely there. Also, Eucharistic ministers in my church can be pro-abort, pro-gay marriage, anything and they freely express their opinions. Really, I don't think any parish employee, Eucharistic minister or even lector should be in open revolt against church teaching. I have heard that the director of religious education for a large diocese told a class of religious education teachers that the Eucharist is not the Real Presence. This was years, if not decades ago, and she is still the director of religious ed for the diocese. So, not only are the priests like your Father Higgins (is he real?) not reverent, but many of the "ministering" people in the church mock church teachings and the Eucharist.

TTC said...

What you describe is the norm, sadly. At least 1/2 dozen times in my life, I have intercepted the Blessed Sacrament from scandalous mishandling.

I wasn't sure if Fr. Higgins was real but he had a picture of a priest with Blessed Pope John Paul II as his profile pic. Pray for the man.

Mes for Life said...

Well, I was on the thread, and Carol has totally misrepresented everything that occurred there. She has slandered Fr.Higgins, a VERY WELL KNOWN Priest who is in good standing with the church and called me a Bitch, for trying to explain to her that the Holy Father has no problem with the reception of communion in the hand, per his quote “I am not opposed in principle to Communion in the hand; I have both administered and received Communion in this way myself.”....No one is above the Pope, both methods of reception are valid per the church.....Carol, needs to go to confession and do some deep soul searching on reverence, its not only outward acts, its about the heart, and its about loving your neighbor, her disrespectful actions towards a priest, her slanderous twisting of what happened and what was said, is a total lack of reverence towards our Lord.

TTC said...

Again, what you did not explain after that quote was that the Pope went on to say that while he is not offended by the principle of Communion by hand, what he really wants to do is promote the reception of the Eucharist by mouth.

When one witnessing to that call and carrying out that mission steps forward, you all got your viscous on in that thread.

There is nothing misrepresented. The priest may be in good standing but so is Fr. James Martin. For that matter Bishop Gumbleton. He was teaching a heresy which he recanted - no thanks to you and the others who were coddling him and going on a rampage to prevent him from seeing his grave error. And you were being a bitch. Nobody has the right to treat a person speaking the truth the way you all did. It was despicable. A weaker person would have been crushed.

The fact that your rampage was all about disputing the superiority and reverence of Communion by mouth and the truth that particles broken from the Eucharist are of divine nature and substance - I would take a good look at who was behind your wind.

Lynne said...

This is another reason why I like going to a TLM, I receive Communion on the tongue kneeling with no EMHCs... I guess that makes *me* a rad-trad... lol

You are fearless, Carol. :-)

If the people who 'railed' against Communion on the tongue tried it for a month, they'd see that it's wonderful to receive that way. I'm betting they wouldn't go back to receiving in the hand.

TTC said...

As God is my witness when they were educated about the magnitude of sacrelige to Christ their practice was causing and invited to receive Him as Divinity deserves, they turned into a pack of wild animals. I don't think I have ever encountered such a malicious reaction to an invitation to reverence to Christ, even amoung the pagans.

It was fascinating.

TTC said...

BTW Lynne, it bothers me that they speak of the Latin Rite as if it is not as approved as the Novus Ordo.

What a gutter.

Anonymous said...

I live in the western suburbs. In my nominally home parish the pastor uses one of those huge cracker-like hosts. A friend of mine goes up after Mass and cleans around the altar, collecting the pieces (sometimes not so small), dissolving them and pouring them out the special sink in the sacristy. No use speaking to him -- he knows he's making a mess and doesn't care. Thank God for reverent Catholics.


M

TTC said...

M,

Frightening, it is impossible to believe succh a man is convicted about Transubstantiation. I would get out of Dodge and pray for the man.

I asked Fr Higgins over a dozen times to say that the particles are Divine. He tried focusing on ridicule, the syntax of words, played word games. Etc. He manipulated the emotions of the daffy women, lied about the teachings of the Church, blasphemed the Divinity of the Eucharist. But I kept at it and he finally recanted. Sometimes, it pays off.

susan said...

Am I missing something?...I didn't see a 'Fr. Higgins', or the daft woman on the comment thread. Did they delete all of their comments?

And Carol, girrrrrrrl....you really are fearless! And one of my GREAT heros....GOD BLESS YOU!!!!

Kelly said...

When I converted (8 years!)IN RCIA I was specifically taught to receive in the hand. Period. Not that it was the alternative to the normative way of receiving on the tongue. Sometime I do go to an EMHC and stick out my tongue and can feel the disapproval. However, our priests are not like that. Thank God. I just wonder if they know or care what is being taught in RCIA!

breathnach said...

