Cardinal Arinze: "We cannot share Communion"

Catholic News Network on May 25, 2018 Cardinal Arinze: If Protestants want to receive Communion, they should become Catholic
“What does the Church do that is as great as the Mass?” asked Cardinal Arinze. “The Church has only one possession equal to the Mass and that is another Mass. Nothing else.
“It is very important to look at the doctrine,” he added. “The Eucharistic celebration of the Mass is not an ecumenical service. It is not a gathering of those who believe in Christ and who invent a prayer for the occasion. It is a celebration of the mysteries of Christ who died for us on the Cross, who made bread into His body and wine into His blood and told the Apostles ‘do this in memory of me’.
“So the Eucharistic celebration of the Mass is the celebration of the faith community, those who believe in Christ. They are communicating in the faith, and in the sacraments, and in ecclesiastical communion, not now Holy Communion but ecclesiastical unity with their pastor, their bishop and the Pope. It is the community that celebrates the Holy Eucharist. Anybody who is not a member of that community does not fit in at all.
“It isn’t just that we wish one another well. After Mass, you can have a cup of tea and even a glass of beer and a bit of cake. That’s OK. But the Mass is not like that.
“But we wish other Christians well. The Holy Eucharist is not our private possession which we can share with our friends. Our tea is such and also our bottle of beer. We can share those with our friends.”
He said that if Protestants wished to receive Communion in Catholic churches they should become Catholics. “Come, be received into the Church and then you can receive Holy Communion seven times a week. Otherwise, no.”
Furthermore, Catholics who have committed mortal sins must receive absolution before they can receive the Eucharist, he said.
“If a person is not in a state of grace, even if he receives Holy Communion five times a day he doesn’t get grace at all but he commits five sacrileges because he wasn’t well prepared,” he says. “It means that the Holy Eucharist is for those in the Catholic faith and fold who hold on to that faith and who are well disposed. For the same reason you can see if a person is divorced and remarried then there is a problem. Christ said [that] he who drives away his wife or husband and marries another… Christ has one word: adultery. It is not we who made that. It is not a Vatican law. It is Christ who said it.
www.catholicherald.co.uk/…/cardinal-arinze…