From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
Since Sleepy Joe is likely committing sacrilege when the libs allow him to receive Communion, does his sacrilege count for Easter duty?
Or would he have to go to Confession and receive again for the Easter duty to be fulfilled? (We can pray but unfortunately we shouldn’t hold our breath).
GUEST PRIEST RESPONSE: Fr. Tim Ferguson
While I understand the interest, since the President is a public figure and his actions have broad implications, I am also reminded of Our Lord’s words in the Gospel of Matthew regarding taking the plank out of our own eyes before attending to the mote in another’s.
So lets turn the question around. If you were to receive Holy Communion unworthily, would it fulfill your Easter duty?
Short answer – don’t receive Holy Communion unworthily. Go to confession, straighten out your life, get back into a state of grace, and it’s not a problem.
Longer answer – if you’re in a state of sin and cannot receive Holy Communion, you shouldn’t receive Holy Communion. Let’s say that you’re in a second, civil marriage without having a declaration of the nullity of your first attempt at marriage. You’ve come back to the idea that you should practice the faith, but for various reasons (such as young children whose lives would be unjustly disrupted by the separation of their parents) you can’t regularize your situation. Don’t receive Holy Communion. While the Easter duty is binding upon all Catholics who have once received Holy Communion, there is an old principle in canon law that no one is bound to the impossible. You are in a state where it is not possible for you to receive Holy Communion, therefore you cannot fulfill your Easter Duty, but that is not imputable to you since you can’t do it. Let’s take another scenario and say, for example, that you’re a prominent person – let’s call you the Leader of the Free World. Your party supports broad access to abortion, and you value the support of your party more than you value the lives of innocent children in danger of being cruelly ripped from their mothers’ wombs. You speak out – frequently and enthusiastically about preserving “the rights of women to choose,” by which you mean – and everyone knows you mean – access to abortion and infanticide. You have placed yourself at odds with your Church, and, in virtue of canon 915, you are not able to receive Holy Communion. Then don’t. Unless and until you’re willing to repent of your position and return to the full practice of the faith (which is more than just going to Mass on Sunday and getting Ashed on Ash Wednesday), you can’t – and shouldn’t receive Holy Communion. Since it is then impossible for you, you are not imputed with failure to observe your Easter Duty.
Now let’s say that, tragically – for your soul and his – your pastor opts to ignore canon 915, and gives you Holy Communion. Your pastor has just allowed you to receive Holy Communion unworthily, and, in accord with what St. Paul teaches, you are now guilty of sinning against the Body and Blood of the Lord (1: Corinthians, 11:27). What an awful state of affairs! If you are blissfully ignorant of the teachings of the Church, your subjective sin might not be as grave. But if you’re a well-educated person, it would be hard to chalk your actions up to ignorance.
Have you fulfilled your Easter Duty by receiving a sacrilegious Communion? Well, because of your state of sin, we’ve already established that you’re not really bound to the Duty, since you can’t actually fulfill it. God is not an accountant who is going to say to you at the end of your life, “Well, you’ve allowed 10 million children to be slaughtered before they could take a breath, you’ve scandalized untold numbers of people by casually ignoring the reasonable laws of the Church, you had that one BLT on a Friday in Lent in 1986, but you did receive Holy Communion during the Lent and Easter Season each year, even if unworthily, so we’ll put those in the ‘plus’ column…” God is not mocked, and the Last Judgment – which will happen for us all – is not a time for bargaining with God.
All that to say – going back to the original, short answer. Don’t receive Holy Communion unworthily. Go to confession, straighten out your life, avoid sin, and receive that tremendous gift of His Body and Blood in a worthy manner.
Fr. Ferguson’s answer is great, from canonical and pastoral points of view.
Fr. Z ADDS:
Allow me to add a couple of comments.
First, regarding “Easter Duty”.
The Church has several positive laws or “precepts”, sometimes also called the Commandments of the Church. They are enumerated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church 2041:
- Attendance at Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation
- Confession of serious sin at least once a year
- Reception of Holy Communion at least once a year during the Easter season (ordinarily
- Easter Sunday through Pentecost Sunday)
- Observance of the days of fast and abstinence
- Providing for the needs of the Church
The 1983 Code of Canon Law says:
Can. 920 §1. After being initiated into the Most Holy Eucharist, each of the faithful is obliged to receive holy communion at least once a year.
§2. This precept must be fulfilled during the Easter season unless it is fulfilled for a just cause at another time during the year.
This goes hand in hand with the previous canon:
Can. 989 After having reached the age of discretion, each member of the faithful is obliged to confess faithfully his or her grave sins at least once a year.
In general, if a person goes for the reception of Holy Communion the minimum time of once a year, it is nearly certain that, during the course of a year, she has committed at least one mortal sin. Possibly not, but… it would be exceptional. So, yearly confession and Communion are pretty much bound up together.
The point of the law is, I think, gently to force people to amend their lives.
