Communion in Orthodox Churches? Same Catholic Faith?

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Father Joe

QUESTION: As a Catholic can I receive Communion in an Orthodox Church? Aren’t our beliefs essentially the same?

ANSWER:

You cannot generally receive Holy Communion in an Orthodox church. The only exception is when it is physically impossible for you to participate at a liturgy in a Roman Catholic or Eastern rite in union with the Holy See. However, please note, that not all Orthodox churches would want Latin rite Christians taking the sacrament from them, either. We should also try to respect their laws. Having said all this, we recognize the validity of the seven sacraments in the Orthodox churches.

The Orthodox churches are national churches and Roman Catholicism has always been in tension with such embodiments of faith communities. This is true in the East and West. Gallicanism placed great stress upon the unity of the Church in France just as Anglicanism signified a juridical breech. Political reasons related to Church authority are still very much part of the problem that must be resolved. What is the extent of papal power and the unity under the Petrine see? This brings with it the debate over the status of the small Eastern rite churches in union with Rome. The Orthodox churches tend to look down upon them as traitors. The Orthodox churches regard the Pope as “the first among equals.” Such is not how we regard the universal see.

Besides ecclesiology, there are also some doctrinal interpretations which divide us. The most famous of these is the Filioque debate in the Nicene Creed: both the authority of the Pope to add to the profession of faith and the understanding of the eternal generations or relations of the divine Persons in the Blessed Trinity. Given pressure from worldly monarchs, Protestant influence and secularism, the second or penitential marriages of divorced persons is also a divide. We cannot readily forgive that for which we were willing to allow the entire English church to slip away— a marriage that is no marriage but adultery. Orthodox churches transplanted into the West are increasingly adopting elements of Lutheranism (emphasis upon Scripture over tradition and the value of faith over works) but these eccentricities are also placing stress upon their loose inner unity worldwide. Indeed, some communities have split as have several of the Russian Orthodox over the fragmentation of the old U.S.S.R. and what was seen as complicity with communism. Indeed, it appears that some prelates might have been KGB plants. Indeed, the recent news has detailed a public rift between the Orthodox patriarchs in Russian and the Ukraine.