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Tables for Two: Gathering for Parent and Son or Daughter

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 18:02:02 GMT

Prayer for Parent with Son or Daughter

Opening Prayer Service
for
Parent & Son or Daughter

Leader:

Loving God, we place our relationship and our journey in faith in your hands this evening. Bless us with the gifts we seek to be faithful to you and to one another. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen

Response to prayers: Bless us O Lord!

Bless our relationships with the grace of understanding and patience, we pray...

Bless our relationships with the grace of reconciliation and peace, we pray...

Bless our relationships with the grace of listening and compassion, we pray...

Bless our relationships with the grace of gentleness and patience, we pray...

Bless our relationships with the grace of honesty and truth, we pray...

Bless our relationships with the grace of love and faithfulness, we pray...

Lord of all blessing, from you has come a wealth of gifts to us. With hearts uplifted, we give you thanks for the gift or our family relationships.

Bless the meal we are about to share and our time with one another this evening. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Discussion Starters

Tables for Two: Closing Prayer

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 17:42:48 GMT

Closing Prayer

The love we share is part of God and His perfect love for us. I experience His love for me through you. with God's help I love you more than I thought possible. Today, I commit myself to love you more and more perfectly as together we walk with God in this wonderful relationship. It is wonderful to love you and be loved by you. Thank you!!!

Blessing Prayer
for Our Relationship

Lord, may we experience your
love in new and deeper ways.
May we always be aware of
how deeply you love us.

May we always have memories
of shared love.

May we always give thanks for
the times when we needed
someone to talk to and we
were there for each other.

May we always walk proudly
together and humbly support
one another.

Lord God, bless us this day
with all good things: health,
joy, love, and laughter. Kepp
us in your care and protect us.
May we learn to love and
appreciate one another more
and more each day.

Amen.

An Evening Prayer

Loving God of all creation, we thank you
for the countless blessings of this day:
gifts of sight, sound, touch, and smell, for
wonder without end.

We thank you for your endless patience
with us and your pardon of our failings.
Awaken our hearts to journey inward to
you with one another. May your spirit lead
us into prayer together.

We surrender ourselves to your
safekeeping as night draws to a close.
Bless with your presence those we
love_______

Come and be with us in sleep that will
refresh us for a new day and for the work
of production or play it holds for us.

With gratitude and faith in God and one
another we conclude this day grateful for
what was and what will be.

Amen

Return to Discussion Starters

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John Paul II Centre

Tables for Two - Preparation

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 17:38:28 GMT

Preparation

Preparation:

prepare menu (5 courses, suggestions follow)

Salmon Rollups / Veggies & Dip

Tomato Soup / Spinach Salad

Chicken with Sun-Dried Tomatoes, Rice Pilaf, Mixed Vegetables, Dinner Buns

Angel Food Cake with Raspberries and Whipped Cream

Coffee / Tea / Juice

or

Punch / Chicken Wings / Veggies & Dip

Tomato Soup / Spinach Salad with Raspberry Vinegarette

Chicken with Broccoli & Cheese, Stuffed Baked Potatoes, Mixed vegetables, Dinner Buns

Cheesecake with Strawberries

Coffee / Tea / Juice

set a price: costs might be kept the cost low by using volunteers and serving homemade wine, but the latter may vary according to legal requirements.
prepare and distribute advertising
prepare questions (paste on file cards and decorate)
prepare a menu card to sit on each table
prepare welcome and explanation of how the event will run
prepare, print, and laminate the closing prayer for the evening (one per couple)
obtain stereo and romantic music
obtain adequate long-burning fuel for the fireplace if you have one.
obtain candles, candle holders, carnations, vases, tablecloths
buy or make wine (may depend on local legal requirements)
recruit servers (about one per three tables) - if your local high school has a 'community service' component to their curriculum, this could make an excellent option.
have the reception/registrar/volunteer call each couple to confirm their attendance and to check the menu with them.
set up lounge/eating space with a small table for each couple
on the actual evening, preset each table for two with salt and pepper, silverware, butter, bread, bread plates, wine glasses, glasses of icewater, cups and saucers, wine in carafes
brief the servers on the opening prayer, inviting them to light a candle at the tables they will serve

Recommendations:

ask the servers to dress in black and white, and give each a white apron to wear
have the servers come in early for briefing, delegating of tables, and to help prepare things in the kitchen (e.g. placing the appetizers on plates, serving the salad, cutting the desert)
dress the serving plates up so they look like something you'd see in a fancy restaurant.
encourage couples to give the gift of babysitting to another - e.g. one couple attends one month, another attends the next month, and they babysit each other's children.

Flow of evening:

Welcome the couples and introduce cook and servers (who remain and participate for the opening prayer).
Explain how the evening will unfold, e.g.:
"We will serve a set of questions with each course. At the end we will serve a closing prayer for you to either pray together at the table once you are done eating, or when you reach home. You're welcome to stay as long as you wish. We will not formally close the evening."
Opening prayer and lighting of the candle at each table. (The prayer service is designed for 11 tables - if you have more, light two or three candles at once.)
Staff returns to the kitchen and the bourses begin to be served... after the food is brought out, a file card with the discussion question is sent to each table.
Throughout the meal, the servers clean up the used dishes, bring more water as needed, and bring out the new courses - allowing for comfortable space and time between each course. It usually lasts 2 1/2 hours.

Gathering Prayer

Tables for Two: Gathering Prayer - Couples

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 17:38:24 GMT

Gathering Prayer

Leader:

We gather this evening to stand apart - together. We gather this evening to share and strengthen the love that we choose to give one another, the love that challenges us to be all that we can be, the love that nurtures and sustains us.

We gather to break bread, to rediscover one another as we celebrate the past, present, and future of our lives together.

We celebrate the unity of Christ that calls us to oneness as we light the paschal candle to remind us of Christ's everlasting presence in our lives.

Response to the following blessings: Bless us with your goodness, Lord.

Blessing and first candlelighting:

We light a candle in memory of those who have handed us the gift of life itself. We honour those who gave us birth and nurtured us, those who endowed us with heritage and raised us, those who offered us love and cherished us. Bless our parents, grandparents, and all who have given us life. For this we pray...

Blessing and second candlelighting:

We light a candle in memory of those who have been linked with us in the ongoing chain of family life. We honour those who have shared our heredity and who have experienced our common bonds. Bless our sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, and all our relatives. For this we pray...

Blessing and third candlelighting:

We light a candle in memory of those to whom we ourselves have passed on the precious gift of life. We hold dear to our hearts those we have held dear in our arms and in our dreams. Bless our children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, and all children. For this we pray...

Blessing and fourth candlelighting:

We light a candle in memory of those we have discovered through the eyes of love in our journey through life. We hold sacred the remembrances of those who brightened our days with affection and who lit up our lives with devotion. Bless our wives, husbands, and close friends. For this we pray...

Blessing and fifth candlelighting:

We light a candle in memory of those who have walked beside us in so many ways. We remember ones who worked with us and played with us, ones who have made out times on earth more enjoyable and our experiences more memorable. Bless our friends and associates, our neighbours, our peers. For this we pray...

Blessing and sixth candlelighting:

We light a candle in meory of the difficult moments in our lives that call us out of aloneness into the suffering yet hopefilled body of Christ. Bless us, Lord, with courage and perseverance to live life to the full. For this we pray...

Blessing and seventh candlelighting:

We light a candle in memory of those special moments in our relationships where we clearly saw the joyfilled face of Christ. Bless us, Lord, with joy in the simplest of events. For this we pray...

Blessing and eighth candlelighting:

We light a candle in thanksgiving for the gift of one another, for the gift of a committed companion on the journey. Bless us, Lord, with faithfulness. For this we pray...

Blessing and ninth candlelighting:

We light a candle to help us remember our call and challenge to be witnesses of Christ's love in the world. Bless us with love that shines of Christ's love. For this we pray...

Blessing and tenth candlelighting:

We light a candle to remember those who have no one to love and encourage them. Bless us with kindness for all people. For this we pray...

Let us pray:

May the warmth of fire and light

That radiates from these candles

reflect its glow on all who sit at table,

May the light of the risen Lord

bless the food, the conversation,

and our love for one another.

Discussion Starters

Tables for Two: Discussion Starters

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 17:38:21 GMT

Discussion Starters

Served with appetizers:

I like to be with you.

With you, I like to...

When we are together, I feel...

-------
Some appetizing reflections...

My favourite memory of a time we spent together is...

It was special because...

---------
Some appetizing questions...

Each morning begins a perfect day. You make this possible by...

Each evening ends a perfect day. You make this possible by...

---------
Some appetizing questions...

Waiting means to me...

Patience means to me...

---------

Served with the salad:

Toss these around...

One way in which I think we are alike is...

One way in which I think we are different is...

-----------
Toss these around...

the strongest feeling about you that I had today that I want to share with you is...

The time that I felt closest to you in the past few days is...

---------
I remember when we first met. Before I met you I was...

What I remember about first meeting you is...

When we met I thought...

---------
Toss these around...

I need you to be patient with me when...

I find it difficult to be patient with you when...

---------

Served with the main course

You are such a gift for me. One thing I really like about you is...

I also like the way you do things, for example...

-------
Chew on these special times...

I feel closest to you when...

A time when we were together that I felt close to God was...

-------
Chew on these...

Ways that I can show you that you are #1 in my life is...

Ways that you can show me that I am #1 to you when we are out in public is...

the fondest memory of a time I felt #` to you in public is at...

-------
Chew on these...

We can make times of waiting better by...

We can help each other be patient by...

-------

Served with dessert:

One way I think will help us grow closer in the next week (month, year) is...

-------
Sweet dreams...

The dreams and hopes I hve for you (me) in the future are...

The dreams and hopes I have for "US" in the future are...

-------
I like who I am when we are together.

You make me feel...

I'd like to do special things for you. What would you like?

-------
Sweet dreams...

"When I consider our future I am most concerned about..."

"When I consider our future I am most looking forward to..."

-------

Served with after-dinner drinks:

Sip on this...

The things I like about you are...

-------
Sip on these questions...

I feel closest to you when...

The things that I like about you are...

-------
I am so thankful that you are in my life.

I am thankful for...

I hope that...

-------
Sip on these questions:

"The most fun I remember having while waiting was..."

"The most difficult time I remember of waiting was..."

-------

Closing Prayer

Message from Cardinal Kasper

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 16:18:37 GMT

Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity

10 March 2005

Your Excellency

I have received your letter of the 28 February with which you sent a copy of the ‘Message from the French Association of Interchurch Families to the Bishops in preparation for the Synod on the Eucharist.’

As you know, the question of communicatio in sacris is one of the major preoccupations of this Pontifical Council. We have provided guidelines on the way to act in the Ecumenical Directory and are naturally interested in the implications of this question on everyday life, particularly that of interchurch families. This subject, because of the doctrinal questions it brings with it, is also on the discussion agenda in several dialogues we are having with other churches. In fact, the two Codes of canon law ask the bishops to watch over with particular attention the development of mixed marriages.

I can assure you, for my part, that the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity intends to raise this important question for debate during the coming Bishops’ Synod, and I hope that this will be the opportunity for deep theological and pastoral reflection on a subject which is nowadays becoming more and more important.

Thank you for drawing my attention to the concerns of French interchurch families.

Yours sincerely

Cardinal Walter Kasper

Charte oecumenique europTenne

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 14:07:11 GMT

Charte œcuménique européenne
Au secours aux foyers mixtes européens !

Notre nouveau numéro Foyers Mixtes va traiter de la Charte Œcuménique Européenne. Entre autre, nous aimerions donner un aperçu de ce qu’il se passe ici et ailleurs en Europe, et comment la charte a été reçue. A-t-elle eu un écho parmi les foyers mixtes (ils sont mentionnés au point 4) ? Comment les paroisses ont-elles reçu la charte, travaillent-elles avec elle ? Y a-t-il des impulsions, des initiatives, des rencontres, des conférences, des discussions, des prières ?

Nous vous serions très reconnaissants si vous nous écriviez 0,5 à 1 page sous le thème : Comment la Charte Œcuménique Européenne a-t-elle été reçue, et quelle perspectives ouvre-t-elle dans votre région ?

Nous aurons besoin de ces interventions avant fin août. Si vous comptez nous écrire quelque chose, mais vous avez besoin de plus de temps : signalez –le nous, et nous verrons quoi faire.

Merci beaucoup !

Pour le comité de rédaction de Foyers Mixtes

Nicola Kontzi-Méresse

Nicola-csirenee@wanadoo.fr

Ou : Centre Saint Irénée, 2 place Gailleton

F-69002 Lyon

The Ecumenical European Charta
Help us, european interchurch couples !

Our new number of Foyers Mixtes will speak about the Ecumenical European Charta. Between other things, we want to give an idea of what is going on here and otherwhere, and how this charta has been received. Was there an echo between the interchurch families (they are mentionned in pont 4) ? How did the parishes receive the charta, do they work with ? Are there impulses, , initiatives, encounters, conferences, discussions, prauers ?

We would be very thankful if you write 0,5 to 1 pages with the theme : How the Ecumenical European Charta has been received, and wich perspectives it opens in votre region?

We would need this interventions untill the end of August. If you want to write something to us but you need more time, please write it, so we’ll see what to do.

Thanks a lot !

For the redaction committee of Foyers Mixtes

Nicola Kontzi-Méresse

Nicola-CSIrenee@wanadoo.fr

Or : Centre Saint Irénée, 2 place Gailleton

F-69002 Lyon

Die europäische Charta Oecumenica
Hilferuf an die europäischen konfessionsverbindenden Familien

Unsere neue Nummer von « Foyers Mixtes » wird von der Charta Oecumenica handeln. Wir möchten unter anderem einen Eindruck davon geben, was hier und anderswo in Europa geschieht, und wie die Charta aufgenommen wurde. Gab es ein Echo unter den konfessionsverbindenden Familien (Sie sind unter Punkt 4 erwähnt)? Wie haben die Gemeinden die Charta aufgenommen, arbeiten sie mit ihr ? Gab es Impulse, Initiativen, Begegnungen, Konferenzen, Diskussionen, Gebete ?

Wir wären Ihnen und Euch sehr dankbar, wenn Ihr uns 0,5-1 Seite schreibt zu dem Them : Wie wurde die Charta Oecumenica aufgenommen, und welche Perspektiven öffnet sie in Eurer/Ihrer Region.

Wir benötigen diese Beiträge bis Ende August. Wenn Ihr uns etwas schreiben wollt, aber etwas mehr Zeit braucht : schreibt es uns bitte, und dann sehen wir.

Vielen Dank !

Für das Redaktionskommittee von « Foyers Mixtes:

Nicola Kontzi-Méresse

Nicola-CSIrenee@wanadoo.fr

Oder : Centre Saint Irénée, 2 place Gailleton

F-69002 Lyon

AAIF Biannual Conference 2004

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:14:13 GMT

Children's Workshop

Church

Lunch

Martin & Ruth

Music

The Group

Workshop

L Hospitalie Eucharistique

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 22:53:31 GMT

L' HOSPITALITE EUCHARISTIQUE
AVEC LES CHRETIENS DES EGLISES
ISSUES DE LA REFORME EN FRANCE

Note de la Commission épiscopale pour l'unité

des chrétiens aux prêtres et aux fidèles
catholiques, 14 mars 1983

Depuis quelques années, les cas d'hospitalité eucharistique entre catholiques et chrétiens des Églises issues de la Réforme en France tendent à devenir plus nombreux. Le désir légitime de l'avancée oecuménique ne peut cependant faire oublier qu'ils posent à la conviction de l'Église catholique des problèmes non seulement disciplinaires, mais encore de l'ordre de la foi. C'est pourquoi la Commission épiscopale pour l'unité des chrétiens estime important de répondre à des questions souvent posées à leur sujet par les réflexions suivantes.

Pourquoi l'hospitalité eucharistique ne peut-elle pas être habituelle?

1. Parce que l'eucharistie est le repas du Seigneur, et qu'elle ne nous appartient pas. Le Nouveau Testament nous montre qu'elle est partagée par ceux qui ont reçu le même baptême et vivent dans la communion visible de la même foi (Ac 2, 42-47). De même, Paul rappelle vigoureusement aux Corinthiens (1 Co 11, 17-34) le lien nécessaire entre la communion vécue dans l'assemblée ecclésiale et la fraction du pain. Le « discernement du corps du Seigneur » concerne à la fois son corps eucharistique et son corps ecclésial. Pour sa part, la tradition de l'Église indivise a toujours fait de la communion à la même foi ecclésiale la condition de la participation à la même eucharistie.

2. Parce que la communion eucharistique et la communion ecclésiale sont indissociables : l'Église fait l'eucharistie et l'eucharistie fait líEglise. Le corps eucharistique du Christ est ordonné à la construction de son corps ecclésial. La communion à la même eucharistie engage donc la communion à la même Église, de même qu'elle suppose le partage de la même foi.

La question de l'hospitalité eucharistique ne peut donc être abordée dans la seule perspective des besoins spirituels individuels ou des liens de fraternité existant entre des groupes limités. Seule la réconciliation entre les Églises aujourd'hui divisées peut rendre normal l'accueil mutuel à la table de l'eucharistie qu'elles célèbrent.

3. Parce que ce n'est pas seulement la foi en l'eucharistie qui est engagée à ce propos, mais l'ensemble de la foi. Or malgré les substantielles avancées doctrinales actuelles, dont nous nous réjouissons, des points sérieux de contentieux dans la foi demeurent; en particulier, certains aspects de la doctrine eucharistique (présidence par un ministre ordonné; permanence de la présence sacramentell e) et des ministères (leur rôle propre dans la structure de l'Église; l'ordination), la place et le sens de la sacramentalité dans la vie chrétienne et plus globalement la compréhension du mystère de l'Église, signe du salut et don de Dieu aux hommes Concrètement, nous ne pouvons pas ne pas constater aussi que certaines décisions et pratiques récentes de l'Église réformée de France contredisent l'orientation actuelle des documents oecuméniques sur la doctrine des ministères. Des questions pressantes avaient été posées dans ces domaines par Mgr Le Bourgeois, lors de son intervention à l'Assemblée du protestantisme français Elles n'ont pas reçu jusqu'à ce jour de réponse autorisées.

4. Parce que la multiplication des hospitalités eucharistiques donnerait à penser que les problèmes posés pour l'unité de l'Église sont déjà résolus et que le statu quoconfessionnel actuel est une forme valable de l'unité telle que le Seigneur la désire. Une telle multi plication relâcherait les liens de foi et de solidarité de chaque fidèle avec sa propre Église. Elle constituerait une solution de facilité qui ne ferait pas progresser la marche vers 1'unité.

A quelles conditions cependant certains cas exceptionnels d'hospitalité eucharistique peuvent-ils être envisagés?

1. Étant donné ce qui vient d'être dit, seuls des cas exceptionnels d'hospitalité eucharistique peuvent être envisagés dans la situation actuelle de division avec les Eglises de la Réforme. Pour qu'ils soient vécus dans la vérité comme des « moyens de grâce » (Unitatis redintegratio, 8) et pour qu'ils contribuent à faire l'Église une, plusieurs conditions sont à respecter, selon le discernement exercé par le Directoire des questions oecuméniques et les autres documents qui font autorité dans toute l'Église catholique.

2. Dans le cas où des prêtres et des fidèles catholiques accueillent des frères protestants à la table eucharistique, une hospitalité authentique suppose de la part de ces derniers un « réel besoin » ou un désir spirituel éprouvé des liens de communion fraternelle profonds et continus avec des catholiques (tels qu'ils sont vécus dans certains foyers mixtes et dans quelques groupes oecuméniques durables), une foi sans ambiguïté quant à la dimension sacrificielle du mémorial, quant à la présence réelle et à la relation entre communion eucharistique et communion ecclésiale, enfin un engagement actif au service de Ï'unité que Dieu veut.

3. La décision qui sera prise en conscience doit avoir été soumise au discernement de l'évêque, responsable du ministère de l'unité (ou des prêtres délégués par lui pour les relations oecuméniques et à qui il aura confié ce discernement en collaboration avec lui). Elle doit veiller à ne pas provoquer le scandale ni même l'étonnement chez ceux qui en seront normalement les témoins.

4. Au nom de la dynamique oecuménique de réciprocité, la communion des fidèles catholiques à la Sainte Cène protestante est aujourd'hui l'objet de demandes pressantes, en particulier chez les foyers mixtes. Une telle démarche, redisons-le, ne correspond pas, pour les catholiques, au lien qu'ils confessent entre eucharistie et communion ecclésiale. Elle préjuge aussi de la compréhension commune du ministère ordonné. De plus, pour l'Église catholique, la forme plénière du ministère ecclésial fait défaut au ministre protestant qui préside.

5. Nous constatons cependant qu'un certain nombre de catholiques estiment pouvoir communier à la Sainte Cène protestante, que ces cas ont tendance à se multiplier et que l'opinion se fait jour de les considérer comme normaux. Nous ne pouvons pas ne pas rappeler que cette évolution est objectivement contraire aux dispositions actuellement en vigueur dans l'Église catholique, dont le fondement est d'ordre doctrinal. La multiplication de ces cas fait également grandir le risque qu'ils soient interprétés par les communautés pro restantes non comme le désir de participer à une réalité de grâce qui est le secret de Dieu, mais comme la reconnaissance de fait de la pleine sacramentalité de leur célébration.

6. Aux catholiques qui estimeraient toujours en conscience pouvoir communier à la Sainte Cène, nous disons donc ce que les évêques allemands ont dit à leurs fidèles sur ce même point : « Le Synode ne peut pas actuellement approuver la participation d'un catholique à la Sainte Cène. Il ne peut être exclu qu'un catholique - suivant sa propre conscience - puisse trouver, dans la situation particulière qui est la sienne, des raisons qui lui font apparaitre sa participation à la Sainte Cène comme spirituellement nécessaire. Il devrait alors penser qu'une telle participation ne correspond pas au lien entre Eucharistie et communion ecclésiale, particulièrement pour ce qui concerne la compréhension du ministère. S'agissant de la décision qu'il sera amené à prendre, il ne devra pas mettre en péril son appartenance à sa propre Église et sa décision ne devra pas non plus équivaloir à un reniement de sa propre foi et de sa propre Église, pas plus qu'elle ne devra apparaître ainsi aux yeux d'autrui. »

7. Nous sommes conscients que ces orientations pourront blesser ou choquer. Nous partageons nous-mêmes la souffrance de ne pouvoir communier ensemble à l'eucharistie. Mais nous demandons à tous ceux que cette note concerne de s'interroger eux-mêmes. Ces orientations prennent en compte les problèmes de fond tels qu'ils se posent aujourd'hui : elles n'entendent pas être définitives. Mais l'évolution que nous espérons de ces positions dépendra pour une part de la manière dont les Églises issues de la Réforme recevront les questions que nous avons rappelées ici. Nous avons à vivre en ce domaine crucial une émulation spirituelle qui nous permette de nous ouvrir les uns et les autres, et les uns par les autres, à toutes les exigences de l'Évangile.

Archdiocese of Adelaid 1997

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 22:36:09 GMT

Archdiocese of Adelaide

In 1997, the Archdiocese of Adelaide, South Australia, published Guidelines for Eucharistic Sharing in the Catholic Church. These Guidelines are not at this point available on the internet.

Meanwhile, they may possibly be available directly from the Archdiocesan offices at

39 Wakefield Street, Adelaide SA 5000
GPO Box 1364, Adelaide SA 5001

Ph: 8210 8210 | Fax: 8223 2307
cco-reception@adelaide.catholic.org.au

Between the Times, Between Communities: Eucharistic Theology for the Bridge

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 14:43:57 GMT

Between the Times, Between Communities:
Eucharistic Theology for the Bridge

Gerald W. Schlabach

(An article printed in ONE IN CHRIST, vol.40, no.2, April 2004)

The story is told of a wedding between a Mennonite and a Catholic. Since the wedding was to be a Catholic ceremony, Mennonite family members were uncertain whether they should take communion. At the rehearsal, one of them pulled the priest aside and asked what they should do. ‘There are two rules I must observe as a Catholic priest,’ he told them. ‘The first is that I cannot invite non-Catholics to receive communion. And the second is that I cannot refuse communion to anyone who comes forward in the communion line.’ With that he gestured to indicate that the conversation was over. [1] Welcome to Catholic culture - welcomed to the table? or not?

The story needed to be told because a modest but growing movement of ‘sacramentally-minded Mennonites and peace-minded Roman Catholics’ calling themselves Bridgefolk have been coming together since 1999 ‘to celebrate each other's traditions, explore each other's practices, and honor each other's contribution to the mission of Christ's Church.’ [2] Since 2001 St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, has been hosting Bridgefolk and Abbot John Klassen serves as co-chair of its steering committee. Bridgefolk embodies the conviction that for ecumenical conversation to bear fruit between high-church and low-church traditions, it is especially important that the necessary work of high-level dialogue find its complement in grassroots encounters that accommodate the polity and dynamics of ‘Free Church’ or ‘Believers Church’ or ‘Radical Reformation’ communities. [3] What this means in practice, however, is that some of the thorniest issues along the ecumenical path sprout with particular sting precisely and urgently at the grassroots level, where the joy of discovering unexpected unity exposes Christians all the more personally to the pain of Christian unity. Such pain can sometimes require a pastoral attention that will not wait for an official concordat.

Certainly that has been the case for Bridgefolk and the unavoidable - unavoidably thorny - issue of intercommunion. Still, if the dynamic of grassroots ecumenical exchange has confronted Bridgefolk all the more urgently with the issue, that same grassroots dynamic may also offer a fertile test plot [4] from which may grow learnings of benefit to other Christians, engaged in other dialogues. Though the theological and pastoral explorations that follow arose from a very particular context, I share them in that hope.

The ‘Already’ and ‘Not Yet’ of Our Unity

At the first public Bridgefolk gathering of Mennonites and Roman Catholics at St. John’s Abbey in July 2002, one of the conference’s Benedictine hosts attempted to convey something of the same message as the priest officiating at that Mennonite-Catholic wedding had done. But what was the message? Some Mennonites present heard hard official words, others saw generous pastoral gestures. Many, both Mennonite and Catholic, felt the pain of Christian disunity. Some felt pain from misunderstanding the cues in another’s culture, perhaps. But many felt the pain of understanding all too well how far we still have to go before we share the common theological language, to say nothing of common institutional bonds, that will give shape to that living unity we sense God’s Spirit already making present among us.

We do face serious issues, and not simply the challenge of cross-cultural misunderstanding. In one sense, when the time comes that participants in a movement like Bridgefolk can partake together at the table of the Lord without any reservations whatsoever - in a communion so full that both traditions may name its fullness equally well in their own ways - then its work will be done. In the meantime, we gather together in Bridgefolk precisely because we have discovered a unity worth celebrating and exploring even though we are still in a ‘meantime,’ living between the times, living between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ of that Christian unity which is both a gift and a calling.

In this meantime, the very nature of the Christian unity we are called to seek is itself one of the issues that divides our traditions. Conscientious Roman Catholics really do believe that without institutional ties embodied through communion with a bishop who is in communion with other bishops and ultimately the bishop of Rome, then Christian unity is at best incomplete; other expressions or sentiments of unity are welcome but by themselves ephemeral. Conscientious Mennonites really do believe that unless Christians are joining their daily lives together in practical down-to-earth ways as they offer one another the mutual aid they need to follow Christ in life, then Christian unity is itself disembodied; structures and institutions are welcome but only as tools to enable shared discernment issuing in faithful discipleship, without which claims of unity may be nothing but a front for hypocrisy. Mennonites may look at the celebrations of the Eucharist in average Catholic parishes and see far less unity than in a meeting such as Bridgefolk’s. Catholics may look at Mennonites gathering around the Bible to discern God’s will and see not a seedling church but a seedling schism. In the face of empirical evidence of institutional inertia, Catholics will sometimes need faith to affirm that Christ really is at work guiding the Church through a Spirit-guided hierarchy. In the face of empirical evidence of countless Church splits, Mennonites will sometimes need faith to affirm that Christ really is revealing his will wherever two or three gather for Spirit-guided congregational discernment.

Bridgefolk represents a conviction that Roman Catholic catholicity-from above and Radical Reformation catholicity-from-below need each other desperately. But to trust that these will one day meet widely and formally also requires faith! In the meantime, we are pilgrims together on a journey. Is it possible to celebrate and embody a unity that is ‘on the way?’ And how?

The Communion of Ss. Benedict and Scholastica

For some participants, the first Bridgefolk gathering at Saint John’s Abbey was not in July 2002 but in March 2001, when its original steering committee, some of their spouses, and one other participant from a 1999 retreat in Pennsylvania, met in Collegeville to renew the work of Bridgefolk together. Building on the relationships that Weldon Nisly, pastor of the Seattle Mennonite Church, had developed during his sabbatical, one of the first things the committee did was meet with the new abbot, John Klassen. Perhaps to initiate his guests briefly into the Benedictine charism, perhaps to communicate his commitment to sustained conversation, or perhaps for a reason only God’s Spirit then knew, the abbot began by recounting the story depicted on a mural that covers one entire wall of his parlor.

It is the story that Gregory the Great told in his Dialogues about what turned out to be the last yearly visit that the aging St. Benedict received from his consecrated sister St. Scholastica. [5] Having ‘spent the whole day (together) in the praise of God and in holy conversation’ at some distance outside the gate of the monastery, Scholastica wished to continue discussing ‘the joys of heaven’ on into the night. Faithful to the Rule for his community that St. Benedict himself had penned, Benedict was determined to return to his cell before nightfall. But while he acted strictly according to the rule, she acted on love and prayed to God with so many tears that the heavens themselves - calm until now - burst out in their own downpour of rain and thunder. Benedict could not leave. Gregory’s comment was that Scholastica’s love had proven stronger than Benedict’s calm but firm resolve. The commentary of many since is that it has been just this combination of flexible love and resolute structure that has given the Benedictine tradition its durability.

We would do well to pause and reflect on the gift that this story constitutes. Without the Benedictine integration of structure and flexibility, as modeled and offered to us by St. John’s Abbey, Bridgefolk might not be possible. Our fledgling movement benefits from the structures, resources and ordered wisdom of a long tradition. Still, it is available to us precisely through the flexibility and hospitality of a community open to an unexpected relationship - with Mennonites of all people. And there is more:

My hypothesis, at least, is that the Mennonites and the Catholics who are drawn to explore one another’s traditions in a movement like Bridgefolk are attracted in part because each one integrates structure and flexibility in a way that looks fresh and invigorating for life within their own church structures. Catholics are attracted by the possibilities for lay leadership and grassroots initiative within the Mennonite tradition, which somehow remain compatible with a rigorous ethic of nonviolence. Mennonites are attracted to the rich plurality of Catholic spiritualities, which somehow have all found a place within the ‘big tent’ of the Catholic tradition.

If only we better understood the ‘somehow’ by which both traditions have held rigor and hospitality, structure and flexibility, together! Mutual misgivings remain, after all, as a check upon our mutual attractions. Whatever their own frustrations with their hierarchy, most of the Catholics among us would hesitate to abandon those structures for the potential fractiousness of Anabaptist-Mennonite church life. And whatever their embarrassment at the record of church splits in their history, most of the Mennonites among us would hesitate to abandon the grassroots dynamic of their church life for potential submission to the Catholic hierarchy. So anything we can learn from the communion between Benedict and Scholastica will be good for relationships both within and between our communities.

While St. Scholastica is undoubtedly the hero of this story, and her rulebending love is its lesson, we would not even know that story were it not for the Rule of St. Benedict that structures love into a durable community life through time. In the same breath, though, we must add that Benedict’s Rule would not have proven so durable if the Rule itself had not allowed for flexibility all along, and presented itself not as an end in itself but as merely a tool and a beginning to growth in the life of virtue. Mature Christians need both. The fullness of Christ’s Church needs both. So even as we explore a possible theological basis for a flexible approach to the rule against non-Catholics partaking in the Eucharist under ordinary circumstances, I have lingered over the model of Benedict and Scholastica in order to urge us neither to resent that rule nor to question the responsibility for rule-making that resides with church authorities.

As they struggle to come to terms with the Catholic approach to these matters, Mennonites would do well to recall some salient facts about their own tradition. Mennonites themselves have practiced ‘closed communion’ for most of their history, sometimes restricting it not only to their own church members but to those who have gone through a Mennonite version of penitential self-examination that was not just between the individual and their pastor but known to the entire congregation. [6] Mennonites themselves have used certain actions and prohibitions as boundary markers to define and preserve group identity, and in hindsight some of these look far more theologically trivial than the Eucharist. To be sure, few of us would be seeking dialogue and exchange with Catholics if we remained part of tightly-defined traditional Mennonite communities. But at least some of the Mennonites in Bridgefolk find far more energy for ecumenical dialogue with Catholics than with Protestants precisely because they do still retain a deeply communitarian approach to Christianity. Such an approach can hardly exist at all unless group norms carry greater weight than individual preferences on issues that are key to community life. [7] As St. Paul insisted in 1 Corinthians 11:29, one cannot partake rightly without ‘discerning the body.’ Whatever challenges and frustrations the Catholic policy of closed communion presents, the Mennonite tradition itself gives reason to suspect that a wide-open invitation to open communion, so natural to a more individualistic Protestantism, is in fact a false solution. For according to the deeply communitarian approach to Christianity that Mennonites and Catholics share, the eucharist or Lord’s Supper must always confirm the realities of ecclesial identity and commitment, not simply personal identity and desire. Mennonites should not find it too hard to agree with Pope John Paul II when he writes that ‘Liturgy is never anyone’s private property.’ [8]

Structure

If we are to discover the flexibility that is integral and proper to Roman Catholic structure, then at some point, in some way, we will have to come to terms with that structure. And there is no way to do this without recognizing that on any matter about which the pope has authoritatively spoken, one will sooner or later have to come to terms with his words. One need not receive those words as Catholic fundamentalists do – ‘Rome has spoken; the case is closed’ - in order to receive them respectfully. One need not discount the responsibility to adapt churchwide teachings to local conditions and personal circumstances in order to recognize the role of the pope in defining global norms and setting a common agenda for the worldwide body he pastors. One need not stifle the questions that church documents raise in order to read them with a clear conscience that is open to formation - particularly since careful and probing readings can themselves be an act of respect.

The pope’s recent encyclical on the eucharist is both a case in point, and the occasion for making that point. If one only read the headlines and general news summaries about Ecclesia de eucharistia there would seem to be no room for ongoing theological conversation about the question of intercommunion, nor any room for exceptions to the rule it reiterates, which limits eucharistic participation to full members of the Catholic Church. It is precisely when we take the structures and teachings of the Church seriously that we will discover unexpected flexibility and pastoral sensitivity.

In any case, Mennonites will not be in serious dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church if they simply brush Catholic convictions aside. Certain of these are key to understanding (at the very least) Catholic policies regarding eucharistic participation. The first is the one I have just been illustrating - that even if Catholics themselves have debated the precise nature of the pope’s role in defining and embodying institutional unity, that role is inescapable.

The second conviction is more subtle. In fact it is so basic that Catholics themselves do not always think to name it explicitly. This is the priority of the objective over the subjective. It surfaces in the encyclical at a couple of critical points. One obvious example in the encyclical is that the ‘objective reality’ of transubstantiation, by which the bread and wine become the very body and blood of Christ, is guaranteed ‘independently of our mind’ [9] by ‘the objective truth’ of Christ’s words in John 6: ‘“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life within you. ... My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.”’ [10]

As the pope turns to the question of who may participate in communion, therefore, subjective ‘invisible communion’ is insufficient without objective ‘visible communion.’ The pope certainly recognizes the importance of ‘invisible communion’ through moral faithfulness or (when Christians fall short) through penance. [11] But he goes on to insist that communion must also be visible in the bonds, structure, and ‘visible framework’ by which Christ offers the means of salvation and governs the Church through the hierarchy. ‘The Eucharist, as the supreme sacramental manifestation of communion in the Church, demands to be celebrated in a context where the outward bonds of communion are also intact.’ [12] (emphasis added)

Now, non-Catholic skeptics (and no doubt some Catholic ones too) may see little more here than a Roman obsession with hierarchical control. While it would be pointless to deny some of that dynamic, much more is at work. Translated into English, Ecclesia de eucharistia, the title of the encyclical, reads: ‘The Church draws her life from the eucharist.’ The phrase evokes and the encyclical follows through with much fruitful reflection on the organic process by which the eucharist nurtures the Church and forms Christian lives. But in Catholic sacramental theology, one simply cannot move on to pastoral, aesthetic, mystical and subjective concerns without defining the objective conditions that make for a valid eucharist in the first place. In Catholicism, therefore, the sacrament of Eucharist thus requires the sacrament of Holy Orders, conferred by a bishop, who has been rightly consecrated according to apostolic succession, and so on. In turn the ritual must be performed according to canonical guidelines. The personal holiness of the priest is not the criterion of eucharistic validity. The quality of music, the eloquence of the homily, the aesthetics of worship, and the intensity of experience are not the final tests of sacramentality.

There is a cost to the priority of the objective over the subjective, and one only needs to move from the exquisite liturgical setting of a place like St. John’s Abbey into a mundane struggling parish with anemic singing to find reminders of that cost. But the core theological conviction has been a settled matter since the Donatist controversy of the 4th and 5th century. [13] And behind it there is actually a deep pastoral concern that the faithful be able to partake in confidence of sacramental grace, without subjecting that grace to the human foibles of the priest or parish that sets the table. If one does not have time to trace the pertinent arguments back to the 4th century, then I suggest Graham Greene’s marvelous novel, The Power and the Glory, set amid the anticlerical persecution of the Mexican Revolution. The novel’s anti-hero is a whisky-soaked adulterous priest who acts heroically in the end, not through any great virtue of his own, but because he knows what he is to do as a priest and goes through the motions even though it means going into the trap that will lead to his death. It is the eucharist that has made him worthy, not he the eucharist.

Third, then, is a conviction I have already mentioned, but that is all the more recognizable next to the other two: To the Roman Catholic mind, objective bonds of institutional unity really do count as the sine qua non among all other expressions of Christian unity, and certainly count more than mere sentiments of unity. If the eucharist ‘demands to be celebrated in a context where the outward bonds of communion are also intact,’ [14] those bonds are formed not only through Holy Orders on the part of priests, but through Baptism, assent to ‘the full truth of the faith regarding the Eucharistic mystery,’ [15] and communion with the ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic church’ by way of the bishop who is the visible principle of unity in any particular Christian community. [16] In other words, we come at last to the question of the ‘objective’ status of those receiving the eucharist as well - the condition of membership.

Intriguingly, however, when the encyclical turns to this question its primary focus is not individual communion or membership but concelebration between church bodies - i.e. joint celebration of the Eucharist by ordained representatives of ecclesial bodies that have not yet restored full bonds of mutual recognition. [17] The point is crucial to understanding the force of the pope’s continuing prohibition against nonCatholic participation in Roman Catholic eucharists. To lift the prohibition against joint celebration of the Eucharist prematurely would be to communicate ‘duplicity’ [18] - to send a mixed message - about whether the church bodies in question have resolved their differences or not. Not only would this obscure the question of ‘valid means’ (those objective conditions for a valid Eucharist we’ve just discussed) but it

… might well prove instead to be an obstacle, to the attainment of full communion, by weakening the sense of how far we remain from this goal and by introducing or exacerbating ambiguities with regard to one or another truth of the faith. The path towards full unity can only be undertaken in truth. [19]

The pope recognizes that it is perfectly natural that those who long deeply for the fullness of Christian unity should hunger to share the eucharist together, since it is ‘the supreme sacrament of the unity of the People of God.’ [20] But it is the common sense wisdom not only of ecumenists but of other mediators that before the parties to a conflict can resolve it they must often feel its pain acutely and view it realistically. Hence, at an official, global, churchwide level, the pope could hardly do otherwise than to reiterate the rule.

Flexibility

Yet the pope remains a pastor, and it has been the enigma of John Paul II in particular to be at once doggedly firm and compassionately sensitive. Thus he continues:

While it is never legitimate to concelebrate in the absence of full communion, the same is not true with respect to the administration of the Eucharist under special circumstances, to individual persons belonging to Churches or Ecclesial Communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church. In this case, in fact, the intention is to meet a grave spiritual need for the eternal salvation of an individual believer, not to bring about an intercommunion which remains impossible until the visible bonds of ecclesial communion are fully re-established. [21]

What are these special circumstances? No doubt what the pope and canon law have especially in mind are Christians from traditions that share a high view of the real presence of Christ in the eucharist but whose circumstances make reception in their own community temporarily impossible. [22] Displacement, travel and illness present the obvious emergency situations. Proximity to death would heighten the gravity of such circumstances still further. [23] But can this be all?

If all ‘special circumstances’ could be anticipated there would be no need for the discernment to which the pope refers when he writes that it is ‘possible to provide for the salvation of souls with proper discernment.’ [24] So what of a Christian whose personal vocation is so intimately wrapped up in working for Christian unity, promoting mutual understanding, and reconciling differences in their very person that to falter or turn away from their calling would in fact pose a certain kind of risk to their salvation? What of a group of such Christians who banded together to support one another in their callings and on this journey - not claiming to constitute one more Church, yet faithful to a communitarian understanding of Christianity that requires us to embody the changes God is working through us, by joining together in durable bonds of society, friendship and accountability?

For one thing, such Christians and such an ecclesial movement will need sustenance for a journey that may be arduous and painful. In his own way, the pope recognizes this near the end of his encyclical when he reiterates the Church’s commitment to persisting on the path of ecumenical dialogue:

The path itself is long and strewn with obstacles greater than our human resources alone can overcome, yet we have the Eucharist, and in its presence we can hear in the depths of our hearts, as if they were addressed to us, the same words heard by the Prophet Elijah: “Arise and eat, else the journey will be too great for you” (1 Kg 19:7). [25]

The pope is right to insist, as he does in this very context, that the need to sustain the ecumenical journey over the long haul gives reasons not to squander or cheapen the very ‘treasure’ of the eucharist - just as earlier in the encyclical he had reason to warn that to celebrate communion together officially but prematurely might actually delay the prospect of full communion. Yet the ‘special circumstance’ not anticipated here - though perhaps allowed - is that some may find the ecumenical quest itself unsustainable without the nourishment of the sacrament. Yes, for a while, hunger might urge a traveler more quickly along on a journey. But one can only travel so far on the pangs of hunger alone. Besides, as Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household itself, points out, as ‘the bread of travelers’ and a ‘first fruit’ of God’s presence, the eucharist increases our hunger and thirst for the fullness of the Kingdom even as it satisfies. [26] There is little chance that participating in the eucharist under these circumstances will satiate the hunger that is proper to this pilgrimage.

If there is one area where the pope’s encyclical most invites further theological exploration it is in fact here, concerning the ‘eschatological’ reality of the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, what Christ has ‘already’ accomplished in the world through the Church brings near and makes present those realities that are ‘not yet’ altogether tangible except by faith. At various places in the encyclical John Paul II points to the eschatological tensions that the eucharist holds together, [27] but he may not have fully explored the practical implications of this reality. In elaborating on the bedrock Catholic conviction that ‘The Church draws its life from the Eucharist,’ the pope has underscored the ‘already’ of ‘the Eucharist (that) makes the Church’ - in other words, the norms and conditions that define an authentic Eucharist. But according to the eschatological tension that the Eucharist holds together, accent can also be placed on the ‘not yet’ of the eucharist in this way: ‘The Eucharist makes the Church.’ [28] The process of making is ongoing and unfinished; the Church must continue to draw life from the eucharist precisely because the Church in its fullness of unity is still being completed. Unity is required for eucharist, but the eucharist makes unity possible. Though I have not made a case for greater official intercommunion than the encyclical allows, in coming years one can expect some theologians to press the encyclical precisely at this point. After all, the very eschatological tension of the eucharist to which John Paul II himself points can be expected to perpetually stretch the ‘already’ of well-defined official norms toward that very ‘not yet’ of which the sacrament is a foretaste.

Bridgefolk Theology of the Eucharist: A Possibility?

Catholics and Mennonites tend to have significantly different attitudes about rules. Among Mennonites, someone who does not keep a rule is breaking it - which leaves no option but to seek to change a rule outright if it proves unwieldy or unfair in even a few cases. Among Catholics, however, someone who does not keep a rule may simply be making an exception - and a community as large as the Roman Catholic Church must have some way of allowing for exceptions and granting dispensations. [29] That allowance is often largely unspoken and merely cultural. Still, stories like that of Benedict and Scholastica (as well as some of the finer points in writings by Catholic moral theologians and canon lawyers) make the approach explicit: Catholics do take their rules seriously, but to follow a rule rigidly in all circumstances will sometimes produce precisely the opposite of what the rule itself intends. To make exceptions - rather than to either break a rule or demand that it change to accommodate one’s local and personal circumstances - is in fact a way of respecting not just the rules but the community life such rules are meant to serve. [30]

If some provisional resolution is possible here, however, is it only possible at the level of cross-cultural understanding? Or is it proper for us to articulate a Bridgefolk theology of the Eucharist too? If by ‘theology’ we mean an official pronouncement, doctrine, canon or policy, then no, that is not the role of a group like Bridgefolk. We can offer our services and witness to the church bodies that represent the traditions we love, and we may even goad or inspire their work, but we cannot do that work for them. However, if by ‘Bridgefolk theology’ we mean careful theological reflection on our vocation, on what it means to live on the bridge between our traditions, and on what it takes to sustain our journey, then we not only can but must. Any ‘Bridgefolk theology’ will be a theology ‘on the way’ - provisional and pilgriming - and this is as it should be. But we would be irresponsible not to name it.

Thankfully, a eucharistic theology for the way, for the meantime, and for the exception, can lay a certain claim to being biblical. It was a priest and canon lawyer, no less, who gave me a great gift of encouragement along my own journey through these questions when he reminded me of the following text from Luke 6:2-4:

But some of the Pharisees said, ‘Why are you doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?’ Jesus answered, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and gave some to his companions.’

It is not mine to offer the bread and wine of eucharist, but what I can offer to my own companions is this biblical story, with a final invitation to reflect:

There would be no story to share if David and then Jesus himself did not assume the validity of the Hebrew priesthood and the Law of Moses. Neither David nor Jesus challenged the authority of their tradition, even while they legitimized exceptions to its rules. It is in that same spirit of respect that we are invited joyfully to receive the obvious lesson of the story - that there is a precedent for pastoral flexibility buried deeply but integrally within the tradition itself. As bands of people sharing on a journey, like David’s companions and Jesus’ disciples, on the way and hungry, let us promise one another support as each examines his or her conscience to discern how best to find the nourishment we need to live between the times, on the bridge between our communities.

[1] To be sure, the second point quoted here is something of an oversimplification, stated this way for the pastoral setting and applying to ordinary circumstances. As article 915 of Canon Law states, ‘Those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to holy communion.’

[2] From the opening paragraph of the Bridgefolk mission statement, available along with other resources at http://bridgefolk.net. The paragraph continues: ‘Together we seek better ways to embody a commitment to both traditions. We seek to make Anabaptist-Mennonite practices of discipleship, peaceableness, and lay participation more accessible to Roman Catholics, and to bring the spiritual, liturgical, and sacramental practices of the Catholic tradition to Anabaptists.’

[3] Cf. Gerald W. Schlabach, ‘The Bridgefolk Movement in Ecumenical Context,’ Ecumenical Trends 32, no. 3 (March 2003): 14–15.

[4] I avoid here the overly-clinical metaphor of a ‘laboratory’ in favor of a more organic one!

[5] Gregory The Great, Dialogues, book II, Life of St. Benedict of Nursia, chapter 33.

[6] Weldon Nisly comments: ‘I wish to remind us that not all Mennonites, even today, would say “any baptized Christian should be welcome at the communion table of any Christian Church.” I suspect that approach is a fairly recent and ecclesiologically ‘unreflective’ Mennonite assumption. It never was and still is not the case for at least some Mennonites who have always practiced ‘closed communion.’ In my Conservative Mennonite roots, many people would have a hard time sharing communion with other Mennonites and couldn't conceive of doing so with Catholics! To put this in very personal context, my parents (who have always been and remain Conservative Mennonite) do not receive communion when they worship here at Seattle Mennonite Church even when I preside and serve communion. This has happened twice in recent years when they have visited us and worshipped with us. We haven't talked about it much and they don't wish to make an issue of it and certainly don't want to cause me pain. But they are very clear that they “only take communion with their own church.” I grew up with a strong sense that we take communion only with “our own people” with whom we are reconciled and share beliefs and a way of life.’ Email message, 17 June 2003.

[7] Communitarian traditions will differ on how they determine those group norms, on how they protect individual dignity from group injustices, and on how they distinguish key issues from trivial ones. But the fact of these differences should not obscure what communitarian traditions have in common.

[8] John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, encyclical letter (2003), para. 52.

[9] ibid. para. 15.

[10] ibid. para. 16.

[11] ibid. paras. 36-37.

[12] ibid. para. 38; sic. Also cf. para. 42: ‘The safeguarding and promotion of ecclesial communion is ... the particular responsibility of the Church's Pastors, each according to his rank and ecclesiastical office. For this reason the Church has drawn up norms aimed both at fostering the frequent and fruitful access of the faithful to the Eucharistic table and at determining the objective conditions under which communion may not be given. The care shown in promoting the faithful observance of these norms becomes a practical means of showing love for the Eucharist and for the Church.’

[13] Those familiar with theology or church history will recognize it in the formula, ex opere operata.

[14] op.cit para. 38.

[15] ibid. para. 38. The full paragraph from which I quote reads thus: The Eucharist, as the supreme sacramental manifestation of communion in the Church, demands to be celebrated in a context where the outward bonds of communion are also intact. In a special way, since the Eucharist is “as it were the summit of the spiritual life and the goal of all the sacraments”, it requires that the bonds of communion in the sacraments, particularly in Baptism and in priestly Orders, be real. It is not possible to give communion to a person who is not baptized or to one who rejects the full truth of the faith regarding the Eucharistic mystery. Christ is the truth and he bears witness to the truth (cf. Jn 14:6; 18:37); the sacrament of his body and blood does not permit duplicity. To ‘not...reject the full truth of the faith regarding the Eucharistic mystery’ must on the positive side mean assent rather than full acceptance or unambiguous faith precisely because what is being received is a mystery.

[16] ibid. para. 39.

[17] The word ‘concelebrate’ appears at the beginning of para. 45, in a sentence that serves as a transition from the previous section reiterating the prohibition against official intercommunion between divided church bodies or liturgies that might prematurely suggest unity, and a new section recognizing the possibility that individual Christians from other church bodies might join in communion under special circumstances. It thus confirms that paras. 43-44 had been about official concelebration, even though in their English translation those paragraphs did not actually use the word. In any case, in the definitive Latin original, concelebratio also appears in para. 44.

[18] ibid para. 38.

[19] ibid. para. 44.

[20] ibid. para. 43.

[21] ibid. para. 45.

[22] The relevant article of canon law, cited in footnotes to para. 45-46 of the encyclical, is no. 844. The canon itself builds in flexibility at a couple of points: ...Whenever necessity requires or a genuine spiritual advantage commends it, and provided the danger of error or indifferentism is avoided, Christ's faithful for whom it is physically or morally impossible to approach a catholic minister, may lawfully receive the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick from noncatholic ministers in whose Churches these sacraments are valid. Catholic ministers may lawfully administer the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick to members of the eastern Churches not in full communion with the catholic Church, if they spontaneously ask for them and are properly disposed....

[23] That such circumstances are being contemplated seems clear both in Canon 844 and from para. 46 of the encyclical itself: In my Encyclical Ut Unum Sint I expressed my own appreciation of these norms, which make it possible to provide for the salvation of souls with proper discernment: “It is a source of joy to note that Catholic ministers are able, in certain particular cases, to administer the sacraments of the Eucharist, Penance and Anointing of the Sick to Christians who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church but who greatly desire to receive these sacraments, freely request them and manifest the faith which the Catholic Church professes with regard to these sacraments. Conversely, in specific cases and in particular circumstances, Catholics too can request these same sacraments from ministers of Churches in which these sacraments are valid.”

[24] op.cit. para. 46.

[25] ibid. para. 61.

[26] Raniero Cantalamessa, The Eucharist: Our Sanctification, translated by Frances Lonergan Villa (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 1993), pp. 94–95.

[27] op.cit paras. 18-20, 57.

[28] This is in fact the focus of chapter 2 of the encyclical, paras.21-25, entitled, ‘The Eucharist Builds the Church.’

[29] Perhaps the difference is that when congregationally based decision making works well, any rule has already anticipated local circumstances, whereas the inevitably hierarchical decision making of a worldwide body must expect and allow exceptions in order to accommodate local circumstances. Of course, congregationally based decision making does not always work well, either within congregations or between them. One is tempted to speculate that some of the contentiousness that has surrounded Mennonite debates over controversial moral issues down to this day would not have been necessary if Mennonite ethics allowed for the possibility of making legitimate exceptions even while respecting churchwide norms.

[30] Painful misunderstanding results in both directions when Catholics and Mennonites (or others, of course) come together in a eucharistic setting without recognizing their differing attitudes and assumptions about rules. Catholics will think themselves generous when they offer an exception, but Mennonites will miss the generosity and instead feel great pain because they assume they have no option besides feeling excluded or breaking the rule. If Mennonites then express dismay at the very existence of the rule in question, many Catholics will then feel an equally great pain at being told, in effect, that they must give up their deeply held belief that communion and institutional unity are inseparable. Neither will have intended to slight the other, but their mutual pain will be no less - and may in fact be greater because the other may scarcely seem to comprehend its source. This is not to say that we can expect to alleviate all of the pain that surrounds this issue. The source of that pain, after all, is the disunity of the Church, and the eucharist is doing its work if we are left feeling that pain more acutely. (I am grateful to Ivan Kauffman for helping me articulate these dynamics. For an excellent discussion of why we are meant to sense the pain of disunity at the very table at which Christians celebrate unity, see William C. Spohn, Go and Do Likewise: Jesus and Ethics [New York: Continuum, 1999], 165–69.)

The Interdependent April 2001

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 17:49:42 GMT

You wonder how people can question the existence of God on days like this. At this moment I am lying under a blue sky absorbing the sun and listening to birds singing in the trees. This weekend is a bit different for me. It's the first weekend this year that I have stayed at my home in Cumbria!

February and March were packed full with ecumenical events around the country. It was wonderful to see so much of YAG members, but was extra hard saying goodbye after Laura Finch's Affirmation, because we knew it could be months before we are together again.
The events started on the first weekend of the February half term with the Confirmation of my sister and me. It was a beautiful service with input from both my Catholic and Anglican priests. There was a good turn out of AIF members and also friends from both our Catholic and Anglican congregations, but you'll have to click on the link to find out more!

The following weekend YAG members met in the busy metropolis of London Waterloo. It was the first time that the social weekend was not a house event. Despite the hard floor and almost non-existent washing facilities we had a fantastic weekend. This new venue had the excitement of touching on unknown turf and I think the experience was enjoyed by all.

After a year's gap, the Ecumenical Youth Event was back up and running. Mel and Mark took an active role behind the scenes and Jen and I went along to experience this inspiring weekend. After two years representing AIF on the Ecumenical Youth Forum Mel has now passed the opportunity to Mark. I'd like to thank Mel for all the effort she has put into making sure AIF has an active voice on the Forum and pray for Mark as he continues her work.

The season went out with a bang as we had our second great ecumenical leap in the form

of Laura's Affirmation service. We have come so far in our pursuit for a joint Confirmation service. A few years ago both my Confirmation and Laura's Affirmation would have seemed impossible, but we should now be encouraged by these events and continue to pray and work for greater unity.

God bless and Happy Easter

Sarah

To view other articles click on these links: Breakout
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A letter from Joanna Hollins
Bursaries and Swanwick
Prayer time
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IFIN Theological Working Group: Study

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 12:41:18 GMT

IFIN Theological Working Group: Study on Interchurch Families as Domestic Churches

Report on the AIF groups, Spring 2007

Ruth Reardon

How do you as an interchurch family experience unity in your marriage and family life?
How does this affect your understanding of the church(es)?

Seven groups met in the North, Midlands and South of England in the early part of 2007 to consider these questions proposed by Thomas Knieps; a brief session was devoted to them at the Heythrop meeting of the Association in February, and a few individuals sent in responses. I shall attempt to identify the themes proposed in answer to the questions. I hope that all those who participated in this project will be able to recognise their contribution somewhere within this cloud of testimony.

We are like other Christian families

We are just the same as other couples and families, united by our faith in Christ and our commitment to one another in marriage. We share our lives, our activities, our interests. We work to understand one another and to communicate with one another. We strive for sensitivity and we forgive one another when we fail. We laugh together, and we share one another’s sorrows. We respect one another. We grow in love for one another. As parents we do our best to share our faith in Christ with our children. As families we are different from one another, as all families are. What is particular to our situation is that we come from two different churches that are not in communion with one another, and we try to be loyal to both in our marriages and family lives.

We are called to marry

We have a strong sense that it is God who has brought us together. We recognised God’s call to us to marry one another, through all the difficulties that families and church communities and clergy placed in the way of some of us. God has united us in marriage and we renew that unity each day by God’s grace. God made us one and God is holding us together. We seek to live the marriage covenant in such a way as to make real the sacrament of marriage. We are committed to seeking God’s will for each of us individually and for both of us together. This is a spiritual bond that grows and deepens.

We love one another

We are united in mutual love and express this through our physical union and the mutual support we give to one another. Sometimes it is periods of illness that make us realise our mutual dependence and the depth of our love for one another. Sometimes there are other stresses through changed circumstances. We realise that hard times are an integral part of marriage, and that married love means laying down our lives for one another, putting the other first. We live in one another’s lives, just as we live in Christ and find our unity in Christ. This brings us to share through the Spirit in the love of the Trinity. Our love grows and develops as we grow together, and is our life-long path to holiness. We constantly find we have to say we are sorry for the hurts we cause one another, and to experience being forgiven. This helps us to grow in love, and to find ourselves within our relationship, in the context of a shared home that is a safe haven where we can be ourselves. Some of us feel that our mutual love brings us to feel ‘at home’ in both our church communities, experiencing the love of Christ in both.

We are different

We experience our unity through our diversity. We have different personalities. Gradually we learn not to try to re-form our partner into our own image, but to appreciate their strengths and be compassionate to their weaknesses, which are different from ours. We find we are complementary and this is a great strength. We are both helped to become who we are. More and more we can pull together as equals and form a good team. We have to agree on what is essential for us as a couple, and then accept and value our differences. As interchurch couples we have to work hard at our unity – if something so central as our Christian faith threatens to divide us – and this is a great blessing. We can take nothing for granted. A double spirituality pushes us towards unity. We discover that our diversity is a plus – like bi-lingualism, it is a great enrichment to our family life. It changes us. ‘Without an interchurch marriage I would be more arrogant and far less thoughtful’ said one Catholic husband.

We do things together

As married couples we don’t need to do everything together, but it would be strange if we didn’t enjoy doing many things together. Where our relationship with God is concerned, because this is so central to our lives, many of us find that it is very important to pray and read the Bible together. In this way we experience our unity in our home with an intensity that might have been lacking if we were one-church couples. Being with one another in church worship is vital for most of us too. Here we experience our unity especially when we are able to share communion with one another. Circumstances differ and it can be helpful to receive a blessing, but the real need is to share communion to express and deepen our unity. When we work together to prepare a shared celebration of baptism we feel richly blessed; we probably would not have thought so much about what we wanted for our children had we not been an interchurch family. We need the churches to give us good experiences of unity to support our marriages and family life.

We belong together

It is important that our parents welcome their son/daughter-in-law as belonging to their family, and recognise that the couple also belong to another family, that of their daughter/son-in-law. It is similar with the churches. We are one church at home, and we experience our unity when we are welcomed and affirmed as a family by clergy and congregations, when we are recognised as having another church loyalty also, when we are offered joint pastoral care and understood as being in a special situation. Even if they do not always agree with us, clergy and congregations can be very supportive, and this makes a lot of difference. Sometimes we have to support one another to persevere in spite of hurts, for instance when others judged us as ‘less’ a Catholic/Anglican/Methodist – a kind of traitor – because we are married to an ‘other’.

We are responsible

As partners and parents, we have to exercise the authority that belongs to us as couples, and in making decisions together we experience our unity. In less important decisions one or other of us can make decisions for both, within our agreed areas of competence. But when we make really important decisions about our family life, we have to be sure we both agree on them, and allow the time necessary for that agreement. Then we are responsible to one another for how we carry them out, and can call one another to account. This is so in all areas of our life, including those relating to our church-belonging, which for us is a vitally important part of our lives. One or both of our church communities may not fully approve our decisions, but we are grateful when they accept our authority to make them, and when they support us in them. There may be problems when there is a change of clergy or when we move. We can only make decisions based on what seems to us best for our family at a particular place and time, and in making those decisions we grow together.

We nurture our children

We share our faith in Christ with our children and strive to live in our home that one Church of Christ that is both deeper than, and transcends, our divisions. Intentionally many couples always refer to their two churches by name, rather than identifying them as ‘Mummy’s church’ and ‘Daddy’s church’. At the same time many of us try to give our children a sense of rootedness in both our church communities. We have found that this does not cause them to be confused, but enriched. Their perceptive questions and comments sometimes surprise us. As they grow older they increasingly make their own decisions and choices about their personal faith and their church-going, and we try to support them together in those choices, confident in the Spirit who is leading them as well as us.

We look outward together

Because we have had to overcome our prejudice and ignorance about our partner’s church, we have developed a more respectful and inclusive attitude to others. Many families have become involved in some kind of ecumenical work. Because we have crossed boundaries in our marriages, we are more willing to cross other boundaries. For one family it is work with refugees and asylum-seekers, for another with world development, for another inter-faith relations. Because our marriages have caused us to go deeper into our faith, for some it is work in the field of spirituality.

Marriage as a model for Christian unity

It seems to us that the churches need to relate to one another in the way that married couples do, if they really want to grow into unity.

These are some suggestions we would like to make.

Love one another – in a real and deep and lasting way. Do separate churches really do this?

Get to know one another at a deep level: work at communicating, listening, sharing, praying.

Put faith in Christ first, more important than our differences.

Focus on what unites, learn to recognise and overcome intolerance, prejudice, tribalism, to distinguish essentials from non-essentials, to correct the myths in all churches about the others.

Be committed to unity, and be prepared to go through a painful process out of disunity because we have to find a way forward together.
Stay with it, in spite of frustrations and impatience: it takes a long time, but change does happen.

Believe that divisions can be overcome because unity is God’s gift to us in Christ. But don’t expect that we can receive perfect unity.
In God’s eyes we are one; it is people who introduce divisions.

Experience differences as enrichment, value and love the differences, see all that is good in the other. Look at differences together, not from opposite sides.

Be ready to change; institutions tend to be slower than married partners to realise they need to change, if the relationship is to progress. Sticking points can become growing points.

Difference and change need not be threatening if we love one another.

Be open to valuing and liking what your partner likes, though you do not have to like it all. We can disagree without falling apart.
Welcome differences as a stimulus to develop our own faith understanding, to look deeper.

Develop an inclusive attitude, hospitable and welcoming. Do well what you do well, and join in with others when they do things better.
Spend time in other churches; this is valuable for both you and the host community. You will understand more; they will have to watch what they say when they realise you are there.

Think of the ‘other’ in terms of who they are, not in terms of who you are (e.g. why use the blanket term ‘non-Catholics’).

Be convinced that unity really matters now. Responsibility for our children gives interchurch families a sense of urgency about unity. Cannot the churches feel more urgently their pastoral responsibilities for these children, and their urgent need to witness to the world that unity with God and with one another that Christ came to demonstrate and to share with us, the unity for which he prayed.

Eucharistic Division: Human Cost

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 23:26:34 GMT

from The Ecumenical Review, Geneva, under the title The Human Cost of Eucharistic Division

Eucharistic Division: The Cost in Human Terms

"Bishop, why can't my mother receive communion with my father?" was the inconveniently direct question asked by the ten-year old daughter of an interchurch family.

Not an easy question for a bishop to be faced with when he is greeting the congregation after a parish visitation, especially if he has just been exhorting the man Catholic congregation to work for unity with other Christians of the area.

For here is a family where husband and wife are united not only in christian faith and baptism, but also in marriage. They have a mission to nurture and evangelise their children in the faith of Christ. They are called to demonstrate to their children in their daily lives the reconciling power of God in Christ by the Holy Spirit. They are a "domestic church". ?et here they are coming together to celebrate the eucharist, the effective sign of that reconciling power, and they are torn apart at. the moment of communion by church discipline. In this respect their witness to their children is compelled to be one of disunity, not of reconciliation. It is the particularly painful situation familiar to so many interchurch families who worship together Sunday by Sunday in the two churches to which mother and father belong.

More than two-thirds of all man Catholics who marry in England and Wales marry someone who is not a Roman Catholic. These marriages are called "mixed marriages". but in England many of those involved prefer the term "interchurch marriages" - a term coined by the Association of Interchurch Families m 1968 to describe a mixed marriage in which each partner is a practising Christian, usually one a Roman Catholic and the other a Christian of another tradition. The Catholic bishops of England and Wales estimate that perhaps one in ten of "mixed" marriages is "interchurch" in this sense. It is these interchurch families who exemplify the human cost of eucharistic division.

