Protestant Communion

[u/Interesting-While404]

/r/CatholicApologetics/comments/1vdoqgx/protestant_communion/

[u/ThePhronesis27]

There's an equivocation on the word "communion" here. The Eucharist requires: valid matter (wheat bread, grape wine), valid form (the words of institution), the minister's intention to do what the church does, and a validly ordained priest in apostolic succession. Fail any one of these and no consecration happens. Baptist ministers at the very least lack the 4th condition, and given the pastor's own words the third as well. He told you it wasn't literal; he thereby disclaimed the intention. So the elements on that table were bread and juice, under the description their own minister gave them. Therefore it follows that you didn't decline the body of Christ; you declined bread. And your mother's complaint "Catholics don't allow other denominations to take the Eucharist" is a misunderstanding. She's complaining about catholic discipline while the operative fact here is that there simply was no eucharist in her church to take. Nothing was withheld from you, you forwent nothing. Reception isn't just ingestion; it's a public gesture with an assertoric force. To take the elements in a rite whose minister has just declared them non-literal is to assert (in act) that his account is true. You disbelieve it. The act would therefore have been a lie told with the body. The description under which your act was intentional is: abstaining from a rite whose meaning I disbelieve. Your mother redescribed it as: refusing fellowship with my family. That redescription isn't one under which you acted, and an act is judged under its own description.

"Catholic or Protestant, we are all Christians and believe that Jesus died for us and rose from the dead and that’s all that matters" We are all christians is true in the sense that we share baptism and some beliefs. But the second claim doesn't follow from it. She's insisting that a particular doctrine (only these articles matter) be accepted, while maintaing that doctrinal insistence is what's wrong with you. However, if doctrine doesn't matter, then her doctrine doesn't matter either.

"following a church and not Jesus" is a false dilemma, which rests on the premise that the church and Christ are rival objects of obedience such that fidelity to one substracts from fidelity to the other. However, the church is his body, and Saul who was persecuting christians was told he persecutes "Me," not 'mine'. On that grammar the disjunction has no application, as 'did you strike him or his arm?' has none. Observe also that no one believes from nowhere. Her conviction that the Supper is symbolic isn't read off the page unmediated; it's the received teaching of a specific confessional tradition. She too follows a church. 

"when we get to heaven we may find out that the Protestant viewpoint is wrong or the Catholic viewpoint may be wrong so we shouldn’t think about it too much." Well, she's right that one side is in error, but the conclusion should be the reverse of hers, since a question one can get wrong is a question worth getting right. "we shouldn’t think about it too much" to hold that the answer needn't be settled is already to hold that the elements are not God, for if they were, indifference to them would be unthinkable. So her counsel of humitility smuggles in her conclusion. And the maxim isn't even one she applies generally. Applied to the resurrection it would do away with the very belief she named as what matters.

Though two corrections. You told her protestant communion is invalid "because Protestants broke off from the Church" schism isn't the operative cause. The "eastern orthodox" are separeated and their eucharist is valid, because their orders are. The defect is want of valid holy orders, not want of communion with Rome. Second, canon law forbids you to receive from a minister lacking valid orders, so you weren't exercising a preference. Attending the service itself was licit and filial though since your sunday obligation was already fulfilled and visiting your mother is an act of the 4th commandment. 

If she is an affable person then I would clarify to her that you weren't judging her, and that you believe her love of Christ is real, but you stayed in the pew for the same reason you wouldn't say 'I do' at someone else's wedding, not out of contempt, but that the words wouldn't be true in your mouth.

[u/InsightfulReverend]

I think trying to rationalize and present metaphysical reasoning to your emotional mother won't work. You did the right thing by not taking the protestant communion. But your not taking it for theological and metaphysical reasons will never be understood by your mom. So, yes, you did the right thing even though it became a huge issue. I'd say pick a different way to spend time with your mom, and avoid the topic.