Ever since I began this blog so many years ago, I have called attention to the possibility that the common chalice, because it is so unsanitary and is a cesspool or viruses and other bacteria, could contribute to a worldwide pandemic. I also indicated that our persistence in promoting the common chalice could lead to lawsuits if someone died after contracting a virus from a common chalice.
Keep in mind, the health department if it had authority over the Church’s handing of “food and drink” as progressives are prone to describe the Most Holy Eucharist, we would have been shut-down decades ago.
Of course, the pandemic exacerbating common chalice was the first to go in this pandemic along with packing people close together and facing each other in church in a half moon or in the round. The Sign of Peace needed to be reformed or eliminated.
But now there is a big debate over the possibility that standing for Holy Communion, face to face with the “communion minister” and receiving in one’s filthy, dirty, pandemic spreading hands is more dangerous in our new age than kneeling for Holy Communion and receiving on the tongue.
Of course, it is a no brainer that it is more reverent and promotes authentic, orthodox belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. But it also promotes good health practices during and epidemic or pandemic.
Thus scientists, who can never be challenged, by the way, say that kneeling for Holy Communion and receiving on the tongue is healthier and safer than standing and receiving in the hand. Who knew? I did of course!
Communion on the tongue safer than communion in the hand: Polish doctors
WARSAW, Poland, October 22, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — A group of Polish doctors warned that reception of Holy Communion in the hand is dangerous.
The open letter to the Catholic Church in Poland, published in the most recent weekend edition of Catholic newspaper Nasz Dziennik(“Our Daily”) and addressed to “the bishops, priests, and brothers and sisters in the faith of the Catholic Church,” and signed by over 60 medical experts, the doctors say they are concerned by the new practice.
Receiving communion in the hand was not the norm in majority-Catholic Poland before the coronavirus crisis. However, in an October 6 statement, the bishops “recalled that people who, for various reasons, wished to receive Holy Communion in their hands with faith and veneration, cannot be accused of disrespecting the Eucharist. The Holy See accepts this way of giving the faithful the Lord’s Body as worthy.”
The doctors now wrote, “We are concerned about the fact that in recent months there has been encouragement on the part of priests (and even orders in some parishes) to receive communion on the hand as a more hygienic method that allegedly protects the faithful from SARS-CoV-2.”
“We don’t know on what basis, particularly on what scientific research, such a thesis was built, or which medical premises confirm it,” they added.
“We believe, from the medical point of view, that one can’t treat giving Holy Communion in the hand as a method much safer than receiving Holy Communion by mouth.”
The doctors pointed out that hands are the “point of contact” between human bodies and their surroundings. Many experts have emphasized the existence of multiple micro-organisms that could include pathogens on hands, they noted, and listed both the germs and their unpleasant effects on the human body.
“Even if we splash disinfectant on our hands before entering church, we have to remember that during Mass they touch things or places we haven’t disinfected: pews, clothing, glasses, hair and even money (the home of many germs) folded in the [offering basket],” they warned.
The doctors are also concerned by the modern practice of communicants standing face-to-face with the person administering the Blessed Sacrament.
“From the epidemiological point of view, we must warn that the standing position also encourages the spread of infection as it makes the priest and communicant more vulnerable to mutual infection,” they wrote.
They observe that either could infect the other with airborne droplets moving from one mouth or nose to the other’s, or even through the eyes. Therefore, they recommend that all communicants receive Communion as far as possible from the priest’s face: they suggest kneeling.
“It should be stated, from the medical point of view, that the giving of Holy Communion directly in the mouth and in the kneeling position is a decidedly safer and more appropriate method than receiving Holy Communion in the hand and standing,” they said and made a dramatic appeal:
“Out of concern for the health of the faithful, we wish to appeal strongly to the Polish Episcopate, to bishops and all priests, for a swift return to administering the Body of Christ on the tongue [to those] in a kneeling position.”
The lead signers of the document were three pathologists from the Medical University of Białystock: Dr. Marek Baltaziak, Dr. Maria Elżbieta Sobaniec-Łotowska, and Dr. Stanisław Sulkowski.
In September, 27 German doctors gave similar advice to the German bishops, declaring that there are “no medical reasons for a ban of Communion on the tongue.”
Like the Polish doctors, the Germans pointed out that hands are very easily contaminated and that face-to-face Communion is more dangerous that receiving Communion kneeling at a distance from the priest’s face. They noted also that if a priest should accidently touch a communicant’s tongue, he can disinfect his fingers immediately afterwards.
