From EWTN: A NETWORK GONE WRONG
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Fifth, the venerable and ancient practice of receiving Communion on the tongue from the hand of the priest
while kneeling, which is still the law of the Church,71 emphasizes the Divine Presence in the Blessed
Sacrament, protects the Sacrament from profanation and sacrilege, or even the appearance thereof, and makes
clear the radical distinction between the priesthood and the laity. As Pope Leo XIII observed in declaring Anglican priestly orders absolutely invalid, the Protestant rebels of the sixteenth century understood as well as anyone the Catholic maxim lex orandi, lex credendi. Loosely translated, the maxim means that the law of prayer is the law of belief. That is, the way of worship reflects what one believes, so that if one prays in a certain way, over time he will come to believe as he prays. Hence, he who prays in the manner of heretics will himself become a heretic. That is precisely why the Protestant
71 Most Catholics do not realize that Communion in the hand is actually a tolerated exception to Church law, but only if very precise and strict conditions are met. One has yet to see where those conditions have ever been met in any diocese.
The decree Memoriale Domini, issued by Pope Paul VI’s Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship on May 28, 1969, decreed that the ancient law of the Church requiring Communion on the tongue must remain in force: “Therefore, taking into account the remarks and the advice of those whom ‘the Holy Spirit has placed to rule over’ the Churches, in view of the gravity of the matter and the force of the arguments put forward, the Holy Father has decided not to change the existing way of administering Holy Communion to the faithful. The Apostolic See therefore emphatically urges bishops, priests and laity to obey carefully the law which is still valid and which has again been confirmed.”
Memoriale Domini had been issued precisely to address widespread disobedience to this law of the Church. Cardinal Suenens and other European prelates, aping Bucer and the other Protestant heresiarchs, had instituted the Protestant practice of Communion in the hand in open defiance of Church law, and then dared the Vatican to do something about it. But while Memoriale Domini upheld the law mandating Communion on the tongue, the same document fatally compromised with Suenens and the other liturgical rebels in Europe by agreeing that in any region where the abuse of Communion in the hand had already been established the document uses the phrase “has already developed” a two thirds majority of the episcopal conference could petition the Holy See to ratify its disobedience and thus make it legal! This the European rebels promptly did. North America soon followed, even though the abuse had not already developed” before Memoriale Domini.