Bishop Thomas Doran

It's a question people have asked me since my earliest days as a priest. In its latest form, it came to me this way. "I am a convert. When my parents come for a visit they always attend Mass with me. Why can't they and other non-Catholics receive holy Communion? It seems rude to me to exclude them. We wouldn't invite them to Thanksgiving at our home and then say that they couldn't sit down and eat. Why is it different with holy Communion?"

It's a good question, one that comes from the heart of a good and caring Catholic. It deserves a good, thoughtful and caring answer. Let me try to provide that.

It's best to begin with a basic understanding of our faith, and particularly of our sacraments. If there's one thing I have learned in my days as a parish priest and high school teacher, it's that many of our Catholic people do not have this, or having had it once they have lost it over the course of the years.

In the case of understanding the sacrament of the holy Eucharist, perhaps we in leadership and catechetical positions in the Church have unwittingly contributed to the confusion by overstressing the idea of the Mass as a meal.

That is not a bad metaphor. There is some ephemeral truth to it as long as it is not pressed too hard. But like all metaphors, it breaks down soon enough all by itself, and then it begins to obscure more than it reveals about the reality of the Mass and the Eucharist.

Recall, then, something else we say about the Mass. Usually it is called the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and that should indicate even to the casual observer that the Mass is not simply a family meal but also - and more essentially - an act of worship. Perhaps you are familiar with the practices of the early Church. We used to divide Mass into the Mass of the Catechumens and the Mass of the Faithful. That reflected a practice of the early Church that prospective converts, those not yet baptized, were allowed to attend what we now call the Liturgy of the Word but were not allowed to attend the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

This distinction has now been somewhat lost, and that loss has been coupled with a sort of puerile ecumenism that influences us to see the Mass in terms of a public performance, one in which all who happen to attend ought to participate on an equal basis. This is not, in fact, a true picture of what the Mass is and what is happening at Mass. The climax of the Mass is the Eucharist, and the Eucharist is a sacrament. So let's talk a moment about sacraments.

Every sacrament - there are seven, and they are baptism, penance, Eucharist, matrimony, extreme unction, holy orders and confirmation - is an act of worship. In every sacrament the Catholic recipient says "amen," and "amen" means "so be it." It is a short way of saying, "I believe what the Church teaches in receiving this sacrament, and my life is directed toward being a living witness to that teaching."

If you view the holy Eucharist in that light, you can see why everyone who happens to be at Mass ought not receive holy Communion. Indeed, in every Catholic Mass just before Communion the priest utters the phrase, "Happy are those who are called to this supper." Not everyone physically present is called. Catholics who are in a state of serious sin - whose lives, at least for the moment, are not living witnesses to the truth of our faith - are not called and should not receive the sacrament. Obviously, those who do not have the Catholic faith are not called to the table of the Lord either. It is that simple.

Of course, this can be explained to people beforehand well or badly, and sometimes we do it badly so our explanation is rude and offends people. It should also be pointed out that since the Second Vatican Council the Church makes provision in Canon 844, which says: "Some conditions under which people who are not members of the Catholic Church but who are baptized Christians and who share our faith in the real presence of Christ, body, blood, soul and divinity under the appearances of bread and wine may under certain well-defined conditions receive Holy Communion."

That is a long answer to a short question, but it is something that Catholic people would do well to understand. It is not from lack of hospitality or a lack of politeness that people who are not members of the Church in good standing should not receive the Eucharist. It is, rather, that we respect their beliefs and circumstances, and therefore do not wish to cast them in a hypocritical role of publicly performing an act that marks one as a member of the Catholic Church when, in fact, they are not and do not wish to be members of the Catholic Church. If each and every one of us can help people more clearly understand the significance of the Eucharist to us and the meaning we attach to receiving it, we can do much to minimize the misunderstanding that arises over this issue.