Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Coronavirus Is Punishment for Communion in the Hand


For the first time in Church history, public Mass was prohibited worldwide, Bishop Athanasius Schneider noticed during the live-streamed Rome Life Forum (May 22).

He calls the coronavirus only a “pretext” for infringing the rights of Christians. This created an "atmosphere of the catacombs" with priests celebrating Mass in secrecy for their faithful.

For Schneider it is "unbelievable" how bishops have converted into "rigid public officials” by banning public worship even before their government did.

The current situation could be understood as a “divine rebuke for the past fifty years of Eucharistic desecration and trivialisation” through Communion in the hand (1969) and the radical reform of the rite of Mass (1969/1970), Schneider analyses.

He gives many arguments against Communion in the hand:

• particles of the consecrated hosts are trampled upon by clergy and laity
• consecrated hosts are being stolen
• Communion in the hand is like taking common food
• Communion in the hand turned the Body of Christ for many faithful into "holy bread" or some "symbol."

Therefore, “now the Lord has intervened and deprived almost all the faithful of attending Holy Mass.”


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