Questions of inter-communion

The question of who can receive Holy Communion in the Roman Catholic Church has raised much debate and, at times, conflict. The great sacrament of communion, which is the Eucharist, has, in the context of Christian division, been the occasion of exclusion and much suffering, especially, but not exclusively, among family members from different Christian traditions.

The Roman Catholic Church understands itself as the Church in which the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church professed in the Nicene Creed subsists. It does not simply state that it is that Church in an exclusive sense, but rather that the Church of Christ fully ‘subsists in’ the Roman Catholic Church, whose visible head is the Pope, the Bishop of Rome and successor of Saint Peter (Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 8).