If a person must receive Communion, and she can’t receive unless she first sincerely confesses her sins with a firm purpose to amend her life, then amendment of life is a pre-requisite to receiving Communion. If some situations go on for more than a year, they are that much harder to amend. So, in her wisdom Holy Mother Church impels people toward the confessional and, subsequently the altar rail with that person’s soul always in view: amendment of a sinful life.
Yes, there are times when amendment is hard, as in the case of the cohabiting adulterers who must stay together for the sake of children. If they do NOT intend to live continently, no confession and absolution, and no Communion. They cannot fulfil their Easter Duty. I would say that they therefore violate that Precept of the Church and, someday, that also must be confessed because it is a sin not to fulfill that duty.
BTW… I think the not so subtle message of Amoris laetitia that amendment of life is an ideal that not all can attain is pernicious. That whole thing must be read with caution and always in adherence to traditional Catholic spiritual and moral instruction. It IS possible to live in the state of grace, with the help of grace. BUT… one must be willing to suffer. I digress.
There are cases when it is impossible. For example you are a crewman on a ship heading to the Easter Islands in the late 18th century on His Majesty’s Ship Canon 920. Ports are far between and the voyage and return could last well over a years. It is impossible because there is no Catholic priest onboard (of course). It is impossible, so you are not bound.
In must cases, a person now can fulfill that duty, depending on their country, etc. The time to fulfill one’s duty is the season of Easter. I believe that that could be extended by legitimate authority or commuted. Indeed,
Can. 1245 Without prejudice to the right of diocesan bishops mentioned in can. 87, for a just cause and according to the prescripts of the diocesan bishop, a pastor can grant in individual cases a dispensation from the obligation of observing a feast day or a day of penance or can grant a commutation of the obligation into other pious works. A superior of a religious institute or society of apostolic life, if they are clerical and of pontifical right, can also do this in regard to his own subjects and others living in the house day and night.
There’s that famous can. 87, what a two-edged sword.
By the way, sometimes you will find in a confessional in an older church a little slot under the grate. That was used to slide through a card that the priest could sign to demonstrate that you had been to confession as part of your Easter Duty.
Lastly, there is great wisdom in can. 920, which looks towards what the last canon of the Code is all about: salvation of souls. The obligation of confession and Communion is for the good of the souls of those in the state of grace and to impel those who are not in the state of grace or who are in bad situations to amend their lives and get to confession before it is too late.
Too late – in that state – might mean Hell, if you have an unprovided death.
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>>In general, if a person goes for the reception of Holy Communion the minimum time of once a year, it is nearly certain that, during the course of a year, she has committed at least one mortal sin. Possibly not, but… it would be exceptional.
Yes, but in the Middle Ages with their Communion practices it might have been different.
For the question, allow me to slightly disagree with Fr Ferguson but first note that for a hands-on approach, the only relevant result is “what do I have to Confess when amendment does come”.
So, I do not think (which he seems to do) that “normal” mortal sinners are excused from the Easter duty. This is because it is possible for them to fulfil it: repent, and then receive Communion. (I leave open whether they can apply can. 920 § 2, but somehow obstinacy in mortal sin is not so really what I imagine as a “just cause”.)
Does that mean that God will say to some fictitious mortal sinner “but at least you fulfilled your Easter duty with your sacrilegious Communion, that’s in your favor?” No, but not (and here’s my second minor disagreement) because God is not an accountant, but because even if He were, you would account a sacrilegious Communion not as fulfillment of Easter duty. The duty is obviously to Communicate piously, not sacrilegiously. (The legislator does not have to say every obvious thing literally.)
And what about the usual divorced-and-remarried and suchlike? Well, they are excused because the difficulty is real. But I don’t there is an excuse if the difficulty is not there, such as if a wrong opinion is to be overcome (barring the general excuse of ignorance*). Also, say, a habitual philanderer who has no theoretical problem with the Church’s teaching, just gives in to temptation again and again, is not, in my view; it is even possible, if perhaps unlikely, that he manages to pull off actual attrition, keeps a couple of days straight and does fulfill the Easter dutyit before falling back into sin.
(*) On the other hand, I don’t think there is much basis, if you know what men are like, for the estimation “But if you’re a well-educated person, it would be hard to chalk your actions up to ignorance”. (In fact, one might have some point in saying ignorance became likelier with more education so long as it does not yet reach real wisdom.) The fact that it sounds more threatening to, in effect, be able to say “you’re going to hell” rather than “what you do is an objective grave sin; as for the state of your soul, God knows it”, and that those would (which I do not dispute) really deserve that, and also it would be good for their souls – that is not an argument.
I suspect the person who originally posed this question was looking for a technical way to say that Joe Biden is not actually a practicing Catholic.
No matter how loudly others may shout, we should never waver in continuing to point out that defending or supporting the legality of abortion is completely unacceptable for any Catholic (or really for anyone, since it’s contrary to natural law). There is plenty to say on that score alone.
