Association of Interchurch Families
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Association of Interchurch Families |
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An initial response from the Association of Interchurch Families
1 The Association of Interchurch Families welcomes the publication on 1 st October 1998 of the teaching document on the Eucharist and Sacramental Sharing, One Bread One Body, in which the Roman Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland apply for our countries the norms on eucharistic sharing contained in the Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism issued by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Rome, in 1993.
2 We welcome the clear statement that Catholic teaching allows exceptional eucharistic sharing "when strong desire is accompanied by a shared faith, grave and pressing spiritual need, and at least an implicit desire for communion with the Catholic Church". (77) We welcome the fact that the Catholic Bishops of these islands "gladly echo the words of Pope John Paul 11: It is a source of great joy to note that Catholic ministers are able, in certain particular cases, to administer the sacrament of the eucharist ... to Christians who are not in full communion but who have a great desire to receive [it], freely request [it] and manifest the faith which the Catholic Church professes with regard to [it]." (100)
3 We welcome the fact that our Bishops explicitly note that the 1993 Directory envisages that a grave and pressing need for eucharistic sharing may be experienced in some mixed marriages, since the sharing together of the sacraments of baptism and marriage creates a sacred bond between husband and wife, and places the couple in a new relationship with the Catholic Church. (I 10, 111)
4 We welcome the fact that our Bishops clearly state that "the sacraments should not be denied to those whom the present law of the Church allows to receive them" (115)
5 We would have wished the Bishops of England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland to have specifically recognised that some families may well experience a continuing serious spiritual need to receive communion together (as for example, the Catholic Bishops of Germany, Southern Africa and Brisbane have done). Instead they have referred to "a unique occasion" (106), a phrase never used in any of the Vatican documents on the subject. We recognise, however, that our Bishops' document is open to wide interpretation, and that pastoral practice will continue to develop.
6 We join with our Bishops in their commitment to our common pilgrim path towards reconciliation and full visible unity as Christians. (120) Merely to be able to drop in to one another's churches for communion would not satisfy those interchurch couples who in their marriages have committed themselves to share everything with each other. Such families pray that their churches will come to a full visible unity comparable to the marriage "partnership of the whole of life". (79)
ONE BREAD ONE BODY: The AIF initial response explained Some people (including some Catholic bishops!) were surprised that our initial response to One Bread One Body was positive. It was formulated on the principle (verified often enough in our own family life) that it is better to affirm people in the good work they have done, rather than to blame them for what they have not yet done. The responsibility of the officers of the Association is not to react in hurt or anger, but to do what is best in the long term for the good of interchurch families.
We welcome the document because it is an advance on anything which has ever been said before collectively by our bishops. When they have spoken together in the past (in The Easter People in 1980, in their 1990 Directory on Mixed Marriages) they have said that admission to communion together is not possible for interchurch families. They could not say that now, because the 1993 Ecumenical Directory from Rome says it is. It is a great breakthrough that they have collectively said that eucharistic sharing is possible .
When we first wrote to our Bishops two years ago, knowing that they were preparing a document to give norms on eucharistic sharing for England and Wales, we asked two things. The first was that that they would specifically identify "those who share the sacraments of baptism and marriage" as in possible need of eucharistic sharing. The second was that they would be restrictive (as we knew they would have to be) in terms of exceptional cases (couples) rather than exceptional occasions.
The first they have done. A lot of hard work has gone into this document. All the right quotes from the 1993 Directory and Ut Unum Sint have gone into it. We welcomed those particularly relevant to interchurch families in our second two paragraphs. In paragraph 4 we welcome a far-reaching statement which does not appear in any of the Vatican documents - which of our bishops got that one in? It is amazingly open if taken seriously.
The second request to our bishops has not been met. We asked them to recognise explicitly that in some exceptional cases there could be a continuing serious spiritual need to receive communion together as spouses and families. When all the evidence suggested that our bishops would go for "occasions" rather than "cases", we sent a second letter in June 1998; this must have already been too late for any changes, but we didn't know that at the time.
Paragraph 5 of our response is therefore more critical. We point out that the norms applying the Ecumenical Directory to our countries at the end of One Bread One Body are more restrictive than they need be, instancing the interpretations made by some other bishops and episcopal conferences. (We ourselves acknowledge that the norms of the Directory on admission are permissive, not prescriptive.)
In the final paragraph we re-affirm our commitment to full visible unity; we do not believe that eucharistic sharing for some interchurch families would be to the detriment of that greater goal.
If we want our bishops to enter imaginatively into our situation (which is obviously very difficult for them), we must be prepared to try to enter imaginatively into theirs. They clearly don't agree on the subject, but they have made a big effort to speak collectively. This means that even those who would have wished the Directory to say nothing about eucharistic sharing for interchurch families have agreed to examine particular cases, even if on very limited occasions. We hope that this will make a lot of difference to couples in some dioceses - we know that not very long ago communion was refused to the great distress of an Anglican bridegroom ("it is not possible", said the bishop) and in the week that One Bread One Body appeared communion for a Methodist wife was refused at her husband's mother's funeral. We rushed off a photocopy of the relevant page, but it was too late for the parish priest to find out who the bishop (who is himself known to be opposed to eucharistic sharing) had delegated. There is still a very long way to go in some places.
On the other hand, we do not yet know of any case in which a spouse is being admitted frequently where this has changed following One Bread One Body. It is pastorally very difficult to reverse a situation of this kind. Parish priests were authorised by the Directory to make their own pastoral judgements in particular cases (although most of them didn't know it!); if they have been admitting they cannot suddenly reverse tins (even if they have to think more in terms of "not refusing").
We are committed to the long slow painful process still ahead, to be persistent, but also patient and polite. We are called to "stay with the problem, suffer the pain and the frustration never expecting too much, never satisfied with too little"
(Primus Alastair Haggart, 1984). November 1998
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