Validity of the Eucharist

A validly ordained priest or bishop is required to confect the Eucharist. Canon 900 identifies the valid minister, while canon 924 requires wheaten bread and natural grape wine. The Eucharistic Prayer must contain the form handed on by the Church, and the minister must intend to do what the Church does. Gestis verbisque treats matter, form, and intention as an integrated ecclesial act rather than a magical minimum.^[2]

Validity differs from liceity, reverence, and fruitfulness. A valid celebration can be gravely unlawful; a lawful celebration can be received fruitlessly by one who lacks the proper disposition. Liturgical abuse is serious without every abuse being invalidating, and a private observer should not declare invalidity where the sacramental facts or the Church's judgment are uncertain.

The Eucharist both signifies and builds ecclesial communion. Lumen gentium 26 describes the Particular Church gathered around its bishop at the altar, and Unitatis redintegratio 15 joins Apostolic Succession, priesthood, and Eucharist. A valid episcopate and priesthood are therefore constitutive of a Church in the Proper Sense rather than optional credentials added to a complete community.^[3][4]

Recognition of a valid Eucharist does not by itself establish Full Communion or make every sacramental sharing lawful. Conversely, the absence of a valid Eucharist does not deny that valid baptism, Scripture, prayer, faith, charity, and other Elements of Sanctification and Truth can nourish Christian life in an Ecclesial Community.

The Catholic Church recognizes the Eucharist of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, Oriental Orthodox Churches, and Assyrian Church of the East because they preserve valid bishops and priests in Apostolic Succession. They are true particular or local Churches, although the wound of separation and unresolved differences prevent Full Communion and ordinary Eucharistic concelebration.

The Anaphora of Addai and Mari illustrates why validity is judged by the Church rather than by a mechanical search for one sentence. After historical, liturgical, and theological study, the CDF concluded in 2001 that this ancient Assyrian anaphora is valid: the institution narrative is present in a dispersed euchological form, within an apostolic Church that retains Eucharistic faith and intention.^[5]

Apostolicae curae judged Anglican ordinations invalid, and subsequent ecumenical dialogue has not altered the Catholic judgment on the Anglican Communion's orders. Anglican celebrations therefore do not, as celebrations of that communion, confect the Eucharist in the Catholic sacramental sense, even though Anglican worship can contain Scripture, prayer, thanksgiving, and other genuine Christian goods.^[6]

The same sacramental consequence applies to Protestant ecclesial communities that lack Apostolic Succession and a valid priesthood. The 2007 CDF Responses says that such communities have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery and are not Churches in the proper sense. This is not a claim that every Protestant celebration is spiritually empty, nor may a denominational label replace competent examination in an unusual individual case.^[7]