If I am unable to receive Communion, can I still go up and get a blessing?

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Either/ or. If you do enter the line, go up with your palms flat on your chest and your arms crissed, and keep in mind that only priests and deacons, not EMHCs, can bless in the communion line.
 
While many bulletins invite people up for a blessing, I have never seen anyone actually go up for one. Those who are not receiving Communion for whatever reason just sit quietly in the pew. As misstherese said, you’re going to get a blessing at the end anyway.
 
The traditional practice is to stay in the pew if you aren’t receiving communion for any reason.
 
And this is the default option as well. Some parishes don’t give blessings in the Communion line. Others encourage it, though there remains no obligation to come forward for those who do not wish to. If I wanted to receive a blessing but were in doubt as to whether the parish permits it, I’d stay in the pew.
 
I think you can, in most places, get a blessing. Personally I stay in my pew. I did that for years while I was in the process of converting. I think the communion line should be for communion. I think there is too much pressure for everyone to go up, regardless of their disposition to receive.
 
JMJ said:
Or do I stay and just pray?
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Communion lines are for just that. They are not Communion and Blessings lines. At the end of the Mass everyone gets a blessing.
Despite some priests allowing it it is not actually permitted.

This is a letter from the Congregation for Divine Worship responding to such a question. Highlighting is mine.

February 2009

Vol. XIV, No. 10

Congregation for Divine Worship –

On Giving Blessings During the Communion Rite

What about giving blessings to people who come forward in the Communion line but who are not receiving Communion? Should a priest, deacon or an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion give the person a blessing instead?

What if a person who is not receiving Communion presents himself with arms crossed over the chest, during the regular administration of Communion?

Two men wrote to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW) asking about this practice. Their query asked if there are “particular guidelines or restrictions” concerning the practice of a minister or extraordinary minister giving the person a blessing.

The response from the CDW was in the form of a letter (Protocol No. 930/08/L), dated November 22, 2008, signed by Father Anthony Ward, SM, Under-secretary of the Congregation.

The letter said that “this matter is presently under the attentive study of the Congregation”, so “for the present, this dicastery wishes to limit itself to the following observations”:
  1. The liturgical blessing of the Holy Mass is properly given to each and to all at the conclusion of the Mass, just a few moments subsequent to the distribution of Holy Communion.
  2. Lay people, within the context of Holy Mass, are unable to confer blessings. These blessings, rather, are the competence of the priest (cf. Ecclesia de Mysterio, Notitiae 34 (15 Aug. 1997), art. 6, § 2; Canon 1169, § 2; and Roman Ritual De Benedictionibus (1985), n. 18).
  3. Furthermore, the laying on of a hand or hands — which has its own sacramental significance, inappropriate here — by those distributing Holy Communion, in substitution for its reception, is to be explicitly discouraged.
  4. The Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio n. 84, “forbids any pastor, for whatever reason to pretext even of a pastoral nature, to perform ceremonies of any kind for divorced people who remarry”. To be feared is that any form of blessing in substitution for communion would give the impression that the divorced and remarried have been returned, in some sense, to the status of Catholics in good standing.
  5. In a similar way, for others who are not to be admitted to Holy Communion in accord with the norm of law, the Church’s discipline has already made clear that they should not approach Holy Communion nor receive a blessing. This would include non-Catholics and those envisaged in can. 915 (i.e., those under the penalty of excommunication or interdict, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin).
 
exnihilo said:
I think there is too much pressure for everyone to go up, regardless of their disposition to receive.
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I wonder how much this suppresses Mass attendance?

People who feel uncomfortable or unworthy to receive, just don’t show?

When Catholic attendance at mass was 80%, most Catholics did not receive communion each week, even though they were in attendance.
 
Here we go again. This letter was a private reply from an official, not a public declaration, and as you can see, it talks of the matter being ‘under consideration’ in 2009 - I rather think that if Rome thought it was important, it would have been addressed by now.

Another point is that the original query related to lay people giving blessings. I think most can agree that this is wrong…

Add to this the fact that the Bishops of England and Wales have been encouraging going for a blessing since the 1970s Swanwick Conference, and the UK has had 2? 3? Papal visits since then, with not a peep of rebuke or correction from Rome in all that time.
 
paperwight said:
Here we go again. This letter was a private reply from an official, not a public declaration, and as you can see, it talks of the matter being ‘under consideration’ in 2009 - I rather think that if Rome thought it was important, it would have been addressed by now.

