Communion of the Minister

To n. 537.

"II. The Roman Ritual, typical edition, title IV, chap. II, where the order of administering sacred Communion to those communicating both outside Mass and before or after it, and also within Mass, is described, at n. 11 has these words: 'The Priest offers the Eucharist to those communicating, beginning with the ministers of the altar, if they wish to communicate.' Likewise in decree n. 1074, of the Gauls, July 13, 1658, on the proposed doubt: Whether in Communion within Mass the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist is to be administered first to the minister serving the Mass rather than to nuns or the others present there? The Sacred Congregation of Rites ordered the answer: In the aforesaid case the minister of the sacrifice is to be preferred to the others, although more dignified, not by reason of preeminence, but of ministry.

"Whence it is asked: Whether the word minister of the altar or of the sacrifice in these and similar documents of the Sacred Congregation of Rites is to be restricted exclusively to ministers already constituted in minor orders, or at least tonsured, or rather whether by the word ministers are to be understood all, whoever they are, whether laymen or clerics, who serve Mass?

"Response to II. By the name of minister of the altar or of the sacrifice of the Mass comes any cleric or layman serving Mass at the altar, who is to be preferred to others in the distribution of the sacred Synaxis; taking care nevertheless that clerics be preferred to a layman serving, and that to clerics of a lesser order others constituted in a greater order be preferred, or persons who possess a higher dignity to be attended to liturgically either per se, as kings, or by accident, as spouses in a Mass for blessing nuptials." Sacred Congregation of Rites, January 30, 1915, Roman, ad 2.