Recently, I was in a dialogue with a close friend of mine who had some questions regarding the Eucharist. The following is her question and my response:
"Okay, so Catholics don't take Communion (bread and cup) at any other church, right? Because of the doctrine of transubstantiation. And for the same reason, they don't allow non-Catholics to take Communion in their churches, right? Or is there some other reason that I'm missing? Is that right?"
Catholics do not take communion at other churches because of the doctrine of transubstantiation, you are correct. It’s also because to take it at another church would be, not to sound harsh, a charade of the sacrament. If Jesus is truly present and this is true, then anything else pales in comparison. To say that Christians are in full communion with one another is a lie (Obviously this is apparent). And we shouldn’t lie when we receive the Truth incarnate. Let me explain:
Transubstantiation is the doctrine which states that at the words of consecration ("this is my body, this is my blood") by a validly ordained priest, the actual substance of the bread and wine change. The accidents (form and appearance and taste) remain. It is truly an act of faith, but it is easy to believe when you think about it. The Creator of the universe created everything out of nothing. I think it would be pretty easy to change one thing into something else; especially when He commands we do it ("do this in memory of me"). So He’s holding His own body in His hands, big whoop for the Creator of the Universe. Those who don't believe that are not allowed because, without maybe knowing it in one instance, they are putting a limitation on what God can and can't do (At least their version of God). But there are a few more reasons why as well.
When you accept Jesus as Lord and Savior you accept everything that He is and everything that He did and everything that He is capable of doing. If He truly is the Lord of your life, you accept everything about Him; including his Church, good and bad (think about Judas. God sure can pick 'em), which He did establish from the get-go. (See Mt 16:16-18. Pay attention to the verse where He says, "...I will build my church") Now, if God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and He says that He will lead His church into all truth (will lead is future tense, all this is in the gospels), then we can trust that He will. To say that an apostasy happened or to say that His Church went wrong at any point in history would be to deny Christ and His promise. And it would make Jesus just a crazy Jewish man, in which case He isn't God and all of this is in vain. God is the only person who has ever followed through and kept His promises. The Holy Spirit was promised to lead the church into all truth. And truth is authority and freedom.
Now there can only be one truth. And one shepherd and one flock. Jesus is the Truth. There are those outside the flock, yes, that God uses and works with, but to get the fullness of the truth and to experience the truth wholly and totally, you need the Church who this was entrusted to and who explains the life of Jesus and who explains confounding verses in the Scriptures. God did establish a Church and there was only one in the beginning as there is only one now.
Now when Jesus established His Church we read, at the end of the gospel of Matthew I believe, that Jesus has all the authority of Heaven and earth at His disposal. And He commands and shares His authority with the Apostles (which is a Greek word that means, "those sent with authority, pretty cool huh?) and their successors. The laying on of hands, which is the sacrament (outward signs of God's grace) of holy orders has been used since new testament times (see Acts) to confer the authority to the succeeding generations of bishops, priests, and deacons. This valid form of ordination was used for 1500 years before the Reformation. Now when Luther split off from the church and when the other reformers took a cue from him, those that were priests, were still validly ordained. No bishops followed Luther out of the church. Very interesting, especially since they are the ones who administer the sacrament of holy orders. When Luther's generation of priests died off, there was no validly ordained person to confer the New Testament priesthood on. So the Lutherans lost it.
Since other forms of Protestantism completely did away with any type of priesthood, they did not have the valid form either. Now the Anglicans are a different story. When Henry VIII broke away, some bishops followed him because they were threatened under penalty of death. These were validly ordained bishops and for a few years still had a valid priesthood. King Edward of England decided to change the form of ordination. This went on for about 100 years until they realized they had made a mistake. They switched back to the original form, but by then, the validly ordained bishops were already long dead. That left the Catholic Church as the only church with any validly ordained priesthood (The Orthodox Church is a different e-mail). There can only be one priesthood, as there was in Judaism. The Jewish priesthood, because there was no reason to sacrifice animals anymore because of the expiating sacrifice of Jesus Christ, was done away with when the
So a valid Eucharist (which is Greek for "thanksgiving" because Jesus broke the bread and gave “thanks”) is only available through a Catholic priest, one who can actually trace his orders all the way back to the apostles. Every priest can, which is really cool if you think about it. So when we say that a fellow Christian cannot receive the Eucharist it is because 1) they are not in full communion with the validly ordained bishop of Rome, the pope and 2) there is no such thing as a communion of disagreement. It's not because you are not in communion with God. But God established a Church on Earth giving them the power to bind and loose. We share a common bond in Jesus, but when we only have some of it or only agree with some of what Christ's Church teaches, then that is not a true communion and will never be until we are one as Jesus prayed us to be in the gospel of John in the 17th chapter. To say that “I don’t think God would do that” or “We are all part of Christ’s church” although true in some sense, makes God subjective to our wills and our version of God. We are operating within the confines of our own "tradition" and looking through our own set of glasses rather than that of the Apostles which was given to them by Christ himself.
This is why Communion is called Communion in the first place. It is a unity of all belief and a true participation in Christ's community, our community on earth, the Church.
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