A Roman Catholic priest who has ministered to many interchurch families over a long period explains why he receives communion at the eucharistic celebrations of other churches at interchurch family conferences.
I do not intend in any way to act against the Church; for this reason I always write to submit my action and my motivation to the Evangelical, Lutheran or Anglican Church that welcomes me, as well as to my local Church and my Bishop, and to my parish community. I myself assume full responsibility in conscience for what I am doing … having prayed and examined myself fully.
Receiving communion in these circumstances, together with interchurch couples, whom I have accompanied and followed for more than thirty years, is something that is full of significance. It signifies for me an expression of the communion that already exists (although imperfectly) and a belief that the Spirit is continuing to lead us towards a communion that is ever fuller. We know that perfect communion will only be given as a gift at the end of time, when ‘God will be all in all’.
Also the Roman Catholic Church, which is my church … through which I feel myself united with all Christians throughout the world, in its conciliar decree Unitatis redintegratio, after having treated of the limitations of communion at the present time, makes some strong positive affirmations. I refer to two of them.
In n.3 it is said that, in spite of all the limitations, ‘the Holy Spirit has not refrained from using the communities that stem from the Reformation as instruments of salvation’. In n.22 it is affirmed that these ecclesial communities, even if they have not conserved the full reality of the eucharist, ‘nevertheless when they commemorate the Lord’s death and resurrection in the Holy Supper, they profess that it signifies life in communion with Christ and await his coming in glory’.
Thus the churches that stem from the Reformation , in the power of the Spirit, are recognised by the Catholic Church as ‘instruments of salvation’, and their Holy Supper is not void, but it is a great deal, it is the essential. The Lord’s Supper is not our property, but is a gift of the Lord. So I pay attention to the fact that the celebration always gives the necessary emphasis to the epiclesis (the invocation of the Holy Spirit), and to the memorial of the unique sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. Equally important is the common liturgical profession of faith that we make in the Apostles’ Creed or the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. Together in celebrating the Lord’s Supper ‘we proclaim the Lord’s death and resurrection, and await his coming again’. Such a great and joyful awareness has become so rooted in me that it has led to a ‘serious spiritual need’. Because of this, in the particular circumstance of an interchurch family gathering, I shall participate in communion at the Evangelical and Anglican-Lutheran celebrations of the Lord’s Supper.
12.2.6