We write here from the background of Britain and Ireland, although similar experiences are common in many parts of the world. There is no lack of evidence of the pain felt many interchurch families who find themselves unable to receive communion together. "The longest journey of my life" is how one Irish Catholic husband described his walk up to the altar for communion while his wife stayed behind in the pew.

As early as 1971 the Association of Interchurch Families approached the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales, asking them to consider the urgent need felt by a growing number of interchurch families to have access to the eucharist as families. The Dublin International Consultation on Mixed Marriage in 1974 recorded "the widespread hope that partners in an interchurch marriage should be permitted a measure of continuing sharing in the eucharist".

More recently, two surveys of the experience of English interchurch families have been made, and the results published m the book Sharing Communion: an Appeal to the Churches by Interchurch Families by Ruth Reardon and Melanie Finch (Collins, 1983) and Whom God hath Joined by Mary Bard (McCrimmons, 1987).

These surveys give plenty of evidence of the sorrow, pain, bewilderment, frustration and sense of rejection and near despair felt by interchurch partners when they cannot receive communion together. Conversely, there is plenty of evidence of the joy and peace which they experience when they are able to receive communion together, especially if they feel they have the blessing of their churches. Families are increasingly judging that it is right for them to receive communion together, and that to refrain from doing so is not only painful but wrong. Happily there are more and more opportunities for families to come together to the table of the Lord. But in very many circumstances they still find themselves unable to do what they believe to be right. And even when they can, there is often the uncomfortable feeling that they are doing something underhand, something they need to be discreet about, something of which many of their fellow-christians (though clearly a diminishing number) would disapprove.

Sin-bearers

When they are refused the eucharistic food which they need to share together in order to nourish and build up their christian life as a couple and as a family, interchurch families are bearing the sin of christian disunity. They are paying the cost of the man-made barriers which have been set up between denominations which all claim to share - more or less fully - in the reality of the One Church of Christ.

In this - without either any fault or merit of their own, but simply because of the situation in which they find themselves - they stand in solidarity with that great company of the poor and the marginalised who are onlookers at the great feast of life to which God has invited all human beings.

There are of course many differences between the situation of the hungry and oppressed of the world, and that of interchurch families in the church. We would not want to press the comparison too far. But there is a real analogy, and it seems to be useful for our purpose here in considering "the human cost of eucharistic division".

In the world God has created, all are invited to the feast of life since an abundance of food for all is provided. But so many people cannot share in that feast and receive the sustenance they need because they are trapped in situations of injustice, oppression and poverty which are of human making. They are paying the price for over-sufficiency in the rich countries of the world. The poor and the oppressed are sin-bearers for the world's injustice, for the human dividing lines which people have set up between rich and poor, powerful and powerless.

None of us should forget them when we come to the sacrament of healing and forgiveness, to share the eucharistic bread which is the sign of reconciliation and unity between human beings as well as between God and humankind, the sign that life is offered to all, and that this life is for sharing.

But maybe interchurch families have a special reason and calling to remember the hungry and the oppressed, the marginalised and the victims of injustice when they come to the eucharist, because they experience so sharply in their own lives the results of the human divisions in Christ's church which, alas, mirror the human divisions in God's world. They too are hungry to share the eucharistic bread at the Lord's table, just as those others are hungry for bread and justice at the feast of life. They are sin-bearers too. Within the church, they stand for those who suffer because of manmade divisions in the world.

Sin and Disunity

Sin and division are human realities. Their price has to be paid.

Eucharistic division is only a part - a reflection - of the price which must be paid for divisions within the christian family. These divisions obscure God's reconciling love, and make the mission of the church more difficult. The church which is called to be the sign of that love cannot be a clear sign to the world. This is the great price which has to be paid for division.

The eucharist is the sign of the unity of the church in Christ. Eucharistic division simply mirrors the disunity of the christian family; it is a sign of that disunity.

We need to stress the link between eucharistic communion and the unity of the church. Those who are reluctant to extend any eucharistic sharing until Christians are visibly one are making a vital point without unity, eucharistic communion is an empty sign. It is essential to take what they are saying seriously.

In the west, this attitude is particularly associated with the Roman Catholic Church. It is true that the Second Vatican Council in its Decree on Ecumenism gave weight both to the traditional position that eucharistic sharing is a sign of unity achieved and therefore generally forbidden, and to the fact that since the eucharist is a means of grace it can on occasion be used as a means to help towards the restoration of unity among Christians. But in practice, church discipline since Vatican II has stressed the first aspect of the relationship between eucharist and unity (at least where the western churches are concerned), and has interpreted the second in very individualistic terms.

Thus it is possible in cases of pressing need for individuals to be admitted to communion in the Roman Catholic Church if the non-Catholic Christian professes a eucharistic faith in conformity with that of the Catholic church and asks for communion of his own accord. These conditions are met in many interchurch families. There is a further condition, however: that the non-Catholic Christian cannot approach a minister of his own community. This seems to rule out interchurch families - although as Cardinal Willebrands, then President of the Secretariat for promoting Christian Unity, said at the Synod of Bishops in 1980 when he urged the bishops to consider afresh the question of admission to eucharistic communion for the non-Catholic partner in a mixed marriage, "this condition is less closely connected with eucharistic doctrine and faith". But at present the rules have to be stretched a little (and are so stretched, of course, in a number of places) to accommodate interchurch families.

It is not surprising that since Vatican II the first and traditional position has been stressed. The second, that the eucharist is a means of grace and so eucharistic sharing can be used on occasion to further unity, is a relatively new insight. But no one should argue as though the "on occasion" did not exist, and interchurch families would plead for further consideration of its application to their situation.

Communion and Unity

Juggling with notions of the eucharist as "end" and "means" in relation to the unity of the church has not been very fruitful for interchurch families, and it may be more helpful to think in terms of communion and unity. An ecclesiology based on the notion of "communion" has been m ' g headway in recent years, thanks largely to the work of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. It is helping to overcome the polarisation of proponents of "end" and "means" in relation to eucharistic sharing and church unity. We all too easily think of "end" and "means" in terms of either / or, rather than in those of the both and of Vatican II.

If we focus on the meaning of "communion", it is easier to think in terms of a sliding scale; there are degrees of communion. There can be imperfect communion which is still communion.

Indeed, the perfect communion to which we are called is none other than the life of God, Father, Son and Spirit, in a relationship of love. It is that same unity of love which binds Christ and his church: God's unity, binding christian people together as they share through Christ in the unity of Persons in the Trinity. This is the fulness of communion. It is only when Christians fully live this unity that we shall be fully in communion with one another.

We do not live fully that communion in the life of the Trinity within any of our churches and ecclesial communities. Yet. within our church communities we receive communion together as a sign of unity, an effective sign which helps us to grow in unity. So we are 'in full communion' with each other and yet that communion is imperfect because we do not yet live out the full reality of our communion in the life of God. There is sufficient unity already for our communion together to be no empty sign, and in the eucharist we express our desire to grow into deeper unity with God and with one another.

In this perspective it can make sense for churches which are not yet 'in full communion' with each other, but are nevertheless in a partial and imperfect way 'in communion' through the faith and baptism which they profess, to accept that an certain occasions and for certain people eucharistic communion between members of divided church communities may be an authentic sign of the unity we already share as well as the expression of a longing to grow towards that fuller unity to which we are all called. It is not good enough to say: no, the churches are not in canonical communion with each other, but they are in spiritual communion, and then think we can come to a final and fixed position on the expression of that spiritual communion in sacramental and canonical terms. There must always be movement here, pushing back the limits of the possible - and this inevitably happens first in a fragmentary and untidy way.

Earlier we suggested that there is a certain analogy between interchurch families in the church and the marginalised poor and oppressed in the world. Perhaps we can also discover a fruitful analogy between work for communion and unity in the church, and work for justice and peace in the world.

There is a striking passage in Fr Gerry Hughes' recent book Walk to Jerusalem - in Search of Peace. When at last he arrived in Jerusalem the author met Fr Bruno Hussar, the Dominican founder of the village of Neve Shalom - Oasis of Peace - where Jews, Christians and Muslims live together in peace. The village now attracts thousands of Jewish and Arab youngsters who come to listen to one another, understand and enjoy one another's company.

Fr Gerry records Bruno's final remark at the end of his visit: "There are situations where it is impossible to do justice immediately to both sides, and Israel today is one. There are times when we have to learn to live in peace in injustice."

He comments: "I know this statement will make many hackles rise and that it can be misinterpreted to mean that the victims of injustice must accept the injustice meekly and passively. We must hunger and thirst after justice; passive acceptance of injustice has no place in Christian life, but Bruno's comment is a corrective to that other statement, which is also true, but can be misinterpreted, 'There can be no peace without justice.' The statement is frequently misused to justify violence until such time as justice can be enforced. It was through his death on a cross that Jesus reconciled all things. He opposed injustice, but non-violently. When he became the victim of violence from the unjust civil and religious powers of his day, he accepted death on a cross and prayed for the forgiveness of his enemies. When he arose from the dead, he said to his disciples, 'Peace be with you,' wishing them peace now, not at some future date when all injustice would have been removed from the earth. Trying to live in peace in an unjust situation, we are more likely to reach eventually a more just solution. Trying to bring justice in an unjust situation without trying to live peacefully in the meantime, brings neither peace nor justice."

This insight into the relationship of peace and justice will find an echo within the experience of many interchurch families, as they apply it to eucharistic communion and the unity of the church. They feel that they have to work towards sharing as couples, as families, in eucharistic communion so far as they can, now, in a situation in which their churches are still divided.

They know that immediate and full unity between the churches may be God's will, but it is not yet possible; for one thing, not enough Christians in all our churches reallywant unity enough. They know that their own strongly expressed desire for eucharistic communion together now makes many hackles rise; they do not however intend it as an assertion that church unity does not matter - indeed, they are often enough among those who hunger and thirst most after unity. But they may provide a corrective to the assertion, which is also true, that there can be no communion without unity. There is a way of expressing this truth which refuses to allow any value to growing unity and degrees of communion. Interchurch families ask when there is sufficient unity to allow some advance towards eucharistic communion. Interchurch families feel that to live so.. as they can in communion in a situation where their churches have not yet reached unity, may well make those churches more likely to grow into unity. It is no good trying to bring unity to divided churches without trying to advance in communion at the same time.

Death and resurrection

Unity and its expression in communion are God's gift in Christ. It was through his death on a cross that Jesus reconciled all things, restored unity between God and humankind, and brought all human beings into communion with his Father and with one another - that communion which is fore-shadowed, though not fully, in the church. We spoke earlier of interchurch families as sin-bearers, bearing the sin of christian divisions, just as the destitute and oppressed are bearing the sin of unjust man-made barriers. But this is only by analogy. Christ himself is the great sin-bearer, who bears away the sin of the world. He bore our sins in his own body on the cross. He absorbed into himself the effects of sin, his body was broken, he became sin for us. And through his brokenness, God restored unity. The great work of reconciliation is already achieved, through his death and resurrection.

The task of the church is to make known the great work of reconciliation in the world, to make known the life that comes through acceptance of death, the peace that comes through absorbing and transforming the fruits of injustice, the unity that comes through suffering the brokenness.

What is the church asked to do when faced with the poverty, suffering and oppression in the world which are the fruits of injustice? First of all, the call comes to relieve suffering and bring hope to individuals. Secondly, the call comes to work for justice, to combat the unjust structures which institutionalise human greed, our lack of care and concern for one another. For some, the call comes to identify fully with the hungry and the suffering, with the marginalised and the oppressed, even to the point of dying with them.

Is there an analogy here too with what the church is asked to do when faced with the situation of interchurch families?

Is not the first call to relieve suffering so far as possible? This is a call for a truly pastoral approach to interchurch families. Their job, like that of all christian families, is to live a reconciled family life, to nurture their children in love and unity, to help them to grow in faith and in response to God's call to them. How can they do this properly without sharing in eucharistic communion? For them it is an urgent question; they have so little time, as couples and as families. Must the relief of their suffering, must their freedom to fulfil the task God has assigned to them be delayed until the churches have finally accepted the healing of all their divisions? Is not the urgency of this pastoral task a stimulus for the churches to relate the situation of interchurch families to the growing communion - imperfect but real - between them, and to apply its fruits to this particular group of Christians who in their family life are already nourished by more than one church tradition?

Suffering is not good in itself; it is to be relieved wherever possible. It is hardly a christian response to say to the hungry and oppressed: we sympathise with you but we cannot help you because your suffering is necessary to show how unjust the world still is. Rather, we held that the relief of suffering brings a sign of christian hope in an unjust world. Yet interchurch families are often offered the first response: we sympathise with you, but your suffering is necessary to show how disunited the disciples of Christ still are.

Secondly, the call comes to work for unity, to replace the denominational structures which institutionalise division by structures which foster unity. The pain of interchurch families who have to pay the cost of eucharistic division simply highlights the wider christian predicament - the cost the church has to pay for divisions between denominations: its mission to the world cannot properly be carried out because its function as a sign of God's reconciling love is obscured. This is the basic question for the churches: the urgency' with which they pursue their reconciling mission in the world. They might even be helped to see this more clearly, to grow in a sense of urgency, if they try to stand with interchurch families and see how they can best help them to undertake their christian mission within their own family life.

For interchurch families themselves there is the third way of living the resurrection even now. They will struggle all they can to make known their urgent pastoral needs to their church authorities, and sometimes they will be heard. They will work for structures of unity from within their denominations with all the energy at their disposal, and sometimes they will see signs of coming together which will cheer their hearts. But in the end some of them will be left only with the third way, the way of suffering, the way of identification with the cross - and for all of them there will be elements of this way on their family journeys.

Yet here too there is a parallel with the experience of the suffering peoples of the world. In The Crucified Peoples Jon Sobrino writes from the experience of El Salvador: "Are these people already living the resurrection? Of course the new heaven and the new earth God wants for them are still long way off. They have far more cross than resurrection in their lives. But they also have some resurrection - and we say this with all due respect and in fear and trembling. In the midst of slavery there is alreadyfreedom, not liberal freedom or the freedom which claims to guarantee human rights. But there is freedom at a deeper level. There is freedom to decide, to commit oneself and to struggle for liberation. There is the height of human freedom when - like Christ - these people do not have their lives taken from them but give them freely and generously ... They are passing from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. In the midst of injustice there is love, forgiveness, reconciliation, fellowship, signs of God's kingdom ... There is the joy of knowing they are people and a people, and that as Christians they are God's children and God's people. They can call God Father because they feel him near. They feel close to well-known people like Archbishop Romero...and to others less well known, many brothers and sisters, and so they feel they are not alone and that God is near. Freedom, love and joy are signs of the risen Lord... Scandalously, but as predicted by the christian paradox, there are already signs of the resurrection among the crucified peoples."

This passage too will strike an echo in the hearts of some interchurch couples, The parallel should not be pressed too far. On the whole interchurch families have a choice unlike the crucified peoples of central America. The easiest escape route is to abandon the churches altogether, and not a few are driven to this. Or they can become one-church families - and for some this seems to be the only way forward, indeed the right way forward for them, But for others, who freely choose to remain two-church families because God seems to be calling them to do so, there is an experience of resurrection even in the midst of all the hurts and conflicts involved.

In their marriages they "live the hope, as well as the difficulties, of the path to christian unity", as Rope John Paul II told them at York in 1982. In their families they know the enrichment which comes from living two church traditions; they are not totally destroyed by the tensions but know something of the newness and release of life which can be given in this context. They have the deep joy of sharing in fellowship with others whose experience echoes their own, who are equally hurt by the way in which many of their fellow-Christians e their separation at the eucharist for granted; in this close fellowship they know that they are not alone, and that Jesus stands in their midst. They hang on to both traditions represented in their families because they know this is the way forward to unity - to embrace diversity within reconciled relationships. They do this in some sense for their churches, anticipating and pioneering that greater unity to which all are called. They do it in love; indeed it is only possible because they love one another. But in love they experience that it is possible.

They offer this resurrection experience of duality in unity to their churches, and pray that it may somehow be used, in God's providence, for the unity of Christ's church, for the peace of God's world.

Ruth Reardon

from The Ecumenical Review, Geneva, under the title The Human Cost of Eucharistic Division

Produced by the Association of Interchurch Families, England

After 25 Years

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 22:53:55 GMT

Two AIF couples look back - and forward

25 YEARS ON THE PATH TOWARDS UNITY

David is Anglican; Irene is Catholic. David is British; Irene is French. Our wedding in December 1960 took place in a Catholic church amid warnings of the priests and the bare signs of celebration and sacrament allowed us. We knew we were black sheep, but our love for each other was deep, nurtured by five years of waiting and letter-writing which was often about the problems that we could foresee in our allegiances to separate Christian denominations. But we didn't allow them to spoil our joyful day.

Once he had accepted to 'sign his children away', as his family put it at the time, David has always been supportive, insisting that the family must worship together weekly; therefore Anglican communion service for him, Catholic mass for everyone, including him. When Irene was unable to go to mass he still took the children, and as they grew up, when questions and arguments on the Christian way of life came up, they turned to him also for answers. So did Irene, who gradually came to think of David no longer as 'a Christian, but...', but as 'a better Christian than I am'.

Irene decided not to send the children to a Catholic school where there was little talk of ecumenism; would the school realise that David was a Christian too? However, we both ensured that they would be taught the Catholic faith by taking them to catechism classes on Saturdays and helping them with their La Retraite correspondence courses throughout their growing years and our moves as an RAF family.

Growth

For many years we felt a common basic faith, but were also very aware of separateness. We were often hurt by each other, and by other Christians. At that time we had no ecumenical aim; we just dealt with situations as they arose. Christening, first communions, and confirmations were tinged every time with sadness and pain because David, as committed a Christian father as any, even on those occasions could not receive Our Lord in the eucharist with the rest of us.

One Catholic priest who did fully recognise David as a Christian had his parish about fifteen miles from our home. So our family traveled there to mass on Sundays, where Irene no longer felt like a second-class Catholic and where David was on the readers' rota. Over this eight year period, it was no wonder that this priest became our family friend and that we grew in trust with each other's differences.

Then came our Marriage Encounter weekend; we felt ourselves renewed as a couple, and were deeply touched by the blessing given to David at the mass in lieu of communion. This gave us an experience of the love of the church for our couple. After our weekend, we realised that the concept of the domestic church gave us the unity denied us by the official churches, and such was the effect of this that we both were inspired to involve ourselves much more in church affairs and pastoral commitment. At about this time, Irene started attending David's church services with him; and as we were gradually accepted by both church communities as a couple and felt more united, it was strange that the pain of separation at communion became more acute.

The visit of the Pope to this country was a time of deep joy and thankfulness for us. Another great source of inspiration was a French Catholic priest who is ecumenical officer in his own diocese. His vision of our couple as a vehicle towards unity rather than a handicap has been life giving to us.

Soon after, we joined the Association of Interchurch Families. It filled our need for mutual support of similar couples. We share a lot, mainly of sadness, of love for both our churches, and of how we suffer for and through our spouse; also of our impatience with what seems to us to be man-made rules and regulations. Again and again, never being allowed to witness at the Lord's table to the unity we live, gives us a share of the pain of Christ in his churches which are separated. We love and respect the Catholic Church and don't want to break its rules, but we long for some sign of reconciliation, some demonstration of the progress made in the last few years, something that the normal Catholic can appreciate and understand. At the same time we see how we are blessed to be witnesses of Christ's possible unity in diversity. One way we have found for daily sharing is in the few minutes spent on Bible study together, using the booklet of the Bible Reading Fel1owship.

Celebration

On our 25th wedding anniversary we hoped for a really symbolic occasion. David asked our Catholic parish priest, with some diffidence, to receive communion at a celebratory mass. Without offering any promise, he told us that it might be possible, but permission would have to come from the bishop. We both got very excited, and hopefully enquired every Sunday if an answer had been received. When it did come, the reply was devastatingly negative.

The very next weekend, we went with downcast hearts to the Spode conference of Interchurch Families. There, a Catholic bishop gave us over an hour of his time and love in talking out our disappointment. He suggested a mass at which David's Anglican priest would distribute the reserved sacrament at the same moment as the Catholic priest gave communion. We took to this idea immediately, as it would demonstrate most vividly the separateness as well as the partial unity of the Body of Christ. He did us good.

So we obtained an interview with our bishop, and he listened with fatherly concern to our longing for our 25th wedding celebration to be an opportunity for a gathering of Christians worshipping as fully together as the Catholic Church would allow. It was decided to hold the mass in the hall of the local Catholic primary school. We sought to achieve a balance of David's Anglicans, Irene's Catholics, our common Christian friends from Chippenham, encountered couples, our Interchurch Families group, and family, both French and English.

We chose the Mass for the Unity of Christians, and included our choice of readings and hymns. We decided that the collection would be shared between Christian Aid and CAFOD. Our three youngsters, as time went on, were amazed to witness our excitement and involvement; they had never see us like this, especially not David! They gladly accepted to do the readings and serve on the altar.

The Day

Suddenly, (or so it seemed) relatives arrived from France to stay, and the big day brought its last-minute tasks and panics. Then we were at the school door welcoming friends and acquaintances from near and far. Then we were sitting waiting, then both priests entered (Irene's priest had just accepted the presidency of our local council of churches and David's was the vice-president) and an inner calm came over us as we both concentrated on participating to the full. Our first hymn was 'This is the day that the Lord has made'. Our congregation entered into the service as though they all worshipped there together each week. There were about 170 participants with a good mix of all denominations, but the love and acceptance of one another slowly became tangible as the mass progressed. We had two sermons: one on unity, one on marriage. The highlights were the renewal of marriage vows when all the couples stood with us to repeat those well-known phrases, and the sign of peace when the priests of our two parishes gave each other their hands. Communion time expressed what we meant it to.

All too soon it was over, and it was apparent that we were not the only ones to have felt the touch of the Holy Spirit that afternoon. As they shared the refreshments after mass, the openness and friendliness of the people, many of them strangers to one another, was obvious.

Looking back, we feel a sense of achievement. We find ourselves strengthened through this celebration, as if anointed, more at one with each other and as a little church. Nevertheless, we feel chastened at how slow our own progress along the path towards unity has been over 25 years. This reminds us how tolerant we must be towards those who seem indifferent to christian unity.

We know that it was not only through us, but through the love, acceptance and prayer of those taking part that the service became the true corporate worship, reflecting Christ's wish that they may be one in him. We were surprised, and felt humble at how much feedback followed, and how richly people interpreted the celebration in the light of their particular gifts. We have learned a lot about people and about the Holy Spirit, and are starting to wonder what form our ruby wedding anniversary will take - in the year 2000.

Produced by the Association of Interchurch Families, England

Ellens First Communiomn

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 22:53:53 GMT

Eleven years ago our elder daughter Ellen unwittingly caused us a number of problems when we were trying to arrange an appropriate celebration of baptism for her. Eventually, we were very happy that her baptism was as 'joint' as we could make it in those days - the celebrant was a Roman Catholic, and the service took place in the Anglican parish church where Chris was the curate. Sarah's birth two years later raised even more difficulties, but these too were happily overcome when our two Bishops assisted at her baptism (there were photographs in the Church Times and the Universe in April 1982).

In the years since then, our children have been brought up within the practice and traditions of both communions. They are as much at home in one as in the other, and see nothing unusual in their father presiding at the eucharist, or their mother administering the chalice at mass. We consciously made the decision that the desire to receive communion must come from Ellen, and not from us, and we were therefore delighted when she finally raised the subject. Needless to say, her horizons very firmly included her two worshipping communities, and she found it very difficult to understand - or even believe - that one of her churches might expect her to exclude the other. Not only did she wish to receive communion in her two churches (and it has to be remembered that she has never had only one), but she was also quite clear that she wished her father and mother to share this day with her.

Occasions such as these can be particularly difficult for a two-church family. How a one-church family would rejoice over a child who asked for communion, and wished to share this important step with her parents! For us, it meant long months of anxiety, of reassurances to Ellen that she was right (even if this meant that the rest of the world had to be wrong), and of careful and considerate negotiation. But it is wonderful to be able to report that, this time, the care and consideration was mutual. We all had to learn to give and take, but we did so in an atmosphere of trust, and even love.

I will not spend too much time on the problems. Chris is an Anglican priest, and a very public figure in our two dioceses, and I myself am not unknown (as our Vicar-General pointed out at a recent AIF meeting!). I am sure that it was very much more difficult for us to be given the permissions we eventually received than it would have been for a more private couple. Also, the fact that I am a eucharistic minister had to be taken into account. Some people have said to me that we succeeded because we know 'the right people'. I had to say that I would gladly have exchanged our fame for their privacy in the course of those six months.

And I want to pay tribute here to my own parish priest, who could not have done more to help us, but helped us most of all by wanting to help us. He must have found the situation difficult at times - he is not a Jesuit from a liberal university, but a Catholic priest from Northern Ireland who had to come to terms with his own experiences and traditions. I also want to acknowledge the support and encouragement we received from our two Bishops and my Vicar-General, Mgr David Donnelly. I know that many discussions went on, phone calls were made, and letters were written, as well as the meetings we had ourselves with all these people. And it wasn't easy for any of us. But we all shared the same objective - to do what was best for Ellen. Our Bishops believed in us, believed in our integrity, and our reasons for asking for something that was difficult for them to give. For a long time I felt that the decision could go either way, but it helped us that we were able to be honest with our Bishops about what that would mean for us. It is very hard to go on being refused by your own church.

As some who read this will know already, Ellen's First Communion mass was celebrated in Chris's Anglican parish church on lOth December 1989. Chris and I read the lessons - which we also chose - and Chris was responsible for the bidding prayers. As a family, the four of us took up the offertory, and that was a very. emotional moment for us. I administered the chalice, first to Ellen, and then to Chris, because the Bishop of Brent-wood gave him permission to receive communion on that occasion. The church was full of family and friends. Both sets of grandparents were there - but how sad that only one set could fully share in Ellen' first communion.

There were many representatives of interchurch families, and of our two congregations, all sharing our joy. Ellen received presents which seemed to cover the entire spectrum of christian churchmanship, including, of course, an ASB and a Roman Missal.

As I've already said, there were sadnesses even on a day like that. A member of Chris' congregation said to me "But you don't mean that we won't be able to take communion in our own church?" I had to say that yes, technically I did mean that. Many people found this very hard to come to terms with. After all, Ellen is the vicar's daughter, and it is their church. But eventually this same person said to me, "Perhaps it will give us some idea of what you and Chris go through every week." This was the attitude that prevailed, but there was a lump in my throat as I stood in an unfamiliar part of Chris' church - behind the altar rails - and watched friend after friend come to their own communion rail and bow their heads for a blessing from a Catholic priest, while I myself had to pass them by with the chalice.

I don't think anyone there was unmoved. I am unable to believe that what we did could cause 'scandal' to any Christian. I am bewildered by people who suggest that God might not approve. Ellen took another step on her spiritual journey, supported by her family and friends, and everything was just as it should be. I pray that when Sarah, and all the other children of interchurch families, are ready to take that step, the way will not be quite so difficult for their parents.

Mary Bard

Produced by Association of Interchurch Families, England

Revealing the Holy

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 15:18:56 GMT

Interchurch Families on the Path to Christian Unity

Reprinted with permission from

INTAMS
review

Review of the INTernational Academy for Marital Spirituality
Vol 6 - No. 2 - 2000

If you wish to distribute this article, please ask permission from
INTAMS, email: intams@skynet.be

Thank you.

=============

Revealing the Holy - Revealing the Holy

In love we want to come, revealing the holy one.

Enter the shadow - enter though you

May be walking blind.

Enter the night - enter the sign.

Revealing the holy…

In weakness our God is revealed.

The wound must be opened

Before it will heal - let's open our hearts

And open the meal.

Revealing the holy…

At table we"ll break and share bread.

Jesus says "When strangers are welcomed I'm fed."

The humble will lead and the proud shall be led.

Revealing the holy… ¹

In striving to express our lived reality over the past eight years of married life as an interchurch couple, we want to explore three questions, namely What was? What is? Where do we go from here?

We came together, in love, from two different Christian traditions. We were aware that we shared one baptism, one faith, one Lord, one God who was Father of us all. I was perhaps more aware than Fenella that we had different understandings and expressions of that one faith. Fenella had crossed relatively easily from church to church depending where she happened to be at the time (with the Anglicans in Britain, the Baptists in Romania, the Church of South India in India). The Catholic church was simply another Christian body with which she expected to be in unity, yet another expression of the richness of God. Even with my awareness of differences, however, we didn't really know what those might be, or their impact on our life and marriage.

We are told and experience that in marriage, we leave our fathers and mothers and become one flesh. We are told and experience that unless we eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink of his blood, we shall have no life in him. We sense, however, that the churches that proclaim these truths have not yet come to grips with their practical consequences.

One of the first points of impact was a decision on where to worship. Fenella was joining me in Canada, where I was already actively involved in the life of my Catholic parish. Her Anglican pastor had suggested it was more important that we worship together than she worship in the Anglican church, so we decided that our primary place of worship would be the Catholic parish. A strengthening factor was that the Anglican parish still used the Book of Common Prayer of 1662, something Fenella had not used in 30 years, and which was now as foreign to her as Latin was to me. Both languages were beautifully poetic, but neither was now a language of prayer to a God who walked and talked with us.

While the language of the Catholic liturgy was closer to her own language, however, that didn't mean the liturgy itself was a comfortable experience for her. We often discussed her discomfort with what she saw as strict and impersonal following of the liturgy, and her need for stronger preaching and teaching. I felt personally attacked, and found those times exhausting. It was only as time went on that I began to realize she was not attacking me personally, but trying to discover meaning in what she was experiencing, and in what seemed to have such an impact on my life. Since that time, fortunately, Fenella has come to discover a profound richness in the Catholic liturgy and, as a very visual person, has especially appreciated its use of art, symbol, and ritual, enabling us to communicate with God through all our senses. In turn, I have come to experience much greater need for sound and extended teaching on the Scriptures and their call to and impact on our lives.

Fenella believes that decisions of faith need to be taken in conjunction with the pastor. With what I saw as a high level of naiveté about the relationship between Catholic pastor and people of other Christian traditions who would worship in the Catholic church, she invited our Catholic priest for supper to discuss her involvement in the parish.

We were extremely fortunate, for while he was clear on the 'canonical problems' raised, he chose to approach the issue from a pastoral perspective. The result was a fairly open and warm welcome to participate fully in the faith life of the community for five years, during which she would discern her faith home. It was something we celebrated and enjoyed for some time. I say 'fairly open', because it soon became evident there were different understandings of what full participation might mean. She was not allowed to proclaim the Scriptures, nor serve on parish council, though she was welcome to receive the eucharist and to help lead children's liturgy each Sunday. The seeming capricious selection of what was allowed or not was incredibly difficult, especially as neither pastor nor parish council ever communicated the reasons to her. Still, we were able to live fairly comfortably in the parish, and with a high degree of involvement.

That ended with a change in pastors, a man who made it clear that he would not refuse her eucharist, but preferred she receive only at Christmas and Easter. "You don't understand" he said, "You're not one of us". He was followed two years later by another priest who told me (but never told Fenella) that "your wife is welcome to worship with us, but sacramental participation is not possible". This is something that Fenella in particular has never understood, as her understanding of welcome to the eucharist has come through the liturgy itself. She later developed a knowledge of canon law on the matter, including the possibilities afforded in the explanatory 1993 Directory on Ecumenism. Even so, the exclusion from the eucharist of people who are recognized as children of God and therefore brothers and sisters in Christ remains for her largely incomprehensible and incompatible with our common baptism and our unity in marriage.

Initially I responded by joining Fenella in not receiving, because I believed then and now that if one half of that 'one' made so by God is not welcome at the Lord's table, then neither is the other half. Unfortunately, the situation grew in intensity Sunday by Sunday, as that priest spoke from the pulpit about those 'outside the Church' not going to heaven, his belief that mixed marriages should be annulled (and preferably forbidden), etc.

Fenella and I had earlier determined that each was responsible for choosing his or her own worship 'home', and the other would faithfully abide by that decision, worshipping together as we went. Following a particularly vehement denunciation, from the pulpit, of "those Anglicans who seek permission of a visiting priest", I finally decided it was no longer healthy for us or for the Catholic community that we continue to worship there, and so decided to take my leave of that parish. Wanting to remain within my Catholic community, however, we began on alternate Sundays to drive many miles (the nearest Catholic church being 30 miles away) to visit family and friends and so join in their communal worship. This pattern continues to this day, though in practice we find ourselves worshipping somewhat more regularly in our Anglican church.

You will notice that even in this exploration, our language has changed. We have moved from 'my' and 'her' church, 'my' and 'her' pastor, to 'our' Anglican church and pastor, 'our' Catholic church and pastor. Fenella and I do not have different pastors. Rather, we both have two pastors, two bishops, two churches, one each of Catholic and Anglican. We have found ourselves, by virtue of the unity of our marriage, becoming inextricably linked to both communions.

This has been a source of great difficulty as well as great joy. We will speak of the difficulties first, for the joy is greater. In speaking of the difficulties, we will draw also on the experiences of others, in particular of those interchurch couples who have children of their own.

One of the largest practical difficulties is the enormous energy required to be actively involved in two church communities. Both parishes call on our help for the same community festivals. Then there are two youth groups, two choirs, two calls to be lectors, communion ministers, religious education instructors, and the work of forming relationships with two different church families. It was not unusual to find ourselves scheduled for ministry in both churches on the same weekend. Exhausting times, definitely, but very good.

Things are somewhat easier now, simply because we are no longer involved in our local Catholic parish, and it is impossible to be involved in the remote parishes we visit. As a result, our energies go primarily into the Anglican community. Unfortunately, this 'ease' has come about for all the wrong reasons, reasons of separation and division rather than of openness and understanding.

Other interchurch families often live far more difficult situations. In one case, a couple who worshipped together in both churches went to their Catholic school to enroll their children. They were told that, in the system of point allocation used, their presence together at worship on alternate Sundays wasn't enough for their children to be placed on the list. They then approached their Anglican community, where they also worshipped together on alternate Sundays, thereby actively keeping up their respect for and celebration of both faith traditions. The result was exactly the same. Because of the parents' fidelity to their own and each other's traditions, the children are now attending a public school that the parents see as less desirable.

For another couple, the non-Catholic is not welcome to receive the eucharist in their local Catholic church. The school connected to that church, however, is of excellent quality, and within walking distance. A short five-minute drive away is another Catholic church where both are welcome to receive. Unfortunately, if they choose to worship where both are welcome, their children will no longer be able to attend the Catholic school that has proved to be so beneficial. The parents therefore continue to worship locally, unwelcome as they feel, weekly experiencing the pain of separated churches.

We personally do not face questions of baptism, but know that the experience of interchurch families varies widely in this matter. The pastoral approach to this reality seems no more consistent than it does to eucharist. In some cases, one or other pastor will refuse to participate, with resulting enormous pain for the parents and families. In others, couples are overjoyed to hear that both pastors and communities will be present and participate willingly in the baptism of their child. Unfortunately, a good experience with one pastor in no way assures a repeat with the next, and it's difficult to know in advance what the response will be.

While there have been great strides in recognizing a common baptism, the implications of that common baptism are not yet as readily recognized, with interchurch families often living the painful consequences of the divide between theological statement and experiential reality. Driven by the reality and called by the theology, many parents want to share with their children the richness of the two traditions which have formed them in their faith, and to have their children recognized as being a part of both churches.

As with many interchurch families, it has often been suggested that Fenella become Catholic, or that I become Anglican (though the second is heard far less than the first). This is possible, yet there are good reasons why it does not happen. Perhaps the most important is that neither of us has any sense of being called by God to change religious affiliation. We sense instead that we are called to continue to live in our marriage the sorrows and joys of the path to Christian unity, remaining faithful where God has placed us.

This realization has not come about so much through flashes of inspiration as through concrete experiences. One such was the visit of Fenella's mother from England. A strong and faithful Anglican, she naturally wanted to worship with us on our 'Catholic' Sunday. She fully enjoyed the liturgy, until communion time. As we always did at the time, Fenella and I received, while her mother, aware of Church regulations, stayed in her seat. We returned to join her, to see tears streaming down her cheeks, while the congregation sang "unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink of his blood, you shall not have life within you.". Right then, Fenella determined she would never again subject her family and friends to that pain. We no longer invite them to join us for the Catholic liturgy, but go with them to the Anglican church. What could have been a wonderful ecumenical gift exchange has become an experience of pain and exclusion.

How can Fenella join my church, with all that she experiences of its richness, then tell her family and friends (the community that has engendered and nurtured her deep faith life) that they are not truly welcome? Such a move may satisfy the scribes and pharisees, but it would not bring joy to our domestic church, nor would it bring the churches closer to unity.

III

We have concerns about the work toward unity, even as we celebrate that work. We are concerned that our churches in most cases appear not yet ready to love each other first, and only then to work out how that love is to be expressed. Instead, we see churches insisting that every "i" be dotted, every "t" crossed before commitments to unity are made. We suspect that, were marriage to be approached in the same manner, we would have very few marriages, and the 'domestic church' would become merely a fine archaeological specimen.

To use another metaphor, while we appreciate the churches acting as parents to their children, and coming together at key family events such as baptisms and marriages, we see nothing in the parental model that brings those parents together on an ongoing basis. We suggest it is not the model of solicitous parents which must be the 'type' for the church, but the life of the couple passionately committed to loving each other, and to discovering in the act of loving just how that love is to be worked out and expressed.

In the midst of difficulties, however, there have been signs of great joy. Fenella's family and friends had experienced only the 'separate Catholic church'. My family knew Anglicans only as 'separated brethren'. Through our 'domestic church', our families have discovered in each other a deep shared faith, and wonder why the churches remain separate.

Our involvement in both churches, and the fact I have been welcomed as a Catholic within the Anglican church, has been a source of great joy. The change in sense of pain within the Catholic church is also welcome. For years, Catholic awareness of the pain of separation has appeared to be fairly limited to awareness that the 'non-Catholic' experiences the pain of separation. Slowly but surely we are discovering an increasing awareness among Catholics that the pain of division exists within the body of which they are a part. This growing pain is a sign of great hope, as we believe that unless and until Catholics experience the pain of separation as their own, there will be little desire and energy generated to do the work needed to heal the pain.

The pain of knowing that we are still not welcome in our local Catholic parish remains very great. This pain is reflected in the experiences of numerous interchurch families with whom we have been privileged to come into contact around the world. In many cases, families have finally dealt with that pain by choosing membership in a single church, or by not worshipping at all. In some cases this has resulted in living with the hidden pain of turning their backs on their own traditions and communities. In other cases, it has brought a great sense of peace. For ourselves, we suspect the former would have applied, had we not been introduced to the Association of Interchurch Families, and found there a great deal of understanding and support.

The divide between theology and practice remains, but we live with it more easily. Part of this is due to the liturgy itself. We find there warmth, openness, compassion and welcome that are truly awesome, without diluting the significance of the reality being celebrated. We come more and more to believe that if our churches would truly listen to their liturgies, much of this divide would melt away.

We have found that the hunger which comes from being excluded from the eucharist has become a driving force in our lives. In some indefinable way, God has nourished us in the hunger, and that nourishment has in turn increased our hunger, and our energy. We have also found our relationship with each other deepening as we share together not only in the exclusion and misunderstanding, but especially in the gift of richness and diversity with which God has blessed us as an interchurch couple. We have come to recognize that we would not have it any other way.

We are coming more and more to believe that the unity we seek already exists, not in some platonic world of ideals, but in the pre-existence of God. We believe that as individuals and as church, our ecumenical work is not about forging unity. It is about developing the capacity to see and recognize the profound unity that exists, and the tools to roll away the stones in our hearts and in our churches which keep us separated from that unity in Christ.

Where do we go from here? How can we know? When we began our journey, we had no idea we would be brought here. We can only continue to respond to God's call. We believe that interchurch families have much to offer that the churches desperately need: examples of mutuality, of trust, of dialogue, and above all of love. We invite the churches, their pastors, and their members to look on interchurch families as opportunities for growth in unity rather than as problems of disunity. We invite our church leaders and members to dialogue with us, and to learn from our experiences, that together as Church we may walk the path to Christian unity.

¹ The title "Revealing the Holy" is inspired by the title song of a CD written by John Coleman and Ian Bartle of "Beni-Abbes", one of the L'Arche communities in Australia, and published by Willow Connection . © Used with permission.

============

Ray & Fenella Temmerman are a Catholic and Anglican interchurch couple living in Canada. Members of the Interchurch Families International Network, they worship ion both their churches, and operate this web site and email listservice for the Network. They can be reached at

115-1185 St Anne's Rd

Winnipeg, MB R2N 0A3

Canada

By phone at: 1 204 284-1147

By fax at: 1 602 926 0243

By email at: RaynFen@gmail.com

Web site: www.interchurchfamilies.org

30 years of interchurch marriage

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 15:04:48 GMT

Simon Quail

I was born in 1948 into a Roman Catholic family. I grew up in the Cotswold village of Heythrop, where the Jesuits at that time trained their philosophers and theologians in the depths of rural England.

There was a mile to cycle down the drive to Heythrop College, where I attended mass every Sunday. This was not therefore a normal parish situation. This was the training ground of Soldiers of Christ. The young men sang well; the small ‘parish’ congregation of local and estate people sat at the back and kept quiet. Mass was in Latin. You were not expected to say anything. I received my First Communion, which was preceded by my first confession at age 7 in a side chapel, from my Dominican uncle. Along with my two brothers I was an altar server, trained in the Latin responses by Robert Murray, SJ. Eventually the dialogue Latin Mass came in, and it was a huge innovation when the congregation were allowed give voice in response to the priest’s invocations. I never really understood what all the Latin meant, but it did sound good.

We met and married

I was away at sea from the age of 17 as a cadet in the merchant Navy, and I always tried to attend Mass whenever I found myself in port on a Sunday. I lived in Sydney for four years and eventually my local church was St Mary's in Hunters Hill. This was a fine Victorian Gothic building in the English style.

In 1973 I met my wife-to-be Marilyn, in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Three months later we were married by special licence of the Catholic bishop (due to the fact that we only gave one month’s notice to the local parish priest). Prior to that we had travelled together from Sydney to Adelaide, Perth and back. In Adelaide we went to a Methodist church service where the singing was enlivened by guitars, then later went to the Catholic cathedral for the six o'clock evening mass, where rock musicians from the high altar rocked the youth in the nave. It was very different from both our experiences in England! When we went to the Anglican church together in Perth we could not tell whether we were in an Anglican or a Catholic church. This sharing of church experiences and blurring of traditions became a motif for our search for a resolution to the perceived problems of sharing different church traditions while wanting very much to share the rest of our lives together. We were very much in love and love conquers all; we glossed over our differences. We were hopeful all could be easily resolved!

Obviously the most important step in cementing our relationship was marriage. We thought long and hard about where to get married and what sort of service we wanted. Marilyn had an Anglican upbringing, but when we met in Sydney in 1973 she was attending a well-known Methodist church. Marilyn and I went together to each other's services to understand each other's tradition. I was intrigued by the communion tradition of the Methodist church, where we passed round small pieces of bread, offering them to our neighbour, followed by a rack of small communion glasses, from which each person took a tiny glass of wine. This was very different from my Catholic experience.

I think the main reason we chose to get married in my church was simply that I did not feel that I belonged in the Methodist church, whereas Marilyn had very little attachment to any particular church. Also the Catholic church was very beautiful, fitting for her wedding!

We discussed matters of our different faith traditions in our two training sessions with the parish priest. We explained to him that Marilyn was an Anglican and I was a Catholic. He told me I had to promise to do all that I could within the bonds of our marriage to bring up our children in the Catholic faith. Marilyn had to be aware of my promise but did not have to make any promises herself. She would not be able to take communion at a nuptial Mass so we decided on a straightforward marriage ceremony. I must say I was surprised at having to make a promise about the upbringing of my children, having never really thought about it. It pointed up the divisions between us and we realised that this was something we were going to have to work through. It was a negative pressure to have to deal with in the early stages of our marriage.

I remember my mother sending me in article from the Daily Telegraph about an organisation called the Association of Interchurch Families, which was concerned to promote unity and understanding within what were called then mixed marriages. We found this a very encouraging article and it gave us hope.

At that time I remember going to Catholic Mass on Sundays by myself with Marilyn coming with me sometimes, and sometimes going additionally with Marilyn to an Anglican service locally. Because life at sea and marriage seemed compatible, we decided to return to England so that I could train to teach; I had obtained a place at Mary Ward College, Keyworth.

I remember attending the very traditional Anglican church and also the lively local Catholic church. At that time the priests had been giving general absolution during Mass before this practice was stopped by Rome. I thought that this was an interesting and useful innovation, as it helped to remove a difference in practice between our two church traditions.

I was having great problems at that time about the obligation to attend Mass every Sunday when I wanted also to share communion regularly with Marilyn. One thing that always saddened us was the division we suffered when Marilyn was denied communion at the Catholic altar-rail with me.

I needed to talk through my problems with somebody.

Thinking things through

I have a reply to a letter of mine to John Coventry SJ; he wrote it on 16 December 1974. He was very encouraging. In the letter which enclosed details about the Association of Interchurch Families, he advised Marilyn and I to… ‘do whatever most, at any particular point, builds up the Christian unity and mutual understanding of husband and wife.Every couple is just that couple and not other people. They have to make their own way in constructing a shared conjugal spirituality, and should do so fearlessly. It can be quite exciting! … and is at any rate full of opportunities. Once you can start thinking in terms of opportunities, rather than obstacles and problems, it all becomes quite different. …

In the light of the above principle, I haven't the slightest hesitation in saying that you ought to go to church with your wife on Sundays… instead of going to Mass. The important reason for doing this is your duty to explore and share with her the spiritual tradition of her church (as she does yours); i.e. the Gospel overrides the law.’

Soon after we made contact with the Association of Interchurch Families and met Ruth and Martin Reardon. I remember meetings at Spode and also once at my College at Mary Ward, Keyworth. These were very small gatherings at that time and I remember that the Reardon children were quite young. It was at this time I first met John Coventry and had long conversations with him and also with Adrian Hastings. They both encouraged me to put my marriage first and to work out my need, my scruple sometimes, to attend weekday Mass.

This was for me a vital time. It enabled me to explore going to Holy Communion with Marilyn in her Anglican church one week and for Marilyn to come with me to my Catholic Mass the next week. As the years rolled by I became more comfortable with regular reception of Anglican communion because it allowed Marilyn and me to witness to our shared spiritual life together. It was very hurtful for us when she came to Mass with me but was not able to come up to receive communion. We wrote a long letter to the Catholic Bishop, asking permission for Marilyn to receive with me and telling him of our practice of sharing communion together in the Anglican church because we saw ourselves as one in Christ in marriage. He wrote back to me a letter basically saying that my ideas ‘were mixed up’ and that ‘the Eucharist is the focal point for unity and must not be used indiscriminately’.

Father John Coventry wrote to me further in 1978 after I had felt that I had been reprimanded by the Bishop. He consoled me that, ‘over and above what is important for your own marriage, I think you are on doing something important in bringing before priests and bishops realities of experience and conviction of which they may not be aware. All interchurch families have to struggle through difficulties, and live tensions rather than resolve them, for the sake of other families and in the process of change in climate of opinion and understanding’. And in a further comment he made about the use of the Eucharist, Father John clarified that ‘what the Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism, n.8. meant… is that sharing in the Eucharist may be used discriminately. It neither says nor means that it may not be used at all.’

Our first local Catholic priest tried to convert Marilyn to be a Roman Catholic, suggesting that this was the only way forward for us. Our second Catholic parish priest was not only probably the largest Catholic priest in Britain but a also very nice man.

The question of baptism

When our first daughter Joanna was born in 1977 we had to think about baptism of course. What Marilyn and I both wanted was for both the Anglican and Catholic priests to baptise Joanna at the same time saying the words, ‘I baptise you in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit’, while they both held the shell and poured water over her head. I remember the parish priest and our local Anglican vicar coming round to our house and discussing how we would accomplish this. To cut a long story short this is what happened, and I don't think the Catholic Bishop was consulted about this minor parish matter! We were delighted. Joanna received a baptism certificate from both church communities and as an Irish interchurch family once put it, Joanna was now at 200% Christian: 100% Catholic and 100% Anglican.

In 1978 we moved to another part of the country and began to establish a practice of worship in our local communities. We liked our Anglican village church at the top of the hill where Marilyn and I and Jo went together every other week. We had to explore several Catholic parishes to discover parish priests who would give us both a welcome. But the situation remained that Marilyn was not welcome at the communion rail, except by one priest who said: ‘It is the Lord's Communion. It is not mine to refuse’. It was a rare example of understanding.

Our second daughter, Philippa, was born in 1979 and of course we wanted the same concelebrated baptism as for Joanna. After much discussion to share in our understanding of what we wanted, the vicar and priest shared jointly in the baptism. I don't think anybody bothered the Bishops for any particular permission at this time.

When Robert was born in 1982 we needed, for some reason I do not recall, written permission from the Anglican Bishop. We also gained agreement from the Catholic Bishop when we visited him, but only because this had happened before in our family. He would have preferred another kind of shared celebration. As the girls ran around his parquet floor we discussed the theology of concelebrated baptism. Robert was duly jointly baptised, as his sisters had been. We felt that we had done right by our children in opening to them the opportunity of experiencing fully the tradition and teachings of both Christian churches.

First Communion and after

The next stage to cause friction in our journey in faith was preparation for First Holy Communion. We left it until Joanna was nine years old in 1986. The difficulty was that I was away at sea and Marilyn would be responsible for taking her to First Communion classes at the Catholic church. This she did with very good grace and understanding. But of course, on the day of the First Communion I very much wanted Marilyn to receive communion with Joanna and me. We were both very pleased to have permission from the Catholic Bishop. But it always felt painful even having to ask. We never felt this should be necessary, but Marilyn always wanted to have a genuine welcome, and not to be underhand about it. The same happened with Pippa’s and Robert’s First Communion, as we had an on-going permission for Marilyn to receive communion with us on those occasions.

Until the age of 14 we insisted that the children came with us to church, joining us in both church communities. They took communion in both churches. They took part in Sunday School, church activities, carrying up the elements for communion in the Catholic Church etc. None have wanted to be confirmed. When the age of 14 and confirmation classes were starting, they did not want to have to choose between their parents’ churches. Nor were they ready for this next step. (One of them is now thinking of having a full immersion to seal personal acceptance of the Christian faith.)

In 1993, with First Communions over, there would seem to be no further opportunities for Marilyn and I ever officially to receive communion together. Also, we wanted to receive communion together much more frequently than every few years! Catholic parish priests still felt that they needed the Bishop's permission to give Marilyn communion on a more regular basis.

Then Marilyn and I attended a local conference on interchurch family life and the Catholic Bishop was in attendance. So Marilyn cornered him and put to him the situation in forceful terms. Thus in 1993 we had a very special letter from the Bishop. He agreed that there would be particular occasions during the year, especially at Christmas and Easter, when it would be right for Marilyn to be admitted to Holy Communion, though he didn't see this happening on a regular monthly basis.

This then has been the pattern of our worshipping lives ever since. Over the past 25 years, Marilyn and I have become very involved in both our Catholic and Anglican communities. We both read the lesson and take part in bidding prayers in both churches. We have held three Alpha courses in our house, which have been led by the local Anglican church. We have attended numerous Lent and renewal courses in the village. We lead a mainly Anglican weekly house group, exploring our Christian faith. Marilyn has been very involved in her church over the years at parish and diocesan level and was for five years a member of English ARC.

In 2002 Marilyn and I were asked to be Mass coordinators for the Saturday evening Mass at the Catholic parish church. This I felt to be a great honour, and a recognition of our ecumenical witness over the years.

When our daughter died in a car accident last summer aged 25, the funeral was held in our village church. I found the outpouring of love and support expressed in so many different ways from the fellowship of the local church and village almost overwhelming. It demonstrated to me the clear value of having roots deeply embedded in a faith community. I was delighted that our Catholic priest from the nearby town was able to join our Anglican vicar in conducting our daughter's funeral. A few members of the Catholic Church community came. It is a commentary about the nature of town churches that we know so little about each other. We come from different directions to attend Mass and go our separate ways afterwards. We feel incredibly blessed by our local village church community. We have a social and faith life here and the two often intertwine. With the pressures of work multiplying and the pressures of just coping with our recent loss, Marilyn and I have, sadly, decided to reduce our formal commitments to our Catholic church community. This, regrettably, will mean a lessening of our ecumenical witness.

Over our 30 years of marriage, Marilyn and I have tried, in many different ways, to learn to live out an interchurch family life. We have kept our love and loyalty to the faith of our birth; and developed a better understanding of the deeper truths as revealed within our different Christian traditions.

Sharing our story

In the early years of our marriage we went firstly to Spode and then to the Swanwick AIF conferences, and have attended the Heythrop Meeting many times. We were part of a local group that met regularly for many years. The last Swanwick meeting we attended was in 1994 for the Silver Jubilee. We always found it very upsetting having to wrestle with the same issues over and over again: marriage; rejection at communion; problems with baptism; First Holy Communion; what about confirmation. I know we could have been a stronger witness for others by being there. And that is what this article is for. It is the story of one couple’s struggle to find not only their own faith but to share in and reflect on the faith journey of their partner. And so to witness to the unity in Christ of two different church traditions: Catholic and Anglican.

Hope for the Church

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 10:25:40 GMT

Published by Peeters-Leuven, 2021.

Hope for the Church(es)" argues the need for the Church to listen and learn from those who today are developing new languages to speak of timeless realities and values. This is especially true as we work toward the healing of the estrangement that afflicts the Church.

Among those to whom the Church should listen are couples married across denominational lines, and the children of those marriages. The former have had to learn to listen to the values each brings to their marriage, if the marriage is to survive and bear fruit. In the unity of their marriage, they carry the riches and challenges of two different traditions. The latter grow up absorbing those same riches and challenges, carrying them within one body.

Both have much to offer the Church and the churches, if they can be invited to tell their stories, invited to share what they have learned.

An example is also provided, in which the exact same words are presented, but in such ways that two very different stories are heard. This, too, lets us know that what we hear and absorb can depend as much on the telling of the story as it does on the story's content.

"Hope for the Chuyrch(es): Young People in an Age of Linguistic Dynamism" forms a chapter in the book "One Bread, One Body, One Church: Essays on the Ecclesia of Christ Today in Honor of Bernard P. Prusak", edited by Christopher Cimorelli and Daniel Minch, published by Peeters-Leuven, 2021.

Hope for the Church(es): Young People in an Age of Linguistic Dyanism, in One Bread, One Body, One Church - Title, Index, Chapter
Story-telling: One Text, Two Voices, Different Stories

One Text, Two Voices, Different Stories

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 10:25:21 GMT

One of the things I do in retirement is facilitate workshops on proclaiming the Scriptures. In those, I provide people with tools to enter into the Scriptures, not as a study of history or paleontology, but as lived and present-day experience. My aim is to help them enter the sacred texts as something they experience, and can then relate as first-person witnesses. It has been my experience that when this happens, the texts come alive, touch people in a way that mere recitation does not.

A particular experience of my own helps to illuminate this. One Sunday, I was rostered to proclaim the Old (i.e. ancient) Testament reading of the creation myth as outlined in Genesis 1. I began to prepare in the usual way, reading the Scriptures aloud several times. The first was to simply see, in my mind, the scene as it unfolded. Then I repeated the reading, asking who was there? What was that person, those persons, doing? Finally, I repeated the reading again, listening to the conversations, even entering into them myself if that happened. There was no right or wrong, there was only the experience, my experience, which would then inform the way I told the story.

I began to read the story, based on what I had been taught, namely that Genesis 1 was written by the Priestly source, very much in the sense that there was an appropriate place and order for everything. It could have been a Priest, it could have been an engineer writing the story.

Then suddenly, in my mind, something changed. I was no longer watching an engineer or a cultic priest at work. I was seeing and hearing an artist at work, musing his way through creation. Each day was not a concrete, practical step in the building of a logical structure. Instead, each day became the stroke of an artist's brush, here a stroke of red, there of yellow, there again of blue or grey or green, all binding together to create a masterpiece. Each day, too, the artist looked at what he had done the day before, mused on it, and then, as in an 'Aha!' moment, decided what he should add next.

I was so struck by the difference in the way the story sounded as I recounted it that I decided to record both versions . (It's a large file, just over 14 minutes long and about 15MB, so may take a while to download.) The result, as you will hear, is the recounting of two different visions of creation, exactly the same words, yet two very different stories.

This, I believe, is what our Church faces today. It's not just a question of what the words are of the story we tell. It's a question of the way we understand and recount our experience of faith, our experience of God at work in our lives.

If you would like to express your opinion on this, or talk about your experience, email me at ray.temmerman@gmail.com .

In casae you missed the link, it's http://interchurchfamilies.org/images/Audio/genesis_1.m4a

Ray Temmerman

Mixed Marriages and Receptive Ecumenism

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 10:15:53 GMT

Mixed Marriages and Receptive Ecumenism: A Meeting of Gifts

Fifth Conference on Receptive Ecumenism

Sigtuna, Sweden, 27-29 June 2022

Mixed Marriages and Receptive Ecumenism:

A Meeting of Gifts

It’s a privilege and joy to gather with competent people enthusiastic for the work of Receptive Ecumenism, people who are committed to seeking out, listening to, and learning from the gift others, people who are members of churches from which our own is estranged, bring to the Body of Christ. It’s a privilege and joy for which I give thanks.

And yet, I am going to take a risk, and encourage you all to leave here, and go home. I hope, however, that you will stay around at least long enough to allow me to explain. In the process, I hope I won’t put you to sleep with facts and figures before coming to the heart of the matter.

So, what am I going to talk about? I will talk about the research I have done, and the data it provided. I will then talk about what I will argue it reveals, evidence of rich ecumenical resource.

Research

I conducted two research projects within the Catholic Church. One was in Canada, one in Australia, seeking evidence on the prevalence of Mixed Religion marriages, within which reside that subset known as Interchurch Families.

In this, two categories come into play. One is known as Disparity of Cult, the other known as Mixed Religion.

Disparity of Cult refers to a marriage between a Catholic and a person who is not baptized. That person could be of deep faith, e.g. a faithful Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, etc., or a person of no faith at all. The issue is not faith, but baptism.

Mixed Religion marriages, as understood in Catholic parlance, are marriages in which the spouses are both baptized, but come from two different Christian traditions. ^[1]

Interchurch marriages are a subset of those same couples, usually involving a Catholic, who intentionally worship together in both churches to the extent they are able, and raise their children within both traditions.

In my research, I drew on evidence both from civil society, and from the Catholic Church.

So, what did this research reveal? First, from civil society.

Civil Society

In Canada, indications are that there are more marriages in which a Catholic is married to a person of another Christian tradition than there are marriages between two Catholics.

I want to reiterate that statement. In Canada, there are more married couples in which a Catholic is married to a person of another Christian tradition than there are between two Catholics.

In Australia, it is slightly lower, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016 census showing that some 35.1% of all marriages involving a Catholic are Mixed Religion, where one spouse is Catholic and the other of another Christian tradition.

I believe the data for the m ost recent UK census will be made available in October, and look forward to seeing it.

Church

Now, how does this compare with Church data? As we will see, is very different.

In Canada, the Church shows Mixed Religion marriages accounting for only some 11% of marriages. Disparity of Cult accounts for a similar 10-11%, with some 74% being between two Catholics.

In Australia, the Church shows Mixed Religion marriages accounting for only 8.7% of marriages, Disparity of Cult at 9.5%.

Clearly the information the Church gathers is very different from that gathered in civil society. Why might this be so?

In conducting the research, I contacted the bishop of every Catholic diocese in Canada and Australia, asking for data from their dioceses on three distinct elements.

These were

the number of marriages in their diocese in which were between two Catholics,
the number Mixed Religion marriages, and
the number of Disparity of Cult marriages.

In Canada, I asked for data from the years 2015-2017. In Australia, because I had concrete data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016 census, I asked for information from that year alone.

The bishops of both countries were very generous in their response, as can be seen from their responses. In such surveys, one would normally be content to have responses from more than 20% of those canvassed. In Canada, 42 responses were received, being some 59% of dioceses. Significantly, they represented some 81% of all Catholics. In Australia, the percentages were slightly lower, but still a sign of great generosity, indicating again that the issue being researched was of real importance to them. I am very grateful to the bishops and their staff.

Comparing the data from civil society to that from the dioceses, what important issues stand out?

Firstly, of course, is that not all marriages recorded in civil society take place in the Church, to be recorded there. The Church, as institution, doesn’t know about them. And that has pastoral implications.

Secondly, in Canada, some 20% of responding dioceses were unable to provide data which differentiated between Mixed Religion and Disparity of Cult. In Australia, this increased to 38.5% of responding dioceses.

In those responses, both marriage categories were gathered as one group. In short, while they knew such marriages were happening, they did not gather the relevant data from their parishes, and so could not state the size of the cohort of such marriages.

What are some of the implications of this?

Without certainty as to the reasons for such amalgamation, one cannot help but wonder if it indicates an understanding, however unintentional, that the only person of concern here is the Catholic spouse; not the Christian of another tradition, not the unbaptized person, not even the one made so by God in marriage. If true, albeit completely unintentional, this would be a most unfortunate situation, one which simply bringing the reality to the dioceses’ attention may be sufficient to have rectified.

I do not directly fault the bishops. The simple fact is that, in the annual gathering of data on marriages from around the world, Rome does not request differentiation. That differentiation is a country-by-country, or even diocese by diocese, decision.

Okay, enough of the statistics. How does all this information relate to real life?

With no requirement to provide the differentiated information, many dioceses do not gather it. The result is that the Church does not know the size of the cohort in its midst containing the seeds of lived ecumenism, cannot call it forward to live its gift to the churches and the Church.

Instead, where there is a perception of such presence, the most common response appears to be to ‘run an RCIA’, the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Please understand: I believe the RCIA is a rich pedagogical tool for introducing non-Christians to Christ and the Church. But it is being used, I suggest, to solve ‘our’ problem of discomfort with the presence of faithful Christians of other traditions in our midst, people who are one with us through baptism and marriage, and who live in their lives the joys and difficulties of the path to Christian unity. And, as we can see from the civil society data, the cohort involved is very large indeed.

Whenever such a large cohort exists within any body, ecclesial or secular, the question should be asked as to whether this cohort represents a problem to be solved and/or a gift to be received.

Some believe it is a problem, saying that “intermarriage undermine[s] the old loyalties.” ^[2] Yet this ‘problem’ has also become one of the largest ‘sources’ of growth in the number of Catholics worshipping in our churches. Even if it may feel like a problem, then, it is also a possibility of growth potential, and should be treated seriously as a result.

Is there another reason to treat this as an opportunity?

I argue that we are dealing with a huge opportunity, the opportunity to learn from such couples how to live the receptive ecumenism required for us to move toward Christian unity. Why do I suggest that?

These couples are faced, week by week, with the reality of estrangement between their churches. Indeed, it seems at times that, rather than encouraging their conjugal union, their churches will impose on them the estrangement the churches themselves live, an estrangement the churches at times hold on to as points of church definition. And yet, these marriages survive.

This survival is, I suggest, evidence of a gift given by God to his Church in its various forms, for the healing of the disunity which has developed and we, at times, cling to.

What gift might this be? What resources might they have and bring, which can be gift to their churches and, through their churches, to the whole Body of Christ – including us?

For these marriages to survive, and especially if they are to thrive, the spouses must develop a capacity to listen to each other, to receive from each other, and to celebrate, the gift of faith, and the form of that faith, which each brings to their marriage. They must learn, as the late Dr Ruth Reardon said, to “affirm the psychological equality within their marriage of the two church communities that are represented within it.” ^[3] They must learn to hold in their marriage the two different and mutually estranged traditions from which they come, and which have given them life, and together to form a way of reconciling the religious estrangements which those traditions have lived for generations, perhaps centuries.

This capacity to receive, to hold, to reconcile and to celebrate differences is a resource which our churches desperately need if they and we are to learn to reconcile the estrangements that exist between them. How might we distinguish some of these capacities in order to see them more clearly, more easily call them forth?

We may begin with the capacity to look first at what we find attractive in the other. Is there something in the way this person lives his/her faith which reflects that which is best within ourselves? What is that, and how might it encourage and support the life of faith we find living in us? That, of course, is the easy part.

The next question, equally vital, is this: what do we find attractive in the other which is different, which we find in some way calls us to be more, completes us even as we may find it challenging our assumptions, our ways of living? This question is far more challenging, as it calls us to look closely at the differences, notas something to be avoided, or something to be changed, done away with, but something to be explored, its richness and beauty, its gift, teased out, called forth. In short, how can that person’s faith be encouraged to grow, both for that person’s good and for our own as well?

Again, how do the parents in interchurch families not only live fully their own form of faith, but encourage their spouses to live fully their form of faith, seeing each as gift of and for the other?

How do such parents encourage and enable their spouse to share their faith with their children so that, while the parents carry two Christian traditions within their marriage, their children begin to carry the two traditions within their body – and do so with grace?

