Should the Circumstances Under Which Catholics Can Take Communion be Expanded?

[Fish and Bread]

Right now, in order to receive communion, a Roman Catholic must technically, according to the rules (Not always followed in practice by individual Catholics, of course), be in a state of grace, which generally entails not having committed any serious or mortal sins as the church defines them (Which may or may not be as most people would define them) without confessing them sacramentally and having the firm intent to try to avoid sinning again.

Some things that unconfessed or confessed without a genuine desire to repent that would technically bar Catholics from receiving communion according to the rules include:

- Missing mass on any Sunday or holy day of obligation
- Masturbation
- Sex outside of marriage
- Receiving communion at at a Protestant Church
- Use of birth control

Those are just a few off the top of my head. It's a long list. We're not just talking armed robbery or murder here.

Should the Church ditch the rules and just say that anyone who has been baptized and or confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church may receive communion? Could they sort of go halfway and ditch most of the list and come up with a shorter list of more serious things that should inhibit people from going up for communion like rape and murder and such?

We've all probably heard the phrase that the Church is a hospital for sinners rather than a museum for Saints. Isn't denying communion to people who need the grace from it kind of the spiritual equivalent of denying medicine to the sick?

A lot of people quote St. Paul in the scriptures talking about people taking communion on unworthily bringing condemnation upon themselves, but many scholars and clergy from other churches and denominations, as well as some liberal or progressive Catholics, feel that in context he was talking about people who were not talking communion seriously.

In other words, at the early less formal masses the early Christians celebrated, some people were pushing and shoving to the front of the line and eating communion hosts until they were full and drinking wine until they were drunk like a normal meal. Sometimes people would be asked to bring their own bread and not share it with those who could not afford it. In other words, St. Paul may have simply been warning that condemnation may fall on people who treat communion like a normal meal or worse and fail to discern it's sacramental and symbolic character rather than speaking about the state of their souls in general. Possibly. That's one interpretation.

What do you think?

Worth noting that it seems like in practice many people ignore the list and receive anyway already, while others don't receive because they are trying to respect the "house rules". Those who feel they can't receive because of the rules may ultimately be driven to a church or denomination where they can, or stop attending church very often.

 

[Fish and Bread]

Just on a personal note, after being away from the Church for a long time on several occasions, not being able to take communion unless I confessed to things I didn't believe were wrong and sincerely intended to repent of was a big stumbling block for me. I find it very awkward to attend a mass and not receive communion. Often I've wound up going to an Episcopalian Eucharist or a Lutheran service or something instead of a Roman Catholic mass on a big holiday like Christmas just so I could receive communion during years when I haven't been a regular church goer without feeling like I was violating the rules the people who owned the building set out. I think it may be a big part of why I've had trouble ever really embracing the Roman Catholic Church as an adult by attending mass every week over the course of years and years the way I was able to do with the Episcopal Church for 3-5 years at one point a long time ago.

I wonder how many more cradle Catholics would regularly attend masses if they could always go up and receive communion without feeling guilty about it? I wonder how many people these regulations surrounding the Eucharist have drive out of the Church? I wonder how many people just go and receive anyway and commit, in the eyes of the Church, yet another sin every time they receive communion simply for receiving communion?

I think change on this issue would be a big deal. I think it would make it easier for a lot of people to return home and really be a part of their parish on a week to week basis.

 

[mark46]

J
I wonder how many more cradle Catholics would regularly attend masses if they could go up and receive communion without feeling guilty about it?

In my experience, cradle Catholics don't give this issue a second thought.

Cradle Catholics understand that there is ONE Church. They understand that we are all sinners. The underlying issue is the legalism and man-made rules and regulations of the Church. I think that cradle Catholic are used to this nonsense and understand that our relationship is with Jesus. We ARE part of the family of God. The catechism REQUIRES us to obey our conscience.

In the US, we have a very strange idea. We go from church to church until we find the one that we like best, attend for awhile, disagree with something, and then move to another church. I am as guilty of this as anyone.
=====

BTW, occasionally I attend churches when I do NOT receive communion. This occurs at weddings or funerals where the priest very clearly points out the rules of his local church. Under these circumstances, I obey the priest. I understand the rules of the Vatican. I sometimes disobey them, with no feeling of guilt.

