Results of a survey on Communion in the hand

Yesterday the Zenit website reported on a survey that have been undertaken in the United States about the attitude of the laity to communion in the hand and other related Eucharistic practices of the contemporary Church. Although I am often suspicious of the value of public opinion research on issues that don’t always come down to a simple affirmative or negative this has been apparently the largest survey that has been undertaken of lay opinion. The results are actually encouraging for those of us of a traditional frame of mind. It does of course depend where the survey was taken because as we know the church in the US shows great extremes of opinion and practice in a way that is perhaps less evident in this country. The report was commissioned by a clearly conservative group but the results are striking. That being so it is perhaps all the more surprising to read it on Zenit which often seems to be very much the voice for current Vatican orthodoxy.

What the survey, the largest so far conducted with regular worshippers, suggests is a desire for greater reverence for the Eucharist, not by only by favouring reception on the tongue but also in externals such as genuflecting and avoiding the use of lay ministers. There was a desire to re-establish in churches the centrality of the Tabernacle. Only a minority of respondents were attending the pre-Conciliar liturgy. The US bishops are being forwarded the report as part of an initiative on the part of those who commissioned it to restore reverence for the Eucharist. 

The article can be seen at Communion in the Hand or in the Mouth? Results Are Published of the Largest Survey in the U.S. on the Eucharist

Communion in the hand

Yesterday I was having tea with two friends when one of them volunteered the information that another friend had recently shamed him into receiving the Host on the tongue as opposed to his usual habit of receiving in the hand.

I gather my face conveyed my shock and disapproval of the fact that he did not always receive on the tongue. Our other friend enquired of him why he thought priest's hands were anointed if not to signify the sacredness of the eucharistic species.

Having found my voice I quoted Bl. Teresa of Calcutta:

"Wherever I go in the whole world, the thing that makes me the saddest is watching people receiving Communion in the hand."

As it happens I was recently pointed to a website called, slightly misleadingly, Communion in the Hand which explains why one should not receive in that manner.

I moved to reception on the tongue back in 1997 whilst I was still an Anglican precisely because I accepted the Catholic arguments about the Eucharist. Theology, tradition and practicality are all in favour of that mode of receiving. I get the impression that it is very much a generational thing, and also, I think, gender related. I am not suggesting we all start look as to who receives how, but some people might be encouraged to think at a higher level than that of contemporary kitchen hygene.