Question for EMHC who visit nursing homes

[hannajomar]

Every Sunday, I facilitate a Holy Communion service at a nursing home.

There are some people who come to this service who aren’t Catholic. That’s not a problem, of course. If their church is unable to visit, at least they can listen to Holy Scripture, pray for their intentions, and sing a hymn or two. Of the handful of non-Catholics, most of them are very respectful about not receiving Holy Communion. But once in a while, someone will really start to press me as to why they can’t receive Communion. I try to stick to just saying that my Church only allows me to give Communion to people who are Catholic. I don’t want to get into a debate. If they understood and accepted the theology behind it, they would be Catholic. I want to stay cordial and on good terms with these people.

Does anyone else have experience with this, and how do you deal with it? My goal is to be obedient to our Church, while also speaking and acting as charitable as possible.

 

[Marauder]

Showing them and answering any questions about a copy of the Guidelines for the Reception of Communion may help. It does it in a way that uses clear language.

The link to it on the USCCB site is:
nccbuscc.org/liturgy/current/intercom.shtml

 

[joanofarc2008]

We used to have this happen when we went to nursing homes. One thing we stopped doing is reception of communion in groups. We started going out and giving Eucharist one on one or two one one in the rooms to individual patients we knew were Catholic. If we weren’t sure we would ask if they were Catholic. If they said no we would ask if we could pray with them. If they were we would invite them to receive Eucharist. It cut down on a lot of this. One thing you need to remember is that many of these elderly may not really arguing the theology - it is just that the faculties may not be completely there to understand that someone else is getting something that they are not. Not saying that it is child-like but in some cases it may be the start of it.

 

[Mrs_Sally]

We have two separate ministries at my parish. One is to a nursing home where we receive a list every week of people who’ve identified themselves as Catholic when they arrived. We go around room by room and give these people communion individually.
The other is to a retirement/assisted living home. Here we do a communion service like the OP describes. We also have a list of Catholics, but obviously we aren’t identifying people by name before distributing communion. I am not aware of a time when a non-Catholic received commuion, but it could happen. There aren’t so many people there though, that the EMHCs can’t learn their names and recognize them over time. It helps to build a little bit of social time into your schedule after the service so that you can begin to know the “regulars”.
The response given by the OP sounds about right. It needs to be said with charity and gently insisted upon every week though.

 

[joanofarc2008]

We have two separate ministries at my parish. One is to a nursing home where we receive a list every week of people who’ve identified themselves as Catholic when they arrived. We go around room by room and give these people communion individually.
The other is to a retirement/assisted living home. Here we do a communion service like the OP describes. We also have a list of Catholics, but obviously we aren’t identifying people by name before distributing communion. I am not aware of a time when a non-Catholic received commuion, but it could happen. There aren’t so many people there though, that the EMHCs can’t learn their names and recognize them over time. It helps to build a little bit of social time into your schedule after the service so that you can begin to know the “regulars”.
The response given by the OP sounds about right. It needs to be said with charity and gently insisted upon every week though.

We actually were lucky enough to coordinate with staff to get a list of the Catholics in the facility. We still stopped in on the others - especially the ones that were listed as “unknown” at least once to offer prayer. If they were welcoming we would add them to our regular visits and at least pray and share the Word. Names were also on doors of the rooms which made this easier.