Tag Archives: Eucharist

Broken Communion

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EucharistToday I’m troubled by the first major challenge from my parents to the Catholic Church: not so much, thankfully, to my personal journey, but ostensibly to the Catholic practice of closed communion.

My father feels offended to be excluded from the Catholic Eucharist. As a baptized Christian, he feels he is privileged to partake. He feels that in denying him communion, the Church is in effect saying he is not a Christian. He feels that the practice of closed communion perpetuates division in the Body of Christ. My mother is hurt that she could not come to my church and take communion with me, or I with her at her church.

Frankly, I had no expectation that this would be an issue. It had not even occurred to me that this would be upsetting to anyone until I googled and found that many Protestants were troubled by this matter. From the very first time I attended Mass some seven years ago, then a thoroughgoing Protestant, it seemed perfectly natural and reasonable to me for the Catholic Church to exclude non-Catholics from the Eucharist. I recognized, even then, that the Church held the Eucharist to be most sacred, was very protective of it, and didn’t offer it to just anybody.

Further study revealed that closed communion is nothing new; it’s one of the most ancient customs of the Church:

But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist, but they who have been baptized into the name of the Lord; for concerning this also the Lord has said, “Give not that which is holy to the dogs” (Didache 9, ca. mid to late first century A.D.).

We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration and is thereby living as Christ has rejoined (St. Justin Martyr, First Apology 65, ca. A.D. 150.).

So the Eucharist was closed to non-Christians; it was only open to baptized Christians who believed the truth of catholic teaching. Certainly, in those early days, when Christianity was outlawed and persecuted, an unknown stranger could not have simply shown up at a Christian meeting, professed to be a baptized Christian, and been received into the Mysteries; no, he would have to have been a known, accepted, and approved member of that community, or else commended to it by other known, accepted, and approved Christians. The Eucharist was closed for the Church’s protection. The unbaptized were not even allowed to be present at the Eucharist, let alone to receive it.

Pope Benedict distributing the Eucharist to a child

Pope Benedict distributing the Eucharist to a child.

What says, then, that communion should be open? My dad points out that there is nothing in Scripture that says explicitly that communion should be closed; but likewise there is nothing in Scripture that says that it should be open to all without restriction. St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians, is writing to the church at Corinth, a closed communion of Christian believers. He does not recommend that the church open its doors and its table to strangers from the street; he is advising the church in the context of its own private, closed Eucharistic celebration. The Eucharist, the Communion of believers with Christ and with each other, is the most intimate and precious of all the Christian Mysteries. It was closely protected and guarded.

But this is 2012. There is no longer the need for such protection, is there? The liturgy of the Mass is no longer a closely-guarded secret; there are no longer accusations of cannibalism in Christians consuming the Lord’s Body and Blood; there are no longer persecutions unto death in our country. My parents are both baptized Christians. Shouldn’t they, known, accepted, and approved Christians, be allowed to receive the Eucharist, too?

That depends on what you believe the Eucharist to be. Evangelical Protestant communities that practice open communion by and large believe that the Lord’s Supper is merely symbolic, a memorial gesture of communion with the Lord, with no sacramental value. When I questioned my dad, this is basically what he affirmed. Christ extends the offer of grace and salvation to all; so why wouldn’t communion in His Body and Blood be extended to all? This exclusivity, this seeming denial of grace to the uninitiated, is what offends my dad.

Eucharistic adorationBut if you believe, as the Catholic Church believes, that the Eucharist is a real, actual, physical communion, in body and spirit, with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, a sacramental commingling of our elements with His Elements, then it seems to me that you would have no choice but to be protective of that communion, and selective of who partakes in it. The Early Church allowed only those who believed and affirmed the reality of that Holy Communion. Why would the modern Church allow anyone who denies that reality? Should the Church offer the most intimate communion with our Lord to just anyone who walks in off the street, who doesn’t even have faith in Him? You may be a Christian — and the Catholic Church affirms that, if you have been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you have a right to be called Christian (Unitatis Redintegratio I.3 § 1) — but if you deny His Real Presence in the Eucharist, it is you who are denying yourself full communion.

If you don’t share the Catholic belief in the Real Presence, why would you be offended at the closed communion? I think that is why it has never offended me: I recognized and respected that I believed differently. I think what offends my dad is the thought that since Christ’s death on the Cross was freely offered to all, why should participation in His Communion be offered to only a select few? This perception of exclusivity is in fact false. The Church has never excluded anyone from grace who sought it. She welcomes all Christians into full, Eucharistic Communion. But they must first affirm what she teaches: the reality of Christ’s presence in that Communion. What “perpetuates division” is Protestants’ continued denial of this core Catholic truth, the “source and summit of our faith.”

