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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.
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Q&A

An Eastern Orthodox friend sometimes attends Mass with me and receives Communion. Is this allowed?

Catholic Answers Staff

Question:

An Eastern Orthodox friend sometimes attends Mass with me and receives Communion. Is this allowed?

Answer:

The U.S. Bishops Conference’s Guidelines for the Reception of Communion states:

Members of the Orthodox churches, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Polish National Catholic Church are urged to respect the discipline of their own churches. According to Roman Catholic discipline, the Code of Canon Law does not object to the reception of Communion by Christians of these churches. (canon 844 § 3)

Basically, this means that the Catholic Church does not object to reception of Catholic Communion by Eastern Orthodox Christians but urges those Christians to respect their own church’s sacramental discipline. To the best of my knowledge, Orthodox churches as a rule strongly object to their members receiving Communion in a Catholic church. A statement of this stance can be found on the Web site of the Orthodox Church in America (www.oca.org).

In short, if your friend considers himself an Eastern Orthodox Christian, ordinarily he should respect the sacramental discipline of his own church. If he wishes to receive Communion in a Catholic church, perhaps he should seriously consider entering the Catholic Church, possibly through one of its Eastern Catholic churches.

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