Communion in the Hand is Self-Ministry

Whoever handles a sacrament is that sacrament's minister.

If everyone can by right handle the Eucharist, than everyone is an ordinary minister of holy communion!

In fact, "Communion in the hand" is not Communion in the hand at all. Holy Communion of the Most Blessed Sacrament is always through the mouth, administered by the hands. The only question is whose hands, one's own or those of another.

The only people that have a sacramental right (and solemn duty) to administer this most august sacrament to themselves are ordained priests and only (outside of a rare exception, e.g. to avoid sacrilege) at his communion during the Mass he himself offers (in persona Christi).

So, this is a heresy. It is the "everybody is a minister", there is no distinction between priest and people, heresy. Or better, the heresy of Self-Ministry. What the Church is saying by this practice is that Everyone is an Ordinary Self-Minister of Holy Communion.

Self-Ministry of Holy Communion should be opposed and rejected at every level as vigorously as any heresy or sacramental abuse, but instead it is defended and promoted and for any pastor or priest to oppose it world-wide he is thrown out.

The bishops and clergy and laity who are so concerned about the heresy involved in discussions of giving unrepentant mortal sinners communion should be at least equally alarmed about this which seems to me to be a more foundational heresy, attacking the dogma of priesthood and that of the adminstration of sacraments.

I would dare say that the flippancy with which we have all acquiesced to this ordinary self-ministry of holy communion has facilitated the move now to the other abominable question of unrepentent adulterers.