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In February 2001 I was asked to speak to interchurch families about sharing communion, and wanted to use some material gathered from the Eucharistic Sharing/Authority (ES/A) study in 1999-2000 (Interchurch Families, 2000, 8,2, pp.14-15). A recent book by Linda Hogan, Confronting the Truth: Conscience in the Catholic Tradition (Paulist Press/Darton, Longman and Todd, New Jersey/London, 2000/2001) offered a framework within which that material could be understood. I spoke therefore about the role of conscience in the decisions made by interchurch families about eucharistic sharing. This is a shortened version of the talk. I am indebted to Linda Hogan for her stimulating study.
The framework of the ES/A study was authority as exercised in the Roman Catholic Church, because that was the concern of the overarching Authority and Governance Project. Now it is the constant teaching of the Catholic Church that conscience must always be obeyed, as the voice of God to us. Alongside that however, there is an expectation that the judgements of an informed conscience will be in agreement with church teaching. But what if they aren’t? Is it a case of either obeying your conscience or obeying the teaching of the church, as if these are two authorities in opposition?
Linda Hogan proposes that we recast discussion of the role of conscience, following not a legalistic tradition but the personalist approach of Vatican II. Instead of asking, What is the status of church teaching? What kind of authority does it have? What kind of obedience is it due? she proposes that we ask firstly: How is the person to act on his/her conscientious decisions and what should his/her approach be when church teaching does not coincide with it? This avoids two distinct authorities vying with each other. I shall follow this approach in studying eucharistic sharing in interchurch families.
A decision to marry
We start with the person. The first decision in conscience to be made is whether
to marry this other person with whom we have fallen in love, with whom we want
to spend our lives learning to love. This other person is not a member of our
own church communion – here I am of course thinking particularly of Roman
Catholics marrying other Christians. We know this adds a complicating factor
to an already hazardous commitment.
The decision to marry is made by two separate persons; the two together decide what kind of marriage it will be. In trying to tease out which decisions are made by the couple and which by the partners individually, I was struck by the couple who said: We decided to be a two-church family, and all our other decisions stemmed from that. I think they were saying that they had decided to be a particular kind of interchurch family. They had decided to own their situation in a very explicit way, conscious that they shared the sacraments of baptism and of marriage, and determined to deepen and to express that sacramental communion as far as they could.
It is a matter of simple observation that this would not be true of all, indeed of most, marriages between Roman Catholics and other Christians. It seems to me that this fact makes sense of the approach taken by the 1993 Ecumenical Directory. On the one hand, it identifies those who ‘share the sacraments of baptism and marriage’ as an example of a possible circumstance of need for eucharistic sharing (alongside danger of death). On the other hand, it foresees that this need will only be experienced by way of exception in particular cases.
It is within the conviction that God has called us into this interchurch marriage, and in response we will endeavour whole-heartedly to ‘become an interchurch family’ in the fullest possible sense, that the need for eucharistic sharing is experienced, that married persons want to share communion. Yet even within this context the need is not always experienced. The very first ES/A group I went to included a young couple who worship together in both churches every Sunday; the Methodist husband said that it didn’t particularly matter to him that he couldn’t receive communion in the Catholic church. I had assumed that in AIF groups there would be that desire, but after that, I put a preliminary question in each group: have you wanted to share communion together?
Needs and desires
It seems to me that the language of the Code and the Directory in talking of
‘grave and pressing need’, and that of Pope John Paul II in Ut Unum
Sint in speaking of ‘great desire’ is trying to dig down to the
level of conscience. If the need and desire is truly found at that level it
seems to be recognised as having a certain binding force, to which church authority
can and should respond. Is the desire to share eucharistic communion by those
who already share the sacraments of baptism and marriage truly experienced as
a conscientious conviction, at the level where the human person responds to
God? The official Pastoral Commentary accompanying the Canadian guidelines on
eucharistic sharing says: ‘Ultimately, the non-Catholic spouses themselves
will determine the occasions of ecclesial and family significance when they
have a serious spiritual need for the Eucharist’. The implication is that
nobody else can tell them exactly when they experience that need and desire
as the voice of God.
