Ecumenism and the Eucharist

Q: I recently attended a funeral held in the Anglican church. There was a note in the program that went something like this: 'If you are presently receiving the Eucharist in another Christian church, please feel free to come forward and receive it.' Where does the Church stand on Catholics receiving the Eucharist while attending functions in other Christian churches?




For Christians who celebrate the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion, receiving the Eucharist is both a sign of faith and of unity. 

Of faith, it is a testimony, a visible witness of one’s personal commitment to Christ. Receiving the Eucharist is an “altar call”: a public act of dedication to Christ and one’s community, and a public display of one’s profound need for God. 

Sharing the Eucharist with the congregation is also a sign of communion, or of intimate unity with one’s peers and fellow Christians around the world. However, for the Catholic, sharing in the Eucharistic Meal is not only a profession of faith and unity, it is also a partaking in the very essence of Jesus Christ and an act of adherence to our Catholic faith.

Pope John Paul II, in his 2003 encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, reminds us that “The celebration of the Eucharist … cannot be the starting point for communion; it presupposes that communion already exists.” He goes on to assert that this profession of unity is both invisible and visible. 
Our profession is invisible in the sense that it conveys union with God, with our immediate community, with Catholics throughout the world, and with the saints and angels in heaven. 
Likewise, our profession is also visible “which entails communion in the teaching of the Apostles, in the sacraments, and in the Church’s hierarchical order” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia 35). 
In other words, in receiving the Eucharist, we not only enter into a profound union with God and his Church, but we profess openly our understanding of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic Meal and our conviction that the Catholic Church has been instituted by Christ and sustained by the grace of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God the Father and the salvation of humanity (see “Catholic Catechism” art. 748-776). Without this invisible and visible profession of faith, “it is not possible to celebrate the same Eucharistic liturgy [with non-Catholic Churches and communities] until those bonds are fully reestablished” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia 44). 

Although we yearn with Christ that “all may be one” (John 17:21), until the bonds are reestablished, interfaith communion would be not only invalid, but it also might become “an obstacle to the attainment of full communion … by introducing or exacerbating ambiguities” about the truths of our faith (Ecclesia de Eucharistia 44). However, under special circumstances the Eucharist can be administered to an individual who belongs to a Church or Ecclesial Community, provided that such an action would “meet a grave spiritual need for the eternal salvation of an individual believer” (45).

The question of interfaith communion is a difficult one, not because of a lack of information, but because it makes apparent the reality of the divisions among Christ’s faithful. Nonetheless, we continue to pray, with Christ, that all Christians may approach the Eucharist in full communion--both visible and invisible--and proclaim with St. Paul: 

The bread we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf

1 Corinthians 10:16, 17