I will be going to early Mass to receive ashes, then later that night I will be going to my wife’s Protestant church for its Ash Wednesday service. Is it permissible to receive ashes from a Protestant church?
Even if we were to grant that ashes in a Protestant church are a properly-blessed sacramental, you will have already received ashes in your Catholic parish. To receive them a second time in the same day, even if it was from a Catholic church, is unnecessary and redundant. In any event, Catholics should consider themselves to be non-participating observers on the rare occasions they visit a Protestant church.
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