Last week the Jesuit Gerard W. Hughes took a more relaxed approach to sharing the Eucharist than that displayed by the British and Irish bishops in their document One Bread One Body. But this week a Tablet assistant editor argues for caution in extending an open communion policy. INTERCOMMUNION is an emotional matter. I myself have sat in a pew fuming with rage and shame as I have seen a non-Catholic bride on her wedding day barred from Communion. I have spoken to an Anglican who was obviously deeply disturbed at my asking for a mere blessing at the Church of England Eucharist we had just attended together. And I have heard of retreatants being so furious about non-Catholics not being included at Communion that they have been quite unable to continue with their prayers.

So it is not surprising that there is a great, possibly an irresistible, drive towards an open Communion policy between the Churches. It is what the people want, and moreover it is what the people are practising, whether the Catholic hierarchy like it or not. If the change is not led from above, it will be forced from below.

But this is not an article to promote intercommunion, rather to urge people to think twice about it. I am not suggesting that those in inter-church families or other special relationships, who have thought through the issues and made decisions of conscience, are doing the wrong thing and should change their practice, at a cost of much hurtful disruption. But I am suggesting that the increasingly prevalent assumption that Catholics ought to practise intercommunion needs some questioning. One Catholic choirboy was deprived of his position in an Anglican cathedral choir solely because he declined to do so. There are some good theological reasons for observing the Church?s discipline, as well as some bad ones of blind institutional obedience.

For many people intercommunion is a simple matter of welcoming. Just as Jesus turned no one away, so ? the argument goes ? we should turn no one away from his table. But this is a superficial argument. Its shortcomings are apparent when we consider the implication that non-Christians as much as Christians should be given the sacrament. This is not just a theoretical problem, for the issue is a real one when the Eucharist is celebrated in the presence of people of other faiths, particularly very tolerant, inclusive faiths like Hinduism or Buddhism.

Most Christians would think it a step too far to offer them Communion, for that would strip the Eucharist of its meaning as an explicit, conscious commitment to Christ. If we want a symbol of welcome, we can use blessed (not consecrated) bread, as some Eastern rites do. Or we can invite non-Christians to share any meal with us other than the one in which we make an explicit commitment to worship Christ as our Lord. Non-Christians do not wish to make that affirmation, and it is dishonest to entice them to make a symbolic action that implicitly says what they would consciously deny.

Welcoming is one of the meanings of the Eucharist, but it has so many more meanings, which richly overlap, adding up to an inexhaustible mystery. The Eucharist is also a Passover meal, the Last Supper, a covenant commitment, a thanksgiving, a breakfast where Christ asks us if we love him, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, food for the journey, milk from the mother?s breast, bodily intimacy in love, a blood-brotherhood with Jesus, solidarity with the Church throughout the world, union with those who have died, and much more besides.

Perhaps most powerfully of all, in the Eucharist we face the question that Jesus asked the sons of Zebedee: Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink? Only tentatively and fearfully can we dare to say yes and put our lips to that cup, accepting the sacrifice of Christ, and drawing our life from the shedding of blood that killed him. Going to Communion is no light matter. And so the early Church made the Eucharist a secret rite for initiates, not an open table for all.

Somewhere in among the meanings of the Eucharist is an expression of communion with the Bishop of Rome as the channel of unity with the worldwide Church. It is not very high up the list, but it is part of the total picture. That is why the teaching document One Bread One Body ? in which the bishops of Britain and Ireland provide a superb introduction to the theology of the Eucharist ? did not permit indiscriminate sharing of the Catholic sacrament by those from other Churches.

However, the tightly restrictive conditions under which they did approve such sharing reflected a serious and tragically unnecessary misjudgement. In an attempt to secure a standardisation of practice between dioceses, the bishops unwittingly backtracked on some responsible progress that had been made at an official level by other dioceses. If they did not realise they had put their foot in it before the outcry, they certainly realised it afterwards.

