A Visitor Helps Clear My Mind With A Question

Asking about a remark Fr Lewis made in his March 12 letter to the Atonement parish, a visitor asked me a few days ago:

“Reception in the hand, though allowed by the Church, is problematic. Great care has been taken at Our Lady of the Atonement over the years to preserve the ancient tradition of kneeling and receiving on the tongue. There are great theological reasons for such reception...”

Isn’t it Anglican patrimony to receive the Sacrament in the hands? Reverently with the right hand cupped over the left?

Yes indeed. When I went through TEC confirmation in 1980-81, this is the only method that we were taught, high church or low, Rite One or Rite Two. Under the 1928 BCP, same thing. Intinction came in only in the mid 1980s after the HIV epidemic to assuage the anxieties of those who may have been concerned about contracting it via the communion wine. However, this was completely optional, and the communicant signaled a desire for it by leaving the Host in his hand when the deacon came around with the chalice. There was an element of receiving in the hand there anyhow, and it was done for hygienic, not theological, reasons.

However it may have soothed some Episcopalians, it had no actual hygienic benefit at the time. But given current health conditions, it's now a positively bad idea.

At Our Lady of the Atonement and similar ordinariate parishes, it's compulsory, since the priest distributes it from specifically designed intinction vessels, and he dips the Host in the wine and places it on the communicant's tongue. (Some people who struggle with alcohol may elect to receive only the Host. I don't know how this works at OLA, or if this is possible there. I assume the priest still places the Host on the tongue, intincted or not.)

This differs from current health recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic, since people are advised not to touch their own faces -- and this is because, after shaking hands or touching some other surface, their fingers can bring germs in contact with their mouth and nose. Since in my experience and observation, a priest or EM who places the Host on someone's tongue can easily brush their face or tongue with their fingers, this is clearly not a good practice in the current environment.

There is certainly a possibility that the OLA parishioner who fell ill with COVID-19 at mass there on March 14-15 contracted it in exactly this way.

So the visitor's question has several very good implicatons:

• Why has the ordinariate adopted a very un-Anglican practice as part of the "Anglican patrimony" and indeed, per Fr Lewis's statement, made it compulsory, when the USCCB considers it entirely optional?
• Why would Fr Lewis, with the tacit endorsement of Bp Lopes, refuse the very reasonable move of making it optional during a health crisis when receiving on the hand is more hygienic?

But then I went back to the question of liturgy. The 1979 Book of Common Payer emulated the post-Conciliar liturgy by celebrating in contemporary vernacular and providing options in the prayers to meet different occasions and local usages. Although it's difficult to define "Anglican" with much precision, the idea of compromise, accepting differences, and local variation might well be characterized, at least by some observers, as a particularly Anglican tradition.

Yet the DW Missal takes a very un-Anglican tack by requiring just one version of the canon, in a made-up archaic English. Those who want a workaday mass that's reverent but less stuffy and takes an hour, like Eucharistic Prayer 3 in the OF mass, are told they don't have one in the DW missal. Any other usage but the DW mass, they must go to the OF -- but hey, they're too good for the OF. That's why they're in the ordinariate.

So this is designed, apparently, for a largely imaginary group of disgruntled Episcopalians who hated the 1979 BCP but waited more than 30 years for an alternative, when some significant number would be worshiping in a different mode altogether. And this leaves out the great majority of Episcopalians, as well as those in the ACNA and other breakaway groups, who actually like the 1979 BCP and Rite Two.

So the most visible problem addressed in the North American ordinariate during a world crisis is whether it should suspend, or even make voluntary, reception on the tongue, when even the USCCB has always said it's optional. But this goes to the woozy liturgical environment that's been created in the name of "Anglican patrimony" as well, when it seems, like communion in the hand, the Anglicans have actually done things differently.

I've been thinking lately about narcissism and how it seems to be playing out as an unintended consequence of Anglicanorum coetibus. For instance,

Grandiosity is the defining characteristic of narcissism. More than just arrogance or vanity, grandiosity is an unrealistic sense of superiority. Narcissists believe they are unique or “special” and can only be understood by other special people. What’s more, they are too good for anything average or ordinary. They only want to associate and be associated with other high-status people, places, and things.

Yet again, the encouraging thing is how few people have risen to this bait.