Dr. Taylor Marshall: Can you explain the importance of communion on the tongue and the tabernacle location at orientum, and how these things, which look like incidental changes, have led to a decrease in Mass attendance and a decrease in belief in the Real Presence?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: I think it’s simply a question of faith, as our Lord told the Samaritan woman, if you knew the gift of God, the unspeakable gift of God, which is the body of Christ in the Eucharist. But this is not only what it is, but who is the holy host. It’s not a thing; it is a person, the presence of the divine person of Jesus Christ, in the fullness of His divinity. As Saint Paul says, in Christ dwells the plenitude of divinity bodily, and this is the Eucharist. If you knew who was there, you would spontaneously kneel.