If we can seek out and approach these families with humility, not to let them know how they are to live, or to have them change religious affiliation, but to walk with them in order to receive and learn from them, I suggest they will become more aware of, be strengthened in, and more able to share more widely, the gift of unity they have been given in their marriage.

I suggest, too, that their gift, strengthened by our walking with them in that exploration and development, will call forth and strengthen the work of ecumenism within us, and at all levels of the Church.

I further suggest that, if our dioceses can begin to record and gather the annual data on mixed-religion marriages, and develop means to reach out to them to receive their gift, we will come to know more fully, and be able to draw on, the gift which presently flies below the radar of our churches.

There is another aspect, which flows from the fact some of these marriages have not been recorded in the Church. Indeed, these couples may not be participating in religious activities in any church. The Church, as institution, doesn’t know who or where they are. Yet these people have enough of a personal connection with the Church that they have identified themselves with a particular faith cohort. And we, as members of civil society, know them, through day care, work, sports gatherings, shopping, and more. It is therefore for us, as members of our churches, to seek out these families, call them forth, learn from them.

And so, I return to the beginning, encouraging you to go home. I do so, not because I think you are wasting your time here, or that I don’t want us to spend time together. Far from it. I do so to invite and encourage you to go back to your roots, there to exercise your gift, calling forth within yourselves, all the competence and passion of which you are capable, the very gift that you are, in the midst of your brothers and sisters of various Christian traditions. Seek out people married across denominational lines. Encourage them to tell their stories, discovering in the process their own gift which they, in living in their marriages the joys and difficulties of the path to Christian unity, contribute to their churches and the Church. Encourage your ecclesial bodies to record the data on such married couples, not as problems to be solved, but as opportunity to be joyously lived.

As Pope Francis says, ideas must come from experience. ^[4] Experience the mixed religion and fully interchurch families in your community. Then let your ideas flow from that experience.

Go home, and be gift.

Ray Temmerman STM

Ray Temmerman (Catholic) is active in the Interchurch Families International Network (IFIN). Ray operates the interchurch families website, http://interchurchfamilies.org as well as an interchurch families international discussion group. Together with his wife Fenella (Anglican), they worship and are active in both their churches, letting their unity in faith bring awareness to their churches, and healing of estrangement to the Body of Christ.

^[1] Mixed marriages: DISPENSATION FROM CANONICAL FORM (part 1), https://cbcpnews.net/cbcpnews/mixed-marriages-dispensation-from-canonical-form-part-1/

^[2] Paul Baumann, “Don’t Invite the Theologians: Is Tom Reese right about what ails the Church?” in La Croix International, 1 June 2022, https://international.la-croix.com/news/religion/dont-invite-the-theologians/16171 accessed 1 June 2022.

^[3] R. Reardon, No Blueprint, in The Journal, Vol 9, No 1, 2001, http://interchurchfamilies.org/journal/pdf/2001V09N01January.pdf

^[4] Antonio Spadario SJ, “Pope Francis in Conversation with the Editors of European Jesuit Journals” in La Civilta Cattolica, 14 June 2022, https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/pope-francis-in-conversation-european-jesuit-journals/

Our Faith Journey

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 09:09:09 GMT

Bernie & Shirley Karstad

Shirley's Story

I was raised a Roman Catholic. My parents were very active in the church. We lived on a farm and attended a small Roman Catholic church. My father served on parish council and dealt with other church business because of the few families that belonged to this rural parish. My mother was also very active in church life and leadership. She led the choir. She helped to keep the church clean as well as doing the church linens. Many Sundays also found her cooking and serving dinner to the parish priests or Bishops who had the service that day. Because of our road conditions in the winter, the commuting priests also spent many a Saturday night staying over so that he could get to church with us in the morning with horse and caboose. Sundays were always special days for us. We rarely, if ever, missed Mass. In the winter it took the whole day just to get to and from Mass with the horses. From the time we were young children we too took part in the church choir. We always prayed as a family. Never a meal was to be had without grace being said before and after it. During the winter months because there was more time spent inside rather than doing outside chores, we said the rosary as a family nightly, as well as our bedtime prayers. During the school year we took catechism by correspondence. In the summer months we invariably had two weeks of catechism classes at the church, taught by the Sisters. At these times we were prepared for the sacraments of Confession, First Holy Communion and Confirmation. We loved these two weeks of classes because we could then play with our church friends.

Although we went to a country public school, all our teachers were Catholic. This was mainly due to the fact that my father was chairman of the schoolboard and besides no kids in our little school were Protestant. Due to this setup every Holy Day of Obligation was a school holiday, because we all went to Mass.

For our high school education we attended a boarding school in the little town close by. Because we had three aunts who were Sisters in a convent in Winnipeg, I chose to go to that boarding school for my high school years. While there I entered that religious order in the hopes of becoming a Sister. After several years in formation I decided that the religious life was not my calling. I felt that God was calling me to serve Him as a lay person. To this day, God has continued to fill my life with challenges. I am grateful for the years I spent in the convent because my spiritual life has certainly been deepened and my faith has been strengthened.

After leaving the convent, I led a normal dating life as a young adult. I dated several young men with different religious backgrounds. But always at the back of my mind I was searching for the right Catholic who may someday be my husband, thinking that a boy with another religious background would possibly only mean trouble. I married a Catholic boy who was also brought up in the traditional Catholic family. He attended a Catholic boy's high school. His father was a Knight of Columbus. His mother was a member of the Catholic Women's League. I was sure that I was making the right decision and had all bases covered and that life would be happy for ever. Well after seven years of marriage and three children later, one five, one three and a baby six weeks old my husband walked out on us for another woman. My whole world fell apart. I was hurt, angry, bitter and frightened. However I knew I had to survive to look after my children. Soon after having been deserted, I turned to my parish priest for spiritual counseling. He was a man of compassion and understanding, and very supportive. He helped to give me the courage and strength I needed to go on. He reaffirmed my faith in knowing that God still loved us very much and would always be there for us when we called on him. At this stage in my life I really learned how to pray, knowing full well that this was the only way to get through this whole mess in my life. I learned to let go and let God.

As a divorced Catholic, I did not receive much support spiritually, emotionally or mentally from my parish community. Somehow I was made to feel that I didn't belong anymore as divorce was totally unacceptable in the church. When I joined a support group for single, widowed and divorced Catholics, I sometimes heard priests tell us how we should continue coming to church, but not receive the sacraments until we had our previous marriages absolved by the church through an annulment. We were told numerous stories about these saintly women who came to church faithfully with their children and took the back pew because they were unworthy to be in the presence of God at this time in their life. They would wait until their annulment was given enabling them to be right within the eyes of the church and then could once again proceed to take part in the sacraments. Knowing this not to be right, I ignored their statements and not only continued to attend church but also received the sacraments. I applied for an annulment, not because I believed in it , but rather because it was one of the church laws. I was granted one after the process taking about a year and a half.

I share with you this history of my life only to emphasize how strong Catholicism was instilled into me as a child and as an adult. Although Protestants may well have been wonderful people, marrying one would only bring problems to myself as well as to my extended family. These were very deep feelings and thoughts of my own.

I remained a single parent for several years raising my children on my own. I once began to date again, with much fear and caution. The Protestant men in my life were nice, but I never gave any serious thought of ever marrying one of them because I in my narrow-mindedness could only foresee problems. Several years later I remarried a Catholic widower, who also was a active practicing Catholic, as well as a recovering alcoholic. Needless to say the romance ended almost immediately on our wedding day as he took scripture literally thinking that he was head of the household and all the rest of us were to be his servants. I was not going to let this marriage end and so walked several extra miles in my life to make it work. After years of verbal, emotional, sexual and physical abuse it was time to get help. With the help of a counselor and the courage and understanding I had gained from the Al-anon program, I came to see that the only way to maintain my safety and the safety of the children was to leave this marriage. Although this was very painful, emotionally and physically, I was forced to do what was best for the children and myself. Needless to say my self-image was once again almost nil and I would have to start rebuilding my life all over again. Being divorced twice in the eyes of the Catholic church and some of my immediate family members was no easy matter. Most expected us to stay in the situation, continue to take the abuse and work through it. But from the Al-anon program I had learned a very valuable lesson. I did not cause the disease of alcoholism, I couldn't control it , nor could I cure it. The only life I could have control over was my very own.

I turned to my parish priest and the church I was actively involved in as a reader, usher, Eucharist minister and participant for support and understanding. I was very disappointed with the compassion we received. In all honesty I was very bitter and angry with the response.

Although alone, we were not alone. The children and myself received a lot of support, understanding, compassion and tangible help from my al-anon friends, non-church-goers , and my son's cub leader, a Lutheran who is now my husband. God was truly with us. At this point in my life, I met Him face to face. My experience and hurt from two failed marriages was not an experience of isolation or in any way had a negative effect on my life. Rather these led me to grow psychologically and spiritually. I did not realize it then, but the emotional and psychological pain was to become perhaps the most powerful force in molding the course of my life. I was fortunate as a child to have been introduced to God, by my parents. The seeds of faith were planted back then. Now it was up to me to cultivate the soil and help them grow. My God became very real. I sensed that Jesus heard my every cry and plea and that He was near by to give me the strength I would need to continue following Him. Although I saw myself as a failure and sinner I knew deep down in my heart that Jesus did not view me as unworthy of His love. God was calling me to deeper intimacy with Himself. My spirituality began feebly but grew more confident along the way. I now recognized the need for God in my life. I had to place myself in his hands with complete trust, confident of His tenderness and love for me. Daily I learned to turn my life over to His care. I learned to meet Him daily in the people I met who touched my life. I took off my Catholic blinders as I call them. I came to the realization that some of us so good Catholics, myself included, are too busy following the rules and not the spirit of the rules in our churches. We hide inside the structure of the church, behind stained-glass windows, too busy with surface and pious practices to have the time for the Mary Magdelines, tax collectors and sinners that sit right next to us. Somehow we've learned to be judges rather than servants. Yes in all humility for the first time in my life I began to see people as they really were, not for what I wanted or thought they should be. It didn't matter if they didn't go to church, or weren't Catholic. They were good people who knew God and lived with and for Him. Yes Lord I am grateful for my past mistakes in life and my sinfulness because through your love and forgiveness, I now can truly call You Father.

The last six years of my life have been filled with peace and joy. I dated and married my son's cub leader, a Lutheran. He is a man who loves me, respects me, supports me, and prays with me. He also makes a wonderful father for my children and a man they can certainly look to as an example of a loving and concerned dad. Our life, my life is still filled with the challenges of everyday living and raising a family. But what a joy to face each day together, praying together that God will help and guide us to become the parents He wants us to be.

Bernie's Story

I was born Sept. 21 1939 on the family farm at Atwater, Sask. My parents were of Norwegian decent, Mom born and raised at Atwater, Dad born in Minnesota and raised at Atwater. It was a mixed farming area and just over the "dirty thirties". Mom and Dad were married in 1935.

I have two sisters, Bernice born in 1941, Beatrice born in 1944, and one brother Bertram 1953-1973.

Being of Norwegian decent made me a "cradle Lutheran". The people of our area were of mixed nationalities, English, Welsh, Hungarian, Jewish and a mixture of the above.

Church was an important part of our families lives. Dad and Mom were active in church activities through there entire lives. It was to church and Sunday School every Sunday, parochial school in the summer. Except on rare occasions, there was no work on Sunday, only normal farm duties.

I guess my first recall of other traditions and faiths was at home on the farm. My Grandmother on my Dad's side talked about her brother (and she wasn't happy) being a Jehovah Witness. The storekeeper in Atwater was Jewish. The farmers whom we worked with and helped were Norwegian, Hungarian, or English but this didn't seem to matter. Work had to be done regardless. I was a pall bearer at the United Church for a neighbor girl when I was 10 or 11. I guess people respected others faiths and traditions and never seemed to question (at least to my recollection). I still remember standing at center ice, at a hockey game, in the rink at Esterhazy banging on the boards with Fr. Burns. There was a Catholic hospital in Esterhazy and Dad had his share of health problems so we were well aquatinted with the Sisters at St. Anthony's. The Sisters looked after the sick as the were called to do and they respected other peoples traditions.

After finishing grade 10 in Atwater I went to the Lutheran Collegiate Bible Institute in Outlook, Sask. It is a Lutheran High School, but not restricted to Lutherans. We had chapel every morning, bible study twice a week, and Sunday worship at the Lutheran Church downtown.

After high school we as a family moved to Saskatoon and joined Zion Lutheran Church. Some of the friends I chummed around with went to other churches so as a group we did the circuit on Sundays. I can remember Dad stating he thought I should be going to Zion Lutheran only, but he did not forbid going to the other churches.

Dating started and I began going with a Catholic girl. We went to Zion, and eventually got married at Zion. Some of her family went to church, her mother (Catholic) went to church, oldest sister (Lutheran) went to church, next sister (Swedish Covenant) although not going to church the kids went to Sunday School, the rest (1) United, (2) Catholic, marriage only no regular worship.

My first wife joined the Lutheran church while we were in Toronto. There were no problems. One thing I can remember is that when there was a reference to the Catholic church, I used to cringe. This thank goodness has come to a halt, through the works of Ecumenism. We worshipped regularly regardless of where we were. After a couple of years in Toronto we moved back to Atwater. I can remember one of the older Norwegian Lutheran ladies at the church in Atwater stating that she didn't think she could worship in the church we went to in Toronto. The church there in Toronto was a Danish Lutheran and there was a real mixture of people worshipping there. My first wife died in 1982 and was buried from Zion Lutheran Church.

A second lady in my life. She was Presbyterian. The dating did not last long but we did "interchurch", not knowing at the time about "interchurch couples".

Then came along Shirley, a good Catholic, looking for a good Lutheran so we could be an "interchurch" family. We started "interchurching" before we were married (in the Lutheran Church) and have been an interchurch family ever since.

As I said earlier church was a great part of our lives as children growing up at home. Grandma Karstad read her Bible daily and sang Christian songs to us children.

As a family we said grace at meals but for family devotions I don't remember this happening. I guess it was more of going to church, being active in the church, doing things right, being an honest citizen was our families way.

In the winter we would have Sunday School after school; this was to accommodate the kids that had a greater distance to travel. I can also remember some discussion among the parents - religion in school - but this was after school and Dad was chairman of the local School Board, and they thought he was extending his authority.

Parochial school in the summer was fun. There would be someone new from Saskatoon or elsewhere to teach us. They stayed at our place so it was a real treat. We would learn new songs and games.

As we got older we went to Bible Camp in the summer at Nelson Lake (about 90 miles north of Yorkton). This was also a fun time. Away from home, doing crafts, swimming, but probably away from farm chores was the best.

High school at Outlook was "heavy" on church. There were kids who rebelled but as a group of teens we needed all the help we could get and here it was, from people who can guide us along that narrow path.

Church was something I do not remember rebelling. It was something I grew up with and it formed an important part of my life. Family, faith, and friends have been my motto for years. I know there were highs and lows in my church life but I did not completely drift away.

Whether in Toronto, Atwater, Esterhazy, Deep River or Saskatoon I always had my membership transferred and took an active part in the congregation.

"Death" brought me closer to God, physically and spiritually, than ever before (whether my parents, brother, or wife). When things look bleak and are "at that time anyway" I looked to God for help. I did not blame God but prayed that His will be done.

Interchurch has also brought me closer to God. With the world as it is today, TV, movies, and people, we need help from above. People are more diverse today and worshipping God is A MUST . As Pastor Hugh Farmer said on a recent Insight program, I paraphrase 'We seem to get cluttered up on earth on how to get to heaven but we all can get there even if on different roads'. Pastor Roger Haugen said "Christianity is not a "spectator sport" but is a "participating" one.

Scouting excites me and still does but Interchurch Families also sparks me up. I see it being very important that we can all worship our God together regardless of tradition. It is for this reason our energies are being focused in this way. It is our way of promoting and living Ecumenism.

Bernie

We are a double-belonging interchurch family. We live and practice our faith lives daily with much joy.

When we began dating, we realized that our lives were no longer solely our own, being as we each had children from our previous marriages. Our children's welfare and happiness were a top priority on our discussion list. Our first commitment to each other was to take into account the religious upbringing of our children. We each took seriously the commitment we had made when we had our children baptized, my son into the Lutheran church and Shirley's children into the Catholic church. In no way did we want to railroad our children into a church where they did not feel that they belonged. We wanted to allow them the freedom to continue worshipping in the churches into which they were baptized. Up until this time Shirley's children had not been inside a Protestant church except for on the one occasion when they attended a service during Scout-Guide week in a United church. She remembers vividly one son saying that they should not go into this church as he thought the people didn't worship the same God as they did. She assured him that this was not so and that they could attend this service. Much to his amazement the service was O.K.

Shirley

Because having a church involvement was very important to both of us, and choosing not to alienate our children in any way, we decided to attend each other's church together to see if this was an option we could consider if we decided to get married. At first it was a very scary experience almost giving us a guilt feeling of betraying our religious upbringing. But as time went on and we could see very little difference between the worship and beliefs of our individual churches we became more comfortable in each other's church. We decided that we could accept each other's differences and learn to respect them if we continued to let God be our guide. Our uneasiness with this practice was now only in our acceptance by our fellow church members. Several had given us warnings that this may be very unfair to our children. Feeling confident within our own commitment to each other we decided to invite our children to worship with us in the two respective churches. We were pleased and blessed when they felt perfectly at home in both churches. And so began our alternate worshipping in both churches on alternate Sundays. The older children when still dependent upon us worshipped with us in both churches. Once reaching their independence they were free to worship in the church of their choice. They chose to worship in the church into which they were baptized and confirmed. At festive times of the year such as Christmas and Easter we try to worship together as a family in either church. During Holy Week from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday we alternate services between the two churches. In our daily prayer life our table grace is R.C. at breakfast and supper and at lunch time we say the Lutheran form of grace . Our evening prayers are normally taken from the Lutheran devotions booklet because we find the stories so fitting to our daily living. However during the Advent and Lenten seasons we usually use the readings from the Our Family magazine as we find these devotions following the daily church readings for the season. Some of our prayers are traditional such as the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be, but on occasion we are also moved to spontaneity. We Catholics continue to make the sign of the cross and use holy water to bless ourselves.

Bernie

In September of 1992, Father Bernard de Margerie introduced us to the concept of Interchurch Families. Belonging to this group gave us renewed strength and enthusiasm, confirming that worshipping and actively participating in two different church traditions is O.K. In our situation both our priests and pastors have been very supportive of our active roles in both churches. Our faith and prayer life has been strengthened because of the richness the two different churches have to offer us in our faith journey. As a result of double belonging we have deepened our personal understanding of the traditions and practices in our own church. No longer is it good enough just to say we do a particular thing just because. We have been forced to take a more active role in the church, beyond our own personal church in that we publicly and openly confess to our friends and church members that we worship in two churches. We have also spoken to our bishops, priests, pastors and fellow church members about being a double-belonging family. We feel more a part of the whole ecumenical movement in our city and community by actively practicing ecumenism on a daily basis. Our children are not confused about attending two different churches; rather, they are blessed by the richness in services each church has to offer. They feel very comfortable in any church we worship in, participating fully and freely. In the Lutheran church they participate in the children's chat, Pioneer clubs, and other children activities. In the Catholic church they are altar servers, participate in the Christmas pageants, children's literature, and prepare for the sacraments with other children their own age. They make no distinction between a priest and pastor. Both are very important to them and equal in their service of carrying out God's ministry. Many times they refer to the pastors as Father, and equally share their hugs with all of them. They are very pleased when our priests and pastors visit our home for a meal, or spend time with us at a campsite.

Some of the concerns we experience as an interchurch family are as follows;

Shirley

1. we are not being totally accepted by our extended families. Some family members still feel that we are being unfaithful to the traditions into which we have been baptized. They also think our children will be confused and that we most certainly are confused.

Bernie

2. on occasions we are forced to chose which church we will worship in due to extenuating circumstances, i.e. religious training classes; special events--speakers; church involvement; family visitors. At times like these we may have to miss being in our own church several Sundays in sequence.

Shirley

3. as our children get older and plan to marry, the communion issue arises, because the Catholic church will not permit us to partake of communion in an other church i.e. When our oldest son got married this fall we suggested that communion only be given to the bride and groom so that the Catholic family would not feel out of place. This was done and it was O.K. even though we had wished it could have been done differently.

Bernie

4. funerals; we wish to have an ecumenical service for our funerals. We wonder how our priests and pastors will meet our needs. At the present time we know we would have no difficulties with our present shepherds, but what about the next one? How will our families accept that prayers may be in the Lutheran church and the funeral in the Catholic church or vise versa?

Shirley

We are truly grateful to be introduced to and belong to this interchurch family group. This family has given us support and understanding. It's a consolation to know that other couples and families walk the same walk as we do, experiencing similar pains and possibilities, confess our faith and reinforce within ourselves and others that church life and active participation are a very important part in one's life. The option of being an Interchurch Family can be a challenging and rewarding experience.

As we walk this journey slowly, we know that deep in our hearts we will all be one someday as Christ wants us to be. This is our daily hope and prayer.

Pros and Cons of being an interchurch family!!

POSITIVE:

1. Couples take a greater interest in their respective Christian traditions because they feel they have to represent them to their partners and children.

2. Interchurch families take a more active role in promoting Christian unity.

3. Interchurch families have a greater appreciation and respect for Christians of different traditions.

NEGATIVES:

1. Spouses do not feel totally accepted in their spouse's church.

2. Couples are confused about when and where to have their children baptized.

3. Protestants feel the greatest pain is being discouraged from receiving Holy Communion.

4. Obstacles are being placed on couples who wish to be married in the church i.e. which church should they choose, who will marry them, can they receive communion at the marriage.

5. Funerals. Can our funeral service be ecumenical and can the services be shared by both churches? Some Protestants feel uncomfortable attending funeral prayers or a funeral in a Catholic Church.

Bernie & Shirley Karstad

What about the children

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 08:35:44 GMT

What about the children of Interchurch Families?

A Centrepiece Article

This question is the most deeply disturbing of all for interchurch couples. Two adults can come together in marriage, each respecting the different beliefs and practices of the other, and not feel obliged to try to change them (although in marriage both partners need to be open to change all the time. of course!). But so far as the children are concerned, a different kind of responsibility is involved. We are much more responsible for the faith of our children than for the faith of our spouse.

From the early years of this century until the 1960s there was little option for a Roman Catholic and a Christian of another communion wanting to marry. Either the nonRoman Catholic partner had to abdicate his/her personal responsibility for sharing the Christian faith as he/she understood it with the children, or the Roman Catholic had to face being cut off from his/her church. If the couple could accept neither of these options, they had to renounce the marriage. Many did so.

A TwoChurch option

Progress towards Christian unity has made possible for parents of interchurch families (in which one partner is a Roman Catholic and the other a member of a different Christian community) an option which simply was not thinkable in earlier times. Why not bring up their children in both communions-at present still divided, but clearly converging, and both committed to the one ecumenical movement with full visible unity as its goal? The idea was put forward in print for the first time, so far as we know, in an editorial which appeared in January 1968 in the Catholic ecumenical review One in Christ. It was suggested that there should be a joint celebration of baptism, that a child should be brought up within the two communities of his parents, admitted to communion in both at a time which seemed appropriate, and only when he left the shelter of the parental home should he be obliged to make his own decision and settle for membership of one church rather than the other.

Will children be confused and insecure?

There were many objections to the suggestion, based on the idea that children need to be given a clear identity. They would be confused; they would feel insecure; they would not know where they belonged. 'You would be f ced with a problem child: "Mummy, am I a Catholic or a Protestant?" wrote Cardinal Heenan in 1970.

All this was theory in 1968. The first gathering of interchurch families which met at Spode House that November discussed the proposal outlined in the editorial. with the help of a Catholic sister win, was also a child psychologist working in a Child Guidance Clinic in Liverpool. Sr John SND saw no insuperable difficulties from the psychological point of view, unlike many critics. The important thing in a child's upbringing. she said, is the harmony and integrity of the parents- however they decide on the details of his religious education; whether they jointly decide to bring him up in one church rather than the other, or whether they decide to bring him up within both churchcommunities. Their harmony and integrity is what matters most to the child.

Of course not all members of the Association of Interchurch Families have decided to embark on a two-church upbringing for their children; some believe it would be harmful to the children or impossible for themselves and they have jointly agreed to bring them up in one church rather than the other. However, a considerable number have set out on a twochurch road. For some it has seemed to be the best way of expressing the basic harmony experienced by the two parents in the present state of Christian divisions. They want to share with their children the rich inheritance of two traditions rather than just one. It is their way of planning for unity and anticipating it so far as they can at the level of their own family life. It is a venture in faith.

But what of the effect on their children? What problems have they to face?

A Panel of older children

It was by accident rather than design that AIF prepared for International Youth Year 1985 by asking the young people of interchurch families themselves to share their experiences with the older generation. At the AIF Spode conference in September 1984 a panel of ten of the 'older children' of interchurch families (aged between 29 and 14) responded to questions put to them about their own upbringing and experiences and their reflections upon these.

A questionnaire to older children In preparation for this Spode conference a questionnaire had been sent out on the same topic, and 37 older children belonging to 16 families responded to it. The results of this questionnaire were written up in detail before the conference and circulated to those attending it. (A few copies are still available.)

Most of those who replied were born in the decade 196070. Certainly they had not all received a twochurch upbringing in the sense suggested in the editorial of 1968; some said that they had been brought up in the Roman Catholic Church. and others simply that they hati been brought up in both their parents' church's. On the whole this depended on their date of birth. but not in all cases. Some of the families had evidnetly changed their approach as time went on in line with the development of the ecumenical movement and the parents' understanding of its implications for their own family life.

Certainly it is not possible to draw out any firm conclusions or generalizations a result of the survey and the panel. It can however be said that by and large the testimony of our 'older children' was of great encouragement to the parents of those who are as yet younger.

No insecurity

First of all, on the whole these particular children had not experienced any great problems of confusion, or insecurity, or identity crises as children. This was true both for children brought up primarily in one church and also for children brought up within two churches. What Sister John said in 1968 seems to have been borne out: that the harmony and integrity of the parents is what matters most to the child.

Children take for granted what their parents offer them. "I thought every child was in the same situation until I was about ten", wrote one teenager who had been brought up in both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England. In fact the question: "Mummy, am I a Catholic or a Protestant?" does not seem to have come up from the children themselves. One child was quite taken aback when asked at the age of twelve: "Are you a Catholic or an Anglican?" (It was a question from the music teacher-a practical question about participation in the choir.) The question had never presented itself as an option before.

One young adult wrote: "I have never considered myself at a disadvantage but rather the opposite-I remember as a child being really proud of being the only Brownie that went to communion." This is a reference to receiving Anglican communion at a younger age than her Anglican contemporaries, because she was already a Catholic communicant; it seemed to cause no problems, and no child in this situation mentioned any. Equally there seem to have been no problems for children who waited to receive communion in the Free Churches until their contemporaries were of an age to do so.

One parent left out

What did cause a good deal of pain and perplexity to a fair number of children (whether brought up in the Catholic Church or in both churches) was the fact that one parent was not able to be with them on their First Communion day. "It spoiled a special day", said one, and many others agreed. It is perhaps worth noting that in several cases where both parents were allowed to receive communion together at their child's First Communion or Catholic confirmation' the children themselves did not spontaneously mention this fact; they simply took it for granted. It was the occasions on which both parents could not receive together with them that they pointed to with sorrow and regret.

More generally, the sense of one parent being left out of the family and unfairly pressurised comes across strongly from some of the children brought up wholly or chiefly in the Roman Catholic Church. "I feel my father feels left out." "To this day I don't think I have forgiven the RC Church for its general position on communion in interchurch families. for I saw at first hand the sorrow and pain not being able to receive with my mother and us children caused him and indeed my mother, sorrow and pain because he wasn't there in the pew and at the altar rail with us." One explained that to feel one of the family "Mum had to all but drop her own faith. I found it wrong." It is clear that quite a number of children were aware of their parents' problems. "There were great advantages (in an interchurch situation) for me", said one of the older children, "but disadvantages for my parents; it was so hard for them."

Advantages

The majority of young people seem to feel that for them the advantages of their situation outweigh the disadvantages. They assess these mainly in terms of expanded horizons. "It gives you a wider view of the Christian religion and you are less blind and more understanding towards other Christian traditions and beliefs." "I feel I am less narrow minded, I can see the good and bad points of both churches and through this I can respect and understand people's beliefs and religions." "It saved me from a very narrow Catholic convent upbringing. Catholicism is such a rich and exciting faith-it is a shame that it seemed so narrow at school. It made me know that there are different beliefs-different ways of knowing the same thing- different paths and different ways." "I see myself as a Christian rather than as belonging to one denomination." "You are challenged from both sides, so you have to think." "You see where differences do not come from denominational standpoints-you see the wide spectrum in both churches."

The problem of belonging

Undeniably, then, there is enrichment, but this can lead to an uncomfortable situation. A nineteenyearold writes: "Sometimes I feel I am sitting on the fence. not really belonging to either church:' This problem of 'not really belonging' does not seem to be felt in childhood, but it has come up at two later stages: among the older children who have left home, and among the adolescents ready to make their own profession of faith.

Leaving home

"It hits you when you leave home; it's not very practical", said one. At that point the need is to find a local Christian fellowship within which to grow and mature. A student writes: "In the Catholic chaplaincy at university I found a group of people who were challenging, who were still grappling with the fundamentals/essentials of their own belief or lack of it. If I had found this elsewhere than the Catholic Church I feel I would have gone there-and again when I move from university I shall find the community wherever I go where I can best grow and become close to God, my fellow men and the earth."

Another writes: "Since leaving university the church I have attended has been largely dictated by a combination of convenience (for a while I went to the Presbyterian church in Malawi) and the desire to find a church acceptable to my boyfriend, later my husband. As a result I now usually attend an Anglican church, which though not convenient is acceptable to us both." She would be "reluctant to 'give up' my membership of the Catholic Church", but is "not very worried about denominational labels", and feels that this is a positive result of her upbringing. There are problems, however: don the other hand I don't realiv feel 'a Catholic' and although I consider my (local) church to be an Anglican church I am not wholly part of that ... having been confirmed in the Catholic Church in theory excludes me from a vote on the parish council of 'my' (Anglican) church.''

A third gives an account her search for a local Christian community: "I joined the C of E rather than the RC church when I left home because despite three attempts (over three years) of trying to get involved in the RC church no room was made for shift workers and there was very little fellowship (with people of my own age) about. It was the complete opposite in the C of E church near the hospital. As both are Christian churches I had no qualms about joining the C of E church and still worshipping at RC and Presbyterian churches at home."

A twentyyear old university student, who has a close relationship with a Baptist younth group as well as being part of a Catholic community, expresses the tensions inherent in her experience, but in the end assumes her twochurch situation as her own with all its attendant difficulties. She writes: "It is only over the last two or three years that I've become fully aware of the real importance of the situation . . . The good points first: I can take nothing for granted-everything has to be considered carefully. For example, when I mentioned to a friend that I took communion in two churches, she asked how I could, as the two beliefs in this area were so different. I had never really considered the matter, and had to have a long rethink. By having to sort out, so carefully, my own beliefs, I have become far more aware of God, and far closer to him. Secondly, the ability to be able to worship in more than one way brings about a much less limited view of Jesus than approaching him in one set way ever could. The quiet, solemn (though not always) approach of our Catholic church inspires a picture of a God who, though loving, demands reverence-which is right. The Baptists, on the other hand, have a far more lively approach and treat God as an intimate friend-which is also right. The two facets of God are an integral part of him, and it is a gift to me that, by partaking in the worship of different communities, I can see the two views together, and gain a more rounded view of God.

"At the moment, though, I feel that the difficulties and hurt dominate, and the good points are outnumbered. The problems arise from the same source as the benefits: from seeing things from different angles and by being brought up to join in more than one church community. When your range of vision has been widened, it is so hard to be satisfied with more limited spheres. There is so much misunderstanding and bigotry between the churches that hurt, leading to disillusionment, is rife. At a Baptist youth group I was told that 'most Catholic priests are agnostics' and at the Catholic church I have heard a visiting preacher pity those who 'have not chosen the faith but have settled for second best.' My immediate reaction. in both cases, was to take the defensive, for my love of both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches was being threatened.

"As a result of such 'competition' between the churches. I find it impossible to be totally at home in one. I cannot be at ease with all the Catholic beliefs, as I cannot with any church's. I find myself constantly comparing the different approaches. As I cannot, therefore, dedicate myself to one community I envy those who are totally immersed in their own church, having never participated in other services.

"And yet. despite the sense of never quite belonging anywhere. and the pain caused by moving between churches. I don t think I would change my situation for the world. Through my experiences I have gained a clearer, closer picture of God, and as this is what we are striving for, it is a special gift that I would never reject."

This last statement links up with one made by a teenage participant in the Spode '84 panel: "I would rather not be secure in one church.',

Professing the Faith

With the trend towards a later age for confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church, and a corresponding stress on the personal commitment of the candidate, there seem to be increasing problems for the teenagers of twochurch families at this stage. Some who have been brought up within two church communities feel that they belong in both, and they want to express this fact in some way when they come to make their own public confession of faith in Christ.

This came out clearly in the 1984 survey: "I would really like to be confirmed in both"; "A joint confirmation, because I don't know which church to choose"; "I would like in the end to be confirmed into all churches, not just one. Perhaps both Anglican and Catholic. I would like to be confirmed as a Christian." It seems clear that in some cases confirmation is being delayed-or rejected-because an adolescent does not want to appear to opt for one church rather than the other.

Questions for the Churches

"I wish we could break down the barriers in order to come together as one church, allowing flexibility for individuals. If everyone 'opts' for a church this will never happen", writes a teenager. Must there be an option? Must there be an option for these children, who have come to make their personal commitment to Christ from the experience of life within two church communities? The One in Christ editorial of 1968 took it for granted that there would have to be an option at some stage. Interestingly, it was Sr Mary John who challenged that assumption at Spode '68: "I cannot see why he should feel the need for choice. May he not be quite happy to continue attending both?"

So, can there be a joint celebration of confirmation? Can there be dual celebration? Can there be dual membership? These are questions for theologians and pastors to wrestle with (as some are doing)-always remembering that these are only provisional questions, but real questions of real people in this 'in between time' in which the churches together have committed themselves to the road to unity but are still 'in via'.

Can there be some way for young people to express publicly their faith in Christ in a way which is not exclusive? Here the testimony of Stefano and Emanuela Marcheselli-brother and sister confirmed as Catholic and Protestant respectively, but in such a way that, with the full agreement of the church authorities. it was made clear to all in their local church communities that neither was cutting him/herself off from the life of the 'other' church-is of great interest and significance (see Interchurch Families no.l3). To quote Stefano: "My choice does not imply separation or detachment-it is a choice which has come to maturity in love, accepting the challenge of a double ecclesial commitment. that is to say, mv personal commitment within the two churches, evangelical and catholic.

Questions for ourselves

What interchurch parents will welcome is the evidence that many ot our older children are convinced that their Christian commitment transcends the fact of being a Catholic or an Anglican or a Methodist or whatever. But how is their Christian commitment related to the denominations as they are'? How is it related to the unity h1 Christ to which all are called.' Is that call being recognised?

Fr Michael Hurlev pointed out at Spode House in 1984 that there is a hint in what our children have written of the idea that one church is as good as another. that they are equally valid. so it doesn't really matter which one you belong to. No church is 'better' than another''; ''I find the religions equally valid:' This he saw as an acceptance of denominationalism rather than a commitment to unity. Does a twochurch upbringing lead to indifferentism?

Interestingly enough, these and similar quotations came from children who had been brought up clearly as Roman Catholics. although one parent sas a Christian of another tradition. Children brought up in two churches seem (in our admittedly very small survey) to see their experience in terms of enrichment rather than of indifferentism. This was put succinctly by Stefano Marcheselli: ''The contusion which people fear has become for me a stimulating enrichment.''

A second point which Fr Hurley made was related to the strong desire expressed by some of the adolescents for confirmation 'as a Christian', and the feat\r that confirmation celebrated in one denomination would simply make the candidate a member of that denomination. One wanted to be confirmed if I could be just a 'Christian' - not to have to opt for one type of Christianity - I would prefer to be confirmed purely as a Christian, rather than as a Catholic or Methodist". And another: if confirmed as a Christian rather than into a particular denomination." Again, Fr. Hurley suggested, this showed a retreat into denominationalism, for "should we not understand every process of christian initiation as bringing the candidate into the church of God wherever it exists?" What a joint celebration can add is that is shows what is actually happening in every other case. But understanding the reality is more important than the form of the ceremony.

True but perhaps a very adult way of looking at things! A member of the Spode '84 panel in her mid-20s, confirmed at eight, could say: To me confirmation didn't make me a Roman Catholic." She had by then invested what had happened to her with a wider significance. But what comes across both in our survey and in the attitudes expressed by the French and Italian adolescents quoted in Interchurch Families no 13. is that some of the young people themselves, coming later to confirmation, are very keen that other people shall see what they mean when they make their public profession of faith in Christ, and understand by the ceremony itself that it is within and through the two church communities that they have come to this point, and that they cannot cut themselves off - or even appear to cut themselves off - from one of them. "I wanted witnesses to seewhat I was doing", said Etienne; "I wanted both churches to know that I was making my profession of faith as a Christian, as a Catholic and as a Protestant."

Some young' people want to make their position crystal clear at the time when they come to make their own public profession of faith. If they are not allowed to do this, they would rather not be confirmed.

On the other hand. we have a case in England of a child being confirmed in the Catholic Church, and the Sunday afterwards being admitted to Church membership in her local United Reformed church. This was done with URC knowledge and approval. but it was felt that the Catholic authorities would not understand. so they had not been told. For this family. it seemed the right way forward. The Rev'd Raymond George suggested something similar at Spode in 1985: a Methodist minister might witness a confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church. and accepting this as confirmation subsequently admit the candidate to full membership in the Methodist Church. Admittedly an anomaly-but the grater anomaly is our disunity. and we have to put up with lesser anomalies at the present time. An Anglican bishop present agreed that this would be a practical way forward. Perhaps the Catholic authorities might come to accept this `de facto. respecting individual consciences, even if they could not yet approve.

There are various possibilities; there is no ideal 'solution' short of church unity. Our children inherit this situation, although happily the healing process is continually advancing. It is for them to hasten this process as and when they can.

The parental role becomes a background one: respect for their children's own decisions. whatever they are: support where it is needed and wanted. Parents who have held on together to two traditions because they feel that both enshrine christian values which the other does not yet fully embrace, values which are meant to be lived in unity, may well be encouraged and cheered if their children - all or any - in spite of all the difficulties and pain involved in a two-church situation, can assume it as - in the words of one of them, "a special gift that I would never reject". But they will be under no illusion that they have handed on an easy or a comfortable task. As Gianni and Myriam Marcheselli wrote: "From now on it is our two adolescents who are bearing the burden. They have set out on a long, hard road. Belonging to the today of our divided churches, it is their task to live already in the tomorrows of God".

Ruth and Martin Reardon

Baptism

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 08:11:38 GMT

You want your baby BAPTISED? one parent ROMAN CATHOLIC, the other NOT?

Our Interchurch Families (UK Region) has produces material relating to the question of Baptism. Our members may find this useful

Transfiguration

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 20:44:06 GMT

Transfiguration

This article was published in the April 2007 issue of Issues and Reflections.

Transfiguration

In 2007 the London meeting of the Association of Interchurch Families preceded the 5th John Coventry Memorial Lecture. As he had done a number of times since the death of John Coventry, SJ, Fr Robert Murray SJ celebrated mass for the Association. Several of his homilies have appeared in the Interchurch Families journal, and later in IFIR (no.3, April 2005). The following homily was preached at Heythrop College of the University of London, where the meeting and lecture took place, on 17th February 2007.

Introduction

Once again I have the joy of leading your eucharistic worship today. The first time was in 1999, when I was invited to stand unworthily in the place of John Coventry. My last time was two years ago, to speak in loving memory of Martin Reardon. I am deeply grateful to be invited again.

We all realise that one reason for your Association to exist is the pain every couple among you feels, because your shared commitment to Christ is in tension with your commitment to separated Christian traditions. Between many denominations, thank God, there is mutual acceptance of eucharistic ministry. But you all know where the cause of pain mainly lies. This is why I find myself as a Catholic priest obliged in conscience to make a statement. Standing here as a representative, I cannot repudiate the discipline I am under by offering a general invitation. Indeed, I accept the Catholic principle that eucharistic mutuality ought to be in step with mutual recognition between churches. But I am equally convinced that interchurch marriages and families are in a special position and that this deserves to be recognised; and in conscience I cannot go against what I believe Jesus desires. Many of you have heard before how I solve this. I invite each of you to exercise your own spiritual discernment. I cannot turn away anyone who comes for love of Jesus, to receive his body and blood. If anyone would rather come simply for a blessing, please do so; or stay in your place and pray, if you prefer. I greet you all in Christ and welcome you all in him.

Hebrews 11: 1-7
Mark 9: 1-13

Are you wondering why I chose the readings you have just heard, to bring you a message for your meeting? What have the letter to the Hebrews and the Transfiguration of the Lord to do with your lives as partners in interchurch marriages? Well, I didn’t go straight for those two texts. I prefer to accept, if possible, the lectionary readings for the day. This may sometimes create challenges, but it can also open up vistas I hadn’t thought of before.

Regiments in the parade

The letter to the Hebrews is addressed to Jews who want to follow Jesus as Christ yet cannot believe he is divine as well as human, God’s eternal Son. The first thing the writer has to put right is a compromise idea, that Jesus was actually some kind of angel. Again and again the readers are warned that if they cannot develop their faith so as to believe in Christ’s full divinity, they will find they have ‘missed the bus’. Hebrews is a long letter, and our passage today is the beginning of the conclusion. After all the warnings, the writer wants to encourage his readers; he recognises that they do want to follow Jesus, and that they have some degree of faith in him. So he builds on that. As this long chapter develops, it becomes clear that by faith he means more than purely intellectual belief: that is only one part of a full response to God. It includes personal true-ness, commitment – what Jewish tradition calls ‘cleaving to God’. The opening statement is filled out by surveying the parade of saints who lived and died with this committed faith in all the centuries before Christ. I hope you’ll go home and remind yourselves of the whole chapter. Finally the writer comes to his climax, which begins the next chapter: we have seen a great ‘cloud of witnesses’; now we must look to Jesus as the one who was really leading the procession all the time, and who still calls us today. In fact that ‘Today’ has sounded repeatedly in an earlier chapter. But now it’s for us, here, now and from now on, to live by and witness to. We are members of that great parade. Our witness to our faith in Jesus puts us among the saints. There are various regiments in the parade; yours is the A.I.F.

On the holy mountain

Now let us look at the story of the Transfiguration as we have heard it in the Gospel of Mark. It is told also by Matthew and by Luke, who adds some precious details, and there is a vivid allusion in the second letter of Peter. This event in the short public life of Jesus is central to his efforts to get across to his disciples that he is indeed the expected Messiah, the Lord’s Anointed, but that this does not mean a political figure who will restore the kingdom of David.

Jesus had chosen twelve men in whom he saw real promise. Among them he must have seen a deeper quality in Peter, James and John. He chose them to experience a revelation of his hidden divine glory, so that they might be able to take in what he was trying to tell them about his destined death and resurrection, and not lose faith.

None of the gospels names the high mountain ‘where they could be alone’. This is unusual, for all four almost regularly tell us where each event they narrate took place. Tradition has come to identify the place as Mount Tabor, but is Tabor really high enough to fit the description? – and remote enough to offer privacy when all in Galilee were looking for Jesus? Unlike Matthew and Mark, Luke simply says that Jesus went up a mountain to pray. Later on Luke alone records how Jesus prayed where he had withdrawn from Galilee with his disciples, to test how far they had got in understanding, but only Matthew and Mark name Caesarea Philippi as the place.

Biblical scholars in recent centuries have been too much obsessed with trying to establish facts and dates, and to identify locations. The fathers of the Church believed, no doubt, that everything narrated in the Bible actually happened, but they were more interested in spiritual meanings. For the listeners to the first preachers of the Gospel, what mountain could evoke, together, the names of Moses and Elijah? Wherever this event actually took place, symbolically and ‘spiritually’ it irresistibly points us to Mount Horeb (the other name of Sinai). This was where God delivered the Torah to Moses. It was where centuries later Elijah, a fugitive from Jezebel’s rage, heard the ‘still small voice’ revealing to him that he was by no means the last surviving true believer in God, and that the time was due for him to hand over his prophetic status to Elisha. And if the mountain to which Jesus had led his chosen three could become for them the spiritual, symbolic Horeb, may not each of us treasure some place, some time, in which we experienced a sense of God’s reality that could turn that place into our own spiritual Horeb?

What was it that the three disciples experienced? Again, Luke tells more than Matthew and Mark. All three say that Jesus was ‘transfigured’, changed in appearance. Matthew says his face shone like the sun; all try to describe this amazing light of Jesus which made even his clothes shine brilliantly – in fact Mark has more to say about this than about Jesus himself! Then all three mention the appearance of the two figures, talking with Jesus; the disciples seem able to recognise them at once as Moses and Elijah. Luke alone tells us what they were talking about: the ‘exodus’ (clearly meaning death) that Jesus was to fulfil in Jerusalem. But what were the disciples experiencing? Again, it is only Luke, and only now, who gives us hints to help us to picture this. Luke says they were heavy with sleep, yet he adds at once that they kept awake all the time. The mention of sleepiness could suggest that the experience was a shared dream; but the firm statement that they kept awake challenges us to choose between physical sight and hearing, or a shared visionary experience. I don’t believe that to choose the latter is necessarily a surrender to disbelief that anything really happened. Faith bids us believe that the whole event was planned by God. Jesus was to prove his divine nature for these special disciples in a way answering to their idea of God’s glory. Thus he would create a vision of the biblical representatives of Torah and prophecy to attest that Jesus was fulfilling God’s promises of the supreme ‘Lord’s Anointed’ to come, and of how his death was to lead to the triumph of God’s plan. Finally a cloud (Matthew says luminous) obscured the whole vision, but from it the disciples heard God’s voice confirming Jesus’ divine sonship, as previously at his baptism. Peter was beside himself, and started babbling; ‘He did not know what he was saying’. If only this precious moment could last! His self-image demanded practical action, of course with Peter in charge. But the vision was already fading, and for the disciples there was just their beloved friend and teacher alone, reaching out his sturdy hand to raise them up.

An eternal meaning

The event of the Transfiguration was over, but its meaning is eternal. I have already suggested that Christians, including you and me, may remember experiences which, in prayerful meditation, we can see as moments on our own Horeb or Tabor, moments when we knew Jesus was reassuring us. It is my prayer for you, precisely in your lives as interchurch couples and parents, that you may be strengthened by such moments and memories. I pray that your very witness to what you are may be for others a sign

Robert Murray, SJ

Return to April 2007 IFIR

SACRAMENTUM CARITATIS

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 20:44:04 GMT

SACRAMENTUM CARITATIS

An Apostolic Exhortation issued by Pope Benedict XVI on 22 February 2007

reflecting the conclusions of the 2005 Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist

We are looking here at the paragraphs in Sacramentum Caritatis that are particularly relevant to interchurch families.

Sacramental sharing

The background

Interchurch families paid close attention to the meeting of the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist, held in Rome 2-29 October 2005. The subject of eucharistic sharing in interchurch families has been a constant concern to such families ever since they began to meet in groups and associations in the 1960s. They were disappointed that the lineamenta in preparation for the Synod, published in February 2004, had spoken in a general derogatory way of ‘intercommunion’, and made no mention of exceptional possibilities of eucharistic sharing in particular cases and under certain conditions according to pastoral judgement. Such exceptional sacramental sharing in the Eucharist has been of transforming spiritual significance as an experience of grace in some interchurch families. They hoped therefore that the Synod would re-affirm the norms that allowed it, and explain the reasons for these exceptions; they hoped also that there would be a specific reference to the needs of some interchurch families.

An international network of interchurch families, which had begun to find a common voice following the Second World Gathering of Interchurch Families near Rome in 2003, therefore submitted a response to the lineamenta in November 2004 (for the text of this response see Issues-Reflections-News, April 2005). This was sent directly to the Synod office. French and Italian interchurch families also sent in separate responses through their Bishops’ Conferences.

The Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church

When the Instrumentum Laboris for the Synod was published in July 2005, there was a section in this working paper headed ‘The Eucharist and Intercommunion’ (86). This included a statement on the need for the Catholic Church ‘to state clearly what stands in the way of full communion and what conditions exist for the reception of communion in sacris’. This reference to the possibility of exceptional admission to communion was very welcome. The preceding section, on ‘The Eucharist and Ecumenism’ (85), said: ‘A favourable rapport has also developed between the Church and communities from the Reformation. The relation of these communities to the Sacrament of the Eucharist is proving, in good part, to be a delicate yet promising experience, as indicated in canon law (c.844) and The Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism (129-131). There was no specific reference to those who share the sacraments of baptism and marriage (Directory 159-60), but the working document was certainly an advance on the lineamenta.

When the Synod of Bishops opened in October 2005, the report of the General Relator, Cardinal Angelo Scola, said that ‘intercommunion’ must be distinguished from the admission of individuals to communion, which it would be more exact to call eucharistic hospitality. (Roman documents have traditionally not used the term ‘eucharistic hospitality’, but spoken of ‘eucharistic sharing’. The term ‘eucharistic hospitality’ was not taken up by the Synod). Further reflection was needed on the relationship between eucharistic communion and ecclesial communion.

Very early in the Synod (5 October 2005) Archbishop John Dew of Wellington, New Zealand, spoke of Catholics married to other baptised Christians. ‘We acknowledge them to be baptised in Christ in the sacrament of marriage, but not in the reception of the Eucharist’, he said. Apart from this reference specifically to interchurch families, there were a number of interventions by Bishops on the subject of eucharistic sharing, some wanting this to be allowed more freely, and others fearful of anything that might weaken the Catholic position on the close relationship between ecclesial and eucharistic communion.

Cardinal Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian unity, made a particularly important speech. We give it in full.

Cardinal Kasper’s intervention, 8 October 2005

‘I am referring to chapters 86 and 87 of the Instrumentum Laboris and to the theme: The Eucharist and Ecumenism. I am thankful for what has been said in these chapters, and in the General Report, about the Eucharist as a sacrament of unity. I would like, first of all, to underline what has already been said in the Synod Hall about eucharistic ecclesiology, which is of great importance for the ecumenical movement.

‘The theme ‘Eucharist and Unity’ goes back to what St Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians: ‘And as there is one loaf, so we, although there are many of us, are one single body, for we all share in the one loaf’ (I Cor.10:17). This assertion ‘one loaf – one body’ and ‘participation in the single chalice’, which means ‘communion in the single body’, modelled the entire tradition of the Church in the Orient and in the West. We find this first of all in St Augustine and once again in St Thomas Aquinas. For Thomas, the ‘res’, that is, the species and the goal of the Eucharist is not the real presence of Christ, which Thomas no doubt teaches, but for him the real presence is only ‘res et sacramentum’ that is, an intermediate reality. The ‘res’ the goal of the Eucharist is the unity of the Church.

‘This view was renewed in Vatican Council II, which rediscovered the church as communion, through the common participation in the sole Baptism and the sole Eucharistic bread. On this point, we agree with the Oriental Churches; the Communities that belong to the Reformation had the same concept at their origins, they have only recently abandoned this. Therefore, the Catholic concept of the intimate link between Eucharistic communion and ecclesial communion is not – as some would tend to believe – a vague anti-ecumenical concept, but an ecumenical concept per se.

‘However, because of this reason, the terminology, which unfortunately is found also in the Instrumentum Laboris, that speaks about ‘intercommunion’, is ambigious and in itself contradictory. It should be avoided, since there is not an ‘inter’ communion, that is a ‘between’ two communions (two Communities), but rather a communion in the communion of the one body of Christ, which is the Church.

‘There is another weak point in the Instrumentum Laboris. It mentions ‘communicatio in sacris’ only with reference to one principle, whereas Vatican Council II talks about two principles: the unity of the Church and participation in the means of grace. It asserts that the unity of the Church, for the most part, forbids the access of a non-Catholic to the Eucharist, but participation in the means of grace sometimes recommends the admission of a non-Catholic to the Eucharist (Unitatio redintegratio 8: cf Ecumenical Directory, 129). For that reason Pope John wrote that it was to him a ‘reason for joy’ that Catholic ministers in certain particular cases could administer the Sacraments of the Eucharist, Penance and Extreme Unction to the sick to other Christians (encyclical Ut Unum Sint, 46: encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 46).

‘These formulations – ‘recommend’, ‘reason for joy’ – mean that this is not merely a concession or exception, but a possibility founded on the Christian concept of every human person, that is on the uniqueness of every person and the uniqueness of every situation of salvation. The human person is never a case of general principle. Canon Law respects this uniqueness of every person. On the basis of and within the limitations of universal law, in certain determinate and particular cases – where the possibility of scandal is remote – it gives way, not to private conscience, but to a canonical act of admission by the competent Bishop. To express this in a better way, it gives room for spiritual discernment, for prudential judgement and the pastoral wisdom of the Bishop (cf CIC can.844).

‘As for the criteria for such decisions, we have a development since the publication of the two Codes of Canon Law. The criteria as listed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n.1394-1401) and in the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n.293) concerning the ecclesial communities, are four: a grave necessity, spontaneous request (of their own will), required dispositions and manifestation of the Catholic faith regarding the Sacrament. Personally, I am convinced that with these criteria the truly pastoral problems may be resolved in a positive way.

‘Because these questions in many countries are of great pastoral importance, I wish to recommend that they be included in the final text or in the propositions.’

The Propositions of the Synod

From the middle of October the Synod considered successive drafts of the set of Propositions it was to pass to Pope Benedict XVI as representing the work of the Synod. The Bishops got together in language groups to work on the texts. One of these groups, English Group C, reported that: ‘The question of ecumenical relations in the matter of eucharistic hospitality was also discussed. Our group is proposing that a thorough study be made in regard to the Catholic practice of eucharistic hospitality in order to help local churches overcome the confusion that currently exists among clergy and faithful’ (National Catholic Reporter, 15 October 2005).

The Propositions received their final vote on 22 ^nd October, and were published by Pope Benedict XVI on the following day, the final day of the Synod. (This had never happened before, and it was done in an unofficial Italian translation of the Latin original.)

Proposition 41 is headed: Admission of Non-Catholic Faithful to Communion. It reads:

‘Based on the communion of all Christians, which the one Baptism already keeps active, though not yet in a complete manner, separation before the Lord’s banquet is justly experienced as something painful. Both within the Catholic Church as well as by our non-Catholic brothers and sisters, there often arises as a consequence the urgent request for the possibility of Eucharistic Communion between Catholic Christians and others. It must be clarified that the Eucharist does not only signify our personal communion with Jesus Christ, but above all the full communion of the Church.

‘Therefore, we ask non-Catholic Christians to understand and respect the fact that for us, according to biblically based tradition, Eucharistic Communion and ecclesial communion are closely linked; therefore, Eucharistic Communion with non-Catholic Christians is not generally possible. Even more does an ecumenical concelebration have to be excluded. It should also be clarified that, in view of personal salvation, the admission of non-Catholic Christians to the Eucharist, to the sacrament of penance and to the anointing of the sick, in special individual situations, under precise conditions, is possible and even recommended (Unitatis Redintegratio 8, 15; Ecumenical Directory 129-31; Code of
Canon Law 844, 3-4; Code of the Eastern Churches 671, 4; encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint, 46; encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 46).

‘The Synod insists that the conditions expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1398-1401) and its Compendium (293) be observed.’

Sacramentum Caritatis

The post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, dated 22 February 2007, was issued by Pope Benedict XVI in March. We give here the text of section 56.

‘56. The subject of participation in the Eucharist inevitably raises the question of Christians belonging to Churches or Ecclesial Communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church. In this regard, it must be said that the intrinsic link between the Eucharist and the Church's unity inspires us to long for the day when we will be able to celebrate the Holy Eucharist together with all believers in Christ, and in this way to express visibly the fullness of unity that Christ willed for his disciples (cf. Jn 17:21). On the other hand, the respect we owe to the sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood prevents us from making it a mere "means" to be used indiscriminately in order to attain that unity. (172) The Eucharist in fact not only manifests our personal communion with Jesus Christ, but also implies full communio with the Church. This is the reason why, sadly albeit not without hope, we ask Christians who are not Catholic to understand and respect our conviction, which is grounded in the Bible and Tradition. We hold that eucharistic communion and ecclesial communion are so linked as to make it generally impossible for non-Catholic Christians to receive the former without enjoying the latter. There would be even less sense in actually concelebrating with ministers of Churches or ecclesial communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church. Yet it remains true that, for the sake of their eternal salvation, individual non-Catholic Christians can be admitted to the Eucharist, the sacrament of Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick. But this is possible only in specific, exceptional situations and requires that certain precisely defined conditions be met (173). These are clearly indicated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church
(174) and in its Compendium (175). Everyone is obliged to observe these norms faithfully.’

The relevant notes for this section read as follows:

(172) Cf.John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint (25 May 1995), 8: AAS 87 (1995). 925-926.

(173) Cf.Propositio 41: Second Vatican Council, Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio, 8, 15: John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint (25 May 1995), 46: AAS 87 (1995), 948; Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia (17 April 2003), 45-46: AAS 95 (2003), 463-464, Code of Canon Law, can.844, 3-4:; Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, can.671, 3-4; Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Directory for the Applivcation of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism (25 March 1993), 125, 129-131: AAS 85 (1993), 1087, 1088-1089.

(174) Cf. Nos.1398-1401.

(175) Cf. No.293.

From an interchurch family perspective

The 1980 Synod of Bishops on Marriage and the Family did a very great deal for interchurch families. Cardinal Willebrands, then President of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, specifically called for attention to be given to the need of some mixed marriage couples for eucharistic sharing. He pointed out that one of the conditions then in force for admission did not have the theological weight of the others. It was the condition that the non-Catholic Christian who asked for admission did not have access to his own minister ‘for a prolonged period’. This was the condition that could seem effectively to exclude interchurch spouses from eucharistic sharing (none of the other conditions automatically did so). When the Code of Canon Law appeared in 1983 it was a cause of great rejoicing to interchurch families that the phrase ‘for a prolonged period’ had been dropped. It was simply a matter of those ‘who cannot approach a minister of their own community’. It looked like a direct answer to Cardinal Willebrand’s intervention. Before the Code interchurch families had to point out that since their need for eucharistic sharing is the need of the couple, the ‘access for a prolonged period’ condition was not relevant to them. After the Code, they could for the same reason explain that the ‘access’ condition was always fulfilled in a request from an interchurch couple.

There seems to have been little specific mention of interchurch families in the 2005 Synod on the Eucharist. But there is a very important point relevant to their needs to be noted. In Cardinal Kasper’s intervention (see the text above) he spoke of ‘development’ since the Code, and referred to the criteria for admission to communion as those listed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Compendium to the Catechism. Here the condition about not being able to approach his/her own minister has been dropped altogether.

This is very relevant to interchurch families. The 1993 Ecumenical Directory identified those who ‘share the sacraments of baptism and marriage’ as in possible need of eucharistic sharing. No longer could it be said that it is impossible to admit interchurch spouses. But even without the ‘prolonged period’ phrase, the condition has still been used by some authorities to deny the possibility of eucharistic sharing except on the occasion of specific celebrations that take place in the Catholic Church – such as weddings, baptisms, First Communions, funerals. At other times, it is argued, the non-Catholic Christian in the marriage is able to have recourse to his own minister. But since Sacramentum Caritatis clearly cites the Catechism as the source for ‘the precisely defined ‘conditions’ for admission, it is now more difficult to say that it is impossible to admit interchurch spouses except on such occasions. (The British Association of Interchurch Families immediately noticed the significance of the omission of the ‘access to own minister’ clause when the papal encyclical Ut Unum Sint came out in 1995 [see ‘A Source of Joy’ in Interchurch Families vol. 4, no.1, Jan.1996, pp.4-6]. Somehow it was never noticed that the Catechism had omitted it a year or so before!)

Below are the relevant texts from both the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) and from the Compendium (2005).

Catechism and Compendium

The Catechism states:

‘1401. When, in the Ordinary's judgement, a grave necessity arises, Catholic ministers may give the sacraments of Eucharist, Penance, and Anointing of the Sick to other Christians not in full communion with the Catholic Church, who ask for them of their own will, provided they give evidence of holding
the Catholic faith regarding these sacraments and possess the required dispositions.’

The Compendium gives us this question and answer:

When is it possible to give Holy Communion to other Christians?
Catholic ministers may give Holy Communion licitly to members of the Oriental Churches which are not in full communion with the Catholic Church whenever they ask for it of their own will and possess the required dispositions. Catholic ministers may licitly give Holy Communion to members of other ecclesial communities only if, in grave necessity, they ask for it of their own will, possess the required dispositions, and give evidence of holding the Catholic faith regarding the sacrament.

‘Personally I am convinced’, said Cardinal Kasper to the Synod, ‘that with these criteria the truly pastoral problems may be resolved in a positive way.’ Interchurch family experience, shared on an international level, bears this out. In some places these criteria have been applied in a positive way for the good of interchurch families (and in so doing have helped to contribute to Christian unity). In other places there is still much educational work to be done before this happens. Hearts and minds have to be convinced before all the possibilities opened up by the developing norms are appreciated and put into practice.

Especially in view of their disappointment in reading the lineamenta preparing the Synod, interchurch families will be grateful to Cardinal Kasper for his recommendation to the Synod that these criteria should be included in its final text. They are grateful to the Synod for accepting this recommendation, and to Pope Benedict XVI for incorporating it into Sacramentum Caritatis.

2. Marriage and Eucharist

So far as the need of some interchurch families for eucharistic sharing is concerned, a great deal hinges on a deepening understanding of the nature of marriage between Christians, and its relation to the eucharist. We conclude, therefore, with the quotation of a passage from Sacramentum Caritatis relating to marriage.

’27. The Eucharist, as the sacrament of charity, has a particular relationship with the love of man and woman united in marriage (Familiaris Consortio, 57). Pope John Paul II frequently spoke of the nuptial character of the Eucharist and its special relationship with the sacrament of Matrimony: “The Eucharist is the sacrament of our redemption. It is the sacrament of the Bridegroom and the Bride” (Mulieris Dignitatem, 26). Moreover, “the entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the Church. Already Baptism, the entry into the People of God, is a nuptial mystery; it is so to speak the nuptial bath which precedes the wedding feast, the Eucharist” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1617). The Eucharist inexhaustibly strengthens the indissoluble unity and love of every Christian marriage. By the power of the sacrament, the marriage bond is intrinsically linked to the eucharistic unity of Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the Church (cf Eph.5:31-32). The mutual consent that husband and wife exchange in Christ, which establishes them as a community of life and love, also has a eucharistic dimension. Indeed, in the theology of Saint Paul, conjugal love is a sacramental sign of Christ’s love for his Church, a love culminating in the Cross, the expression of his “marriage” with humanity and at the same time the origin and heart of the Eucharist. For this reason the Church manifests her particular spiritual closeness to all those who have built their family on the sacrament of Matrimony (Proposito 8). The family – the domestic Church (Lumen Gentium, 11) – is a primary sphere of the Church’s life, especially because of its decisive role in the Christian education of children (Proposito 8).’

Ruth Reardon

A Transforming Ecumenical Initiative

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:30:45 GMT

A Transforming Ecumenical Initiative

This article was published in the 2004 issue of Issues, Reflections, News.
Ministry to Interchurch Engaged Couples

By Fr. George Kilcourse
© 2004 by George A. Kilcourse, Jr.

If we were to identify a single initiative that holds the potential to transform the faith journey of the next generation of interchurch families, there is little doubt that ministry to interchurch engaged couples would be the focus of such an effort. The fortieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s dramatic change in attitudes toward other Christians affords a timely interlude to assess how far we have come and what next, tentative-but-strategic steps are most appropriate to make visible the unity of interchurch spouses. From the Roman Catholic perspective, this diversity-in-unity [i] is already evident through the sacrament of their baptisms and (in the case of a Roman Catholic validly married to a Christian of another tradition) their marriage. Yet after almost four decades of struggling for recognition and respect as interchurch couples (and families), these women and men still too often report that, “When we were engaged and preparing for marriage….,” they received virtually no marriage preparation that addressed or even acknowledged the possibility of their living out an interchurch identity [ii] . In fact, their narratives of dealing with clergy and marriage preparation presentations too often include traumatic moments when a partner was proselytized by some office-holder in the other tradition, or some authority apodictically pronounced that any ecumenical involvement in the marriage liturgy by a clergy person of the other Christian’s church or their family members would not be possible.

The Lived Experience

Such days have, for the most part, happily waned. A key development in Roman Catholic circles in the United States has been the parish-centered “couple-to-couple” marriage preparation ministry that frequently pairs an interchurch couple with the engaged couple identified as a prospective interchurch couple. The genius behind such parish programs sparks interactive and meaningful discussion in a home environment. The host couple “models” how such potentially “interchurch” engaged couples can relieve anxieties and perceived obstacles, while at the same time gives an honest and clear appraisal of the challenges of living as an interchurch family. These parish “coupleto-couple” marriage preparation ministers—often designated ‘sponsor couples’—are more than one-dimensional. At their best, they attempt to mirror a range of factors such as the relative age of the sponsor couple at the time of their own marriage and the actual age of the engaged couple so that their experience can better address issues of concern. Similarly, if both spouses are working professionals, or if they have a long-distance relationship before marriage, a sponsor couple with similar experience could better identify with and more sympathetically prepare the engaged couple. Ideally, interchurch couples who serve as the sponsor couples for marriage preparation to an engaged couple who are potentially “interchurch” would represent the Roman Catholic church [iii] and the church tradition of the other engaged partner.