 

[Fantine]

I always go back to the Dominican nuns in grade school, and the souls on the blackboard. The ones with little chalky dots had venial sins. The ones filled in completely had mortal sins.

I always heard that "mortal sin turns you completely and totally away from God."

And that's how I evaluate mortal sin.

How many people have I known who have gone over completely to "the dark side?" Barely any. And it wasn't because they missed Mass, and certainly not because they masturbated or had premarital sex.

I know so many wonderful people with so much good in their hearts, souls, and actions who would not fit textbook definitions of saintliness.

If Cardinal Burke died and pushed St. Peter out of a job and was heaven's gatekeeper (shudder......) heaven would be a much poorer place without the presence of so many perfectly imperfect people.

But of course that would never happen.

 

[Fish and Bread]

In my experience, cradle Catholics don't give this issue a second thought.

I'm a cradle Catholic and I do. But I was born to very conservative parents. I had Opus Dei affiliated grandparents on the one side. There are two priests in the extended family, one Opus Dei. Suffice is to say that I was very inculcated to view the Church in a certain way at a young age, to the point where by the time I was even 10 I stopped considering myself Catholic or Christian based on that the view of the Church I was raised to believe. And I find it very hard to separate myself from that view that I was essentially raised in, but every time I fail to separate myself from the view, I separate myself instead from the Church, and every time I can not separate myself from the idea that Rome is the one true Church combined with outlook on the Church I was raised to have, I find myself outside Christianity. Hence, a rather unique outlook.

I think in my heart of hearts I'd like to be a progressive Roman Catholic, but I can't bring myself to say take communion when I feel the church's rules prohibit it. And then secondarily I might like to be a progressive Episcopalian, but at some level I suspect that the whole thing is just playing Church and their God is not where God is theologically (Though perhaps it's where God *should* be theologically), and sometimes have trouble sticking with that for those reasons. So, I wind up unchurched an awful lot.

You know, a lot of what is in our "gut", religiously speaking, is determined at a young age.

There are times when religion is psychologically destructive for me and times when it brings me peace. I suspect what I should probably do, if I can manage it living in a relatively rural area, is find a progressive Episcopalian parish or something and just steel myself to go and try to force through my head that I view God in the way that brings me peace and not allow myself to revert to views I don't want to hold that leave me sleeping in on Sundays. Although sleeping in isn't so bad, really. I did manage to be Episcopalian for like four years over a decade ago, it was overthinking it and taking God too literally and feeling I had to try to reconcile with the Roman Catholic Church and finding it impossible to do so in the long-term in a way I found ethical that sort of caused me to give that up.

Odd though it may seem to say, perhaps for me the path to being some sort of Christian is to pick the God I want to have and fall in with him. If he turns out not to real, I'll be in the same hell I'd be in as a bad Catholic in the end, but I'd have a better spiritual outlook in this world and be more at peace, perhaps.

But even were I to wind up Episcopalian again someday in terms of where I receive the Eucharist and my actual membership, in some ways as a cradle Irish Catholic, I will always be Catholic and informed by Rome's liturgy and theology and by the religious customs I grew up with and are practically in my blood as someone of Irish descent. An Irish Catholic in exile, as it were, to the place where I can be the most Catholic without violating my own ethics.

One problem I used to run into a lot on CF is that they at least some years ago forced essentially forced people to declare an affiliation, and then people whenever I said something they didn't like would decide I wasn't a real Catholic or something and try to ban me from expressing my opinions, based on their perception that I might not be attending mass every week and taking communion at a parish in good standing with my local Catholic parish in union with Rome at any given time. Which hurts because I feel I am Catholic. I was baptized in the Church, which is Rome's view of membership. It's in my blood. It's where I grew up. Even when I was Episcopalian, I tended to lean towards a bishop and diocese centric view rather than the focus on parish that some have.

I think sometimes CF, and life in general, has trouble recognizing that things can be legitimate even when they aren't entire black and white or fish or fowl. We recognize cultural Jews with some religious customs as legit, even if they are not Orthodox Jews or rarely attend shul, why don't we recognize cultural Catholics with some religious customs who go to no church or a different church for ideological or practical reasons?

