Hi, Melissa —

Thank you for your question but the premise of your question is wrong.

Catholics are not allowed to receive communion in non-Catholic Churches. Some do, because they don't know better or they are simply disobedient Catholics.

There are exceptions. The Catholic Church will allow members of the Orthodox Church or any Ancient Church which has maintained a valid Eucharist, to receive Holy Communion in a Catholic Church however most of those Churches may not allow their members to go to Catholic churches and receive Holy Communion in a Catholic Church.

As it relates to Protestants, NONE of them, including the Anglicans, have a valid Eucharist, nor do they believe that Eucharist is Jesus Christ Himself present under the appearances of bread and wine. They deny the nature of the Sacrament and if they didn't, their founders rejected Apostolic Succession and the nature of the Holy Orders, therefore they have no valid priests to consecrate the Eucharist.

A Protestant minister can stand there all day and say, This is my body to a piece of bread, and it's still going to be piece of bread. However, when a Catholic or Orthodox Priest says those same words over a piece of bread, the bread becomes Jesus Christ in Sacrament and in substance.

None of this is meant to offend our Protestant brethren, but just take a look at the word communion.  You have the word union along with a prefix co, meaning with. So by taking communion, you are saying that you are in union with the Church. To receive Holy Communion, while still remaining defiantly outside the Church is to bear false witness.

Yes it is true, the Catholics and the Orthodox aren't exactly in full union with each other, but there is enough union over the nature of the Sacraments that we can offer our faithful the Eucharist in our Churches.

Should we offer the same to Protestants, they would deny what we are offering them is Jesus Himself.

John

Melissa —

Actually, a Catholic may not receive communion in a non-Catholic Church, unless that church has the real sacraments (the Orthodox Churches) and there is no Catholic Church available.

Real sacraments have been handed down from the Apostles with of the power of Christ to act in His stead. You can find much in the Epistles about this. I imagine you could search this site for:

• power of orders or
• ordination or
• tradition.

Yes, there is only one God, and there is only one Christ, and there is only one sacrament of Communion with Him, the Bread of Life. A sacrament is the carrying on of Christ's action through the ministry of the priest, who, in the case of the Eucharist, says the words commanded by Christ to bring about His Presence. We commune with the Real Christ, with the one Body, as one Body. Communion says we are united truly with Him.

1. If one is not united with His Body, the Church, one is lying if one receives His Body in the Eucharist.
2. If one is not in the unity of faith, sacrament, and obedience, one ought not receive the sacrament of unity.

All the more so if one does not even believe what the Eucharist itself is.

We can't lie at the same moment that we are professing unity and belief. In the Gospel of John, Chapter 6, those who did not believe that the Eucharist was His true flesh and blood had the honesty to leave fellowship with Jesus. They didn't try to convince themselves that he didn't really mean all that stuff about his flesh and blood.

The Bible reflects the beliefs of the Church that wrote and recognized it. The Church does not take her beliefs from the Bible. Rather, she recognizes the Bible as the Written Incarnation of the Word that was fully entrusted to Her through the Apostles. Revelation ceased with the death of the last Apostle. If we want to know what the Apostles taught and believed, we should look, not only to Scripture, but to the teachings they passed on, teachings that the faithful were commanded to hold fast to. We can find those teachings in the words and practices of the early Church (see the Didache of 90 A.D.) and passed down without loss from then, until now in:

• the teachings of the Church as expressed in her Creeds
• the Councils
• the Popes (when teaching authoritatively)
• and Bishops (when teaching in union with Peter).

Hope this helps. It's a very big topic.

Mary Ann

Melissa,

Historically — that is, up until Protestantism came on the scene — communion was a sign of full unity between churches. (Churches here is used in the sense of dioceses, not in the sense of denomination.) Two churches that were in communion with one another held to the same faith and were in full agreement over the dogmas of the faith.

The expression of this communion was that the faithful could receive communion at each others church or diocese.

If members of one church could freely receive communion at another church, those two churches were considered to be in communion with one another (or more properly, in full communion). This is how the Church worked and how you distinguished your faith from another faith and whose doctrine you trusted.

Thus for a Catholic to receive communion from a church of another denomination is to manifest one of two things. Either:

• it manifests unity with their doctrine, or
• it manifests a rejection of the Catholic principle of unity

either of which is a betrayal of Catholicism.

In the reverse direction, for a non-Catholic to receive communion in a Catholic church is to:

• manifest a betrayal of their own doctrine, plus a premature unity with the Catholic Church,
• or a violation of unity with our church by not believing what we believe.

I liken a non-Catholic receiving communion in a Catholic church like a guest who's been invited over to chat in the living room but who overstays his welcome and invites himself to the family dinner or better yet to a family wedding reception!

Communion is intimate and is an expression of intimacy. It's sacred and it's intended for members of the family only. We own the house so we make the rules; we understand that Protestants do not believe what we believe about communion, but that's all the more reason they should not be participating.

So if you are not Catholic, please understand and respect our family rules. We believe very differently than you do about the meaning of communion so we do things differently than you do.

Eric