9th September, 2014
By Jonathan Ekene Ifeanyi
Your Grace,
Thank you for the leaflet which you printed a few weeks ago and which was circulated in the cathedral, entitled: ‘FROM THE ARCHBISHOP’S CIRCULAR ON COMMUNION-IN-THE-HAND.’ In it was written the following:
“Following the meeting of the Bishops of the Lagos Ecclesiastical Province, and in line with the resolution of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria that Holy Communion COULD be given in the hand, we have now deemed it necessary to permit in the interim the reception of Holy Communion in the hand as an extraordinary practice while the Ebola Virus alert is on…”
Your Grace, put simply, this news, which was also broken in other states of the country, terrified thousands of Catholic faithful across the nation! But a few Catholics, like myself, were not surprised at the news because they know exactly what Vatican II religion is: Satanic!
By the present practice, Your Grace, Nigerian Catholic Bishops have not only displayed an extraordinary act of faithlessness, they have also betrayed the Church publicly! But we know that it was not really because of Ebola that this novelty has been introduced, because we know that just as it is possible to contract Ebola while giving someone Holy Communion on the tongue, so also is it possible to contract the virus while giving “communion” in the hand.
Your Grace, by the present practice Nigerian Bishops must not hope to have really driven out the virus, they have rather invited it into the country.
As you know, for over 1,900 years of Catholic history, the normal way of receiving Holy Communion, which every bishop or priest is bound to follow, had been and still is by the faithful kneeling down and a validly ordained priest — not a deacon or a Rev. Sister — giving them the Host on the tongue. This custom, which today is only practised by Catholic traditionalists, like members of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) who are now in Nigeria, is simply based on sound Catholic doctrine and the teachings of the ancient Fathers and Doctors of the Church. For instance, Your Grace, Pope St. Sixtus I (circa 115 AD) taught that “the Sacred Vessels are not to be handled by others than those consecrated to the Lord” — meaning that it is actually only a validly ordained priest (whose hand has been consecrated for this very purpose) that is qualified to give Holy Communion to the faithful. The Council of Saragossa (380) excommunicated anyone who dared receive Holy Communion by hand, and this was confirmed by the Synod of Toledo. The sixth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (680-681) forbade the faithful to take the Sacred Host in their hand, threatening transgressors with excommunication. In his famous Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote: “Out of reverence towards this Sacrament (the Holy Eucharist), 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. Hence, it is not lawful for anyone else to touch it except from necessity, for instance, if it were to fall upon the ground, or else in some other case of urgency” (Summa Theologica, III, 82, 3). In the sixteenth century, the Council of Trent confirmed this: “The fact that only the priest gives Holy Communion is an Apostolic Tradition.”
Your Grace, it is a common perception among Catholics that the world began to come apart in earnest around 1960. It is the year that seems in retrospect to mark a great divide beyond which the exhausted remnants of Christendom lost their remaining power to restrain evil, and all that had been unthinkable quickly became commonplace. As you know, the Second Vatican Council, the most prominent fruit of this period, has rightly been described by many as the worst evil that ever befell the Church. Put simply, Vatican II turned the foregoing teachings on the Eucharist upside down, first, by importing modern atheistic democracy into the Catholic Church, giving the priests and bishops the “right” to mess up Catholic doctrines and practices just as they want. On the Eucharist, for instance, Your Grace, now the priests may have maximum time to talk about money and to do so many irrelevant things, even things that have nothing to do with religion altogether, but when it comes to the distribution of Holy Communion, which is one of their primary duties as priests, they complain of one thing or the other — they complain and complain and complain, handing the precious Body of Christ (or what they present as the “body of christ”) either to Deacons or to women (Rev. Sisters who are simply forbidden to climb the Sacred Altar) or to the lay “faithful.”
Your Grace, since the post-Vatican II revolution began, the liturgical change that faithful Catholics regard as most horrifying is communion in the hand. It overthrows everything — everything we had been taught to believe about the ineffable holiness of the Real Presence and the sacred character of the priesthood. The 16th century Protestant heretics who abolished communion on the tongue and introduced communion in the hand were well aware of the doctrines the old practice represented, and changed the mode of receiving communion precisely in order to overthrow these teachings. So too, during and after Vatican II. The modernist heretics — great and small — who promoted errors such as transfinalization, transignification, a “transient” presence of Christ in the Eucharist, assembly theology or a “lay” priesthood inevitably also advocated communion in the hand. Denying Catholic dogmas on the Real Presence and the priesthood went together with the new ritual practice — which says that “there is nothing special here; just plain old bread!”
