zaangalewa
Gold Member
- Jan 24, 2015
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Pope Francis blocks German Protestants
from receiving Catholic communion
With "German" has this nothing to do. And I do not know what Pope Francis has to do with this decision. This decision had happened a long time before he became pope. The main reason for this is that we Catholics believe the same what for example the protestant Martin Luther had believed. We believe in a real presence of god during communion. The consecrated bread is seen as a real presence of god. That's called "holy transsubstantiation". This is a very serios thing for most Catholics (- and not only for Catholics, what's sometimes a little underestimated). People who don't respect this and see in a communion only a symbolic act - what most protestants are doing - are able to be unintentionally respectless. (Asides of many people who are intentionally respectless). And this form of respectlessness is a very terrible thing for many Catholics. So this rule to give communion only to Catholics in a Catholic church service is first of all a rule to avoid problems.
And a consecrated bread becomes by the way never property of someone. The only lawful use of a consecrated bread is to eat it during church service - under the conditions which are normally only Catholics know. You will often also see many Catholics in a church service, who do not eat a consecrated bread, because they do not feel in the moment it is good to do so - on many different individual reasons. And sometimes also some Catholics are "excommunicated" what doesn't mean someone is not a Catholic any longer. This means just simple not to have the right to eat a consecrated bread.
The "problem" - if it is a problem at all - is by the way that many priests - worldwide, also in the USA - don't care about. They give also protestants the communion - in general or in some special cases. Even Pope Benedict XVI for example did give the communion to Frere Roger - anything else no one ever would had been able to understand.
PS: I'm by the way married with a protestant. We are Germans. We visit meanwhile very seldom any longer a church service, what began specially also because my Protestant wife is not ready to break our Catholic rules in this context, what I - and also every other Catholic, which I know - is ready to do without any problem. A relict of the 30 years war, I guess. People often had to change their religions here. This has positive and negative effects. In this way I learned by the way to love the Swedish tradition around an Italian Saint with the name "Santa Lucia". Funny thing this female Santa - makes a lot of fun.
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