From Advaticanum website:
Q: The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Kazakhstan, with papal approval under Benedict XVI, made Communion kneeling and on the tongue the obligatory ordinary form and forbade Communion in the hand even for visitors. You have no extraordinary ministers, no female altar servers, and you have altar rails. How did that become possible, as this is almost unthinkable in much of Europe and North America?
Bishop Schneider: Well, first, they are the heirs of martyrs and confessors in Kazakhstan. And they had such a deep veneration for the Holy Eucharist—such a deep veneration. They could not imagine receiving our Lord standing. I know the old people still who suffered in the prisons. And I myself lived during the persecution in the underground Church in Kyrgyzstan. And then I was in Estonia. My parish priest was a holy priest who before, in Stalin’s time, was imprisoned in a concentration camp here in Kazakhstan. And he was a confessor, a living confessor. And he was my parish priest in Estonia. I made my first holy confession when I was ten years old with him. And he gave me my first Holy Communion; he prepared me, and my mother also. Therefore he instilled in us such a deep veneration for the Holy Eucharist, for the moment of Holy Communion.
And therefore, when we left for Germany, West Germany, at the end of ’73, I remember very well—I was almost thirteen—he gathered us. We were four children, and my parents, and he said, “Be careful. When you come to West Germany, there are some churches where Communion is given in the hand.” When my mother—I observed her—heard this, she reacted spontaneously. What a horror. She even cried. She was so shocked. “Is this possible?” And he said, “Yes, in West Germany, yes.” But he was not well informed. He said only in some churches. And he said, “Please don’t go to these churches where Communion is given in the hand”—a holy confessor priest. And my mother promised him, “We will never do it.” And then we came to Germany, and it was in all the churches the same situation.
When my mother said she had no other choice, she came home, I remember, and looked at us children: “Oh, my children, I cannot understand how people can treat our Lord in such a manner with Communion in the hand”, and she started to weep. And these tears of my mother inspired me later to write my small booklet, Dominus Est, on the dangers of Communion in the hand. And this is my booklet; the manuscript of my booklet Pope Benedict XVI approved personally in a personal letter to me, saying, “Your arguments are convincing.” He wrote this as Pope, personally to me.
In any case, and therefore, the bishops in Kazakhstan—it was nineteen years ago—said it is normal. We have to, out of respect for our confessors and even still surviving people in our parishes from the old times who suffered persecution, make sure that Communion is really received kneeling and on the tongue, and that foreigners must adapt themselves.
So I think I would wish every bishop in the world, every bishops’ conference, to do the same. This was, in the entire Catholic Church until 1969, the rule. More than a thousand years, and strictly observed. However, the dam was opened, and then came the flood. And who opened the dam? The Pope, Paul VI. We must be honest, please. He opened the door and allowed Communion in the hand. He made a consultation of all the bishops in the world in ’68, asking them if it would be meaningful and helpful to introduce Communion in the hand. And the majority of the bishops answered Pope Paul VI, “Please don’t allow it, because it will cause abuses, sacrileges, and a weakening of the faith.” These were the arguments.
And in spite of the warning of the bishops, in spite of these arguments, in spite of this, Paul VI opened the flood. This is a huge historical responsibility. He had to say, “No, I will not allow it.” I consider that Communion in the hand has caused irreverence and sacrileges in the Church, and is still causing them. It is one of the deepest wounds in the body of the Church and must be healed, of course, slowly.
But the first thing which must be done to restore the health of the body of the Church is to stop Communion in the hand. And it must be done by the Pope again. The Holy See opened the flood, and the Holy See must close it again. And of course, with gradual steps, but it must be done.
