Really?
I remember being taught (in 1971) that the host was not to be chewed, just allowed to dissolve on your tongue. That was after the demand was for the Holy Eucharist to be received kneeling.
I just don't see the reverence for receiving God (as we are taught) in the hand--I guess I've seen too many slouching, irreverant people during Communion to turn me against it. It seems to me that there is too much of this putting God on OUR human level (and I got this education in the 1970s--when I was in elementary school) post V2 versus the proper reverance and respect that we owe Him.
I'm no doubt somewhat older than you, because the convention observed in my childhood was that you ate nothing after midnight prior to Mass (this is 43 years ago, mind you), although I believe this may have been at the insistence of the unreformed, hard-line Irish Jesuits who ran the boarding school I was attending at the time. In the wider community, I think by then the fast was three hours.
Anyway, the sad truth is that all the changes in the Church -- changes purely for the sake of change -- have pretty much withered my faith, which is a terrible thing, as it has left an aching void in my heart and in my life.
My son attends Catholic school and has been versed in his religion, but there are many times I feel like a hypocrite on Sunday morning. I hate what the church has become and -- a terrible thought -- sometimes suspect those who now lead it harbor a secret wish for its eventual destruction.
The last time the flicker of faith flared briefly into a flame was when I attended Tridentine Mass here in New York at St. Agnes near Grand Central Station. Briefly, I could see further than the human uncertainties of every day life, personal weakness and my considerable moral frailty. Why this should have been the case, I'm at a loss to explain. Perhaps the liturgy simply touched memories of my youth, when faith was absolute. Perhaps it was the Latin, a language I still love and thank the Jesuits for laying open to me. Perhaps it was the old Mass's capacity -- indeed, its insistence -- on undistracted reflection, meditation and self-examination. Whatever the reason, fleetingly, faith was restored in full.
My son, I fear, is a lost cause. Neither he nor any of his friends makes the slightest pretense of believing. When he does go to Mass, which isn't very often, it's because there will be some girl or other he's keen to hang with after. Now I'm not one to put down the need for human reproduction and the adolescent mating dance that precedes it, but mere lust strapped down by shifting, weak convention makes a poor basis on which to hope for a resurgence.