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PHILL - Has there been any point in time where not those not holding the priesthood were allowed to help administer the sacrament?
JOEL -
If you think about it this happens every Sunday when members, both men and women, pass the sacrament to the person sitting next to them in the pews.
The Church Handbook says:
"Priests and Melchizedek Priesthood holders may bless the sacrament. Deacons, teachers, priests, and Melchizedek Priesthood holders may pass the sacrament.
After a priesthood holder hands a sacrament tray to a member, others may pass the tray from one to another for convenience." (CHI 20.4.3)
Blessing the sacrament does require priesthood authority. D&C 20:58 says, “But neither teachers nor deacons have authority to baptize, administer the sacrament, or lay on hands”
But passing the bread or water trays to another member actually requires no priesthood; if it did the deacons would have to walk up and down every pew to present it to each member.
In 1899, Apostle Francis Marion Lyman addressed the First Sunday School Convention, and gave a Q-and-A-style address. In it, he said,
Question: Have members not holding the Priesthood the right to pass the sacrament?
Answer: You pass it to one another, do you not, all the time, all you sisters and all you brethren? Then why ask the question? The administering of the sacrament is not passing it to the people. The administering of the sacrament is when the brethren offer the prayer in blessing the bread or water. That is the administration of the sacrament. That cannot be done by Deacons, nor by members of the Church who do not bear the Priesthood.
(Francis M. Lyman, “The Administration of the Sacrament in the Sunday School,” Proceedings of the Sunday School Convention 74, 77 (1899))
But the way it is done now, requiring a priesthood holder to take the trays from the Sacrament table to the congregation, has been the authorized way for many years and should be followed.
This hasn't always been so. There were times, for example, during world wars when there were not many priesthood holders in a ward,
it was the practice for non-priesthood holding members, both men and women, to prepare the sacrament table and pass the sacrament
In the Journal of Mormon History it says the following:
"there was "no rule in the Church" that only priesthood bearers
could carry the sacrament to the congregation after it was
blessed. While it was "custom" for priesthood men or boys to
pass around the bread and water, he (President Heber J Grant) said, "it would in no wise
invalidate the ordinance" if some "worthy young brethren lacking
priesthood performed it in the absence of ordained boys" and he
had "no objection" if it were done.
Women and custodians usually prepared the sacrament table,
so it did not appear on a list of priesthood duties until 1933.
As late as 1943, the Presiding Bishopric publicized for bishops
the example of young women in one ward who "take care
of washing and sterilizing the sacrament sets after each service."
Annette Steeneck Huntington recalled that during the
1930s in Emigration Stake, the "young girls in MIA . . . filled the
water cups in the kitchen and placed the bread on the trays. We
then prepared the Sacrament table with the cloth and trays on
it. It was a wonderful privilege I shall always remember."
Journal of Mormon History
Young women have also helped collect fast offerings in the past:
Women blessing and passing the sacrament is documented in the the book: Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany)
But it would only have been done under extremely unusual circumstances, such as in Nazi Germany, for non-priesthood holding men and women to bless the sacrament and I guess technically that would invaidate the ordinance, but the spirit of the ordiance could still be there.
In our time there would be very little need to have non-priesthood holding members to participate in the administration of the sacrament.
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