Communion with the Catholic Church

Full communion exists where the visible bonds of the Catholic faith, the sacraments, and submission to legitimate ecclesiastical governance are intact. It includes the Latin Church and all twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches sui iuris. Diversity of rite, canon law, spirituality, and theological expression does not lessen their equal Catholic dignity or their communion with the bishop of Rome.^[1]

Full communion is not a claim that every Catholic is personally holy. It describes an objective ecclesial relation. A baptized Catholic who obstinately rejects faith or ecclesiastical communion can wound or break that relation through heresy, apostasy, or schism even while baptism's sacramental character remains.

Baptism validly conferred by washing with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit incorporates a person into Christ and creates a sacramental bond of Christian unity. The baptized in separated communities are therefore truly Christians in imperfect communion, not pagans and not strangers to every grace of the Church. The extent of communion varies according to the ecclesial goods a community retains.^[2]

Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Christians belong to separated Churches that Catholic doctrine recognizes as true particular or local Churches because they preserve apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist. Anglican and Protestant bodies without a valid episcopate and Eucharist are ecclesial communities rather than Churches in the proper sense. This terminology concerns objective ecclesial structure; it does not rank personal virtue or presume the sacramental history of every individual.

Because the Eastern non-Catholic Churches possess valid sacraments, Catholic law permits limited sacramental sharing under strict conditions. When necessity or genuine spiritual advantage recommends it, danger of error or indifferentism is avoided, and access to a Catholic minister is physically or morally impossible, a Catholic may receive Penance, Eucharist, or Anointing of the Sick from a non-Catholic minister in whose Church those sacraments are valid. The discipline of the minister's own Church must also be respected.^[3]

Catholic ministers may administer those three sacraments to properly disposed members of Eastern Churches who ask on their own accord. Other baptized Christians may receive them only in danger of death or another grave necessity judged by competent authority, provided they cannot approach their own minister, ask freely, manifest Catholic faith concerning the sacrament, and are properly disposed. These are pastoral exceptions, not ordinary intercommunion.

Those without valid baptism are not in Christian ecclesial communion, but they are not outside God's providence or the Church's missionary concern. The Jewish people hold a unique relation to Christianity: Israel first received the covenants, Scriptures, worship, promises, and patriarchs, and from Israel came Christ according to the flesh. God's gifts and calling are irrevocable; the Jews must never be represented as rejected or accursed by God.^[4][5]

The irrevocability of God's covenant with Israel does not establish a second saving path parallel to Jesus Christ. Dual-covenant theology, if it means that Jews are saved by a covenant independent of Christ, is incompatible with the universal mediation of Christ and the Church's duty to witness to him as Redeemer of all. How God's fidelity to Israel and the universal salvation wrought by Christ are joined remains a divine mystery, not permission to deny either truth.^[6]

Muslims profess the faith of Abraham and adore the one merciful Creator, although they deny the Trinity, Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection as Christianity confesses them. Other religions can preserve real moral and spiritual goods and rays of the Truth that enlightens every person, while lacking the fullness revealed in Christ. Those who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel, yet sincerely seek God and strive under grace to do his will, may attain salvation only through Christ's grace, never by religious error as such.^[7]