Road to unity opens again

More than 40 years ago, official representatives of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches announced that they had achieved substantial agreement on the doctrine of the Eucharist. It was seen as a major breakthrough over what was one of the most divisive issues at the time of the Reformation and after. Yet it continues to divide today. In earlier centuries, it was divisive largely because each side, Anglican and Catholic, preferred to emphasise their points of disagreement with the other for reasons which had much to do with the politics of the time. The divisiveness remains, despite the 1971 joint statement, because access to Communion in each other’s services is still opposed by the Catholic Church. Under the new mood in ecumenical relations since the election of Pope Francis, is it not time this problem was addressed?

To pose this as a question is to recognise that real difficulties remain. When Rome’s response finally came, in 1991, it was broadly negative: the degree of agreement was not sufficient. It is still the case, therefore, that Anglicans attending Catholic Masses are not invited to take Communion, but instead are offered a blessing by the priest. This can cause painful feelings of rejection. In exceptional circumstances – for instance if a member of the Church of England is holidaying in rural Spain – the bar on receiving Communion at a Catholic Mass is relaxed. It is in any event self-enforced. The fact that exceptions are already allowed suggests further exceptions would not necessarily raise new difficulties. The easiest cases would be where Catholics and Anglicans attend residential conferences together, or joint services during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Inter-denominational marriages are a similar issue, where both partners attend a Catholic Mass.

The chief architect of the Vatican’s reaction, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is now the Pope Emeritus. His great fear was of rela­tivism – the idea that differences do not really matter because all truth is subjective. With Pope Francis, the emphasis is different. If the current co-chairmen of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, Archbishop Bernard Longley and Archbishop David Moxon, are tempted to reopen the intercommunion issue, there is no time like the present. It does not necessarily involve the mutual recognition of ministries, which would only be raised if the issue were about Catholics receiving Anglican Holy Communion.

The 1971 agreement was perhaps a little naive in supposing that all historical issues could be laid to rest. Holy Communion was a major battleground in the battle of ideas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Test Acts, for instance, required recusant Catholics to deny the truth of transubstantiation or be banished from public life, and face penalties for refusing to attend services of the Church of England. Thus there is a “truth and reconciliation” issue to be dealt with here, and the fault was not all on one side. But mutual goodwill is such that an honest appreciation of each community’s different historical narratives could be a source of strength, not weakness. Extending “eucharistic hospitality” to fellow Christians more broadly than at present could be a dramatic sign that the Catholic Church is renewing itself in the light of the Gospel, and that Catholic ecumenism is open for business once more.