Engaged couples in this situation are served well not only in such couple-tocouple ministry but also in highly commendable clergy-to-clergy ecumenical relationships. The ecumenical leadership role of pastors and deacons cannot be underestimated. An attitude of acceptance, encouragement, and collaboration with the ordained minister from another church in both marriage preparation and the planning and celebration of the marriage liturgy are genuine catechesis for both the couple and all those who participate in the celebration. Sometimes a clergy person from one church can be the catalyst for an ecumenical conversion by the clergy person from the other church—here we see the beginnings of an ecumenically sensitive ministry leading to future openness and pastoral care of interchurch engaged and married couples. In the same pattern, parish staff members who might administer pre-marital psychological inventory instruments or interpret such profiles for an engaged couple can communicate a positive attitude and encourage couples who intend to live as an interchurch couple and family. At so many junctures in parish life (beyond the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity), all the baptized in the community can affirm and celebrate the gifts of committed and dedicated interchurch spouses.

This being said, such ideal events remain far too rare in real life. We face the situation where engaged couples approach marriage through the prism of a dominant culture where the wedding reception arrangements, the caterer, the florist, and the bridal consultant all too often dictate and demand more attention that the actual religious preparation for the woman and man about to enter into this religious covenant relationship. In some circumstances, clergy and those entrusted with administering marriage preparation programs abdicate their responsibility and settle for “the minimum.” As long as the proper canonical paperwork has been recorded and the couple attends a required marriage preparation day / evening, then their marriage can take place. This status quo easily turns into a missed opportunity. Given the preponderance of married couples in the United States who hemorrhage away from any ecclesial religious observance (or those who end up divorcing), our still-divided churches have a mutual self-interest [iv] in cultivating better ministries to serve the interchurch identity of such spouses. The alternative is to alienate both “mixed marriage” couples and those couples who aspire to be truly interchurch couples by ignoring them—or worse, by the church’s indifference toward them. Interchurch marriages are de facto the majority [v] in many Roman Catholic dioceses across the United States, making it urgent that we initiate creative strategies to address how we mainstream—and not marginalize—interchurch families in the life of our parishes and congregations.

An Alternative Approach: Re-Designing Ecumenically

Striking variations in the quality of pastoral ministry—particularly marriage preparation—for interchurch engaged couples cause concern among conscientious Family Ministry directors and the staff members who serve such programs. The sheer number of potentially interchurch couples who participate in traditional marriage preparation programs warrants special attention to both their unique gifts and particular pastoral needs. Unfortunately, silence about the presence of such engaged couples at marriage preparation programs is tantamount to an ecumenical version of the expression “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” At the same time, financial constraints in Roman Catholic dioceses across the country have led to shrinking staff as well as budgets; resources in Family Ministry offices are diminishing at the very time when pressing new initiatives need to be implemented. What to do?

In the Archdiocese of Louisville, long-standing conversations between Catholic ecumenical leaders (including the local chapter of AAIF—The American Association of Interchurch Families) and the Director of The Catholic Family Center, Barbara MacDonald, are bringing forth one such transforming initiative. As someone engaged in local ecumenical action over the past three decades, I have long realized that our goal is not to create new ecumenical structures, but to make more ecumenical the structures that already exist through the church’s various ministries.

For many years I have attempted to coax and urge ecumenical officers to collaborate in such a pattern. However, given the reality that in Catholic dioceses persons in these positions (ordinarily—and still, predictably—a priest) wear many hats, often serving simultaneously as pastor of a parish. When and if such ecumenical officers are called upon to collaborate with interchurch families, the invitation is placed at the end of a long list of more formal (and visible) ecumenical endeavors in his/her portfolio. Some ecumenical officers decline to engage in this ministry. It is not always out of disinterest but sheer overwork. Because interchurch family ministry involves sometimes complex pastoral questions and issues, many ecumenical officers frequently refer these wives and husbands to the parish priest. In an ideal world, this could be appropriate and effective. In the event that he enjoys a degree of ecumenical literacy and is knowledgeable about the applicable principles, norms, and criteria for making pastoral decisions about the care of children and spouses in interchurch families, this can prove fruitful. However, many of our priests have never had a formal course in ecumenism; virtually all Roman Catholic seminaries in the United States ignore the mandate from the bishops’ conference that such a course be an integral part of the theological curriculum for today’s seminarians. When we (the church) fail to educate the clergy for ecumenism, the consequences can be abysmal and worse than discouraging. Roman Catholic Family Ministers, however, are uniquely positioned to help close this ecumenical gap when it concerns marriage and family life.

At a recent national pastoral convention, I visited the cavernous hall where publishers and new technology gurus displayed their wares. It is easy to spend three hours in such an environment and feel as if you have hardly seen a small portion of the 4 “latest” and “best” electronic aids to pastoral ministry. When I came upon one vendor heralding new software for a parish database, I listened attentively to his spiel. I explained that I was giving a talk about interchurch families at the convention. His head craned and he stared directly at me. “What’s that?” he asked. I explained and then posed a question: “Can your software allow us to record (and retrieve lists of) such families as “interchurch” and provide the specific denomination of the other Christian spouse? He looked quizzical. He thought the programmers would be able to “add” a field or make some other adjustment. I gave him my card and he promised he would write to me, thanking me for the entrepreneurial idea. Ten months later I have yet to receive a reply from the vendor or the technology wizards in response to my question: How and where do we identify the interchurch families among us?

It goes without saying that interchurch families in American churches are largely hidden, if not anonymous. One of my favorite anecdotes comes from a Louisville woman, a Methodist married to a Roman Catholic husband, whose new pastor approached her after observing for two months how she and the three children were at worship every Sunday. “We have a widows and widowers support group,” he suggested. “My husband’s not dead,” she exclaimed, “He’s just a Roman Catholic!” Each Sunday after he attended Mass at the nearby parish, he would pick up his wife and children and take them to brunch. We have failed to envision or to think about “the church” in categories that reverence or accept the growing presence of interchurch families among us as a palpable ecumenical reality. They are not easily “recognizable” like an interracial couple, or a new immigrant couple, or even like couples from cultures associated almost exclusively with another part of our vast United States (e.g., Hispanic / Latino).

If we are going to pave a new path for interchurch engaged couples in America, then the marriage preparation program offers an ideal starting point. We need to look upon these Family Ministry events as “teachable moments” in the life of the church. What can be learned includes: (1) the Catholic Church’s own ecumenical change of attitude and teaching; (2) a primer on the ongoing ecumenical movement and the Catholic Church’s participation in it; (3) the Catholic Church’s emphasis upon the family as the “domestic church”; and (4) the Catholic Church’s provision of particular possibilities for interchurch families to live out in concrete, visible ways the unity the church aspires to realize, yet which they already share to a larger degree [vi] .

Anyone familiar with “marriage preparation” knows that Roman Catholics enjoy the most extensive and intentional programs among churches in the United States. Almost by default, the other churches have failed to offer or mandate adult education that addresses formation for marriage. Most Protestant pastors will explain that, at best, they would offer “counseling” sessions and question-and-answer conversations in their office with any engaged couple. A statistically insignificant number of them would contact an already overworked and stressed-out priest to engage in joint pastoral care or marriage preparation involving a “mixed marriage” or potentially interchurch couple. It is fair to say that Roman Catholic marriage preparation programs are nowadays “the only show in town” when it comes to the opportunity to educate with ecumenical sensitivity and to care pastorally for the increasing number of this particular type of engaged couple.

A Sketch of the Emerging ‘Pilot’ Project

Where do we start? How do we strategically re-design marriage preparation programs that begin to respond in some comprehensive manner to the systemic ecclesial realities presented when a Roman Catholic marries a Christian from another denomination? The Louisville conversations and planning process now bring us to a plateau where serious, constructive efforts take shape. The Catholic Family Office’s recent reorganization, particularly the redesign of its own marriage preparation programs, affords the occasion for both ecumenical and pastoral creativity as well as fidelity to Roman Catholic teaching and our ongoing renewal developments.

In late August, a team of ecumenical leaders (including veteran interchurch couples) will observe a marriage preparation program presented by the Catholic Family Office. The first purpose is to review and analyze the “content” of the existing theological-pastoral presentations. The second purpose is to consider how the dynamics and “process” of the existing program could better accommodate “mixed marriage” engaged couples as well as already-committed or potentially “interchurch” engaged couples who participate. The goal is twofold: (1) to identify where necessary revisions (sensitive to the presence and promise of interchurch engaged couples) in the current program might best be incorporated; and (2) to draft a presentation of ecumenically sensitive theological-pastoral presentations on marriage that are faithful to Roman Catholic teaching yet responsive to the many “mixed marriage” and potentially interchurch engaged couples who attend. This latter goal allows for an interactive segment in this “teachable moment” that might include small group discussions as part of the design.

Discussions about including only “mixed marriage” or potential or prospective “interchurch” engaged couples in the presentation and interactive process resulted in a consensus that this experience would be best offered in a full plenary of all couples attending the day’s marriage preparation program. Virtually every Roman Catholic can identify siblings, cousins, friends, or neighbors—and perhaps even their own parents—as persons who have covenanted marriages in “mixed marriage” or “interchurch” patterns. Because many interchurch couples already experience feelings of “segregation” or are otherwise marginalized (leading to perceptions that their marriages are inferior to Roman Catholic-Roman Catholic marriages [vii] ), this plenary session will encompass their immediate concern within Roman Catholic-Roman Catholic engaged couples’ broader “extended family” experiences of the interchurch family phenomenon.

Once this event and follow-up meetings result in the incorporation of necessary revisions for ecumenically sensitive theological-pastoral presentations on marriage, presentations that are faithful to Roman Catholic teaching yet responsive to the many “mixed marriage” and potential or prospective interchurch engaged couples attending the Archdiocese’s marriage preparation programs, the redesigned “pilot” program can audition. There will undoubtedly be further revisions and “tweaking” of the presentations based upon ongoing review and evaluations by those who attend as well as 6 by the team designing them. The delivery of the “interchurch” segment of the marriage preparation program will ambitiously aim:

To present succinctly the Roman Catholic Church’s change of attitude and teaching manifest with regard to ecumenism and Christian Unity, especially pointing out how ecumenism relates to the sacrament of Marriage
To provide an overview of the ongoing ecumenical movement and the Catholic Church’s participation in it, especially as its “irreversible” development (as Pope John Paul II has described it) will touch the lives of all engaged couples and their future children over the next generation
To reinforce the Roman Catholic Church’s insistence that the family is the “domestic church” and to explore implications of this teaching in the life of interchurch families
To teach clearly that the Roman Catholic Church provides particular canonical norms [viii] that may be applied pastorally so that an interchurch family could live out (to some extent) in concrete, visible ways the unity that the still-divided churches aspire to realize
To confirm how interchurch spouses and children already share a unique experience of a given Christian unity through the sacraments of baptism and marriage and their familial experience as a “domestic church”
To address how and under what conditions the extraordinary possibility of Eucharistic sharing (by way of exception) that the Roman Catholic Church (in principle and in accord with prudent pastoral judgment) may offer another Christian might apply to a particular interchurch spouse or child

Interchurch Marriage and Family ‘After-Care’

The participation of veteran local interchurch couples—the laity—will add immeasurably to the success of this initiative. It is the first time that AAIF local groups and a local chapter will be equipped to offer follow-up experiences, ongoing education, and pastoral care after an engaged couple’s wedding day. Data including mailing addresses, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses can be volunteered by those engaged couples who would welcome this kind of unprecedented ecumenical after-care for their marriage relationship.

It is easy to imagine the integration of interchurch family groups as informal (or even formal) parish organizations. Once these follow-up groups have been cultivated, larger regional or archdiocesan meetings and conferences or interchurch marriage renewal events could be planned periodically. Outreach to Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches could lead to new collaboration with their professional staff engaged in family ministry. The critical 6-month and 18-month stages in the life of newly married couples warrants assembling volunteers from among “mixed marriage” and “interchurch” couples in the “pilot” programs for a day of reflection to re-assess their faith life, progress, and decisions in light of their special identity. Not only the large regional groupings for marriage preparation of engaged couples but also Engaged Encounter and alternative delivery systems will appropriate lessons and insights by employing the model of this ecumenically transforming initiative.

An ambitious date of late January, during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, has been tentatively set for the formal announcement of this new ecumenical initiative in partnership with the Archdiocese of Louisville’s Family Center office. It is a timely and appropriate moment to draw attention to the growing phenomenon of interchurch marriage. Perhaps a few weeks later, during Lent of 2005, the pilot program will audition. Pending review and revisions, it is not impossible to imagine that an interim report and a template script that details Louisville’s transforming response to the needs of so many engaged couples will be available as we cross the threshold of the new liturgical year in November, 2005. The more extensive the transplanting of such a model into diverse dioceses, and the greater the wisdom applied by local ecumenists and family ministry professionals, the healthier and the more effective will be the Roman Catholic Church’s ecumenical witness and its family ministry.

How this initiative might be broadened and deepened through the participation of clergy persons, religious educators, ecumenists, and theologians in future decades remains a story to be lived and told at some future date. Variations on the theme will unfold in countless local expressions of the living church. Perhaps in this era, when the very definition and nature of marriage as an institution (both civil and religious) is being tested and contested, the churches can discover a common ministry that once again responds to the World Council of Churches’ “Faith and Order” principle of never doing separately what we can better accomplish together. It is time for the Roman Catholic Church to exercise ecumenical leadership and no longer complain that interchurch marriages cannot survive—indeed, they can even thrive and share their gifts with the whole church. Honest pastoral care and ministry to these faith-filled wives, husbands, and children has emerged as a growing and urgent matter in the life of the present and future church.

Books and documents

The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement and How It Has Been Impoverished by Its Friends Michael Kinnamon (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2003)
Double Belonging: Interchurch Families and Christian Unity George Kilcourse (New York: Paulist, 1992) • Unitatis Redintegratio [The Decree on Ecumenism]
Ministry to Interchurch Marriages (Omaha: Creighton University, 1999)
Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism (1993)

[i] I use this expression in the sense that Michael Kinnamon employs it in The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement and How It Has Been Impoverished by Its Friends (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2003). “The ecumenical vision insists that the church’s given unity is wondrously diverse, but we too often speak of uniting our diversities” (115). The familiar expression of the churches seeking “unity in diversity” places such emphasis upon “unity” that we lose sight of the gift of diversity. See chapter 4, “Unity and Diversity,” where Kinnamon explores this in more detail. His concluding chapter expresses this insight aptly: “Diversity-in-communion [koinonia] is at the heart of our witness” (119).

[ii] While the interchurch marriage or interchurch family is a distinct minority among “mixed marriages,” it is an important pastoral question to explore what the church might do by way of pastoral care after a “mixed marriage” occurs in order to assist such couples who might conscientiously desire to live as an authentically “interchurch” couple. See George Kilcourse, Double Belonging: Interchurch Families and Christian Unity (New York: Paulist, 1992) where I define such couples in the context of the European and British experience: “An interchurch marriage differs because (1) it joins in marriage two baptized Christians from different traditions, (2) each spouse participates actively in her or his particular church, and to various degrees in one another’s church, and (3) each spouse takes an active, conscientious role in the religious education of his or her children” (2). These dedicated couples and their children demonstrate that there are possibilities for interchurch life that involve a significant ecumenical paradigm change in ecclesial understanding, a development that resonates well with the vision articulated by the Second Vatican Council. (See Unitatis Redintegratio [The Decree on Ecumenism] n.4 : “The sacred Council exhorts, therefore, all the Catholic faithful to recognize the signs of the times and to take an active and intelligent 8 part in the work of ecumenism…. The result is that, little by little, as the obstacles to perfect ecclesiastical communion are overcome, all Christians will be gathered, in a common celebration of the Eucharist….”

[iii] For the purposes of this paper, I assume that interchurch engaged couples participating in Roman Catholic Marriage Preparation programs are, in fact, a Roman Catholic and a Christian from another tradition / church. While the largest group of active interchurch families in the United States includes a Roman Catholic spouse, there are innumerable other patterns, e.g., Lutheran-Episcopalian, Presbyterian-Methodist, Baptist-Disciples of Christ, etc.

[iv] Creighton University’s Center for Marriage and Family reported in its national study, Ministry to Interchurch Marriages (Omaha: Creighton University, 1999) that the number of Catholics who convert to “same church” Protestant marriages is equal to the number of Protestants who convert to “same church” Catholic marriages. Because this is a “wash,” denominational leaders should reverence conscientious shifts of members into “full communion” in each others churches and collaborate on ministering to the large group of “mixed marriage” couples who drift into divorce. Here is a fertile field for mission and catechesis.

[v] Recent national statistics indicate a precipitous decline in the number of recorded marriages in the dioceses of the United States. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) has analyzed data provided for the annual Official Catholic Directory for the United States and presented some startling trends. The U.S. Catholic population grew between 1984 and 2004 from 52.4 million to 67.3 million. Yet the annual number of marriages fell from 348,000 to 232,000—a 48% decline in church-recorded marriage rates in twenty years. Given the rising incidence of “mixed marriages” in the United States, one could prudently conclude that significant numbers of Roman Catholics are marrying without seeking either appropriate dispensations, or they choose to ignore Roman Catholic church law; one might surmise that the latter correlates significantly with their perception of many “nominal” or non-practicing Roman Catholics that the church still disapproves of their marriage to a Protestant. This data argues for further research and more attention to authentically interchurch marriages as an ecclesial reality instead of as an intractable “problem.”

[vi] Pope John Paul II identified the lived experience of interchurch couples and their families in these pastoral and ecumenical terms when he described them during his May 1982 visit to York, England: “You live in your marriage the hopes and difficulties of the path to Christian Unity.” Interchurch Families 7 (June 1982) 1.

[vii] Kilcourse, Double Belonging, chapter 2, “Crisis Points and Hurdles—Interchurch Marriage Preparation” (24-49).

[viii] An entire section of the Roman Catholic Church’s norms on this and other questions are found in the Council on Christian Unity’s text, Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism (1993), especially in chapter IV, “Communion in Life and Spiritual Activity Among the Baptized.” The sub-section (“C”) “Mixed Marriages” has a special bearing on interchurch engaged couples, interchurch marriage, and interchurch children.

A Response to Antelias (2004)

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 20:53:17 GMT

from INTERCHURCH FAMILIES AROUND the WORLD May 2004

Interchurch families were very pleased to be invited by the Revd Dr Konrad Raiser, in December 2003, to respond to the paper ‘From Antelias with Love’ on the future shape of the ecumenical movement. We are glad to respond to this request, because the promotion of Christian unity has been one of the aims of all groups of interchurch families.

1 A response on behalf of an international interchurch family network
The groups and associations listed below represent marriages in most of which one partner is a Roman Catholic and the other Reformed, Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, Pentecostal, community/new church, Waldensian, United, Baptist, or another kind of Protestant. We have a few Orthodox within our membership, but not many. There are large numbers of mixed Christian marriages within our countries. We represent those mixed Christian families who feel called to work for Christian unity. We have held two multi-lingual World Gatherings of Interchurch Families, the first at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva in July 1998, and the second near Rome in July 2003. This second World Gathering endorsed a paper entitled Interchurch Families and Christian Unity (the Rome 2003 paper), which we append to this response. It is available in English, French, German and Italian.

We represent long-standing interchurch family groups in the following countries:
Australia: There are formally-constituted associations of interchurch families in different parts of Australia (Western Australia and Brisbane were the first in the early 1990s). They are working together to prepare for an international English-speaking conference of interchurch families to be held in Newcastle, NSW, in August 2005.

Austria: Interchurch family groups in Austria were formed in the late 1960s. In 1991 the local groups came together in an Arbeitsgemeinschaft konfessionsverschiedener Ehen. It is now called, significantly, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft konfessionsverbindender Familien (ARGE Ökumene).

Britain: The Association of Interchurch Families (AIF) dates from 1968. Since 1990 it has been a ‘body in association’ with Churches Together in England and Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. It arranges an annual conference and other meetings, and publishes information and reflections.

Canada: Groups were set up in various parts of Canada from the early 1990s; the strongest being in Montreal, Saskatoon and Calgary. After working together to prepare an international English-speaking conference at Edmonton in 2001, they formed a loose Canadian Association of Interchurch Families (CAIF). The international website is run from Canada.

France: Groups of foyers mixtes or foyers interconfessionnels were formed in France (beginning in Lyon) in the early 1960s. In 1995 regular meetings of all foyers mixtes francophones began, and a comité francophone permanent was established in 1998. This was replaced in 2004 by a formal French association: Association Fran?aise des Foyers Mixtes Interconfessionnels Chrétiens (AFFMIC).

Germany: Local groups met for many years (for example a group that met at Neresheim Abbey celebrated 30 years of annual meetings in 1999). In 1999 a national network was formed under the umbrella of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Ökumenischer Kreis; it is called Netzwerk Ökumene: konfessionsverbindende Paare und Familien.

Ireland: The Northern Ireland Mixed Marriage Association (NIMMA) was formed in 1974 to provide information and support to couples in a very divided society. It holds an annual conference and its work is valued as part of the Northern Ireland cross community development initiatives. In 1973 an Association began in the Irish Republic, but is not now very active.

Italy: Famiglie miste interconfessionali have met together in Northern Italy, centred on the Pinerolo area, since the late 1960s. Their initial inspiration came from Lyon, and they have met together every few years with French representatives of foyers mixtes.

Switzerland: Francophone Swiss foyers mixtes were in contact with the French in the late 1960s, and since 1974 groups in Switzerland have organised conferences in turn every 18 months or so. In late 2003 a formal Swiss association was established: the Association des Foyers Interconfessionnels de Suisse (AFI-CH).

United States of America: The American Association of Interchurch Families (AAIF) was launched at Louisville in 1988, and re-constituted on a wider basis following an English-speaking international conference held in Virginia in 1996.

We are also in contact with interchurch families in Belgium, Croatia, Hungary, New Zealand, and Scandinavia.

2 We would like any re-configuration of the ecumenical movement to include the Roman Catholic Church as a member alongside others
This is very important for us. The ecumenical make-up of most of our marriages is that of a Roman Catholic in equal partnership with a Christian of another communion. Thus it seems essential to us that any process of reflection and dialogue about the future shape of the ecumenical movement takes seriously the fact of the Roman Catholic Church as a full partner with others, not as in some sense ‘over against’ the others. It is important to remember that the term ‘the ecumenical movement’ is not synonymous with the World Council of Churches.

We do not want to undervalue bilateral relationships between churches, but we also want to stress the importance of multilateral relationships, and the value of Roman Catholic participation in them as a member alongside others. In our countries some of us have the experience of Roman Catholic membership of multilateral ecumenical bodies, and we value this. For example, in England the Roman Catholic Church has been a member of Churches Together in England since 1990, and the same is true for the ecumenical bodies in Scotland and Wales. The Association of Interchurch Families is happy to be a ‘body in association’ both with Churches Together in England and with Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. In Germany the Catholic Episcopal Conference joined the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Christlicher Kirchen as a full member in 1974. In Australia the Roman Catholic Church is a member of the six State Councils of Churches, and has been a member of the National Council of Churches in Australia since its inception in the early 1990’s. In some cases older ecumenical bodies have come to an end in order to allow new ones – with full Roman Catholic membership – to come into being.

We would like to see serious consideration of this possibility at world level. We are glad, of course, that the Roman Catholic Church is already a full member of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches.

3 From our own perspective, we would like to stress the value of multilateral consideration of marriages between Christians of different denominations

We would like a clear commitment, by the churches working together, to a common pastoral approach that would focus on what is good for interchurch families. We would like to see joint work on how the churches can learn from one another’s different approaches, and without necessarily agreeing with one another’s perspectives can come to respect them, and find a way to work together to lessen some of the tensions between separated churches, tensions that have unnecessary and deleterious effects upon interchurch family life. We would like to see the churches searching for a practical way of working together for the pastoral good of those Christians who marry across denominational boundaries, and want to be faithful to their own church tradition as well as to share in that of their spouse.

This means a re-configuration of the ecumenical movement that links the theological work of dialogue more closely with practical pastoral questions, including interchurch families – relating Faith and Order activities more closely to ‘Life and Work’ concerns. One way to help this might be to allow for some kind of on-going relationship between voluntary ecumenical bodies like Associations of Interchurch Families and multilateral church structures (rather like the ‘bodies in association’ in the UK).

As ‘domestic church’ every interchurch family has to struggle with the questions that face the churches as they move forward in the ecumenical movement, but on a family’s scale and within a family’s time-frame. We would like to have some forum at world level within which we could share our unique experience with our churches, and in doing so make a small contribution to their growth towards visible unity. We believe that strengthening the position of interchurch families in ecumenical bodies would in itself contribute to the reconfiguration of the ecumenical movement.

Between the Times, Between Communities: Eucharistic Theology for the Bridge

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 20:32:57 GMT

Between the Times, Between Communities:
Eucharistic Theology for the Bridge

Gerald W. Schlabach

(An article printed in ONE IN CHRIST , vol.40, no.2, April 2004)

The ‘Already’ and ‘Not Yet’ of Our Unity

The Communion of Ss. Benedict and Scholastica

Structure

Flexibility

Yet the pope remains a pastor, and it has been the enigma of John Paul II in particular to be at once doggedly firm and compassionately sensitive. Thus he continues:

Bridgefolk Theology of the Eucharist: A Possibility?

It is not mine to offer the bread and wine of eucharist, but what I can offer to my own companions is this biblical story, with a final invitation to reflect:

[3] Cf. Gerald W. Schlabach, ‘The Bridgefolk Movement in Ecumenical Context,’ Ecumenical Trends 32, no. 3 (March 2003): 14–15.

[4] I avoid here the overly-clinical metaphor of a ‘laboratory’ in favor of a more organic one!

[5] Gregory The Great, Dialogues, book II, Life of St. Benedict of Nursia, chapter 33.

[8] John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, encyclical letter (2003), para. 52.

[9] ibid. para. 15.

[10] ibid. para. 16.

[11] ibid. paras. 36-37.

[13] Those familiar with theology or church history will recognize it in the formula, ex opere operata.

[14] op.cit para. 38.

[16] ibid. para. 39.

[18] ibid para. 38.

[19] ibid. para. 44.

[20] ibid. para. 43.

[21] ibid. para. 45.

[24] op.cit. para. 46.

[25] ibid. para. 61.

[26] Raniero Cantalamessa, The Eucharist: Our Sanctification, translated by Frances Lonergan Villa (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 1993), pp. 94–95.

[27] op.cit paras. 18-20, 57.

[28] This is in fact the focus of chapter 2 of the encyclical, paras.21-25, entitled, ‘The Eucharist Builds the Church.’

Anliegen der konfessionsverbindenden Familien in Deutschland.

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 16:05:41 GMT

Kirchliche Situation

In Deutschland kam es nach dem Krieg, verursacht durch die Aufnahme von Flüchtlingen, zu einer starken Vermischung der Konfessionen. Als Folge nahm der Anteil konfessionsverschiedener Familien ständig zu. Heute ist jede dritte Ehe, die geschlossen wird, konfessionsverschieden.

Ökumene

Schon vor 50 Jahren wurde die "Arbeitsgemeinschaft Christlicher Kirchen" (ACK) gegründet (damals 7, heute 14 Mitgliedskirchen) mit dem Ziel, die Einheit der Christen zu fördern. An vielen Orten gab es einen ökumenischen Aufschwung in der Zusammenarbeit der Gemeinden, ökumenische Arbeitskreise, ökumenische Gottesdienste, Kanzeltausch usw.

Situation konfessionsverschiedener Familien

Aber obwohl viele Ehen konfessionsverschieden sind, wird dies kaum zur Kenntnis genommen, es gibt keine besondere Seelsorge. Die Teilnahme am Gemeindeleben ist manchmal schwierig, da von vielen die konfessionsverschiedene Ehe immer noch als Problem betrachtet wird. Zur Trauung konfessionsverschiedener Paare wurden 1971 "Gemeinsame kirchliche Trauordnungen" erstellt. Seminare für konfessionsverbindende Familien werden im Benediktinerkloster Neresheim sei 25 Jahren, in Dornstadt seit 10 Jahren angeboten.

Teilnahme an Eucharistie und Abendmahl

Gehen konfessionsverbindende Paare gemeinsam zum Gottesdienst, wird die Trennung am Tisch des Herrn besonders schmerzhaft erfahren. Inzwischen nehmen manche evangelische Partner an der Kommunion und katholische Partner am Abendmahl teil, was meistens akzeptiert wird. Aber es gibt Pfarrer, die dies nicht zulassen. Dabei wurden 1974 von der Katholischen Deutschen Bischofskonferenz und der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (EKD) "Gemeinsame kirchliche Empfehlungen" herausgegeben, die 1981 weitergeführt wurden. In der Empfehlung von 1981 heisst es, dass die katholische Kirche evangelischen Christen die Eucharistie u. a. in "schwerer Not" gewährt - wozu sich der evangelische Partner zählen kann. Die Teilnahme des katholischen Partners am Abendmahl in der evangelischen Kirche wird in die Gewissensentscheidung des Einzelnen gelegt, jedoch wird darauf verwiesen, dies entspreche nicht dem Zusammenhang von Eucharistie und Kirchengemeinschaft. Dagegen heisst es: "Die evangelische Kirche öffnet ihre Abendmahlsfeiern auch katholischen Christen und verwehrt es ihren Gliedern nicht, an der Kommunion in der katholischen Kirche teilzunehmen". Im Februar 1997 beschloss die Ökumene-Kommission der Katholischen Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, dass der zuständige Pfarrer konfessionsverschiedene Paare zum gemeinsamen Empfang der Eucharistie zulassen kann, wenn diese die Trennung am Tisch des Herrn als Belastung erfahren. Diese Regelung bedeutet, dass die jeweilige Praxis vom Gemeindepfarrer abhängt. Auch kennen viele Ehepartner die Bestimmungen der Kirchen nicht und denken nach wie vor, gemeinsame Eucharistie und Abendmahl sei verboten. Dies führt dazu, dass sie nicht daran teilnehmen. Oft ist das mit ein Grund dafür, sich nicht mehr am kirchlichen Leben zu beteiligen.

Wichtigstes Anliegen

Da gemeinsame Teilnahme an Eucharistie und Abendmahl notwendig ist, um als christliche Familie leben zu können, sollte nicht nur die evangelische, sondern auch die katholische Kirche konfessionsverschiedene Paare generell und offiziell dazu einladen. Denn "konfessionsverschiedene Ehe vollzieht Kirche, nicht

Kirchenspaltung, und für Kirche ist nach katholischen Grundüberzeugung Eucharistie unverzichtbar und konstitutiv" (Peter Neuner). Notwendig ist ausserdem, dass diese Paare von Pfarrer und Gemeinde positiv aufgenommen werden. Nur dann werden sie und ihre Kinder Heimat finden in ihrer Gemeinde.

Rosmarie Lauber

Eucharistic Sharing: Barrier or Bridge?

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 10:30:51 GMT

Review of Ecumenical Studies • Sibiu

vol. 14 • issue 1 • April 2022

Eucharistic Sharing: Bridge towards Unity – Barrier to Unity?

Eucharistische Gastfreundschaft – Brücke oder Hindernis der Einheit?

VIEW THE DOCUMENT (PDF) HERE

Directory on Ecuminism Baptism

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 13:45:29 GMT

PONTIFICIUM CONSILIUM
AD CHRISTIANORUM UNITATEM FOVENDAM

DIRECTORY FOR THE APPLICATION 0F
PRINCIPLES AND NORMS ON ECUMENISM IV

COMMUNION IN LIFE AND SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY AMONG THE BAPTIZED

A. THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM

92. By the sacrament of baptism a person is truly incorporated into Christ and into his Church and is reborn to a sharing of the divine life. Baptism, therefore, constitutes the sacramental bond of unity existing among all who through it are reborn. Baptism, of itself, is the beginning, for it is directed cowards the acquiring of fullness of life in Christ. It is thus ordered to the profession of faith, to the full integration into the economy of salvation, and to Eucharistic communion. Instituted by the Lord himself, baptism, by which one participates in the mystery of his death and resurrection, involves conversion, faith, the remission of sin, and the gift of grace.

93. Baptism is conferred with water and with a formula which clearly indicates that baptism is done in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is therefore of the utmost importance for all the disciples of Christ that baptism be administered in this manner by all and that the various Churches and ecclesial Communities arrive as closely as possible at an agreement about its significance and valid celebration.

94. It is strongly recommended that the dialogue concerning both the significance and the valid celebration of baptism take place between Catholic authorities and those of other Churches and ecclesial Communities at the diocesan or Episcopal Conference levels. Thus it should be possible to arrive at common statements through which they express mutual recognition of baptisms as well as procedures for considering cases in which a doubt may arise as to the validity of a particular baptism.

95. In arriving at these expressions of common agreement, the following points should be kept in mind:

a) Baptism by immersion, or by pouring, together with the Trinitarian formula is, of itself, valid. Therefore, if the rituals, liturgical books or established customs of a Church or ecclesial Community prescribe either of these ways of baptism, the sacrament is to be considered valid unless there are serious reasons for doubting that the minister has observed the regulations of his/her own Community or Church.

b) The minister's insufficient faith concerning baptism never of itself makes baptism invalid. Sufficient intention in a minister who baptizes is to be presumed, unless there is serious ground for doubting that the minister intended to do what the Church does.

c) Wherever doubts arise about whether, or how water was used,'05 respect for the sacrament and deference towards these ecclesial Communities require that serious investigation of the practice of the Community concerned be made before any judgment is passed on the validity of its baptism.

96. According to the local situation and as occasion may arise, Catholics may, in common celebration with other Christians, commemorate the baptism which unites them, by renewing the engagement to undertake a full Christian life which they have assumed in the promises of their baptism, and by pledging to cooperate with the grace of the Holy Spirit in striving to heal the divisions which exist among Christians.

97. While by baptism a person is incorporated into Christ and his Church, this is only done in practice in a given Church or ecclesial Community. Baptism, therefore, may not be conferred jointly by two ministers belonging to different Churches or ecclesial Communities. Moreover, according to Catholic liturgical and theological tradition, baptism is celebrated by just one celebrant. For pastoral reasons, in particular circumstances the local Ordinary may sometimes permit, however, that a minister of another Church or ecclesial Community take part in the celebration by reading a lesson, offering a prayer, etc. Reciprocity is possible only if a baptism celebrated in another Community does not conflict with Catholic principles or discipline.

98. It is the Catholic understanding that godparents, in a liturgical and canonical sense, should themselves be members of the Church or ecclesial Community in which the baptism is being celebrated. They do not merely undertake responsibility for the Christian education of the person being baptized (or confirmed) as a relation or friend; they are also there as representatives of a community of faith, standing as guarantees of the candidate's faith and desire for ecclesial communion.

a) However, based on the common baptism and because of blood or friendship, a baptized person who belongs to another t" Community may be admitted as a witness to the baptism, but only together with a Catholic godparent. A Catholic may do the same for a person being baptized in another ecclesial Community.

b) Because of the close communion between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches, it is permissible for a just cause for an Eastern faithful to act as godparent; together with a Catholic godparent, at the baptism of a Catholic infant or adult, so long as there is provision for the Catholic education of the person being baptized, and it is clear that the godparent is a suitable one

A Catholic is not forbidden to stand as godparent in an Eastern Orthodox Church, if he/she is so invited. In this case, the duty of providing for the Christian education binds in the first place the godparent who belongs to the Church in which the child is baptized.

99. Every Christian has the right for conscientious religious reasons, freely to decide to come into full Catholic communion. The work of preparing the reception of an individual who wishes to be received into full communion with the Catholic Church is of its nature distinct from ecumenical activity. The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults provides a formula for receiving such persons into full Catholic communion. However, in such cases, as well as in cases of mixed marriages, the Catholic authority may consider it necessary to inquire as to whether the baptism already received was validly celebrated. The following recommendations should be observed in carrying out this inquiry.

a) There is no doubt about the validity of baptism as conferred in the various Eastern Churches. It is enough to establish the fact of the baptism. In these Churches the sacrament of confirmation (chrismation) is properly administered by the priest at the same time as baptism. There it often happens that no mention is made of confirmation in the canonical testimony of baptism. This does not give grounds for doubting that this sacrament was also conferred.

b) With regard to Christians from other Churches and ecclesial Communities, before considering the validity of baptism of an individual Christian, one should determine whether an agreement on baptism (as mentioned above, n. 94) has been made by the Churches and ecclesial Communities of the regions or localities involved and whether baptism has in fact been administered according to this agreement. It should be noted, however, that the absence of a formal agreement about baptism should not automatically lead to doubt about the validity of baptism.

c) With regard to these Christians, where an official ecclesiastical attestation has been given, there is no reason for doubting the validity of the baptism conferred in their Churches and ecclesial Communities unless, in a particular case, an examination clearly shows that a serious reason exists for having a doubt about one of the following: the matter and form and words used in the conferral of baptism, the intention of an adult baptized or the minister of the baptism.

d) If, even after careful investigation, a serious doubt persists about the proper administration of the baptism and it is judged necessary to baptize conditionally, the Catholic minister should show proper regard for the doctrine that baptism may be conferred only once by explaining to the person involved, both why in this case he is baptizing conditionally and what is the significance of the rite of conditional baptism. Furthermore, the rite of conditional baptism is to be carried out in private and not in public.

e) It is desirable that Synods of Eastern Catholic Churches and Episcopal Conferences issue guidelines for the reception into full communion of Christians baptized into other Churches and ecclesial Communities. Account is to be taken of the fact that they are not catechumens and of the degree of knowledge and practice of the Christian faith which they may have.

100. According to the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, those adhering to Christ for the first time are normally baptized during the Paschal Vigil. Where the celebration of this Rite includes the reception into full communion of those already baptized, a clear distinction must be made between them and those are not yet baptized.

101. In the present state of our relations with the ecclesial Communities of the Reformation of the 16th century, we have not yet reached agreement about the significance or sacramental nature or even of the administration of the sacrament of Confirmation. Therefore, under present circumstances, persons entering into full communion with the Catholic Church from one of these Communities are to receive the sacrament of Confirmation according to the doctrine and rite of the Catholic Church before being admitted to Eucharistic communion.

B. SHARING SPIRITUAL ACTIVITIES AND RESOURCES

General Principles

102. Christians may be encouraged to share in spiritual activities and sources, i.e., to share that spiritual heritage they have in common in a manner and to a degree appropriate to their present divided state.

103. The term "sharing in spiritual activities and resources" covers things as prayer offered in common, sharing in liturgical worship in the strict sense, as described below in n. 116, as well as common use of sacred places and of all necessary objects.

104. The principles which should direct this spiritual sharing are the following:

a) In spite of the serious difficulties which prevent full ecclesial communion, it is clear that all those who by baptism are incorporated into Christ share many elements of the Christian life. There thus exists a real, even if imperfect, communion among Christians which can be expressed in many ways, including sharing in prayer and liturgical worship, as will be indicated in the paragraph which follows.

Placed by the Association of Interchurch Families , England

Mixed Marriages and Receptive Ecumenism: A Meeting of Gifts

Mon, 27 Jun 2022 10:53:13 GMT

Fifth Conference on Receptive Ecumenism

Sigtuna, Sweden, 27-29 June 2022

Mixed Marriages and Receptive Ecumenism:
A Meeting of Gifts

So, what am I going to talk about? I will talk about the research I have done, and the data it provided. I will then talk about what I will argue it reveals, evidence of rich ecumenical resource.

Research

In this, two categories come into play. One is known as Disparity of Cult, the other known as Mixed Religion.

Mixed Religion marriages, as understood in Catholic parlance, are marriages in which the spouses are both baptized, but come from two different Christian traditions. ^[1]

In my research, I drew on evidence both from civil society, and from the Catholic Church.

So, what did this research reveal? First, from civil society.

Civil Society

In Canada, indications are that there are more marriages in which a Catholic is married to a person of another Christian tradition than there are marriages between two Catholics.

I want to reiterate that statement. In Canada, there are more married couples in which a Catholic is married to a person of another Christian tradition than there are between two Catholics.

I believe the data for the most recent UK census will be made available in October, and look forward to seeing it.

Church

Now, how does this compare with Church data? As we will see, is very different.

In Canada, the Church shows Mixed Religion marriages accounting for only some 11% of marriages. Disparity of Cult accounts for a similar 10-11%, with some 74% being between two Catholics.

In Australia, the Church shows Mixed Religion marriages accounting for only 8.7% of marriages, Disparity of Cult at 9.5%.

Clearly the information the Church gathers is very different from that gathered in civil society. Why might this be so?

In conducting the research, I contacted the bishop of every Catholic diocese in Canada and Australia, asking for data from their dioceses on three distinct elements. These were

the number of marriages in their diocese in which were between two Catholics,
the number Mixed Religion marriages, and
the number of Disparity of Cult marriages.

In Canada, I asked for data from the years 2015-2017. In Australia, because I had concrete data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016 census, I asked for information from that year alone.

Comparing the data from civil society to that from the dioceses, what important issues stand out?

What are some of the implications of this?

Okay, enough of the statistics. How does all this information relate to real life?

Whenever such a large cohort exists within any body, ecclesial or secular, the question should be asked as to whether this cohort represents a problem to be solved and/or a gift to be received.

Is there another reason to treat this as an opportunity?

This survival is, I suggest, evidence of a gift given by God to his Church in its various forms, for the healing of the disunity which has developed and we, at times, cling to.

What gift might this be? What resources might they have and bring, which can be gift to their churches and, through their churches, to the whole Body of Christ – including us?

Again, how do the parents in interchurch families not only live fully their own form of faith, but encourage their spouses to live fully their form of faith, seeing each as gift of and for the other?

As Pope Francis says, ideas must come from experience. ^[4] Experience the mixed religion and fully interchurch families in your community. Then let your ideas flow from that experience.

Go home, and be gift.

Ray Temmerman STM

^[1] Mixed marriages: DISPENSATION FROM CANONICAL FORM (part 1),

https://cbcpnews.net/cbcpnews/mixed-marriages-dispensation-from-canonical-form-part-1/

^[3] R. Reardon, No Blueprint, in The Journal, Vol 9, No 1, 2001, interchurchfamilies.org journal 01January

Mixed Marriages and Receptive Ecumenism

Mon, 27 Jun 2022 10:20:25 GMT

Fifth Conference on Receptive Ecumenism

Sigtuna, Sweden, 27-29 June 2022

Mixed Marriages and Receptive Ecumenism:
A Meeting of Gifts

So, what am I going to talk about? I will talk about the research I have done, and the data it provided. I will then talk about what I will argue it reveals, evidence of rich ecumenical resource.

Research

In this, two categories come into play. One is known as Disparity of Cult, the other known as Mixed Religion.

Mixed Religion marriages , as understood in Catholic parlance, are marriages in which the spouses are both baptized, but come from two different Christian traditions. ^[1]

nterchurch marriages are a subset of those same couples, usually involving a Catholic, who intentionally worship together in both churches to the extent they are able, and raise their children within both traditions.

In my research, I drew on evidence both from civil society, and from the Catholic Church.

So, what did this research reveal? First, from civil society.

Civil Society

In Canada, indications are that there are more marriages in which a Catholic is married to a person of another Christian tradition than there are marriages between two Catholics.

I want to reiterate that statement. In Canada, there are more married couples in which a Catholic is married to a person of another Christian tradition than there are between two Catholics.

I believe the data for the most recent UK census will be made available in October, and look forward to seeing it.

Church

Now, how does this compare with Church data? As we will see, is very different.

In Canada, the Church shows Mixed Religion marriages accounting for only some 11% of marriages. Disparity of Cult accounts for a similar 10-11%, with some 74% being between two Catholics.

In Australia, the Church shows Mixed Religion marriages accounting for only 8.7% of marriages, Disparity of Cult at 9.5%.

Clearly the information the Church gathers is very different from that gathered in civil society. Why might this be so?

In conducting the research, I contacted the bishop of every Catholic diocese in Canada and Australia, asking for data from their dioceses on three distinct elements. These were

the number of marriages in their diocese in which were between two Catholics,
the number Mixed Religion marriages, and
the number of Disparity of Cult marriages.

In Canada, I asked for data from the years 2015-2017. In Australia, because I had concrete data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016 census, I asked for information from that year alone.

Comparing the data from civil society to that from the dioceses, what important issues stand out?

What are some of the implications of this?

Okay, enough of the statistics. How does all this information relate to real life?

Whenever such a large cohort exists within any body, ecclesial or secular, the question should be asked as to whether this cohort represents a problem to be solved and/or a gift to be received.

Is there another reason to treat this as an opportunity?

This survival is, I suggest, evidence of a gift given by God to his Church in its various forms, for the healing of the disunity which has developed and we, at times, cling to.

What gift might this be? What resources might they have and bring, which can be gift to their churches and, through their churches, to the whole Body of Christ – including us?

The next question, equally vital, is this: what do we find attractive in the other which is different, which we find in some way calls us to be more, completes us even as we may find it challenging our assumptions, our ways of living? This question is far more challenging, as it calls us to look closely at the differences, not as something to be avoided, or something to be changed, done away with, but something to be explored, its richness and beauty, its gift, teased out, called forth. In short, how can that person’s faith be encouraged to grow, both for that person’s good and for our own as well?

Again, how do the parents in interchurch families not only live fully their own form of faith, but encourage their spouses to live fully their form of faith, seeing each as gift of and for the other?

As Pope Francis says, ideas must come from experience. ^[4] Experience the mixed religion and fully interchurch families in your community. Then let your ideas flow from that experience.

Go home, and be gift.

Ray Temmerman STM

^[1] Mixed marriages: DISPENSATION FROM CANONICAL FORM (part 1) , https://cbcpnews.net/cbcpnews/mixed-marriages-dispensation-from-canonical-form-part-1/

^[3] R. Reardon, No Blueprint, in The Journal, Vol 9, No 1, 2001, http://interchurchfamilies.org/journal/pdf/2001V09N01January.pdf

Ruth Reardon, R.I.P.

Mon, 30 May 2022 16:08:11 GMT

Ruth Reardon 1930 – 2022

Like most of us, Ruth fulfilled many roles – as a beloved family member, friend, mentor and colleague as well as being involved with her churches, her community, ecumenical bodies and various publications. In the short time available today I cannot do justice to all these roles so, drawing on Ruth’s own writings and contributions from AIF members and friends, I want to focus on what became the central purpose of Ruth’s life and through which she lived out all of these roles. I refer, of course, to the passion that she shared with Martin for Christian Unity symbolised in the Rublev icon which was always at the centre of their family life with Sarah and John, a constant reminder of God’s encircling love.

Born into a devout Baptist home in 1930, she first wanted to be a missionary in Africa and by 21 was playing a role in national church life by representing Baptist students at the 1 ^st Conference of British Youth. Five years later she became a Roman Catholic after meeting Fr John Coventry, a Jesuit, who had addressed the Student Christian Movement at her college. By the following year she was working in Belgium and later enrolled on a course of Religious Studies at Louvain university where she lived with other international students in the home of two keen ecumenists.

After she had been there a year an Anglican priest, Martin Reardon, arrived to study at Louvain and over the coming months they spent time together talking and praying. But then, Ruth wrote “... as we were preparing a service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in 1961, we realised we were in love. It was a terrible shock. We were dismayed. Falling in love ” she added “ is always a gift, but in this case, it was hardly a welcome one ”.

The cause of their dismay was of course the fact that mixed marriages were strongly discouraged and seen, even by committed ecumenists, as a problem. However, with this dawning of their love for each other the seeds of what would become their mission in life began to take root as they grappled with the theological possibilities that marriage between Christians of different communions might contribute to the understanding and healing of ancient divisions.

After 3 years of discernment, Martin was unexpectedly given a dispensation by the Archbishop of Brussels, Cardinal Suenens, who had decided that he did not need to promise to bring up the children of the marriage as Roman Catholics. This allowed Ruth and Martin to be married in Belgium in a ceremony in which both Catholic and Anglican priests took part – an impossibility in England in 1964. At their wedding Ruth’s ring had the words “That they may be One” engraved inside – whilst in Martin’s was written “That the world may believe”.

Back in England Ruth and Martin were well-placed to support couples who faced similar issues to them in their marriages. In early 1968 they arranged a small meeting for such couples in their home in Sheffield, followed by a successful national meeting in November where Fr John Coventry, now the Secretary of the Catholic Ecumenical Commission for England and Wales said: “ They’re so pleased to meet one another – we must do this again. ” Thus was the Association of Interchurch Families (AIF) born, and Ruth’s personal experience of ecumenism grew into a much broader and lifelong purpose in the cause of Christian Unity. One of the association’s members once described Ruth’s commitment as being like that of someone who had founded a religious order – and in some senses that is indeed perhaps how she saw AIF ...

There will be time to talk of Ruth’s many achievements at future events – but for now, suffice to say that for many years she managed the new organisation, and until very recently she was both a theologian for, and a caring pastor to, interchurch couples. With her formidable intellect, she would read the Roman Catholic Church’s documents with an astute eye and pick out the nuances that favoured both ecumenism and the lived reality of being an interchurch couple – a reality that she understood so well because of her interest in, and care for, couples who sought support from the association. Always aware of the bigger picture (including the international dimension of being an interchurch family) she showed couples how to gently persuade the hierarchy without antagonising them. Indeed, she was highly regarded by the Roman Catholic Bishops’ conference and well known to the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity in Rome.

Throughout her life, Ruth contributed extensively to ecumenical journals; she was co-editor of “One in Christ” during and after Vatican II and edited a regular journal for Interchurch Families from 1993 till 2009. Her final article published last year in response to the Vatican document “ The Bishop and Christian Unity: an Ecumenical Vademecum ” pointed out a change of language coming from Rome, and she quoted three examples of the church listening to interchurch families – a change for which she and Martin can take at least some of the credit. In spite of continuing restrictions on sharing communion, the article is full of optimism for the future.

First Martin, then Ruth, had hoped to write a book on unity from the perspective of interchurch families. It was not to be, but I believe that Ruth has given us a gift far more precious than words on a page – she gave us the example of a life of faithful service and pastoral care in which unity was at the heart of everything that she did. Her life, and our memories of that life, have a much greater power to witness to the vision of unity expressed in Jesus’s prayer in John 17, and which was inscribed in Ruth and Martin’s wedding rings, than any book could ever do.

Working closely with Ruth as chair of AIF I know that she was aware that this day was fast approaching, and I close with her own words, written two years after Martin’s death: “ Marriage is for this world, but the love and unity between us is a participation in God’s own love and is therefore eternal. One day I too will be called to the fuller knowledge of that love in our Father’s house. ”

Ruth has now been called to that fuller knowledge and we give thanks that our knowledge of her, and her love for us, has enriched us all in this life. May she rest in peace.

Paul T Docherty – 30 May 2022

A Guide to Help Catholic Bishops Promote Christian Unity

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 21:41:21 GMT

We are indebted to One in Christ , Turvey, Bedfordshire, UK, for their continued excellent ecumenical work. This article was published in One In Christ , Volume 53, no 1, in 2021.

A GUIDE TO HELP CATHOLIC BISHOPS TO PROMOTE CHRISTIAN UNITY:

IS ANYTHING NEW FROM AN INTERCHURCH FAMILY PERSPECTIVE?

Ruth Reardon

The Bishop and Christian Unity: an Ecumenical Vademecum, was published by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU), Rome, in December 2020. It runs to 50 pages and its purpose is to encourage and assist Catholic Bishops to fulfil their ecumenical responsibilities. It was presented by Cardinal Koch, President of the PCPCU, at a press conference on 4 December 2020, and can be found on the website of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity ( http://www.christianunity.va/content/dam/unitacristiani/Documentazione%20generale/2020Vademecum/Vademecum-EN-GARAMOND.pdf ).

The publication of the guide marks both the 25 ^th anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Ut unum sint , and the 60 ^th anniversary of the establishment of the Second Vatican Council by Pope John XXIII. Besides being based on Vatican II’s decree on ecumenism, Unitatis redintegratio (1964), and on Ut unum sint (1995), the new vademecum is also based on the Directory for the Application of the Principles and Norms on Ecumenism (PCPCU, 1993). From a canonical point of view there is nothing new in this guide: Interchurch families who search it for a change in the rules – for example, on eucharistic sharing – will be disappointed. However, the language and tone of the new guide indicates how far thinking and practice on the application of authoritative texts has moved on during the past few decades.

The background

An earlier guide, A Handbook of Spiritual Ecumenism (New City Press, New York, 96 pp) was published in 2006 under the authorship of Cardinal Walter Kasper, then President of the PCPCU. This was produced in response to a request for a brief handbook or vademecum inviting those with special responsibility for Christian Unity to deepen the spiritual roots of ecumenism. The request came from the 2003 Plenary Meeting of the Council, which focused on the theme of ‘spiritual ecumenism’. In it, Cardinal Kasper offered his own stimulating experiences and the contributions of others who had shared their lived experiences of spiritual ecumenism, as a practical aid for all who have taken to heart the cause of unity among Christians. (The extensive contributions to the preparation of the handbook by Mgr Johan Bonny and Fr Don Bolen, both staff members of the PCPCU at the time, and now bishops, were acknowledged.) It is a ‘this is what can be done’ document.

This new vademecum, The Bishop and Christian Unity, also responds to a request from the members of the Pontifical Council, meeting in 2016. It is addressed directly to every Catholic Bishop, whose ‘ecumenical engagement is not an optional dimension of his ministry but a duty and an obligation’, in the words of the preface by Cardinal Koch and Bishop Brian Farrell, Secretary of the PCPCU. The text had been developed by the Council’s officials in consultation with experts and relevant Vatican dicasteries, and it is published with Pope Francis’ blessing. It is in effect saying to each and every Bishop: ‘please get on with it; this is your job’ in a more forceful way than in the earlier handbook.

Both guides devote two paragraphs to mixed marriages/interchurch families and it is these that are focused on here. In A Handbook of Spiritual Ecumenism ‘Mixed Marriage Families’ appear in paras. 39 and 40, under the general heading ‘Sacramental Celebrations’. In The Bishop and Christian Unity ‘Interchurch Marriages’ is the heading of para. 35, followed directly by para. 36 on ‘Sharing in Sacramental Life’, both under the general title of ‘Pastoral Ecumenism’.

A change in terminology: from ‘mixed marriage’ to ‘interchurch marriage’

An important point to note is the change in terminology used in The Bishop and Christian Unity. So far as I know this is the first time that ‘mixed marriages’ have become ‘interchurch marriages’ in any official Roman document, and it is a real step forward. The term was coined in 1968 at the first national meeting of mixed marriage couples in England, and it was used in 1969 when the English ‘Association of Interchurch Families’ was formed. The couples AIF represented disliked the term ‘mixed marriages’ because of its ambiguity; it could apply to many kinds of mixing, including interracial and interreligious marriages. As international contacts grew, it became clear that wherever groups and associations of interchurch families appeared, they shared this feeling. Interchurch families worldwide felt that they had a particular vocation with regard to promoting Christian unity, and the terminology by which they self-identified recognised this: in English-speaking regions ‘interchurch families’, in German-speaking regions ‘konfessions verbindenende Familien’ , (English version) in French-speaking regions ‘ foyers mixtes interconfessionnels ’, and in Italy ‘ famiglie miste interconfessionali ’.

One of the specific suggestions made to the 2015 Synod on the Family by the Interchurch Families International Network was that consideration should be given to revising the terminology of ‘mixed marriage’ when it refers to the marriages between baptised Christians (see the ‘Response to the 2015 Synod on the Family from the Interchurch Families International Network’, in One in Christ, vol 49, no1, 2015, pp.142-160). The Bishops did not seem to respond at the time, but the request has now been answered favourably in this PCPCU document. Using the term is a mark of respect for the vocation of interchurch families. As a result, they become more visible within the church communities, and can give a clearer ecumenical witness.

Bishops are advised to listen to interchurch families

Among the list of ‘Practical Recommendations’ which closes the section on ‘Pastoral Ecumenism’ in The Bishop and Christian Unity is the following: ‘To meet with and listen to the experiences of interchurch families in your diocese’ (p.33). To my knowledge this is unprecedented advice to be given officially to Bishops at world level. Interchurch families have always been eager to ‘tell their stories’ – one international conference in Scotland in 1992 had the theme ‘Listen to our story’ – but, with notable exceptions, many couples have found over the years that it was not easy to meet bishops who wanted to listen. They have been grateful to the Catholic pastors and theologians who have been willing to do so. Fr Thomas Ryan CSP, Director of the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism, who arranged a series of meetings with interchurch families across Canada in the late 1980s, said that he ‘had never interacted with a group of church members who were more grateful that somebody expressed interest in what they were living’ (see ‘A Canadian Association?’ in the Journal of the Association of Interchurch Families, 4, 1, January 1996, p.7).

But here it is Bishops themselves who are being advised to take the initiative. This is a pastoral recommendation that is worthy of the spirit of Amoris Laetitia ; it goes beyond simple ‘pastoral care’ to something more like the ‘pastoral understanding’ that the international conference of interchurch families held in Edmonton, Canada in 2001 hoped for. It catches the spirit of the recent guidelines published by the German Bishops on eucharistic sharing in interchurch families, when the Bishops spoke of a ‘spiritual conversation’ with couples on the subject, using a phrase that St Ignatius of Loyola applied to the discernment required in deciding upon a particular course of action. Any of the German Bishops is free to apply the guidelines in the way he decides is best for his own diocese (see ‘The German Bishops and the Development of Understanding of Intercommunion’ by James Cassidy in One in Christ vol 53, no1, 2019, pp.31-45, and ‘The German Bishops’ Guidelines on Eucharistic Sharing in Interchurch Families: What’s New?’ by Ruth Reardon in vol 52, no 2, 2018, pp.339-358). One English couple suggested that a ‘friendly conversation’ would sound less formidable and more welcoming – and in fact this was what they had experienced with their own Catholic Bishop. In any case what is required is a pastoral dialogue that would start from the actual experience of real people. If this happened widely it could transform the situation of interchurch families and allow them to live out their vocation in a more open and joyful way.

Positioning of interchurch families in relation to sacramental sharing

A particular field of experience that interchurch families have long been eager to talk about with Bishops is that of eucharistic sharing. The Bishop and Christian Unity reinforces the new work done by the 2006 Handbook in positioning interchurch families firmly in the context of its section on sacramental celebrations (see ‘Spiritual Ecumenism: a vademecum from Cardinal Kasper’, in Interchurch Families: Issues and Reflections no 6, April 2007.

This was a step forward from the 1993 Directory. The new text goes further. Its ‘Pastoral Ecumenism’ section is introduced by ‘Shared pastoral challenges as opportunities for ecumenism’ (32), followed by ‘Shared ministry and sharing resources’ (33) and ‘Mission and catechesis’ (34). After this commendation of shared pastoral care, ministry, catechesis and mission, comes ‘Interchurch marriages’ (35). These must not be seen as problems, since they are ‘often a privileged place where the unity of Christians is built’. However, ‘pastors cannot be indifferent to the pain of Christian division which is experienced in the context of these families, perhaps more sharply than in any other context.’

The following section on ‘Sharing in Sacramental Life’ (36) does not in fact mention interchurch families specifically, but the fact that it follows on immediately from paragraph 35 seems to link it directly with the ‘pain of Christian division’ experienced so sharply in interchurch families and laying its claim on the pastoral concern of the Bishop. It is the Bishop’s task to decide whether there is a serious need for eucharistic sharing. The Bishop is always called to exercise his ‘pastoral discernment’ in judging when exceptional sacramental sharing is appropriate because it concerns the care and the salvation of souls. He must exercise prudence to avoid causing confusion; ‘nevertheless he should bear in mind St John Paul II’s words when he wrote: “It is a source of joy to note that Catholic ministers are able, in certain particular cases, to administer the Sacraments of Eucharist, Penance and the Anointing of the Sick to Christians who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church” (Ut unum sint, 46)’.

A strongly pastoral approach and tone

The document appeals to the pastoral heart of the Bishop. Bishops must become more aware of the deep pain that couples experience because of Christian divisions. All Christians of course need to experience the pain of division, but the intimate context of marriage – a sacrament that is a sign of the close union between Christ and the Church – means that some mixed couples who share the sacraments of baptism and marriage experience the consequences of division far more sharply than most Christians do.

The word ‘pain’ was introduced into the Roman terminology in the 2006 Handbook following the use of the term in relation to eucharistic sharing in Cardinal Kasper’s address to interchurch families when they made an informal visit to the PCPCU in 2003. Is that pain always necessary when churches are committed to working together more closely on the road to visible unity? Bishops must not become so focused on the first principle of sacramental sharing that they overlook the second. The document quotes Unitatis Redintegratio,8. A sacrament bears witness to the unity of the Church; it is also a sharing in the means of grace. In general, therefore, sacramental sharing is limited to those in full communion. However, it is permitted for the care of souls within certain circumstances, and when this happens it is to be recognised as both desirable and commendable. The Bishop and Christian Unity stresses that the Bishop needs to exercise his discernment in weighing the claims of both these aspects of sacramental sharing. It also says that ‘it is important to stress that the bishop’s judgement about what constitutes a “grave necessity” for sacramental sharing is always a pastoral discernment, that is, it concerns the care and the salvation of souls.’ Yes, he should be prudent in avoiding confusion, nevertheless he should ponder the words of Pope John Paul II expressing his own joy that this is now possible in certain cases. There is a stress on the positive aspect of eucharistic sharing: where this can take place, it is to be desired and commended.

A focus on the pastoral needs of interchurch families in all their variety and at all stages of marriage and family life does not negate the witness of the Roman Catholic Church to the close relationship between eucharistic and ecclesial unity, but it approaches the question of eucharistic sharing from another perspective, which is equally Catholic. It is greatly to be welcomed by interchurch families and all concerned for their welfare that the focus for the Bishop has been clearly identified as the pastoral discernment of the need for eucharistic sharing in some couples and families, rather than a concentration on a checklist of canonical criteria for admission. The canonical criteria remain, but the whole tone is different, the expectations are different.

Listening to interchurch couples and families: an ecumenical process?

An earlier section of ‘Pastoral Ecumenism’ (paras 32-37) indicates that ‘shared pastoral challenges are opportunities for ecumenism’, and this is taken up in paragraph 35 on ‘Interchurch marriages’. ‘Mutual meetings of Christian pastors, aimed at supporting and upholding these marriages, can be an excellent ground for ecumenical collaboration … Local agreements on these pressing pastoral concerns are therefore to be encouraged.’ It follows then that listening to the concrete experiences of interchurch couples in the context of meeting with other church leaders can be a fruitful form of ecumenical collaboration for Catholic Bishops.

‘Listening’ may not be so easy in a time of pandemic. But where Christians really want to talk to one another, they have been finding in recent months that although not the same as face-to-face meetings, virtual meetings via Zoom can be very fruitful. Three recent examples are relevant to our topic here.

EWARC: the first example

It was in 2007 that the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM) produced its first report: Growing Together in Unity and Mission (GTUM). IARCCUM is concerned with joint action and common witness; its emphasis is on practical and pastoral ecumenism, as distinct from the focus of the older ARCIC (Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission) on theological dialogue. Both bodies now function in parallel at international level. The national bodies that follow up the work of ARCIC were expected to do the same for IARCCUM, and thus it was that the English Anglican-Roman Catholic Committee (‘English ARC’), in its 5-year working period from 2013 to 2017, studied GTUM in the context of the English situation, and produced its own report: Walking Together: Mapping Anglican-Roman Catholic Relations 2018. It was published in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2018, introduced by the Anglican and Roman Catholic Co-Chairs, Bishop Tim Thornton and Archbishop Bernard Longley. As a result of its mapping exercise of the way in which Anglicans and Roman Catholics were working together at diocesan and parish level, and in line with the proposals of GTUM, it made six practical proposals at the end of its report. In first place was the suggestion that Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops together might reflect on ways in which they do and could increasingly ‘support interchurch families, especially by ensuring that all canonical provisions and pastoral opportunities are reflected in parish life’ (see ‘An English ARC Report, seen from an Interchurch Family Perspective’ in One in Christ, vol 52, no 1, 2018, pp.170-175).

EARC’s successor became EWARC (English and Welsh Anglican-Roman Catholic Committee). Doral Hayes, the AIF Executive Development Officer, and also Ecumenical Facilitator for Hertfordshire, was appointed as a member of the Anglican team. The first meeting of the quinquennial took place in the summer of 2018. It takes some time for a new committee to sort out its priorities, but EWARC decided to take up the challenge presented to it and work on promoting the joint pastoral care of interchurch families. At a meeting of EWARC in mid-March 2019, Doral was asked to introduce the subject as a lead into a general discussion. She reiterated an invitation already made by the AIF Chair of Trustees, Paul Docherty, to members of EWARC to an AIF weekend in October 2020.

