In two previous articles, I made the argument that unleavened, not leavened, bread was the original matter used in the Holy Eucharist by Christ and his apostles (even years after our Lord’s ascension). I noted how that point is particularly relevant to Catholic-Eastern Orthodox dialogue since the Latin use of unleavened bread during Holy Mass was one of the central justifications the medieval Orthodox Churches gave for their schism from the Catholic Church.
The eucharistic differences do not end with the bread, either. There is another Latin practice that Seraphim Hamilton, a modern Orthodox theologian whom I deeply respect, calls a “dealbreaker”: the withholding of the chalice from the laity.
Since the medieval era, the Latin Catholic Church began moving away from the ancient practice of distributing Holy Communion to the faithful under both kinds. As early as the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas noted that “it is the custom of many churches for the body of Christ to be given to the communicant without his blood” (Summa Theologiae, III, Q. 80, A. 12). However, it wasn’t until 1415 that the Council of Constance imposed this as a discipline for the entire Latin rite (see Session 13).
Before Eastern Orthodox apologists get too excited about medieval Rome “breaking with tradition,” the following must be pointed out. Despite the withholding of the chalice being a popular Western practice between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, it doesn’t feature on even one Byzantine list of “Latin errors” from this time period. Though it’s possible that the practice wasn’t prevalent enough for the medieval Greeks to have been concerned with it, I don’t find that likely.
In her book The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins, Tia Kolbaba documents how the medieval Byzantines would criticize the Latins for just about anything they could get their hands on. For example, some Byzantines criticized the Latins for not reverencing the Blessed Virgin Mary enough, presumably because they didn’t use the Greek term Theotokos (53). Other critiques include the Latins not “fasting properly” during Lent, the fact that Latins fasted on Saturdays, that some Latin bishops wore rings, that Latins made the sign of the cross “incorrectly,” and so on (see Kolbaba’s Appendix 3). Certainly, if there was a medieval Latin custom that the Byzantines had a problem with, however infrequent, we would know about it. Yet no mention of Communion under one kind.
It also seems that this practice wasn’t condemned by the Greeks at the Council Florence (1438-1445), which is quite telling. The Council of Constance (1414-1418) had universally enforced the withholding of the chalice from the laity just a few decades before Florence (and the practice was widespread prior to then as well), so it’s incredibly unlikely that the Greeks weren’t aware of this discipline. Yet not only does none of the Greeks at Florence condemn it, but it was apparently so unimportant to East-West dialogue that Florence’s famous bull of union, Laetentur Caeli, says nothing about the issue.
As far as I can tell, the first Eastern Orthodox authority to explicitly and dogmatically denounce the practice of Communion under one kind was Patriarch Cyril Loukaris of Alexandria. In 1616, he wrote the following in condemnation of the practice: “Whoever does not confess that at the Mystery of Communion the laity, too, must partake of the precious and immaculate Body and Blood . . . let such persons be anathema.”
This is an important detail because, famously, Loukaris was heavily influenced by Calvinism. In his Confession of 1629, Cyril espoused various Calvinist doctrines that would eventually be condemned via the Eastern Orthodox Confession of Dositheus in 1672. It appears, then, that criticizing the Latin rite’s custom of Communion under one kind isn’t a traditional Eastern Orthodox polemic at all. Rather, this critique comes from Protestant influence on the Orthodox churches. Even in the recent polemical book put out by Uncut Mountain Press, The Errors of the Latins, the earliest Orthodox critique of withholding the Chalice they could find comes from the 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (p. 89).
The question therefore ought to be asked: why did the Eastern Orthodox Churches go centuries without condemning the Latin custom of Communion under one kind, despite having every incentive to?
Here’s what I think. The Reformers criticized the Latin Church’s practice of Communion under one kind because it deviated from the way they interpreted Christ as commanding the Eucharist to be celebrated. I propose that the reason why the Protestants were the first to make this argument, rather than the Eastern Orthodox, is because, by these standards, the way the Orthodox distribute Holy Communion could be condemned as well.
To understand why, recall that at the Last Supper, our Lord separated these two commands: “take, eat” and “drink this” (see Matt. 26:26-28). He didn’t say, “Mingle these two together and then partake of them simultaneously with a spoon.” Indeed, it’s quite ironic that Eastern Orthodox polemicists criticize the Latin West for not having “a valid reason to alter the general practice of the Church,” as Errors of the Latins puts it (p. 98), which was to give both the bread and the chalice to the laity—when they did the exact same thing by introducing the Communion spoon!
Consider how Symeon of Thessalonika, a fifteenth-century Eastern Orthodox theologian, describes the development of the Byzantine rite’s practice of distributing Holy Communion. He admits that the “most ancient tradition, as we received from [the] holy fathers,” was for both the clergy and the laity alike to “separately . . . receive first of the bread [in their hands], then again separately of the chalice united with the bread.” However, he goes on to say that “because of some incidents,” later “fathers thought that communion should be given to the laity by a spoon” (p. 225).
It seems that the Latins weren’t the only ones who ran into difficulties distributing Holy Communion in the Middle Ages! The East likewise faced this difficulty, and simply came up with a different solution. Rather than Communion under one kind, the East withheld the chalice from the laity by replacing the Chalice with a spoon. Both of these customs are deviations from the original apostolic practice, which was to allow everyone to literally take the bread (note: with their hands) and literally take the chalice.
To this day, both Orthodox and Catholic priests believe themselves bound to literally take and eat the bread, and literally (and separately) take and drink the chalice. However, both Orthodox and Catholics acknowledge that the laity are not bound to literally perform these actions.
In this way, both Catholics and Orthodox recognize that the commandment to “take this, all of you,” whether with respect to the host or the chalice, strictly applies to only the apostles and their successors. This makes good sense, since that commandment was given only to the apostles. Indeed, as the Catholic Encyclopedia points out, this commandment was joined to the command “do this in remembrance of me,” which both the East and the West interpret as a command for priests to consecrate the bread and the wine in the liturgy. The laity do not “do this”—i.e., offer the eucharistic sacrifice—in the manner that the apostles and their successors were commanded to. Thus, they likewise do not have to “take” the bread and the chalice in the same manner that the apostles and their successors do.
Indeed, since both Catholics and Orthodox accept the doctrine of concomitance—which states that the whole Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity, is fully present under both eucharistic species—we both believe that the laity can fulfill the Lord’s command to partake of both his flesh and his blood (John 6:53) by receiving the Eucharist under only one kind. As recently as 2024, the Russian Orthodox Church allowed their faithful who suffer from celiac disease to partake of only the precious blood of Christ on this very basis: “A layman suffering from a gluten-associated disease may commune of just the blood of Christ, as the Savior is fully present in It.”
This mutual understanding between the East and the West is likely why Communion under one kind wasn’t an issue during the genesis of the Great Schism (1054-1445). It was only when the East was exposed to anti-Catholic arguments from Protestantism that the Eastern Orthodox decided to adopt this as one of their reasons for being separate from Rome. Certainly, the Eastern Orthodox have zero justification for abandoning their traditional critique of unleavened bread and replacing it with this novel critique of withholding the chalice.
In conclusion, if the Eastern Orthodox can justify changing the apostolic practice of using unleavened bread in the Eucharist, and of literally giving the host and the chalice to the laity, then they have no grounds for criticizing the Catholic Church for coming up with its own eucharistic disciplinary changes. We both believe in the Holy Spirit’s infallible protection of the Church’s universal disciplinary laws, so let’s not argue like Protestants.