“Kneel before your God in the Eucharist” - July 14, 1979

Archbishop Chaput discouraging kneeling for Holy Communion...

"My children, kneel before your God in the Eucharist. Do not stand like you stand in meeting halls, but kneel and give Him a just love and observance of honor." - Our Lady, July 14, 1979

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. of Denver, Colorado, has recently issued a statement telling his flock not to kneel for Holy Communion:

The [U.S.] bishops have determined that we should not kneel or genuflect. We receive Communion standing. Before receiving, we bow our head in adoration, and we say "Amen" and receive the body of Christ on the tongue or in the hand.

This will be new for many of the faithful, because the formal act of reverence was not widely promoted in the past. This act helps us avoid nonchalance in receiving holy Communion. It allows us to acknowledge what we are about to do: take under the form of bread and wine the resurrected body and blood of Christ. If we have become distracted during the procession, the gesture helps us to recollect ourselves.

While the act of reverence will be new for some, it may be "different" for others. In the past, we may have made a sign of the cross, a profound bow (one from the waist), genuflected or simply knelt as our act of adoration. The Church now asks us asks to submit our personal preference to her wisdom.

Two points need to be made: (1) there is no "wisdom" in discouraging the clear outward sign acknowledging the divinity of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, that of kneeling. Bowing can be a cultural sign of mere respect for another person (i.e., Japan), but in the West kneeling has clearly been understood and promoted as an act of supreme worship reserved for God alone (see Isaiah 45:24). With 70% of Catholics in the U.S. no longer even believing in the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence, one wonders how wise the U.S. bishops can be, who seem to be oblivious to the cause/effect relationship between discouraging outward reverence for the Blessed Sacrament (such as prohibiting kneeling, removing altar rails, removing Communion patens, Communion in the hand, etc.) and the catastrophic loss of faith in the Blessed Sacrament.

(2) An important distinction needs to be made in Archbishop Chaput's terminology: his use of the word "Church" refers to the "American Catholic church" (little "c") and its humanistic aversion to giving latria to our Eucharistic Lord. What we will explain below is the position of Roman Catholic Church (big "C") regarding kneeling for Holy Communion, as expressed by the Popes, Scripture, Tradition, and the Congregation for Divine Worship, which has never discouraged but has constantly encouraged the practice of kneeling for Holy Communion throughout the centuries:

The 1980 instruction approved by Pope John Paul II, Inaestimabile Donum, states:

"When the faithful communicate kneeling, no other sign of reverence towards the Blessed Sacrament is required, since kneeling itself is a sign of adoration." (#11)

Archbishop Chaput's statement also contradicts a recent Vatican clarification made by Cardinal Medina Estévez (Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments) on October 25, 2001 which admonished the American bishops: ". . . protect those faithful who will inevitably be led by their own sensibilities to kneel, from imprudent action by priests, deacons, or lay ministers in particular, or from being refused Holy Communion for such a reason. . ." (letter of October 25, 2001). In another letter on November 7, 2000, Cardinal Medina Estévez made it clear that the General Instruction of the Roman Missal does not intend to prohibit customary kneeling at Mass:

VATICAN CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS
Prot. n. 2372/00/L

Responses to Dubia

1. Is it the case that the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, by No. 43 of the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani, intends to prohibit the faithful from kneeling during any part of the Mass except during the Consecration, that is, to prohibit the faithful from kneeling after the Agnus Dei and following the reception of Holy Communion?

Resp.: Negative.

2. Does the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments intend by Nos. 160-162, 244, or elsewhere in the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani, that the people may no longer genuflect or bow as a sign of reverence to the Blessed Sacrament immediately before they receive Holy Communion?

Resp.: Negative.

3. Does the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani Nos. 314-315, or elsewhere, intend that a separate chapel for the reservation of the Most Blessed Sacrament within parish churches is to be preferred to a prominent and central location within the main body of the church, thus visible to the faithful during the celebration of the Mass?

Resp.: Negative, et ad mentem.

Mens: Within the norms specified by law, it pertains to the diocesan Bishop, in his capacity as moderator of the Sacred Liturgy in the particular Church entrusted to him, to exercise judgment regarding the most appropriate place for the reservation of the Most Blessed Sacrament, bearing foremost in mind the purpose of encouraging and enabling the faithful to visit and adore the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Vatican City, 7 November 2000
Jorge Arturo Cardinal Medina Estevez, Cardinal Prefect
Archbishop Francesco Pio Tamburrino, Archbishop Secretary

Systematic attempts to destroy faith in the Real Presence...

