Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Back to kneeling?

One paragraph from an article by a Third Order Dominican, Lyn Frances Elledge, "Restoring the Altar Rail & the Tabernacle," in the December issue of the New Oxford Review particularly struck me:
At the October 2005 Eucharistic Synod of Bishops in Rome, Archbishop Jan Pawel Lenga of Karaganda, Kazakhstan, spoke for a change in the reception of Holy Communion in order to recover a sense of the sacred. He said that "Among the liturgical innovations produced in the Western world, two in particular tend to cloud the visible aspect of the Eucharist, especially as regards its centrality and sacredness: the removal of the tabernacle from the center and the distribution of communion in the hand.... Therefore, I humbly propose the following practical propositions: that the Holy See issue a universal regulation establishing the official way of receiving communion as being in the mouth and kneeling...." Cardinal Janis Pujats of Riga, Latvia, made similar comments.
But of course, these are bishops from Kazakhstan and Latvia . . . Let them come to Los Angeles, Californica, and learn the meaning of reverence at the knees of His Eminence, Roger Michael Cardinal Mahoney!

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