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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.

Communion Bench

Adaptation of the sanctuary-guard or altar-rail

Click to enlarge

Communion-Bench, an adaptation of the sanctuary-guard or altar-rail. [See sub-title Altar-Rail s.v. ALTAR (in LITURGY)] Standing in front of this barrier, in a space called the chancel, or pectoral, the faithful were wont in early times to receive Holy Communion, the men taking the Consecrated Bread into their hands and the women receiving it on a white cloth, called the domenical, while deacons administered the Precious Blood which each took through a reed of gold or silver. About the twelfth century when the custom arose of receiving under one kind only, the priests placed the small Hosts on the tongues of the communicants at the chancel-rail. Later on, about the fifteenth century the practice was introduced of receiving Holy Communion kneeling, and so the altar-rail gradually came to assume a form better suited to its modern use, and like what it is at present (Bourasse, Dict. D’Arch., Paris, 1851). When large crowds approach the altar on special occasions so that the ordinary accommodation for receiving is not adequate, a row of prie-Dieu or benches provided with Communion cloths or cards, with a lighted candle at the end of each row, may be arranged around the chancel. (Gong. of Rites, Deer. 3086, November ed.)

PATRICK MORRISROE


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