Your Grace, the practice of receiving Holy Communion in the hand first began to spread in Catholic circles during the early 1960s, primarily in Holland, then Belgium, France and Germany. In November 1969 the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) decided at its Plenary Assembly to submit a formal request to the Vatican II Paul VI for “permission” to distribute “Holy Communion” in the hand and it was granted to them. The CCCB’s argument then was not something similar to the Ebola saga, rather it informed its members that “the growing participation in the Eucharist, especially by sacramental communion, has created within man the desire to see re-established the venerable custom of receiving the Eucharistic Bread in their hands” — thus giving the false impression that something like that existed in the past! While not explicitly forbidding Communion on the tongue, the “faithful”—especially first communicants and converts—were “encouraged to receive the Eucharistic Bread on the flat palm of the hand.”
This movement towards adopting a new, single policy was reinforced by the removal of the Communion rail, which is compatible with receiving Communion on the tongue. Once the faithful were effectively forced to stand for “Holy Communion” (instead of kneeling) and the practice of receiving in the hand became the norm, lay people were then invited to come up to the altar and distribute “Holy Communion.” Eventually and unfortunately this practice also became normalized.
Your Grace, then one of the major arguments given for supporting the practice of receiving “Holy Communion” in the hand was that it “emphasizes an active personal involvement, one of the goals of liturgical renewal.” (CCCB). If, however, this was one of the bishops’ primary motivations behind their quest for legitimate renewal, one has to wonder why the most solemn act of kneeling at the moment of Holy Communion was considered expendable when for centuries it was employed because of its immeasurable benefit of predisposing one to holiness.
Communion in the hand was mostly promoted by the Vatican II by John Paul II, a man who, as I write, Catholic pundits all over the world are still debating whether he was even a Catholic in the first place, let alone a pope. After John Paul II, many who advocated more traditional liturgical practices looked upon Vatican II Benedict XVI as a sympathetic ally who sought to restore tradition in Catholic worship. Hence, the “permission” given for the “Old Mass”, the reappearance of “old-style” vestments at St. Peter’s, the encouragement given to worthy sacred music, etc.
But as you also know, Your Grace, before he occupied the throne of St. Peter Josef Ratzinger was accused of heresy for denying the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist following his work “Die Sacramentale Begrundung Christiliche Existenz” in which he wrote — and I quote: “To go to the Church on the ground that one can visit God who is present there is a senseless act which modern man rightly rejects.” This book, Your Grace, is still on sale even as I write. But surprisingly, the same Ratzinger, as Benedict XVI, was said to have “promoted” adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Eucharist and in fact, to have “put an end to the act of Communion in the Hand!” The following statements of Benedict XVI are often cited in this regard: “I am not opposed in principle to give Communion in the hand; I have both administered and received Communion in this way myself. The idea behind my current practice of having people kneel to receive Communion on the tongue was to send a signal and to underscore the Real Presence with an exclamation point. One important reason is that there is a great danger of superficiality precisely in the kinds of Mass events we hold at Saint Peter’s, both in the Basilica and in the Square. I have heard of people who, after receiving Communion, stick the Host in their wallet to take home as a kind of souvenir. In this context, where people think that everyone is just automatically supposed to receive Communion — everyone else is going up, so I will, too – I wanted to send a clear signal. I wanted it to be clear: Something quite special is going on here! He is here, the One before whom we fall on our knees! Pay attention!” (Light of the World, Ignatius Press, pg. 159)
Despite these statements, Your Grace, traditional Catholics around the world did not take Benedict XVI seriously because they rightly understood the angle from which he was operating. For, they were sure, in their Catholic consciences, that one cannot just deny the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist without making a public confession and reparation to that effect and still remain a Catholic. Your Grace, I cannot dabble into this issue here because of space. It may suffice, however, to state briefly that upon closer examination, one quickly discovers that Ratzinger/Benedict’s starting point for arriving at the foregoing conclusions is often located in another theological universe: e.g. attractive “sacrality,” culture, sensibilities, the Teilhardian cosmos, richness. (See Work of Human Hands, 5–6, 170–72).