While the wokesters are tearing down statues of anyone with any remote connection (real or imagined) to having supported slavery centuries ago, the same crowd is defending the right to tear innocent people to shreds inside their very mothers’ wombs. Where’s the logic in that? Oh, right, I forgot…
I should, of course, have written “the ‘right’ to”…
“. . . a little slot under the grate . . . was used to slide through a card that the priest could sign to demonstrate that you had been to confession as part of your Easter Duty.” Pardon my ignorance, being born in the year Vatican II opened, but, demonstrate to whom?
Response 1, a Natural and civil Law comment & completely irrefutable: Those who support abortion support the ability of one human being to decree the the killing of another human being.
Response 2: Is it salutary to include as part of one’s bedtime prayer intentions a petition to one’s patron saint (Anthony of Padua, in my case) that as one’s own death approaches to intercede so that one, regardless of the circumstances, receives the benefit of the last rites/sacraments? (I’m thinking of that recent Texas tragedy.)
@Boniface
I suspect it possible the person who posed the question was also taking into account the likes of Card. Wilton saying he wouldn’t deny communion to Biden. I believe this was before he was elevated to Cardinal.
In other words, maybe this came about due to such tomfoolery as James Martin saying that to deny anyone is to weaponize the Eucharist.
Either way, the poster of the question is likely receptive to the advice of removing the plank from your own eye. He seems like a real nice guy who is willing to take advice and improve himself.
Greg the Geologist, presumably one’s pastor. Pastors used to be required to keep a record of those who made their Easter duty. We found some Easter duty “receipts” in a very old German prayer book that has been in the family for many years.
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if you’re in a state of sin and cannot receive Holy Communion, you shouldn’t receive Holy Communion. Let’s say that you’re in a second, civil marriage without having a declaration of the nullity of your first attempt at marriage. You’ve come back to the idea that you should practice the faith, but for various reasons (such as young children whose lives would be unjustly disrupted by the separation of their parents) you can’t regularize your situation. Don’t receive Holy Communion.
I am sorry to disagree with someone as eminent and wise as Fr. Ferguson, whose advice I normally love, but I fear this is not quite right.
Nothing in principle, prevents the couple from repenting their sins, choosing to live as brother and sister, going to confession, and receiving Communion remoto scandalo (e.g. in the sacristy outside of Mass, with the pastor knowing the circumstances). Yes, it might be VERY HARD to remain chaste, even with the grace of the sacraments. But not “impossible” in the proper sense. Which is exactly what is conveyed in this:
Those faithful who are divorced and remarried would not be considered to be within the situation of serious habitual sin who would not be able, for serious motives – such as, for example, the upbringing of the children – “to satisfy the obligation of separation, assuming the task of living in full continence, that is, abstaining from the acts proper to spouses” (Familiaris consortio, n. 84), and who on the basis of that intention have received the sacrament of Penance. Given that the fact that these faithful are not living more uxorio is per se occult, while their condition as persons who are divorced and remarried is per se manifest, they will be able to receive Eucharistic Communion only remoto scandalo.
stated by the Pontifical Council on Legislative Texts (PCLT) in 2ooo.
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/intrptxt/documents/rc_pc_intrptxt_doc_20000706_declaration_en.html
Moreover, while the “upbringing of children” is so often offered as a suitable reason why the couple “cannot separate” (i.e. cannot stop living more uxorio), I am troubled by the implications of this. First, it means that they have RIGHTLY(?) decided that even with grace they cannot live chastely as brother and sister. Second, they have decided that all (ALL!) of the couples who do in fact separate even though they have kids are sinning by that separation, that none of those separated parents are doing OK as parents. Third, they have seemingly not considered what kind of example they set for their kids when it comes out (and it ALWAYS comes out eventually) that they had a first spouse and this second “marriage” is not really marriage: how many kids (now older, teens or twenties) will abandon the Church and their faith upon learning that their own parents were LYING to them all these years about either (a) their parents “being married”, or (b) their parents telling them to obey the Church? How could such a revelation not rock the young person’s bedrock beliefs?
Yes, they should repent, and commit to living chastely, and go to confession. They still cannot go to Communion randomly where they might cause scandal, but they can satisfy the Easter duty by receiving in secret. They definitely should NOT receive in a state of mortal sin, and yes, the Easter duty BECOMES a duty to go to confession first if necessary to get in a state of grace, so receiving in a state of mortal sin fails the Easter duty. I think Fr. Z captures it:
The point of the law is, I think, gently to force people to amend their lives.
And it’s not like this duty springs out at them all at once without warning: they knew all along they are supposed to receive the sacrament once a year, and that doing so required first being in a state of grace. That’s where the gentle, gradually ever more urgent urging of conscience come in.
Well my pastor flat-out tells us we’re going to hell if we don’t go to church on his birthday which falls on a holy day of obligation.
I have my grat-grandparents sick call set which is multiple objects in a celluloid case. The crucifix/candleholder/holy water font, which comes apart, a couple of patens, an incense boat and a little brush. Oh, and a brown scapular to put on the dying. There may be other items but I don’t remember.
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