Though I'm perhaps a little unique in some ways, I don't think I am as rare as people think. That is one of the reasons why I have always pushed hard to open these type of forums to anyone who considers themselves Catholic and to people of similar liturgical churches and denominations like Episcopalians, Lutherans, etc., or even evangelicals and such with Marian devotions and so on and so forth. I don't like drawing hard and fast lines around things that exclude people. I don't like being personally excluded either.

Bad enough that churches draw those kind of lines, but here we are a message forum, not a church membership roll or a communion line or something of that sort. It's not like if we let one too many people in, or the wrong person, God will punish us. It's just a message forum. We should be able to be inclusive.

If I were Pope for a day, I would like to have that same sort of inclusivity when it comes to communion, and if I were God for a day, to heaven. I've never much cared for the idea of hell. I often believe that it exists, but I rarely can bring myself to consider it ethical. You don't torture people for all eternity, you purify them and bring them to heaven, or build some place like limbo where they spend eternity in physical comfort if they technically can't be in heaven. Give them the equivalent of their own eternal Star Trek holodecks. I don't buy this they can either be with God or burn to death over and over forever and those are the only two things God was "allowed" to come up with, as if an omnipotent God couldn't create some better alternatives to hell for the people who he'd otherwise assign there or allow to fall into that if he wanted to. I mean, in a pinch, if he couldn't come up with a better alternative, he could always just let people be dead when they die instead of reviving them in an afterlife where they are going to be tortured in fire for an eternity. I mean, really, what kind of ethical being tortures people for all of eternity or allows them to be tortured when he could prevent it easily? Hell is unjust for anyone because no one can commit a crime in a finite lifetime that requires a eternal punishment- that's not abolishing an eye for an eye for something more merciful as Christ did in the bible, but replacing it with something *harsher* than an eye for an eye, a lifetime of whatever for an infinite punishment.

This is part of where I feel our outlook on God is stuck ethically in some sort of tribal mentality. He's like the God a primitive tribe or ancient civilization would think of as very ethically advanced, but not quite where we should be today.

One of the reasons why I sometimes categorized myself progressive as opposed to liberal, though I am both, is that I feel religion should progress and become more ethical rather than remaining static in old understandings.

 

[Fish and Bread]

By the way, I can't tell you how thrilled I would be at a very basic gut level if the Pope just came out one day and said every human being who respects the presence of Christ is welcome to receive the Eucharist and all this stuff about mortal sins and restrictions based on this and that and mandating confessions are out the window or only require for murders, assaults, and rapes or something, and that taking communion will not harm anyone who treats it with reverence and that it is God's free grace for all. That would be an incredible gesture that would make a huge difference for me.

 

[mark46]

I wonder how many more cradle Catholics would regularly attend masses if they could always go up and receive communion without feeling guilty about it? I wonder how many people these regulations surrounding the Eucharist have drive out of the Church? I wonder how many people just go and receive anyway and commit, in the eyes of the Church, yet another sin every time they receive communion simply for receiving communion?

I think change on this issue would be a big deal. I think it would make it easier for a lot of people to return home and really be a part of their parish on a week to week basis.

In the US, lapsed Catholics represent the 2nd largest religious group in the country. So, there are lots and lots of lapsed Catholics out there. Many are there for the reasons you mention; many are out of the Church because of the scandals.

I do think that Pope Francis will bring many back.

 

[mark46]

By the way, I can't tell you how thrilled I would be at a very basic gut level if the Pope just came out one day and said every human being who respects the presence of Christ is welcome to receive the Eucharist and all this stuff about mortal sins and restrictions based on this and that and mandating confessions are out the window or only require for murders, assaults, and rapes or something, and that taking communion will not harm anyone who treats it with reverence and that it is God's free grace for all. That would be an incredible gesture that would make a huge difference for me.

The path of open communion is not the path the Church has chosen. The Church strongly believes what Saint Paul said about being properly prepared to come to the Table.

As you know, the Episcopal Church does take the view that you describe.

