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No—I teach theology, including a class on Liturgy. I draw distinctions between things that I am absolutely certain of, morally certain of, strongly inclined to hold, weakly inclined to hold, and have little reason to lean one way or another. Not only do I need to distinguish between these degrees, I need to be capable to articulate my reasons both for a position and for placing a position in a particular range of certainty.

I am morally certain of the following six points:

It has been the custom in the Catholic Church in the west (i.e. west of Greece) for the faithful to receive communion kneeling and on the tongue from time immemorial to some time after Vatican II. By time immemorial I do not mean forever, but that no one is able to point to a time when it began or became dominant.

The patristic testimony from the Greek-speaking areas indicates that while certain exceptions might be made, or at least existed within living memory of the Fathers, there is no patristic evidence from this area indicating the practice of the faithful communicating by their own hand has ever been common within the time of documented memory.

Moving east of Greek-speaking areas into Syria and points east, a text attributed to St. Cyril of Jerusalem does indicate the practice as present in Jerusalem, but practiced in an elaborately regulated ritual. One should also note that the practice in Jerusalem should not be given huge weight as reflecting an unbroken tradition, as the city had been purged of inhabitants following the Jewish rebellion and Roman policy only allowed non-Jews to live there fore a good while. Further east one may find Assyrian Catholics who still have a time-immemorial ritual, which is outlined in a post of mine that precedes this one. The east is also worthy of further study as it is home to many (as in dozens) of small traditional groups.

No one has preserved a tradition or even a record of a tradition of treating the Blessed Sacrament as ordinary food. What has commonly been adopted in the west over the past three decades is, insofar as its inherit symbolism goes, ritually poorer than anything detailed in the historical record.

From apostolic times certain designated members have presided over the eucharistic assembly. These, from time immemorial, have communicated in a manner different from that of the faithful—namely, taking our Lord into their own hands, and using their own hands, rather than receiving Him through the hands of someone else.

I am strongly inclined to hold:

Given the above point (which, in its second half, is my fifth morally certain point) even if one could determine how the apostles received at the last supper, it cannot be taken as indicative of how the faithful received subsequent to the Last Supper, especially as it would be evident that what was being celebrated and received far surpassed the passover lamb.

Widespread practice, especially before modern communication, usually does not spring up out of nowhere, so what we know of the fourth century may be taken as indicative of at least a strong trend in the preceding centuries.

I am weakly inclined to hold:
That the New Testament record and the early Church literary record is capable of shedding virtually no light on the question of how the faithful communicated. I am willing to entertain the possibility of some light through vigorous text analysis, following the methods outlined in my previous post, but am keenly aware that liturgical ëxperts” often read too much into too little. Far from saying that the issue is not important to me, I am saying that I demand an appropriate degree of academic rigor.

All that said, I am strongly inclined to hold that even if some practice were capable of being documented in the first three centuries, organic development has universally been in the direction of external signs of reverence, and the recent practice in the west is a direct break with this organic development.

Finally, as to whether the Catholic and Calvinists hold the same position with regards to the Blessed Sacrament, at least as of 1572, fervent Calvinists were of the opionion that the Catholic position differed sufficiently from the Calvinist that they were willing to kill Catholics who did not abjure, and Catholics were fervent enough to be killed. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06651c.htm