The Bishop and Christian Unity had not yet been published, with its proposal that bishops should listen to interchurch families, nor had it spoken of the value of ‘shared pastoral challenges’ as ‘opportunities for ecumenism’. But EWARC members anticipated it by deciding that they wanted to meet and listen to interchurch families themselves. An overnight meeting was planned between representatives of EWARC and the Association of Interchurch Families for the autumn of 2020. It was disappointing that a face-to-face meeting could not be held in view of Covid 19 restrictions, but a zoom day event was organised on October 10 ^th and was felt to be very worthwhile. Over fifty members of AIF were present. The Anglican co-chair of EWARC, Bishop Christopher Foster of Portsmouth, was there all day except when he had to go off to two different ordinations which were delayed because church buildings could not be used until Covid 19 regulations began to be relaxed. In addition to Bishop Christopher and Doral, there was another Anglican member of EWARC and two more who proposed to ‘drop in’ as other commitments allowed. Roman Catholic members included Canon Tony Churchill, the co-secretary of EWARC, Fr Jan Nowotnik, the new Roman Catholic National Ecumenical Officer and Secretary to the Catholic Bishops’ Department for Dialogue and Unity, and two more. Another member of EWARC present was the Baptist consultant-observer Dr Paul Goodliff, general secretary of Churches Together in England.

There were mutual introductions on the work of EWARC and interchurch family history, but the centrepiece was when interchurch families were divided into small groups to ‘tell their stories’, each group with an EWARC member to lead and ask questions. EWARC wanted to understand current pastoral needs and what would most help interchurch families to fulfil their vocation. These leaders reported back in a plenary session chaired by the Bishop of Portsmouth on what they had heard from their groups, when he returned from his first ordination visit, and there was a chance for comments and questions before he left again for his second ordination service.

Paul Docherty’s preliminary report on the day was discussed by the AIF Advisory Council in November; the final version with suggestions for ways in which both EWARC and AIF might influence the provision of pastoral care given to interchurch families has been forwarded to EWARC. AIF talked and EWARC listened. Many of the themes raised – including eucharistic sharing – concerned practice in the Roman Catholic Church, but questions were also raised about Anglican practice. As one EWARC member commented: ‘The group was not a “moan-fest” but faithful Christians who love their churches, taking stock of reality. Much love was also expressed, both for the church and for particular priests’. One of the practical outcomes of this conversation is a project (which is already in hand) to revise the booklet Churches Together in Marriage: Pastoral Care of Interchurch Families’, published by Churches Together in England and CYTUN (Churches Together in Wales) in 1994, and to use the new material on the web-sites of Churches Together in England and the Association of Interchurch Families.

The NBCW leaflet: the second example

EWARC had practised listening to interchurch families in an ecumenical context, with Anglicans and Roman Catholics together, and a Baptist participant observer. The stimulus had come from IARCCUM, an international body, while the discussion had focused mainly on the local situation in England. The leaflet on eucharistic sharing launched at a webinar on 17 May 2021 by the National Board of Catholic Women (NBCW), a consultative Body to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, also focused on the local situation, but it was prepared in a Catholic context.

An earlier version of the NBCW leaflet had been published in the year 2000, entitled: May my husband (a Christian from another Church) ever receive Holy Communion with me? How? In 1998 the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, together with the Catholic Bishops of Scotland and Ireland, had published One Bread One Body (OBOB), applying the norms of the 1993 Ecumenical Directory from Rome to the territory of the three episcopal conferences. AIF had rejoiced that, for the first time, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales as a body had recognised in One Bread One Body that it was canonically possible for other Christians to be admitted to communion in the Roman Catholic Church alongside their Catholic spouses, in certain cases and under certain conditions. The members were, however, saddened that this permission was apparently limited to ‘unique occasions’, a condition that was not imposed by the 1993 Directory from Rome. The Association was studying One Bread One Body in detail (see One Bread One Body: a Commentary from an Interchurch Family Point of View by Ruth Reardon in One in Christ, vol 35, no 2, 1999, pp 109-130) when it was asked by NBCW to appoint a woman to its Ecumenical Standing Committee. The Committee was concerned that the positive provisions of OBOB were so little known at parish level and were in the process of preparing a leaflet to help inform Catholics of what was possible under the terms of OBOB. A member of AIF was duly appointed, and May my husband? appeared in the following year. AIF helped with the leaflet’s publicity and distribution.

So when, in 2016, the newly appointed secretary of the Department for Dialogue and Unity of the Catholic Bishops Conferencesuggested to NBCW that a revision of the May my husband? leaflet, bringing its language up-to-date and making it more user-friendly, could be timed to coincide with the 20 ^th anniversary of OBOB, it seemed natural for the Committee (now the Ecumenical and Interfaith Committee of NBCW) to contact AIF about the project. It was agreed that AIF would take on a consultative role, but that the document would be the responsibility of NBCW as a Consultative Body to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference. In fact, the AIF representative, Helen Mayles, who joined the Committee in 2016, did a great deal of work on the leaflet. Personally, I was doubtful whether a revision of the original leaflet would yield much fruit, since the norms of One Bread One Body were still in force, but how wrong I was.

The new version is entitled: Who can receive Communion with us? When may Christians from other Churches ask to receive Holy Communion in a Catholic Church? It states its credentials: ‘This leaflet has been written by the National Board of Catholic Women in consultation with the Association of Interchurch Families, the Department for Dialogue and Unity of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome. It is based on One Bread One Body, the Bishops’ Conference teaching document on the Eucharist in the life of the Church.’ The process of revision took about five years, was presented twice to the Catholic Bishop’s conference, had input from the Pontifical Council in Rome and went through seemingly endless drafts, but the result is well worth it. The text is still bounded by the norms of One Bread One Body, but its tone is very different from that of the 2000 version. As an Anglican member of AIF wrote: ‘I welcome the tone and especially the ‘expectation’ – it is written in loving joyful expectation of requests being made AND GRANTED. For those of us who have gone through a painful occasion of asking and being refused, to read a loving explanation of the rules predicated on the expectation that the answer will normally be ‘yes’, gives me hope. I welcome seeing more light and love in the process than I did when I first read One Bread One Body and felt that the last few pages seemed to be trying to close and even bolt/lock that door. We have come a long way and I hope the Eucharist will be food for all for the onward journey.’

The revision of the leaflet had got people talking again about eucharistic sharing in interchurch families and realising how long it was since One Bread One Body appeared. Much had happened during those two decades, including the detailed work done by the German Bishops’ Conference on the subject, and the response of Pope Francis to the Lutheran wife who questioned him in 2015. The leaflet itself could not go further than OBOB, but the webinar on 17 May 2021 to launch it, organised by NBCW, allowed for questions and discussion on possible future developments. It began with a theological perspective introduced by Dr Clare Watkins, Reader in Practical Theology at the University of Roehampton, based on the theology of OBOB. She covered an immense agenda in 15 minutes in a most stimulating manner: the purpose and shape of One Bread One Body; ‘real presence’ and ‘sacrifice’; ‘communion’ in the Eucharist and in the Church; the theology of the domestic church and an implicit theology of discernment – a practice on which so much depends in the living out of the norms; also, the apparent tensions between normally disallowed practices being allowed in exceptional circumstances. There were two additional points: the tensions between dogmatic positions and pastoral concerns, and the question of who can give permission: does it always have to be a bishop, or can the parish priest adapt the norms as pastoral situations arise?

Then the formula changed: rather than asking Bishop Paul Hendricks, Auxiliary Bishop of Southwark and member of the Department for Dialogue and Unity, to give another talk, Janet Ward, the Convenor of the NBCW Ecumenical and Interfaith Committee, put questions to him. He had been pleased to become involved with the preparation of the NBCW leaflet at a late stage, and paid tribute to Canon John O’Toole who had initiated the work and had done much to support it until his term as secretary of the Department for Dialogue and Unity of the Catholic Bishops Conference came to an end at the beginning of 2020. It was not a document of the Bishops’ Conference as such, but the bishops had seen it at various stages of the work. Asked about some of the issues raised, Bishop Hendricks was particularly interested in the question of the discernment involved and who should undertake the discernment. To the question of what would happen if a non-Catholic came forward for communion, he said that a celebrant would not normally refuse unless grave public scandal was involved. A similar method of question-and-answer was used to draw out the story of a Catholic/Anglican couple, Helen and Philip Mayles, members of the Association of Interchurch Families. They were interviewed by Janet Ward, and this proved to be a good way of listening to their testimony, described by the Catholic husband of an Anglican wife who had joined the webinar from Australia, as speaking ‘very gently from the depths of their experience and heart’. The text of their interview is appended to this article.

The lively discussion that followed the three presentations could have gone on for so much longer. ‘This is all part of a process,’ said Janet Ward, and it is to be hoped that this webinar will be followed up, so that interchurch families who experience a need to share communion may be enabled openly and confidently to ‘speak with the Lord and go forward’, (as Pope Francis has encouraged them to do), surrounded by the joy of their church communities and for the good of the whole Church.

An Anglican Centre in Rome webinar: the third example

The third example of bishops, with others, listening to interchurch families comes from an international and Anglican context. Only a few days after the launch of the NBCW leaflet, on 20 May 2021, the Anglican Centre in Rome (ACR) offered a webinar entitled ‘ Walking Together: the gift of interchurch marriages ’. A few years ago, the ACR publicised interchurch families as a topic for one of its week-long Rome courses, but no details were given and the proposal was not followed up, then Covid 19 intervened. However, by hosting a webinar in the context of the pandemic the ACR was able to bring together online more interchurch couples from around the world than it would have gathered for a week in Rome. The webinar aimed at highlighting the journey and experience of married couples coming from the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, exploring the many blessings of Anglican-Catholic marriages, and showing how they have addressed the differences of their respective spiritual journeys and how they have been challenged as couples and as families.

There were several Anglican Bishops at the seminar, including its Director, Archbishop Ian Ernest, former Bishop of Mauritius and Primate of the Indian Ocean, who welcomed the participants. He had become Director in 2019, the same year that Bishop Michael Burrows, Bishop of Cashel, Ireland, had taken over as Chair of the Governors of the ACR. He too took part in the webinar, as did Bishop David Hamid, Bishop in Europe. Their role was to ask questions and make comments; the main part of the session was given over to the stories of interchurch families themselves.

After a meditation by Canon Edgar Ruddock to set the scene, the first speaker was Dr Ken Dunn, formerly an experimental physicist at Queen’s University of Belfast and now a Visiting Professor to the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. From 1984 to 2020 he was a member of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland. He was a founder-member of the Northern Ireland Mixed Marriage Association (NIMMA) and its first chair (1974-78). He has chaired the Association again from 2006 to date. When he and his future Catholic wife, Maura, first went out together, the troubles had just begun, and times were hard for mixed marriages. Happily, the ecumenical centre at Corrymeela put on a weekend for mixed marriages, and for Ken and Maura it was like ‘coming in from the cold’. NIMMA soon came to birth, and Ken was well placed to give a brief history of this body, unique among interchurch family associations in having a divided community to contend with, as well as a divided Church.

A couple living in Ireland who spoke of their marriage included an Anglican priest. Anne was ordained in the Church of England but then moved to the Church of Ireland where she had served in two parishes and in chaplaincies. She and her husband, Alan, had met at Taizé when they were both working there as volunteers. In the case of another couple from the Republic of Ireland it was the husband, Phil, who was the Anglican priest. He had met his future Catholic wife, Claire, when he was preparing for ordination and after she had left a missionary community with whom she had worked as a religious sister for twelve years. They had both been welcomed into the community of the other and had been able to share communion from the beginning. The important thing was that their marriage was Christ-centred, said Claire, and everything else flowed from that – living with both traditions seemed quite natural. Living with differences is enriching, and they would never want to give them up, although there are things in the Anglican Church, such as women priests and married priests, that she would like to see in her own Church.

The oldest couple who spoke came from Mauritius; they had been married for 56 years and had children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They had met when Robert, the Catholic, came to study in England. Valerie’s family had been much involved in the life of the local Anglican parish church, but she had been educated at an Ursuline convent school in the area, so she was ‘well-versed in Catholic teaching’ by the time she left home to train as a nurse in London. The couple met all the discouragement that was normal for ‘mixed marriages’ in those days, but persevered. Valerie had signed the promise about the Catholic upbringing of the children that was required and had no regrets. She had been allowed to receive communion when she had requested it on family occasions. Robert commented that the only difference in their worship seemed to be that Valerie’s was in English and his in French.

This, and other interventions, raised the subject of interchurch marriages that were also inter-cultural. The question of identity came up, as did eucharistic sharing, when quite different experiences were mentioned. The variety of couples and situations was striking, and the interchurch couples who asked questions and made comments were not limited to those where Catholics were married to members of the Anglican Communion. The question of the relationship of interchurch families to official ecumenical dialogues came up: did they think these top-level meetings were relevant to them? did they feel they were problems to the churches? Interestingly, Jamie Hawkey, Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey and chair of the UK Development Committee of the ACR, referred to this during another webinar a little later, meeting to discuss the topic of the ‘Malines Conversations 100 years on’. He noted that one couple was grateful for the dialogues, but another thought they should start with the experience of people on the ground rather than with high-level theology.’It is not a binary choice’, said Canon Hawkey, stressing that we need communication between those from above and those from below. Bishop Michael Burrows had made this point at the end of the interchurch family webinar, saying that the ACR wants to make a bridge between formal theological dialogue and pastoral reality. That would indeed be welcome to interchurch families.

The ACR is well placed to undertake this work. It has been friendly and generous to interchurch families in the past. When the International Network of Interchurch Families held its Rome Gathering in 2003 all the A-RC couples who attended it were invited to tea at the Centre one afternoon, which was much appreciated. And when a small representative group returned to Rome two years later for an informal meeting with the PCPCU, the ACR offered kind hospitality and practical assistance in providing a meeting place for the larger group that came to help plan and follow-up that meeting. The webinar, however, is an entirely new initiative, and a good beginning. There is a great deal more to tease out and unpack on ‘the gift of interchurch families’ – and how they are a challenge, as well as a gift, to the churches.

Appendix: An interview with a Catholic-Anglican couple, from the webinar organised by the National Board of Catholic Women, 17 May 2021

Janet We are now going to ask Helen and Philip Mayles to share some of their experiences. Can I invite you first of all to tell us a bit about yourselves?

Helen I am a Roman Catholic, my mother is Spanish, my English father was brought up an Anglican and became a Catholic soon after his marriage.

Philip Curiously, I was also born into an interchurch marriage. My mother was a catholic and my father was the son of a Methodist minister. Although I was baptised in a Catholic church, I was brought up as an Anglican.

Helen We have been married for 40 years. We have two grown up daughters, both of whom are very involved in their Christian communities.

Philip We have been determined throughout our marriage to take as active a part in each other’s church as possible and have usually gone to both churches each Sunday. We see our two churches in a similar way as we see our two parental families and we want to be fully part of both of them.

Janet When you first met how did you see the difficulties associated with being members of different church traditions?

Philip With a Catholic mother and Protestant father I have always had an interest in the theological differences between our churches. When we were engaged, I went for instruction with a priest at Westminster Cathedral. I found that we share almost all of the fundamental beliefs, but the priest told me that I should not become a Catholic just to be able to receive communion with my wife. In the end I decided to remain an Anglican.

Helen There were tensions at times as we discussed our beliefs, but I learnt to value the extra insights that I experienced as I accompanied Philip to the Anglican church. I believe that God was calling me to marry Philip, for many reasons, but one of the most important ones was that he is a committed Christian of another denomination.

Philip We both wanted to be married within the context of the Eucharist, that is, to have a nuptial Mass. At the time of our marriage in 1980 it was apparently not possible for us both to receive communion, but the idea of only one of us receiving communion seemed like a complete contradiction to the rest of the wedding service.

Helen We concluded that the only way to solve this dilemma was for the priest to be the only communicant – which strangely may have seemed more normal now with Covid restrictions!

Janet How were things after you were married?

Helen We joined the Association of Interchurch Families shortly after the birth of our first daughter. The support of this group of committed Christian couples and of the priests and ministers of all denominations that we have met through the Association has been invaluable. In the 1980’s, the late Fr John Coventry, then recently retired as Jesuit Provincial, enabled us to consider the issues and then to receive communion together at the Masses celebrated with members of the association.

Philip These two occasions a year were particularly special as the whole group of Christians were able to be fully part of the celebration of the Eucharist and were often quite emotional.

Helen Our children were both baptised in a Catholic church with our Anglican parish priest also taking part in the service. They went to a nearby Catholic school and the crunch came when we asked our parish priest if Philip could receive communion at our eldest daughter’s first holy communion, and the pries replied it was only possible with the Bishop’s permission. I knew one of the auxiliary bishops quite well and he invited us to tea. We were astonished when he told us that First Holy Communion was not an occasion of serious need as it was really a social occasion and added that the diocesan bishop had never given such permission. As a young married couple, we were saddened to see that a Bishop, with whom I was otherwise quite friendly, completely misunderstood the deep pain that we felt Sunday after Sunday as we were separated at the Eucharist. And worse than that, how the refusal to allow their Daddy to receive Communion at their first communion was an effective way of undermining my efforts to bring up the children in the Catholic tradition.

Philip The deep hurt in our family was eventually lessened by us going to a priest in a neighbouring parish who said to me “of course you must receive communion” and the children made their first communion in his parish.

Janet Has One Bread One Body made your life together easier?

Helen It confirmed the position that the Catholic Church did not insist that you had to be a Catholic in order to receive Communion at Mass. However, only being able to approach our parish priest on ‘unique occasions of joy and sorrow in the life of our family’, was a long way from what we had hoped for. We did obtain permission to receive together on occasions such as Anniversaries, Easter and Christmas.

Philip I have never forgotten the first time at Midnight Mass at Christmas in our parish, when the Eucharistic minister who administered the Chalice made a point of coming to us after Mass and said how really pleased she was to be able to give me communion.

Helen We also received a much warmer reception from our bishops: Philip wrote to Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, who was then bishop of Arundel and Brighton, to ask permission for Philip to receive communion at my father’s funeral.

Philip We received a lovely letter back in which he said that I would be welcome to receive communion at any funeral in his diocese. (He also encouraged us to approach our own parish priest who was known to him.)

Helen Most of my father’s family are Anglican, and the priest celebrating the funeral Mass realised that some of them would want to receive communion also. He asked me to quietly let them know that he would not refuse them Communion at the altar, and this gave them great joy. That funeral Mass was a time of special grace that brought together the extended family.

Philip Around the same time we were invited to attend a diocesan Mass in celebration of Marriage. It would have felt rather strange to be celebrating our marriage and not to receive communion together. I therefore wrote to the bishop to ask for permission. It was uplifting to come home to find a friendly message on our answerphone saying that I would be most welcome.

Helen Another memorable occasion was the confirmation of our two daughters, in their late teens. Our parish priest was given permission to administer the confirmation. Our Anglican priest at the time was a retired bishop and it was agreed that he would be the children’s sponsor…

Philip … but wearing the full regalia of an Anglican bishop – this was as close as we could get to a joint confirmation. The confirmation took place during Saturday evening Mass with many parishioners from both our congregations present.

Helen Our parish priest had agreed to give Philip communion but was concerned about giving communion to the bishop as well. When it came to the moment he was spontaneously moved to do so.

Philip Some time later, we were attending an interchurch family conference in Canada with Bishop (now Cardinal) Marc Ouellet. In a small group, our daughter had told him about her confirmation and he later related this to the plenary and was momentarily lost for words with emotion.

Janet How do you see things 20 years after the publication of One Bread One Body?

Helen It would be easier now to obtain permission to receive Communion at one’s wedding or a child’s 1 ^st communion. But there are still many who do not know they can ask, and others who would like to ask for permission more often but can’t face a ‘no’.

Philip It has been pointed out to me that it would be much easier if I were to become a Catholic. However, I am still more comfortable worshipping in the Anglican tradition and as St John Paul II said ‘we live in our marriage the path to Christian unity’. When we are able to receive communion together it is always a special occasion for us. When we cannot receive together it is as hurtful as it would be not to be able to join in a family meal in my parents-in-law’s house. It sometimes feels as though we are Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet striving to celebrate our love in the context of their feuding families. Perhaps the Duke will turn up one day soon and will encourage them to bury their differences!! We long for the day when our churches are able to see that they really ARE one as Christ prayed.

Helen The churches may be divided but we were both baptised into Christ, we have become one flesh through the sacrament of marriage and we need the gift of the Eucharist to nourish our Faith, to sustain us in our Christian life together, and to help us witness to the one Body of Christ.

Philip We live in hope that One Bread One Body is not the final word. A few years ago a Lutheran woman approached Pope Francis and asked him when she could receive communion with her husband. His reply was that he could not give her permission but encouraged her to “talk to The Lord and go forward”, stressing that there is One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.

Helen The leaflet just published seeks to put the norms of One Bread One Body in a style that is more approachable and written with empathy. We ask the Bishops of England and Wales to consider revising the norms in One Bread One Body, and to address, for example, the serious need of married couples to receive communion together on an ongoing basis. There are also spontaneous needs that do not allow time for a formal request: the serious need of small ecumenical groups, whether it be in a Chapel of Unity, or on a pilgrimage or retreat, to express their unity by celebrating the Eucharist and receiving communion together.

Network of Interchurch Couples and Families

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 19:46:03 GMT

English version:

Overcoming the barriers of the denominations and living the unity in reconciled diversity - that is daily life for interchurch couples and families. There are local initiatives, circles, groups in which interchurch couples and families meet. Seminars are organised in different places to exchange experiences and to gain encouragement from one another. But up until now there has been no national forum for couples who share this situation, for them to exchange information and experiences. The network of interchurch families will fill this gap.

Our aims:

* We are the voice of interchurch couples united in one church

* We make the reality of our lives and our life experience of bringing our churches into one in our marriages into something that bears fruit in our church communities

* We want to awaken the consciousness that interchurch marriage is a model for unity in reconciled diversity

* We want to bring about a networking of local initiatives and of individual couples on a national and an international level

Our tasks:

* to offer an address to turn to and a source of information for interchurch families and couples

*to offer information that will be of service and support to those who need it, for example at a wedding, a baptism, first communion, confirmation, and for the spiritual life of the marriage and family

* to make the theological texts and the results of the dialogues between the churches better known, especially in connection with eucharistic sharing

* to arrange seminars and conferences for interchurch couples and families, especially on marriage preparation

* to stimulate and support pastors in their understanding and care of interchurch families

* to keep in close touch with sister associations in other countries (for example ARGE Oekumene in Austria, Foyers Mixtes in France, Association of Interchurch Families in England etc.)

* to develop initiatives for local ecumenical work and to contribute through this to communication between christians

The network is a member of the AOEK ("Arbeitsgemeinschaft Oekumenischer Kreise e.V." or Council of Ecumenical working groups): Alpenstrasse 6, 88418 Hofheim, Germany

Members of the group set up to organise the network:

Beate and Joerg Beyer, Nicole and Bertram Huber, Rosmarie and Rudolf Lauber, Gudrun Steineck.

A network over denominational boundaries - a network of the one church

If you would like to contact us

* as an engaged interchurch couple
* as a local initiative or group
* as a christian interested in unity

fill in the form below and send it to the contact address given below

I am interested in information about the network: ___

I should like to take part in a conference or seminar for interchurch couples and families:___

I should like to play an active part in the work of the network:___

I live in an interchurch marriage/partnership:___

I am a theologian:___

My denomination is:_____________________

My partner's denomination is:______________________

Sent by:

Name, first name, title:.............................................................................

Address:.....................................................................................................

Telephone:..................................................................................................

Fax:...............................................................................................................

email:.............................................................................................................

Send to:

Netzwerk konfessionsverbindender Paare und Familien
c/o Rosmarie Sudetenstrasse 22,
D - 71263 Weil der Stadt
Germany

R.Lauber@t-online.de

Hope for the Church(es)

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 17:00:27 GMT

"Hope for the Church(es)" argues the need for the Church to listen and learn from those who today are developing new languages to speak of timeless realities and values. This is especially true as we work toward the healing of the estrangement that afflicts the Church.

Both have much to offer the Church and the churches, if they can be invited to tell their stories, invited to share what they have learned.

Hope for the Church(es): Young People in an Age of Linguistic Dyanism, in One Bread, One Body, One Church - Title, Index, Chapter
Story-telling: One Text, Two Voices, Different Stories

Diocese of Maitland - Real Yet Imperfect 2001

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 23:17:54 GMT

Real Yet Imperfect

In 2001, the Catholic Diocese of Maitland, Australia, published guidelines for Eucharistic sharing. These guidelines were entitled "Real Yet Imperfect", a reference to the imperfection of communion between our churches.

If you wish to obtain a copy of these guidelines, please contact the Diocese of Maitland at http://www.mn.catholic.org.au/

Interchurch Families as Ecumenical Instruments

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 17:08:54 GMT

This is a draft of a chapter that has been accepted for publication by Oxford University Press in the forthcoming book The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies edited by Geoffrey Wainwright and Paul McPartlan, due for print publication in 2019

Part 4 Instruments: Chapter 10 INTERCHURCH FAMILIES

Are interchurch families ‘instruments’ of the ecumenical movement?

It may seem surprising that interchurch families (usually one partner a Roman Catholic and the other a member of another Christian communion) are included among ‘ecumenical instruments’. Most are official bodies or organs of dialogue set up by the churches specifically to promote Christian unity. Interchurch couples get married because the partners fall in love and sense that God has called them to this particular union. Their own unity as two persons called into ‘an intimate community of life and love’ (Gaudium et Spes 48) is at the forefront of their minds. The institutional churches have not encouraged this vocation – in the past they have strongly warned Christians against ‘mixed marriages’, and even now often point to the inherent difficulties rather than to the possible benefits.

Interchurch families believe that they can contribute to Christian unity

Yet from the official entry of the Roman Catholic Church into the ecumenical movement, marked by the Second Vatican Council, many couples have believed that their own growing unity could in some small way contribute to making visible the growing unity between their churches. Their confidence grew until in 2003 an international gathering meeting near Rome and representing interchurch families from eleven countries could state:

We believe that, as interchurch families, we have a significant and unique contribution to make to our churches’ growth in visible Christian unity. Many people in our churches have told us that we are pioneers. As two baptised Christians who are members of two different, and as yet separated Christian traditions, we have come together in the covenant of marriage to form one Christian family. As we grow into that unity, we begin and continue to share in the life and worship of each other’s church communities. We develop a love and understanding not only of one another, but also of the churches that have given each of us our religious and spiritual identity. In this way interchurch families can become both a sign of unity and a means to grow towards unity. We believe that interchurch families can form a connective tissue helping in a small way to bring our churches together in the one Body of Christ.

Different kinds of interchurch families and mixed marriages

The 1993 Ecumenical Directory issued by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity refers to couples in mixed marriages between a Catholic and another baptised Christian as ‘those who share the sacraments of baptism and marriage’. Not all such couples would normally be called ‘interchurch’. One or both partners might be nominal Christians, or might decide to worship separately within their respective communities.

In interchurch families both partners remain faithful to their original church membership, but, so far as they can, are committed to participate in the life and worship of their spouse’s church too. If they have children, they share their parental responsibility, bringing them up to appreciate both Christian traditions. There is no blueprint for how this is done; each family is unique, and in conscientious striving comes to a common mind on how to live out its two-church character.

Groups and associations of interchurch families

In the 1960s couples who began to explore this possibility felt isolated. Groups and associations were formed for mutual encouragement and support. Many couples active in these groups had experienced considerable difficulties and discouragement from families and from their church communities, but they were positive about the opportunities offered by such marriages for the partners themselves, for their children and for their churches. They wanted to share this positive approach with other mixed couples who felt pressurised into choosing one church or the other, or decided to cut their links with both churches because of the problems they had encountered. Ecumenically-minded Catholic clergy (together with ministers of other communions) began to fulfil a vital role in the pastoral care of these family groups. Indeed, they were often at the origin of such groups: there was René Beaupère OP in France, Don Mario Polastro in Italy, John Coventry SJ in England, Beda Müller OSB in Germany, Michael Hurley SJ in Ireland, and later George Kilcourse in the United States and Tom Ryan CSP in Canada. They stimulated interchurch family groups to think beyond themselves and their needs to their contribution to growing unity between the Roman Catholic Church and other churches.

By the time the Second World Gathering of Interchurch Families took place in 2003, informal international networking had brought together English-speaking associations and groups in Britain and Ireland, Australia, Canada and the United States (usually called ‘interchurch families’, but ‘mixed marriages’ in Northern Ireland), French-speaking groups in France and Switzerland (‘foyers mixtes’ or ‘foyers interconfessionnels’), German-speaking groups in Germany and Austria (konfessionsverbindende Familien’), and Italian groups (famiglie miste interconfessionali’). They had made contacts with interchurch families in Africa and Asia too. These groups were united in their desire to contribute both to a better pastoral understanding of interchurch families and to closer relationships between their churches. Together they were able to give a voice to these aspirations. It is primarily these groups and associations of interchurch families who are considered as ‘ecumenical instruments’ here.

Do the churches see interchurch families as ecumenical instruments?

Before the Second Vatican Council mixed marriages between Roman Catholics and other Christians were forbidden by the Catholic Church unless both partners made promises, including a promise to bring up all the children of the marriage in the Catholic faith. Other churches saw this as violating the rights of their members. In 1963 Dr Visser t’ Hooft, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, declared that the ecumenical reality of the Council would be judged by two things. One was whether it removed the canonical difficulties for Christians of other communions marrying Catholics.

The fruit of the Council was seen when the papal ‘motu proprio’ Matrimonia Mixta was issued in 1970. The Catholic partner alone had to promise to do all that he could for the Catholic baptism and upbringing of the children; the other partner was not required to make any promise. There was also a less negative view of mixed marriages: they ‘do not, except in some cases, help in re-establishing unity among Christians’. A radical change was hidden under cover of the negative.

Pope Paul VI spoke more positively in his encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi of 1975. ‘Families resulting from a mixed marriage also have the duty of proclaiming Christ to the children in the fullness of the consequences of the common baptism,’ he wrote. ‘They have moreover the difficult task of becoming builders of unity.’

Pope John Paul II was even more explicit in Familiaris Consortio in 1981. ‘Marriages between Catholics and other baptised persons … contain numerous elements that could well be made use of and developed … for the contribution they can make to the ecumenical movement. This is particularly true when both parties are faithful to their religious duties.’

In Britain in 1982 Pope John Paul II spoke of interchurch families as ‘living the hopes and difficulties of the path to Christian unity’. The 1993 Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism issued by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity marked a real step forward in its pastoral provision for mixed marriages, but did not move beyond Familiaris Consortio in assessing the contribution such families might make to the ecumenical movement. Ten years later, things had moved on. Cardinal Kasper, then President of the Pontifical Council, could say in his greeting to the Rome world gathering in 2003: ‘Mixed marriages have an important role to play in ecumenical relations’.

There has been further progress in assessing this role. When he visited Poland in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI said that a mixed marriage could lead to the formation of ‘a practical laboratory of unity’. In his Handbook of Spiritual Ecumenism (2007) Cardinal Kasper stated that the Catholic Church ‘invites reflection on the contributions [mixed marriage families] can make to their respective communities, as they live out their Christian discipleship faithfully and creatively.’

We have detailed these developments in the Roman Catholic Church, because it has generally been easier for other churches to appreciate the ecumenical significance of interchurch families. Gradually it became possible to explore this together. In 1998 the Seventh Report of the Joint Working Group between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches recommended eight priorities for the attention of the 1998-2005 Joint Working Group, and the second was: ‘The ecumenical role of interchurch marriages. The ecclesiological implications of the sacrament of marriage between Christians of different Churches and in their family life’.

How interchurch families contribute to Christian unity

Interchurch families as described above contribute to Christian unity by their very existence. Certainly many are active in ecumenical structures such as Councils of Churches and bilateral dialogues and committees, because they are strongly motivated to work for church unity, but interchurch families embody unity in simply being interchurch families, apart from any activities in which they participate. They also point to the scandal of Christian disunity in a very striking and personal form, for example when they are not able to share eucharistic communion.

Growing together as partners, parents and families

When mixed couples consider marriage, it can be the strong Christian quality of their lives that attracts them. What they have in common is so much greater than that which separates them in their respective denominational allegiances. They are both children of the one Father, disciples of the one Lord Jesus Christ, bound together by the gift of the one Holy Spirit. They share their baptismal faith and deeply desire to commit themselves in a life-long covenant to journey together to the Father’s house. The scandal is not that two Christians are drawn to marry one another, but that the communions to which they belong are divided, so it is difficult for them to decide to marry. As they live their marriage together, as equal partners with shared parental responsibilities, church divisions mean that they have particular problems, but they also have special opportunities to receive and create unity.

When they meet, the partners may well assume that the divisions between their two ecclesial communions are irreconcilable. But they grow in married love as they share their lives together, respecting and forgiving and learning from one another, and they find that this attitude can extend to one another’s churches too, as they live together within both traditions. There is a real ‘exchange of gifts’. Just as they both have much to learn from and offer to one another, they come to realise they have much to learn from and offer to each other’s church tradition. Elements from both are integrated into their family life. They learned to practise a mutual ‘receptive ecumenism’ long before it had a name! Together they take on a larger identity that includes rather than excludes; they discover that their differences can be enriching, and do not necessarily divide them. Their children inherit this wider identity.

In living within one another’s traditions interchurch families come to understand that just as the positive gifts of each other’s church communities can be valued and shared, so their characteristic weaknesses can be forgiven. If marriage partners learn to see the perspective from which their spouse is coming, words and actions that at first seem unacceptable are placed in a new light. The hurt they cause is forgiven because the limited perspective from which it comes is understood. The underlying love and trust are of greater importance in their lives. Cannot churches, too, learn to understand one another’s perspectives and forgive one another?

In the process of living together interchurch families come to understand that the same truth can be expressed in different ways – sometimes they appreciate this in practice even before theological dialogues acknowledge it. When the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission came to a ‘substantial agreement’ on the eucharist in 1972, many were surprised. But Anglican-Roman Catholic couples who had been accompanying one another to church each week were not; they had already experienced themselves as ‘doing the same thing twice over’.

Sharing the experience of unity with others

As they share in the life and worship of their partner’s church as well as their own, interchurch spouses can be welcomed and feel at home in both. Some accept responsibilities in their partner’s church – teaching the children or helping with the youth group, joining the music group, the welcome ministry, or even the parish council. When they are accepted as ‘different’ and yet ‘one of us’ they can undermine prejudice, and by their presence help to make clergy and congregations more aware of the language they use about other Christians.

When clergy and congregations of both churches join in celebrations of family occasions – weddings and especially baptisms, even funerals – unity can become for them a living reality in a new way. Clergy brought together by the insistence of a mixed family who have valued their experience of exercising joint pastoral care are more ready to offer this to other couples. If interchurch families host house-groups for Bible study or prayer it is natural for them to be ecumenical rather than limited to a single congregation. Thus interchurch families can become motors of ecumenism on a local level.

Domestic churches: visible signs of unity

When they open their homes and share their experiences with other Christians, interchurch families are witnessing to their existence as a ‘domestic church’, bonded together in their marriage covenant. They know themselves to be one church at home, and that this one church is profoundly in communion with the two churches – in the sense both of denominations and local congregations – to which the partners respectively belong. They will not yet receive canonical recognition of this experienced reality, but they can remain faithful to both ecclesial communities and give expression to their lived unity as fully as possible in their particular circumstances. Partners and children are always trying to push at the boundaries, in their desire for eucharistic sharing, for shared celebrations of baptism, and for ways of affirming the faith of growing children and celebrating the gift of the Holy Spirit that involve both church communities. Such celebrations can be a joyful ecumenical witness without parallel. The vital importance of Christian unity is experienced in human terms.

The domestic church is built up through the relationships of marriage and family life, in the constant falling and rising again through which couples and families experience the ever-present grace of God in their homes. Interchurch families witness to the centrality of committed relationships in the movement towards Christian unity. Their love is not content with a parallel separate existence, but yearns for, and therefore promotes, growth into deeper unity. The marriage covenant provides a support and framework within which this love is encouraged to grow. Actual living together under one roof enables the partners to enter into each other’s everyday life, to get to know one another at a deep level. They share resources and decide together how best to use them for the good of the family and others. Parents share responsibility for the education and nurture of their children, and welcome the contribution of growing children to family decision-making. Interchurch families who do these things in their everyday lives are creating a living and healing connection between the ecclesial communities to which they belong; their domestic church embodies and signifies the growing unity of the Church. Children of interchurch families take their two-church connection for granted.

How can interchurch families become more effective ecumenical instruments?

This situation offers a considerable challenge to institutional churches that regard themselves as separate and distinct from others, and insist that ecumenical encounters must take place from a single denominational base. It especially challenges the Roman Catholic Church whose self-understanding includes a sense of being ‘church’ in a fullness that it cannot attribute to other ecclesial communities. It is easier for churches that regard themselves as ‘parts’ of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church to accept the two-church character of interchurch families.

Challenges and gifts to the churches

If interchurch marriage spouses experience their marriage relationship as an equal partnership, they may well feel they have to give equal weight in practical terms to the two churches that nourish their one domestic church. They have variously described their experience as ‘double belonging’, ‘double insertion’, ‘double participation’, ‘double solidarity’. They are not claiming canonical dual membership, but trying to express an experienced reality. This is a particularly difficult challenge for the Roman Catholic Church, with its conviction that the Church of Christ ‘subsists in’ it in a way that goes beyond what is lived in other churches. (Of course since Vatican II the Roman Catholic Church no longer claims simply to ‘be’ the one Church of Christ without remainder.)

Often the official response when interchurch families try to describe their experience of unity in the domestic church and their efforts to bring up their children within that unity is simply: ‘It is not possible’. An institutional mentality cannot cope with it. The 1998-2005 Joint Working Group of the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church devoted a number of sessions to interchurch families, but failed to come to any kind of understanding and did not even wish the papers presented at those sessions to be published. Yet by the grace of God the impossible happens, and ‘affective ecumenism’ may well lead on to ‘effective ecumenism’.

Challenges to accepted ways of thinking are uncomfortable. But because change and conversion is always needed on the Christian journey, challenges can be received as gifts. Interchurch families can be received as gifts. The institutional churches have at times tried to set the spouses against one another: ‘if in spite of the Catholic’s best efforts’; ‘Anglicans are advised to stick to their consciences’. But domestic churches have refused to be divided, and have worked for a win-win situation. Both ecclesial communities are to be equally valued, respected and loved within their one family. It doesn’t always work out in perfect harmony! But it is the aim in many interchurch families, and they hold to it so far as they can. Thus they witness to the priority of our relationship with God-as-Trinity, and of our relationships with one another in promoting Christian unity, to spiritual ecumenism and to the ‘ecumenism of life’. It does not mean that other aspects of unity are unimportant, but without these, the fruits of theological dialogues cannot be ‘received’ and lived in our churches. Interchurch families live the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ of unity. At their best, they can live ‘reconciled diversity’ within an ‘organic unity’ – albeit on a small scale.

Pastoral understanding

It will probably be a long time before the concept of ‘double belonging’ can win any kind of official recognition within the Roman Catholic Church, and indeed the expression can easily be misunderstood and needs to be used with caution. Meanwhile, what the Catholic Church can do, and has done, is to develop a better pastoral understanding of interchurch families in their concrete situation. The influence of other churches has helped, and the more this pastoral understanding can be developed, the more ecumenical progress can be made. A response to pastoral need can help to break down an institutional mentality.

This is true at all levels of church life. At local level, some ministers apply the general norms in a way that allows the lived unity of a particular couple or family to be expressed sacramentally, thus responding to their deepest desire. At national level, churches have worked together on the pastoral care of interchurch families; for example, Churches Together in England, Waldensians and Catholics in Italy, Catholics and the Uniting Church in Australia, the Catholic/Reformed Dialogue in the United States. At international level, the 1993 Directory issued by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity was particularly important. It recognised that although the Catholic partner was obliged to promise to do all in his/her power for the baptism and education of children in the Catholic Church, the other partner ‘may feel a like obligation because of his/her own Christian commitment’. It allowed for exceptional eucharistic sharing for those who share the sacraments of baptism and marriage; it was clear that the norms of the Code of Canon Law for admission to communion could be applied in the circumstances of a mixed marriage, under certain conditions and on a case by case basis. Such application has been made more widely in some countries than in others. Some episcopal conferences and particular bishops have been able to distinguish between authentically interchurch couples with a real and deep need to share communion from the larger body of mixed marriages where no such desire may be felt. Exceptional eucharistic sharing is a pastoral provision, but its ecumenical significance should not be underestimated.

Instruments must be put to use

To be effective, instruments must be used. Groups and Associations of Interchurch Families have always tried to relate both to their denominational authorities and to larger ecumenical instruments. The British Association of Interchurch Families is recognised as a ‘Body in Association’ with Churches Together in England and the other national ecumenical instruments, and members of interchurch families have been called on to take part in bilateral dialogues in a number of European and English-speaking countries. An international group of interchurch families were official participants in the Third European Ecumenical Assembly, and interchurch families have also been represented at Assemblies of the World Council of Churches. Representatives of the international network of interchurch families received a warm welcome when they visited the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity in 2005 for informal discussions.

Interchurch families are a small number in relation to the many mixed marriages involving a Roman Catholic and another Christian, but there are signs that their ecumenical potential is being recognised. Evidence comes from the ecumenical vademecum published by Cardinal Walter Kasper in 2007: a Handbook of Spiritual Ecumenism. He refers to the intrinsic value of the contribution they can make as they live out their Christian discipleship faithfully and creatively. Faithfulness does not mean a slavish conformity to the past; interchurch families are encouraged to seek creative new ways of expressing the unity in Christ of their domestic churches.

Interchurch families are to be ‘called upon to play a role’, to be ‘given a particular responsibility’ in various local ecumenical activities, or in organising support groups for other mixed marriage families. They are to be invited ‘to study and make known the Church’s teaching concerning the promotion of Christian unity and developments resulting from ecumenical dialogue’. They certainly have an incentive to do this, since they often suffer in their family lives from ignorance of ecumenical developments by pastors who may be very well-meaning but do not know what is ecumenically possible. These things have happened already on the initiative of interchurch families, but now it is bishops and others responsible for promoting Christian unity who are asked to invite and give active encouragement to them to undertake such tasks. It is good that interchurch families are given a recognised responsibility; but relevant church authorities will need to take action. As they do so they will have the opportunity to listen to ‘the particular experiences’ of interchurch families, and to give them ‘due pastoral consideration both in terms of the gifts and the challenges they bring to their communities’.

The Handbook places interchurch families in its section on ‘Sacramental Celebrations’; thus the sacramental reality of their marriages and family life is affirmed and underlined. Since the sacraments, besides being ‘an expression of the Church’s unity’, are also ‘a source of the Church’s unity and a means for building it up’, they ‘have their place in spiritual ecumenism’. A future task will be to draw out more fully the relationship between marital spirituality and spiritual ecumenism, between the domestic church and the whole Church. If by their existence and patient endurance and sustained efforts groups and associations of interchurch families can continue to stimulate and contribute to this work, they will indeed be useful ecumenical instruments.

German Bishops’ Guidelines on Eucharistic Sharing in Interchurch Families 2018: What’s New?

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 16:39:31 GMT

The following article, used here by permission, is originally published in One in Christ, 2018.2, Volume 52, pp. 339-358

German Bishops’ Guidelines on
Eucharistic Sharing in Interchurch Families 2018: What’s New?

At the press conference following the plenary assembly of the German Bishops’ Conference in February 2018 its President, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, announced that the bishops had prepared pastoral guidelines for the admission of non-Catholic partners in interdenominational marriages to communion, in individual cases and after careful pastoral discernment of their need, provided those partners affirmed Catholic eucharistic faith. The proposed handout for the guidance of Catholic pastors was approved by a large majority of the bishops, but was still open to changes in the text (which was not itself published).

When seven German bishops who opposed the proposal wrote to the Vatican in March asking for clarification as to whether the question of admission to communion for Protestant spouses could be decided at the level of an episcopal conference, or whether a decision at the level of the universal Church would be required, the whole question attracted international speculation and debate. Pope Francis asked some of the German bishops to come to Rome for a meeting with several heads of dicasteries and curial officials, notably from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. This meeting took place on 3 May, and Pope Francis asked the German bishops to come to as unanimous a position as possible. However a letter a few weeks later from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, acting with the approval of Pope Francis, informed them that the questions raised at the Rome meeting must be studied further at world level. [1]

In June Pope Francis and Cardinal Marx discussed the question further, and Pope Francis spoke of it in a press conference he gave on the plane when returning from his visit to the World Council of Churches in Geneva on 21 June. He referred to the desire of the German bishops to be faithful to what the Code of Canon Law said about admission to communion in special cases, and to the seriousness with which they had made their study. The difficulty was not so much the content of the document, but how it relates to the universal Church, and whether responsibility for decisions lies with the diocesan bishop or with an episcopal conference. A week later, on 27 June, following a meeting of the Permanent Council of the German Bishops’ Conference, the original text of the proposed guidelines was published on the German Bishops’ website, together with a statement by the Permanent Council. This made it clear that the document, published as Orientierungshilfe: Mit Christus gehen – Der Einheit auf der Spur: Konfessionsverbindende Ehen und gemeinsame Teilnahme an der Eucharistie, was not an authoritative Conference document, since it relates to a dimension of the universal Church, but was published as an orientation text to help individual bishops as they undertake their responsibilities. The statement of the Permanent Council was given in English translation on the website. A few weeks later the full text ofMit Christus gehen was published there in English translation, under the title Aid to Orientation: Walking with Christ – Tracing Unity: Interdenominational marriages and sharing in the Eucharist. We are concerned here with what is new in Walking with Christ, compared with earlier guidelines following the provisions of the 1993 Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism.

A pastoral approach

Walking with Christ builds on past approaches to eucharistic sharing in interchurch families, but it goes further, in the perspective of Amoris Laetitia, in its application to particular couples. At the level of an episcopal conference (albeit with a dissenting minority) it has gone beyond the perspective of pastoral care expressed in terms of norms to that of the ‘pastoral understanding’ that the Edmonton international conference of English-speaking interchurch families appealed for in 2001: ‘Pastoral understanding goes much further than pastoral care; it is a two-way process. It implies dialogue, and respect for the conscientious convictions and actions of couples and families in situations where their loyalty to their marriage bond, to their “domestic church”, must sometimes necessarily be held in tension with their loyalty to their wider church communities.’ [2]

It is clear that the German bishops have listened to interchurch spouses, and to pastors who work with them, and have recognised that some couples have a spiritual need and great desire for on-going eucharistic sharing, in order to express and deepen their marriage bond and their witness to their children of the reconciling love of God in Christ. They have understood that in terms of the existing norms they could go a long way in responding to those needs, and they have wantedto do all they could to welcome spouses to receive communion together. ‘Interdenominational married couples and families are very close to our heart’, they said when they published the German text in June. They have rejoicedto find a way forward, and ‘expressly welcome’ the Protestant spouses who decide to follow this way (58), whether the couple had not so far received communion together, because they saw the rules as forbidding it, or whether they had already been doing so for a long time. The bishops stress that they are inviting couples to follow their own consciences (54).

In Germany, a number of individual bishops have decided to apply the guidelines in their own dioceses, while others are awaiting further discussions. We are not concerned here with the question of whether it is an episcopal conference or a local bishop who is authorised to give guidance on these lines (this will be studied further at a global level), but with the content of the document, especially in relation to the lived experience of interchurch families.

The English translation offered on the German bishops’ website is used here. When referring to the text therefore the term ‘interdenominational marriages’ is used; this is a term which the English would normally use themselves, if needing an alternative to the long-established but questionable ‘interchurch marriages’, while they would think of marriages which involved Lutheran and Reformed Christians as ‘interconfessional’. The German bishops when writing in their own language have chosen to use the preferred term of German couples: Konfessionsverbindende Ehen. This is difficult to translate into English but evocative in terms of the couples’ understanding of their ecumenical vocation: ‘confessions-uniting marriages’. This term was deliberately chosen by German and Austrian interchurch families in preference to the older ‘confessions-dividing marriages’. It is a sign of respect that the German bishops have decided to use terminology that couples themselves have chosen to express their self-understanding.

Rome has always continued to use the term ‘mixed marriages’ for marriages between Christians. One of the questions that the Interchurch Families International Network’s response to the 2015 Synod on the Family raised was whether, now that ‘interreligious marriages’ was being used to describe marriages of Catholics with partners of other faiths, something analogous could be used for mixed Christian marriages. The English title that the Holy See Press Office gave to the German document on 3 May was: ‘Walking with Christ in the footsteps of Unity: Mixed Marriages and Common Participation in the Eucharist’.

Not a new question: what are the parameters so far?

Ever since mixed marriage couples came together in groups with Catholic priests and other ministers, to encourage one another and to assess their position in the light of the new situation created by the convocation of the Second Vatican Council, the question of eucharistic sharing has been raised.

In England, for example, the first national meeting of mixed marriage couples took place fifty years ago at Spode House in November 1968. The couples drew up a statement that was distributed to the press and sent to the Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Mixed Marriages, which was due to meet at Pineta Sacchetti a few days later. The final point of the statement (no 5) read: ‘Mixed married couples are very conscious that doctrinal agreements between churches are not the only way in which we can progress in Christian unity. These are important, but they can only be an attempt to formulate lived Christian experience as divided Christians are drawn together into that communion of love with which the Father loves the Son, with which Christ loves the church. Marriage between baptised Christians is a sign of the close union of love between Christ and his church. It is not surprising therefore that it should be given to some mixed marriage couples and families to experience the reality of Christian unity in a way which has not yet been experienced by all the members of their churches. The question must be raised of this lived experience to eucharistic communion.’ [3]

There were several things to encourage them. First of all, the Second Vatican Council had approached the question of sacramental sharing in a new way. It set it in the context of the growing unity of all Christians, since the Catholic Church had now committed itself to full participation in the ecumenical movement. The conciliar Decree on Ecumenism (n 8) stated that eucharistic sharing is not a means to be used ‘indiscriminately’ to restore Christian unity. It set down two principles: eucharistic communion signifies the unity of the church, so it is generally ruled out between divided Christians: it is also a means of grace, so it is sometimes to be commended. Practical decisions on what is to be done are left to the local bishop, unless the bishops’ conference or the Holy See has decided otherwise. Might not therefore eucharistic sharing be recognised as a means of grace to help interchurch couples to grow in mutual love, to witness more effectively to their children the reconciling love of God in Christ, and by their lived experience of unity to call all Christians to respond more fully to their call to be one in the unity for which Jesus had prayed?

Secondly, in 1967 the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity had issued a Directory for the Application of the Decisions of the Second Vatican Council Concerning Ecumenical Matters, Part 1;this began the process of spelling out the conditions under which separated Christians in the west could be admitted to Catholic communion. A separated Christian could be permitted such access in danger of death or in urgent need (during persecution, in prison) if he had no access to his own minister and spontaneously asked for Catholic communion, so long as his eucharistic faith was in harmony with that of the Catholic Church, and he was rightly disposed. Other cases of urgent need were to be judged by the diocesan bishop or the episcopal conference. A Catholic in similar circumstances should only ask for the eucharist from a minister who had been validly ordained. This seemed to give wide discretion to local bishops and episcopal conferences to recognise the ‘adequate reasons’ and ‘urgent need’ for admission to communion in the Catholic Church referred to in the Ecumenical Directory.

Thirdly, there were already concrete cases where these concepts had been applied to interchurch families. In the spring of 1968 the Dutch bishops issued their Provisional Directives on Mixed Marriages, which included the statement that if a baptised non-Catholic partner asked to receive communion at a nuptial mass, they would be prepared to grant this on request, provided the partner could unite himself with the faith of the Catholic Church which is given living expression in the eucharistic celebration, and had access to the communion service of his own church. [4]

Even before this, there was a known case in 1966 of an American Presbyterian bride receiving communion together with her Catholic husband at their nuptial mass in Assisi, with the authorisation of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. [5] And at Spode 1968 itself, participants were delighted and amazed to have with them an Anglican husband who had recently been married in his Italian bride’s home parish, and who had received communion with her at the wedding mass. However, things did not progress as quickly as they had hoped.

The ‘urgent need’ of 1967 had become ‘serious spiritual need’ in 1972, in the Instruction concerning Particular Cases when other Christians may be admitted to Eucharistic Communion in the Catholic Church, issued by the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity on the authority of Pope Paul VI. Defined as ‘a need for an increase in spiritual life and a need for a deeper involvement in the mystery of the church and its unity’, this seemed a good description of their own need to a number of interchurch families who experienced themselves as ‘domestic churches’. It would obviously be only certain ‘particular cases’ who would experience that need. However, another clause was added: the Christian who asked for admission must be unable to have recourse to his own minister ‘for a prolonged period’. This seemed to rule out interchurch spouses, and it was a relief to couples that it was dropped in the Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1983. What was required was grave necessity, an inability to approach their own minister, a free request and proper dispositions (c 844). Ten years later, the Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, issued by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in 1993 on the authority of Pope St John Paul II, explicitly identified mixed Christian marriages (those who ‘shared the sacraments of baptism and marriage’) as in possible need of eucharistic sharing. In the years that followed, a number of episcopal guidelines for eucharistic sharing in interchurch families were issued in different countries. The German bishops (apart from the dissenting minority) have made it quite clear that they believe Walking with Christkeeps within the parameters of the global norms decided by the Catholic Church.

A strong ecumenical perspective

The German bishops’ text is set firmly within the context of progress in Christian unity. This is clear from the sub-title: ‘tracing unity’, ‘tracking unity’, ‘in the footsteps of unity’. Their guidelines are proposed as a concrete step towards Christian unity, as an act of solidarity with the German Protestant churches. At the beginning of their text they recall the commemoration of the 500 years of the Reformation in Lund, Sweden, in October 2016, when Pope Francis and the President of the Lutheran World Federation said in their Joint Statement: ‘We share the pain of those who share their whole lives, but cannot share God’s redeeming presence at the Eucharistic table. We acknowledge our joint pastoral responsibility to respond to the spiritual thirst and hunger of our people to be one in Christ.’ In Germany, say the bishops, it is particularly important to take seriously the commitment of the Lund Joint Declaration, since Germany has about as many Catholic as Protestant Christians, and ecumenical relations at local level have developed very well, and gained in depth through the year of Reformation commemoration 2017. The bishops feel a solidarity with all the members of the Council of Christian Churches in Germany and judge that this is the time to take an important step forward (1).

They realise that there are many interdenominational couples in Germany who express an intense longing to receive communion together. In a Joint Statement with the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Healing of Memories: Witnessing to Jesus Christ. A Joint Statement on the Year 2017, they recalled the suffering of those who, although they are spouses in an interdenominational marriage, according to Catholic teaching ‘are usually not allowed to approach the Lord’s table together’. ‘We stated’, say the Catholic bishops, ‘that Holy Communion cannot simply be reduced to a means to an end’. However, in particular cases where there is a personal relationship with Christ and a life led in solidarity with the Catholic Church, pastoral support may be given. At the ecumenical penance and reconciliation service held together with the EKD in March 2017, the bishops declared publicly that ‘trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit, we undertake to provide marriages that unite the denominations with every support to strengthen their shared faith and promote the religious upbringing of their children’. Walking with Christtakes a step towards fulfilling this commitment.

The German bishops thus made it clear that their decision had matured in consultation with the EKD, and their common search for how the churches could move forward on the road to unity. They recognised that it was possible to move ahead where some interchurch couples were concerned, precisely because their life commitment to one another in marriage was actually a force that was drawing their churches closer together. As that early statement at Spode 1968 had said, it had been ‘given to some mixed marriage couples and families to experience the reality of Christian unity in a way which has not yet been experienced by all members of their churches’. It was important that the EKD did not think of the Catholic bishops’ move as proselytising (especially since the bishops stated that they could not authorise reciprocal sharing), and consultation was certainly in line with the norms of the Code of Canon Law and the 1993 Directory, which stated that ‘the diocesan bishop or the episcopal conference is not to establish general norms except after consultation with the competent authority, at least at the local level, of the non-Catholic Church or community concerned.’ [6] It was in fact unusual; no other guidelines on eucharistic sharing in interchurch families had been so explicit about ecumenical discussions with other churches beforehand.

A pastoral problem: ‘cases of need’? or ‘occasions of need’?

In formulating their pastoral guidelines, the German bishops were determined to be faithful to both the statements made in the Decree on Ecumenism: the norm is to restrict admission to communion to Catholics; however, there are commendable exceptions to this practice. They had to make it clear that they were not giving a blanket approval for the admission of all mixed marriage spouses, but were welcoming those who deeply desired it and lived faithful lives in solidarity with the Catholic Church. It was not just a matter of ticking boxes, checking whether a list of canonical criteria were fulfilled.

Other bishops and bishops’ conferences had faced the problem before them, especially in areas where there are large numbers of mixed marriages. How could admission be limited to avoid a ‘free-for-all’ in a way that would undermine the Catholic witness to the close link between ecclesial and eucharistic communion? The French Episcopal Conference was the first to lay down guidelines on eucharistic sharing, through their Commission on Christian Unity. They did this in 1983, as soon as the Code of Canon Law had dropped the condition that, in order to admit to Catholic communion, the relevant non-Catholic minister should not be available ‘for a prolonged period’. They identified the need as a proven spiritual desire, where there are continuing bonds of fraternal communion with Catholics, as lived in certain foyers mixtesand in some long-lasting ecumenical groups. [7] The stress here was on the permanent nature of the living bonds established with the Catholic Church. Decisions on admission would be taken locally, and communicated to the bishop or his ecumenical officers.

Other guidelines appeared after the 1993 Directoryhadidentified, at world level, those who shared the sacraments of baptism and marriage as in possible need of eucharistic sharing. The first came from the diocese of Brisbane, Australia, in 1995. This made a distinction between cases of spiritual need for occasional admission (for example, a partner at a nuptial mass, a parent at baptism, confirmation and first communion, the family at a funeral), and spiritual need for regular admission. This latter was explained as referring to couples where each partner lives devotedly within the traditions of his/her church, makes a significant contribution to the ecumenical movement, and where the spouses can experience serious spiritual need each time they are with the family at mass. There was a recognition here that couples are very different: some will be together at mass in an on-going way, while other partners will only be there with their family on special occasions. Similar guidelines followed in a number of other Australian dioceses.

The Southern African Bishops’ Conference in the first draft of their Directory on Ecumenism (1998) picked up the phrase ‘whenever they are together at a eucharistic celebration’. The final version (2003) said that a spiritual need can arise when spouses are attending a eucharistic celebration for a special feast or event or when accompanying their partners at Sunday mass.

The German Bishops’ Ecumenical Commission issued guidelines in 1997, but not all the German bishops agreed with them, and they were not authorised by the episcopal conference. So far as the spiritual need of the couple was concerned, the guidelines suggested that separation of married partners at the Lord’s table might lead to serious risk to the spiritual life and faith of one or both partners. It might endanger the bond created in life and faith through marriage, and might lead to indifference to the sacrament and distancing from family worship and so from life in the Church. The need was to be ascertained in pastoral dialogue with the couple; in some cases ‘full sharing in the Eucharist’ would be granted to the Protestant partner. Similar guidelines were soon published by the Archbishop of Vienna, and later by the Czech bishops.

In 1998 the three episcopal conferences of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland issued their guidelines in One Bread One Body. These differed from previous documents in ruling out the possibility of on-going eucharistic sharing in exceptional cases of need. Their option was to restrict admission drastically by suggesting ‘unique occasions’ for joy or sorrow in family life for which admission could be requested by a non-Catholic partner or parent from the bishop or his delegate: unrepeatable one-off occasions such as baptism, confirmation, first communion, marriage, ordination, death. The policy of approving certain occasions on which admission to communion could be requested was followed in a few dioceses in the United States, sometimes expanding the list of special occasions, for example to wedding anniversaries and major feasts – Easter, Pentecost, Christmas – and retreats and workshops; there was no national agreement on this. In Canada the Bishops’ Ecumenical Commission suggested guidelines and circulated them to the dioceses, who then decided whether or not to adopt them or to adapt them.

Interchurch couples in Britain and Ireland were glad that their bishops had recognised the possibilityof admitting the other Christian partner in an interchurch marriage to communion in the Catholic Church, and it was a welcome step forward in places where permission had routinely been refused on the occasions mentioned. However, in other places, practice had already moved on, and some couples who went to their parish priest in distress got the answer that ‘of course, it doesn’t apply to you’. Others again felt they had to cease what had become an established practice. The situation on the ground was very patchy – as, indeed, it is clear it has become in Germany.

Certainly the restriction of admission to a few ‘unique occasions’ seemed lacking in pastoral understanding to many couples and families who were often together at mass, and believed that eucharistic sharing was very important in view of their marriage commitment to grow together in love with their children in their domestic church. They hoped that there would be further development before too long – but One Bread One Body was published twenty years ago, and there has been no official movement in Britain and Ireland since then.

The first thing that interchurch families in England will be likely to notice about the German Bishops’ guidelines, therefore, is that the focus is on the need of particular couples and families to share communion, without any mention of certain occasions when this could be permitted. While they were careful to stay within global Catholic guidelines, the approach of the German Bishops is not juridical or restrictive. Rather, their tone is warm and welcoming. They clearly want to do all they can to support the marriages and family life of the interdenominational couples in their care.

A stress on the needs of the couple and family

There are other ways in which the German proposals show new emphases in their pastoral concern for interchurch couples and families. Unlike other guidelines, their earlier 1997 guidelines had expressed their concern that if eucharistic sharing were refused the pressure on the marriage might be too great, endangering the marriage bond and distancing the partners from the life of the Church. Twenty years later they repeat this concern that if the couple’s ‘grave spiritual need’ is not remedied, ‘the marriage that is founded on Christ’s love of the church may even be jeopardised (cf. Eph 5:32); providing this help is a pastoral ministry that strengthens the bond of marriage and supports the salvation of people.’ (18) They stress the need of the couple rather than that of the individual Protestant spouse. This is certainly true to the experience of most interchurch couples who desire to receive communion together; it is as a couple – the ‘one body’ of their domestic church – that they experience their need and present themselves. The need is that of the ‘one coupled person’ to receive communion, for the sake of their marriage and family life.

That is why some of the comments on the German bishops’ proposals, doubting the real need of interdenominational couples for eucharistic sharing, seem so wide of the mark to interchurch families themselves. Some critics have dismissed their desire as mere psychological inclination, others as no more than the pain that we all feel because Christians are divided. This ignores the particular ecclesial element present when interdenominational partners experience themselves as domestic church. But the German bishops quote Amoris Laetitia: ‘The Eucharist offers the spouses the strength and incentive needed to live the marriage covenant each day as a domestic church’ (318), and apply this to the need to deepen conjugal communion in interdenominational marriages: ‘the church must do all it can’(30). Married couples need to know and to feelthat ‘church-dividing obstacles do not break the bond of their marriage’ (27).

Cardinal Arrinze, speaking at Buckfast Abbey in May 2018, said with reference to the German proposals: ‘If Protestants wish to receive communion in the Catholic Church they should become Catholics.’ [8] There are probably many interchurch spouses who would be delighted to become Catholics – indeed, who feel a real sense of belonging to the Catholic Church already – if they were not required to give up their existing denominational attachment. As a couple they have taken on a larger identity than they had as separated individuals. It is not yet possible to express this canonically, but it ispossible to admit them to Catholic eucharistic communion, while respecting their existing allegiance. The German bishops are doing all they can, having recognised the spiritual need and desire of some interdenominational families. As they say, ‘We are encouraged by the spirit of ecumenism’, and it is in faithfulness to the real progress made on the ecumenical journey that ‘We wish to provide interdenominational marriages with pastoral support.’ [9] They appreciate the ‘deep hurt’ that may result when spouses ‘joined together in the sacrament of love are seeking the unity promised in Christ but are unable to share in the eucharist’ (30).

The German bishops stress, not only the need of the couple to strengthening their marital bond by eucharistic sharing, but also acknowledge their need as parents in witnessing to and teaching their children. ‘Both spouses have a high degree of responsibility for each other and for the faith of their children’ (24), and it may be in this context that they experience a great need to share communion. Certainly couples have asked for many years how they can witness fully to their children what they believe and experience as the reconciling power of Christ while they are separated at the sacrament of love and unity?

This has been a strong motivating factor for interchurch families ever since they began to come together in groups and associations following the Second Vatican Council. Before the Council they might have decided that they could not marry one another. A parent has a greater degree of responsibility for a child’s faith than for that of a spouse. Adults who know something of the reasons for the historical divisions between Christians may be able to be together at the eucharist without sharing communion, but can children be expected to understand? Similar stories come from different countries of some children who have shown that they find it incomprehensible: they have spontaneously broken the host they have been given and carried back half to give to the parent who has been missed out. For many couples it is the First Communion of a child that has been the crisis point in determining that they must find a way to share communion together – and not just at the celebration itself, but in their ongoing life together, unofficially if official sharing is not possible in their situation.

If a couple share Catholic eucharistic faith and after discussion with one another recognise in themselves a real need to receive communion together, the bishops wish them to do so in order to deepen their bond with Christ, their bond with one another and communion within the family. The bishops suggest that this should be done ‘if possible with the children and parents as well’ (32). It affects the whole family, so all should discuss it. Obviously this depends upon the age of the children, who are ‘involved as their age and their faith dictate’ (53).

