For centuries, church leaders put conditions on “worthy reception” that made it difficult and psychologically dangerous — even terrifying — for the faithful to take Communion, writes ed_kilgore
Joe Biden speaks during a worship event at the Brown Chapel AME Church on March 1, 2020, in Selma, Alabama. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images To a lot of Biden-loving Democrats, and probably to most non-Catholics, the idea of denying Communion to the second Catholic president of the United States probably seemed bizarre. In the end, thanks to the intervention of the Vatican, conservative U.S.
A great if remarkably little-discussed scandal of Catholic history is that for a period of about 1,500 years — from the 4th century until roughly the 19th — most Catholic laypeople did not regularly take Communion. For centuries, church leaders begged the faithful to receive the Sacrament at least once a year — typically on Easter Sunday. But at the same time, they put conditions on “worthy reception” that made it difficult and psychologically dangerous — even terrifying — to do so.
Why did church leaders do this? Did they want to keep Communion exclusive? According to the great 20th-century liturgical reformer Gregory Dix, the fencing of the altars was mostly attributable to the vast wave of pagan conversions that occurred after the late Roman Empire imposed Christianity as its official religion:
Catholics were hardly alone in making Communion disposable for most believers. Many Protestant faith communities, fearing the “superstition” of the mass with its proclaimed real and material presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, ripped Communion right out of the weekly worship service, consigning it to annual, quarterly, or monthly observances.
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