Carol, well done!

Amazing how these folks become unhinged when faced with a nuanced argument. Their first reaction: "she's a trad nut case". Oh, she actually defends the Novus Ordo on her blog and with Catholics in her daily environment. Well, "she's an overly scrupulous Miss Grundy who has personal issues that make her judgmental." No, she's defending the perennial teachings and traditions of the Church,as to the dignity and holiness of the actual Body of Christ. Well, "she's a meanie, she rejects irreverent reception of the Body of Christ, it will put off frequent reception of the Eucharist---never mind that those in mortal sin may be receiving".

breathnach said...

Kelly,

15 years ago I was naive enough to volunteer as a lector at St. Anthony's Shrine, Boston. During their orientation they required that all lectors, extraordinary ministers MUST receive by hand. I never undertook to be a lector there. I assist at the Novus Ordo and have never received by hand. Of course,it's not a sin, but in this time of disbelief in the Transubstantiation, it is a discipline that shows respect and prevents the trampling of the sacred Host.

Aged parent said...

I commend you for your doggedness and fearlessness.

Two things are never mentioned by the promoters of Communion in the hand. The first is their lack of knowledge about the ancient practice of receiving this way, which they say they are reviving. It is true that in some jurisdictions of the early Church the practice was common, but the Host never at any time was allowed to actually come into contact with the flesh. A pure, white linen was placed upon the outstretched hands of the recipient and the priest would place the Host upon the linen. The recipient would then raise the linen-covered hand toward his mouth and receive - again, never once at any time actually touching the Sacred Species. (Bishop Athanasius Schneider has recently written about this)

The second thing proponents of this terrible current practice do not wish to talk about is the fact that a Pope can make disastrous disciplinary decisions. Many do not like this sad fact but a careful study of the history of the Church will enlighten them on the point. Too many confuse the words "infallibility" and "impeccability" and it is the misunderstanding of those two terms which has caused terrible damage in the Church. It is not pleasant to have to say that Pope John Paul II was wrong in allowing this sacrilege to become the norm; clearly, he was wrong. As he was wrong about allowing altar girls, as he was wrong about not seriously governing the Church that was put in his care and in so many other ways it is too depressing to recall. A Pope can do fine things and he can also do catastrophically stupid things, and he can do them during a single pontificate. Why else should Catholics pray for the Pope if not to protect him from doing the wrong thing? To cite John Paul's approval of Communion in the hand as if that settles the matter is to misunderstand much about the Faith.

Communion in the hand must go away, at least the way it is currently practiced. It was eventually abandoned by the early Church out of fear that, even with the use of the sacred linen upon the hands, some particles could eventually fall on the ground. It will take a courageous Pope to bring this about. We all need to pray that God sends us one.

Again, I commend you, sir, for your fighting spirit and I wish you well on this 3rd day of Christmas.

Kelly said...

Aged parent-

Beautiful and wise post!

Alas , Carol is not a "sir," but she is certainly courageous. :)

And breathnach, thank you for your response :)

Aged parent said...

Thank you, Kelly, for correcting me on that point. I am now all the more in admiration of Carol's steadfastness.

Aged Parent

TTC said...

Suzy, the thread with Higgins and the daffy women are on David's facebook profile page. It is surreal.

Thanks to you and everyone for your kind words on the fearlessness. I definitely do not do it under my own power so it really does not belong to me. I will box it up and give the gratitude to my guarian angels.

TTC said...

Kelly, Eight years - wow. You understand our religion better than most ordained men. Praise God. The looks of disapproval are amazing aren't they. You know what this blaguard priest said? He said people whose tongue touches his fingers are committing sacrilege.

That's right. It wasn't the people who were grabbing the Eucharist with their hands and grounding Christ into their shoes committing sacrilege because pieces that break off of the Host are not Divinity. His fingers are divinity and people who receive on the tongue commit sacrilege.

If he has a problem with an unsteady hand, perhaps he should cut down on the booze or lose a few hundred pounds so people don't have to stand six feet away from his body.

I hope you'll pardon my venting. I can't tell you how disgusting this character behaved to discourage -- and outright lie to people -- so they will not receive by mouth.

I had a dream I went there, put out my tongue and licked his fingers up to the knuckles before accepting Christ. LOL.

Mes for Life said...

Well Carol, I have the entire thread and I will be reading it on my radio show.....and I will pray for you....

TTC said...

Breathnach - you are so right!

My favorite broom hilda was the woman who took a breather from the attacks to play psychologist.

