Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, during an interview with CNA, recommended that Catholics receive Holy Communion on the tongue and kneeling. The cardinal said: "(It) is the sign of adoration that needs to be recovered. I think the entire Church needs to receive Communion while kneeling". He then explained why: "It is to simply know that we are before God himself and that He came to us and that we are undeserving".

Cardinal Cañizares is the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the top authority on the liturgy after the pope. Benedict XVI only gives communion to the faithful on the tongue and kneeling. 

The Cardinal observed that "If we trivialize Communion, we trivialize everything, and we cannot lose a moment as important as that of receiving Communion, of recognizing the real presence of Christ there, of the God who is the love above all loves"

Catholics continue to be allowed to receive communion standing and on the hand. But the cardinal pointed out that "If one receives while standing, a genuflection or profound bow should be made, and this is not happening"

Context to understand the statements of Cardinal Cañizares

1-Communion on the tongue is the universal law of the Church and therefore should be the norm everywhere.

2-Communion on the hand is a dispensation of the law granted to those episcopal conferences who requested it.

3-We should respect and not judge the form of reception of our neighbor. Remember that the Eucharist is the sacrament of charity and unity. Communion should not be an occasion for spiritual pride and division.

4-Most important is the disposition of the heart.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal
states that "the faithful communicate either kneeling or standing, as determined by the Conference of Bishops." The Instruction adds, "(w)hen they communicate standing, however, it is recommended that they make an appropriate sign of reverence, as determined in the same norms, before receiving the Sacrament."

In 2002, then-Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez, attempted to clarify the issue after receiving complaints from lay Catholics who were being refused communion after kneeling to receive the host.

The Congregation, he wrote in an open letter, "considers any refusal of Holy Communion to a member of the faithful on the basis of his or her kneeling posture to be a grave violation of one of the most basic rights of the Christian faithful, namely that of being assisted by their Pastors by means of the Sacraments (Codex Iuris Canonici, canon 213)."

He went on to add that even when the Congregation has given its approval for a bishops’ conference to make a standing posture the norm, "it has done so with the stipulation that communicants who choose to kneel are not to be denied Holy Communion on these grounds."

He also highlighted that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, believed the "centuries-old tradition" of kneeling to receive communion is a "particularly expressive sign of adoration, completely appropriate in light of the true, real and substantial presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ under the consecrated species."

Cardinal Estévez concluded with a warning that "the Congregation will regard future complaints of this nature with great seriousness" and, if those complaints are verified, it would "seek disciplinary action consonant with the gravity of the pastoral abuse."