catholics chime in...

[Gibson486]

St. Margarets in Lowell, Ma for grade school (grad 98)

Central Catholic in Lawrence for High school (grad 02).

Lots of people go to catholic schools and are not catholic. After all, it's a private school.

Who said I was never taught the proper way? All i was taught was that you had a choice to do it either way. Never was told that you had to recieve by tongue and that it was a sin to do it other wise. Are you saying that the proper way is tongue only? If so, that is the reason why I asked in the first place.

 

[Fritzo]

Originally posted by: anxi80
at catholic school we were taught to cup our hands, take a step to the side away from the line, consume the host, perform the sign of the cross and walk back to the pew. but i have seen people who also open their mouth to accept it, but its usually someone older.

ive also have been told if its already been blessed and declared as the eucharist then it has to be served. a story i was told is that someone once dropped a box of the host and it spilled into the street. had it been blessed he would've had to consume all the pieces because it represents the body of christ and would be considered sacrilege to discard of it. of course, i think they told us that story to teach us to respect it. can anyone knowledgable of the history chime in and confirm the validity of the story?

edit: i removed the hand over hand comment, im a rightie so i may have been just doing it out of habit. dont think either hand on top/bottom matters.

This method was approved in the late 70's. Some old school Catholics won't do this, but it is certainly OK.

FYI- If a priest sees you trying to take the host in an inappropriate way, he will not give it to you.

 

[Felisity]

Originally posted by: BigJ
When I received communion as a child, you had two options. Either they'd place it in your hands (there was a specific way to position, I forget because I don't follow the religion anymore) or they'd place it in your mouth. I've never heard it was a sin to touch the Host.

Same for me, went to a Catholic grammar school grades 1-8 back in the 80s. AFAIK this is still the rule of thumb.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: GeneralDisarray
I'm not 100% certain, but I beleive that allowing people to take the host from their hands was a change made in the Vatican II council in the 1960's. I remember because my parents were taught to never touch it in Catholic school, but by the time I got there you had the option of taking it from your hands or having it placed on your tongue.

RE: dropping a host: this is false. I was an altar boy in a Catholic church, and any hosts not used were put into a metal box, I cant recall the exact name, but it only contained blessed hosts and wine. Any remnants of host, such as crumbs, or small amounts of blessed wine, were our job to dispose of. There was a special sink in the back that we would run and then wash the items in. The priests said it was special because it emptied directly onto the soil, putting the blessed items back into the Earth, instead of having them mix with sewage as they would in a normal drain.

It's not something that was introduced with the Vatican II since Anglicans (who are also Catholic, just not Roman Catholic) have been allowing communicants to receive the host in their hands since long before Vatican II and the Anglican's method is a direct copy of the original Roman Catholic.

To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing in Catholic nor Roman Catholic doctrine that prohibits receiving the host in cupped hands.

The consecrated host must either be consumed by the priest, held in reserve (depending on the church it may be placed in an aumbry, a tabernacle, or a pyx, with the latter two being less common in "low" parishes), or disposed of reverently if too soiled to be eaten. "Disposed of reverently" can mean different things depending upon the church, in churches that use the traditional communion wafers, this typically means placing the host in water and allowing it to dissolve fully, then pouring the water and dissolved host down the sacrarium (the sink whose drain goes into the ground and not the sewer system) or, in some parishes (though typically only in more thoroughly protestant churches) burned.

ZV