Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis’s Call to Theologians
THOMAS O’LOUGHLIN
(LITURGICAL PRESS, 192 PP, £19.99)
Tablet bookshop price £18 • Tel 020 7799 4064
In November 2015, when asked by the Lutheran wife of a Catholic what more could be done to make it possible for her and her husband to partake of the Lord’s Supper together, Pope Francis, speaking off the cuff, replied: “I make your question my own – I ask myself: is sharing the Lord’s Supper the end of a journey or is it the viaticum for walking together? I leave the question to the theologians …”
This is the response of the Irish theologian, Thomas O’Loughlin, professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham, to the Pope’s apparent suggestion that theologians open up a discussion of the issue of eucharistic hospitality. Can the practice of the Catholic Church be changed to allow baptised Christians belonging to other churches and Christian communities to share fully at the table when they take part in a Eucharist celebration presided over by a Catholic priest?