The German bishops seem to understand the urgency of the need that is experienced by interdenominational families, which leads them to seek unofficial sharing. They ‘are not suggesting that anyone has been irresponsible’ (7), but they would like everyone to be ready to examine themselves, and to bring their decisions out into the open, in a way that will strengthen the faith and unity of marriage. They speak of the ‘deep pain’ of exclusion, and the pastoral care needed ‘both for the salvation of the individuals concerned and for the flourishing of an entire marriage and family’ (25).

A stress on faith

There is a constant stress on the faithof the couple and family in the German bishops’ text. They point out that an interdenominational marriage, sacramentally united, already partially realises the church communion to which the churches are committed. It is ‘a marriage of this kind that is lived in faith that is a “house-church” in intrinsic communion with the eucharist’. … Eucharistic communion and ecclesial communion are most closely connected. Marriage is a blessed form of life that realises communion with Christ in communion between the spouses and with the whole church. … Faith bestowed by the Holy Spirit breathes life into the conjugal communion. This “house-church” must of course be lived in this way: entering more deeply into faith, and in communion with the whole church’ (52).

At the same time the bishops are not seeking to judge couples: ‘Only God knows what faith the spouses share; the church hopes that it will grow within their marriage, and intends to nurture this growth.’ (5) ‘Nurturing growth in faith is therefore a major task. Where conditions are conducive, eucharistic communion is both an important expression and a strong driver of this growth’ (13). The German bishops are content to allow couples and families to decide whether they profoundly want to grow in faith through eucharistic sharing. ‘We believe in a conscientious decision by the spouses in an interdenominational marriage for whom the shared life of faith and the religious upbringing of their children are concerns of the heart. We also believe in pastoral care for married couples that deepens faith’ (33).

A section on Catholic eucharistic faith is included in Walking with Christ, since the question of whether they share the Catholic Church’s eucharistic belief faces anyone who wants to share in communion (35). The bishops are appreciative of the way ecumenical dialogues have helped Catholics and Protestants to focus less on differences and more on how much they already share. They explain that three dimensions of the eucharist are especially important for the Catholic Church: communion with Jesus Christ, communion with each other in the whole Church, and communion with the world. All three dimensions are articulated in the Word of God and in the Eucharistic Prayers, and form a unity. The bishops thus propose this liturgical framework in working out their exposition of Catholic eucharistic faith, as well as referring enquirers to the Catechism of the Catholic Churchand the Catechism for Adultswhich they had issued as a Bishops’ Conference (35-36).

In offering their testimony to Catholic eucharistic faith in a liturgical context they cover all the necessary ground in a way that would satisfy best a Christian spouse who desires to share communion with his or her partner in the Catholic Church. It is not a tick-the-box list of beliefs, but it tries to convey an understanding of the eucharist as a celebration of the transformation of the whole of life. One of the seven dissenting bishops, the Bishop of Bamberg, took a different approach, saying, after the publication of the guidelines, that he would apply them in his diocese ‘on occasions’, provided the Protestant spouse would accept the Catholic profession of faith, the seven sacraments, the Church’s understanding of the eucharist, and the Church’s hierarchy under the Pope. This is very different from the way in which the majority of the bishops approached the question of the eucharistic faith necessary for participation in the eucharistic celebration.

A stress on conscience

The German bishops emphasize that a decision is to be made by interdenominational spouses according to their consciences. In this they believe they are following the example given by Pope Francis when he spoke to a Lutheran wife in Rome in 2015: ‘Speak with the Lord and go forward.’(5) [10] They quote Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia: ‘We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them’ (AL37). ‘This paper’, they state, provides orientation on how in particular cases a path can be opened based on responsible personal decisions and recognised by the Church for Protestant wives and Protestant husbands living in interdenominational marriages to participate fully in the eucharist’ (8).

The bishops invite interdenominational couples to come to a decision according to their own consciences (54) and they do not condemn those who have already acted according to their consciences in receiving communion even before this was officially permitted. They trustthe consciences of couples who are serious about their shared life of faith and the religious upbringing of their children (33).

In spelling out the method they have chosen to help such couples to express a conscientious decision that can be accepted by the Catholic Church, they have gone into much greater detail than any previous episcopal guidelines.

The method: a ‘spiritual conversation’

The German bishops’ invitation is to ‘all interdenominational married couples to seek a conversation with their pastor/priest, or another individual appointed to provide pastoral care, to come to a decision which follows their own consciences as well as preserves the unity of the church’ (54) The invitation is to all, whatever their previous situation, with a stress on the bishops’ desire that they should follow their own consciences. The bishops want to promote freedom of conscience, responsibility in faith, and peace in the church. They declare that: ‘All those in interdenominational marriages who, after having carefully examined their consciences in a spiritual conversation with their pastor/priest or another individual appointed to provide pastoral care, conclude that they affirm the faith of the Catholic Church, and must end a situation of “grave spiritual need” by satisfying their longing for the eucharist, may join the Lord’s Table in order to receive Holy Communion’ (56).

The bishops explain that the Easter Day conversation of Jesus with two of his disciples on the way to Emmaus from Jerusalem, as St Luke tells it, is a model for the kind of spiritual conversation to which they are inviting interdenominational couples. He follows them, accompanies them, listens to their explanation of why they are so sad. He opens the scriptures to them, helping them to understand the saving significance of his own suffering, so that their hearts burned as they listened to him. And then they recognise who he is as he blesses the bread and breaks it for them at the evening meal. They return to Jerusalem and share their faith in Christ with the entire early church (31).

A church that can give this kind of experience to interchurch families is showing itself to be a truly pastoral church. Many couples have indeed had this kind of experience at different points in their lives. On one such occasion a young English Catholic and her Methodist husband went on holiday to France. ‘We shall be able to receive communion together there’, she said happily. Before mass they approached the parish priest, who looked shocked and said no, it couldn’t happen. The Catholic wife burst into tears, and the priest was upset when he realised what a serious matter it was for the couple. ‘Come and see me this afternoon’, he said. When they arrived they found that the priest had asked two or three parishioners who spoke English to help him in the conversation. They asked the Methodist why he wanted to receive communion so much, and what he believed about the eucharist. It was a good talk, in a mixture of French and English. Later the couple received a phone call from the priest: the Methodist husband would be very welcome to receive communion, and the following Sunday he made this very clear. He asked the Catholic wife to be one of the special ministers of communion, so the Methodist had the joy of receiving the chalice from his wife.

The German bishops are trying to lift this kind of experience, which many couples have received on a parish level, to the level of a whole diocese where the bishop judges that this is appropriate. It will not be easy for some pastors to undertake this kind of spiritual conversation, which ‘in all cases needs wise and sensitive pastoral care’(34). There are too many stories of couples who are brusquely dismissed with the comment that ‘you can’t receive because you don’t believe in transubstantiation’. The German bishops have in fact explained this term in their section on eucharistic belief (41), and they indicate that they are prepared to undertake an educational programme, which they foresee as a necessary part of the process they are proposing. ‘We bishops, who are responsible for a pastorally correct practice of administering Holy Communion (cf canon 844), must promote continuous training in this field for those who as pastoral ministers are required to hold conversations in faith and accompany married couples on the way of discernment “according to the teaching of the church and the guidelines of the bishop” (AL300)’ (34). They are not treating the question of a ‘spiritual conversation’ lightly.

At the end of their document the bishops append a practical section: ‘Annexe: Guidance on holding a conversation’. There are no fixed rules, but an open mind, discretion, a relationship of trust, an awareness of the motives for coming to a particular decision and the effects it will have, prayer, inner freedom, mutual respect and humility, love of the church and her teachings, love of the celebration of the eucharist are all necessary if the conversation is to serve freedom of conscience, true faith and church unity.

The bishops base their proposal for a ‘spiritual conversation’ on the advice given by Ignatius of Loyola when an important decision is to be taken; the conversation is with Christ himself, who will show the way forward (Spiritual Exercises15), and the attitude must be a search for whatever is most conducive to communion with God (23).

On the question of eucharistic belief, the bishops quote the orientation offered by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna: ‘Whoever can say Amen to the Eucharistic Prayer with an honest heart, can also receive the fruit of this Eucharistic Prayer, Holy Communion, with an honest heart.’ They advise using this liturgical approach when discussing what the church believes she is doing when celebrating the eucharist, adding that ‘the conversation is not an exam; its purpose is to clarify the personal situation of the individuals concerned’. As they did in the earlier section of their report, they use the liturgical texts to highlight the three aspects of communion into which we are led: communion with Jesus Christ, communion with each other and the whole church, and communion with the whole world.

The outcome of the conversation is no foregone conclusion; some may decide they are not ready to receive communion. If this is the case, the bishops ask them to continue on the journey, finding other ways of being with the community at mass. Asking for a blessing is already an expression of faith, saying that the Catholic Church is also a blessing for me, although I do not share Catholic belief or have a deep longing to receive communion, but I would like to be blessed, so that I may be a blessing for others. This may be an appropriate and faith-nurturing way to develop a more intimate communion with the body of Christ. But where a decision to receive communion is made, it will be a joy to administer and to receive, in communion with the whole church.

Open acceptance by the Church

There is a really striking insistence that when a conscientious decision to receive communion has been agreed upon in the course of the kind of ‘spiritual conversation’ proposed, the interdenominational spouse should be openly accepted by the community, led by the bishop. It would be a public recognition, both for those who had longed to share communion for a considerable time, and for those who had already been sharing unofficially. This open, official recognition is something many interchurch families have longed for, feeling that it would liberate them to give a more visible witness to Christian unity, both to their children and to others around them. It was one of the requests that the international network of interchurch families put to the 2015 Synod of Bishops. [11]

There is a great sense of welcome in these guidelines. Interdenominational marriages are not condemned. The denominational schism of the church of Jesus Christ ‘is no fault of the spouses concerned’, but ‘often a cause of particular pain to them’ (24). The bishops are very conscious of the risk that spouses may feel excluded, and in danger of losing touch with the church (25). They do not want anyone to go away; even if a decision is made against receiving Holy Communion, there are other ways for believers to participate: celebrating the Word of God, praying together, ‘spiritual communion’, receiving a personal blessing – all are ‘important signs of an ecclesial communion that is not yet complete’. Couples who choose this way are to be respected and encouraged; the bishops see in it a strong sign of ecumenical community (26).

Nobody is forced to choose this way against their conscience, however. It is for the couple to decide whether their need and the faith of the non-Catholic partner makes eucharistic sharing the right and necessary path for them. A spouse who chooses this way is then receiving the same body of Christ as everyone else; it is the same grace, the same covenant, the same eucharist, the same table. But at the same time spouses who receive in this way are recognised as Christians who owe allegiance to another church or ecclesial community. Their links through marriage and faith are sufficiently close for them to be admitted to Catholic communion, but still in an exceptional way. The churches share a real but incomplete communion; in their case as spouses it is more fully realised. They are an open reminder to all that there is a further path to travel. So the interdenominational couple becomes both a ‘symbol and an impetusin the search for full Christian communion’ (57). Their marriage and family life will be strengthened. Then it will be a ‘source of joy’ [12] for the Catholic Church to administer the sacrament to them. The German bishops ‘wish to share in this joy, and expressly welcome all those who follow this path’ (58).

Ruth Reardon

[1] The process was described in One in Christ52, 1, 2018, pp 149-57.

[2] Interchurch Families, 10, 1, January 2002, p.1.

[3] Sharing Communion: an appeal to the Churches by interchurch familiesed Ruth Reardon and Melanie Finch, with an introduction by Martin Reardon and conclusions by John Coventry SJ, Collins, London, 1983, p109.

[4] One in Christ 4,3,1968 pp 312-13.

[5] Tablet 10 12 1966 p 1400.

[6] Can.844; followed by the Directory 130.

[7] Comparative information on guidelines issued by diocesan bishops and episcopal conferences was collected in a pack on ‘Sharing Communion’ by the British Association of Interchurch Families (1999), and there is a good deal of further information in a section of the interchurch families’ international web-site www.interchurchrfamilies.org

[8] Tablet, 2 June 2018.

[9] Headings in the first section of Walking with Christ.

[10] AmorisLaetitia: Comments from an Interchurch Family Perspective, One in Christ50, 1, pp 82-85.

[11] ‘Response to the 2015 Synod on the Family from the Interchurch Families International Network’, One in Christ49, 1, 2015, pp.241-60 cf section 9, pp 157-59.

[12] Ut Unum Sint 46;Ecclesia de Eucharistia46.

Interchurch Families: What about the children?

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 16:28:42 GMT

This article, posted here by permission, is from One in Christ, 52/1, 2018, pp. 158-63.

INTERCHURCH FAMILIES: WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?

Doral Hayes *

This paper explores the fears and hopes of interchurch parents for their children in 1968 when mixed marriages were considered a principal ecumenical problem. In 1968 it was tentatively suggested that it might be possible to bring up children within two churches; many saw this as impossible. Yet some interchurch families dared to hope that it might prepare the way for visible unity in Christ. This paper considers the response they received and proposes it is time to examine the lived experience of lnterchurch Families and to hear the testimony of Interchurch children asking what relevance this has for the church today.

ifty years ago in 1968, when a small group of ‘mixed marriage’ couples (where one partner was Roman Catholic and the other from another Christian denomination) ﬁrst came together at national level in England, they coined the term ‘interchurch marriages’ to distinguish themselves from other kinds of mixed marriages. ln 1967 mixed marriages were described by the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service as the ‘primary and crucial ecumenical problem.' [i] Contrary to this belief, a few people began to suggest that, in the light of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, mixed marriages need not be a problem to the churches, or to ecumenical progress, but rather an opportunity and resource. Concern about the Christian upbringing of the children in such marriages had long been recognised as the central issue. This was described in a ground-breaking editorial published in the English Catholic ecumenical journal One in Christ as ‘the most difﬁcult of all problems’, [ii] since the Roman Catholic Church refused to recognise a marriage between a Catholic and a Christian of another communion unless both partners promised that all children would be baptised and brought up in the Catholic Church. In this paper I will highlight the hopes and fears of interchurch couples for their children as they expressed them ﬁfty years ago, and the responses they received at that time. In addition to hearing the lived experience of interchurch couples, the voices of the now adult interchurch children need to be heard if there is to be constructive reﬂection on new pastoral approaches.

The Second Vatican Council aroused great expectation among ecumenically minded Catholics, with Ruth Reardon, one founder of AIF describing this as a time ‘when everything seemed possible’. [iii] Vatican ll brought the Roman Catholic Church officially into the ecumenical movement, spelled out its commitment to respecting religious liberty and developed Catholic teaching on the nature and value of marriage, thus impacting the Roman Catholic view of mixed marriages and leading to a change of policy as expressed the Papal document Matrimonia Mixta in 1970. Following the Council there were discussions between the churches, some explaining their difficulties with the Roman Catholic position, and Catholics explaining why their Ecclesiology had led them to a position that was offensive to other Christians.

In some European countries, with encouragement from Rome, the practice on asking both partners to make the traditional promise about the baptism and upbringing of the children began to change, but such changes largely bypassed England.

One in Christ, published in England, tried to spread information about new thinking and practices in other countries, but many people simply did not believe that this was possible. The 1968 editorial made a revolutionary proposal: that the children of mixed marriage families might be brought up within the life of both their parents’ churches, and only when they left home would they have to decide between them.

Several theologians were asked to comment on the proposal; the responses were mainly cautious, but in general the idea was thought worthy of further consideration. It was already being considered by some ecumenically-minded Catholics that where the other Christian partner in a mixed marriage was devout, and the Catholic a nominal Christian, it might in practice be better for the children to be brought up in the church of the more devout partner. This could at least be tolerated by the Roman Catholic Church, even if not approved. But the Catholic partner would have to acknowledge their sacred duty and promise that he/she would do all they could for the Catholic baptism and upbringing of the children. Nobody considered what to do if the partners had ‘two informed consciences’, [iv] both ﬁrm in their own church allegiance, and equally desirous of sharing their faith with their children. These couples posed the ‘greatest problem’ [v] and the pastoral response was to tell the couple not to get married.

However, in the post-conciliar climate it began to seem to some mixed couples that a more ecumenical approach might be a real possibility: a shared upbringing that would offer an experience of life in two churches. When the ﬁrst meeting of mixed marriage couples was convened on a national level in 1968, those who came to it found to their joy that others too shared this perspective. They coined the term ‘interchurch marriages’ for those who wanted their marriages to express an ecumenical commitment to both churches and to one another.

Whatever decision they made about the church-belonging of their children they were committed to both churches. ‘Mixed marriages’ continued to be the official terminology of the Roman Catholic Church for such marriages between Christians, but in 1970 the Bishops of England and Wales estimated that 10 per cent of mixed marriages in their countries could be reasonably called interchurch marriages.

The central difﬁculty for interchurch families in 1968 was the insistence by the Roman Catholic Church on the promise that all children would be raised as Catholics, which seemed to remove joint parental responsibility. Some made the required promise reluctantly, some refused to make it and married in another church resulting in the Catholic being barred from communion; some had not been required to make the promise due to special circumstances; and some hoped to marry without being obliged to make it and remain in good standing within his/ her church. Many faced disapproval from family, priests and ministers; a common reaction from Catholic priests had been: ‘I've never met a couple like you before’. They felt like oddities, afraid they wouldn’t ﬁt in, and that their children might be treated as oddities too, to be fought over by grandparents and churches. There were however hopes that the Catholic rules would change everywhere so that no longer would both partners have to make the promise. This would open the door for the possibility of a joint parental decision to bring up the children in the church that seemed right for each family, or to consider seriously together the possibility of a fully joint upbringing.

There had been many criticisms of the One in Christ proposal from a theological, canonical and not least, a psychological point of view, so the organisers of the ﬁrst meeting invited a child psychologist and Catholic sister to comment on the proposal. Would it really mean that the children would feel insecure, not knowing where they belonged, as couples had often been told? Or would the parents be able to help their children to grow into a faith and unity that they were beginning to experience themselves, a unity that their churches were now committed to? The response was amazingly reassuring. What matters to children, concluded Sr Mary John, is the harmony and integrity of their parents. She found the idea of bringing up the children of a mixed marriage in both communions attractive, but was puzzled by one part of the proposal. Why should a child eventually have to choose between them? This question came as a surprise but ﬁlled participants with hope for the future. They envisaged their families preparing the way for the unity of the churches. Even if unity did not come before their children made their own decisions, perhaps the churches would be closer together so that they did not to have to make a choice.

There were still all kinds of problems to face-—how far would the churches be prepared to adapt their disciplines to allow the degree of sacramental sharing for which parents hoped for their children? The publication of Matrimonia Mixta in 1970 showed that rules could change; the experimental legislation on the ‘promise’ of the 1960s was extended to the whole Catholic Church and the Bishops of England and Wales produced their own Directory making it clear that no promise was required of the other Christian parent. This raised hopes for a more ﬂexible pastoral approach, in which the pastors of both partners could be involved. Already in 1968 the Lambeth Conference in its Report on Renewal in Unity welcomed a move towards joint pastoral care of families both before and after marriage by the clergy of the two churches, but a report from the ﬁrst mixed marriage meeting in 1968 records a participant commenting, ‘I have not noticed it happening much in England.’ However, Matrimonia Mixta encouraged couples by stating that ‘mixed marriages could help in re-establishing unity among Christians’ [vi] and by commending joint pastoral care for mixed marriage families together with ministers of other churches.

The ]oint Working Group between the British Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church took up the question of joint pastoral care for interchurch marriages, and its recommendations were published in 1971. This was encouraging although the idea of a dual upbringing was not accepted as a real possibility. But couples were persistent, and by 1994, when Churches Together in Marriage: Pastoral Care of Interchurch Families was produced by the Group for Local Unity of Churches Together in England, there was considerable experience of shared celebrations of baptism. lnterchurch children were also beginning to ask for shared celebrations of conﬁrmation. One pastoral guideline for clergy and ministers said: ‘Do everything possible to support interchurch parents who want to share the riches of both traditions with their children and bring them up within the life of two church communities; respect any feeling of double belonging on the part of the children, who should not be required to make an exclusive choice?" [vii] Pastoral care for interchurch families remains patchy; in some places good, in others almost non-existent, depending on the understanding and attitudes of local bishops, clergy and ministers. What has always been valuable is the mutual pastoral care that has been exercised by interchurch couples for one another.

The fundamental questions that interchurch couples asked themselves fearfully but also hopefully, were these: Would their children come to a living faith in Jesus Christ? Would the churches allow them to live out and carry forward their relationship with two churches as their parents had hoped and as they themselves might wish as they grew older? In the early years they were working with an untried proposal. Now there is half a century of experience of dual upbringing to assess.

In 2017, I had the privilege of connecting with a group of adult children of the Association of lnterchurch Families (AIF), when l carried out a small qualitative study which has become the starting point for a larger piece of work investigating the lived experience of interchurch children. In 1968 it was not possible to examine the impact of being raised in an interchurch family, while a small study was carried out by AIF in 1984; but in 2018 a more detailed analysis could be possible as a larger group of interchurch children are available spanning different generations. The changing shape of both church and society in the UK indicates less attachment to denomination and tradition and this work has implications for organisations like AIF as well as for the church more broadly.

It is time to ask how this church upbringing and the pastoral response they and their parents received from the churches has inﬂuenced their faith, perception of and sense of belonging to the church. It is time to consider whether they were confused-—-did they feel like an oddity or a problem?

ln conclusion, interchurch parents were and still are concerned about whether their children will come to a living faith and how the churches will support them to carry forward their relationship with two churches, as far as they wish to do so. The pastoral response remains patchy and reﬂecting on the lived experience of interchurch families highlights the need to listen to the testimony of interchurch children, to hear their unique perspective on the pastoral care of their families. Each interchurch family is unique requiring a pastoral response adapted to its needs. Pope Francis writes ‘Education in the faith has to adapt to each child’, [viii] ‘all of us are striving towards something greater than ourselves and our families Let us make this journey as families, let us keep walking together’. [ix] lnterchurch families are by their nature families of great faith, informed consciences and ecumenical resource. The churches need to hear their voices, reﬂecting the joy and pain they have experienced across the Church of God.

* Doral Hayes BA (Hons) is the Executive Development Officer for the Association of lnterchurch Families and Ecumenical Facilitator for Hertfordshire in the UK and wife to Declan and mother to Amelia and Dylan. Doral is currently studying at Newman University, Birmingham, UK for an MA in Contemporary Christian Theology and writing a dissertation on the impact of being raised as an interchurch child.

[i] Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service (1967) 3, 9.

[ii] Editorial, One In Christ (1968):130-6.

[iii] R. Reardon, ‘There is No Blueprint for lnterchurch Children,’ The Journal of Interchurch Families (2001) Summer.

[iv] Editorial, One in Christ (1968): 131.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Matrimonia Mixta (1970): 1.

[vii] CTE/CYT UN, Churches Together in Marriage (London CTE/CYT UN 1994): 68.

[viii] Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia (2016) par. 288.

[ix] [ix] Amoris Laetitia, par. 325.

German Bishops' Proposed Guidelines on Eucharistic Sharing in Interchurch Families

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 16:19:54 GMT

The following article, used here by permission, is originally published in One in Christ, 52/1, 2018, pp. 149-57.

GERMAN BISHOPS' PROPOSED GUIDELINES ON
EUCHARISTIC SHARING IN INTERCHURCH FAMILIES

Ruth Reardon*

In February 2018 the German Bishops’ Conference approved pastoral guidelines for the admission of non-Catholic partners in interchurch marriages to communion by a large majority. However, seven diocesan bishops wrote to the Vatican expressing their objections to the text and asking for clarification. A meeting took place in Rome on 3 May between representatives of the German Bishops and curial officials; Pope Francis asked the bishops to come to as unanimous a position as possible. After being informed of the discussion he approved a letter to the bishops saying that the questions raised on 3 May needed further study at world level, and the German document was not ready for publication.

At the close of the plenary assembly of the German Bishops Conference in February 2018, its President Cardinal Reinhard Marx issued a press release saying that the German Bishops, after intensive discussion, had prepared pastoral guidelines for the admission of non-Catholic partners in interchurch marriages to communion, in individual cases and after careful pastoral discernment with respect to their need, provided those partners affirmed Catholic eucharistic faith. The proposed handout for the guidance of Catholic pastors was approved by a large majority of the German Bishops’ Conference, but was still open to changes in the text.

The full text was not published, but the German bishops seemed to be making a straightforward application of the provisions of the 1993 Vatican Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism. There appeared to be no mention of limiting admission to communion to special occasions, as some other guidelines - including One Bread One Body (the British and Irish guidelines of 1998) - had done. (For a commentary on these guidelines, see One in Christ 35/2, 1999, pp. 109-30.) This proposed application by the German bishops was very welcome to interchurch families; the Interchurch Families International Network had asked the 2015 Synod on the Family to make it clear that admission need not be limited to particular occasions, but because of the nature of marriage and family life the need for admission could be regarded as on-going in some cases (see One in Christ 49/1, 2015, pp. 142-6o). There remained an ambiguity on this point between ‘exceptional occasions’ and ‘exceptional cases’ (meaning couples). The provisions of the Directory were of course permissive, not prescriptive, and bishops would still have the right to make their own applications, but it would be helpful to interchurch families if it were made clear on the world level that permission for admission in some cases could be on-going (as indeed some bishops have decided).

In an interview with a Lutheran press agency, the vice-president of the Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrϋck, was reported as saying that the Bishops wanted to recognise and give a pastoral foundation to what was already happening in practice, since in many places Protestant spouses already received communion alongside their Catholic partners. Bishop Bode was present at the 2014 and 2015 Synods on the Family.

Opposition from within the German Episcopal Conference: a letter to Rome

However, it was not long before some German Bishops began to express their fundamental opposition to the proposal. In March Cardinal Gerhard Mϋller, formerly Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, declared that this was a doctrinal rather than a pastoral matter, and bishops’ conferences had no authority to decide doctrinal issues. This seemed strange in view of the fact that episcopal conferences had been urged to make their own applications of the provisions of the 1993 Directory, and many had already done so. Indeed, Catholic ministers had been instructed to decide in individual cases in accordance with the Directory’s norms, if the diocesan bishop or the Bishops’ Conference had not established their own norms (Directory, 130). Cardinal Mϋller’s view would seem to take no account of the position taken by the Vatican ll Decree on Ecumenism (8), which states that there are two main principles involved. First, expressing the unity of the Church generally forbids eucharistic sharing; second, sharing in the means of grace sometimes commends it. There is a norm; there are exceptions. The local bishop is to decide on what should be done in practice, unless the bishops’ conference or the Holy See has decided otherwise. Subsequently the 1983 Code of Canon Law (844) and the pastoral application made in the 1993 Ecumenical Directory have laid down at world level the parameters within which Catholic bishops and episcopal conferences are expected to make their own applications. A number of such applications, both by individual bishops and by conferences of bishops have been published. How then can the German Bishops’ Conference not have the authority to make its own application?

However, following this lead seven German bishops, led by Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne, wrote to the Vatican on 22 March suggesting that the German Bishops’ Conference had overstepped its competence and that its decision was therefore unlawful. They asked for clarification as to whether the question of admission to communion for Protestant spouses in an interchurch marriage could be decided at the level of an episcopal conference, or if a decision at the level of the universal Church is required. The letter was sent to the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Luis Ladaria, and to the President of the Pontiﬁcal Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch, without prior consultation with Cardinal Marx.

The text of this letter was not at first made public (it was later leaked to the press), but Cardinal Marx published his own reply to the arguments it raised on the German Bishops’ Conference website on 4 April. He pointed out that the proposed pastoral handout did not speak of general admission for spouses in interchurch marriages, but said that in individual cases a serious need for eucharistic sharing might arise because of the way a couple shared their married life. He referred to canon 844, and to the fact that guidelines had been established elsewhere by bishops and bishops’ conferences. The bishops had studied the relevant theological and ecumenical documents, and the possibilities offered by canonical regulations, so that they would be in line with the universal Church. Pope Francis had encouraged further steps forward in ecumenism and in pastoral care, and the bishops wished to create greater clarity for ministers and couples.

A meeting in Rome

On 19 April the German bishops announced that Pope Francis had called Cardinal Marx, Cardinal Woelki and Bishop Felix Genn of Mϋnster (known as a good mediator) to Rome to discuss the matter. On 30 April the Vatican press office announced that there would be a meeting on 3 May of a group of German cardinals and bishops with several heads of dicasteries and curial officials at the Vatican. Besides the three already mentioned, the German delegation included Bishop Wiesemann of Speyer, president of the Doctrinal Commission of the German Episcopal Conference, Bishop Vodeholzer of Regensburg, vice-president of the Doctrinal Commission, Bishop Feige of Magdeburg, president of the German Bishops’ Commission for Ecumenism, and Fr Langendörfer SJ, secretary general of the German Episcopal Conference.

Besides Archbishop Ladaria and Cardinal Koch, Mgr Markus Graulich, undersecretary of the Pontiﬁcal Council for Legislative Texts and Fr Hermann Geissler, office head of the Doctrinal Section of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were to be present.

The Holy See Press Office issued a release on the evening of 3 May. It explained that the German Episcopal Conference had prepared a pastoral handout entitled ‘Walking with Christ in the footsteps of Unity: Mixed Marriages and Common Participation in the Eucharist’; this had been approved by more than three-quarters of the bishops at the end of the plenary session held 19-22 February 2018. A not insigniﬁcant number of pastors, among them seven diocesan bishops, did not feel, for a variety of reasons, that they could give their consent, and wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pontiﬁcal Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legal Texts. In accordance with Pope Francis’ wish, an exchange was arranged between some German bishops and curial officials. The names of those present were listed, and it was noted that the meeting took place at the CDF headquarters, and that the language used was German. Mgr Ladaria explained that Pope Francis appreciated the ecumenical commitment of the German bishops, and asked them to seek for a possibly unanimous arrangement in a spirit of ecclesial communion. During the meeting

various points of view were discussed; for example, the relationship of the question to the faith as well as to pastoral care, its relevance for the universal Church, and juridical aspects of the subject. Archbishop Ladaria would inform Pope Francis on the content of the exchange, which took place in a cordial and fraternal atmosphere.

The background

This is not the ﬁrst time that the German Episcopal Conference has been openly divided on the issue of eucharistic sharing for interchurch families. Following the publication of the Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism by the Pontiﬁcal Council for Promoting Christian Unity in 1993, the question of eucharistic sharing in interchurch families became a matter for debate and decision by many episcopal conferences. Many national Ecumenical Commissions worked intensively on the subject. In Germany the Commission issued a statement in early February 1997 (German original in Una Sancta, 1, 1997, and English translation in Interchurch Families, 6/1, 1998).

To summarise: the text drew attention to the two fundamental Catholic principles for eucharistic communion: witness to the unity of the Church and sharing in the means of grace. Families in interchurch marriages may experience serious spiritual need in certain situations. The underlying principles for eucharistic sharing in individual exceptional situations, namely that the eucharist is a sign and source of the unity of the church and at the same time spiritual food, are seen, in the case of interchurch marriages, from a particular theological perspective: according to Catholic belief the valid marriage contract between two baptised partners means the continuing mutual giving of the sacrament of marriage, which is a sign of the unity of Christ with his Church. The Christian family is to be seen as ‘embodiment of the church’ and shares in the ministry of the church. Neither a refusal for all, nor a permission for all partners in interchurch marriages who are not Catholics to share in the eucharist would be appropriate. Since pastorally the establishment of objective criteria for serious spiritual need is extremely difficult, ascertaining such a need can as a rule only be done by the minister concerned. Essentially this must become clear in pastoral discussion. When full sharing in the eucharist is granted to the partner who is not a Catholic, care must be taken that an individual case such as this does not become a general precedent. At present the Roman Catholic Church is convinced that its responsibility is to grant communion at the Lord's table to Christians of other denominations only in exceptional cases.

The German Ecumenical Commission had been responding to a report by a joint working group that had been set up by the Bavarian Council of Churches and the Nuremberg Council of Churches; this had asked for a blanket invitation to communion for all partners in interchurch marriages. The Ecumenical Commission had taken care to remain strictly within the terms of the 1993 Directory in stressing that admission to communion could only be allowed in particular cases; not all the German Bishops, however, agreed with the statement, and the question continued to be hotly disputed in Germany. In 2002 the then-President of the German Episcopal Conference, Cardinal Lehmann, issued a press statement at the end of the February plenary assembly; the bishops were preparing to issue a document on ‘Church and Eucharist’, which would include the question of admission for interchurch families:

Mixed marriages have to be seen as a particular life situation for Christians, whose communion in marriage is grounded in baptism and rooted in the sacramental nature of their Christian marriage. There must be further exploration of how far the profound ecclesial character of communion in marriage may justify exceptional admission to the eucharist. This is not so much a matter of unique occasions celebrated in the life of the family, such as First Communion, but more a matter of the constant striving of the couple to live their path of faith together. The pastor who accompanies a couple has a particular role here.

A new situation?

In recent years the ‘profound ecclesial character of communion in marriage’ has been intensively studied at world level in the 2014-15 Synods on the Family and in the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (1916). The intention has not been to bring in new legislation related to marriage, but to focus hearts and minds on the need for a pastoral understanding of the situation of married couples in a new way. Pope Francis has stressed the importance of pastoral support for marriage and family life, and the pastoral discernment that is needed by each and every couple in its own particular situation. He showed his understanding of the deep need felt by some interchurch families for eucharistic sharing and his encouragement for them to ‘go forward’ in his visit to the Lutheran church in Rome in November 2015 (One in Christ, 50/1, 2016, pp. 83-5). He did not appear to wish to make a ruling himself; he wanted to allow the couple to make their own discernment and to follow their conscience.

It seemed at ﬁrst that Pope Francis did not wish to give a ruling in the case of the dispute among the German bishops, he wanted them to work hard to reach a unanimous decision as far as they possibly could. (The precise meaning of his words was disputed.) This is consistent with the approach of the Roman Catholic Church to mixed marriages since the Second Vatican Council. It could never be the same again since the Decree on Ecumenism, the Declaration on Religious Liberty, and the new understanding of marriage that came with Vatican II. The subject of mixed marriages has always been a contentious one, particularly where there are large numbers of divided Christians living side by side, as in Germany and England. It has never become a top priority at world level. The motu proprio of 1970 laid down certain clear boundaries (for example, no promise about the children’s upbringing could be asked of the other Christian partner) but there was a good deal of latitude left for decisions to be made by national episcopal conferences. The national directories that applied the motu proprio to their own territories differed considerably between themselves (see One in Christ 7/2-3, 1971, pp. 210-34, and additional updates in the following numbers). These directories were open to revision; for example, the wording of the promise required from the Catholic partner has been revised twice in England since the ﬁrst national directory in 1970.

The 1970 motu proprio stated that mixed marriages do not help in promoting Christian unity ‘except in some cases’. It is those exceptional cases already identiﬁed in 1970 that are those most likely to be the exceptional cases who experience a deep desire for eucharistic sharing. Many of the couples who ‘share the sacraments of baptism and marriage’ do not, indeed, wish to share the eucharist; like many one-church couples, they are not in church at all. There are other reasons for which mixed couples do not wish to share the eucharist, while some who do experience a deep need and desire have found that they have been able to share communion without causing any problems in their local communities. The number of those interchurch spouses who ask for admission to communion and fulﬁl the conditions are not as great as has been suggested on both sides of the debate. But there is certainly a great fear in some quarters that the proposal will be understood as a blanket permission for all those spouses who share the sacraments of baptism and marriage, shortly to be followed by a more general admission for other Christians. This fear makes it very difficult for some to see the issue as a pastoral one of the greatest importance to some interchurch couples and families.

The controversy that was been raised not only inside but outside Germany attracted more attention at world level than the subject received at the 2014-15 Synods on the Family. Following the meeting of 3 May it looked as though a very heavy responsibility rested with the German bishops; what happened to their guidelines would surely have an inﬂuence beyond Germany itself. Would the German Bishops be able to come to a unanimous decision? Would they ﬁnd a way to witness clearly both to the Catholic conviction of the close link between ecclesial and eucharistic unity, and also to the nature of marriage as an on-going, lifelong relationship, not a series of exceptional moments——wedding, baptism, ﬁrst communion, conﬁrmation, funeral?

A letter from Rome

But they were not to be left alone with this responsibility. Pope Francis decided that the questions raised at the 3 May meeting must be studied further at world level. This was made clear in a leaked letter from Archbishop (Cardinal-designate) Ladaria to Cardinal Marx, copied to the other German bishops who had been at the Rome meeting; it was dated 25 May and appeared in the press on 4 June.

Archbishop Ladaria wrote that as agreed on 3 May, he had informed Pope Francis about the discussion; he had spoken twice with the Pope, giving him a summary of the conversation on 11 May, and discussing the question further on 2.4 June. The points made in his letter had the explicit approval of the pope.

First, he appreciated the ecumenical efforts of the German Episcopal Conference, and their close collaboration with the Evangelical Church of Germany. The shared commemoration of the Reformation in 2017 showed the possibility of common witness and encouraged us to go forward with trust towards ever deeper unity. Second, the discussions of 3 May showed that the text of the guide raises many problems, and Pope Francis concludes that the document is not ready for publication. This is because the issue touches the faith of the Church and is signiﬁcant for the universal Church. It also affects ecumenical relations with other Churches. Further, it concerns the interpretation of canon 844, and the dicasteries of the Holy See are to clarify the questions this leaves open, at the level of the universal Church; in particular it appears opportune to leave to the diocesan bishop the judgment on the existence of ‘grave and urgent necessity’. Thirdly, Pope Francis is greatly concerned that the spirit of episcopal collegiality should remain alive in the German Episcopal Conference.

Since the letter appeared there has been a proliferation of commentaries and forecasts, from many different points of view. No doubt there will be many more. A thorough re-thinking of the question at world level may take a long time. There are many apparently conflicting values and concerns to be recognised and held together. It took from 1965 to 1970 to establish at world level the basic parameters of the parental ‘promise’ required when a Roman Catholic married a Christian of another communion, and there are still different applications and attitudes in different regions.

Fifty years on, there has been enormous progress in ecumenical relations, and there has been a renewed understanding of the nature of married life on the part of the Catholic Church, particularly since the Synods on the Family and the appearance of Amoris Laetitia. As Pope St John Paul ll said to interchurch families at York in 1982: ‘You live in your marriage the hopes and difficulties of the path to Christian unity’. The ‘exceptional cases’ of those mixed marriages who promote Christian unity referred to in the 1970 motu proprio have become the ‘exceptional cases’ who appealed to the 2014 and 2015 Synods to recognise their on-going need for eucharistic sharing for the sake of their family life. By such sharing they can embody and express more fully the hopes as well as the difficulties of the path to Christian unity.

They would like to offer this as a small service to the whole Church.

* Ruth Reardon was a founder-member of the Association of lnterchurch Families in 1968. its Secretary until 2000, editor of the journal Interchurch Families 1993-2004, and is now a President of AlF.

Eucharist: An Opportunity for Familial Reception?

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 16:11:34 GMT

The following article, produced here by permission, was published in One in Christ, 52/1, 2018, pp. 31-39a publication of the Olivetan Benedictines of Turvey and Rostrevor, UK, pp 31-39.

Eucharist: An Opportunity for Familial Reception?

Ray Temmerman *

In the Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church, Canon 844 § 1 specifies the administration of the sacraments to Catholics alone. It then immediately goes on to allow for exceptions. [1] Can. 844 §2allows Catholics, when there is no availability of Eucharist within their own Church, to receive from non- Catholic ministers in whose Churches the sacraments are valid . [2]

Two corollaries to this part of the canon should be noted. First, in order to receive the Eucharist in this situation, it must be appropriate, from the Catholic perspective, to be received by those ministers and their Churches. Second, given that some of those Churches are not welcoming of people who are not their members, it must be equally appropriate for Catholics to, in the words of Susan K. Wood, ‘risk the real pain, the profound embarrassment, the wrenching experience of exclusion’ [3] that may result from engagement with such ministers and their Churches.

Canon 844 § 3 allows for Catholic ministers to administer the sacraments of penance , Eucharist , and anointing of the sick licitly to members of Eastern Churches which do not have full communion with the Catholic Church if they seek such on their own accord and are properly disposed . One might presume that this applies only when ministers of their own Eastern Churches are not available, however it doesn’t actually say that. It appears sufficient that such Christians be properly disposed, and seek participation (i.e. this is something they actively do of their own volition) in the sacraments within the Catholic Church.

Finally, there is the question of reception of people of other Christian traditions within the Catholic Church. Can. 844 § 4 . states ‘If the danger of death is present or if, in the judgment of the diocesan bishop or conference of bishops , some other grave necessity urges it, Catholic ministers administer these same sacraments licitly also to other Christians not having full communion with the Catholic Church , who cannot approach a minister of their own community and who seek such on their own accord , provided that they manifest Catholic faith in respect to these sacraments and are properly disposed .’

The conditions are clearly outlined, and are expanded on in the Directory on Ecumenism.

The DAPNE and Exceptions

The Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism (DAPNE) states that where the Eucharist, penance, and the anointing of the sick are concerned, ‘in certain circumstances, by way of exception, and under certain conditions, access to these sacraments may be permitted, or even commended, for Christians of other Churches and ecclesial Communities.’ [4]

Exceptions, as you know, are not situations in which the law can be broken, but rather situations in which the law does not apply, something outside of, or beyond, the norm. The norm involved here is that the sacraments are for those in full communion with the worshipping community. The exception, if granted, would be to extend sacramental participation to a person not in full communion with the worshipping community.

Some dioceses and episcopal conferences have published their own directories on Eucharistic sharing, with some giving lists of events to serve as examples of where an exception may be granted. Where such exceptions have been granted, they have been welcomed and celebrated. What has been the experience of the faithful regarding the granting of exceptions?

While not able to speak for all, I can provide some indication from the perspective of interchurch families, couples bound together as brothers and sisters of Christ through baptism, and made one in marriage. Living in their marriages ‘the hopes and difficulties of the path to Christian unity’, [5] they ‘can lead to the formation of a practical laboratory of unity’. [6] As such, they are on the frontlines of this issue, impacted Sunday by Sunday, most often (though not exclusively) within the Catholic Church. They find themselves, as per Derrida, lodged within the traditional conceptuality, where are found the fissures and wounds of the tradition, ‘challenging the very order of it in order to move to a new time, an unexpected thing and different place.’ [7] Their experience indicates several responses.

In practice, such lists have often been taken as exclusionary, i.e. if the event is not listed, no exception is deemed possible.
It is presumed that a minister of the person’s tradition is always available, even in cases where the couple, that one made so by marriage, is worshipping together. It would appear the spouses must make a choice: either 1) they uphold the unity of their marriage, and refrain as one from receiving the sacrament in recognition of the divisions between their churches, or 2) they deny the unity of their marriage in order to receive individually the sacrament of unity in their respective traditions—and in that denial perhaps render themselves improperly disposed.
There is a presumption that the person of another tradition does not have a Catholic faith in the Eucharist.
The issue of disposition is seldom broached.

I offer these observations, not by way of criticism, but to indicate that there is a real need to delve more deeply into our understandings of exceptions. I invite you to explore with me a context, theological, ecclesiological and anthropological, whose exceptionality calls for the exceptions possible in canon law.

In Baptism, we are made by adoption what Christ is by origin, raised from our natural human condition to the dignity of sons and daughters of God. [8] We become members of Christ, and are ‘incorporated in the Church’. [9] We are formed into God’s people. This is the case for all who are baptized, provided the minister of baptism has ‘the intention of doing what the Church does’, [10] and that the baptism is conducted with water and the trinitarian formula. [11] This is tremendously and wondrously inclusive.

Against this sense of inclusion, there is a history of speaking, at least in English, of brothers and sisters in Christ, who enjoy membership in Christ’s Body, the Church, albeit through other Christian traditions, as being ‘separated brethren’. This term has led many to see those brothers and sisters as somehow ‘other’, not really ‘one of us’. Therefore, it’s worth looking at its origins.

Orientalium Dignitas (1894), [12] while addressed to the Eastern Churches, spoke of fratres dissidentes, or dissident brothers. They are our brothers, but we don’t get along. Orientalium Ecclesiarum (1964), [13] also speaking of relations with the Eastern Churches, spoke of fratres seiunctos, a term translated into English as separated brethren. That same term is taken up in Unitatis Redintegratio (1964), where once again it is translated into English as separated brethren.

It’s important, however, to look at the understanding of the Latin term. According to G.H. Tavard, one of the drafters of Unitatis Redintegratio, Cardinal Baggio, a noted Latin scholar, requested that the term seijuncti be used instead of separati. Separati, he argued, ‘would imply that there are and can be no relationships between the two sides; seijuncti, on the contrary, would assert that something has been cut between them, yet that separation is not complete and need not be definitive.’ [14] Tavard suggests a more appropriate terminology would be to speak of estranged brothers rather than separated. The nuance does not come through well, if at all, in the English translation, yet the difference in nuance is important.

Rather than seeing Christians of other traditions as being somehow separated from the body, needing to be reattached to have life, we can rightly see them as still connected, still part of the same body of which we, as individuals, also form part. Even though the bodily tissue is damaged and in need of healing, the body is still one. There is still in some way a flow of nutrients, of neurological signals, between the parts. Unity still exists, is still real, though in a manner which is less than perfect.

That lack of perfection, however, lies not at the level of being truly brothers and sisters, but at the level of estrangement between true brothers and sisters.

What would happen if we began referring to Christians of other traditions as brothers and sisters from whom we are estranged? Would we perhaps begin more clearly and easily to recognize them as still part of the same body of which we are also part, still connected, even though the body may be damaged, the connections tenuous and in need of repair? Would we see that estrangement requires two to be involved, i.e. that we have as important a role to play in lessening the estrangement between us as does the person from whom we are estranged?

Dinner in the household of God.

To slightly modify a phrase by Susan K. Wood, even though all people are born into the human community, and thereby experience union with one another within this common reality, our incorporation into that community takes place only within a particular concrete household. [15] It is normal and normative that we humans eat and drink in our own household, where we are familiar with the family’s recipes and rituals. While, in more affluent societies, it is now more common to ‘go out’ to eat, trying different restaurants, with their varied ambiances, recipes and flavours, the norm is still to eat in one’s own home. To eat in another’s home, even that of a brother or sister, is exceptional. And to do so in the home of a sibling from whom one is estranged, is exceptional indeed. This, I suggest, is an appropriate context for the Directory’s use of the term ‘exception’.

To go into the home of a family member from whom one is estranged, there to eat and drink with that member, where access to one’s own recipes and rituals is unavailable, is an activity full of risk, and therefore rightly an exception. One does not know if one will be received in welcome (even if the receivers are equally fearful), or rejected, turned away. Nor is one familiar with the rituals, the behaviours considered appropriate. One believes only, with that sibling, that there is real food here, and real drink, and that eating and drinking together can help to heal the estrangement, restore the family unity.

It may be that such eating and drinking takes place around a baptism, a wedding, a funeral, events which hold a certain commonality, and hence reduce the risk. But I would argue that the events themselves are not the exception. Rather, they reveal the primary exception which, I would also argue, is the act of going outside one’s own home, to the home of a family member from whom one is estranged, with all the risk that entails, there to eat and drink together with the intent [16] of building family unity, reducing the estrangement.

For an estranged sibling to receive in a ‘non-home’ Church or ecclesial community involves two acts of reception. The one we are most familiar with, the one spoken of in canon law, is that of the estranged sibling receiving the Eucharist. But there is a second, namely that of the Church or ecclesial community receiving that sibling.

The presence of an estranged sibling in the community’s central act of worship constitutes a call to that community to receive that estranged sibling. How will the community respond? With a presumption that the sibling rejects the community’s self-understanding, its guidelines for table etiquette? Or with a presumption that, even if the specifics of that etiquette are unknown by the sibling (as can often be the case), the sibling is seeking to reduce the estrangement, restore the body? Will the body of Christ be recognized as present only in the sacred elements, or also in the person of the estranged sibling (1Cor.11:29)? The selected presumption, conscious or subconscious, will largely dictate the community’s response, for rejection or reception.

If we take the words of the canon, and obey them, I suggest we will find it very difficult to receive anyone from outside our Church or ecclesial community without extreme vetting, based on a presumption that such people fall short of our required table etiquette. If, on the other hand, we take those same words and apply them within the context of an exceptional act, I suggest we will find ourselves far more able to receive the gift of God present in the form of the estranged sibling.

Returning to canon 844 §4, I also ask: is the very desire to reduce estrangement between brothers and sisters, a response (even if unwitting, i.e. it never specifically enters a person’s mind that this is what is being done) to Christ’s call that all be one, not itself of sufficient gravity to warrant administration of the Eucharist to Christians not fully in communion with us, provided all the remaining criteria are met? [17]

Let us not forget that ‘the res et sacramentum of Baptism … is membership in the Church,’ [18] and that ‘the res et sacramentum of the Eucharist is not just the risen body of the Lord, but the whole Christ, the Church.’ [19] This must surely include those brothers and sisters who have come to our home, the home of siblings from whom they are estranged, there to eat and drink with those siblings.

I return, then, to the original question encapsulated in the title of this paper: can we find it in ourselves to receive an estranged member of the family who risks joining us for a meal, with our presuming, not that this family member is an abuser of family ties, merely out to see how the relatives live, but one like us, a pilgrim on the way to the unity for which Christ prayed? In such a situation, can the Eucharist, rather than a sign of delineation and separation, be viaticum, food for the journey for all who receive?

If so, then the Eucharist can indeed become an opportunity for familial reception.

* Ray Temmerman (Catholic) is married to Fenella (Anglican). Both are active in the Interchurch Families International Network and together in their two churches ( http://interchurchfamilies.org ). Their experience of actively participating and worshipping together in both churches has led Ray to begin research on the topic ‘Interchurch Families and Eucharistic Sharing: In Search of a New Hermeneutic’.

[1] Code of Canon Law, (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983), hereinafter referred to as ‘Code’. Canon. 844 § 1 . Catholic ministers administer the sacraments licitly to Catholic members of the Christian faithful alone, who likewise receive them licitly from Catholic ministers alone, without prejudice to the prescripts of §§ 2 , 3 , and 4 of this canon , and can. 861 , § 2 .

[2] Code, Canon 844§ 2 . Whenever necessity requires it or true spiritual advantage suggests it, and provided that danger of error or of indifferentism is avoided , the Christian faithful for whom it is physically or morally impossible to approach a Catholic minister are permitted to receive the sacraments of penance , Eucharist , and anointing of the sick from non- Catholic ministers in whose Churches these sacraments are valid .

[3] Cf Susan K. Wood, ‘We've lost the ecclesial meaning of the Eucharist.’ Compass: A Jesuit Journal, Mar.-Apr. 1997, p. 30. Canadian Periodicals Index Quarterly, hereinafter referred to as ‘Wood’.

go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=CPI&sw=w&u=winn62981&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA30523199&it=r. Accessed 5 July 2017.

[4] Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993), Article 129, accessed 15 Oct. 2017:

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_25031993_principles-and-norms-on-ecumenism_en.html

[5] Homily of John Paul II, York, England, (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1982), #3, accessed 15 Oct. 2017:

https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1982/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19820531_famiglie-york.html

[6] Address of Benedict XVI, Warsaw, Poland, (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2006).

https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedictxvi/en/speeches/2006/may/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060525_incontro-ecumenico.html accessed 2 Mar 2018.

[7] Claudio Carvalhaes, ‘Borders, Globalization and Eucharistic Hospitality’, Dialog 49 no 1 (2010), p 45-55, p. 48.

[8] Cf Avery Dulles, Models of the Church, (New York: Doubleday, 2002), p. 46.

[9] Lumen Gentium, (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1964), # 11.

[10] Decree for the Armenians, (Council of Florence, 1439); and also Decree on the Sacraments, (Council of Trent, 1547), Canon 11, cited in Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism,(Oak Grove MN: Winston Press, 1980), hereinafter referred to as ‘Catholicism’.

[11] Catechism of the Catholic Church, (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993), #1271. Baptism constitutes the foundation of communion among all Christians, including those who are not yet in full communion with the Catholic Church: ‘For men who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in some, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church. Justified by faith in Baptism, [they] are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church. Baptism therefore constitutes the sacramental bond of unity existing among all who through it are reborn.’

[12] Orientalium Dignitas, (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1894), http://www.papalencyclicals.net/leo13/l13orient.htm ,accessed 17 June 2017.

[13] Orientalium Ecclesiarum, (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1964), http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_orientalium-ecclesiarum_en.html accessed 17 June 2017.

[14] G.H. Tavard, ‘Reassessing the Reformation,’ One in Christ, 19 (1983), pp. 360-361.

[15] Wood, p. 30. Her original phrase is ‘Even though all Christians baptized with the water bath in the name of the Trinity are incorporated into the death and resurrection of Jesus, and thereby experience union with one another within this common baptism, our incorporation into Christ and the Church takes place only within a particular concrete ecclesial community.’

[16] An example, by way of clarification of what I mean by intent might be in order. When my wife and I invite a sibling and his/her spouse to our home for a meal, we do so in the simple joy of getting together. We serve as hosts, they as guests; we have a good time together, after which they return to their home. Our guests are, indeed, my sibling and his/her spouse, but they could be anyone. There is, moreover, no intent to strengthen family bonds, though that may well be an unintended outcome. On the other hand, when I and my siblings, each of us with our spouses, gather every third month for a sibling dinner, we do so with the specific intent of nurturing and enhancing family bonds. We meet in the home of one or other of the siblings, and share a meal together, a meal prepared from the offerings of each. At the end of our time, we each return to our own homes, to continue our journey of life. But in the process, we have strengthened our family bonds, built the capacity to work through differences, made our family more ‘one’.

[17] Note that the wording of the canon presents challenges. One might think that the criteria of §4 (cannot approach a minister of their own community, etc.) serve as the deciding factor in determining whether or not an exception can be granted to share the Eucharist. While the criteria may offer guidance in determining levels of ecclesiality, the fact is that people of other traditions seldom get far enough to have their case tested against the criteria. In the vast majority of cases, the question of exception is determined on the basis of serious necessity, itself determined according to criteria of imprecise determination, and almost invariably unknown by the person(s) impacted by the determination. There would seem to be no way of knowing what level the bar is which one must leap over before reaching and being tested against the specified criteria. The appended flow chart shows that more clearly.

[18] Catholicism, p. 740.

[19] Catholicism, p. 739, citing Matthias Scheeban’s The Mysteries of Christianity.

Walking the path to Christian Unity

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 23:13:47 GMT

The following article is published in One in Christ, Volume 52 (2017) Number 2.

Walking the path to Christian Unity

As part of the Responding to the Reformation Conference, Richard and I (see footnote) were asked to represent the Association of Interchurch Families. Initially we were asked to be part of a panel speaking on reconciliation but Jenny Bond also asked us to run a workshop. The instructions indicated many people appreciate stories about personal experience.

So during the workshop we shared the following story. Our daughter Ruth was brought up within our two churches having been baptised in the RC church at the Easter Vigil with the full participation of Richard’s vicar. He agreed to receive her and register her baptism on Easter Sunday morning. In the RC baptism a candle is lit from the Paschal candle and passed to the father for safekeeping. Knowing that something similar is a part of the Anglican service we took her candle with us on Easter Sunday. As we walked up the steps towards the vicar, he leaned forward, ‘What do you want me to do with the candle?’ I whispered in reply, ‘We thought you might light it from your Paschal Candle?!’ He looked slightly embarrassed, ‘I’m afraid to say I hadn’t thought of that! What a good idea!’

As the panel had a specific focus on reconciliation, Richard opened our contribution by reading the following quote:

A desire to promote Christian unity has been a constant for Interchurch families throughout the past forty years. They have a particular incentive to take part in ecumenical work, and many have been found working for unity at local, national and international levels. Their experience of living in one another’s traditions and growing in mutual understanding and love is a particular contribution they can make to the ecumenical movement; they can be signs to the churches on their way towards unity. From ‘Forty Years of Interchurch Families’ by Ruth Reardon, ‘Issues and Reflections 8’, October 2008

I continued with stories about Ruth which had an emphasis on reconciliation. The first story happened when she was three years old and at Sunday mass with me. As we got nearer the time for the Eucharist she asked if she could receive communion. I knew that wouldn’t be possible so I whispered that she needed to be older. I hoped that would be the end of it, but I hoped in vain. The following Sunday she pulled my arm, ‘Can I receive this week? I’m older now.’ I decided to take a different approach and rather than answering her question I asked one of my own. ‘Why do you want to receive communion?’ She looked shocked, clearly expecting me to know the answer and then responded, ‘Because it’s Jesus, of course!’. I looked around the congregation and wondered how many had such a deep theological understanding of what was happening. In fact I would have struggled to put it so succinctly. I turned my attention to making it clear she was still unable to receive.

Thankfully, the following summer we went to an Interchurch Families International Conference in Rome. Members of the Waldensian church provided a programme for the children in four languages. At one of the services led by a Lutheran Minister he said ‘If you feel your child understands what is happening at the Eucharist and is ready to receive they are welcome to do so.’ Ruth asked if that meant her and when I nodded she smiled and stood reverently waiting until she received. I think she must have been happy after this experience because she didn’t mention communion again for a while.

However, when she was six years old the issue was raised again when the Anglican diocese took a decision to admit children to communion before confirmation. The vicar in our local parish had a daughter two years older than Ruth and decided to admit the children at seven years old. This created a problem for us as the Roman Catholic diocese permitted children to make their first communion in the school year in which they were eight. I spoke to Ruth about it and made it clear that she could do the preparation but if she wanted to make her first communion in the RC church she would be unable to be admitted in the Anglican church with her friends.

She was happy to go through the Anglican preparation which used a course adapted from the RC model and I took her every week. I thought she was happy with her decision as she never complained. The day of admission was set for Easter Sunday during morning service. Her friends were given certificates to show to other churches that in spite of not being confirmed they were able to receive. Whilst this ceremony was going on she turned to me, ‘Why won’t the Catholic church let me receive communion if I make it here first?’ I wondered how I could explain the Reformation to a seven year old. I settled on the following: ‘The Anglican church fell out with the Catholic church and they still feel hurt.’

‘How long ago was this?’

‘About 4 or 500 years ago.’

‘Isn’t it about time they forgave each other?’ I was left wondering why a seven year old could see something so clearly that church leaders couldn’t. As one person said to me, ‘Out of the mouth of babes......?’

At this point we were told that time was running out. Richard drew our piece together by indicating that these stories summed up our experience of reconciliation as an Interchurch Family and he finished our contribution with this piece,

We have some concerns about the work toward unity, even as we celebrate that work. We are concerned that our churches in most cases appear not yet ready to love each other first, and only then to work out how that love is to be expressed. Instead, we see churches insisting that every "i" be dotted, every "t" crossed before commitments to unity are made. We suspect that, were marriage to be approached in the same manner, we would have very few marriages, and the 'domestic church' would become merely a fine archaeological specimen. From ‘Revealing the Holy: Interchurch Families on the Path to Christian Unity’ by Ray & Fenella Temmerman, in INTAMS, Vol 6, #2, 2000

The other panellists made their contributions to the discussion followed by a plenary open to everyone. One group had wrestled with the difference between forgiveness, reconciliation and atonement. During the preparation for the panel the previous evening I talked about the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. I believe forgiveness is something you can do on your own without necessarily being reconciled especially if it involves abuse or the perpetrator is dead. I briefly shared this with everyone. I was reminded of a book I read two years ago by Desmond and Mpho Tutu, ‘The Book of Forgiving’ which I have on Kindle. I asked if I could read from chapter 7, Renewing or Releasing the Relationship. Desmond Tutu said the final part of forgiveness is the decision to renew the relationship or to let it go. There was a profound moment of silence and then Richard had the last word, ‘Unity is not an option rather it is an imperative.’

Footnote: Richard Connell (Anglican) Reader Emeritus and Helen Connell (RC) MTh (Oxon)

Nourishment for the Journey

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 23:04:04 GMT

“Nourishment for the Journey, not a Prize for the Perfect”: Reflecting with Amoris Laetitia on Eucharistic Sharing in Interchurch Marriages

Corinne Bernhard-Bitaud & Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi

This paper was originally published in A Point of No Return? Amoris Laetitia on Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage , Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi (ed.), (Munster: LIT-Verlag, 2017), p. 215-232. Permission to publish here kindly granted by the publisher and editor.

In his letter to the bishops of the Buenos Aires pastoral region of September 2016, Pope Francis explicitly confirmed an interpretation of Amoris laetitia according to which the church opens a path of personal and pastoral discernment offering divorced and remarried Catholics the possibility of having access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. [i] The pope has thus unmistakably changed the church’s discipline with regard to the divorced and remarried and revised the theological vision that had undergirded the previous practice. [ii] While this is certainly good news for Catholics in second marriages and their families, others who are also living in what the Catholic Church regards as “irregular or complex marital situations” may not be equally pleased with the Post-Synodal Exhortation. Interchurch families, [iii] for instance, had asked the 2015 Bishops’ Synod for an explicit statement that spouses “who express a real need and desire for Eucharistic sharing, and who fulfil the criteria for admission, can be allowed to receive communion alongside their Catholic partners on an on-going basis, whenever they are at mass together.” [iv] Amoris laetitia, however, which dedicates only one paragraph to interchurch families, [v] simply refers to the 1993 Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, stipulating that admission to Eucharistic communion for the non-Catholic spouse can only be granted in exceptional cases. [vi]

In this paper we will explore whether or not Amoris laetitia also has a positive message for interchurch families. In a first step, Corinne Bernhard-Bitaud reads the document from the perspective of an interchurch family that experiences the pain of being united in the domestic church of the family day by day and yet separated at the Lord’s Table on Sunday. She regrets that Amoris laetitia does not recognize more explicitly the existential need of these families to be offered Eucharistic hospitality. Sharing her concerns, Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi pushes the reading of Amoris laetitia a step further beyond what it explicitly states. Looking at how the exhortation deals with the admission to communion of remarried divorcees, he argues that, seen in its entire theological and pastoral orientation, Pope Francis implicitly entitles and encourages interchurch couples to embark on a path of personal and pastoral discernment which may include Eucharistic sharing not only for exceptional occasions but on an ongoing basis.

1 Reading Amoris Laetitia from the Lived Experience of Interchurch Families

The apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia offers general concerns about Christian families (AL 292) which do not specifically focus on interchurch families but do not exclude them either (AL 297): “Here I am speaking not only of the divorced and remarried, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves.”) In the title itself, this exhortation is addressed to “Christian married couples”, and not only to Catholic married couples. I am the Protestant spouse in an interchurch family, and I was myself a child in an interchurch family, so that I have been living daily ecumenism for almost 50 years. That is the reason why, from this specific point of view, I want to give an account of of how I received the elements of this text related to the admission of Christian spouses to the Eucharist and its spiritual function for couples.

1.1 The Domestic Church – Disunited at the Lord’s Table

Pope Francis recalls that Christian marriage is a “domestic church” (AL 292) in reference to St John Chrysostom: “Make your house a church. Indeed, you are also responsible for the salvation of your sons and your servants.” [vii] The Second Vatican Council had taken up and developed this term, stating that it means that the family should be a place where the baptized live their Christian vocation: “For where Christianity pervades the entire mode of family life, and gradually transforms it, one will find there both the practice and an excellent school of the lay apostolate.

In such a home husbands and wives find their proper vocation in being witnesses of the faith and love of Christ to one another and to their children.” [viii] Interchurch families from all countries recognize themselves completely in this formulation, which they used themselves during their Second World Gathering in Rome in 2003: “Like every other Christian family, an interchurch family represents the Body of Christ in the home, and can, therefore, be described as a domestic church.” [ix]

What we want to bear witness to on this subject has already been described in theological research: [x] we are a domestic church, we are experiencing, in our couples, a united church, in full communion, even if we are not in the classical ecclesiological patterns of unity. Indeed, as is highlighted by the papal document:

“If a family is centred on Christ, He will unify and illumine its entire life” (AL 317). So we are living witnesses, and we will not remain silent that the most complete unity is really possible even while respecting our diversity. If this is possible for the “cellular” level that the family is, why should it not be possible at higher levels?

Nevertheless, referring to the Ecumenical Directory, the pope reminds us that the Roman Catholic Church’s general rule for the Protestant spouse in an interchurch family is “Eucharistic inhospitality”. Restricting admission to the Eucharist to exceptional circumstances (AL 247) and forbidding Catholic believers from participating in the Protestant Last Supper (formally restated in 2003 [xi] ) leads interchurch couples to have to disunite themselves each Sunday before the Lord’s Table. It is really necessary to underline here that this is not just a question of experiencing the scandal of division once a year, during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, or from time to time during ecumenical assemblies, as is for example the case for most of our ministers, but of experiencing this scandal each week. Month after month. For our whole lives. We are united domestic churches during the whole week, except on Sunday before the Lord’s Table.

Along with the Synod Fathers, Pope Francis underlines that remarried divorcees “are baptized; they are brothers and sisters; the Holy Spirit pours into their hearts gifts and talents for the good of all” (AL 299). The Protestant spouses in interchurch families would be delighted to be described in the same manner.