 

[mark46]

I'm a cradle Catholic and I do. But I was born to very conservative parents. I had Opus Dei affiliated grandparents on the one side. There are two priests in the extended family, one Opus Dei. Suffice is to say that I was very inculcated to view the Church in a certain way at a young age, to the point where by the time I was even 10 I stopped considering myself Catholic or Christian based on that the view of the Church I was raised to believe. And I find it very hard to separate myself from that view that I was essentially raised in, but every time I fail to separate myself from the view, I separate myself instead from the Church, and every time I can not separate myself from the idea that Rome is the one true Church combined with outlook on the Church I was raised to have, I find myself outside Christianity. Hence, a rather unique outlook.

I think in my heart of hearts I'd like to be a progressive Roman Catholic, but I can't bring myself to say take communion when I feel the church's rules prohibit it. And then secondarily I might like to be a progressive Episcopalian, but at some level I suspect that the whole thing is just playing Church and their God is not where God is theologically (Though perhaps it's where God *should* be theologically), and sometimes have trouble sticking with that for those reasons. So, I wind up unchurched an awful lot.

You know, a lot of what is in our "gut", religiously speaking, is determined at a young age.

There are times when religion is psychologically destructive for me and times when it brings me peace. I suspect what I should probably do, if I can manage it living in a relatively rural area, is find a progressive Episcopalian parish or something and just steel myself to go and try to force through my head that I view God in the way that brings me peace and not allow myself to revert to views I don't want to hold that leave me sleeping in on Sundays. Although sleeping in isn't so bad, really. I did manage to be Episcopalian for like four years over a decade ago, it was overthinking it and taking God too literally and feeling I had to try to reconcile with the Roman Catholic Church and finding it impossible to do so in the long-term in a way I found ethical that sort of caused me to give that up.

Odd though it may seem to say, perhaps for me the path to being some sort of Christian is to pick the God I want to have and fall in with him. If he turns out not to real, I'll be in the same hell I'd be in as a bad Catholic in the end, but I'd have a better spiritual outlook in this world and be more at peace, perhaps.

But even were I to wind up Episcopalian again someday in terms of where I receive the Eucharist and my actual membership, in some ways as a cradle Irish Catholic, I will always be Catholic and informed by Rome's liturgy and theology and by the religious customs I grew up with and are practically in my blood as someone of Irish descent. An Irish Catholic in exile, as it were, to the place where I can be the most Catholic without violating my own ethics.

One problem I used to run into a lot on CF is that they at least some years ago forced essentially forced people to declare an affiliation, and then people whenever I said something they didn't like would decide I wasn't a real Catholic or something and try to ban me from expressing my opinions, based on their perception that I might not be attending mass every week and taking communion at a parish in good standing with my local Catholic parish in union with Rome at any given time. Which hurts because I feel I am Catholic. I was baptized in the Church, which is Rome's view of membership. It's in my blood. It's where I grew up. Even when I was Episcopalian, I tended to lean towards a bishop and diocese centric view rather than the focus on parish that some have.

I think sometimes CF, and life in general, has trouble recognizing that things can be legitimate even when they aren't entire black and white or fish or fowl. We recognize cultural Jews with some religious customs as legit, even if they are not Orthodox Jews or rarely attend shul, why don't we recognize cultural Catholics with some religious customs who go to no church or a different church for ideological or practical reasons?

Though I'm perhaps a little unique in some ways, I don't think I am as rare as people think. That is one of the reasons why I have always pushed hard to open these type of forums to anyone who considers themselves Catholic and to people of similar liturgical churches and denominations like Episcopalians, Lutherans, etc., or even evangelicals and such with Marian devotions and so on and so forth. I don't like drawing hard and fast lines around things that exclude people. I don't like being personally excluded either.

Bad enough that churches draw those kind of lines, but here we are a message forum, not a membership role or a communion line or something of that sort. It's not like if we let one too many people in, or the wrong person, God will punish us. It's just a message forum. We should be able to be inclusive.

