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Ship of Fools: St Anne’s, Gilbert, Arizona, USA


imageShip of Fools: St Anne’s, Gilbert, Arizona, USA

Odd mixture during high mass – and communion on the tongue

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Comments

  • Our Latin Mass Community does the same. Safety protocols are set in place and followed to the letter of local law at all other Masses except for The Tridentine. I think Our Lord would make an exception for human hands that made during these times.
  • edited October 2021
    It would appear, after further research, that the Diocese of Phoenix itself is ambiguous about the practice. Quoting from their website:
    Communion may be received either on the hand or on the tongue at the
    communicant’s discretion – at a minimum care should be taken by the
    minister of Holy Communion to sanitize their hands if they determine they
    have touched a person’s tongue or saliva. Sanitizing after each communion
    on the tongue may continue at the discretion of the minister.

    I said in my report that I doubted that God would transmit disease via the Precious Body and Blood of his Son, but that I also doubted that God would protect us from the consequences of our own rash decisions. Personally I think the diocese's -- and St Anne's Church's -- policy re the reception of communion is carrying "freedom of choice" a bit too far.

    But I may be prepared to forgive them when I study the photo at the top of the report, and observe the altar servers' perfectly laundered, starched and pressed cottas, all the same length (with one exception) despite the disparity in height among the boys.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Two of them seem to go to the same barber - or perhaps at these times they are brothers and that's how their mother is managing. ( We've been in severe lockdown, and that has meant barbers etc have been closed for the last 10 weeks or so.)
  • It is apparently the right of each Catholic communicant to receive the Sacred Host on the tongue.Even although most ecclesiastical authorities state that Communion should be received only in the hand,there are always exceptions who wish to insist upon their 'rights'.
    As well as those people insisting upon their rights there are some elderly people who are simply not aware of Communion in the hand and who automatically expect to receive communion on the tongue.
    In many cases the priest will simply do what the person wants,rather than have,as I have seen, an argument between priest and communicant at that most sacred moment.
  • All well and good, so long as the virus doesn't do what it wants.
  • Alan29Alan29 Shipmate
    Quite a lot of Latin in what was billed as a Mass in English.
  • A pair of tweezers dipped into a shot-glass of (medical) alcohol before tweezing a host and depositing onto a communicant's tongue would do well.
  • I wonder if Jesus would flinch at the notion of his Precious Body being pricked by tweezers, or if his Blessed Mother would approve of anyone doing such a thing to her boy.
  • I think since we haven’t successfully prayed our way out of this pandemic as of yet, some should just relax their Pre-Vatican II scruples and receive the Sacrament in hand. Jesus will surely understand.
  • Tell it to the Bishop of Phoenix.
  • If I was one of his flock I would. But I’m under C O’Malley’s jurisdiction. Maybe His Excellency (Olmsted) wishes to avoid the kerfuffle that the Greeks went through here in Boston. Archbishop Methodius butted heads with the AG of New Hampshire regarding intinction of the Sacrament on a spoon. Common practice in normal times with the Orthodox and Byzantine Rite. The good Archbishop cited Separation of Church and State (long sigh) and continued the practice. He was temporarily relieved of episcopal duties by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. They’ve since kissed and made up. Hopefully with an air kiss on each cheek or via FaceTime.
  • A liturgical kiss, of course.
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