For the moment, in the current state of the Roman Catholic Church’s practice, I no longer feel fully accepted as a baptized sister, even though I grew up in this church almost as much as in the one I chose.

The real pain that results does not give testimony to God’s unconditional love. Yet, the apostolic exhortation tells us that this unconditional love is related to “the highest and most central values of the Gospel”, and suggests that these values could be superior to the (Catholic) church’s moral teaching (AL 311). All Christians can feel the pain coming from division. As families, this division hurts us in our flesh because it concerns not only our life partner, our spouse, but also our children. Academic theological debate is not within the expertise of interchurch families, even though we make efforts to understand it and to benefit from it. But in contrast, we can recount what is perhaps the main contribution from interchurch families to ecumenical debates: the testimony of what we live, of what happens inside our domestic church.

When, years ago, one of my sons asked to receive his First Communion in the Catholic Church, as a Protestant mother, I welcomed this request and I thanked the Lord for it, without the shadow of a partisan ulterior motive, because this is not at all the issue. I met the priest who was accompanying the children, I explained our family situation, and I asked permission to receive the Eucharist with my son on this day of celebration. As a matter of fact, even if I do not share the ecclesiological reasons for stipulating discriminative conditions for the admission to the Lord’s Table, I respect the Catholic Church’s rule. The priest (I have to say that he had reached a certain age) gave me the authorisation with a big smile and a most fraternal “yes, of course”. Two years later, another of my sons made the same request.

I asked the same question to the new parish priest – he was younger – but he answered that it was not possible at all. He added, as an explanation, that Catholic and Orthodox Churches had needed eight centuries to become reconciled, and Protestants and Catholics have “only” been divided for five centuries. And, after that, he ended our discussion. Not a fraternal word. No questions about my Eucharistic faith. No opportunity for dialogue. So, I did not receive the Eucharist with my little boy on the day on which he received this sacrament for the first time. During the entire celebration, I have to say that I was really angry. A painful anger, deep inside of me, obviously unable to consider any ecclesiological reason.

An anger which totally prevented me from giving thanks on this day. Of course I did it later; interchurch families are resilient, and they move forward. But this division felt in the flesh was for me an existential experience of the spiritual violence of our separation. What can justify forbidding a baptized mother, believer, and activist for Christ, from receiving the Eucharist with her own children?

It is probably true that this priest was clumsy; it is certainly true that all priests do not react like he did. But the Catholic Church, for the moment, agrees with him on this issue, even if not on the form of his answer. Moreover, interchurch families testify that they are more and more often facing such refusals, even in “exceptional circumstances”, in particular from priests who didn’t experience the ecumenical momentum of the Second Vatican Council. And these priests are, of course, more and more numerous in the church. All the possible sociological thoughts on this situation cannot take away the reality that it induces and that we live in.

The Eucharistic fast can be a solution, or even a powerful act from ministers of our churches on the occasional situations of ecumenical celebrations. But I want to emphasize that it is inconceivable to fast each Sunday throughout our life as an interchurch couple. We would starve. So, let’s listen again to the pope: “At times we find it hard to make room for God’s unconditional love in our pastoral activity.

We put so many conditions on mercy that we empty it of its concrete meaning and real significance. That is the worst way of watering down the Gospel.” (AL 311) We can ask ourselves if this could not be true for ecclesiological considerations as it is for moral considerations.

1.2 What Kind of Example for our Children?

Concerning the children of divorced couples, the apostolic exhortation quotes a question from the pope’s catechesis of August 5th 2015: “How can we encourage those parents to do everything possible to raise their children in the Christian life, to give them an example of committed and practical faith, if we keep them at arm’s length from the life of the community, as if they were somehow excommunicated?” (AL 246) This question can also be asked concerning interchurch families. We make efforts to give a Christian education to our children; we teach them the words of our Lord: “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift” (Mt 5,23-24). Unfortunately, they can observe, Sunday after Sunday, that we have now believed for five centuries that we are not reconciled enough to share together the bread of our Lord. What can be their thoughts when they observe the gap between announcing the primacy of God’s powerful love and the fruits of sorrow that arise from the practical rule of the church? Moreover, when they ask to be confirmed, if they want to bear witness to their dual background – which is entirely different from a supposed third church –, they are told that it is impossible, and they can feel themselves condemned for what they are.

This unity that they have lived inside of the domestic church of their family is to be shattered when they become adult persons in faith. What kind of example do we give with such a rule?

My personal experience is that at the beginning of our life as an interchurch couple, we alternated going to both churches. But for some years now, because of explicit refusals from ministers or magisterial messages unfavourable to Eucharistic hospitality, we have anchored our spiritual life in a Protestant harbour. So our children grew up as teenagers more in Protestantism than in Catholicism, although this was not our initial choice. It was not our life project. We really wanted to offer them the wealth of our spiritual diversity. But the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church, despite the work of some of its theologians, [xii] has made this project so difficult that we eventually gave it up.

The paper adopted by the Second World Gathering of Interchurch Families, Rome 2003, quoted interchurch teenagers as declaring: “It is not we who are confused in refusing to choose one Church or the other. It is you of former generations who have been confused in accepting and perpetuating the divisions of the churches. Christ willed only one church.” “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Lk 18,16).

1.3 A Reading of John 6

Facing all these questions, here is my reading of John 6. Five thousand men are there, and the women and the children. All are going to share, without any discrimination, the bread and fish. Judas Iscariot is there, too! All these people are the guests of our Lord. No entry ticket. Many of them are there simply out of curiosity, expecting a miracle. John is clear on that point: “a great crowd of people Jesus himself says, later: “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.” This is not even linked to curiosity, even less an issue of understanding what happens or what is the meaning of these signs. If those people are there, it is only because of the call of their bellies. They are here like beggars standing outside the door of a church. Even so, Jesus welcomes all of them, and he feeds them, himself.

He does not say that their curiosity, or appetite, are not enough in order to be able to receive a part of this bread of life, or that it is necessary to fully understand everything, or have a pure doctrine before being able to ask and receive. He simply acts. He shares the bread and gives it to all these men, women, and children.

Without any consideration of social background, age, intellect, moral value, or religious purity. It is enough to be there, to have followed the Master on this road, on this day. He does not ask for any baptismal certificate, nor promise of a commitment. Only later, will they understand. And, even then, they will not understand quickly. Even the apostles will become aware of the real signification of that sign only after the Resurrection. And probably some of those people will not understand at all. John tells us that many disciples will not accept Jesus’s explanation of this sign, and will leave the community. But this was their choice, nobody had excluded them from the sharing of the bread and the Word. Jesus gave them first, without any condition, this possibility to understand the Eucharistic sharing by living (or experiencing) it.

I believe in a God who became human, who really experienced our lives, and whose Body was given for us, for all of us, without any discrimination, without any conditions for access. I do not believe that He rejoices when we stand divided when we are to remember or to make present the sacrifice, never mind in reality how we name it. An eminent educator of the beginning of the 20th century promoted the basic principle of “learning by doing” (Lord Robert Baden-Powell).

I believe that this is what is at stake in Eucharistic hospitality. I believe that the strength given by the sacrament of unity is the ability to walk towards unity. This means learning unity by living it, by being confident in our God’s power, by letting go of our intellectual – and so very human – certainties.

As interchurch families, we want to testify that each time we can receive the Eucharist together, we do not live this transgression of the rule as a transgression of the divine commandment (Lk 22,19; 1 Cor 11,25-26). On the contrary, it produces in our family life many spiritual fruits of joy, revival, encouragement, and strength, exactly the same as for other Christian families. Hence we share with the pope the belief that “[t]he family’s communal journey of prayer culminates by sharing together in the Eucharist, especially in the context of the Sunday rest. . . For the food of the Eucharist offers the spouses the strength and incentive needed to live the marriage covenant each day as a ‘domestic church”’ (AL 318). Then, why should we be eternally deprived of a “regular” access to this divine grace – “regular” having the dual meaning of “constant” and “in line with the rules” (see AL 316, 296)?

2 Reading Amoris Laetitia from the Perspective of a Theology of Interchurch Families

When interchurch families show themselves disappointed with the outcome of the 2014/2015 bishops’ synods and the Post-Synodal Exhortation, their reaction may be understandable on a human level. But it is also perfectly justifiable from a theological point of view. I will first briefly summarize in what way contemporary church teaching and theological scholarship deal with interchurch marriage and the question of Eucharistic sharing. It will become clear that calling for the admission to communion of the entire interchurch family on a regular basis is not an exaggerated claim by those concerned but theologically sound and legitimate.

I will then analyse what Amoris laetitia explicitly has to say about interchurch families and Eucharistic communion. In a third and final move I will try to infer what implications the overall theological and pastoral orientation of Pope Francis’s exhortation may have for spouses and families who share their lives across denominational borders. The pope’s message for them may then in the end be more hopeful than first thought.

2.1 Contemporary Church Teaching and Theology on Interchurch Families and Eucharist Sharing

Catholic teaching and theology refer to the Eucharist as “the fount and apex of the whole Christian life” (LG 11) by which the Christian faithful share in the life of the Triune God and the unity of the People of God is brought about. The Second Vatican Council regards the Eucharist as both sign and source of ecclesial unity. The Decree on Ecumenism states that Christ instituted “the wonderful sacrament of the Eucharist by which the unity of His Church is both signified and made a reality”. [xiii] It goes on to say that common worship, including sharing the Eucharist, should bear witness to the unity of the church and provide a sharing in the means of grace to further perfect such ecclesial union. Where such unity is lacking or is imperfect, the Eucharist should as a rule not be shared unless it can serve in special circumstances as a means of grace to help restore lost or deficient ecclesial unity (see UR, 8). Seen from an ecclesiological point of view, there is thus not much to recommend Eucharistic sharing in the interchurch family on a regular basis. But ecclesiology is only one aspect to be considered here; another and complementary one is the theology of marriage.

In the very same article of the Constitution on the Church mentioned above, the council refers to the sacrament of matrimony by which Christian spouses are said to “signify and partake of the mystery of that unity and fruitful love which exists between Christ and His Church” (LG 11). By virtue of the marital sacrament they not only “help each other to attain to holiness in their married life and in the rearing and education of their children” but have a special position and role within the church. The marriage of Christians gives rise to the family “in which new citizens of human society are born, who by the grace of the Holy Spirit received in baptism are made children of God, thus perpetuating the people of God through the centuries”. It is here that the council refers to the family as a “domestic church”, a realization of the church in its smallest unit. [xiv] This has massive implications for interchurch couples whose marriages the Catholic Church regards as sacramental [xv] and whose families can then truly be called domestic churches as well. [xvi] Moreover, signifying and sharing the mystery of Christ’s union with the church in their interpersonal conjugal union, interchurch spouses, just like Catholic same-church couples, bring about that ecclesial unity which finds its expression in and through the Eucharist. The close link between marriage and the Eucharist, which post-conciliar teaching consistently emphasizes, must therefore also be asserted for interchurch marriages and their families. There is no reason at all why interchurch families should not feel equally addressed when Pope Francis writes in Amoris laetitia that the family, which is entitled to “become a communion of persons in the image of the union of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”, is called “to join in daily prayer, to read the word of God and to share in Eucharistic communion, and thus to grow in love and become ever more fully a temple in which the Spirit dwells” (AL 29). It may then be that ecclesiological considerations advise against Eucharistic sharing in the domestic churches that are interchurch families as long as the church communities to which they belong are not in communion with one another – the theology of marriage in any case commends it despite the lack of full ecclesial unity. And that is why interchurch families cannot and should not turn a deaf ear to Pope Francis when he proclaims that “the family’s communal journey of prayer culminates by sharing together in the Eucharist, especially in the context of the Sunday rest”, and that “the food of the Eucharist offers the spouses the strength and incentive needed to live the marriage covenant each day as a ‘domestic church”’ (AL 318).

Contemporary theology has further developed these lines set out in Vatican II ecclesiology, sacramentology, and theology of marriage, arguing that the interchurch family is an ecclesial community which, on the basis of baptism and sacramental marriage, is entitled to share Eucharistic communion together. [xvii] Also, post-conciliar church teaching and discipline have come to acknowledge that interchurch spouses find themselves in a particular situation which differs from that of any other ecumenical grouping because of “the reception of the sacrament of Christian marriage by two baptized Christians”. [xviii] The Ecumenical Directory thus admits the non-Catholic spouse in an interchurch marriage to Eucharistic communion but further stipulates that this admission “can only be exceptional” and that “in each case” the ecclesial norms concerning intercommunion must be observed. [xix] What justifies such exceptional admission – in the case of interchurch marriages but also more broadly – are, according to the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the 1993 Ecumenical Directory, “situations of grave and pressing need”. [xx]

Various bishops and bishops’ conferences have since then specified that interchurch couples may indeed experience a “serious spiritual need” for sharing the Eucharist together which springs from the very nature of their marital commitment. [xxi] To accommodate this spiritual need, the concrete regulations in the respective pastoral guidelines of the local churches vary. Some restrict the admission of the non-Catholic spouse to a one-off event at unique occasions such as the nuptial mass or the funeral of the Catholic partner, others extend it to occasions of ecclesial or familial significance (such as ecclesial feast days or the celebration of first communion, confirmation, or the wedding of a child), while still others see a spiritual need arise every time an interchurch couple attends mass together. If indeed one follows the central theological argument that in the Eucharist “Christian spouses encounter the source from which their own marriage covenant flows, is interiorly structured, and continuously renewed”, [xxii] it seems perfectly plausible to situate the spiritual need of interchurch spouses in the uniqueness of their situation as such rather than restricting it to unique occasions. For if marriage requires a continuous commitment of the spouses to realize conjugal and ecclesial unity in the domestic church, it also needs to be sustained on an ongoing basis. [xxiii]

The Interchurch Families International Network (IFIN) has therefore pointed out in its “Response to the 2015 Synod on the Family” that “Christian marriage is not a series of special occasions, but an on-going daily commitment to becoming ever more fully an intimate community of life and love, a domestic church. Exceptional Eucharistic sharing is needed throughout an interchurch marriage to sustain this communion in Christ, to express and to deepen it.” Hence, it made the request to the Synod “that interchurch spouses who express a real need and desire for Eucharistic sharing, and who fulfil the criteria for admission, can be allowed to receive communion alongside their Catholic partners on an on-going basis, whenever they are at mass together.” [xxiv] Neither the Final Report of the 2015 synod nor the pope’s Post-Synodal Exhortation, however, responded positively to this request.

2.2 What Amoris Laetitia Says on Interchurch Marriage and Eucharistic Sharing [xxv]

We have already indicated that Amoris laetitia as a whole does not pay excessive attention to interchurch families and their particular situation. The only paragraph dedicated to this issue (AL 247) simply repeats what the Relatio synodi of the 2015 synod had to say in its no. 72. [xxvi] It states first that “marriages between Catholics and other baptized persons” have an intrinsic value and can make a contribution to the ecumenical movement. With a quotation from Familiaris consortio (no. 78), it is then urged that “an effort should be made to establish cordial cooperation between the Catholic and the non-Catholic ministers from the time that preparations begin for the marriage and the wedding ceremony”. The remaining half of the paragraph is finally dedicated to Eucharistic sharing but it simply quotes what is said in nos. 159-160 of the Ecumenical Directory: a decision as to whether the non-Catholic party may be admitted to communion is to be made in keeping with the general norms, taking into account the particular situation of the reception of the sacrament of matrimony by two baptized Christians; although the spouses share the sacraments of baptism and matrimony, Eucharistic sharing can only be exceptional and in each case according to the stated norms.

Ruth Reardon has argued that although interchurch families had hoped for more, the exhortation’s reference to the Ecumenical Directory has to be welcomed nonetheless. This is because the Directory’s specific regulations with regard to interchurch marriages are not well known among many priests and even bishops who still tell non-Catholic spouses that they may not receive the Eucharist. “The general norms on Eucharistic sharing (Directory 129-131) are often quoted as though there were no specific reference to the particular situation of those who ‘share the sacraments of baptism and marriage’ later in the document”, namely in its nos. 159-160. [xxvii] In this way, the Relatio synodi 2015, and the Post-Synodal Exhortation which quotes from that final report, have corrected the false impression still given by the Instrumentum laboris 2015 which suggested that the non- Catholic spouse in an interchurch marriage may receive the Eucharist only if his or her pastor is not available, without referring to any spiritual need. [xxviii] By quoting nos. 159-160 of the Directory, Pope Francis clearly confirms the special needs interchurch couples may have with regard to Eucharistic communion and, according to Reardon, implicitly warrants the pastoral option of exceptional Eucharistic sharing on an ongoing basis for those who wish to adopt it.

When the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Ireland, and Scotland issued One Bread, One Body: A Teaching Document on the Eucharist in the Life of the Church, and the Establishment of General Norms on Sacramental Sharing in 1998, Reardon had compellingly shown in her “Commentary from an Interchurch Family Point of View” that the bishops’ had opted for a restrictive interpretation of the Ecumenical Directory when they read “exceptional” in the sense of “occasional” admission and finally reduced the possibility of Eucharistic sharing to “unique occasions”. She continues that [t]he Directory itself never refers to occasions, nor to occasional Eucharistic sharing.

It speaks of admission to Eucharistic communion as being permitted, or even commended, “in certain circumstances, by way of exception, and under certain conditions” (129). It is at the very least a legitimate reading of the text in n. 160 to refer the “exceptional” to the “cases” which follow, when it would mean that Eucharistic sharing for spouses in a mixed marriage is possible in exceptional cases where the conditions for admission are fulfilled. Here “cases” is taken to refer to couples, that is, to persons and not to “occasions”. [xxix]

One could find a late proof that Reardon’s reading is indeed legitimate when crosschecking it with a sequence in Amoris laetitia which deals with the admission to the Eucharist of divorced and remarried spouses. In AL 305 Francis maintains that “it is possible that in an objective situation of sin. . . a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end”, and then adds in footnote 351 that “[i]n certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments”. This is a rather convoluted way of saying that in particular cases and under certain conditions divorced and remarried Catholics can be admitted to the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist.

But nobody would ever doubt that the wording “in certain cases” (in Italian: in certi casi) does indeed directly refer to a category of persons being exceptionally admitted to the sacraments rather than to specific or unique occasions in the life of these persons. What the pope wants to express here is that they may receive the communion whenever they wish to do so, supposing that the conditions for ad mission are fulfilled. Analogously, when the Directory stipulates that Eucharistic sharing of the non-Catholic spouse in an interchurch marriage “can only be exceptional” and that “in each case” the existing norms have to be observed (no. 160), this can be taken to mean that in particular cases an interchurch couple may be allowed to receive communion whenever they attend Mass together and desire to do so.

We do not have to prove here, however, whether or not ongoing Eucharistic sharing in interchurch marriages is possible on the basis of the stipulations of the Ecumenical Directory. It seems in any case very likely that it is, since some local bishops and bishops’ conferences have interpreted the Directory precisely in this way. [xxx] Likewise, there is no indication whatsoever that Pope Francis would want to negate this possibility. But has Amoris laetitia then no other message for interchurch families than that everything remains as it was before?

2.3 The Implicit Logic of Eucharistic Sharing in Amoris Laetitia

It is obvious that Pope Francis does not see the need to change doctrine or canon law. “. . . not all discussions of doctrinal, moral or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium”, he writes in the introduction to Amoris laetitia (3), and later explains that because of the “immense variety of situations” families are living in today, “neither the Synod nor this Exhortation could be expected to provide a new set of general rules, canonical in nature and applicable to all cases” (AL 300). When it comes to marriage and family, his aversion to doctrinal and canonical “one-size-fits-all” solutions has a self-critical note: “We have long thought that simply by stressing doctrinal, bioethical, and moral issues, without encouraging openness to grace, we were providing sufficient support to families, strengthening the marriage bond, and giving meaning to marital life.” (AL 37) A mainly normative discourse, Francis seems to argue, has obscured the church’s primary task of helping couples and families “better to respond to the grace that God offers them” (AL 35). The theme of God’s grace being present in the lives of families and waiting to be discovered and responded to is indeed a frequently recurring, and probably the most central, concern of the pope in Amoris laetitia. He is also aware of the fact that many “appreciate the Church’s efforts to offer guidance and counselling in areas related to growth in love, overcoming conflict and raising children” and are therefore “touched by the power of grace experienced in sacramental Reconciliation and in the Eucharist, grace that helps them face the challenges of marriage and the family” (AL 38). That this powerful source of support may flow more abundantly and reach families in their concrete living conditions is Francis’s strongest desire, which finally makes him put all norms and rules, whether moral or ecclesiastical, in their place as the two by now famous footnotes 340 and 351 clearly demonstrate. Even a person who lives in an objective situation of sin “can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end” which, as the footnote explains, “can include the help of the sacraments” (AL 305, footnote 351). Likewise, “the consequences or effects of a rule need not necessarily always be the same” which, as footnote 336 expounds, “is also the case with regard to sacramental discipline” (AL 300), if only the degree of responsibility of a person is taken into account. Both are clear indications that the power of divine grace and, even more so, a person’s need of such grace, can definitely trump laws and rules, in this case ecclesiastical rules governing the dispensation of the sacraments.

It is not always so clear whether the pope refers to moral or ecclesiastical laws which both may be imposed to curtail the working of God’s grace. When referring to divorced and remarried persons, his focus is primarily on the moral law, since living in a second union while the previous marriage is still valid is regarded by the church as living in adultery. But because, as we have already seen, “it is possible that in an objective situation of sin – which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – a person can be living in God’s grace” (AL 305), it would be “reductive simply to consider whether or not an individual’s actions correspond to a general law or rule, because that is not enough to discern and ensure full fidelity to God in the concrete life of a human being” (AL 304). It can therefore be that a person who has good reasons to stay in the second union [xxxi] can recognize in his/her conscience “with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal” (AL 303). The moral law which prohibits adultery does thus not necessarily allow a judgment on the behavior of a person which objectively contradicts the law but may subjectively be justified.

To substantiate his claim, Francis recalls both a classical moral insight which says that general moral principles fail when it comes to matters of detail [xxxii] and the understanding of the natural law which should not be regarded “as an already established set of rules that impose themselves a priori on the moral subject” but rather as “a source of objective inspiration for the deeply personal process of making decisions” [xxxiii] . Moral decisions have thus to be taken in a personal process of prudent discernment for which general moral principles serve as sources of orientation and inspiration but as such do not determine a person’s moral responsibility once the decision has been made nor do they give any indication of the state of grace this person at this point is in. [xxxiv]

If moral laws ought not cut off people from the inexhaustible source of divine grace, ecclesiastical rules should do so still less. This is the pope’s second concern with regard to the discipline of the sacraments, which makes him call for the possibility of divorced and remarried persons to receive the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. He thereby recalls what he had expressed already in Evangelii gaudium, [xxxv] namely that “the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy” (EG 44) and the Eucharist be “not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak” (EG 47). [xxxvi] In fact, the same conditions that are applicable to personal moral decisionmaking also apply here to canonical decisions with regard to the admission to the sacraments: “general rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation [. . . ] cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations” (AL 304); and “the consequences or effects of a rule need not necessarily always be the same” (AL 300). The only additional requirement here is that the process of personal discernment has to be accompanied and supported by a pastoral discernment, i.e. a “[c]onversation with the priest, in the internal forum, [which] contributes to the formation of a correct judgment on what hinders the possibility of a fuller participation in the life of the Church and on what steps can foster it and make it grow” (AL 300).

If we try to draw any conclusions from the perspectives Amoris laetitia opens for the admission to communion of remarried divorcees for the Eucharistic practice in interchurch families, we should start from the pope’s genuine concern that God’s grace may not be hindered to help couples face the challenges of married and family life. Having unmistakably pointed out that the grace of God works in their lives as well [i.e. of those who participate in the Church’s life in an incomplete manner] by giving them the courage to do good, to care for one another in love and to be of service to the community in which they live and work” (AL 291), Francis has broken new ground in theology which finally makes him demand that the flow of grace should not be hindered by any moral or church law. But it is here already that interchurch families would reject, and rightly so, any attempt to put their situation on equal footing with what Amoris laetitia, although respectfully, refers to as “irregular marital situations”. [xxxvii] When falling into love with and marrying someone from a different church or church community, interchurch spouses do not go against any moral ideal of the Catholic Church.

We have shown above how contemporary church teaching and theology recognize the value of interchurch marriage on the basis of common baptism and the shared sacrament of marriage. And also Amoris laetitia talks about the “intrinsic value” of interchurch marriage (247). The exclusion of the non-Catholic spouse from sharing the Eucharist is thus not caused by any moral failure as in the case of divorced and remarried spouses whose state and condition of life, at least in previous church teaching, was said to “objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist” (FC 84).What impedes the union between Christ and the church to be symbolized in the Eucharistic sharing of the interchurch marriage is the lack of full “unity in faith, worship and community life” between the churches to which the spouses (and their families) belong [xxxviii] – a fact that the spouses are not responsible for nor can do anything about. If one follows the logic of Amoris laetitia, it is unthinkable that interchurch families should remain deprived of “the food of the Eucharist [which] offers the spouses the strength and incentive needed to live the marriage covenant each day as a ‘domestic church”’ (AL 318), only because official church bodies refuse – or do not succeed in realizing – the full unity of and in the Body of Christ. [xxxix] When visiting the Lutheran church in Rome in November 2015 and being asked by the Lutheran wife married to a Roman-Catholic about Eucharistic communion in the interchurch family, Pope Francis gave an answer completely in line with this theological logic:

I respond to your question only with a question: how can I participate with my husband, so that the Lord’s Supper may accompany me on my path? It is a problem to which each person must respond. A pastor friend of mine said to me: “We believe that the Lord is present there. He is present. You believe that the Lord is present. So what is the difference?” – “Well, there are explanations, interpretations . . . ”. Life is greater than explanations and interpretations. Always refer to Baptism: “One faith, one baptism, one Lord”, as Paul tells us, and take the outcome from there. I would never dare give permission to do this because I do not have the authority. One Baptism, one Lord, one faith. Speak with the Lord and go forward. I do not dare say more. [xl]

One may indeed complain – and some have done so with regard to the somewhat cryptic admission of divorced and remarried spouses to the sacraments contained in the two footnotes [xli] – that Amoris laetitia does not draw out more explicitly the implications of its theology for the issue of Eucharistic sharing in interchurch families. Pope Francis, however, seems convinced that a change of attitude is more important than, and must be prior to, changing the rules and regulations. Reardon has therefore well captured what might be the answer to the question of so many interchurch families: “Does this leave interchurch families where we were before? Does Amoris Laetitia leave the Church where we were before? There has been no change in legislation. But the entirely new insistence on discernment by couples and families and their pastoral accompaniment by parishes, priests, and bishops may in time create an entirely new climate of pastoral understanding that will lead to a new flourishing of the domestic churches that contribute to as well as receive from the life of the Church.” [xlii] 42 It is this new climate of pastoral understanding, supported by a renewed theology of marriage, grace and Eucharistic unity, that interchurch families may put their hope in.

Corinne Bernhard-Bitaud & Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi, ‘”Nourishment for the Journey, not a Prize for the Perfect”: Reflecting with Amoris Laetitia on Eucharistic Sharing in Interchurch Marriages’, in A Point of No Return? Amoris Laetitia on Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage , Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi (ed.), (Munster: LIT-Verlag, 2017), p. 215-232

[i] For an English translation of the guidelines issued by the bishops of the Buenos Aires pastoral region for implementation of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia, and Pope Francis’s response to those guidelines, https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2016/09/18/guidelines-buenos-aires-bishops-divorcedremarried/; accessed 15.01.2017.

[ii] For a detailed analysis of the theological and practical shift from previous church teaching to Amoris laetitia, see E.-M. FABER/M.M. LINTNER: “Theologische Entwicklungen in Amoris laetitia hinsichtlich der Frage der wiederverheirateten Geschiedenen”, in: S. GOERTZ/C.WITTING (eds.): Amoris laetitia – Wendepunkt für die Moraltheologie? (Katholizismus im Umbruch; 4), Freiburg-Basel-Wien: Herder, 2016, 279-320; also B. PETRÀ: “From Familiaris Consortio to Amoris Laetitia: Continuity of the Pastoral Attitude and a Step Forward”, in: INTAMS Review 22/2 (2016), 202-2016.

[iii] We refer in this paper to “interchurch family” in terms of a family that “includes a husband and wife who come from two different church traditions (often a Roman Catholic married to a Christian of another communion). Both of them retain their original church membership, but so far as they are able they are committed to live, worship, and participate in their spouse’s church also. If they have children, as parents they exercise a joint responsibility under God for their religious and spiritual upbringing, and they teach them by word and example to appreciate both their Christian traditions”, a definition given in: Interchurch Families and Christian Unity, Rome, 2003, available from roma 2003 accessed 15.01.2017.

[iv] Response to the 2015 Synod on the Family from the Interchurch Families International Network, 6 April 2015, 12, available from IFIN_Response_to_Synod 2015.pdf ; accessed 15.01.2017.

[v] 5 FRANCIS: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, 2016, 247 (henceforward abbreviated as AL), available from https://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhor tations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_en.pdf; accessed 15.01.2017.

[vi] See PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN UNITY: Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, 160, available from http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstun i_doc_25031993_principles-and-norms-on-ecumenism_en.html; accessed 15.01.2017, hereafter referred to by its common short name, the Ecumenical Directory.

[vii] JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: In Genesim, Sermo 7 (PG 54, 607).

[viii] Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 35 (henceforward abbreviated as LG).

[ix] Interchurch Families and Christian Unity, 3.

[x] See e.g. T. KNIEPS-PORT LE ROI/R. TEMMERMAN (eds.): Being One at Home: Interchurch Families as Domestic Churches, Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2015.

[xi] See JOHN PAUL II: Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 2003, 30. PDF-

[xii] See e.g. CENTRE D’ETUDES OECUMÉNIQUES (STRASBOURG)/INSTITUT DE RECHERCHES OECUMÉNIQUES (TÜBINGEN)/INSTITUT DE RECHERCHES CONFESSIONNELLES (BENSHEIM): Le partage eucharistique entre les Eglises est possible: Thèses sur l’hospitalité eucharistique, Strasbourg: Academic Press, 2005.

[xiii] Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio, 2 (henceforward abbreviated as UR).

[xiv] On the concept of domestic church see T. KNIEPS-PORT LE ROI/G. MANNION/P. DE MEY (eds.):The Household of God and Local Households: Revisiting the Domestic Church (BETL; 254), Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2013.

[xv] CIC 1983, can. 1055 §1 stipulates that every marriage between the baptized “has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament”.

[xvi] The idea of interchurch families being domestic churches is developed in detail in T. KNIEPS PORT LE ROI/R. TEMMERMAN (eds.): Being One at Home.

[xvii] See e.g. P. NEUNER: Geeint im Leben – getrennt im Bekenntnis? Die konfessionsverschiedene Ehe: Lehre – Probleme – Chancen, Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1989, 110f.; ID.: “Ein katholischer Vorschlag zur Eucharistiegemeinschaft”, in: Stimmen der Zeit 211 (1993), 443-450; G. HINTZEN/P. NEUNER: “Eucharistiegemeinschaft für konfessionsverschiedene Ehen?”, in: Stimmen der Zeit 211 (1993), 831-840; E. FALARDEAU: “The Church, the Eucharist and the Family”, in: One in Christ 33 (1997), 20-30; B. PRUSAK: “The Ecumenical Household as Domestic Church: Ecclesial Threat of Pastoral Challenge and Even Resource?”, in: T. KNIEPS PORT LE ROI/R. TEMMERMAN (eds.): Being One at Home, 155-173; E. FALARDEAU: “Eucharistic Hunger in the Domestic Church: A View from Interchurch Families”, in: T. KNIEPS PORT LE ROI/R. TEMMERMAN (eds.): Being One at Home, 175-187.

[xviii] PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN UNITY: Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, 159.

[xix] “Although the spouses in a mixed marriage share the sacraments of baptism and marriage, Eucharistic sharing can only be exceptional and in each case the norms stated above concerning the admission of a non-Catholic Christian to Eucharistic communion, [ . . . ] as well as those concerning the participation of a Catholic in Eucharistic communion in another Church, [ . . . ] must be observed.” (Ibid. 160)

[xx] See ibid. 130. The CIC 1983 in its can. 844 §4 stipulates the case and conditions of exceptional admission to the sacraments (of Penance, Eucharist and Anointing of the Sick) in the following way: “If the danger of death is present or if, in the judgment of the diocesan bishop or conference of bishops, some other grave necessity urges it, Catholic ministers administer these same sacraments licitly also to other Christians not having full communion with the Catholic Church, who cannot approach a minister of their own community and who seek such on their own accord, provided that they manifest Catholic faith in respect to these sacraments and are properly disposed” (emphasis added). It is obvious that while the Code primarily refers to objective circumstances (the absence of the non-Catholic minister and similar cases of “grave necessity”) which may justify the admission of non-Catholics to the Eucharist, the Ecumenical Directory also reckons with subjective “needs” on the part of the persons involved.

[xxi] For an overview of such pastoral guidelines see B. PRUSAK: “The Ecumenical Household as Domestic Church”, 161-171.

[xxii] JOHN PAUL II: Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 1981, 57 (henceforward abbreviated as FC.

[xxiii] See R. REARDON: “One Bread One Body: A Commentary from an Interchurch Family Point of View”, in: One in Christ 35 (1999), 109-130.

[xxiv] See Response to the 2015 Synod on the Family from the Interchurch Families International Network, 12.

[xxv] This section draws on R. REARDON: “Amoris Laetitia: Comments from an Interchurch Family Perspective”, in: One in Christ 50 (2016), 66-86.

[xxvi] See The Final Report of the Synod of Bishops to the Holy Father, Pope Francis, 24 October 2015, available from http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20151026_relazione-finale-xiv-assemblea_en.html; accessed 15.01.2017.

[xxvii] R. REARDON: “Amoris Laetitia: Comments from an Interchurch Family Perspective”, 67.

[xxviii] The Instrumentum laboris 2015 had formulated in its no. 128: “Some suggest that mixed marriages might be considered as cases of ‘grave necessity,’ in which it is possible that a baptized person who is not in full communion with the Catholic Church, yet shares the Church’s faith in the Eucharist, be allowed to receive the Eucharist, when their pastors are not available and taking into account the criteria of the ecclesial community to which they belong (cf. [Ecclesia de Eucharistia], 45-46; Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, 25 March 1993, 122-128).”

[xxix] See R. REARDON: “One Bread One Body: A Commentary from an Interchurch Family Point of View”.

[xxx] See ibid. 118f.

[xxxi] Some of these reason are listed in AL 298.

[xxxii] See AL 304.While referring to Thomas Aquinas, the pope in fact recalls the principle of epikeia which goes back to Plato and Aristotle. See G. VIRT: “Moral Norms and the Forgotten Virtue of Epikeia in the Pastoral Care of the Divorced and Remarried”, in: Melita theologica 63/1 (2013), 17-35.

[xxxiii] AL 305 quotes here from a document of the INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL COMMISSION: In Search of a Universal Ethic: A New Look at Natural Law, 2009, 59, available from http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfait h_doc_20090520_legge-naturale_en.html; accessed 15.01.2017.

[xxxiv] AL 301 expresses clearly that “it is can no longer simply be said that all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace”.

[xxxv] FRANCIS: Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 2013 (henceforward abbreviated as EG).

[xxxvi] AL 305, footnote 351. With regard to the Eucharist, Francis clearly opts here for the second of two principles which the Decree on Ecumenism of Vatican II had formulated for practicing common worship with separated churches: “first, the bearing witness to the unity of the Church, and second, the sharing in the means of grace. Witness to the unity of the Church very generally forbids common worship to Christians, but the grace to be had from it sometimes commends this practice.” (UR 8)

[xxxvii] Amoris laetitia puts “irregular situations” continuously in inverted commas. – In the Relatio synodi of 2014, interchurch or, in ecclesiastical parlance, “mixed marriages” were still dealt with under the heading of “Caring for Wounded Families”; see Relatio synodi, 2014, 54, available from http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20141018_relatio-synodi-familia_en.html; accessed 15.01.2017. AL 247 lists them in a section entitled “Certain complex situations”.

[xxxviii] See Ecumenical Directory, 129.

[xxxix] It is true that Pope Francis knows of situations in which, following St Paul’s admonition in 1 Cor 11,17-34, the unity of the Body of Christ is indeed wounded and the Eucharist should not be received (see AL 185-186). This is the case when “scandalous distinctions and divisions among its members” are being created (AL 186). Francis reads the Pauline text as “a serious warning to those families who withdraw into their own comfort zone and close themselves off, in particular, however, for families who remain indifferent vis-à-vis the suffering of poor and most needy families” (AL 186; the English translation leaves out this sentence which in the Italian original runs as follows: “Questo testo biblico è un serio avvertimento per le famiglie che si richiudono nella loro propria comodità e si isolano, ma più specificamente per le famiglie che restano indifferenti davanti alle sofferenze delle famiglie povere e più bisognose”). This warning, however, includes interchurch as much as same-church families.

[xl] Quoted in R. REARDON: “Amoris Laetitia: Comments from an Interchurch Family Perspective”, 86.

[xli] See e.g. N. LÜDECKE: Déjà vu 2.0, 18 July 2016, available from http://theosalon.blogspot.be/2016/07/deja-vu-20.html ; accessed 15.01.2017.

[xlii] R. REARDON: “Amoris Laetitia: Comments from an Interchurch Family Perspective”, 86.

INTERCHURCH MARRIAGES: towards a spirituality

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 22:22:45 GMT

This article originally appeared in : A.Brenninkmeijer-Werhan (ed): Marriage – Constancy and Change in Togetherness , Munster: LIT Verlag, 2017 (Symposium, 15). Reproduced by kind permission.

An interchurch marriage is a marriage between Christians. As in any other, the spouses are called together by God to commit themselves to one another for life, to live together in a love that reflects God’s love for his people, Christ’s love for his Church.

In his post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the Joy of Love, Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis writes: ‘Christian marriage, as a reflection of the union between Christ and his Church, is fully realized in the union between a man and a woman who give themselves to each other in a free, faithful and exclusive love, who belong to each other until death and are open to the transmission of life, and are consecrated by the sacrament, which grants them the grace to become a domestic church and a leaven of new life for society’. This is just as much a description of interchurch marriage as it is of Catholic/Catholic marriage, although some in both categories would find themselves in situations ‘which do not yet or no longer correspond to the Church’s teaching on marriage’, as the passage continues (292). It should be noted, too, that ‘fully realized’ does not mean ‘perfectly realized’, as Pope Francis often insists (325).

Interchurch families have found themselves giving a warm welcome to Amoris Laetitia. It was not that the document said much about interchurch marriages in any specific way, although it included a positive and helpful – if brief – passage referring to them (247). Rather it was that what was said about marriage and the domestic church could be applied to interchurch families as much as to same-church couples. It offered a spiritual approach that was equally relevant to all. And beyond that, something else stood out from an interchurch family perspective; it was so easy to apply what was said in the text about relationships as they are worked out in marriage and family life to relationships between the churches as they commit themselves to walking the ecumenical path together. Amoris Laetitia reinforced the conviction of interchurch couples that simply by their commitment to one another in marriage and – as a unit – to one another’s churches, they are contributing in a small way to bringing together those churches into the unity for which Jesus prayed. They are indeed living the path to Christian unity.

A threat or a gift?

An interchurch marriage is a fully Christian sacramental marriage; the two spouses are called together to form a domestic church – a church in their home. So what is distinctive about interchurch marriages? They are one type of cross-frontier marriages; they cross the boundary between two separated church communities. Like all cross-frontier marriages, they can be perceived as a threat to the communities from which they come, for when the two partners commit themselves to one another in marriage they are declaring their determination to confront together and overcome differences between themselves that their respective communities have not been able to handle. That was how ‘mixed marriages’ were seen by the Roman Catholic Church and other churches before the Second Vatican Council. They were a danger to the separate identities of their churches. So Catholics (if their marriages were to be recognised) had to promise to do all they could to ‘convert’ their partners to the Catholic Church, and both partners had to promise that all the children of the marriage would be baptised and brought up in that Church. In response other churches strongly advised their members not to marry Catholics.

But like other forms of cross-frontier marriages, these marriages can also be perceived by their communities as a gift and a promise. If by the grace of God the partners and their children can succeed in living together in love in their domestic church, may not their experience in some small way help their wider church communities to live together in unity too? Since Vatican II, with the official entry of the Roman Catholic Church into the ecumenical movement, this positive view of marriages between baptised Christians of different traditions has been able to gain ground, Catholic rules have gradually been relaxed, and the fears and suspicions of other churches have lessened. There is still a long way to go, but the change in expectations and attitudes over the past fifty years has been phenomenal.

Mixed marriages between baptised Christians have claimed a distinctive terminology. They have distinguished themselves from other kinds of mixed marriages – interracial or interreligious, for example – by calling themselves ‘interchurch’, or else ‘interdenominational’ or ‘interconfessional’ families. Sometimes they have been called ‘ecumenical’ marriages. Starting with the French foyers mixtes in the Lyon and Paris areas in the early 1960s they have formed groups and associations of couples in a number of European countries and throughout the English-speaking world, supported by clergy and ministers, to encourage one another and to reflect on their situation. There is now an informal Interchurch Families International Network that links them together, and an international website: www.interchurchfamilies.org

In a paper adopted by the Second World Gathering of Interchurch Families held near Rome in 2003, they described what they meant by a ‘fully and intentionally’ interchurch marriage. ‘An interchurch family includes a husband and wife who come from two different church traditions (often a Roman Catholic married to a Christian of another communion). Both of them retain their original church membership, but so far as they are able they are committed to live, worship and participate in their spouse’s church also. If they have children, as parents they exercise a joint responsibility under God for their religious and spiritual upbringing, and they teach them by word and example to appreciate both their Christian traditions’ (Interchurch Families and Chrisian Unity, Association of Interchurch Families, London, 2004, p.2). Interchurch couples recognise that not all mixed Christian marriages share these intentions, but would like to offer to others their conviction that this is possible and can be deeply enriching. They also recognise that a ‘fully and intentionally’ interchurch marriage in no way means a ‘perfect’ interchurch marriage – to return to Pope Francis’ thinking in Amoris Laetitia, referred to earlier (122).

A work of the Holy Spirit

Many have seen the developments which have taken place over the last half-century in relation to mixed Christian marriages as a work of the Holy Spirit, leading us forward from the insights of the Second Vatican Council relating both to Christian unity and to Christian marriage. Indeed, the Indian Bishops’ Conference, in their mixed marriage guidelines, stated positively that the very existence of interchurch marriages can be seen as part of God’s plan. ‘Many circumstances of life’, they said, ‘and undoubtedly Divine Providence itself, arrange that at times compatible members of different Churches develop a desire to be united in a permanent bond of marriage … united in love.’ (Guidelines for Ecumenism, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, New Delhi 2000, part 4, 56)

From their earliest years of coming together in groups and associations, interchurch families discovered that they shared a desire to contribute to the growing unity of their two church communities, both in the sense of local congregations and wider denominations. They saw themselves as pioneers, going ahead of their churches because of their privileged experience, but always rooted in them and acting on their behalf. They desired to become both a sign of unity and a means to grow towards unity. They hoped to form a ‘connective tissue’ that would help in some small way towards the healing of the wounds in the one Body of Christ.

Gradually their ecumenical potential has been recognised by the Catholic Church. As early as 1970 Pope Paul VI’s motu proprio on mixed marriages admitted the possibility under cover of the negative: ‘mixed marriages do not, except in some cases, help in re-establishing unity among Christians.’ So ‘in some cases’ they can, concluded interchurch spouses, and prayed and worked to that end. Later popes encouraged them. ‘You live in your marriage the hopes and difficulties of the path to Christian unity’, said Pope John Paul II at York, England, in 1982. As they expressed that hope in prayer together, in the unity of love, he declared, the Holy Spirit would help them to grow in trust and understanding. At Warsaw, Poland, in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI declared that when two young people from different Christian communities come together in marriage, their decision ‘can lead to the formation of a practical laboratory of unity’. For this to happen, he said, it is not only the couple that needs mutual goodwill, understanding and maturity of faith, but also their communities, who must help and support them. When Pope Francis visited the Lutheran church in Rome in 2015, he used his favourite ecumenical image of separated Christians ‘walking together’ in and towards unity. To a Lutheran/Catholic couple he observed that: ‘You are a witness to an especially profound journey because it is a conjugal journey, truly a family journey, of human love and of shared faith’. (The full text is given as an appendix to Ruth Reardon, ‘Amoris Laetitia: comments from an interchurch family perspective’’, in One in Christ, 50, 1, 2016, pp 66-86)

From the beginning interchurch families were committed to promoting Christian unity. Later, as the movement for marital spirituality developed, with the creation of the International Academy for Marital Spirituality and the publication of the INTAMS Review, we found a language in which some of our own insights could be expressed and deepened. We began to recognise more clearly the way in which marital spirituality and spiritual ecumenism came together in our marriages. In the early days of the British Association of Interchurch Families one of our members wrote: ‘Some people play at ecumenism, but we live it.’ As our appreciation of marital spirituality developed, we came to see the profound relationship between Christian unity and interchurch marriages. Unity becomes not just what we do, but who we are, simply because we are so fundamentally joined together by the Holy Spirit in marriage and family life, in the depths of human love and shared faith. Pope Francis expressed this so clearly in 2015 in a way that resonated with our own experience (see above). We are grateful too that Amoris Laetitia had nothing at all negative to say about interchurch marriages – I think this may be a first for official Roman documents.

A gift and a call

Many interchurch couples have a very clear sense of vocation. The partners sometimes feel a stronger sense of being called to marry one another than do those in same-church marriages – precisely because it can be such an unexpected experience. Many couples have been surprised by the way they have been drawn together in love, often attracted by the deep Christian faith of the other. A Canadian Catholic wife explained: ‘God gave me all I had asked for in a spouse – only I had forgotten to say he must be a Catholic.’ She was mirrored by a Protestant wife from New Zealand, who also received all she had prayed for: ‘only I didn’t ask that he shouldn’t be a Roman Catholic’. It is often a difficult decision to marry, especially when there is strong opposition at first from communities and families. But the surprise itself can lead on to a strong conviction that this is a gift and a call from God, and opposition can sometimes test and strengthen the bond between the couple.

The call does not always come to a young couple who have to decide whether they are going to throw in their lot with one another for life. Sometimes it comes to an older couple who have gone their separate ways for many years until something – maybe a meeting with another interchurch couple, or a particular life experience – shows them the possibility of becoming a ‘fully and intentionally’ interchurch family and they are drawn irresistibly towards it. Sometimes it comes because one partner has become a Catholic – or because a Catholic has joined another Christian community. There is no single pattern.

I refer particularly to couples where one partner is Catholic and the other a member of a different church community because in these cases (as in marriages with Orthodox Christians) the two spouses belong to communities that are not in communion with one another; this presents particular difficulties when the couple are bound together in one domestic church and want to express that unity within their wider communions. It is simply a reflection of the unique position of the Catholic Church within the ecumenical movement; it claims to be ‘more church’ than others in a very fundamental way, and behaves accordingly, but on the other hand it wants to enter into theological discussions with other church communities on an equal level (‘par cum pari’ says the Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism).

The French priest Abbé Paul Couturier, who inspired the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and saw that if Christians were to be united they must pray together for unity, had to grapple with this unequal situation. He totally transformed the earlier Octave of Prayer, with its prayer for unity around the See of Peter (which could only be a form of prayer used by those already convinced that the Pope is central to the unity of the Church), into a Week of Prayer for the unity that Christ wills, to come as he wills it (which can be prayed by all Christians who want to enter into Christ’s own prayer for unity, recorded in St John’s Gospel). Along with conversion of heart and holiness of life, Vatican II commended it as ‘the soul of the ecumenical movement’, worthy to be called ‘spiritual ecumenism’.

In marriage the partners are committed to one another on an equal footing, with equal rights and responsibilities as partners and parents. The new insights of Vatican II gave interchurch couples a solid basis for believing that they would be able to enter into their marriage partnership as equals. It made possible the ‘full and intentional’ interchurch marriage as described earlier. But often this is not a straightforward process. Sometimes it feels like one spouse having a family of origin that looks down on the other as its social inferior, and makes its attitude very clear. The couple have to negotiate the imbalance together, not allowing the views of one family to take over their marriage, but at the same time not allowing themselves to be distanced from either of them. It can be a slow process that can be very difficult at times in practice, but it is amazing how understanding can grow at a deep level. Sometimes a Catholic is surprised at how well their partner can explain to other Christians the position of the Catholic Church and the particular gifts it can offer to the ecumenical process – better than they could themselves!

Very often the spouses begin with all kinds of misunderstandings and prejudices about their partner’s church tradition. Because they love one another they are willing to talk them through. ‘I don’t suppose many engaged couples spend an evening discussing what it means to ask the prayers of a saint, what incense is for, or what the word “priest” really means’, wrote one Anglican wife.

Defensiveness can be replaced by a realisation that intense questioning may not represent aggression but a loving determination to understand. And many interchurch partners have said that they have grown stronger in their own faith, more appreciative of their own tradition, because they have had to work hard to explain it to their spouse. ‘I am a better Catholic than I would have been if I had married another Catholic; I would have taken so much for granted and not really thought about it’, said a Catholic husband. And in the process, the couple find that their relationship is strengthened; because they have talked on a deep level about their church relationships, they can communicate better with one another in other areas of their life too.

A commitment to share in the life of two church communities, so far as they can, means hard work for an interchurch couple; church diaries and rotas are not geared to such an undertaking. But it can be experienced as a double blessing, in times of sorrow as well as times of joy. Many have spoken of their gratitude for the support they have received from both communities; for instance, when illness strikes or when a baptism is celebrated. Conflicts are part of marriage, and family life shows the church in its brokenness as well as in its call to unity. This is true for interchurch families as for all domestic churches, and it can affect them in a particularly painful way. But as the spouses, two different and distinct persons, come together to share their lives and grow together into one coupled person, they can embody Christian unity with a particular joy.

Sharing of gifts

‘The ecumenical movement is not only about the removal of obstacles but also about the sharing of gifts’, said Pope John Paul II and the Archbishop of Canterbury in their Common Declaration of 1989. (Eds. Adelbert Denaux, Nicholas Sagovsky and Charles Sherlock, Looking towards a Church fully reconciled. Final Report of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission 1983-2005 (ARCIC II), London 2016, p 344) That is certainly true for interchurch spouses. They are committed to sharing everything they can, including their respective church traditions, the particular ways their communities have lived out their Christian faith. These can seem strange and even threatening in their unfamiliarity at first; things that are taken for granted by one partner can appear quite shocking to the other. This can be experienced in all marriages, of course; habits and assumptions that come from the family of origin of one of the spouses can be really unwelcome to the other. Negotiating the differences and establishing a new pattern of their own, drawing on what they judge to be the best of both their family traditions is an essential task for all newly-married couples. For interchurch couples it has a particular dimension.

The criterion is faithfulness to Christ and to the great tradition shared by all Christians. There is far more here that unites them than divides them. But there are real differences, and their task is to live this diversity in unity, not dismissing anything that is important to either partner out of hand, nor taking everything on board without discrimination either. There will be much mutual questioning, and not all couples will come to similar conclusions; each has to find its own way forward, to discover the best choices for their particular situation. One young couple considered how they could best organise their living space to welcome others – family, friends, and strangers – into their home, into their life together. ‘Offering hospitality at our dinner-table is part of this, and at our daily meals we like to remind ourselves from whom all good things come and give thanks by saying a simple grace before eating. Also, reserving a place in the house, in the living room for example, for times of prayer (placing a Bible open for scripture readings, a candle to light beside an icon …) has the effect of keeping our daily “material” life in touch with our “spiritual” life.’

Many interchurch couples have felt it important to learn to pray together as couples, precisely because their worship together in their respective communities could be problematic. This might start in a particularly intense way during their engagement, as part of a ‘getting to know you’ process, alongside an effort to be together during their respective church services. The practice may continue into their married life, as they seek to shape their domestic church in their home, and then have to be re-thought as they attempt to work out how they are going to share their prayer with their children. There will be practical questions to face: a decision to read the scriptures together may be relatively simple, but what about a balance between liturgical and extempore prayer, and how to use – or ignore – prayers like the ‘Hail Mary’ which are deeply rooted in one tradition but may feel very strange to someone coming from another. One couple decided that the Anglican partner (who was not comfortable with asking the prayers of the saints) should pray the biblical half, and the Catholic should respond with the second part of the prayer; thus it would it would become a prayer that their children would recognise when they met it in a Catholic context, and at the same time the partners would respect one another’s sensitivities without calling attention to their differences.

As they become more familiar with another way of praying, both partners can develop and change, and feel greatly enriched by the process. The same is true more generally as they begin to share more fully in the life of their spouse’s congregation. ‘We appreciate the Catholic liturgy and the Baptist sermon’, said one young couple. They considered that being exposed to both was much better than being limited to only one. Catholics can be impressed by the role taken by the laity in their partner’s Protestant church; others can appreciate the attention given to marriage and marriage preparation in their Catholic parish. Both partners can come to value diversity and take on an enlarged identity. Some go so far as to talk of ‘double belonging’ and see themselves as a united couple which is a part of both congregations. It is not surprising that interchurch families are often active and influential in local ecumenical relations out of all proportion to their numbers. They feel they have received so much from their exposure to other Christian traditions, and want to share their experience more widely. Their enthusiasm and commitment to unity can itself be a gift for their congregations.

The joy of love

Interchurch couples set out on their married journey with their ‘personal story of love’, as Amoris Laetitia puts it (9). The path is above all the path of love, reflecting Christ’s love for his Church, entering into the mutual love of the Father and the Son, into the communion of love that is the mystery of God, Father, Son and Spirit of love. This is equally the ecumenical path. Cardinal Mercier, Archbishop of Malines, was an ecumenical pioneer in the 1920s, welcoming Anglicans to his home. He realised that if divided Christians were to unite, they must love one another. In order to love one another, they must meet one another and get to know one another, he declared. That is precisely what interchurch couples have done, meeting one another, getting to know one another, and committing themselves together to the relationship of marriage that is indeed a school of love. Love is the first law of Christians. It is the same process, the same path of love that must be followed by the two partners joined in marriage and by divided Christians who share a common baptism.

They will find great joy in this path of love, but they know from the outset that they will not always find it smooth going. Pope Francis returns several times to the theme of ‘imperfect’ love. Although the grace of the sacrament of marriage is intended above all to perfect the couple’s love (89), he says, we have problems whenever we think that relationships or people ought to be perfect, or when we put ourselves at the centre and expect things to turn out our way (92). Love does not have to be perfect for us to value it. The other person loves me as best they can, with all their limits, but the fact that love is imperfect does not mean it is untrue or unreal (113). These words from Amoris Laetitia are a reminder of how the 1993 Ecumenical Directory described the way in which members of other churches and ecclesial communities are brought by baptism into ‘a real, even if imperfect’ communion with the Catholic Church (Directory 129). God offers the grace to bind married partners and separated Christians into loving communion, but as human beings we are always on the way to its full realisation, we can only grow gradually into the fullness of love. But that growth is real, our love is real, and walking together in love is the path, just as the fullness of love is the goal.

It is an on-going dynamic process, which advances as the partners are able to receive and integrate the gifts that God offers to bind them together in unity. God is patient, and knows that human beings can only progress towards unity by stages; it is not a once-for-all process. We can only take small steps at a time, but they are important. Pope Francis’ three little words ‘Thank you’, ‘Sorry’, ‘Please’, need to be practised all the time (133), until they come to express a habitual attitude of mutual gratitude, of repentance and forgiveness, and of a humility that leads to deeper unity. This is as true for the ecumenical journey as for the conjugal journey.

Christians are called to a love that never gives up, says Pope Francis. It is always beginning all over again. It endures everything. Married sacramental love is an ‘affective union’, spiritual and sacrificial, combining the warmth of friendship and erotic passion, and enduring long after emotions and passion subside (120). This love is a gift of the Holy Spirit, a powerful love that reflects the unbroken covenant between Christ and humanity that culminated in his self-sacrifice on the cross. Much has been written about the importance of the contribution that friendship has made to the progress of the ecumenical movement – a deep friendship that has grown between Christians who have recognised that they are already fundamentally one in Christ, in spite of church divisions, a friendship that has stimulated them to work tirelessly for visible unity. At the end of his meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1989, Pope John Paul II said to Archbishop Runcie that ‘affective communion’ leads to ‘effective communion’. Conjugal love, as ‘the greatest form of friendship’, certainly has its part to play. So much in the language of Amoris Laetitia recalls that used of ecumenical relationships: a faithful covenant that entails no going back (123); sharing everything in mutual respect (125); joy growing through the free exchange of gifts (129); joy also growing through pain and sorrow and shared effort (130); a shared commitment to deeper growth together for the sake of society as a whole (131); definitive commitment made publicly (132); authentic dialogue that takes time (136-7); ‘unity in diversity’ or ‘reconciled diversity’, freeing ourselves from feeling that we all have to be alike, and a recognition that many disagreements are not about important things (139); reciprocal submission (156); a shared and lasting life project, living as one(163).

None of this is possible, says Pope Francis, without praying to the Holy Spirit for an outpouring of his grace, his supernatural strength and his spiritual fire, to confirm, direct and transform our love in every new situation (164). The grace of the Holy Spirit will enable married couples to grow in holiness through their married life, as they share in the mystery of Christ’s cross and resurrection in their sorrows and in their joy. They will care for one another, guide and encourage one another, and experience this as part of family spirituality (321). Spirituality becomes incarnate in the communion of the family. Those who have deep spiritual aspirations should not feel that the family detracts from their growth in the life of the Spirit, but rather see it as a path which the Lord is using to lead them to the heights of mystical union (316).

This passage resonates with the spiritual ecumenism and the way of prayer taught by Abbé Paul Couturier, mentioned earlier. When he asked separated Christians to pray for unity in, with and for one another, he asked them not simply to pray for other Christian groups, but in particular for their growth in holiness – for the sanctification of Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Reformed and so on. This is above all how they would grow closer to one another – by growing closer to Christ, in his Spirit. And in their united prayer they are already one.

In this dynamic process we are seeking what is beyond us, and yet living it now – the ‘already but not yet’ that can become especially clear to interchurch families. It is true for the married path; it is true for the ecumenical way. At the end of his exhortation Pope Francis writes: ‘No family drops down from heaven perfectly formed; families need constantly to grow and mature in the ability to love. This is a never-ending vocation born of the full communion of the Trinity, the profound union between Christ and his Church, the loving community which is the Holy Family of
Nazareth, and the pure fraternity existing among the saints of heaven (325).’ We have not yet arrived, we cannot ask for perfection; that is for the Kingdom to come. This perspective will keep us from judging others harshly. We are striving towards something greater than ourselves and our families. ‘Let us make this journey as families, let us keep walking together. What we have been promised is greater than we can imagine. May we never lose heart because of our limitations, or ever stop seeking that fullness of love and communion which God holds out before us (325).’ Interchurch families will add their appeal: let us make this journey as churches and ecclesial communities too; let us keep walking together, never losing heart, trusting that in the fullness of time God will bring us all together to share in the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Pope Francis sees the Church as a ‘family of families, constantly enriched by the lives of all the domestic churches. In virtue of the sacrament of matrimony, every family becomes, in effect, a good for the Church. … The experience of love in families is a perennial source of strength for the life of the Church (87-88).’ In the letter to the Ephesians (4:7-13) we read that after his ascension Christ gave gifts to his Church, for the sake of the building up of the whole body. These gifts were people: apostles, prophets, evangelists and teachers. Here in Amoris Laetitia we see not just individuals but families recognised as gifts to the Church. In this perspective may we not see interchurch families as an ecumenical good, as gifts for the sake of the life of the whole Church. May the love that unites them be recognised as an ecumenical strength. May these families be seen as signs and instruments given to the churches for the sake of their growth into the full communion of the One Church of Christ, made visible as a witness to the world.

Ruth Reardon

Amoris Laetitia - Comments From an Interchurch Family Perspective

Sun, 01 May 2016 15:33:57 GMT

The following article by Ruth Reardon is published in One in Christ, Vol 50 (2016) Number 1, reprinted here with permission.

Amoris Laetitia: Comments from an Interchurch Family Perspective

The long-awaited post-synodal apostolic exhortation, on the Joy of Love, was signed by Pope Francis on 19 ^th March 2016 and published on 8 ^th April in Italian, English, French and German. This is an attempt to assess the importance of this document from the limited perspective of what is of particular interest to interchurch families as such.

Mixed marriages

There is one paragraph only (247) devoted to mixed marriages (‘marriages between Catholics and other baptized persons’). This simply repeats para 72 of the Final Report of the 2015 Synod. Under the heading ‘certain complex situations’, it states that issues involving mixed marriages require particular attention. There are three points. First, mixed marriages have an intrinsic value and can make a contribution to the ecumenical movement. Second, for this purpose there should be cordial co-operation between the Catholic and non-Catholic ministers from the time that preparations for the marriage begin. Then the remaining half of the paragraph is devoted entirely to the question of Eucharistic sharing in such marriages. It repeats what is said in the 1993 PCPCU Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism: a decision as to whether the non-Catholic party may be admitted to communion is to be made in keeping with the general norms, taking into account the particular situation of the reception of the sacrament of matrimony by two baptized Christians. Although the spouses share the sacraments of baptism and matrimony, Eucharistic sharing can only be exceptional and in each case according to the stated norms (159-60).

The contents of para 247 are taken from Familiaris Consortio and the 1993 Directory on Ecumenism. In this sense there is nothing new here. However, it can be noted that this section devoted to mixed marriages (between Catholics and other baptized Christians) stands by itself as a positive statement. Interchurch marriages are clearly distinguished from other kinds of mixed marriage, as the submission to the 2015 Synod of Bishops from the Interchurch Families International Network (IFIN) had hoped [1] . There are still negative references to marriages with disparity of cult (interreligious marriages), but no longer are mixed marriages lumped together with them as ‘leading to critical situations not easily resolved’ (248), as they were in the Final Report of the 2015 Synod. Interchurch families are treated as quite distinct from interreligious families and other kinds of mixed families, and there are no negative references to them in the entire document.

It is important that a reference to Eucharistic sharing in the context of mixed marriages has been included in the document, following its appearance in the Final Report of the 2015 Synod, since the provisions of the 1993 Directory in this regard are not well known and many people even now still regard Eucharistic sharing as ‘impossible’. The general norms on Eucharistic sharing (Directory 129-131) are often quoted as though there were no specific reference to the particular situation of those who ‘share the sacraments of baptism and marriage’ later in the document (159-60). Indeed, this was done in the Instrumentum Laboris of the 2015 Synod. While there has been no clear official clarification that in some cases exceptional Eucharistic sharing can be on-going in a marriage, as IFIN had hoped, that pastoral option is still open to those who wish to adopt it. The whole thrust of Amoris Laetitia is not to change legislation at this stage but to stress the need for a more sensitive pastoral approach where marriage and family life is concerned.

To sum up:

1 It is recognised that interchurch families can contribute to the ecumenical movement.

2 Catholic and other Christian pastors are encouraged to work together in their pastoral care.

3 Possibilities for authorised Eucharistic sharing exist for those who ‘share the sacraments of baptism and marriage’ which do not yet exist for all Christians.

4 Interchurch marriages are clearly distinguished from other kinds of mixed marriage, and there are no negative references to them anywhere in Amoris Laetitia.

For the rest, beyond these specific points, Pope Francis addresses interchurch families and those who endeavour to offer them pastoral care in just the same way that he addresses same-church families and their pastors. They can feel included. Interchurch families are ordinary Christian families too; the only thing that distinguishes them is that they relate as couples and families both to the Roman Catholic Church and to another Church or ecclesial community. There is a wealth of pastoral understanding and spiritual enrichment in Amoris Laetitia to be absorbed over time. Here I am going to pick out a few of the principles and attitudes which lend themselves to particular application to interchurch families as such, as well as acknowledging that there is so much else in the document that will apply to them as well as to others.

Interchurch marriages are Christian marriages and domestic churches

‘Christian marriage, as a reflection of the union between Christ and his Church, is fully realized in the union between a man and a woman who give themselves to each other in a free, faithful and exclusive love, who belong to each other until death and are open to the transmission of life, and are consecrated by the sacrament, which grants them the grace to become a domestic church and a leaven of new life for society’ (292). This description of a ‘fully realized’ Christian marriage applies to many interchurch marriages, although some (like some Catholic/Catholic marriages) would find themselves in situations ‘which do not yet or no longer correspond to the Church’s teaching on marriage’(292).

(It should be noted that this ‘full realization’ is not a ‘perfect realization’, as Pope Francis is at pains to underline a number of times.)

Families are not a problem

Pope Francis understands that Christian families today face many difficult issues and complex situations as they respond to their vocation. He makes it clear that the synodal process has been a beginning, not an ending. There is need for a continuing open discussion of complex doctrinal, moral, spiritual and pastoral questions (2). His focus is clearly on the urgency of developing new pastoral approaches and attitudes. This is not the time to raise canonical questions. Thus it is not surprising that the two issues on which IFIN asked for consideration of a change in the rules (the need for a pre-nuptial ‘promise’ by the Catholic partner, and a further clarification on the norms for Eucharistic sharing) do not figure in Amoris Laetitia. It is support for family life that is urgent, and rules can follow later. (In fact, since Vatican II there has been a gradual change in the norms both in relation to the pre-nuptial promise required for the validity of a mixed marriage, and to Eucharistic sharing for those ‘who share the sacraments of baptism and marriage’; interchurch families hope that this development will be taken further, as soon as possible.)

