*Question:
I am RC…but the mysogeny of the church is starting to be more of a problem then I can handle…o am looking seriously at the Espicopal Church…so here are some questions. My kids have all recieved 1st communion in the RC; are they allowed to recieve communion in the Espiscopal Church? How similar will the service be for them? What is the difference between Rite I and Rite II? And this may sound silly…but on hospital forms etc..do you list yourself as Catholic or Protestant? What if the children don’t like the wine – I’ve seen people dipping the Host; is that okay?</FONT></P>

Answer:

Your kids are definately allowed to receive communion in the Episcopal church. We recognise the validity of Roman Catholic orders and sacraments, and the fact that Rome is in schism from the rest of christendom doesn't change that.

The service will be so similar that you'll find yourself stumbling over the responses sometimes because you got the "prompt" is identical, and the response has one or two words different.

Rite I is Elizabethan English, and is the standard used by English speaking Anglicans all over the world. Rite II is modern English and will be more familiar to you, it dates to the late 70's just as the words in the Catholic Book of Worship do.

The reason they ask on hospital forms, is so they know which member of the Pastoral Care team to send around. If you check "Protestant" you'll end up with Pastor Bobby-Joe from the local gospel church (or a generic presbyterian). He'll pray with you, but he won't offer you communion.

If you check "Catholic" they'll send Father Joseph around, and he'll offer you communion but you'll feel guilty about taking it. Usually it's not a problem though. The hard-line EWTN Roman Catholics tend not to go in for pastoral care. The people who do go in for pastoral care are more interested in caring for you, than in correcting your doctrine. At worst, he'll talk and pray with you and offer to send around his Episcopalian colleague. At best, he'll say "who cares, we just won't tell the Bishop" and offer you communion anyway. You can skip the problem by crossing out both and writing in "Episcopalian". Think of it as your American right to choose a write-in candidate.

(Anywhere else in the world, write in "Anglican". I have a lovely story about a colleague who tried to go to church while he was waiting to be evacuated from Iran. He met up with his Roman Catholic friends at the American compound after, complaining that even with the best directions, he couldn't find the Anglican church, although he kept coming back to church calling itself "Episcopal" -- no idea what *that* was!!)

Communion in one kind is sufficient and effective:

The bread and wine are "comingled", so that receiving one carries the essence of receiving the other. Normative communion is to receive in both kinds; that's true in Roman Catholic doctrine as well, though they practice a looser approximation of that norm than we do. But alcoholics and celiacs very frequently receive in only one kind, and anyone else who feels they are at a particular risk from one or the other elements.

A wierd point of formalities, that only picky ("t"-) traditionalists like me care about: Pre-Vatican II, Roman Catholics received on the tongue. You knelt at the altar rail and opened your mouth, and the minister popped the host into your mouth. Anglicans received (and still do) in the hand -- we cup the right hand in the left, receive the host in the right hand, and raise both hands it to the mouth with no additional handling of the host. This minimal touching of the host was considered irreverent in Roman Catholic circles. Post-Vatican II, Roman Catholics began receiving in the hand. If they are picky about formalities, they cup the *left* hand over the right, receive in the left hand, pick up the host with the right hand, and put it into their mouth. This not-much-less-minimal handling of the host is considered irreverent in stuffier Anglo-catholic circles, unless you are "intincting" (the formal word for "dipping").

If you're intincting for yourself, you need to receive in the left hand so you can pick up the host in the right hand. If you do intinct, you'll want to handle the host as little as possible and dip an untouched edge into the cup. This is because hands are a lot germier than lips. One can of course receive the intincted wafer on one's tongue as you describe, but unless you see other people receiving that way it might be nice to warn the eucharistic minister ahead of time -- just mention it to the priest as you're shaking hands on the way out, and he'll pass it on -- because it isn't the practice everywhere.

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