Instruction out-of-date says Sister Footner

In reply to certain statements made by correspondents (April -4) I should like to. point out that (1) the Instruction of the Congregation for Divine Worship 1969 is out of date, having been stiperseded by the statement of the same Archbishop Rugnini made in 1973 which I quoted. (2) When I was informed offi cially that the bishops had instructed the clergy not to refuse Communion to those who put Out their hand for it. f resumed communi cating al every Mass. doing just that My previous tem porary abstention had been dictated by what turned out to be unnecesSary consid eration for our parish priest. It was well said by Mr H. Kohen that "it is so much more reverent to receive Our Lord in one's hand than to have him. so 10 speak. shoved down our throats." I might :ids! that "to stick out the tongue" is taken to he a gesture of the utmost contempt in every known culture. Sister May-Anglela Fortner PC Address supplied It would he a pity if Mr Noel King's letter of April 4 has given an impression of the Church's rigidity in the matter of the mode of receiving Communion.
In recent years several countries. including France and Belgium, applied for the restoration of Communion in the hand, and permission was granted by the Holy Sec. The Congregation for Divine Worship has laid down several conditions governing such restoration, and the first is particularly significant: "This method of receiving Communion is not to be imposed upon the faithful. Each person should feel free'to cornmunicate in either the former way or the new way. Both ways can he easily adopted in the same celebration."
Nothing could be more explicit than this, and I would suggest that the real issue in this debate is the necessity for recognition of diversity in practice. and the removal of such impediments which make a free choice impossible for the communicant.
Communion in the hand was the accepted practice of the
Church until the 9111 nr lOrh centuries, and one is tempted to ask those who would adopt .1 legalistic position in order to maintain the present custom whether the 20th centroy Catholic is more deficient in reverence. spiritual discernment and intelligence than his forefathers of those early years!
The type of authoritarianism which would dictate to the faithful hr seeking to impose
one method of reception, betrays an attitude which is alien both to the spirit of the New Testament and of Vatican II
In this instance I am tempted to think that "faithful" might he better rendered as "sheep"!
Peter Had
I ecturer in Religious Studies, Gipsy 11111 College Kingston Hill, Kingston upon '1 hames.