29 comments:
1, 2,3, ... enter the "scientist" priest with his rebuttal!
What should also be noted is that in the TLM, only the priest's index finger and thumb may touch a consecrated Host, and when that has been done these fingers cannot touch anything else until ceremonially washed. That makes it much easier to keep these fingers sanitary following the lavabo than in the often sloppy way of using hands and fingers in the Novus Ordo.
I'm not a "scientist," but I do know how to read.
And it's not "my" rubuttal, but that of clinicials who ARE scientists.
The Common Cup has not been shown to be a vector of disease any more than doorknobs or door handles are vectors. Both CAN be sites where bacteria/viruses live, for a while at least, but with the sanitary practices we know so well, they do not pose a significant risk.
Fr, MJK,
LOL - still beating that tired old drum. You never disappoint. You are a slave to leftwing ideology and talking points.
ToastJM, the drum is neither tired nor old. Neither is science "left wing." Read the clinical reports, or keep sharing in Fr. McDonald's delusion.
We’ve been down this road SO many times with FRMJK. I even at point, pointed out the deficiencies in the one VERY OLD (1998) letter to editor citing the only input from CDC. https://www.ntnl.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Common-Cup-CDC.pdf
Sooo, folks, don’t enable this any longer. None of us will be drinking from the “common cup” anytime in the near future, not even FRMJK’s parishioners. The elderly and immune compromised never should. Nuff said.
What’s the common chalice? That’s right a function of the anti-church.
Anonymous Kavanaugh at 1:23.
LOL, and YOUR party says abortion is "healthcare" and an "essential service." Start offering the Common Chalice this Sunday. Stand up for your "beliefs."
Anon 3:22 - Germ theory is also VERY OLD, and gained wide acceptance by the 1890's. Are we, then, to dismiss it as outdated? Certainly not.
Yes, we've been down this road many times and I suspect we'll make the journey many times again. I'll be travelling the road each time Fr. ALLAN McDonald tries to foist his liturgical preferences on the Catholic Church using bogus and unsupported arguments about the "dangers" of the common cup for communion.
Many of the elderly and immune compromised chose to receive communion from the common cup for years - decades even. Is there any evidence that this practice caused pandemic, or even an outbreak of illness in just one parish?
Folks, give it up, Fr. Kav is irrelevant and his view is a mere blip on the continuum of history. I'm more concerned about dioceses and parishes where bishops and priests usurp the rights of the faithful by DEMANDING we practice the Protestant tradition of Communion in the Hand.
Did you ever notice that when this was introduced way back in the 70's just HOW quickly most of us folded and accepted it? We just trusted those DRE's and other experts who worked so hard to "update" us.
I would not be surprised at all if this becomes the next battle we have to fight in our Church's civil war. Communion in the hand is so wrong on so many levels, but the Ape of the Church within our Church is ready to impose its utopian vision on us by having us compromise this one more thing. And we seem to be fattened and ready for the slaughter.
Of course, the evidence is that the common chalice is banned, to prevent the spread and flatten the curve. I rest my case.
Of course, the current ban on the common cup has nothing to do with what may have occurred 20 years ago when the practice was the norm in thousands of Catholic parishes around the country.
A temporary road closure due to a minor subsidence in the pavement is not "evidence" that driving on that road is always and forever dangerous.
What might be relevant is a report or two on a parish that suffered a localized epidemic of some particular disease that was traced clinically to the use of the common cup.
Without that evidence, you have no case.
Father Kavanaugh,
Please explain your Party's position that abortion is an "essential healthcare service" evening during a pandemic. Your so-called support for human life rings very hollow since you are empowering the very people who will never change. The word hypocrite comes to mind
ToastJM - Please explain the connection between the use of the common cup and abortion.
Anonymous k,
Because taking the common cup defies logic and science, just as calling the killing of an innocent unborn, an essential healthcare service
Fr MJK about the Cup: you have stated that there is no evidence that the cup can transmit disease. It seems the evidence would be that under certain circumstances and procedures that it is safe. What are those?
rcg - No, I have NEVER stated, "...that there is no evidence that the cup can transmit disease." Not once have I every stated that.
I have stated repeatedly that the common cup CAN be a vector for disease, but that the chances of that happening are very slim. The same can be said for sneezes, handshakes, doorknobs, and door handles, etc. The same can also be said of cash and coins, but I don't see any outcry from the germophobes here that these be banned from the collection baskets at church. (see "Paper money and coins as potential vectors of transmissible disease"
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24571076/) or https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/821787_5.
