Tea at Trianon: Communion on the Tongue

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Communion on the Tongue

From LifeSite:

Bishop Robert Morlino of the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin has asked his entire diocese to begin receiving Holy Communion on the tongue, while kneeling, by next fall so as to increase “reverence” for the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The bishop made his request at the conclusion of his homily at the April 11 Chrism Mass, where oils are consecrated for use in administering sacraments in parishes throughout the diocese.

"I’m going to ask that we move together towards greater reverence when receiving Holy Communion. I’m going to ask that people be encouraged to receive Communion on the tongue and kneeling," he said near the end of his homily.

"There is no question that Communion on the tongue is more reverent. And it doesn’t lend itself to a casual kind of behavior. I’m going to ask, beginning in the Fall, that our students are taught to receive Communion on the tongue," he added.

Until the 1960s, Catholics around the world received Communion kneeling and on the tongue. The practice of Communion in the hand grew out of a disobedience that can be traced back to Holland. Because of the widespread abuse of receiving in the hand, Pope Paul VI granted an indult for the practice in a 1969 letter from the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship.

Brent King, the Madison diocese's director of communications, told LifeSiteNews that receiving Communion the traditional way, kneeling and on the tongue, increases reverence due to an “outward posture” of lowering the body which can translate to an “inward disposition” of humbling oneself before God.

In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul wrote that “at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow.”

King said if “we’re kneeling, we’re showing a reverence to what we actually believe, that the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ is present in the host.” (Read more.)