I think what offends my dad, even more fundamentally, is the idea that the Church has authority at all: the authority to tell anyone that they cannot celebrate the Eucharist when, where, and exactly how they wish. In the democratic and individualistic mindset that has ascended in modern evangelicalism, any individual is free to approach Christ outside and without the Church at all. It’s a misguided interpretation of the “priesthood of all believers,” taken to its furthest extreme: each believer individually is his own priest, and therefore needs no one else at all. And this gets into a whole ‘nother barrel of worms that I’ll have to deal with another time.

Suffice it to say that I am troubled. This will not stop the course I know I have been placed on; but I don’t want my parents to be offended or hurt. I don’t want them to feel excluded or rejected. But I’ve talked to my dad at length, and I don’t think there’s any getting past this; he’s unwilling to see the matter any other way.

The Real Presence

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The Four Doctors of the Western Church

The Four Doctors of the Western Church: Pope St. Gregory the Great, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome.

I have admired the Church Fathers for a long time, since my first serious introduction to them some eight years ago in Dr. G’s History of the Christian Church. I conducted my first study of them in depth five years ago. And yet through all that time and reading, my own bias never occurred to me, until just a couple of weeks ago. “What have I been thinking?” it hit me with a start. I had been honoring these men, for their faith, their erudition, their devotion; and yet I was discounting and dismissing most of what they believed.

Did I somehow consider myself above their “superstitious,” “archaic” beliefs? Did I believe that in this age of science, we had adopted a more “rational” view of faith? Did I suppose that we moderns were too “reasonable” to subscribe to such “foolish” doctrines as the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist?

Yes, reasonable like believing that the very Son of God would be born of a Virgin in a backwater Palestinian town? That he would make blind eyes see and the lame walk, with the power of his healing hands? That he would be crucified for the sins of humanity, and rise again from the dead in glory, to judge the living and the dead at the end of the age? That the Holy Bible is the written Word of God? If we believe all of this in faith, how is it any more “unreasonable” to believe that the bread and wine of our Eucharist become for us Christ’s Body and Blood? This is what Christ told us; this is what St. Paul affirmed; this is what every one of the Church Fathers believed.

One can (and has) written extended doctrinal treatises expositing this idea in Scripture and patristic thought; I don’t have time to go there, and you don’t have time to read it. So a few examples will suffice.

The key passage in the Gospels is in John 6. Jesus tells his listeners in the synagogue at Capernaum that he is the Bread of Life come down from heaven; that in eating him there would be eternal life. The Jews were incredulous, and wanted to take his words metaphorically; but rather than clarifying his statement, Jesus insisted:

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true [some translations, truly, indeed] food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. (St. John the Evangelist, The Gospel according to St. John 6:52-55, ESV)

Many of his own disciples were confused and troubled by these claims — certainly outrageous, taken literally. “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him” (v. 66). But still he made no effort to correct them.

Similarly, at the Last Supper, Jesus spoke unambiguously:

And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. (St. Luke, The Gospel according to St. Luke 22:19-20, ESV)

St. Paul, in describing the Eucharist, certainly understood it to be something more than a symbol:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. (St. Paul, First Epistle to the Corinthians 11:27-29, written ca. A.D. 56)

Eucharistic adorationThere is no doubt that the earliest Fathers of the Church believed the bread and wine of the Eucharist were the actual Body and Blood of Christ. St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the Church at Smyrna, ca. A.D. 110:

[Speaking of those with “heterodox opinions”] They abstain from the Eucharist and prayer, since they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father raised up again in his kindness. (St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Smyrneans 7)

St. Justin Martyr, in his First Apology (ca. A.D. 150), explains the Eucharist at length:

We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration and is thereby living as Christ has rejoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh are nourished, is both the flesh and blood of that incarnated Jesus. (St. Justin Martyr, First Apology 65)

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, writing in the middle of the fourth century, declares:

Do not, therefore, regard the Bread and Wine as simply that; for they are, according to the Master’s declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you the other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge in this matter by taste, but be fully assured by faith, not doubting that you have been deemed worthy of the Body and Blood of Christ. (St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses 22, 6).

These are just a few of many, many examples I could have cited. From the very earliest witnesses, though the Middle Ages, the Real Presence was an accepted fact of the Christian religion. It was never seriously questioned until the Protestant Reformation. Since then, evangelical Protestants have insisted, with little justification, that the Eucharist is only a symbol or memorial. Most do not even consider that theirs is the new, unfounded doctrine, without scriptural or historical support.

