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Faith1960
Guest
I have to go to a memorial Mass this Saturday, then I go to the 5:00 Saturday Vigil Mass. Can I receive Communion at both Masses on the same day?
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otjm
Guest
Yes, you are allowed to receive twice. The second time you receive must be during a Mass.
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Don_Ruggero
Guest
Yes.
This has been in the law of the Church…and the pastoral practice…for so many decades, I am in amazement that this question actually comes up so often on this forum.
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GEddie
Guest
No amazement needed.
'Tis easier to post than to search in the archives.
ICXC NIKA
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Gorgias
Guest
Well, since 1983, at least, when the new canon law was promulgated. The “living memory” of Church regulations really does come down from “what Grandma told us” back in the day; I’d bet that 99% of the misperceptions about sacraments come from this source of “conventional wisdom.” (And, of course, it’s worse with weddings and baptisms (and nullity cases), since the ‘advice’ that people tend to give comes only from their own personal experience – and experience that’s decades old, at that!)
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Crusaderbear
Guest
The trouble with search engines is, if you don’t phrase it right, you get nothing. And the CAF engine doesn’t seem to handle phrases very well!
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Faith1960
Guest
Yep. I tried searching for it but couldn’t find the right word. And if I type phrases I get tons of irrelevant stuff. Thankyouverymuch.
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paduard
Guest
Yes.
paduaard
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FrDavid96
Guest
Echoing BOTH parts of the response.
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Faith1960
Guest
I said I couldn’t find it by doing a search.
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FrDavid96
Guest
What disturbs me, as a priest, is the very fact that you feel a need to search the topic anyway.
That’s not a criticism of you; instead it’s a lament of the fact that you (I presume a good practicing Catholic) have encountered a barrier in your ability to receive Holy Communion licitly. That means that people who should know better (priests, catechists, etc) have done a poor job of giving you necessary information. It’s obvious that someone told you not to do it, because otherwise you wouldn’t be asking the question in the first place.
I am upset that someone else’s failure is preventing you from receiving Communion, or even causing you anxiety about it. That’s not fair to you.
Depending on where you live, this has been the rule since the 1950’s (ability to receive Holy Communion in the morning and at the Saturday evening/night Mass)–that depends on when the Saturday evening Mass was first instituted, and that varied by diocese. It’s been the universal rule since 1983.
Even if you made your First Communion in the 1940’s (when such a thing was not possible), it’s a symptom of poor teaching that no one bothered to correctly explain to you a law that’s been in-place for more than 34 years at a minimum.
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jwilson77
Guest
I received my First Communion in the mid 80’s and I distinctly recall the Sisters teaching us that we could not receive Communion more than one time per day; if we went to mass twice and/or were serving mass twice, we could not receive Communion twice and should place our finger over our lips (like the “shhh” sign) and the priest would bless us and move on.
So, that being said, I can appreciate the position the OP is in and asking the question.
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Tantum_ergo
Guest
It wasn’t just the Sisters, either. By that time there were many many lay teachers in Catholic schools, and a lot of lay religious educators outside of school, and they went with the instructions given them by the DRE, the priest, or the materials supplied for instruction. And unfortunately, for many reasons, this being ‘pre internet’ and all, people in the 1980s and 1990s even, and into this century as well, did not always get accurate instruction.
Also, to be fair, with many parents not practicing or picking up information ‘by osmosis’ according to their own scrambled memories or practices, and with students in the 1980s, 1990s etc bombarded by so much more than the children up through the 1950s (not simply TV and radio but cable, Wi-Fi, video games, computer, sports and other leisure activities, etc.), some of the children may have been taught accurately at one point, even several points, but promptly have done a ‘data dump’ and thus be convinced they were ‘never’ taught such a point.
Kind of a ‘perfect storm’, these last 40 years or so, for bad catechesis with all parties involved. (That doesn’t mean it was intentional, and it doesn’t mean that ‘nobody was properly taught’.)
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Gorgias
Guest
The new canon law was promulgated in 1983. So, they might just possibly “hadn’t gotten the memo yet”.
Or, more likely, it had dropped off the radar. Even in those cases in which these sorts of things (whether minutiae or critical facts) are explained, they tend to be disregarded, misremembered, or swamped by the force of whatever they’d learned as a child or from family.
Think I’m off base? Ask an average Catholic about what Pope Francis said about excommunication and absolution (in the context of abortion) in the recent past. Ask about the obligation to attend Mass, or receive Eucharist. Ask whether divorced people can receive communion. Ask about gluten and valid matter in the Eucharist. I can pretty well guarantee that these things – which really have gotten lots of attention in the Catholic and even secular circles – pop up, get some attention, and then go away.
I think that the dynamic isn’t “we do a bad job teaching these things” (although, goodness knows, we could be more effective!). Rather, the dynamic is one with which every teacher is familiar: if you teach a concept and that teaching is never used, then the teaching is forgotten (and is replaced with whatever information preceded it). Therefore, when the need to appropriate the learning appears, the information is no longer part of the person’s memory.
My gut feel isn’t that no one has been taught “you may receive Eucharist twice in one day, as long as the second time is in the context of the celebration of Mass”; rather, it’s that we’ve been taught it, but have forgotten it, in the way that humans forget low-occurrence information all the time.
Tis_Bearself
Patron
I was taught in the 70s that you could only receive once per day as well.
Until the Internet rolled around, it wasn’t very easy to research these topics either, so you had to base these things on what nuns in school/ parents/ your particular parish priest etc. said, and it was not always correct, or even if correct it was not always clear. For example, receiving at the vigil on Saturday and receiving the next morning on Sunday might be seen as receiving on two different days and thus not the same as receiving once in the morning and once in the evening of the same day.
Add to this the fact that many Catholics typically don’t attend more than one Mass or Communion service per day, and this is something that’s unlikely to come up for them except on rare occasions such as a memorial service. I only got clear on the rule myself a couple years ago when, as part of my return to the Church, I began to attend a lot more Masses and sometimes found myself with two opportunities for Communion in a single day.
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Faith1960
Guest
I wasn’t well taught about the Church even though I went to a Catholic grade school. I’ve talked to someone else from another grade, same school, and neither was she.
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Faith1960
Guest
I graduated eighth grade in 1974.
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FrDavid96
Guest
That would put your First Communion around 1968 (2nd grade).
At that time, even 1968, the rule was that one could receive Communion at a Saturday morning Mass and receive Communion at the Saturday evening Mass (if there were such Masses scheduled in your diocese). If your diocese started Saturday evening Masses later, then insert that year into the previous sentence. No matter what, it can’t be later than 1983.
Again, it’s not my intention to criticize you. Instead, I see your posts as an example of poor teaching and formation by those who should have known better.
In 49 years since your First Communion, some priest somewhere along the way should have explained this to you, and done so in such a way that you wouldn’t be asking your question today.
I don’t blame you, I blame “we priests” collectively.
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