Andrew Zajac
Communion just concluded at the papal Mass at Nationals stadium and no sign of the Roman Curia protocol police though there was plenty for them to do.
Within the last few years, various Vatican edicts imposed slight changes in rules governing the actions of priests and laity around the altar.
One of the changes required that communicants bow before receiving the host.
As the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (2003) p. 48, item 160, puts it, “when receiving Holy Communion, the communicant bows his or her head before the Sacrament as a gesture of reverence…”
This morning, some bowed and some didn’t.
Either word of this requirement hasn’t gotten out or this is simply another opportunity for stylistic picking and choosing that a billion-member, heavily bureaucratized, global, 2,000 year-old religions affords.
It’s admittedly a very small thing. But if it’s that hard to get everybody in the church onto the same page on a superficial item, one gets the sense of how hard it is to steer the faithful on matters like birth control, the death penalty and just wars.
