Bishop Athanasius Schneider: The Council of Trent. It is a dogma that in each even little, most little part of the host is the whole Christ present. And therefore this is a dogma we have to behave according to our dogma, and in this manner of receiving Holy Communion in the hand, with these we expose our Lord to so a great loss of fragments. So that they can be attached to the palm of the hand, in the two fingers, and then between the priest and the communicant, there is no plate that falls all down. Even in our country, we have no communion in hand. Thanks be to God, and we are using only, always, a plate, a paten. And after even my experience, after each mass, I have some fragments on the paten. Yes, it’s often my experience. But when there is no pattern, like in the communion, hands fall down, and so our Lord is crushed by the feet in his church, in so many places. This cannot be. We cannot be silent about this and say, Okay, we can continue. It is licit. Okay, it is legally licit. But we have to reflect upon this, and then there is the first very grave consequence, very grave.
Fr. Mitch Pacwa: And if I might just add something from a priest I met who had been in a Communist Chinese prison, and hosts had been smuggled into him, and what he would do is consecrate the he was given wine and bread smuggled by his mother, and he would break off into tiniest fragments to make sure each priest could receive even a fragment of Holy Communion. And this was all, and it took years to be able to get that. And so this is very precious. For their experience. They treat each fragment, yes, and risk their lives doing it.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: It’s very impressive for this example of you. Then I continue. This was the first grave consequence of this manner of receiving Holy Communion, which is today spread all over the world. And the second one, the stealing of the host, is increasing in so many countries, really increasing astonishingly. And so we expose our Lord to stealing the host. And then the next consequence, objectively I speak, I do not speak about the interior attitude of the people who receive Holy Communion in hand, to be clear, I speak on the objective situation. The third consequence is that this form of receiving the Lord, the holiest of holy, in this manner as we have today, so much spread, standing in the hand and taking with your fingers and so on here. Here is a minimalism, a minimum of gestures of adoration, a minimum. But when this is the holiest of holy, we have to give the maximum. It is a logical consequence of our faith.