How do we arrive at the point where we recognise our spiritual need, our deep desire, as of God, so that we have to be very careful about what we allow to stop our response? I remember a Catholic wife saying, Maybe what I want to do is more important than it should be – after One Bread One Body ought we to check with our parish priest because he’s definitely breaking the rules – ought we to check that it’s OK for us to continue. This document from the British and Irish Catholic Bishops (One Bread One Body, October 1998) officially gave for Britain and Ireland a more restrictive application of the norms of the 1993 Ecumenical Directory from Rome than many had hoped for. Some couples who were receiving together on a continuing basis did check it out, and were usually reassured. Our parish priest was not so anxious about OBOB as we were! said one couple. Others felt that if the parish priest wanted to change his attitude on a matter so important to them, it was up to him to say so. Their responsibility was to continue a practice on which they had made a conscientious decision.
A fundamental conviction
It seems to me that there is a fundamental conviction that has come over time
to shape the conscience of some (not all) interchurch families in this area.
It could be articulated something like this: God has led us into this marriage.
God has not called either of us to change our church allegiance. God has bound
us together in the communion of marriage as well as that of baptism. God has
called us to be a domestic church. It is good for our marriage that we should
receive eucharistic communion together; that is the normal way by which our
domestic church can be sustained and built up. We must therefore share eucharistic
communion so far as we can. We recognise this as a fundamental need and a deep
desire. We shall try to articulate this fundamental conviction and to live by
it, and make the choices we continually have to make in relation to it. It is
not a question of keeping rules and laws, but rather of working towards what
we have discovered to be good for us in our particular context – while
taking account of the good of others.
Of course we must take account of the consciences of others – of clergy who celebrate, of members of the communities in which a eucharist is celebrated. As Fr Ladislas Orsy said at the Virginia conference, if we want to be healers in a wounded church, we can’t do it by taking short-cuts that involve pushing other people out of the way (Interchurch Families, 1997, 5,1, pp.10-11). There is the reciprocity of consciences involved.
But how have we come to our fundamental conviction, and how do we make the particular decisions that must be made over and over again? I follow Linda Hogan’s outline in suggesting that we use our intellect or reasoning powers, our intuition, our emotions, our imagination, our capacity for spiritual discernment. We are engaged as persons at every level of our being. We will look at each of these five elements in turn, but first there is another point to note.
A complicating element for us, as partners and parents, is the need to shape our consciences together. We come from different church traditions with different attitudes to eucharistic sharing; we aren’t always at the same point as one another; there is the continual need to dialogue, to be patient with one another. In the groups I noticed that sometimes one partner would want the other to be in a place where they weren’t. A Methodist wife: I wish he would receive communion in my church. An Anglican husband: I wish she would receive communion in my church, because it’s the only way we’re going to be able to share communion. (They were both referring to the local church.) A Catholic wife: I wish he would ask. Even if we share a fundamental conviction that eucharistic sharing is right for us as a couple, we may differ quite a lot about how and when it is right to act on that conviction; how far the circumstances of each particular decision should influence us. There is also the question of a balance between the churches to be considered – a balance that affects our marriage.
1 Using our reason
There is much intellectual work to be done; some we have done together in the
Association of Interchurch Families, and we cannot think of this without naming
John Coventry, who laid a firm foundation. But we each have to use our powers
of reason for ourselves, and I saw a lot of evidence in the ES/A groups of people
doing this, struggling to define and redefine the problem, to be logical and
coherent. I saw some looking at the decisions that face us in the light of church
teaching at various levels and in the light of Scripture. I saw people prepared
to ask advice and to take account of the views of others who were felt to be
trust-worthy. I saw some taking account of the guidelines on eucharistic sharing
issued in other countries.
Particularly interesting is the way people use Scripture in coming to their decisions. The bishops I interviewed went straight to John 6 and texts about the eucharist. They seemed to be much more personally involved in the first part of One Bread One Body, the teaching section on the eucharist, and not to have paid anything like as much attention to the norms in the last part. Many interchurch families went straight to John 17, and use the unity texts in support of eucharistic sharing – short-circuiting the existence of church divisions. There was also a strong focus on the words of institution, as used in the liturgy; and how hard it is to be part of a eucharistic assembly and not respond to the Lord’s invitation to eat and drink – all of you. A few interchurch families referred to texts such as the picking of corn and healing on the Sabbath (the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath), which didn’t occur to any of the bishops interviewed as relevant to eucharistic sharing.
2 Using intuition
In making particular decisions of conscience in particular circumstances we
do not only use our reason; we use intuitive knowledge that we cannot test by
purely intellectual means. We often think of women as more intuitive than men.
Linda Hogan suggests that this may come from more careful attention to gestures,
reactions, unspoken assumptions and valuations, through sensitivity to all that
is implicit and unconscious in other people’s behaviour.