I have stated repeatedly that there is no evidence of an outbreak of disease shown to be caused by the common cup. Tens of millions of people have shared the common cup in our churches and others for decades. Surely if there had been some outbreak it would have been noted, studied, and reported. I find no evidence of such.
This is the science of contagion, not the faulty "logic" or "common sense" that some want to use as the basis for their desire to see communion under both species done away with permanently.
“I have stated repeatedly that the common cup CAN be a vector for disease, but that the chances of that happening are very slim.”
Just asking please for the studies done to support this hypothesis.
1. Hobbs BC, Knowlden JA, White A. Experiments on the communion cup. J Hyg1967;65:37-
48.
2. Burrows W, Hemmons ES. Survival of bacteria on the silver communion cup. J Infect Dis
1943;73:180-90.
3. Gregory KF, Carpenter JA, Bending GC. Infection hazards of the common communion
cup. Can J Public Health 1967;58:305-10. MEDLINE
4. Furlow TG, Dougherty MJ. Bacteria on the common communion cup [letter]. Ann Intern
Med 1993;118:572-3. MEDLINE
5. Dancewicz EP. What is the risk of infection from common communion cups? [letter].
JAMA 1973;225:320.
6. Kingston D. Memorandum on the infections hazards of the common communion cup with
especial reference to AIDS. Eur J Epidemiol 1988;4:164-70. MEDLINE
7. Gill ON. The hazard of infection from the shared communion cup. J Infect 1988;16:3-
23. MEDLINE
8. Loving AL, Wolf L. Effects of holy communion on health
Hey Father Kavanaugh, is this just another Biden gaffe or an admission of guilt?
In either one of Joe Biden’s signature gaffes, or a really terrible Freudian slip, former Vice President Joe Biden asserted that they have put together the “most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”
“We have put together, and you guys did it for President Obama’s administration before this, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics,” Biden said during a virtual Get Out the Vote event.
Freud would have a FIELD day with ToastJM.
Am I right...?
"The Myth of Voter Fraud - Extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare. Yet repeated, false allegations of fraud can make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to participate in elections."
https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-can-vote/vote-suppression/myth-voter-fraud
Fr. MJK, As the kids say, hic est qui hic est, “ The Common Cup has not been shown to be a vector of disease...”.
Anonymous K,
LOL! The Brennan Center? Another lefty site.
Try this on for size:
Anyone who denies the existence of voter fraud in the U.S. needs to go to Heritage's online database, where they will find 1,285 proven instances of it—including 1,110 criminal convictions. Some of the stories are quite striking. In 2016, for example, Elbert Melton, the former mayor of Gordon, Alabama, illegally notarized two ballots, without witnesses present, while running for re-election. Melton won the race by only 16 votes—many local and state races are decided by such small margins. He was convicted of absentee ballot fraud, removed from office and sentenced to one year in prison.
Who can forget how Al Franken won election to the US Senate? A box of votes that showed up after he lost!! It was a miracle
56 million people voted in 2016. 1,258 - over what period of time we do not know - is 0.00002% of votes.
My God, Mildred! The voter fraud is overtaking us!!!
Add to that, the Brennan center never "denied the existence" of voter fraud. If you read, this time with comprehension, the headline posted, it says, "Extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare."
Freud, where are you when ToastJM needs you?
Anonymous K,
Don't take my word for it, take Joe Biden's word:
Democratic nominee Joe Biden said his team has created "the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics" in a recent video.
"We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics," Biden said in the video.
Your kind of guy!
Anon 6:37, any studies in the past 20 years? Infectious Disease science expertise has come a long way in this era. You need to upgrade your “facts”.
Citizen Kavanaugh,
LOL. Indeed in recent years man made global warming has been exposed as a fraud, just like abortion is a healthcare service, even though corrupt priests who are trying to fool their bishops by fake pro life activities, believe to the contrary!
Citizen - Are there any new, updated studies on gravity. Surely physicists and mathematicians have come a long way in this area. Can you cite a "new" study on blood circulation? The 16th century BCE Ebers Papyrus is a little dated, don't you think? Or maybe you want us to reconsider the very old notion that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the solar system. After all, we have the much more recent studies by the Catholic Robert Sungenis who holds a "doctorate" from the Calamus International University in the Republic of Vanuatu.
Maybe we need to "update" ALL our facts.
Or, maybe not.
It's hard to imagine the Polish bishops don't allow people to exercise an option available in every other part of the world and approved by St. Paul VI decades ago. Would the author be willing to accept evidence of medical organizations (i.e., not just a few "Polish doctors") stating the contrary?
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