I find it offensive to deny the sacrament to those we know are courageously and faithfully committed to Christ. It offends me not because it is unwelcoming, but because the refusal implies a lie: it suggests that they are not quite ready to drink the cup of Christ?s covenant, but the truth is that they are often more ready than we Catholics are to do so.

However, sharing the Catholic Eucharist with other Christians raises quite different issues from intercommunion the other way round, when Catholics receive, for example, in Anglican churches. I used to think this was different but easier. Now I believe it is different but more difficult.

There is such a wide variation in Anglican beliefs about the status of the Communion bread, that I used to be sure I would have at least as high an understanding of it as many of their own members. I could receive this Eucharist for whatever it was, God only knew. At the least it was a symbol and a remembrance, and many low-church Anglicans insisted it was no more than that anyway. So there could be no objection to my participation, I thought.

But I was pulled up short one day as I was proudly explaining my practice to a senior Anglican bishop. I expected his approval but instead he looked at me severely and said, I don?t think you should do it unless you believe it is Holy Communion. Not a word more. Suddenly I saw intercommunion from a new perspective.

Do I believe the Anglican Eucharist is Holy Communion? That is, do I believe it is the same as the Catholic Eucharist? I don?t believe it isn?t. It is just that I am not sure. I cannot believe that Christ would deny the gift of himself to anyone who asked to receive him in faith. But the normal fullness of the sacramental process is that we receive the Body of Christ Jesus, hidden in the form of bread, through the mediation of the Body of Christ, which is the Church. The Body of Christ gives us the Body of Christ. So I know the Catholic sacrament is the Body of Christ, because the Church has given me her guarantee.

But where Catholic communion has been broken, something has to be different about the Eucharist. Maybe not even the Reality, maybe no more than the mechanism of reaching the Reality. (In sacramental terminology: maybe not even the res, maybe no more than the es et sacramentum.) Someone who receives the Anglican Eucharist may become One Body with Christ, but they are not sharing in the same way in the One Bread. That Oneness of Bread cannot be asserted unilaterally, only recognised bilaterally. The loaf must be one before it is broken and shared.

So if I am asked, Is this the same as your Holy Communion?, then I cannot unequi-vocally say, Amen.

WHEN the bishop made his comment, I began to see that Anglicans read more into Catholics sharing their Communion than I had realised. This is why Anglicans will often say how much it means to them when a Catholic receives at their table. They are saying, Thank you for recognising our orders and accepting that our Eucharist is the Real Thing. Conversely, it is why Anglicans will often express keen hurt when their offer of shared Communion is turned down. In the end a welcome refused is a rebuff. They know only too well the reason for refusing the invitation, and it hurts.

Catholics sometimes choose to avoid giving offence by accepting the invitation even if they are not sure of the status of the sacrament. But that may not be a very honest way of proceeding. Intercommunion is an emotional issue, all right, and to talk about it even in the pages of a Catholic paper may be tactless.

One more point is worth making. Communion is not an individual matter, but of its nature a community matter, involving indeed not just the local community but the whole Body of Christ. There is therefore something inappropriate about people making individual decisions about whose Eucharist they will accept. Anglican Communion with a woman priest may feel great, but how about Communion with a less congenial Church, such as one of the fundamentalist sects which promote physical punishment of children? This is not just for me to decide. If I have placed myself in communion with one Church, then that Church has a say about the others with whom I may place myself in communion.

If all this sounds depressingly negative, there is one great consolation, and that is the beauty of being blessed. To remain sitting in the pew is to be excluded. But to go forward up to the altar, and to feel on your head the tender touch of another person, willing God?s blessing upon you, maybe in words addressed personally to you by name, and then to go back to your pew still able to feel where that hand had touched you, and to remember those words in your ears . . . this is a different form of communion. And though it may be what the old books of piety called a silver communion rather than a golden one, it is not to be missed for the world.

Back to homepage