REVIEWS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: DOMINUS EST – IT IS THE LORD! BY BISHOP ATHANASIUS SCHNEIDER

Just a brief note- on March 6th, Lent begins, and I usually fast from personal use of the internet.  This will be the last post until at least April 27th, if not May 4th.  In the meantime, though, I will be working on making and planning some changes to the site, so please look forward to those.  Have a good Lent, and have a wonderful Easter Sunday!

Abstract: A short, convicting book that makes a pretty good argument for receiving the Eucharist kneeling and on the tongue rather than standing and in the hand.

Content Warning (highlight to view): Very, very high church

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A few weeks ago, I overheard a mother talking to her son saying, “The wine isn’t really blood.”  The grade-school child had just gotten out of his Catholic religious education class, and here was his mother teaching heresy in the school hallway.  For any readers not in the Catholic/Orthodox know, for a Catholic to deny that the bread and wine used in the mass really has been transformed into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ is like denying that an oak was once an acorn.  The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is fundamental to the Catholic faith.  You cannot claim to be a faithful Catholic while rejecting one of the Church’s oldest and most important dogmas.  Yet there, going past me, was a mother doing just that.  To my shame, I was too afraid of causing a scene to speak out against her.  I have wished many times I could go back and stand up for the Church.  Unfortunately, I am also likely enough to have another chance even going forward.  There are too many “Catholics” today with that mother’s attitude, too many of the supposedly faithful who deny Church dogma and lack any reverence for the Blessed Sacrament, who commit sacrilege every single week when they go up for Communion while denying Christ’s Body and Blood which they then take.  Too many priests, too, as this past year of scandal has shown, have no regard for the sanctity of Whose Body they touch with their sin-slathered fingers or Whose flock they lead astray through lack of reverence.  And unfortunately, there are too many like me who, in the moment, are too afraid to speak.

Thanks be to God that there are still those courageous enough to.

Bishop Schneider’s Dominus Est – It is the Lord! is a convicting and convincing little book first published as a book in English in 2008.  With only about 50 pages, which includes a glossary of names and notes, the Bishop argues clearly against the culture of irreverence that has taken over the Catholic Church regarding the Eucharist, particularly the consecrated bread, also called the Host.  Specifically, he argues for the universal return of two specific practices: (1) taking the Host on the tongue while (2) kneeling “so as to be fed like a child” (30).  In other words, make one’s physical actions embody one’s spiritual attitude.

After beginning by recounting the actions of three women (two of them direct relatives) with immense reverence for the Body of Christ and supporting the need for that attitude of reverence, the bishop moves into various “testimonies,” where he pulls from different authorities ranging from Church Fathers, to the liturgy, to even Protestant denominations to support his case.

Of the two points, his arguments for kneeling aren’t as strong.  He does quote Scripture, tradition, and past popes, but as his main point is just kneeling being a sign of respect, and at least in American culture standing can also be such a sign, there isn’t as great a sense of necessity as with his other points.  However, in terms of it being a more ancient, perfect, universal, and distinct way of showing reverence, the bishop makes some good points.

His arguments for taking the Eucharist on the tongue are much stronger.  Not only does he argue from authority, he references traditional, practical argument related to that need for reverence.  Throughout the book, Bishop Schneider uses authoritative quotes that would be hard to interpret in a way other than how he does, and many of those quotes are in blocks rather than easy to dismiss one-liners.  The notes, when expansive and not just giving sources, are helpful with a few of these quotes, too, as the bishop either gives clarification or anticipates an objection.  Between the authority of his quotations and the practicality of the points made, the bishop makes a pretty conclusive case against receiving the Eucharist on the hand.  And again, this is only within about 50 pages.  25 if you take out the glossary, notes, and his initial examples of reverence.

This book doesn’t leave much, if any, room for argument.  It’s short, but it’s no lightweight.  As Bishop Schneider concludes, “The Sacred Host is not some thing, but some One… we are involved with nothing other than, and no one less great than, the Lord Himself [emphasis in the original] (51).”  So we better act like it.