2. Traditional Practice
It has always been the practice of Catholics to receive Holy Communion on the tongue. To touch the Sacred Species and the Sacred Vessels was the privilege of the ordained only. The Popes, Saints and Church Councils, from the earliest times had advised the faithful to receive Communion only on the tongue. Pope St.Sixtus I, in the early 2nd century, made it clear that “it is prohibited for the faithful to touch the sacred vessels, or to receive in the hand”. A century later another Pope St. Eutychian (275-283) forbade the faithful from taking the Sacred Host in their hand. In the 5th Century, Pope St. Leo the Great energetically defended and required faithful obedience to the practice of administering Holy Communion on the tongue of the faithful. The Council of Saragossa (380), The Synod of Rouen (650) and The Sixth Ecumenical Council, at Constantinople (680-681) forbade the faithful to take the Sacred Host in their hand and condemned Communion in the hand to halt widespread abuses that occurred from this practice; and as a safeguard against sacrilege, also excommunicated anyone who dared continue receiving Holy Communion by hand.
The Angelic doctor of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) affirms that “Out of reverence towards this sacrament, nothing touches it, but what is consecrated; hence the corporal and the chalice are consecrated, and likewise the priest’s hands, for touching this sacrament.” The Council of Trent (1545-1565) states “The fact that only the priest gives Holy Communion with his consecrated hands is an Apostolic Tradition.”
Even in recent times, Popes and Theologians, echoed the past to retain this sacred tradition. Pope Paul VI (1963-1978) “This method [on the tongue] must be retained.” (Memoriale Domini). “To touch the sacred species and to distribute them with their own hands” states Pope John Paul II, “is a privilege of the ordained.” (Dominicae Cenae, 11) and again “It is not permitted that the faithful should themselves pick up the consecrated bread and the sacred chalice, still less that they should hand them from one to another.” (Inaestimabile Donum, April 17, 1980, sec. 9). Throughout the Catholic Church history, Communion in the hand was discouraged, forbidden and condemned several times but never once did such things happened against Communion on the tongue.
Now you may ask the obvious question, how and when did the sacrilegious practice of communion in the hand entered the Catholic Church? The practice of Communion in the hand prevailed in few places and for almost eight centuries in the early church, largely as a result of persecution. During the early periods of the Church, the faithful could not gather for worship without facing some persecution. The priests especially, in several places, could not be present to offer the Holy Sacrifice regularly. So, the laity were allowed to carry the Holy Eucharist at home and the hermits were allowed to carry in the wilderness, to self-communicate. The faithful sometimes had to secretly gather to pray and self-communicate. It was this conditional and exceptional practice, born of extraordinary hardship, that likely gave rise to Communion in the hand. However, once the age of persecution ended and the Church gained stability and structure, this practice began to reveal its dangers. Irreverence and sacrilege became increasingly associated with it. Hence, we find the Popes and Saints since the 2rd century discouraging this practice. Once the Roman Empire embraced Christianity and the Church became structured as one universal and unified body, the practice of receiving Holy Communion on the tongue began to be restored. In his article on “Communion” in the Dictionaire d’Archeologie Chretienne, Leclerq declares that the peace of Constantine was bringing the practice of Communion in the hand to an end. St. Basil the Great (330-379), one of the four great Eastern Fathers, considered Communion in the hand so irregular that he did not hesitate to consider it a grave fault (Letter 93). This reaffirms for us the reasoning that it was persecution that created the alternative of either receiving by hand or not receiving at all. History, therefore, affirms that Communion in the hand was never the ideal, but a reluctant accommodation during times of crisis — not a model for normal liturgical life in the Church.
Here we must also understand that, the early Christians did not receive in the hand, like Catholics do today with their fingers. Firstly, there was the practice of washing of hands before participating in the sacred liturgy. Also, the women were required to cover their hands with a white cloth. For instance, St. Caesarius of Arles (d. 542), states that “All men wash their hands before going to the altar, and all women hold a pure cloth on which they receive the Body of Christ.” (Sermon 227). Secondly, the Sacred Host was received in cupped hands while bowed. It is clear that this mode of reception was to be carried out in a reverential manner. Cyril of Jerusalem and Theodore of Mopsuestia liken the practice to that of receiving a king, and both of them note the method of reception was in joined hands (also described in other sources as hands in the form of a cross). As the Church grew in numbers, even this practice of receiving on the palm of the hand, which emerged due to persecution, was universally halted because of the Eucharistic mishaps and sacrileges, that were the direct outcome of this practice. By the 9th century, the Church in her wisdom and out of deep reverence for Our Lord’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament, successfully ended this practice throughout the world. However, this method of Communion in the hand, in its worst form, returned in the 16th Century, in the protestant churches, due to their refusal to believe it to be the actual Body and Blood of Our Lord.
Today’s sacrilegious practice of Communion in the hand, was inspired by those protestant beliefs and schemed by the enemies of the Church, the freemasons, and was implemented by few liberal bishops, by impelling Pope Paul VI to grant them the indult to authorize this practice in their dioceses. Sadly, this degrading practice spread like wildfire into the rest of the world, because of the blind obedience of the bishops, priests and laity around the world. These were easily deceived by false antiquarianism, that this method of reception was a noble ancient practice, but cunningly left out the reasons why the early and medieval Church strongly condemned and ended this practice.
It is undeniable that the practice of receiving Communion in the hand was allowed to proliferate due to a lack of strong ecclesiastical authority, and endorsed through compromises that were rooted in a misguided sense of tolerance. This has, unfortunately, resulted in widespread irreverence and a disturbing indifference toward the Blessed Sacrament, which has become one of the most common liturgical abuses and a scandal of our time. “I know the history of the communion in the hand, was clandestinely reintroduced, disseminated on the basis of equivocation, and confirmed through unwavering disobediences… (to the Holy Father), by imposing over twenty-seven years a use that the Pope did not want to authorize because he considered as dangerous for the good of the Church, until they finally managed to spread it almost everywhere in the world.” wrote Monsignor Juan Rodolfo Laise, an Argentine Bishop, who forbade this sacrilegious practice in his diocese. Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, suggest the policy of giving Communion in the hand be revised or “abandoned altogether.” It is Archbishop Ranjith’s belief that the introduction of this practice after Vatican II has resulted in indifference, outrages and sacrileges toward our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, causing great harm to both the Catholic Church and to individual souls.
“There can be no doubt that Communion in the hand is an expression of the trend towards desacralization in the Church in general and irreverence in approaching the Eucharist in particular…. Why—for God’s sake—should Communion in the hand be introduced into our churches when it is evidently detrimental from a pastoral viewpoint, when it certainly does not increase our reverence, and when it exposes the Eucharist to the most terrible diabolical abuses? There are really no serious arguments for Communion in the hand. But there are the most gravely serious kinds of arguments against it.” – Dietrich von Hildebrand (called a “20th century doctor of the Church” by Pope Pius XII), in an article entitled “Communion in the Hand should be Rejected,” November 8, 1973.
The great Fr. John Hardon has also spoken out against this practice. On November 1st, 1997 at the Call to Holiness Conference in Detroit, Michigan, there was a panel discussion in which Fr. John Hardon was one of the speakers who fielded various questions from the audience. One of the questions was about Communion in the hand. After explaining how the practice was illegally introduced into the United States, he concluded by saying, “Whatever you can do to stop Communion in the hand will be blessed by God.”