So you're still promoting giving communion to someone who has not first gone to confession in years. This priest was absolutely wrong and is probably a modernist as well. In addition, you are making the conclusion that because this man received communion illictly (at best) that this is what brought him back to the Faith. Wow.
No I am not actually promoting anything. If I feel I have a sin that needs to be confessed, I refrain from Communion until Confession. That is me.
Whether or not this priest sinned I will not say nor will I say that man sinned. There are the Norms but their are exceptions. The Catholic Church allows Orthodox to receive communion in the Catholic Church. In extreme, extreme, extreme, situations, lets say natural or military type situation, I do believe a protestant can receive if they ask and profess a faith in the sacrament (correct me if I am wrong).
The priest was very specific, he asked them to make an act of contrition of some sort before communion and go to confession as soon as possible. Modernist or not, I don’t know. If I were the priest, maybe I do something different.
As for the man I speak of, that is the story he told me as we worked together teaching RCIA (for about 5 years together) in the early 2000’s.