If I were Pope for a day, I would like to have that same sort of inclusivity when it comes to communion, and if I were God for a day, to heaven. I've never much cared for the idea of hell. I often believe that it exists, but I rarely can bring myself to consider it ethical. You don't torture people for all eternity, you purify them and bring them to heaven, or build some place like limbo where they spend eternity in physical confort if they technically can't be in heaven. Give them the equivalent of their own eternal Star Trek holodecks. I don't buy this they can either be with God or burn to death over and over forever and those are the only two things God was "allowed" to come up with, as if an omnipotent God couldn't create some better alternatives to hell for the people who he'd otherwise assign there or allow to fall into that if he wanted to. I mean, in a pinch, if he couldn't come up with a better alternative, he could always just let people be dead when they die instead of reviving them in an afterlife where they are going to be tortured in fire for an eternity. I mean, really, what kind of ethical being tortures people for all of eternity or allows them to be tortured when he could prevent it easily? Hell is unjust for anyone because no one can commit a crime in a finite lifetime that requires a eternal punishment- that's not abolishing an eye for an eye for something more merciful as Christ did in the bible, but replacing it with something *harsher* than an eye for an eye, a lifetime of whatever for an infinite punishment.

This is part of where I feel our outlook on God is stuck ethically in some sort of tribal mentality. He's like the God a primitive tribe or ancient civilization would think of as very ethically advanced, but not quite where we should be today.

One of the reasons why I sometimes categorized myself progressive as opposed to liberal, though I am both, is that I feel religion should progress and become more ethical rather than remaining static in old understandings.

Thank you for you extensive sharing.

My experience of Church is obviously much different than yours. I have never considered the Church's set of man-made rules and regulations to be central to its function. It seems that you are having a hard time escaping the Church of your childhood.

Our spiritual path is our own. Joining a faith community is certainly the way Jesus taught us to live. IMHO, the spiritual path is about obeying the two commands of Jesus. It is about our prayer life and how we treat those people who He has put in our path. Jesus has called us to be His hands and His feet here on earth. Baptism and Eucharist are great gifts.

I suspect that we (you and I and others) fuss much too much about which church to attend, and not enough on living out our spiritual life. Jesus has taught us that there is but one Church. Our popes have taught us that there are many Christian churches. Each has a portion of the deposit of faith; each is led by the Holy Spirit.

For me, Eucharist is indeed important, and communion needs to where the priest believes that Jesus is truly present. Beyond that, I still waste time searching. I need to obey the advice of my mentor of choosing a local church that is doing God's work, and get to work. I don't particularly like my choices, but they are what they are.

 

[Tallguy88]

I do struggle with the belief that masturbation and missing Mass are sins so grave they will send you straight to hell if not sacramental ly confessed. I mean, it seems a sincere act of contrition could be enough to get us out of the "danger zone", at least until we can get to Confession. I do feel quite guilty about not going to confession, that I often don't even bother going to Mass if I can't receive. I know that's not the right attitude, but it is what it is.

Add to that the fact that my work schedule often makes it quite difficult to get to the little pre-announced Confession times. I liked my 1st priest, the one who Confirmed me and ran my RCIA class. He would always be in the confessional at least 30 minutes before every Mass, barring an unexpected emergency. I really tried to go to every Mass back then. But he was old and has moved off to be semi-retired. Now Confession is only before the Saturday evening Mass or by appointment.

 

[sylverpiano]

Good morning all

I am definitely do not live a life free from sin, but other tan a very seldom incident of missing Mass on Sunday,the five sins noted by our friend F&B are not in my repertoire.

I can't imagine receiving Holy Communion while not in a State of Grace, nor can I receive communion at a non-Catholic Church.

I am imperfect and unworthy, but I am a Catholic

 

[sylverpiano]

???

 

[sylverpiano]

sorry, misposted here

 

[dzheremi]

Can I ask a question related to this, as a non-Catholic? When did the idea/practice of treating mass as an obligation start? From what some Eastern Catholic friends have told me, this is a Roman Catholic (not Eastern Catholic) rule, and it seems strange to me. In my own Orthodox Church we do not have such a rule, because it has not been guaranteed either historically or currently that our people will be able to come to liturgy without problems, though of course if you can come, you should. But historically many of our churches were given away to rival groups in political disputes, or destroyed by the Muslims (who still do that), or other things like that. And today in the West, where we are free to go to church, it's still often a problem because there are so few Oriental Orthodox churches compared to Protestant, Catholic, Greek, etc. churches -- but mostly our bishops and priests say we can't go to any of them (that's what I was told by my own priest, because I am moving to an area without any OO church; though I understand that some other churches in our communion are less strict about this, like the Armenians, I have to follow what my own priest and bishop say, and they both say no).

