D
dmar198
Guest
Recently I was reading the book Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian. On page 202, a gentleman from the late 1700s is writing in his journal and mentions that a Catholic bishop occasionally gave dispensations allowing Catholics to receive Communion in Anglican churches. This was apparently one way of dealing with the penal laws to which Catholics and other non-conformists were subject, by which they were forced to pay a fine if they did not occasionally receive Communion from Protestants. Apparently, Catholic bishops sometimes gave dispensations to individual Catholics allowing them to receive Communion in an Anglican Church.
This is not permitted in Canon Law today, but in the novel it is not treated as an abuse, but rather as an ordinary-though-infrequent thing that sometimes used to happen. I asked a theologian about this, because I wondered what changed. He said that one of the things that changed was that in the 1800s Pope Leo XIII ruled that Anglican ordinations are definitely invalid, along with their Masses and Eucharists. Before that, it was apparently permissible to view Anglican ordinations and Masses and Eucharists as valid-but-illicit. Thus, if a Catholic minister was unavailable (which, under the penal laws, could easily happen), his argument is that it might have been possible for a Catholic to receive a dispensation allowing them to receive from an Anglican (presuming them to have valid orders, since this hadn’t been definitively ruled out yet), at least in a situation of grave necessity.
I was just wondering if there is any documentation from the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, or early 1800s in which this possibility is more clearly spelled out? Is there any evidence that Catholics were indeed occasionally permitted to receive Communion from an Anglican minister? Do we have the text of any such dispensations, or references to such things in actual historical documents, rather than novels? Thanks! I’d just really like some context for this because it might help show that a degree of Catholic participation in non-Catholic rites of worship has occasionally been permitted by the Church, even before Vatican 2.
This is not permitted in Canon Law today, but in the novel it is not treated as an abuse, but rather as an ordinary-though-infrequent thing that sometimes used to happen. I asked a theologian about this, because I wondered what changed. He said that one of the things that changed was that in the 1800s Pope Leo XIII ruled that Anglican ordinations are definitely invalid, along with their Masses and Eucharists. Before that, it was apparently permissible to view Anglican ordinations and Masses and Eucharists as valid-but-illicit. Thus, if a Catholic minister was unavailable (which, under the penal laws, could easily happen), his argument is that it might have been possible for a Catholic to receive a dispensation allowing them to receive from an Anglican (presuming them to have valid orders, since this hadn’t been definitively ruled out yet), at least in a situation of grave necessity.
I was just wondering if there is any documentation from the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, or early 1800s in which this possibility is more clearly spelled out? Is there any evidence that Catholics were indeed occasionally permitted to receive Communion from an Anglican minister? Do we have the text of any such dispensations, or references to such things in actual historical documents, rather than novels? Thanks! I’d just really like some context for this because it might help show that a degree of Catholic participation in non-Catholic rites of worship has occasionally been permitted by the Church, even before Vatican 2.
Last edited: