Kazak bishop recalls Communist persecution, questions Communion in the hand

June 22, 2010

In an interview with Aid to the Church in Need, the General Secretary of the Bishops' Conference of Kazakhstan recounted the persecution Catholics endured in the Soviet Union under the regime of Leonid Brezhnev. Between 1971 and 1973, when he was a child of ten to twelve, Bishop Athansius Schneider and his family would travel by train to the nearest church, which was 60 miles away.

“The Communist government forbade children from participating in the Holy Mass,” he recalls. “Only adults were allowed to go, but we were four children and therefore my parents chose to take the first train in the morning when it was still dark so we wouldn’t be visible to others to see us… And then we would return with the last train in the evening …The Sundays, we spent with our parish priest who had a little room only-- not a house, but just a little room; it was his kitchen, sleeping room, and library in this one room. We spent our time because we were the family who travelled from afar. There I made my first Confession and first Communion with this holy priest who was also imprisoned in Karaganda earlier.”

Bishop Schneider, the author of a book defending the traditional manner of receiving Holy Communion, added:

For me it’s not a new understanding, I, all my life, lived this because I received the Holy Communion in such circumstances of persecution, and this reverence; it was so natural for me as a child to receive; I was told this is God here present really, and it was so natural to kneel, and “This is the Most Holy," as we say ,“The Most Holy - Sanctissimum".

Even my mother who lived during this times of persecution; once she saved a priest from the police in the Urals where she was deported, and then her mother, my grandmother was very ill and when the priest was departing, my grandmother asked my mother to ask the priest prior to his departure to please ask the priest to leave a Holy Host-- consecrated host in case she [grandmother] died so that she could receive the Holy Communion and my mother told the priest this request. And the priest said: “Yes, I will leave you one consecrated host on the condition that you administer this Holy Communion with the most reverence possible.”

My mother gave her [grandmother] the Holy Communion and to do this my mother took a pair of new white gloves, to give, to administer the host so that she would not touch the host with her bare hands. She would not dare touch the Holy Sacrament with her bare hands and she took a spoon to administer it. And this was so profound and so natural for us, and therefore, when we came and saw this in the Western churches, I was not so astonished, but we felt so much sorrow in our soul. I do not judge the person receiving Communion with their hands, this is another question because they can still receive it with reverence and love, but the objective situation of distributing the Holy Communion; you can not deny this, that it has turned so banal, so less reverent, like distributing cakes.

This is the Lord; when the risen Lord appeared to the three women and they saw Him, they knelt down…they fell on their knees on His feet and adored Him. And even the Apostles did the same when the Lord went to heaven. Why should we not do the same?

 

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Further information:

• Stalin's missionary work - An interview with Bishop Schneider of Kazakhstan (Aid to the Church in Need)
• Historical argument favors Communion on the tongue (CWN, 4/22/08)