"Carol, how was your Christmas. Did something happen? I think it must have been terrible. What happened. Where are you now? Who is with you? Where are your parents? Friends? Children? Did they come to visit you yesterday? Were you all alone? What did you do today? Nobody is trying to hurt you. What we said hurt you. Are you hurt? Hurt people hurt. Something happened to you..."

Do people fall for this stuff?

I'll tell you what happened Lady, I ran into the taliban. Drink the poison yourselves.

haha.

TTC said...

LOL. You wouldn't dare read the priest's heresy, ridicule and the comments of the bitches on your 'radio show' without censoring it out and picking and choosing comments.

I've got a name for the episode - slander and prayer.

You're a piece of work, you know that?

Get out of here.

TTC said...

p.s. Be sure to book the psychic as a narrator -- and that Paully woman who attends the theological seminary. She absolutely loved David's story telling Catholics not to bother to give consideration to receiving Christ by mouth.

I couldn't care less about your slander on your two-bit radio show. Knock yourself out.

TTC said...

BTW - what was your name again?

I'm going to prepare a special blog post for the handful of menopausal women who tune in to your show.

Kelly said...

LOL Carol! And ew! lol. I do feel kinda bad for the priest when he accidentally touches my tongue..but thems the hazards of the job, huh?

some priests are experts at sticking the host on the tongue deftly with their thumb.
I , on occasion , am called upon by the pastor to serve as EMHC. Just out of respect I do it, I would prefer not to, and have told some of our priests this and they never ask me. I guess I just don't see how a couple extra minutes spent giving people communion from the priest only could be all that bad.

TTC said...

Kelly, I know - mea culpa.

All priests ever need to do is steady their hand and pay attention. Most of them are giving out Communion and their minds are elsewhere.

Furthermore, the ones that crybaby about giving Communion by tongue - offer the Chalice of Blood, which hundreds of people drink from - and then they drink what's left!

TTC said...

ps breathnach - you were going to lector at the shrine? LOL - what were you thinking?

Did you know the priests there almost started a scuffle with a man they refused to give Communion by mouth to? There was a big fugatz. But the last time I went there, a lot of people were receiving Christ by mouth. The fights pay off.

It is true, the priests are bullying the faithful, teaching that Communion by mouth is for the loons whilst the rest of us use our hands. They are actually poo-pooing it at the seminary and diaconate programs.

Let us face it. There are more Fr. Higgins than we can shake a stick at. But let those of us who witness, witness. There are more people receiving Communion by mouth than there were five years ago.

breathnach said...

yes, Carol I was fool enough some years back to try and be a lector at St. A's. There were still several older priests there who were conscientious. I haven't been there in a very long time.

Mr. Grey seems very outraged by all this imaginary abuse inflicted on "in hand" receivers. You have to dig very deep to find any of it. I've attended five or six parishes in the last ten years and have been one of a handful not receiving by hand. It's a crock!

breathnach said...

BTW Carol,

I'm surprised the dime store psychologists haven't compared reception by tongue to an oral fixation that the repressed troglodytes (aka tongue receivers) have never worked out from their unhappy childhoods.

TTC said...

Breathnach, there are still a few good priests at St. Anthony's. They have some that are absolutely off the walls, but I believe they finally plucked the rector who was a train wreck. God bless him.

Still, I think there and the Paulist Center are places that would need plenty of Advil and toilet paper if we signed up for lectoring?

TTC said...

ps - Fr. Higgins did make some kind of perverted inference that I had no idea what he was talking about - thankfully. The saints preserved me from taking my mind to that gutter. He mentioned misogyny with it. I don't want to know!

CatholicConvert said...

Noticing the differences of blog quality....David's blog on the subject is full of links and references so that people can actually look into what he is posting about. The other, no links, no references, just her spouting at the mouth about her opinion and her perception about what happened (which btw, is no one else's perception, whether traditionalists or NO who posted on the thread). In fact, most of the traditionalists asked both Carol and Father to make the exchange a PRIVATE one )private mail). So please, everyone needs to look at the exchange for themselves before thanking Carol or telling her how brace she was, because she, without meaning to, did a lot of damage to the message.

CatholicConvert said...

In addressing the post-conciliar upheaval in the years since the close of the Second Vatican Council, Sheen had this to say:

"The tensions that developed after the Council are not surprising to those who know the whole history of the Church. It is a historical fact that whenever there is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit as in a general council of the Church, there is always an extra show of force by the anti-Spirit or the demonic. Even at the beginning, immediately after Pentecost and the descent of the Spirit upon the apostles, there began a persecution and the murder of Stephen. If a general council did not provoke the spirit of turbulence, one might almost doubt the operation of the third Person of the Trinity over the assembly." (pp. 292–293)

Kelly said...

