Non-Catholics receiving communion at Mass

[GailMac]

I find it ironic that this sacrilege was at a “healing” retreat. It is obvious to me that the priest who dispensed non-catholics from the norms is the one who needs the deepest healing! I’ll pray for him and hope everyone who has read this thread does as well. But I also hope that the Church acts as well, simply because if this man is brought to the Physician, then his healing can begin. Until he is stopped, he will defer this healing.

Peace,

Gail

 

[GailMac]

Dear Jpruitts1 -

I just read the document you were referred to by JPII and found the paragraphs in Chapter 4 I think your detractor may be referring to:

"I would like nonetheless to reaffirm what I said in my Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint after having acknowledged the impossibility of Eucharistic sharing: “And yet we do have a burning desire to join in celebrating the one Eucharist of the Lord, and this desire itself is already a common prayer of praise, a single supplication. Together we speak to the Father and increasingly we do so ‘with one heart’”.94

1. While it is never legitimate to concelebrate in the absence of full communion, the same is not true with respect to the administration of the Eucharist under special circumstances, to individual persons belonging to Churches or Ecclesial Communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church. In this case, in fact, the intention is to meet a grave spiritual need for the eternal salvation of an individual believer, not to bring about an intercommunion which remains impossible until the visible bonds of ecclesial communion are fully re-established.

This was the approach taken by the Second Vatican Council when it gave guidelines for responding to Eastern Christians separated in good faith from the Catholic Church, who spontaneously ask to receive the Eucharist from a Catholic minister and are properly disposed.95 This approach was then ratified by both Codes, which also consider—with necessary modifications—the case of other non-Eastern Christians who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church.96

1. In my Encyclical Ut Unum Sint I expressed my own appreciation of these norms, which make it possible to provide for the salvation of souls with proper discernment: “It is a source of joy to note that Catholic ministers are able, in certain particular cases, to administer the sacraments of the Eucharist, Penance and Anointing of the Sick to Christians who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church but who greatly desire to receive these sacraments, freely request them and manifest the faith which the Catholic Church professes with regard to these sacraments. Conversely, in specific cases and in particular circumstances, Catholics too can request these same sacraments from ministers of Churches in which these sacraments are valid”.97

These conditions, from which no dispensation can be given, must be carefully respected, even though they deal with specific individual cases, because the denial of one or more truths of the faith regarding these sacraments and, among these, the truth regarding the need of the ministerial priesthood for their validity, renders the person asking improperly disposed to legitimately receiving them. And the opposite is also true: Catholics may not receive communion in those communities which lack a valid sacrament of Orders.98

The faithful observance of the body of norms established in this area 99 is a manifestation and, at the same time, a guarantee of our love for Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, for our brothers and sisters of different Christian confessions—who have a right to our witness to the truth—and for the cause itself of the promotion of unity." ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/JP2EUCHA.HTM

It would be quite a stretch for this to apply to the residents at a particular nursing home and would of course involve the proper authorities FIRST! Also note that in the Encyclical, the Holy Father is speaking of a Priest administering the other Sacraments, as well, not just Holy Communion. It is meant mainly for an Eastern Orthodox person presenting him or herself in a Catholic Church and requesting to be received and in a few instances others who are prevented from regular attendance at a Catholic Church but desire it. This would allow for some shortcuts to full Communion, but the person asking would be handled on an individual basis. There is no “dispensation” for nursing home residents contained in this document and if the whole is read, it rather re-enforces the Churches teaching on the unworthy reception of the Eucharist. I sincerely wonder how anyone reading the whole, could find the “loophole” that gives them special imagined permissions to dispense at will, those they feel should be able to receive the Body and Blood of our Lord!

(Praise God for JPII! He’s a saint if you ask me! Don’t cha just love his stuff? )

Peace,

Gail

P.S. You will also note in this passage the Holy Father notes that a **profession of faith **is heard before the minister administers any of the Sacraments, Penance, Eucharist and Annointing. The Priest is actually receiving someone into the Church, not dispensing them from norms.

 

[peary]

I wouldn’t call a practicing sincerely devout Christian unworthy, Catholic or not, but that’s just me. IMO, nobody should be denied from being at Christ’s table.

**Are you saying, then, that those who do not believe that the Eucharist is Christ body, blood, soul, and Divinity contained should be receiving? In other words, nonbelievers should receive the Eucharist? Saint Paul writes in 1Corinthians 11:27-29: *“Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.” ***

 

[Joe_5859]

These rules were made by Jesus or the Church? Can you be more specific about Jesus making these rules? Where did Jesus say you had to be Catholic to receive communion?

Jesus gave authority to the Church. Obviously, there was no book of canon law before Jesus’ death and Resurrection. There wasn’t even a New Testament.

Who to admit to Communion is a matter that is within the Church’s authority to determine.

 

[jmcrae]

These rules were made by Jesus or the Church? Can you be more specific about Jesus making these rules? Where did Jesus say you had to be Catholic to receive communion?

Given that the Mass is the Passover of the New Covenant, we can not only look at the regulations given by St. Paul with regard to the Sacrament of Holy Communion (which apparently seem ambiguous to some readers) let’s also take the Passover of the Old Covenant as our model. In the Passover of the Old Covenant, we find that the very first regulation is (Exodus 12:43),

Moses:

This is the ordinance for the passover: no foreigner shall eat of it …]

It is obvious that “open communion” was not the norm for the Old Covenant. Given the addition of St. Paul’s instructions and warnings with regard to the Passover of the New Covenant, it seems clear that “open communion” was never meant to be the norm in the New Covenant, either.

 

[Hegesippus]

I was talking communion in my post.

Here is what Balthasar says concerning open communion. Good food for thought.

“But it would go against the entire New Testament to deny the Church in principle the right and the duty of drawing a line and to vilify this practice as “sniffing our heretics. Of course, this is not to say that the social side of the way original Christianity drew the line – breaking off even common human intercourse – must be maintained literally today. What is essential is breaking off the communion within the Church, above all sacramental communion. The “table of the Lord,” as the Church has always understood and practiced it, is not a continuation of Jesus’ “meal with sinners" but the gift of an inner participation in his most holy attitude. This is the reason for the washing of the feet and for the prayer: “I sanctify [consecrate] myself for them, so that they too may be sanctified [consecrated] in the truth" (Jn 17: 19). For this reason Paul demands an examination of conscience from everyone who approaches. The table itself, and what it offers, demands distinction and thereby separation, not in order to form a sect, but in order to prepare the true-apostles of Christ for their mission.
After all, everybody is free to believe or not to believe what he pleases. The freedom of religion was solemnly proclaimed by the last Council. If someone cannot identify himself with the apostolic faith of the Catholic Church, nobody hinders him from distancing himself from it. What advantage would he have from confessing this faith and at the same time falsifying it for himself and others?

• Hans urs von Balthasar