Another point is that the original query related to lay people giving blessings. I think most can agree that this is wrong…

Add to this the fact that the Bishops of England and Wales have been encouraging going for a blessing since the 1970s Swanwick Conference, and the UK has had 2? 3? Papal visits since then, with not a peep of rebuke or correction from Rome in all that time.
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So where is the “official declaration” allowing blessings in the Communion line?
 
It’s the “everybody gets something or it doesn’t count” attitude of our society.

The idea is that if some people are not receiving Communion, then “they must get something” because it would be wrong to have a part of the Mass (or anything else) where only some people get to participate.

It’s like the participation trophies and like high schools who wouldn’t dare exclude students from participating in the graduation ceremony for the mere fact that they haven’t graduated.

Everybody has to get something.
 
I did it once, I’ll never go through for a blessing unless the priest announces it. I was a groomsman in a Catholic wedding and was 1 of only 2 NC’s in a wedding party of 14. They wanted us to go up or we would have stuck out like a sore thumb and the wedding part would look “incomplete” or “dumb” during communion if two people didn’t go up. I was on an end and would have needed to let out 6 people, they didn’t like the idea of that either.
 
I presume for something like that, there was a rehearsal or some discussion of it beforehand, so the priest was well aware some non-Catholics would be coming up for their blessings.

One of the issues with just doing it at a normal weekday Mass is that the priest is up there trying to concentrate on giving everyone Communion and when someone requests something different, like a blessing, it throws him off stride a bit. There is a very real possibility that before someone could properly communicate that they just wanted the blessing, the priest would have been administering the Host to them. If it’s a special Mass like a wedding, an ecumenical service, or even a Christmas or Easter holiday service, the priest is more on notice that there may be some non-Catholics coming up in the line.
 
Actually, no…there wasn’t, at least to our knowledge. The priest didn’t come to the rehearsal, and we didn’t even practice communion at rehearsal. Me and the other NC didn’t find out what we were supposed to do until after rehearsal dinner.

I know that the priest at my wife’s parish is in favor of performing blessings during normal Mass. I asked him, but after he wrote some stuff about NC’s I told my wife that I’m good. I don’t need to get a blessing if that’s what their feeling of NC’s is.

My wife has tried a couple other times to get me to go up with the rest of the fam. I think she looks at it as a way that we can actually be a family and worship as a family and stay a family at church, not Catholic wife&kids and non-Catholic dad.

Last few months I’m not there for communion anyway. Our one year old won’t sit still for more than 5 min, so I’m usually walking around with him in the gathering area anyway. Which is even more awkward when the EMCH tries to offer me communion, and doesn’t seem to understand that I’m passing because I’m not Catholic.

That’s one reason I don’t think it’s the “everybody needs a trophy” society. I think the whole point of it is to try to tell people (from what I heard non-Catholics specifically) that they are indeed welcome at Mass and it’s a way to include them, rather than exclude them. Does it actually work, I don’t know. I’m guessing for some NC’s, it’s a better alternative than being left in the pew by yourself when the rest of the family goes up. I know, for me, that’s one reason I’m not a big fan of attending Mass with my wife & kids and especially at holidays when it’s all my in-laws too.
 
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I normally stay in the pew but twice I’ve been asked by the RCIA director and priest to go up for a blessing. For me at least I felt even more awkward getting the blessing than just staying seated.
 
That’s interesting given your past posts that your priest is in favor of doing the blessings during normal Mass.
I know a lot of priests who don’t object to doing the blessings, but would not be expecting such a thing to happen. In these parishes there are non-Catholics who attend (usually with their spouses) and they generally just stay in the pew. Sometimes my husband is among them. My husband would be embarrassed about having to march up for a blessing and would be afraid he’d do it wrong or something and he is much happier just sitting in the pew and getting a blessing at the end of the Mass with everyone else.
 
Torolf said:
I normally stay in the pew but twice I’ve been asked by the RCIA director and priest to go up for a blessing. For me at least I felt even more awkward getting the blessing than just staying seated.
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Agreed, I felt like I really stuck out. While all the adults were taking communion, I was over getting a blessing with the rest of the kids.
 
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