This should come as no surprise, because the young Josef Ratzinger was himself formed in the mid-20th century modernist theological universe that rejected the methods and principles of Thomist (i.e. Catholic) theology, so the traditional tone of Benedict’s practical conclusions should not divert us from the poisonous principles behind them. The modernist George Tyrrell (1861–1909), after all, was likewise a great fan of the Latin High Mass, “with all its suggestion of mystery, faith and reverence.” (Through Scylla and Charybdis, 34).
Courtesy of Benedict XVI, conservatives and advocates of officially-sanctioned celebrations of the “old Mass” are thus left without a fixed theological principle upon which to hang their opposition to communion in the hand. It was all “context”— the Holy Father said so!
But, Your Grace, Trent has an answer to Benedict XVI: “If anyone says that after the consecration the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ are not present in the marvellous sacrament of the Eucharist, but are present only in the use of the sacrament while it is being received, and not before or after, and that the true body of the Lord does not remain in the consecrated hosts or particles that are kept or are left over after Communion: let him be anathema” (Canon 4).
Hence, Your Grace, the point here is very simple: namely, that we are perfectly aware that Vatican II churchmen do not really believe in the Real Presence. To buttress this point, you know that Francis I, who in February 2014 gave “permission” for a married Maronite Catholic to be ordained a priest in St. Louis in the United States, recently told a divorced and remarried woman that it was okay to take Communion even though her parish priest denied her the Host. The Argentine woman had written to him about whether she should receive communion at Mass even though she was divorced and remarried. “There are priests who are more papist than the pope,” Francis himself reportedly told Jacquelina Lisbona.
Your Grace, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis I have rightly been described as popes who would pretend to be Catholic but would in fact be liberals, whose talk might be right-wing but whose action is left-wing, who are characterized by their contradictions, ambiguity, Hegelian dialectic, in brief, by their lies. Among the over two hundred popes that have ruled the Church since the time of Christ, these five men are simply different and are in no way ashamed to be seen as such. Indeed, we are into the New Church of Vatican II, just as Our Lady stated that “Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist…the Church will be in eclipse.” Our Lady made this prophecy on September 19, 1846 at La Salette, France, and we are witnessing it now.
And then, Your Grace, is there any difference between what these Modernist Popes have done to the Holy Mother Church and what you and your colleagues have also done and are now doing again to our Divine Master here in Nigeria?
Your Grace, every learned Catholic knows, as I have already stated, that the act of giving “Holy Communion” in the hand was mostly promoted by John Paul II himself.
Your Grace, as you know, often the shallow excuse the priests give for “permitting” all hands to touch the sacred Host is that during His time on earth Our Lord did it that way. Your Grace, for this very reason the Master Himself — very sad — visited Rev. Sister Hermana Gaudalupe on the 14th of April 1989, during the pontificate of John Paul II, and gave a moving message in which He debunks this Satanic argument and threatens to deal with the world Catholic Bishops, Priests, Rev. Sisters and lay “faithful” who are involved in this sacrilege. Put simply, no one who reads this message — except the Devil himself — will ever imagine, let alone indulge in, this scandal again. Your Grace, if you care, I will gladly send this “private revelation” to you.
As you also know, Your Grace, now another prominent excuse often given by Nigerian bishops and priests for “permitting” the present scandal is simply that it is so done in the Western countries! Your Grace, Charles St. George is not a Nigerian. On the contrary, he is a Westerner who testifies against the evil he sees in the Catholic Churches in the Western world. He requests forgiveness of his sin and the lifting of excommunication. Your Grace, I urge you, in the name of our Most Holy and Righteous Lord, to abandon the present practice of communion in the hand. If you do, other bishops in the country will certainly follow your example. Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments under Benedict XVI, was very much aware that many cardinals, bishops and priests who are promoting communion in the hand do not really believe in the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, and this was what led him to suggest that the policy of giving communion in the hand be “abandoned altogether.” It was Archbishop Ranjith’s belief that the introduction of this evil 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. In the preface to a book by Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan, Dominus Est: Meditations of a Bishop from Central Asia on the Sacred Eucharist, Archbishop Ranjith notes that the practice of receiving Communion in the hand was not introduced in response to calls from the laity. Instead, he argues, the established practice of piety—receiving the Eucharist kneeling, on the tongue—was changed “improperly and hurriedly,” and became widespread even before it was formally approved by the Vatican.
Your Grace, I want you to be another Archbishop Ranjith in Nigeria.
Dominus tecum, may the Lord be with you.
•Ifeanyi could be reached at [email protected]