From Baptism of Desire to Kasper’s Communion of Desire

Father Feeney expressed concern in his lectures about the abuse of the idea of spiritual communions. Not that he was opposed to the devotion as it was promoted by many saints for those who, in past times, were not permitted to receive every day. But he was worried over the fact that liberals were equating spiritual communion with Real Eucharistic Communion, as if the former could effect the same grace as the latter.  Father, no doubt, counseled those who were reluctant to receive because of some uncertainty in their mind as to their state of grace to make a spiritual communion, but he did not want them to make a habit of it. It was a good thing to do, but it was not a Eucharistic thing to do. Eucharist means “good thanks” and the best way to thank God at Mass is to accept His invitation to Holy Communion.

In Holy Communion, Jesus assimilates us into Himself in an utterly unique way. The full effect of this cannot be accomplished by a mere spiritual communion. Father’s chapter on the “Great Gift of God” in his book Bread of Life is all about this. “Christianity is a concorporeal spiritual life!” Father writes, and “The same cowards who make the Church an invisible society, have tried to make the Blessed Eucharist a purely spiritual communion, with nothing to do with our body. The priest says in the Mass: ‘Corpus tuum, Domine, quod sumpsi, et Sanguis quem potavi, adhaereat visceribus meis . . .— ‘May Thy Body, O Lord, which I have received, and Thy Blood which I have drunk, cleave unto my entrails . . . .’ May we be formed and fashioned out of the same substance, concorporeally united, so that we may become other Christs.” If you have not read Bread of Life you are missing out on a theological and devotional masterpiece.

Cardinal Walter Kasper has taken spiritual communion, or what he calls a “sacrament of desire,” to a new level of equivocal abuse. In his interview with EWTN journalist Raymond Arroyo he expressed his position by referring to none other than Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI). Monica Migliorino Miller, writing for Crisis Magazine, offers an excellent commentary: “In 1994 the then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a letter to bishops affirming that divorced and remarried Catholics are not permitted to receive the Eucharist, yet they may avail themselves of “spiritual communion.” Kasper seizes on this point and argues that by spiritual communion the person is “united with Christ he cannot live in grave sin, this would be a contradiction.” He believes if the divorced and remarried can receive the spiritual benefits of Holy Communion through “spiritual communion” (through sacrament of desire) it is illogical to forbid them to actually receive the Eucharist.” You can read her timely and insightful article here.