Here is an example from an ES/A group. It concerns an Anglican wife and a Roman Catholic husband; his mother was very ill. A lady in the Catholic congregation was concerned that the Anglican wife should be able to receive communion at the Catholic funeral – check it out now with the parish priest, she said, because you will be in such an emotional state when it happens. So the Anglican wife did, and the parish priest said, yes she could receive communion when the time came. Not long after, the couple were with the mother when the Catholic curate came to give her communion. Clearly he was going to give communion to her son too. The Anglican wife said: I saw the panic on his face when he looked at me. So I made things easy for him and said could I receive a blessing. This was an intuitive response. On later reflection she felt it had been right in the circumstances, however much she regretted it for herself and her husband.
There was a discussion between a Catholic husband and an Anglican wife in another group. The husband said he would expect the parish priest to give his wife communion if the bishop said he could; he ought to obey the bishop. Even if you know he still doesn’t feel right about it? asked his wife. That’s his problem, says the husband. But the wife replies: I wouldn’t feel like that at all. I wouldn’t feel happy about it knowing he was unhappy. You put him in a really difficult position – with God. A questioning grunt from the husband, and the wife continues: Well, if he feels God’s saying – if he feels it’s wrong – then for the priest it’s going to be a barrier between him and God, and I wouldn’t want to be putting him in that position. I don’t think it’s right. (It is a hypothetical situation; none of the bishops I interviewed would want to put a priest in that position. But I use this as an example of an intuitive judgement that the couple could reflect further on together and evaluate.)
Sometimes it is quite a different scenario – when people feel intuitively that a particular priest would really like to give them communion together, but he doesn’t want to be asked. Some couples are very happy with this and respond by going forward for communion together; others are not, and tend to want to push the priest to make a decision.
3 Using emotions
We also use our emotions in making particular decisions, perhaps especially
(like using intuition) when it is a case of decisions that have to be made in
a hurry. Do I receive communion at this particular eucharist? I was struck by
the number of times in the ES/A groups that people described their really not
knowing what they were going to do until the moment arrived, living through
the eucharist in a kind of emotional turmoil. They might well have decided beforehand
in a rational way what was going to happen, but when it came to the actual eucharistic
experience, it was quite a different matter. This could happen to one partner,
or to both partners at the same time. It happened to whole families at the closing
eucharist of the Virginia international conference, when we joined an Anglican-Roman
Catholic parish for their usual format: a shared service of the Word, but two
separate canons at opposite sides of the church. Families reacted differently
– but were still talking about it months later.
As in the cases when we use our intuition, we need to evaluate our emotional responses to see what information and insight they offer in shaping our consciences. If we meet a similar kind of situation again, shall we decide in a similar way or differently? We can’t decide how we feel, but we can decide whether we are going to act on our emotions.
Many described themselves as experiencing fear – fear of refusal from a priest if they ask, fear of disapproval from others if they go forward. One Catholic wife described an incident from many years ago. She and her Anglican husband had received communion together on one occasion, I think where they were not known. Soon afterwards they had been at a funeral mass, and at communion he had asked: Can I come? She looked at the priest and at the congregation; and said: No, not this time. She had gone up alone. Her neighbour at the altar rail had said to the priest: I’m a Baptist. I should very much like to take communion at X’s funeral. He had given the Baptist communion. I felt a terrible spiritual coward because I’d said my husband couldn’t come, said the Catholic wife. I had just been assuming the answer no all the time, maybe that’s not right, maybe we are moral cowards.
Many described themselves as experiencing intense anger at the position of the Roman Catholic Church on eucharistic sharing. Some other Christians feel it is wrong to have to ask. One Anglican husband explained he made a great effort for his wife’s sake. Our wedding anniversary was coming up, and I wrote to the bishop. I didn’t actually ask. I couldn’t quite bring myself to do that. I said it would be good if my wife and I could receive communion together – I didn’t even say in the Catholic Church. The bishop wrote back and said of course you may – he interpreted it as a request for admission.
We cannot help feeling afraid, anxious, angry, resentful. But we can be sure that if we act under the impulse of our fear, our anxiety or our anger, we are not acting freely under the impulse of God’s love.
