Receiving Eucharist without Reconciliation

[PetraG]

As far as I know, a person baptized in a church not in full communion with the Catholic Church cannot lawfully recieve the sacrament of penance until recieved into the Church, except under the circumstances described in canon law (such as danger of death). Reception into the Church generally involves completion of three sacraments of initiation (depending on age): Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Eucharist.

Can. 844
§1 Catholic ministers may lawfully administer the sacraments only to catholic members of Christ’s faithful, who equally may lawfully receive them only from catholic ministers, except as provided in §2, 3 and 4 of this canon and in can. 861 §2.
§2 Whenever necessity requires or a genuine spiritual advantage commends it, and provided the danger of error or indifferentism is avoided, Christ’s faithful for whom it is physically or morally impossible to approach a catholic minister, may lawfully receive the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick from non-Catholic ministers in whose Churches these sacraments are valid.
§3 Catholic ministers may lawfully administer the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick to members of the eastern Churches not in full communion with the catholic Church, if they spontaneously ask for them and are properly disposed. The same applies to members of other Churches which the Apostolic See judges to be in the same position as the aforesaid eastern Churches
so far as the sacraments are concerned.
§4 If there is a danger of death or if, in the judgment of the diocesan Bishop or of the Episcopal Conference, there is some other grave and pressing need, catholic ministers may lawfully administer these same sacraments to other Christians not in full communion with the catholic Church, who cannot approach a minister of their own community and who spontaneously ask for them, provided that they demonstrate the catholic faith in respect of these sacraments and are properly disposed.
§5 In respect of the cases dealt with in §2, 3 and 4, the diocesan Bishop or the Episcopal Conference is not to issue general norms except after consultation with the competent authority, at least at the local level, of the non-Catholic Church or community concerned.

 

[PetraG]

Welcome home !

Hopefully this will help. I don’t like to receive communion when I feel like I have a mortal sin on my soul. However, it breaks my hear to sit at mass and not receive. My priest told me as long as I firmly intend to go to confession at my earliest opportunity and do so, I can receive

As noted by @(name removed by moderator), we are normally strictly enjoined to refrain from receiving Holy Communion when we are aware that we are in a state of mortal sin. A confessor might tell someone he has deemed to have their free will seriously mitigated with respect to a known issue or who suffers from scrupulosity–that is, who has not actually been in a state of mortal sin when the person said “I feel like I have a mortal sin on my soul”–to go ahead and receive provided the person has the intention to confess. That doesn’t make it the universal norm of that confessor for all penitents!

I know you were only offering the example of your feelings, in way of empathy, but just like the treatment of a bodily physician, it is generally a mistake to offer the advice of a confessor as anything other than the example of what the standard of care might cover. We should not transfer treatment advice given to us to anyone else, but rather direct them to accept the care of their actual physican. Be very careful that you clarify when sharing your situation that the advice that your confessor gave to you is not automatically transferable to anyone else. With regards to general advice, we need to stick with what the Church teaches generally, with the clarification that confessors are taught the ways in which Church teaching may apply differently to special cases.

I will also say that the experience of having to refrain from Holy Communion sometimes impresses upon us in a stark way the damage done by sin. It gives an opportunity for reflection, if that is what circumstance puts us through, and an opportunity that might be to our profit when we are tempted in the future. After all, if it breaks our hearts not to recieve Holy Communion, how much more should it break our hearts to think of the kind of offense we have committed against Our Lord and how easily we turned away from the One who loved us so much as to offer Himself so completely on our behalf!

 

[Cor_ad_Cor]

A baptized person is not (usually) received into the Church without confession first. This is spelled out in the RCIA directives and elsewhere. See this example (last paragraph of page 2-9):

https://www.catholicnh.org/assets/Documents/Worship/Our-Faith/RCIA/CatechumenateGuidelines.pdf

 

[PetraG]

I mean that confessor might deem the penitent unlikely to actually be in a state of mortal sin because the poster wrote “when I feel like I have a mortal sin on my soul.” If a penitent is afflicted with scrupulosity and is constantly wanting to confess sins that are not mortal, the confessor might tell him that the intention to confess is sufficient.

 

[PetraG]

That is my point about not transferring council from a confessor to someone else. A scrupulous person has a hard time ever really believing that they haven’t committed a mortal sin. Their confessor knows it is not good for them to go to confession too frequently. This is someone a confessor could tell “if you have the intention to confess, that is sufficient.” Why? Because it is true! They know they could go to their confessor, tell them they want to go to confession, and they’d be told to wait. If they’re going to be obedient, it really isn’t possible to go to confession right away. They aren’t avoiding going to confession and just telling themselves “oh, I’ll go when I get a chance”; they’re agreeing for their own good to go less often.
The same would be true of someone a confessor deems to be too enslaved by an ingrained habit to deliberately choose what they know is wrong. I mean someone who has an addiction of some kind. What would be a mortal sin for someone else to choose to do isn’t a mortal sin when someone lacks the self-control to reliably avoid the grave offense.
Those are possible reasons. I don’t want to enumerate the reasons, though, because that is in a confessor’s pay grade not mine. Suffice it to say that no physician and no confessor wants people to go around making personal counsel that seems to go against the typical standard of care into generalized self-treatment advice.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

Thank you for sharing your lovely family photo !
God’s blessings on you and your children! Your sweeties brought tears to my eyes!!