Oh I looked, dear. I looked.

TTC said...

Catholic Convert,

These people have been reading here for years. I havebeen blogging for over a decade. Innuendo thatI would lie about an exchange will be fruitless.

Let's go over what happened.

Michael Voris took time and effort to produce a Vortex on why Christ's Body and Blood should be received on your tongue.

I like.David, but I am mystified as to his response to Voris' earnest effort to give what is holy to Christ Our King. Rather than helping to promote more reverent reception, he chose to author a piece to discourage it. The links which you reference were used to create the impression that at one time in history, people sat on the floor in a circle, etc, and consequently, you may receive the Eucharist like the pagans because it is not a sin.

Flatuence in Church is not a sin either, but peoole who respect the Divinity of Christ do that in a powder room.

I am sorry to say it, but authoring a piece and organizing links to documents and the history of ou Church to discourage and undermine efforts to educate the uncatechized on the pagan vulgarity of dropping Christ onto the floor and grinding him into shoes, is not the work of the Holy Spirit.

When I showed up to reverse damage David was doing, to explain the particles of Christ you are mishandling, instead of being recieved with profound horror of the consequences of your practice, the same bitches who have driven thousands of souls into exile in every parish, showed up to defend, not Christ, but Davids feelings. Behaved like wild animals. Fr.Higgins showed up and added his piece of poo, but explaining that the particles I was speaking about do not have Divine properties. Which then made you all rabid.

The devil is in the rest of the details which I shant repeat. It is the truth. As God is my witness, I testify to it.

That is all my readers need, I assure you. They have seen the same sort of bitches in their own parishes for decades, destroying, removing, trampling what is holy, and then threatening and slandering people who testify to what they are doing to Christ.

I intend to obtain a copy of that exchange from the pious witch with the radio show so that her "radio show" devoted to punishing me through her slander will be debunked when I publish excerpts she will fail to mention to give the absurd impression something else happened other than what I describe.

TTC said...

ps

"the message" does not need links or long winded explanations to convince you to stop dropping Christ onto the floor.

I gave you the reasons why in one sentence and it debunked Davids attempt to discourage you. You are dropping Christ on the floor and grinding Him onto your shoes. Fr Higgins tried numerous lies about the Divinity of Christ to debunk me, but in the end, he bowed his knee. What you drop on the floor is Christ.

If you need some kind of links and materials to convince you to continue to drop Christ on the floor, David Gray has provided it.

Frankly, my dear, I dont give a damn what you do. You have the knowlwdge about what you are doing to Christ. I have finished my service to Him in this fugatz. That is all I care about. Lots of luck making your choice. You have our prayers.

Anonymous said...

Nice language there. Being sarcastic.

TTC said...

After that spectacle, you have some nerve showing up here with a stink of moral superiority because I use the word bitches to describe the phenomenon. Bitches describes it perfectly. The only other description that would be fitting is 'a brood of vipers' but I thought that would blow their fallopian tubes out of their brains.

This cult has invaded every parish, misquoting the intentions of the Second Vatican Council to profane and remove what is holy.

You've had a good run but it is over.

The Holy See is on the case. They reversed the damage done to the language of the Sacred Liturgy - and slowly but surely, we will bring back the practices, our statues, our devotions into catechesis.

If you don't like it, you can always return to the Unitarian Church down the street but my advice to you is to sit down and shut up as we promote the practices. Otherwise, it is going to get ugly.

Kelly said...

Hey Carol--did you see this?
http://www.sanctepater.com/

stillstaggering said...

Well, thanks to a bit of brain damage, I can drop to my knees, but I cannot stand up without assistance. Here in our diocese in BC, Canada, in all four parishes, I am assisted to my feet as if this is the most normal thing in the world. If said priest, altar boy, or strong person behind me is unaware, I just say in a clear, but quiet and pleasant voice, "Please give me you wrist", and, flash, just like that, up I go.


stillstaggering

TTC said...

Kelly,

Awesome!! Thanks for bringing that to our attention. There's another fun post out there too. I'm going to try to wind them all into another post.

stillstaggering said...

I would like to add: when you know that the very next person you will see is Jesus, and you will be giving an account of your life, a person's perspective changes--radically.

And, yes, miracles do happen. I know.

Kelly said...

I think I saw the one of which you speak :) I had a uncharacteristically quiet day and I was able to treat myself to an afternoon of blog-reading.

TTC said...

Kelly, it sure is fascinating.

Anonymous said...

Awesome job! Thank you for defending Christ so intelligently.