What we are now witnessing in the United States is not the mere bungling of ignorant liturgists, but a systematic attempt to destroy the true Catholic faith in the Real Presence. We need to recall our Church history and recognize that tactics similar to those during the Protestant revolution are now being used in the United States.

The U.S. bishops seem to have taken their cue from Protestant revolutionaries, such as Bishop John Hooper and John Knox. In 1552, Bishop Hooper denounced what he called the superstitious practice of kneeling for Communion. In a homily before King Edward VI, the Bishop spoke these blasphemous words:

"The outward behaviour and gesture of the receiver should want all kind of suspicion, shew, or inclination of idolatry. Wherefore seeing kneeling is a shew and external sign of honouring and worshipping, and heretofore hath grievous and damnable idolatry been committed by the honouring of the Sacrament, I would wish it were commanded by the magistrates that the communicators and receivers should do it standing or sitting..." (Philip Hughes, Philip, Reformation in England, (London: Hollis Carter, 1953, p. 197)

John Knox, another Protestant, also railed against the Catholic practice of kneeling for Communion: "at Berwick, the Scotsman John Knox on his own authority had discontinued the practice of kneeling to receive Communion." Similarly, he preached a sermon before King Edward VI towards the end of September 1552, and "permitted himself an outburst of invective in the king's presence," (Ibid., p. 197) denouncing as idolatry the practice of receiving Communion kneeling. Afterwards, Knox wrote to Archbishop Cramner bidding him to have the rubric for kneeling removed in the new 1552 Common Prayer Book. So popular was Knox that he was offered the bishopric of Rochester, England, which he declined: “His own alleged reason for declining these preferments was that he thought the Anglican Church too favourable to Roman doctrine, and that he could not bring himself to kneel at the communion service.” (Catholic Encyclopedia, John Knox)

Recent purveyors of impiety include Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago. At the June 1995 meeting of the National Catholic Conference of Bishops, Cardinal Bernardin brought forth an amendment to allow for standing during the Eucharist prayer as an option at the discretion of individual bishops. Bernardin’s motion was met with an avalanche of opposition (Catholic World Report, Aug. 27, 1995). We know from Our Lady of the Roses message that there are many infiltrators that have made their way into the Catholic priesthood and episcopate to destroy from within. Their plans were spelled out many years ago for all to read in the stunning book AA-1025: The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle. This book is the diary of a communist who had infiltrated the Catholic priesthood to destroy from within. He writes:

“To weaken more the notion of the ‘Real Presence’ of Christ, all decorum will have to be set aside. No more costly embroidered vestments, no more music called sacred, especially no more signs of the Cross, no more genuflections, but only dignified and stern attitudes. Moreover the faithful will have to break themselves of the habit of kneeling, and this will be absolutely forbidden when receiving Communion.” (p. 90)

The following words from an email we received could fittingly be applied to the abolishment of kneeling: “there is an agenda here. Modernists are disgusted by piety and would like to extirpate it, root and branch, from the Catholic faithful. How else to grease the skids for the Cult of Man?”

Only 30% of U.S. Catholics now believe in the doctrine of the Real Presence. Who can doubt that the systematic discouragement of kneeling has been one of the causes for this catastrophic loss of faith?

Faith of the Church...

Concerning those who would say that the Holy Eucharist should not be outwardly adored and worshipped, the Council of Trent declares:

"If anyone says that in the holy sacrament of the Eucharist the only-begotten Son of God is not to be adored even outwardly with the worship of latria (the act of adoration), ...and that the adorers of it are idolaters; let him be anathema." (Enchiridion Symbolorum, Denzinger, 30th edition, Number 888, p. 271).

Fr. Regis Scanlon quotes St. Augustine to emphasize the great evil of discouraging people from kneeling before the Eucharist:

”From the perspective of the Catholic doctrine involved, discouraging Catholics from kneeling at the Consecration at Mass is extremely evil. It was mentioned earlier that St. Augustine said: ‘It was in the flesh that Christ walked among us and it is His flesh that He has given us to eat for our salvation. But,’ he added: ‘no one eats of this flesh without having first adored it . . . and not only do we not sin in thus adoring it, but we would be sinning if we did not do so!’” (St. Augustine, On the Psalms, 98:9, in Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei , No. 55, p. 323)

Pope Pius XII's encyclical on the Sacred Liturgy, Mediator Dei, tells us that "Outward acts of religion... serve to foster piety, to kindle the flame of charity, to increase our faith and deepen our devotion." "They make it possible to tell genuine Christians from their false or heretical counterparts." Furthermore, the holy Pope Pius XII states, "It is therefore the keen desire of the Church that all of the faithful kneel at the feet of the Redeemer to tell Him how much they venerate and love Him."

