Addiction and the Reception of Holy Communion: Pastoral Guidance Informed by the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas

ABSTRACT: This essay evaluates the frequent pastoral guidance offered to Catholics suffering from addiction: that they should sacramentally receive Holy Communion after losing sobriety, even without prior priestly absolution, on account of their mitigated culpability, their need for the sacrament, and the canonical exception to the confession requirement. After treating Aquinas’s account of diminished voluntariness, I present an argument from fittingness against such counsel. Instead, I propose that reverential Eucharistic abstinence is ordinarily more beneficial to an addicted person post-relapse than is presuming the right to reception. My argument is based, in part, upon the recurring Thomistic principle that a positive desire for the Blessed Sacrament, rooted in faith and charity, suffices to obtain the grace of the sacrament.