Origins
The primitive discipline of the Church established a different punishment for certain crimes according as they were committed by laymen or clerics. The former entailed a shorter and ordinarily lighter penance than the latter, which were punished with a special penalty. The layman was excluded from the community of the faithful, the cleric was excluded from the hierarchy and reduced to the lay communion, that is to say, he was forbidden to exercise his functions. The nature of this latter punishment is not quite certain.
According to one opinion, it consisted in excommunication, together with a prohibition to receive the Eucharist; according to another, the penitent was allowed to receive Holy Communion but only with the laity. Canon xv of the so-called Apostolical Canons forbids any priest, residing outside his diocese without authorization, to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice, but grants him permission to receive the Eucharist along with the faithful. The canon lxii ordained that clerics who apostatized during the persecutions were to be received among the laity.
In 251, a letter of Pope Cornelius to Fabius, Bishop of Antioch, informs us that the pope, in presence of all the people received into his communion, but as a layman, one of the bishops guilty of having conferred sacerdotal ordination on the heretic Novatian. A letter of Cyprian of Carthage mentions a certain Trophimus, who was admitted to communion among the laity. There are similar cases, in which we find it stated that the penitent was admitted to receive communion among the laity.
The Council of Elvira (c. 300) which reveals to us in many ways the religious life of an entire ecclesiastical province, in canon lxxvi, à propos of a deacon, mentions the same discipline. This is the most ancient canonical text that speaks of the custom of lay communion.
Read more about this topic: Lay Communion
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