Dietrich von Hildebrand, whom Pope Pius XII called a 20^th Century Doctor of the Church, asks, “Whence comes the disparagement of kneeling? Why should the Eucharist be received standing? Is not kneeling, in our culture, the classic expression of adoring reverence?” (The Charitable Anathema, p. 42)

Cardinal Ratzinger writes these words on the importance of kneeling during the liturgy: "Here the bodily gesture attains the status of a confession of faith in Christ: words could not replace such a confession." (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986, pp. 74-75).

At the U.S. bishops’ meeting in 1991, “Bernard Cardinal Law … remarked that when the bishops ... established the practice of standing for Communion, they did not realize how Catholic identity and piety would suffer." (The Wanderer, November 28, 1991, p. 4)

Bishop John Keating of Arlington, Virginia, states in his pastoral letter on Eucharistic reverence:

“No bodily posture so clearly expresses the soul’s interior reverence before God as the act of kneeling. Reciprocally, the posture of kneeling reinforces and deepens the soul’s attitude of reverence.” (A Pastoral Letter on Reverence for the Eucharist, December 4, 1988)

Fr. Robert Skurla, on April 4, 1982 in St. Peter’s Cathedral (Scranton, Pennsylvania), exhorted all the faithful, “Kneel for Communion. We say in the Scriptures: ‘At the Name of Jesus everyone should bend,’ then why do we stand for Holy Communion, when we have Jesus in person?”

As Scripture says, "For every knee shall be bowed to Me" (Isaiah 45:24).

“The United States of America heads fast to a schism. Fight, My children; do not give in to the forces of evil. Fight the enemy with prayer.” - Our Lady, May 29, 1976

Our Lady of the Roses Awesome Bayside Prophecies... https://www.tldm.org/Bayside/ These prophecies came from Jesus, Mary, and the saints to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, NY, from 1968 to 1995.

YOUR KING
"Why must you insult My Son? Can you not bend your knees? Is He not your King?" - Our Lady, November 21, 1970

BOW YOUR KNEES
"Remember, My child, shout it from the roof. My Son is with you until the end of your time. It is truly His Presence, His Real Presence, His divine Presence, His Body and His Blood. Do not treat Him with disrespect! Bow your knees; cover your head! Do not chew Him!" - Our Lady, June 8, 1974

REAL PRESENCE
"You violate your sacred trust. You have taken the Body of your Creator, the Son of your God in the Trinity, and violated Him. You must do your eating at home! When you come to the great Sacrifice, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, you come in reverence. You must go down upon your knees and do penance now for the offenses to your God! ...
"As in the past, cannot you recognize the mystery of Heaven and earth? Did not the staff of Moses turn into a serpent in the will of God? Did not the river in Egypt turn into blood in the will of God? And cannot God, in His will, come to you changing the bread and wine into the actual Presence, the real Presence, the factual Presence of His Body and Blood?" - St. Michael, February 1, 1977

HONOR
"All honor must be given to My Son in the Eucharist. Man must kneel. My Son's House is the House of God and a house of prayer, and it must not be turned into a meeting hall." - Our Lady, July 25, 1979

RESTORE HOLINESS
"In the beginning I gave to you, through your prophets, the establishment of My Church upon earth. The rules were simple but now have become changed and defiled to please the carnal nature of mankind. You must restore the holiness to My House! You must bend your knees in humility and penance." - Jesus, December 31, 1975

RESTORE ALTAR RAILINGS
"I have asked you to get down on your knees. Clergy in My Son's House, His Church, restore the altar railings, that man may be on his knees. For many shall crawl on their knees in desperation seeking to flee, but nowhere shall they escape the flames. Restore My Son's Church while there is time. Return the railings! Have the people make atonement upon their knees to their God!" - Our Lady, May 30, 1981

Directives from Heaven... https://www.tldm.org/directives/directives.htm

D146 - Honor the Eucharist, Part 1   PDF
D147 - Honor the Eucharist, Part 2   PDF
D161 - The Great Apostasy  PDF
D163 - Schism  PDF

Articles...

Vatican defends the right to kneel for Holy Communion
http://www.tldm.org/News5/Vatican_kneeling.htm

"No kneeling" rule sparks outcry
http://www.tldm.org/news5/kneeling2.htm

Links...

Letter on the posture of the people during Mass, Cardinal Medina Estévez, November 7, 2000

Kneeling and Faith in the Eucharist, by Fr. Regis Scanlon

Standing or Kneeling during the Liturgy?, by Fr. Joseph Fessio, S. J.

Standing Up for Kneeling (Catholic Insight - December 1997)

Kneeling (EWTN Library - Winter 1991)

Kneeling after the Lamb of God (EWTN Library)

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