This Congregation for Divine Worship
and the Discipline of the Sacraments has recently received reports of members
of the faithful in your Diocese being refused Holy Communion unless while standing
to receive, as opposed to kneeling. the reports state that such a policy has
been announced to parishioners. There were possible indications that such a
phenomenon might be somewhat more widespread in the Diocese, but the Congregation
is unable to verify whether such is the case. This Dicastery is confident that
Your Excellency will be in a position to make a more reliable determination
of the matter, and these complaints in any event provide an occasion for the
Congregation to communicate the manner in which it habitually addresses this
matter, with a request that you make this position known to any priests who
may be in need of being thus informed.
The Congregation in fact is concerned
at the number of similar complaints that it has received in recent months from
various places, and considers any refusal of Holy Communion to a member of the
faithful on the basis of his or her kneeling posture to be a grave violation
of one of the most basic rights of the Christian faithful, namely that of being
assisted by their Pastors by means of the Sacraments (Codex Iuris Canonici,
canon 213). In view of the law that “sacred ministers may not deny the sacraments
to those who opportunely ask for them, are properly disposed and are not prohibited
by law from receiving them” (canon 843 � 1), there should be no such refusal
to any Catholic who presents himself for Holy Communion at Mass, except in cases
presenting a danger of grave scandal to other believers arising out of the person’s
unrepented public sin or obstinate heresy or schism, publicly professed or declared.
Even where the Congregation has approved of legislation denoting standing as
the posture for Holy Communion, in accordance with the adaptations permitted
to the Conferences of Bishops by the Institution Generalis Missalis Romani n.
160, paragraph 2, it has done so with the stipulation that communicants who
choose to kneel are not to be denied Holy Communion on these grounds. –Jorge
A. Cardinal Medina Est�vez [Full Document]