So, conceivably, if we had such a rule most of our people would not be able to receive at certain times (sometimes, historically, not a few centuries)! It seems like that reality would be worse than missing "mass" (for us, liturgy) due to these various obstacles. But maybe no Catholic ever has genuine problems that lead to missing it.

It just seems like it makes more trouble than it solves, right? (I don't mean to question your church, of course; it can decide what it wants, but I am genuinely curious about the historical circumstances behind this particular rule, as I know the historical circumstances behind my own church's lack of this kind of rule. As I understand it, the Greeks have their own variation on this where a person can only miss so many times -- I don't remember the exact number -- before they in effect excommunicate themselves. That seems weird too, but then we never really see eye to eye with them.)

 

[FireDragon76]

I was involved with a liberal independent Catholic group for a while - the priest simply absolved everyone after the penitential rite and pronounced absolution ("God the Father of Mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to himself... " etc.). He still wanted us to go once a year to a private confession, but he made it clear our forgiveness did not depend on it.

 

[Tallguy88]

I was involved with a liberal independent Catholic group for a while - the priest simply absolved everyone after the penitential rite and pronounced absolution ("God the Father of Mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to himself... " etc.). He still wanted us to go once a year to a private confession, but he made it clear our forgiveness did not depend on it.

It would be nice if more priests were like that. But for some reason, they say the General Confession isn't sufficient.

 

[FireDragon76]

It would be nice if more priests were like that. But for some reason, they say the General Confession isn't sufficient.

Yeah, it's not remotely "legit" about what the bishop did, but that's why I stressed he was Independent Catholic. My sense was their praxis (practice) was the same as the average liberal Roman Catholic.

I have come to basically a Lutheran understanding of confession that stresses the words of absolution. I believe a great many cafeteria catholics simply ignore confession altogether, which is probably not a good thing.

The more I studied Church history, the more I realized private confession was something that was more a monastic practice that crept into the ordinary Christian's life slowly in the middle ages.

 

[Rhamiel]

Yeah, it's not remotely "legit" about what the bishop did, but that's why I stressed he was Independent Catholic. My sense was their praxis (practice) was the same as the average liberal Roman Catholic.

I have come to basically a Lutheran understanding of confession that stresses the words of absolution. I believe a great many cafeteria catholics simply ignore confession altogether, which is probably not a good thing.

The more I studied Church history, the more I realized private confession was something that was more a monastic practice that crept into the ordinary Christian's life slowly in the middle ages.

yeah, probably not a good thing

my understanding is that yes, private confession has its origins in the monastery
but before that we had either public confessions or people like Constantine who waited till their deathbed to even get Baptized

I really do not want public confessions to become the norm
it is hard enough to tell the Padre in the confessional that I look at inappropriate content
I don't want to say that infront of the whole congregation, like with the blue haired old lady sitting next to me, come on, don't do that to me

 

[frenchdefense]

The church needs to figure out how they want to handle communion. My understanding is the reason why you are suppose to receive communion at least twice a year as a practicing Catholic is that people didn't receive communion very often for the reasons stated above. The rules were a little harsh. I have been told by my parents and so forth that when they were children only a small percentage of people at any given mass received communion.

After Vatican II (although from what I understand it started before that) the reception of communion on a regular (weekly) basis began to be encouraged.

We seem to have an inconsistency here. Either this is something spherical you continuously prepare for or it's something important to the regular practice that has rules that can be easily attained.

Look at any Catholic board and about a lot of thread on it are about whether some person commit a sin by receiving communion because of some (let's admit it) are arcane rule or definition that they need help interpreting.

It's just, well, stupid. Let's decide what we want this to be about and how it should be looked at.

 

[Rhamiel]

Frenchdefense
how about this
people live good Christian lives, filled with faith, hope, charity and obedience
and they receive communion frequently

be spiritually mature
pray and practice discernment before you get married
do not get divorced
if your spouse is unfaithful and divorces you, or is abusive and you have to leave, then live a life of chastity

problem solved