Of course there are the positive emotions too: I was overjoyed. It meant so much to us. Such joy is not only expressed by the partners, but by local communities. One Catholic wife said: It took us about ten minutes to get out of the church – people wanted to kiss him and hug him and said you don’t know what it means to us that you’ve taken communion here tonight – you are part of this community and we’ve always felt it wrong you couldn’t take communion with us. Where there is so much positive emotion, there can be an incentive to try to find other occasions. There have been occasions recently when a celebrant has made it clear that on this particular occasion, close family and friends are invited to communion, and has let it be understood that nobody will be turned away. We may not approve of the limitation of admission to ‘special occasions’, but they are particularly joyful when they can go beyond the immediate interchurch couple or family and extend experience of eucharistic sharing to whole congregations.
4 Using imagination
Linda Hogan suggests that the use of the imagination is the most difficult aspect
of the integrated activity of conscience to discuss; it is so nebulous and hard
to quantify. But the imaginative, abstract stage can be very important in allowing
one to see possibilities that are not immediately obvious. There are always
new possibilities that we have never thought of. Here is an example of a Catholic
husband who imagines himself into his wife’s situation: It suddenly dawned
on me that in the Anglican church I never felt upset, rejected, because the
decision was mine. I suddenly appreciated that the problem in the Catholic Church
is officialdom saying you’re not welcome – this is the heartbreak.
Now I position myself behind my wife and if she doesn’t receive communion
I don’t either – just a blessing. It was a totally new decision
made as a result, I think, of using imagination.
In the groups I noticed a number of parents with small children imagining ahead to the time when these children would be ready for first communion – the crisis point for very many interchurch families.
We can use our imagination also to envisage the variety of responses that may be made to particular requests or actions of ours, so that we are as prepared as possible for whatever may come – there will always be surprises. We can never simply assume we know what another person will do or say.
5 Spiritual discernment
We have seen that our decision making is not an exclusively rational process.
Our emotions, intuitions and imagination are involved. So also is the capacity
for spiritual discernment; its importance in the traditional Christian understanding
of conscience has been clear from earliest times. It stresses the role of the
Spirit as an internal teacher. I was struck in the groups by the number of times
people referred to the leading of the Spirit as against ‘man-made rules’
– a phrase that came up over and over! What God has joined together, let
not man put asunder. We must obey God rather than man. In dealing with spiritual
discernment, Linda Hogan gives interesting quotations from the moral theologian
John Mahoney, that ‘conscience is important in discovering where the Spirit
is leading individuals in the context of an overall vocation’. (For us,
the overall vocation of being an interchurch family, and moving forward within
that vocation.)
So the moral insight that comes from genuine and prayerful spiritual reflection forms a significant part of the Christian understanding of conscience. Mahoney describes this interior moral discernment in terms of a taste or a feel for that which is good in a particular context. It is difficult to describe, difficult to have confidence in, ambiguous. Mahoney acknowledges that ‘the moral “feel” for a situation which Christians are believed to possess by reason of their personal adherence of faith may be unashamedly of the character of insight in search of arguments or, in terms more generally applicable to theology as a whole, of Christian experience seeking understanding.’ Interchurch family experience seeking understanding: that seems a good way to describe 30 years of AIF!
We must recognise the inevitability of moral failure, the danger of self-deception, the incompleteness of our knowledge and understanding, the immaturity of our emotions. We can never be certain we’re right. Yet we have to act on the truth as we know it, and do the best we can to act with integrity and pursue what we believe to be good. In the end that is all that is asked of us.
Change and development
A positive and rounded view of conscience sees it as engaging the whole person
(indeed both partners), with our first concern being how best to understand
and articulate the good and loving thing to do in each situation. The next question
is how to understand ourselves – or our partners – as loyal and
committed members of the church while at the same time disagreeing with a particular
teaching or discipline. With a personalist view of conscience differences of
opinion between individuals and church authorities can be seen as inevitable
– and indeed as valuable – within a dynamic approach to human growth
and understanding. They arise necessarily from the unity-in-difference that
is the essence of living communities. They contribute to change and development
in church tradition. We can move beyond (to quote Linda Hogan) ‘the conventional
model of the individual conscience up against the weight of tradition, since
the conscientious judgement of the individual, too, is part of the tradition.
Indeed, the individual’s insight may have an important function in prompting
a particular development or change in the church’s apprehension of value.’
So the conscientious judgement of interchurch families is a part of, and can influence, church tradition. So let us form and re-form our consciences. Let us respect one another’s consciences and good intentions, the consciences of our clergy and bishops, and the consciences of all our fellow-Christians, and pray that God will lead us all together into the wholeness of the kingdom.
Ruth Reardon
9.2.13-16
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