On what grounds does the Catholic church reject sacraments of protestant denominations?

Question

While there is a wide range of opinion among adult-baptism protestants as to whether a Catholic (or other infant) baptism is or can be considered valid, there seems to be (at least in my experience) a general attitude that Catholic communion and marriage are considered valid by protestants. That is to say, if a protestant were to visit a Catholic church and participate in the Eucharist (communion), most protestants would not have a problem with this (whether the Catholic church would allow this is another question). And certainly if a couple got married in the Catholic church, and later became protestant, no protestant church (that I'm aware of) would require a re-marriage (then again, if a couple gets married before they are Christian at all, I've never heard of any protestant churches requiring a re-marriage in this case, either).

However, if a protestant couple gets married, then later becomes Catholic, they must be re-married in the Catholic church (or at least this is my understanding!). And Catholics are not permitted (by the Catholic church) to participate in a non-Catholic communion (with a few possible exceptions?). I don't know if Catholics recognize a protestant baptism, or require re-baptism when a protestant becomes a Catholic. (Related question here)

So my question is: On what grounds does the Catholic church reject communion, marriage, and (possibly) baptism of protestants?

Answer 1

I think @DavidStratton's answer takes a good "root cause" approach but I'd like to look at the surface of things a bit as well. I noted in my comment above that protestant baptisms and marriages are not categorically rejected by the Catholic Church so I'll just focus on communion. There are three main reasons why Catholics wouldn't receive communion from protestants:

• Intercommunion signifies a unity of faith that doesn't exist. For Catholics the act of receiving Holy Communion is, among many other things, a public statement of faith: "I believe what this Church teaches in general, and I believe in particular what this Church teaches about the Eucharist"

• Most protestants don't believe the doctrine that in Catholic traditional language is called "transubstantiation". So in a Catholic's eyes, a protestant community holding a communion service is, objectively speaking, doing something other than what the Lord commanded in Luke 22:19. This obviously makes for some insurmountable difficulties.

• Even those protestants who do believe in transubstantiation, by whatever name, almost certainly don't believe in an ordained priesthood in the same way that Catholics do -- which would almost certainly mean that they don't have what the Catholic Church would consider a valid priesthood. And only validly ordained priests are able to confect the Eucharist validly. So even in the (I assume rare?) case of a protestant community that professes a faith in the Eucharist which is indistinguishable from the Catholic doctrine, there would still be the objective problem of validity of the sacrament.

Answer 2

I believe that @Justin Y's answer to an earlier question of mine has the key to the answer to your question as well. My question was "What is the doctrinal or Scriptural basis for a central Church authority"

In his answer, Justin stated this:

A central church authority is a necessary byproduct of believing that certain ordinances are necessary for salvation. Ordinances often have rules for who can be administered to as well as how it must be done. Church authority is a very orderly and efficient way to regulate those requirements. The Old Testament is an excellent example of this. Notice that churches who put more emphasis on ordinances also have more structure (Catholic, Orthodox, and LDS churches, as well as the Jewish faith). And it's not just a good way to regulate the ordinances, but also a good way to regulate doctrine.

The simple answer is that the Catholic Church, like Orthodoxy, as well as some other denominations, teaches that authority must be ordained, or passed along from someone who has the authority to do so. The entire governing structure of the church is based upon these concepts. Therefore, ordinances performed by someone who is not authorized to perform them would be deemed invalid.

In a secular comparison, only accredited schools have the authority to hand out diplomas that are seen as valid. If I were to hand you a diploma for a Computer Science degree, I doubt anyone would accept it as valid because I don't have the authority to hand out college degrees. If you were to apply for a job that required such a degree, they would likely require you to get it from an accredited school, because mine is invalid.

Answer 3

I'm not sure, but I don't think that it's required to get re-married if a couple converts to Catholicism. While researching an answer to this question on annulment, I found multiple sources that say:

...every marriage, whether between Catholics, Christians of other denominations, or non-baptized persons, is presumed to be valid.

Answer 4

I think there are two reasons protestants may tend to be more relaxed about this than Catholics.

The first comes down to the word "Sacrament". Many, perhaps even most, protestants just don't believe in sacraments as such. Sure, we believe there are things we are commanded to do as part of our worship, but instead of rising to the level of a sacrament we would instead say that a Christian who fails to do such things sins, and praise God for the grace made possible by the blood of Jesus. So because of the idea that the sacraments are less directly connected to salvation and membership in the body of Christ, it makes less sense to be strict about rules of who, when, and where.

The second is that protestants have a more direct line to God, so to speak. We don't seek approval of any priest, bishop, cardinal, or pope, and therefore don't need their permission to participate in any act of worship. Neither would we want to deny that worship to anyone else, but instead want to make the Good News accessible to as many as possible as easily as possible.