Very helpful. It should not be thought that permission to communicate the unbaptized is a trivial matter, let alone a gesture of hospitality. It’s adoption would involve a radical reinterpretation of Baptism in a manner which would fundamentally undermine the meaning of the sacrament. “As baptism beginneth life” wrote Richard Hooker. He didn’t mean that Baptism usually occurred in infancy, a sort of rite of passage. He meant that Baptism transforms a person ontologically. In it we are ‘in Christ’ buried and risen to a new life. Not only would communication of the unbaptized trivialize Baptism, it would also transform the Eucharist from the action in which we anticipate the Heavenly Banquet and participate in the Risen life of Christ, into a welcoming meal of temporal fellowship, a sort of glorified Coffee Hour.

There was a time when the essential doctrines of the Church were there, to be received and lived into. More and more these doctrines seem to some to be irresistible targets for change. One has to ask what impels people to treat holy things as mere ‘political’ platforms, as open to revision as party manifestoes. Do they realize that they are handling holy gifts?

Very well said, wvparson.