[Sources for patristic quotations: Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on “Romanism” by “Bible Christians” (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 237-238; St. Ignatius quote supported by consultation of, and slight emendation from, Bart Ehrman, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 302-303]

Premises

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Today was a long day. I had several posts I spent most of the day plotting in my head, but when I got home, I was met with something far more exigent: the first real, vehement opposition I’ve met from a friend to my becoming Catholic.

She raised a valid point: To what degree have I foregone my conclusion? Have I already concluded that I am becoming Catholic? This blog is titled, “A Catholic being born.” Apparent in that is the assumption that I am in a process that will result in my conversion. Might my “delivery” still end in a “stillbirth”? It is possible; I have not closed my mind. But I have felt good about the road I am on, and until tonight have had a relatively smooth passage.

She, an ardent Baptist, had consulted with another friend who was very knowledgeable about matters of theology and doctrine. She proceeded to aggressively challenge me, making a number of mistaken assumptions about what I believe and why I am pursuing Catholicism. It was very clear that neither of us understood where the other was coming from: she didn’t understand where I stand, what I believe, or why I am approaching the Catholic Church; I didn’t understand why she was so vociferously opposed to it. She called me “ridiculous” and “unreasonable”; I do not believe I was.

So I thought it would be productive for me to try to formulate where it is I stand and what it is I believe — the premises from which I’m proceeding. Feel free, reader, to challenge me or question me — but please don’t call me ridiculous or unreasonable; I’m making every attempt not to be.

Premise: Everyone who calls on the name of Christ, and subscribes to the central tenets of Christianity, as laid out in the orthodox, traditional creeds of the Church, is a Christian.

I’ve come from an evangelical Protestant background. I’ve known and been close to many people from many different Christian denominations, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. I’ve witnessed firsthand the grace of God to transform lives and save souls, active in their lives and in their churches. Therefore, I can come to no other conclusion but that all of our differences of doctrine and practice amount to nothing in God’s eyes. Despite our human divisions, we are still, in the Spirit, one unbroken and unified Body of Christ.

Does one’s belief in the sacraments change the fact of what they are to God? Does the Catholic belief in the sacramentality of baptism create in it an efficacy that doesn’t exist in a Protestant baptism, where in many traditions, it’s considered merely symbolic? This seems not to be the case: if I become Catholic, the Church will accept the validity of my Protestant baptism when I was twelve, as my “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” This apparently doesn’t extend to marriage: the Church doesn’t accept the sacramentality of a Catholic’s marriage outside the Church.

It also doesn’t seem to extend to the Eucharist: our pastor explains to non-Catholics every week that “while we may believe in the same God and the same Christ, we don’t believe in the same Eucharist,” so they are not allowed to receive it. But, then, is Communion in a Protestant church without any efficacy at all? I don’t know that I can accept that. If we believe in the same Christ, does he not provide His Body and Blood to all His brethren? Is it the Catholic belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist — the participation of a man ordained as a priest, the practice of a liturgy — that makes Him really present — or does Christ Himself transubstantiate the elements?

Christ said to the Apostles, “(You) do this in memory of me.” The Catholic Church believes that all ordained priests, having been ordained by bishops, who in turn have been ordained by older bishops, are successors of the Apostles by apostolic succession. Therefore, the priest in the Mass is a substitute for Christ at the Lord’s Supper. It’s not the priest who transubstantiates the elements; it’s Christ Himself.

Protestants, on the other hand, read the Gospels, and take the passages where Christ was enjoining and entrusting authority to the Apostles, such as the Great Commission and the institution of the Lord’s Supper, not as injunctions to only the Apostles, but to all believers. Therefore, to a Protestant, any believer has the authority to baptize or cast out demons in the Lord’s name or celebrate Communion. The Protestant minister who does those things does not believe he is Christ’s substitute — but he is doing them in Christ’s name, so he nonetheless is.

But if Christ is truly present in the lives and churches of Protestants, would a Protestant minister standing in for Christ not be as valid as an ordained Catholic priest? By another tack, if a Catholic priest is a successor of the Apostles because he has been ordained by the bishops of the past, would a Protestant minister, having been taught and having received tradition from Scripture and from the Christian leaders of the past — even back to and across the chasm of the Reformation — not also be a successor of the Apostles? If Christ is truly, really present in the Catholic Eucharist, why would He not be present in the Protestant Eucharist also? Why wouldn’t He make Himself present in the crackers and grape juice of every church that proclaims His death until He comes?

I have gotten lost in a tangent I didn’t intend to go on. This is not the course I wanted this post to take. It is almost midnight, hours past my bedtime. I’ll have to collect my thoughts and try again tomorrow. Needless to say, tonight has seriously disturbed me and put me in a panic.

[Be sure to read my reflections on this subject in the ensuing days, “Bridging the Gap” and “The Historical Church.”]