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Ante Deum
In kneeling before our God and allowing Him to be placed upon our tongues by the consecrated hands of a priest we are in good company. We have the consolation of receiving Him as did St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. John Bosco, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Bernadette, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, St. Maria Goretti, St. Thomas More, the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, the children of Fatima-----the list is endless! We can unite ourselves with this army of Saints and the countless host of good and faithful Catholics who for more than a millennium have received Communion in the traditional manner. Alternatively, we can join those Catholics who have "come of age", who are "mature" and "adult", who stand before the priest, hold out their hands and say: "A Conciliar Catholic does not kneel before his God, a Conciliar Catholic stands before his God." The truth of the matter may well be that a "Conciliar Catholic" has no God but himself. Dietrich von Hildebrand was another staunch opponent of the Nazis. Fascists and Communists do not like people who ask questions. They prefer those who submit without question to the Party diktat. Dietrich von Hildebrand continued asking questions until death robbed us of the greatest lay defender of the faith in the English [and German] speaking world. In The Devastated Vineyard he demands [pp. 67/8]: "Why, one asks oneself, has kneeling been replaced by standing? Is not kneeling the classical expression of adoration? It is in no way limited to being the noble expression of petition, of supplication; it is also the typical expression of reverent submission, of subordination, of looking upwards, and above all it is the expression of humble confrontation with the absolute Lord: adoration. Chesterton said that man does not realize how great he is on his knees. Indeed, man is never more beautiful than in the humble attitude of kneeling, turning towards God. So why replace this by standing? Should kneeling perhaps be prohibited because it evokes associations with feudal times, because it is no longer fitting for 'democratic' modern man? Does religious renewal lie in suffering from an unfortunate case of 'sociologitis', which nonsensically wants to deduce fundamental human phenomena from a particular historical epoch and kind of mentality? And why can the faithful no longer kneel beside one another at the Communion rail-----which is after all a great expression of humanity-----why must they march up to the altar goose-step fashion? Is this supposed to correspond to the meal character of Holy Communion [which is stressed so frequently[ better than kneeling together in a recollected way?"
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