Bishop Schneider Says: Communion in the Hand is a Great Wound in the Church – Kreuz.net – May 31, 2012 A reform of the Church is advanced by an end to Communion in the hand and supper tables. Proceedings and Old Liberal committees will play a completely subordinate role.

Auxiliary Bishop Schneider on the Homepage of the Shrine of Maria Vesperbild.

(kreuz.net) "The more committees, the more proceedings, the more fear of public opinion and the politically correct, the less there will be real reforms in the Church."

This is what Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider from Astana in Kazakhstan said on Pentecost Sunday at the Swabian pilgrimage Maria Vesperbild.

For Msgr Schneider it is "more than clear that the Church has experienced a great crisis."

Communion is Handed out Like Bread

The crisis shows itself in its most gripping in the declining Liturgy, for the prelate: "Today's manner of receiving Communion spread throughout the world is a great wound."

The body of Christ has been received "without recognizable sacred gestures of worship".

Hand communion leaves one with the impression as if one is taking a regular meal, which "one puts in ones' own mouth".

The Bible gives a different example of reverence

Msgr Schneider recalled that the angel and prophets in Holy Scripture knelt before Jesus Christ:

"How great is the contrast between today's widely spread form of hand communion with the minimalistic signs of reverence on the one side and the glorious examples in Holy Scripture and the examples of Catholics frm the past two thousand years, and also the edifying examples of our own associates, parents, grandparents on the other side."

The example of the Pope

Msgr Schneider recalled then that Pope Benedict XVI has been distributing Holy Communion in the mouth since Corpus Christi of 2008 to the faithful on their knees:

"A true Catholic, and even more a Catholic Bishop, can not ignore the Pope's gestures."

That would be a true renewal

For the Auxiliary Bishop it would be a poignant sign of Faith if all the Masses world-wide "were brought back to clear signs of reverence, silence, the holiness of the music".

He criticized the supper table very carefully: priests and people should interiorly and exteriorly look together upon Christ, he said.

All faithful should "receive the body of Christ self-evidently in the state of sanctifying grace, having gone to confession, and to receive it directly in the mouth with the piety of a child."

In this Msgr Schneider sees "powerful sings of a true renewal in the Church".

In such Masses a God fearing man should fall on his knees and say: "Verily, God is among you" [1Cor 14 24-25]