I just attended Mass at Westminster Cathedral in London. I didn’t receive communion because I am not Roman Catholic, but I noticed they were only distributing the host to communicants, without offering the cup to drink from as well. When did that become practice?
Some priests offer both the consecrated wine and bread, some only the consecrated bread. If you have one “waifer” or a speck of or three hundred, you have Jesus within you, so bread and wine or just bread, you have Jesus within you.
The main thing is - The Dude said it - unless you gnaw on my flesh and drink my blood....”
Note - this is what is post-bible labelled for communication purposes “transubstantiation” meaning change in substance - from bread and wine to consecrated bread and wine, as Jesus did, and it is Jesus Christ in his body, his blood, his soul, his eternal divinity (it’s ALL Jesus, Jesus’ ALL). BUT it still has the look, taste, smell, of bread and wine (it’s a faith mystery, like belief in God).
So Jesus did what it says at the Last Supper in the bible and ate/drank it, just as he was baptized with the Holy Spirit by John, to show us that we ought do it to follow Him.
You did not receive communion out of respect for God, your church and I trust the Catholic church. One must be free of mortal sin to receive, hence confession must be available to the recipient(in addition to being baptized a Christian with the HS). To receive Him with a mortal stain is to incur severe judgement upon oneself, and the Church doesn’t wish that on anyone, Catholic or non-Catholic, of course. We pray for those (Catholics are ignorant sinners often) who receive unworthily and thus offend Jesus, including ourselves should we do so while still deceiving ourselves of having committed such a sin...hence, all the more need for the availability of confession after! Born again in Christ each time we drop to our knees and fully repent, because of His Mercy alone.
I think that sometimes Communion is still given "in one kind," as they say, under certain conditions: celiac disease, esophageal cancer (communicant can't swallow/digest the wheat Host); alcoholism (communicant wishes to avoid Consecrated Wine); or sometimes just the Sacred Host if there are large crowds e.g. at a World Youth Day with a couple million people.
Latin Masses also do not offer the Chalice to the laity for communion,
Was the Mass you attended in Latin?
“...I noticed they were only distributing the host to communicants, without offering the cup to drink from as well. When did that become practice?”
It was first commonly shared up until the High Middle Ages. Because of cost, worries about spilling the cup, and heretical groups like the Hussites, the practice ceased in the Late Middle Ages. It was revived experimentally in the 1950s in Europe if I am not mistaken. It became common in the U.S. in the 1970s with the permission of the Vatican (because such a practice is not explicitly seen in the rubrics of the Mass). That permission was believed by some to have ended in 2010. One diocese - Phoenix - tried to restrict the sharing of the cup (as would have been proper since the permission was believed to have expired), but the bishop (a good bishop, Bishop Olmstead) has apparently waffled on that because of the outcry from Mass goers: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2011/11/11/20111111phoenix-bishop-reverses-ruling-wine-communion.html Apparently the permission was about a related matter and not the actual sharing of the cup. The sharing of the cup can only happen at the “new” liturgies: i.e. the new Mass since Vatican II and the Anglican Use Mass. It CAN NEVER happen at the old Latin Mass from before Vatican II.