For the time being Pope Francis asks for patient careful reading of the exhortation, hoping that in this reading all will feel called to love and cherish family life, for ‘families are not a problem, they are first and foremost an opportunity’ (7). The specific opportunity identified in the case of interchurch families is that they can make a contribution to the ecumenical movement (247). As interchurch couples used to assure one another in the early days of the Association of Interchurch Families in the late 1960s, when faced with a difficult problem over getting married or arranging a shared baptism: ‘Our problems are our opportunities!’. Think in terms of pastoral care for families, not just for individuals, says Pope Francis. Family units are important in the life of the Church and the world (44).

Each family is unique

When Pope Francis reflects on the challenges that face pastors, he does so in a very general way, because it is the task of different communities to devise practical and effective initiatives that respect both the Church’s teaching and local problems and needs (199). If families are to fulfil their calling to be ‘joy-filled witnesses as domestic churches’, it is vital that people experience the Gospel of the family as a joy. Pastors ‘are called to help sow seeds, the rest is God’s work’. ‘The Church wishes, with humility and compassion, to reach out to families and to help each family to discover the best way to overcome any obstacles it encounters’. Each family: ‘it is not enough to show generic concern for the family in pastoral planning’ (200). There is to be no blanket approach. ‘In the home, decisions cannot be made unilaterally, since each spouse shares responsibility for the family: yet each home is unique and each marriage will find an arrangement that works best’(220).

This is one of the points that IFIN made; there are some issues that are common to interchurch families as such, and a general policy needs to be worked out. But also, each interchurch family is unique. Each has to find a way to live out their ‘two-churchness’ that is right for their particular situation. As interchurch couples have always said: there is no blueprint for an interchurch family. Here pastors may find it helpful ‘with humility and compassion’ (200) to work together with other Christian pastors involved with interchurch couples, as they are encouraged to do. It is not always easy, and it is time-consuming, but there are sometimes considerable ecumenical benefits. As an Irish Catholic priest said in recounting his participation with Anglican priests in shared celebrations of baptism: ‘I came away from these experiences utterly convinced of the unsurpassable value of time spent in mutual preparation by both clergy in a spirit of co-operative partnership.’

Marriage is a vocation

Amoris Laetitia identifies the family as a domestic church, with love at its centre (67). Marriage is a sacrament, a gift ‘given for the sanctification and salvation of the spouses’. ‘Marriage is a vocation, inasmuch as it is a response to a specific call to experience conjugal love as an imperfect sign of the love between Christ and the Church. Consequently, the decision to marry and to have a family ought to be the fruit of a process of vocational discernment’ (72).

Interchurch spouses often have a very strong sense of being called to marry one another. It is often a difficult decision to marry someone from another ecclesial communion, sometimes in the face of strong discouragement from communities and families. Many couples have been surprised by the way they have been drawn together in love, often attracted by the deep Christian faith of the other. As one Canadian Catholic wife said: ‘God gave me all I had asked for in a spouse – only I had forgotten to say he must be a Catholic’. Similarly a Protestant wife from New Zealand: ‘only I didn’t ask that he shouldn’t be a Roman Catholic’. Interchurch couples are happy when their vocation to form a domestic church, reflecting the love between Christ and the Church, is respected by their communities.

Accompaniment through all the stages of marriage and family life

Pope Francis stresses the need to accompany married couples and families throughout their lives, to be close to them in all their joys and sorrows, their hopes and hurts – and especially when they are hurting. It is certainly true that pastoral understanding is needed for interchurch families through all the stages of marriage and family life, as IFIN pointed out in its submission to the 2015 Synod. Interchurch couples and families have often been hurt by the way in which they have felt that their church communities have been pulling them apart, rather than supporting their unity.

Marriage preparation begins the process. It ‘begins at birth’ (208), and interchurch parents too can be aware of this, and consider together how the particular values expressed in their marriage can model a way forward for their children, if and whoever they eventually marry. The more immediate preparation of engaged couples should ‘assist them to recognize eventual problems and risks’. ‘They should be strongly encouraged to discuss what each expects from marriage, what they understand by love and commitment, what each wants from the other and what kind of life they would like to build together’ (209). For interchurch couples this will include discussion of the particular problems and opportunities that will come if they marry across church boundaries, and attempt to live together in their domestic church a unity that their respective communities have not yet achieved. They will need a ‘firm resolve’ to be willing to ‘face eventual sacrifices, problems and situations of conflict’ (210). In facing these together their love will be deepened. Couples should be given details of where they can turn for help when problems arrive (211); for interchurch couples that will include information about groups and associations of interchurch families, where these exist.

The wedding celebration itself should become a ‘profound personal experience’ for the couple. ‘In the case of two baptized persons, the commitment expressed by the words of consent and the bodily union that consummates the marriage can only be seen as signs of the covenantal love and union between the incarnate Son of God and his Church (213). In an interchurch marriage the two baptized persons who are committing themselves to one another for the whole of their lives come from two church communities; the couple will feel that they are supported by both if the clergy and congregations of both share in the preparation and the liturgical celebration, whichever church building is chosen for the wedding. Because these communities are not in full communion with one another – their communion is real, but not yet fully realised – they do not normally share Eucharistic communion (Directory 129-31). The couple will need to decide whether they want the wedding to be celebrated in the context of a Eucharist. Even if they as a couple may be allowed to receive communion together, they might not wish the congregation and families to be divided, if the same is not true for them. There are many decisions to be made that are specific to an interchurch wedding, so that the marriage liturgy which is ‘a unique event, both a family and a community celebration’ (216) may be as appropriate and joyful as possible for the couple and families involved.

Pope Francis insists on the importance of accompanying couples in the first years of married life, when they have to learn that neither is perfect, but each is ‘a work in process’ (218), that they have to negotiate to arrive at win-win situations (220), that God is calling each to help the other to mature (221). It is a time when an interchurch couple need to work out their relations as a couple with both their church communities, and establish a worship pattern and a tradition of family prayer as they ‘dance towards the future’ (219) into which they will be able to integrate a child, the child of them both.

Amoris Laetitia speaks of love and pregnancy. ‘Children are loved even before they arrive’ (166); ‘for nine months every mother and father dreams about their child … for Christian married couples, baptism necessarily appears as a part of that dream’ (169). The time of expecting and receiving new life from God is a time of joy for the couple, but for interchurch couples it can also be a time of anxiety. Will their two church communities be willing to rejoice together at the birth of their baby? Will they be willing to join together in a shared celebration of baptism? Will the couple be able to get the baptism registered in both registers – a concrete sign that both communities will take responsibility for supporting them as parents as they bring up their child to the best of their ability? Will they experience a family tug-of-war, as both sets of grandparents try to make exclusive claims on the religious upbringing of their grandchild? Pope Francis advises mothers not to ‘let fears, worries, other people’s comments or problems lessen your joy at being God’s means of bringing a new life to the world. Prepare yourself for the birth of your child, but without obsessing’ (171). It has sometimes been very hard for interchurch mothers not to ‘obsess’.

Both parents are necessary; ‘every child has a right to receive love from a mother and a father’ (172). This is not just ‘the love of father and mother as individuals, but also of their mutual love, perceived as the source of one’s life and the solid foundation of the family’. The following words have a particular application to interchurch parents: ‘Together they teach the value of reciprocity, of respect for differences and of being able to give and take’.

Both parents together are the teachers of their children. The Church plays an important supporting role, starting with Christian initiation, through welcoming communities, says Pope Francis (84). ‘At the same time I feel it important to reiterate that the overall education of children is a “most serious duty” and at the same time a “primary right” of parents. This is not just a task or a burden, but an essential and inalienable right that parents are called to defend and of which no one may claim to deprive them’. This is said in relation to the claims of the state, but it can also be applied to church authorities. Indeed, for mixed marriages a first recognition of this was made in 1970 when both partners no longer had to promise that all children of their marriage would be baptized and brought up as Roman Catholics. ‘The Church is called to cooperate with parents through suitable pastoral initiatives, assisting them in the fulfilment of their educational mission. She must always do this by helping them to appreciate their proper role and to realize that by the reception of the sacrament of marriage they become ministers of their children’s education’ (85). This help is just what IFIN appealed for, taking account of the two-church situation of interchurch families from baptism onwards, as the children grow and develop in their relationship with Christ, experienced through the life and traditions of the two church communities of their parents.

The couple must ‘leave’ their own parents (not abandoning or ignoring them), in order to create together a new home that ‘will be a true hearth, a place of security, hope and future plans, and the couple can truly become ‘one flesh’ (190). Neither can simply expect to reproduce the pattern of their own upbringing – certainly not in an interchurch marriage. ‘Both spouses need to make the effort to grow in trust and communication. Marriage challenges husbands and wives to find new ways of being sons and daughters’. It is a cause for joy when an interchurch marriage is the occasion for one or both families of origin to be drawn into a concern for Christian unity that they might never have known without that experience.

In a section on crises, worries and difficulties, Pope Francis points out that crises can become opportunities (232) – many interchurch couples have discovered this. Facing them together has ensured deeper communication, and pastors can encourage this process (234). For interchurch couples this means that church divisions must not be allowed to drive an unnecessary wedge between the couple; pastoral care needs to concentrate on supporting the unity of the marriage in whatever ways are possible. For all marriages, forgiveness and reconciliation are basic, and separation must only be considered as a last resort. Accompaniment must continue after separation and divorce. It is here, under the heading ‘Certain complex situations’ that we find paragraph 247 on mixed marriages, followed by a paragraph on marriages with disparity of cult (which includes a reference to marriages in which one partner is a Catholic and the other a non-believer), and consideration of the problems that arise when persons in a complex marital situation wish to be baptized, families whose members experience same-sex attraction, and single-parent families (248-52). All need pastoral accompaniment.

Pope Francis speaks of the challenge of the death of a loved one. ‘To turn our backs on a grieving family would show a lack of mercy’ (253). The death of an interchurch spouse, or that of a child, is a time when it is particularly valuable for the pastors and communities of both churches to show their loving concern for the remaining spouse, or for the grieving parents. Interchurch families have felt joyful gratitude when both have come together to celebrate the life of a spouse or a child who has meant so much to them. A funeral can be a final act of ecumenical witness, and a great comfort to those left behind.

Discernment

The need for wise discernment to guide couples and families through the complexities of their experiences today is central to the thinking of Pope Francis. Sometimes this means that pastors should stand back, and allow space for couples to make their own discernment in their particular circumstances. It is not helpful ‘to try to impose rules by sheer authority’ (35). Pastors themselves ‘need a healthy dose of self-criticism’ (36). ‘We find it hard to make room for the consciences of the faithful, who very often respond as best they can to the Gospel amid their limitations, and are capable of carrying out their own discernment in complex situations. We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them’ (37). Jesus himself ‘never failed to show compassion’ (38). So often interchurch couples have been grateful to pastors who have offered them this kind of respect and support. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea’, said one parish priest to a couple who explained to him how they intended to bring up their children. ‘I don’t see how it will work. But if that’s what you’ve decided together to do in conscience, I shall do all I can to support you.’

The Church’s way ‘is to pour out the balm of God’s mercy on all those who ask for it with a sincere heart.’ We need ‘to avoid judgements which do not take into account the complexity of various situations, and to be attentive, by necessity, to how people experience distress because of their condition’ (269). Each person should be helped ‘to find his or her proper way of participating in the ecclesial community and thus to experience being touched by unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous mercy. No one can be condemned for ever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel! Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and re-married, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves’ (297). Interchurch families can feel themselves included too, and there is quite a lot in chapter 8 (‘Accompanying, discerning and integrating weakness’) referring to the Church’s care for the divorced and remarried that can be applied to them.

Pope Francis notes the immense variety of concrete situations of the divorced and remarried, so that ‘neither the Synod nor this Exhortation could be expected to provide a new set of general rules, canonical in nature and applicable to all cases. What is possible is simply a renewed encouragement to undertake a responsible personal and pastoral discernment of particular cases’ (300). (Footnote 336 adds that ‘this is also the case with regard to sacramental discipline, since discernment can recognise that in a particular situation no grave fault exists’. ‘Priests have the duty to accompany the divorced and remarried in helping them to understand their situation according to the teaching of the Church and the guidelines of their bishop’. … ‘What we are speaking of is a process of accompaniment and discernment which guides the faithful to an awareness of their situation before God’. There can be a ‘grave danger of misunderstandings’, but ‘when a responsible and tactful person, who does not presume to put his or her own desires ahead of the common good of the Church, meets with a pastor capable of acknowledging the seriousness of the matter before him, there can be no risk that a specific discernment may lead people to think that the Church maintains a double standard (300). ‘General rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations. At the same time, it must be said that, precisely for that reason, what is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be elevated to the level of a rule (304). But rules are not ‘stones to throw at people’s lives’. Pastors must not close their hearts and hide behind the Church’s teachings, judging difficult cases and wounded families with superiority and superficiality. By thinking that everything is black and white, pastors sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth. People need the Church’s help to grow in the life of grace and charity (305). Here is a second footnote (351) which says that in certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. Pope Francis adds a reminder, taken from Evangelii Gaudium, that ‘the Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak’.

Pope Francis assures his readers that ‘to show understanding in the face of exceptional situations never implies dimming the light of the fuller ideal, or proposing anything less than what Jesus offers to the human being. Today, more important than the pastoral care of failures is the pastoral effort to strengthen marriages and thus prevent their breakdown’ (307). This might well be applied to the fears of those who are worried that any extension of exceptional Eucharistic sharing might undermine the Catholic witness to the close bond between ecclesial and Eucharistic communion. There is no reason for it to do so. Indeed, an understanding of an interchurch family as a domestic church should in itself be a strong support to that witness. Reflecting on the way that family members need to relate to one another if they are to grow in love and joy as a domestic church, can also be a stimulus for church communities, as they reflect on the way in which they need to relate to one another if they are to grow together into unity.

Pope Francis can ‘understand those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion’. But ‘Jesus expects us to stop looking for those personal or communal niches which shelter us from the maelstrom of human misfortune, and instead enter into the reality of other people’s lives and to know the power of tenderness. Whenever we do so, our lives become wonderfully complicated’ (308). ‘The Bride of Christ must pattern her behaviour after the Son of God who goes out to everyone without exception. He loves them all. On the basis of this realization, it will become possible for the balm of mercy to reach everyone, as a sign that the kingdom of God is already present in our midst’ (309). ‘At times we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems’ (310). At times we find it hard to make room for God’s unconditional love in our pastoral activity. We put so many conditions on mercy that we empty it of its concrete meaning and real significance. That is the worst way of watering down the Gospel’ (311). We need to avoid a ‘cold bureaucratic morality’ in dealing with sensitive issues, but to practise ‘a pastoral discernment filled with merciful love, which is ever ready to understand, forgive, accompany, hope, and above all integrate.’ ‘I encourage the faithful who find themselves in complicated situations to speak confidently with their pastors or with other lay people whose lives are committed to the Lord. … I also encourage the Church’s pastors to listen to them with sensitivity and serenity, with a sincere desire to understand their plight and their point of view, in order to help them live better lives and to recognize their proper place in the Church’ (312).

Training in ministry for marriage and family life

It is not always easy for interchurch families to ‘speak confidently with their pastors’; many have tried it and have met with such discouragement and incomprehension that they have felt unable to try again. When they talk with other interchurch couples, however, they learn of the wide spectrum of pastoral responses that exist. The Synod on the Family identified the need for ‘a more adequate formation … of priests, deacons, men and women religious, catechists and other pastoral workers’ and Amoris Laetitia took up this theme, saying that ‘ordained ministers often lack the training needed to deal with the complex problems currently facing families’ (203). The IFIN submission to the Synod pointed out that it would be helpful if further education on the pastoral care of interchurch families could be included in all seminaries, especially if some of the input is given by interchurch couples. Where this has been done, it has proved very positive.

Interchurch families, Christian unity and the Eucharist

There are many references in Amoris Laetitia to the link between the sacrament of marriage and the sacrament of the Eucharist, between family life and sharing in the Eucharist. In the opening chapter, ‘inspired by the Scriptures, to set a proper tone’ (6), there are two references to the close relationship of Eucharistic communion to the family life of the home. The first is to the New Testament texts that speak of ‘the churches that meet in homes; a family’s living space could turn into a domestic church, a setting for the Eucharist, the presence of Christ seated at its table’ (15). The second is a reference to the family becoming ‘a union of persons in the image of the union of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. … The family is called to join in daily prayer, to read the Word of God and to share in Eucharistic communion, and thus to grow in love and become ever more fully a temple in which the Spirit dwells’ (29). Families are not just collections of individuals when it comes to Eucharistic communion; they are families, domestic churches who need to share Eucharistic communion. This is felt deeply by some interchurch families. Family spirituality, prayer and participation in the Sunday Eucharist is important, and it is valuable to celebrate the Eucharist for families, especially on wedding anniversaries (223).

Besides a number of references to the family as a union of persons in the image of the Trinity, Amoris Laetitia also focuses on marriage as a sign of the love between Christ and his Church. The mutual belonging of the spouses is a real representation, through the sacramental sign, of the same relationship between Christ and the Church’ (72). ‘Christian marriage is a sign of how much Christ loved his Church in the covenant sealed on the Cross, yet it also makes that love present in the communion of the spouses. By becoming one flesh, they embody the espousal of our human nature by the Son of God. That is why, in the joys of their love and family life, he gives them here on earth a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb. Even though the analogy between the human couple of husband and wife and that of Christ and his Church, is “imperfect”, it inspires us to beg the Lord to bestow on every married couple an outpouring of his divine love’ (73).

The theme of ‘imperfect’ love is referred to again in a meditation on one of the phrases in the Pauline hymn to love in the first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13: love endures all things. Although ‘the grace of the sacrament of marriage is intended before all else to perfect the couple’s love’ (89), ‘we encounter problems whenever we think that relationships or people ought to be perfect, or when we put ourselves at the centre and expect things to turn out our way (92). ‘Love does not have to be perfect for us to value it. The other person loves me as best they can, with all their limits, but the fact that love is imperfect does not mean it is untrue or unreal’ (113). This is a reminder of how the 1993 Ecumenical Directory described the way in which members of other Churches and ecclesial Communities are brought by baptism into a ‘a real, even if imperfect’ communion with the Catholic Church (Directory, 129) – a communion that is real, even if not fully realized, as the phrase can be translated.

Another reminder of the relationship between married love and ecumenical relationships between churches and ecclesial communities comes in the section ‘Growing in conjugal love’. Married sacramental love ‘is an “affective union”, spiritual and sacrificial, which combines the warmth of friendship and erotic passion, and endures long after emotions and passion subside’ (120). This recalls the meeting of Pope John Paul II and the Archbishop of Canterbury when the Pope said to Archbishop Runcie that ‘affective communion’ leads to ‘effective communion’. Much of this section of Amoris Laetitia can be applied to church relationship as well as to marriage. ‘God makes of two spouses one single existence’ (121). However, ‘there is no need to lay upon two limited persons the tremendous burden of having to reproduce perfectly the union existing between Christ and the Church, for marriage as a sign entails a dynamic process … one which advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God’ (122). Other examples: a faithful covenant that entails no going back (123); sharing everything in mutual respect (125); joy growing through the free exchange of gifts (129); joy also growing through pain and sorrow and shared effort (130); a shared commitment to deeper growth together for the sake of society as a whole (131); definitive commitment made publicly (132); authentic dialogue that takes time (136-7); ‘unity in diversity’ or ‘reconciled diversity’, freeing ourselves from feeling that we all have to be alike, and a recognition that many disagreements are not about important things (139); reciprocal submission (156); a shared and lasting life project; living as one (163). A daily effort is needed, and the grace of the Holy Spirit who confirms, directs and transforms (164).

The concluding sentences of the last chapter of Amoris Laetitia, on the spirituality of marriage and the family, can equally well be applied to the ecumenical process. ‘Families need constantly to grow and mature in the ability to love. This is a never-ending vocation born of the full communion of the Trinity, the profound unity between Christ and his Church, the loving community which is the Holy Family of Nazareth, and the pure fraternity existing among the saints of heaven.’ We have not yet arrived, we cannot ask for perfection; that is for the Kingdom to come. This perspective will keep us from judging others harshly. We are striving towards something greater than ourselves and our families. ‘Let us make this journey as families, let us keep walking together. What we have been promised is greater than we can imagine. May we never lose heart because of our limitations, or ever stop seeking that fullness of love and communion which God holds out before us’ (325). Interchurch families will want to add: let us make this journey as Churches and ecclesial Communities too, let us keep walking together.

This final section on the spirituality of marriage and the family also stresses the need for Eucharistic sharing in their walk together. ‘The family’s communal journey of prayer culminates by sharing together in the Eucharist, especially in the context of the Sunday rest. Jesus knocks on the door of families, to share with them the Eucharistic supper (cf Rev 3:20). There, spouses can always seal anew the paschal covenant which united them and which ought to reflect the covenant which God sealed with mankind in the cross. The Eucharist is the sacrament of the new covenant, where Christ’s redemptive love is carried out (cf Lk 22:20). The close bond between married life and the Eucharist thus becomes all the more clear. For the food of the Eucharist offers the spouses the strength and incentive needed to live the marriage covenant each day as a “domestic church”.’ (318)

That necessary ‘sharing together in the Eucharist’ is difficult for the domestic churches that are interchurch families, so long as the Church communities to which they belong are not in communion with one another. Many have shared as far as they can without receiving communion together, but they know that this is not enough. They can be powerful witnesses to an underlying unity when they are able to share the Eucharist fully (although exceptionally) across church divisions. ‘The married couple are a permanent reminder for the Church of what took place on the cross; they are for one another and for their children witnesses of the salvation in which they share through the sacrament’ [of marriage]’ (72).

Sometimes it is the children themselves who take the initiative. When children are lovingly helped to ‘grow in freedom, maturity, overall discipline and real autonomy’ (261), they ‘will surprise us with ideas and projects born of that freedom, which challenge us to rethink our own ideas. This is a good thing’ (262). There is the child who looks up at the bishop when he visits the parish and asks: ‘Why can’t my Mummy receive communion with my Daddy?’ There is the son who is reluctant to receive his First Communion if his father is not able to receive alongside him. There is the child who breaks her Host in two in order to carry half back to her mother and share it with her. There is the child who observes: 'I don’t think that’s a very good rule, because it breaks up families.’

Traditionally the Catholic norms for Eucharistic sharing have allowed for the needs of individual Christians, but not for those of mixed families as families. The 1993 Ecumenical Directory broke new ground when it referred to those who ‘share the sacraments of baptism and marriage’ as in possible need of Eucharistic sharing – but much more work needs to be done in relation to spouses and to families. It needs to take account of the fact that ‘the family’s communal journey of prayer culminates by sharing together in the Eucharist, especially in the context of the Sunday rest’, and that ‘the food of the Eucharist offers the spouses the strength and incentive needed to live the marriage covenant each day as a “domestic church”.’ ‘Each day’; it is not a question of rare occasions; marriage is an on-going commitment and needs on-going sustenance.

‘The Church is a family of families, constantly enriched by the lives of all those domestic churches. In virtue of the sacrament of matrimony, every family becomes, in effect, a good for the Church’ (87). ‘The experience of love in families is a perennial source of strength for the life of the Church’ (88). May interchurch families become an ecumenical good; may the love that unites them be recognized as an ecumenical strength.

Personal reflections on a puzzle

On 15 ^th November 2015 Pope Francis visited the Lutheran church in Rome, and his address was followed by a question-and-answer session. A Lutheran wife, Anke de Bernardinis, married to a Catholic, raised the question of sharing communion. Ever since I read his answer (appended below), I have been puzzled by his statement that ‘I would never dare give permission to do this because I do not have the authority.’ I would have thought that in terms of canon law and the 1993 Ecumenical Directory he could have done precisely that (obviously after pastoral dialogue) as Bishop of Rome. But having now read Amoris Laetitia, it seems to me that it makes sense to read the answer in the light of the Exhortation.

Amoris Laetitia shows Pope Francis as not interested in changing rules and regulations, or in the minutiae of their interpretation, but rather in setting out a renewed vision of marriage and family life, based on love, and inculcating a whole new pastoral approach, based on accompaniment and discernment. As we have seen, he envisions an inclusive Church, and leaves it to bishops, priests, parishes, ministers for marriage and family life, to work out and implement pastoral policies, to show compassion and welcome to all. He trusts families to exercise their own discernment.

Right at the beginning of Amoris Laetitia, he repeats a phrase that he used in Evangelii Gaudium, ‘time is greater than space’ (3), and later he repeats it again, adding that ‘it is more important to start processes than to dominate spaces’ (261). More explanation was given in Evangelii Gaudium, where Pope Francis says that this approach ‘enables us to work slowly but surely, without being obsessed with immediate results. It helps us patiently to endure difficult and adverse situations, or inevitable changes in our plans. It invites us to accept the tension between fullness and limitation, and to give priority to time.’ He explains what he means: ‘Giving priority to space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion; it is to crystallize processes and presume to hold them back. Giving priority to time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces. Time governs spaces, illumines them and makes them links in a constantly expanding chain, with no possibility of return. What we need then, is to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society and engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point where they bear fruit in significant historical events. Without anxiety, but with clear convictions and tenacity’ (Evangelii Gaudium 223).

So the whole thrust of Amoris Laetitia is to encourage, at every level of the Church’s life, actions that will initiate or contribute to processes leading to positive developments in marriage and family life. With respect to mixed marriages, the process has already begun. Law has changed, and it can change further. Already bishops are free to admit interchurch spouses to communion together, in particular cases. Some bishops and priests want to do so, others do not. Some want to limit admission to rare occasions; others feel that this does not take account of the nature of marriage. May it not be that Pope Francis does not wish to pursue the question at the level that might risk ‘crystallizing’ it too soon (the level of law) but to encourage actions that will open up fruitful possibilities for the future? Always to be done with love, humility and patient discernment, as he constantly indicates.

This attitude is at work in his answer to Anke de Bernardinis. He refuses to answer the question in terms of ‘criteria for admission’. He muses over some theological questions in his own mind. Jesus said ‘Do this in memory of me’; we do the same thing. Is Eucharistic sharing a final sign of unity or a way to move towards it? The marriage supper of the Lamb will be the perfect banquet at the end of time, but in this imperfect world is not the Lord’s Supper food for the journey? We share a common baptism, so we have to walk together. An interchurch family may share in that walking together even more deeply than others, because it is also a conjugal journey, a family journey of love and faith. There are shared failures and the need for forgiveness; this is the same for both partners, although they may express and seek it in different ways. They pray together, and their baptismal bond becomes stronger. They teach their children who Jesus is and why he came – and it is the same message, whether it is expressed in Lutheran or Catholic terms. So what about the Supper?

Pope Francis recalls a great friend of his, an Episcopalian bishop, who accompanied his wife and children to Mass on Sundays before going to worship with his community. We know that he was deeply affected by the fact that the family did not receive communion together. The great friend was Tony Palmer, a bishop of the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches. He first met Archbishop Bergoglio in 2006 in Buenos Aires, where he was on a joint mission with the head of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Italy to bring Catholics and evangelicals together. When they met, the Cardinal was especially interested to learn that he had a Catholic wife and children. Palmer explained that it worked well – they were complementary in their diversity – but there was a problem. ‘I told him that since I led my family back to the Catholic Church, I am not allowed to take communion. I have to stay in the benches on Sunday morning. So my kids come back after taking communion and say, “Dad, why would you join us to a church that separates a family?” When he heard this, Palmer said, Bergoglio’s ‘heart broke – his eyes filled with tears.’ [2]

Then Pope Francis gave his reply to Anke. ‘I respond to your question only with a question: how can I participate with my husband, so that the Lord’s Supper may accompany me on my path? It is a problem to which each person must respond.’ We believe the Lord is present. ‘Life is greater than explanations and interpretations. Always refer to baptism: “one faith, one baptism, one Lord”, as Paul tells us, and take the outcome from there. I would never dare to give permission for this because I do not have the authority. One baptism, one Lord, one faith. Speak with the Lord and go forward. I do not dare say any more.’

‘Go forward’ – not expressly to receive communion, but not specifically for a blessing either, nor to witness to the pain of division. It is up to ‘each person’ to make their prayerful discernment in any particular circumstance. In the context of his reflections Pope Francis’ answer can be read as an encouragement to Anke de Bernardinis to go forward to receive communion as food for the journey so that those who already share baptism and their family journey of love and faith should share the nourishment they need for their further journey.

Does this leave interchurch families where we were before? Does Amoris Laetitia leave the Church where we were before? There has been no change in legislation. But the entirely new insistence on discernment by couples and families and their pastoral accompaniment by parishes, priests and bishops may in time create an entirely new climate of pastoral understanding that will lead to a new flourishing of the domestic churches that contribute to as well as receive from the life of the Church.

Ruth Reardon

Appendix: an extract from the question-and-answer session that took place when Pope Francis visited the Lutheran Church in Rome, 15 November 2015

Then Anke de Bernardinis, the wife of a Roman Catholic, expressed sorrow at “not being able to partake together in the Lord’s Supper” and asked: “What more can we do to reach communion on this point?”.

Thank you, Ma’am. Regarding the question on sharing the Lord’s Supper, it is not easy for me to answer you, especially in front of a theologian like Cardinal Kasper! I’m afraid! I think the Lord gave us [the answer] when he gave us this command: “Do this in memory of me”. And when we share in, remember and emulate the Lord’s Supper, we do the same thing that the Lord Jesus did. And the Lord’s Supper will be, the final banquet will there be in the New Jerusalem, but this will be the last. Instead on the journey, I wonder — and I don’t know how to answer, but I am making 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, to those who understand. It is true that in a certain sense sharing is saying that there are no differences between us, that we have the same doctrine — I underline the word, a difficult word to understand — but I ask myself: don’t we have the same Baptism? And if we have the same Baptism, we have to walk together. You are a witness to an even profound journey because it is a conjugal journey, truly a family journey, of human love and of shared faith. We have the same Baptism. When you feel you are a sinner — I too feel I am quite a sinner — when your husband feels he is a sinner, you go before the Lord and ask forgiveness; your husband does the same and goes to the priest and requests absolution. They are ways of keeping Baptism alive. When you pray together, that Baptism grows, it becomes strong; when you teach your children who Jesus is, why Jesus came, what Jesus did, you do the same, whether in Lutheran or Catholic terms, but it is the same. The question: and the Supper? There are questions to which only if one is honest with oneself and with the few theological “lights” that I have, one must respond the same, you see. “This is my Body, this is my Blood”, said the Lord, “do this in memory of me”, and this is a viaticum which helps us to journey. I had a great friendship with an Episcopalian bishop, 48 years old, married with two children, and he had this concern: a Catholic wife, Catholic children, and he a bishop. He accompanied his wife and children to Mass on Sundays and then went to worship with his community. It was a step of participating in the Lord’s Supper. Then he passed on, the Lord called him, a just man. I respond to your question only with a question: how can I participate with my husband, so that the Lord’s Supper may accompany me on my path? It is a problem to which each person must respond. A pastor friend of mine said to me: “We believe that the Lord is present there. He is present. You believe that the Lord is present. So what is the difference?” — “Well, there are explanations, interpretations...”. Life is greater than explanations and interpretations. Always refer to Baptism: “One faith, one baptism, one Lord”, as Paul tells us, and take the outcome from there. I would never dare give permission to do this because I do not have the authority. One Baptism, one Lord, one faith. Speak with the Lord and go forward. I do not dare say more. (Translation given on the Vatican website)

[1] The text of the IFIN submission was given in One in Christ, 49, 1, 2015, pp.142-160.

[2] The story of the friendship is told by Austen Ivereigh in The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope, 2014,and also in an article inthe Boston Globe, 7 August 2014.

John Coventry Lecture 2016

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 13:35:33 GMT

Personal Reflections on the Synods of Bishops on the Family

John Coventry Memorial Lecture 2016

Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi

I am extremely thankful to the Association of Interchurch Families that they have generously agreed to organize this book launch and thus give me and Ray the opportunity to present the results of our shared endeavor. I’ll say a bit more about the book at the end of my speech.

When in late August of last year the idea of a book launch in London took shape, I became a bit anxious about how this would work when I heard that the book presentation could possibly be held together with the prestigious John Coventry Memorial Lecture. I thought, well, they will certainly invite some bishop, prestigious theologian, or other prominent person to give the lecture, as they have done in the past. As it turned out, you didn’t, so here I am.

What I would like to do in this lecture is to provide some personal reflections on the two synods of bishops on the family which were held in 2014 and 2015 and on the synodal process which is still ongoing and which will reach a new phase with today’s promulgation of the post-synodal exhortation by Pope Francis.

To reflect as a theologian and Catholic Christian on the bishops’ synods is a risky and provisional undertaking. Provisional, first because precisely the synodal process is still in progress and secondly, because I have no idea what Pope Francis, the pope of surprises, will do with the propositions of the synod fathers in his post-synodal exhortation.

But my task is also risky because my assessment of the synods is not only based on sober theological analysis but also mixed up with personal feelings, preferences and expectations. I have a feeling of gratitude and satisfaction because I am thrilled by the fact that the topic of marriage and family has all suddenly received so much attention in the church and beyond. Yet, I am also disappointed with the concrete results of the synods because they did not meet my initial expectations.

So, I will try to address some of the issues which render my task a difficult one and hope that in the end I will have provided you with a full-fledged lecture.

1. A Sense of Gratification and Satisfaction

In the 1980 December issue of The Furrow, the Irish Redemptorist and Professor of Moral Theology at the Alphonsian Academy in Rome, Sean O’Riordan, looked back on the Fifth General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the family which had just closed. Struck by the strong and powerful address which the then new Pope John Paul II had given at the closing session, he concluded his article in the following way:

At the heart of the programme (of Pope John Paul II, TK) lies a traditionalist vision of the values and principles implied in the sacrament of matrimony; but it is a traditionalist vision that is also mystical and prophetic and that seeks to rebuild Christian life today rather than try to bring it back to an irretrievable past. This is a mighty project but it necessarily raises many questions at different levels, theological, ecclesiological, pastoral and sociological. To take one central point in the project: will Pope John Paul II succeed in carrying the whole Church with him in the full implementation of the teaching of Humanae Vitae in regard to birth regulation? If so, he will have succeeded in doing something that Paul VI did not succeed in doing. But if he too fails to create a unified Church stance here, what then? A situation could develop in which his teaching would have less and less effect on actual Christian living today while the man himself would still be highly popular.Ecclesiologically it would be a very difficult and complex situation. But there is no sign at all that the Polish Pope 'who comes from afar' is afraid that he might find himself in such a situation. He seems to be quite confident that he can carry the Church with him all the way. Will he in fact be able to do so? Only time can tell. [1]

Thirty-five years later we know that John Paul II’s conviction and courage did not suffice to “carry the whole church with him”. The various questionnaires and surveys which have been produced in the run-up to the First Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 2014 have provided sufficient and compelling evidence that a large portion of committed Catholics do not agree with the church’s response to current challenges to sexual, conjugal and family life – with contraception heading the list of contested issues, followed by unmarried cohabitation and remarriage after divorce which were high on the agenda already at the 1980 synod, and homosexuality and same-sex relations which have been added since then to the concerns of many faithful. Conservatives in the Roman Catholic Church have also come to realize that the discrepancy between the magisterium’s moral instruction and the moral insights of the people of God is not primarily due to the failure of pastors and catechists who have not succeeded in rendering the message understandable and communicable. The New York columnist Ross Douthat, himself a converted Catholic, has recently claimed that the “master narrative” of conservative Catholicism is in crisis. This master narrative goes as follows:

Once, fifty years ago, there was an ecumenical council of the Church. Its goal was to reorient Catholicism away from its nineteenth-century fortress mentality, to open a new dialogue with the modern world, to look more deeply into the Catholic past in order to prepare for the Catholic future, and to usher in an era of evangelization and renewal.

This was not intended to be a revolutionary council, and nothing in its deliberations, documents, and reforms was meant to rewrite doctrine or Protestantize the faith. But the council’s sessions coincided with an era of social upheaval and cultural revolution in the West, and the hoped-for renewal was hijacked, in many cases, by those for whom renewal meant an accommodation to the spirit of the 1960s, and the transformation of the Church along liberal Protestant lines.

Soon, two parties developed: One followed the actual documents of the council and urged the Church to maintain continuity with Catholic teaching and tradition, and the other was loyal to a “spirit of the council” that just happened to coincide with the cultural fashions that came in its wake.

The second party had its way in many Catholic institutions – seminaries and religious orders, Catholic universities and diocesan bureaucracies – for many years. The results were at best disappointing, at worst disastrous: collapsing Mass attendance, vanishing vocations, a swift erosion of Catholic identity everywhere you looked.

But fortunately for the Church, a pope was elected who belonged to the first party, who rejected the hermeneutic of rupture, who carried the true intentions of the council forward while proclaiming the ancient truths of Catholicism anew. And while a liberalized, accommodationist Catholicism failed to reproduce itself and began to (literally) die out, the Catholic witness of this pope and his successor inspired exactly the kind of renewal the council fathers had hoped for: a generation of bishops, priests, and laity prepared to witness to the fullness of Catholicism, the splendor of its truth. [2]

This story, however, is showing rifts, at least since the pontificate of Pope Francis. Douthat reveals its flaw in that conservatives have underestimated the potential and the resilience of progressive Catholicism. Their somewhat naïve optimism made them believe that theological liberalism had had its time and that John Paul’s papal conservatism had irrevocably stabilized the church and even to some degree influenced the wider culture. They were mistaken, however. The polarized debates at and surrounding the two recent bishops’ synods have shown that liberal Catholicism had never disappeared. It just hibernated during the era of John Paul II and Benedict XVI and all too eagerly seized the moment when the newly elected Jorge Bergoglio “in words, deeds and appointments…reopened doors that seemed to be closed since 1978, offering liberal Catholicism a second chance, a new springtime of the sort that seemed hard to imagine just a few short years ago.”

As much as I agree with Douthat’s thesis that the conservative master narrative was flawed, I do not believe that what is at stake here is a simple miscalculation of the real power constellations in the church nor a false sense of security from the side of the conservatives who naively presumed that the papacy is “the first bulwark of orthodoxy” – which was true for John Paul and Benedict but seems no longer so for Francis. It may be right and can only be applauded when Douthat calls on John Paul II-era Catholicism to “think more deeply” – instead of relying on arguments thought to be won once and forever – and to provide in particular “a more robust theory of the development of doctrine”. But I do not see what such a theory will be substantially about if its proponents are as quick as the author quoted here to conjure up the ghost of a “Hegelian understanding”, i.e. the view that “history will have its way” and to denounce what he calls the “Protestantization” of the faith. Being myself a Roman Catholic married to a Protestant like many of those here present, I have come to learn from my marital life as much as from theological study what Protestant thought has in fact contributed to my own understanding and living of the “Catholic faith”. It is such rude and thoughtless predication based on an excessive need for demarcation that disqualify Catholic conservativism in my eyes and make it difficult to respond to Douthat’s cryptic invitation to go beyond the usual ideological barriers and redefine the “Catholic center”.

I do not have the intention to further enter into this discussion with our author, but there is one element in Douthat’s analysis which I find plausible and worth considering in the context of the recent bishop’s synods. Douthat writes that “for all its future-oriented rhetoric, Vatican II’s clearest achievements were mostly backward-looking. It dealt impressively with problems that came to the fore during the crises and debates of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (the Church’s relationship to democracy, to religious liberty…). But its deliberations simply took place too soon to address the problems that broke across Catholicism and Christianity with the sexual revolution and that still preoccupy us now.” I agree. Vatican II made an inestimable and overdue attempt to define the church’s position towards and in modernity but left that task largely unfinished. And it does not really come as a surprise that the church has more to reconnect with and accomplish the council’s agenda in no other domain than that of sexuality, marriage and family life. It is only that the post-conciliar era of papal conservatism has not been very helpful in doing so – sorry to say that, Mr. Douthat! It seems to me that Pope Francis has very well understood what is really at stake here when he called the two synods.

When the Brenninkmeijers started in 1986 with what would later become the International Academy for Marital Spirituality (INTAMS) and still when I joined it in 1995, many in church and theology turned up their noses at what they regarded as an exotic topic and a weird endeavor. That we were able to make our small contribution to an epochal task the church and Christianity in the second half of the 20 ^th and beginning of 21 ^st century are confronted with, gives us a belated sense of gratification and satisfaction.

2. A Sense of Dissatisfaction

Whether I look at it from the perspective of interchurch families or from a broader angle, I cannot conceal my disappointment about the tangible, official results of the two synods so far. I willingly admit, as many observers have done, that the synod has been a real exercise in synodality and collegiality, that after decades of authoritarian direction and supervision the synod fathers were able and also willing to speak with parresia, candidly and boldly, and that most of them were also listening with humility, as Pope Francis had expressly urged them to do at the opening of the Extraordinary Assembly in October 2014. But what will in the end remain of it, if that is all there is? “The formal results of our work may seem rather mediocre; but the Synod was a wonderful learning experience for us all”, said one of the bishop at the end of the 1980 synod which he had attended. [3] But synods do not fulfil their purpose if they only give a good feeling to bishops.

I would like to illustrate in more theological detail what is precisely the cause of my dissatisfaction with the documents, mainly with the final report, the Relatio synodi of the 2015 assembly. I will restrict myself to analyzing first briefly how the documents have addressed the so-called “difficult” or “complex” family situations and then turn to the issue of interchurch families.

From Irregular to Complex Family Situations

The major challenge the bishops’ synods were confronted with can be summarized in a straightforward question: how can the church teaching on Christian marriage be upheld in the face of the factual diversity of forms of living together – among Christians and Catholics – which do not – not yet or no longer – correspond to the ideal expressed in that teaching? While the 1980 synod in its outlook on the world still started from a closed Catholic milieu to which artificial birth control, “free unions”, “trial marriages” and remarriage after divorce presented rather disconnected items of deviance and contention, [4] the recent synods were much more aware of today’s pervading cultural context in western societies which they perceived as a compact and unified challenge to the church’s traditional teaching on marriage. The Instrumentum laboris for the 2015 synod [5] thus explained:

While continuing to proclaim and foster Christian marriage, the Synod also encourages pastoral discernment of the situations of a great many who no longer live this reality. Entering into pastoral dialogue with these persons is needed to distinguish elements in their lives that can lead to a greater openness to the Gospel of Marriage in its fullness. Pastors ought to identify elements that can foster evangelization and human and spiritual growth. A new element in today’s pastoral activity is a sensitivity to the positive aspects of civilly celebrated marriages and, with obvious differences, cohabitation. While clearly presenting the Christian message, the Church also needs to indicate the constructive elements in these situations that do not yet or no longer correspond to it. (IL 98)

The synodal document seemed thus to indicate a shift from the position of Familiaris consortio, the exhortation in which John Paul II had put his stamp on the 1980 synod deliberations by inculcating that God’s law with regard to marriage presents an uncompromising moral claim for each and every couple and therefore does not admit any gradual step-by-step approach in the way of its fulfilment. [6] The Instrumentum laboris, however, no longer condemns couples who do not live up to the ideal of marriage but instead encourages pastors to recognize the positive and constructive elements realized in their choices and the partners themselves to grow humanly and spiritually towards a fuller realization of the Christian ideal. This is concretized in the following passage:

In considering a pastoral approach towards people who have contracted a civil marriage, who are divorced and remarried or simply living together, the Church has the responsibility of helping them understand the divine pedagogy of grace in their lives and offering them assistance so they can reach the fullness of God’s plan for them. Looking to Christ, whose light illumines every person (cf. Jn 1:9; GS, 22), the Church turns with love to those who participate in her life in an incomplete manner, recognizing that the grace of God works also in their lives by giving them the courage to do good, to care for one another in love and to be of service to the community in which they live and work. (IL 62, my emphasis)

The document even made a cautious attempt to provide a theological foundation to this new perspective by referring to the so-called “seeds of the Word”, a term which the Second Vatican Council had used to describe elements of truth that can be found in non-Christian cultures and religions:

The presence of the seeds of the Word in these cultures (cf. AG, 11) could even be applied, in some ways, to marriage and the family in so many non-Christian societies and individuals. Valid elements, therefore, exist in some forms outside of Christian marriage – based, however, on a stable and true relationship of a man and a woman – which, in any case, we maintain are oriented towards Christian marriage. (IL 56)

When I read these and similar passages in the summer of 2015, some of which were already contained in the Relatio synodi of 2014, other newly elaborated in the Instrumentum laboris, I was convinced that the synod had taken an initial and cautious but nonetheless firm step toward a renewed approach in conjugal and family ethics so much desired and longed for by many faithful Catholics and moral theologians alike. My disillusionment was then all the greater when the Final Report [7] was published in Italian on October 24, the day of the conclusion of the Ordinary Assembly. What had happened?

Almost all of the previous references to the concept of gradualness in moral life had been simply eliminated in the Relatio synodi. [8] The two remaining ones are quotes from Familiaris consortio, the last one referring to John Paul II’s knockout argument that gradualness is not in the law itself. [9]

Likewise, the presence of the “seeds of the word” in marriage and family life which the Instrumentum laboris said could be found also in “so many non-Christian societies and individuals”, is restricted in the Relatio synodi to “positive elements…in marriage practices of other traditional religions” (RS 47, my emphasis). The previous, open formulation that “valid elements…exist in some forms outside of Christian marriage” (IL 56) which could be interpreted to pertain also to those (marginal) Christians who live together without Christian marriage, has been replaced by a vague and in fact pointless assertion that marriage in other religions may contain some truth which is orientated toward the sacrament.

Even more revealing is what has become of the passage according to which “the Church turns with love to those who participate in her life in an incomplete manner, recognizing that the grace of God works also in their lives by giving them the courage to do good, to care for one another in love and to be of service to the community in which they live and work” (IL 62, my emphasis). One now reads: “From the perspective of the divine pedagogy, the Church looks with love on those who share in her life in an imperfect way: it invokes upon them the grace of conversion, encourages them to do good, to care for one another with love and to put themselves at the service of the community in which they live and work” (RS 53). God’s grace which was previously said to be possibly working in the lives of all those (Christians and non-Christians) who cohabit, have concluded a civil marriage or live in a second marriage after divorce, is invoked now as a “grace of conversion” which should allow these couples to immediately make an end to their irregular situations.

In fact, the Final Report does not deviate any inch from the teaching of Familiaris consortio when it comes to the discussion of forms of living together outside Christian marriage, unless one regards it already as an achievement that the new document has dropped its characterization of these situations as “irregular” and now refers to them as “complex situations”. Had the document not here and there interspersed quotes from Pope Francis’ exhortation Evangelii gaudium insisting on a merciful pastoral approach to these situations, one might wonder what the whole synodal endeavor had been about.

What about Interchurch Families?

Although the synodal documents have repeatedly pointed out that “problems relative to mixed marriages were frequently raised in the interventions of the synod fathers”, [10] the issue of interchurch marriage has manifestly not been a primary concern of the synodal process so far. This is understandable if one looks at the sense of urgency and delicacy which surrounded the central theological and ethical problems related to marriage and family life on the synods’ agenda. Compared to these issues, interchurch families have perhaps little reason to complain about the post-conciliar teaching and legislation concerning their particular situation. This was obviously also the opinion of the synod fathers since to my knowledge there was not one single substantial contribution to the issue either at the first or second assembly. This had at least been different at the 1980 synod with the widely noticed intervention of Cardinal Willebrands who had suggested that the time was ripe for re-examining the question of admitting interchurch couples to sharing the Eucharist together. [11] As we all know, this intervention finally had its effect when in 1993 the Ecumenical Directory declared that there could be exceptional admission of the other Christian partner to the Catholic Eucharist in certain cases. I’ll come back to this later.

In a private conversation in December 2014 in Rome, Cardinal Baldisseri, the General Secretary of the Bishops’ Synod, confirmed that there had been little expertise available to the synod with regard to interchurch and interreligious marriages and so he strongly welcomed my proposal that the Interchurch Families International Network would provide an extensive response to question 39 added to the 2014 Lineamenta (Does current legislation provide a valid response to the challenges resulting from mixed marriages or interreligious marriages? Should other elements be taken into account?). [12] While the IFIN Response to the 2015 Synod, [13] which after internal consultation within the Network was sent to the Secretariat of the Synod on 11 April 2015, has presumably been the only substantial contribution on this matter, it is difficult to discern whether, and if so, what impact it had on the 2015 Instrumentum laboris and the Relatio synodi. Ruth Reardon has started to assess both documents in that regard, the Instrumentum laboris in the IFIN Comments which we again officially submitted to the Synod Secretariat in August 2015 [14] and the Relatio Synodi in her report for the November 2015 AIF News. [15] I will try to add to her analysis.

If one compares the references to interchurch (and interreligious) marriages in the different synodal documents, one realizes a lack of consistency and coherence in the way the topic is dealt with throughout. A first observation here concerns terminology. The synodal documents still use the generic term “mixed marriage” when they refer to a marriage between a Roman Catholic and a spouse from another Christian denomination while the traditional expression of “disparity of cult” for marriages between a Catholic and a non-baptized partner has now been replaced by “interreligious marriage” – although, as Reardon observes, the term “disparity of cult” resurfaces again twice in the 2015 Relatio synodi. One can only regret that the synod has not taken up the IFIN suggestion to consistently use the term “interchurch marriage” or “interdenominational marriage” in order to clearly distinguish it from what is now commonly and adequately referred to as “interreligious marriage”.

The 2014 Instrumentum laboris [16] which was mainly a compilation of the answers to the Vatican questionnaire contained in the preparatory document of 2013, has only two short references in which interchurch and interreligious marriages are lumped together and the need for adequate marriage preparation (56) and pastoral care in view of difficulties with the religious education of children (154) is underlined without any further explanation. Also the 2014 Relatio synodi [17] does not differentiate between interchurch and interreligious marriage, situating them both somewhat naively in countries in which Catholicism is in the minority (7). Accordingly, the risks and chances connected to them are described rather abstractly as religious indifference on the one side and “the possibility of fostering the spirit of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue” on the other. These earlier documents thus provide a minimalistic, abstract and almost stereotypical approach to the reality of mixed marriages.

Both the 2015 Instrumentum laboris and the 2015 Final Report adopt the passage from the previous documents in more or less the same wording as part of their analysis, in Part One, on the cultural contexts in which contemporary family life is to be situated (cf. IL 28; RS 25). But both documents have then an additional section in the third part under the heading of “pastoral accompaniment” in which the issue of mixed marriage is further unfolded in its complexity. Still lumping interchurch and interreligious marriage together, the Instrumentum laboris addresses the difficult journey of faith involved in these unions, focusing in particular on the religious upbringing of children, participation in the liturgical life and the sharing of spiritual experience (IL 127). At the same time, a distinction between a juridical and pastoral level is introduced, and it is specified – at least as I understand the awkward phrasing, both in the Italian original and English translation – that solutions for the problematic issues in these marriages should be sought in the pastoral rather than legislative realm. That is probably also why in the following sentence a “policy of behavior”, a sort of code of conduct for the spouses, is suggested in order to prevent that the religious journey of either of them be impeded, and the lived experience of mixed couples is invoked as a possible source for a constructive way of dealing with difficulties. One could see in this paragraph a faint echo of those passages in our IFIN Response in which we asked that priority should be given to pastoral over juridical solutions and the responsibility of the spouses with regard to the upbringing of children should be respected. Although the working document does not mention, let alone take up, our appeal to drop the prenuptial promise as a juridical requirement, it seems to me inspired by a similar mindset which favors a “constructive dealing with differences regarding the faith” on the level of personal responsibility. Unfortunately, one gets the impression that this constructive approach is obscured in the Relatio synodi by the way in which the same paragraph is now introduced, emphasizing the critical aspects over the fruitful ones (“While mixed marriages and marriages of disparity of cult can be potentially fruitful, they can also lead to critical situations which are not easily resolved…”, RS 74).

My reading is again more sobering when it comes to the passage which deals with Eucharistic sharing. The Instrumentum laboris had, in its number 128, quite abruptly stated: “Some suggest that mixed marriages might be considered as cases of ‘grave necessity,’ in which it is possible that a baptized person who is not in full communion with the Catholic Church, yet shares the Church’s faith in the Eucharist, be allowed to receive the Eucharist, when their pastors are not available and taking into account the criteria of the ecclesial community to which they belong”. Some commentators argued that this move to loosen the rules on admission to the Eucharist was the result of the lobbying of some liberal German bishops who had also pushed to allow divorced remarried persons to receive communion. [18] Still, I am inclined to believe that the IFIN Response had its impact here as well. After all, we had also asked for “an explicit statement that interchurch spouses who express a real need and desire for eucharistic sharing, and who fulfil the criteria for admission, can be allowed to receive communion alongside their Catholic partners on an on-going basis, whenever they are at mass together”. [19] In any case, the paragraph disappeared from the Relatio synodi – probably also because of the reaction of some conservative circles who referred to it in the media as an “unexploded bomb” that, if not defused, would undermine the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist. [20] In the place of it the Final Report had a completely new paragraph in which first the ecumenical value of interchurch marriage was underlined with a quote from Familiaris consortio and then the regulations concerning the admission to the Catholic Eucharist by other Christians were quoted from the 1993 Ecumenical Directory (cf. RS 72).

Ruth Reardon has welcomed this addition in the Relatio synodi and qualified as “tentative” [21] and “unsatisfactory” [22] the previous formulation contained in the Instrumentum laboris. She correctly argues that the Ecumenical Directory itself has applied the norms for sharing the Eucharist to interchurch spouses and distinguished their case from those of other “grave necessities” by referring to the theological reality that they “share the sacraments of baptism and marriage” [23] . While the Instrumentum laboris had in some way fallen back behind this acquis, the Relatio puts this right again and, although it does not break new ground, reaffirms the positive and open interpretation that some bishops’ conferences have given to Eucharistic sharing and therefore opens the door for further advance.

I cannot but agree with this adequate theological analysis. But in the end, it simply reveals that also from the perspective of interchurch families the synodal documents have just confirmed the doctrinal, disciplinary and pastoral status quo. Nothing less, nothing more. And we are back again finding ourselves rejoicing that the clocks have not been turned back.

However, it would be unfair to finish my reflections in such a pessimistic tone. It would mean making my calculation without Pope Francis.

3. What Sense to Make of Pope Francis and the Future of the Synodal Process?

The issue of shared communion in an interchurch marriage was ultimately highlighted by Francis himself in November last year, when he took part in a question-and-answer session at Rome’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. In response to a question posed by a Lutheran woman married to a Catholic man who asked if she could receive communion by virtue of her Christian baptism in accordance with her own conscience, Francis replied that she should “talk to the Lord” about receiving holy Communion “and then go forward”. But he also cautioned that he “wouldn’t ever dare to allow this, because it’s not my competence.” [24]

But whose competence is it then to grant such an admission if not the pope’s?, many may have asked themselves. Instead of entering into a theological discussion on whose power it is to change church doctrine and discipline, I think that we have to put Francis’ reaction in line with the other famous pronouncement he made when speaking to reporters on a flight back from Brazil in 2013: “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” Also this answer left many inside and outside the church greatly perplexed.

What the pope did, however, was simply referring to Jesus himself. Last Sunday, the Fifth Sunday of Lent, we heard in the Roman liturgy the narrative of Jesus with the adulterous woman from the Gospel of John (John 8,1-11). When the Pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery to Jesus and ask him what to do with her, he bends down and writes with his fingers in the sand. “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And after a while, when all have left and he is alone with the woman, Jesus straightens up and asks her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, Lord,” she replies. “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

If even Jesus who is without sin does not judge the woman, how then could the pope or any other Christian dare to do so? There is of course a difference between a person who has cheated on his or her spouse, a homosexual person with a deep seated orientation towards partners of the same sex and a Lutheran interchurch woman wishing to receive communion when worshipping together with her husband in a Catholic mass. But what connects them all is that each of them and every human person has a personal and unalienable relationship with God. Church regulations, moral norms and doctrinal formulae are useless or even harmful if they do not render possible and enhance the individual’s living faith relationship. Therefore, the true defenders of morality and doctrine “are not those who uphold its letter, but its spirit; not ideas but people; not formulae but the gratuitousness of God’s love and forgiveness. This is in no way to detract from the importance of formulae – they are necessary – or from the importance of laws and divine commandments, but rather to exalt the greatness of the true God, who does not treat us according to our merits or even according to our works but solely according to the boundless generosity of his Mercy”. [25]

Catholic sexual, conjugal and family ethics urgently needed this return to the Gospel as its true ressourcement. We need an approach in which mercy does not come after ethics and doctrine but is their core center. But since God’s mercy is not an abstract phrase but His loving turning towards concrete persons in specific situations, our moral norms and doctrinal formulations remain dead letters if we fail to spell them out, always anew, for concrete persons, especially in the complex and sometimes difficult situations the bishops’ synods had to deal with. It may be true that the synod fathers had to meet on the basis of the lowest common denominator and that therefore they agreed that the synodal discussion should be about the applicability but not the contents of the church teaching, about pastoral care but not about moral doctrine as such. In the long run, this recipe will not work. It can’t work if we share Pope Francis’ dream of “a Church which does not simply ‘rubberstamp’, but draws from the sources of her faith living waters to refresh parched hearts” [26] .

And what does all that mean for interchurch families? That brings me finally to the book that I have the pleasure of presenting to you today. As you may know, the book gathers the results of a period of reflection and research within our Interchurch Families International Network which began in 2005 when some of us met at the Vatican with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Out of that meeting came the suggestion that interchurch families should be encouraged to continue theological reflection based on their personal experiences and following on from the Rome Paper of 2003. It was agreed that interchurch families might make a significant contribution to the development of an understanding of “domestic church”, a term re-introduced to the church during the Second Vatican Council, but which had remained unexplored, its potential gift and richness left largely untouched. It was thought that interchurch families, with the hermeneutics that came from being inserted into the Church through two churches, could make a unique contribution not only to the development in understanding the term, but of the way the domestic church could be an instrument of Christian unity. The thrust which has been underlying this project has always been our conviction – and intention to demonstrate with consistent and sound theological arguments – that interchurch families are indeed and fully domestic churches, realizations of their own kind of Christ’s church, and that therefore several church regulations simply do not make sense.

I still do not have any doubts that it was good and useful to do so. It is true, Cardinal Willebrands already in 1980 expressed at the synod that “it can be said of the two Christians who have been baptised in different Churches, as it is of a marriage between two Catholics, that their union is a true sacrament and gives rise to a ‘domestic church’; that the partners are called to a unity which reflects the union of Christ with the Church; that the family, as a family, is bound to bear witness before the world, a witness based on that ‘spiritual union ... which is founded on a common faith and hope, and works through love’.” [27] But what other bishop would wholeheartedly have joined him in this conviction since then? Why is it otherwise that I feel so grateful when I read in the report of the German language group at the last synod: “The interchurch marriage, too, has to be regarded as a domestic church and has a specific vocation and task which consists in the exchange of gifts within the ecumenism of life”. [28]

In other words, our book still serves its purpose in making a compelling theological argument. After the recent synods, however, I am even more convinced of what Ray and I wrote in our introduction:

We suggest that interchurch families should not expend good energy attempting to persuade their church authorities that they should listen to the theological and ecclesiological arguments that can be, and have been, put forward. (…) Rather, interchurch families should broaden the scope of what they do, which is live Christian unity in the everyday. First, though, they must remember that they are domestic churches. They must have the courage of their convictions, and exercise the authority of those who are affected by this reality.

If they are indeed church, then interchurch families cannot simply demand of their church leaders that what they need is provided. They are church, and as church they have a part to play in enabling church leaders and ecclesial bodies to meet their needs. They need to find ways of leading, enabling, encouraging church officials to open themselves to developing the same competencies interchurch families have, for the wellbeing of their ecclesial bodies. They should recognize that, if they are indeed domestic churches, then their church of the home will be most fully itself when the churches of which they are part are also truly themselves, open to and respectful of the other, learning from each other . [29]

[1] S. O’Riordan: “The Synod on the Family, 1980”, in: The Furrow 31/12 (1980), 759-777, 776f.

[2] See R. Douthat, “A Crisis of Conservative Catholicism”, http://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/01/a-crisis-of-conservative-catholicism.

[3] Quoted in S. O’Riordan, “The Synod on the Family, 1980”, 765.

[4] See J. Grootaers & J.A. Selling, The 1980 Synod of Bishops on the Role of the Family: An Exposition of the Event and an Analysis of its Texts, Leuven: University Press, 1983.

[5] Instrumentum laboris, 2015; available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20150623_instrumentum-xiv-assembly_en.html#The_Family_and_Accompaniment_by_the_Church (accessed 15.03.2016); henceforward referred to as “IL”.

[6] See Familiaris consortio, 34: “Married people too are called upon to progress unceasingly in their moral life, with the support of a sincere and active desire to gain ever better knowledge of the values enshrined in and fostered by the law of God. They must also be supported by an upright and generous willingness to embody these values in their concrete decisions. They cannot however look on the law as merely an ideal to be achieved in the future: they must consider it as a command of Christ the Lord to overcome difficulties with constancy. ‘And so what is known as 'the law of gradualness' or step-by-step advance cannot be identified with 'gradualness of the law,' as if there were different degrees or forms of precept in God's law for different individuals and situations. In God's plan, all husbands and wives are called in marriage to holiness, and this lofty vocation is fulfilled to the extent that the human person is able to respond to God's command with serene confidence in God's grace and in his or her own will.’”

[7] Relatio synodi, 2015, available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20150623_instrumentum-xiv-assembly_en.html (accessed 15.03.2016); henceforward referred to as “RS”.

[8] See e.g. IL 57: “Perciò, anche nel caso in cui la maturazione della decisione di giungere al matrimonio sacramentale da parte di conviventi o sposati civilmente sia ancora ad uno stato virtuale, incipiente, o di graduale approssimazione, si chiede che la Chiesa non si sottragga al compito di incoraggiare e sostenere questo sviluppo.” (My emphasis; the English translation unfortunately does not correctly render this section of the sentence.) The whole section has been skipped in the RS 2015.

[9] See RS 37 and 86.

[10] See e.g. IL 2015, 126.

[11] See J. Card. Willebrands, “Mixed Marriages and Their Christian Families”; available at http://www.interchurchfamilies.org/index.php/sacramental-and-other-resources/eucharist/mixed-marriages-cardinal-willebrands.html (accessed 18.03.2016).

[12] See Lineamenta 2014, Part III, question 39; available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/index_it.htm (retrieved 16.03.2016).

[13] See Response to the 2015 Synod on the Family from the Interchurch Families International Network, 6 April 2015; available at IFIN_Response_to_Synod2015.pdf (accessed 16.03.2016).

[14] See Instrumentum Laboris of the 2015 Synod on the Family. Brief Comments in the Light of the Response to the Lineamenta Submitted by the Interchurch Families International Network, August 2015; available at IFIN_Comments_on_InstrumentumLaboris2015.pdf (accessed 16.03.2016).

[15] See R. Reardon, “Synod on the Family, 4-25 October 2015”, in: AIF News, November 2015; available at http://www.interchurchfamilies.org.uk/wpsystem/wp-content/uploads/Synod-2015-Report-by-Ruth-Reardon.pdf (accessed 16.03.2016).

[16] Instrumentum laboris, 2014; available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20140626_instrumentum-laboris-familia_en.html (accessed 16.03.2016).

[17] Relatio synodi, 2014; available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20141018_relatio-synodi-familia_en.html (accessed 16.03.2016).

[18] See http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/10/letter-number-nine (accessed 16.03.2016).

[19] Response to the 2015 Synod, 12.

[20] http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2015/10/08/letters-from-the-synod-october-8-2015/ (accessed 16.03.2016). In trying to answer this fear, the Archbishop of Birmingham seemed to many interchurch families to be unduly negative; http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2015/10/13/archbishop-longley-rejects-synod-proposal-on-communion-for-anglican-spouses/ (accessed 16.03.2016).

[21] See Instrumentum Laboris of the 2015 Synod on the Family.

[22] See R. Reardon, “Synod on the Family, 4-25 October 2015”.

[23] Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, 1993, 159-160; available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_25031993_principles-and-norms-on-ecumenism_en.html (accessed 16.03.2016).

[24] http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/catholics-and-lutherans-find-common-ground-as-reformations-500th-anniversar/#ixzz3xKI1Hyhs (accessed 17.03.2016).

[25] Pope Francis, Address at the Conclusion of the Synod of Bishops, 24 October 2015; available at http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/october/documents/papa-francesco_20151024_sinodo-conclusione-lavori.html (accessed 18.03.2016).

[26] Ibid.

[27] J. Card. Willebrands, “Mixed Marriages and Their Christian Families”.

[28]Relatio – Circulus Germanicus,Synod15 – 14a Congregazione generale: Relazioni dei Circoli minori sulla terza parte dell’Instrumentum laboris, 21.10.2015; availabe at https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2015/10/21/0803/01782.html#germ (accessed 18.03.2016)

[29] T. Knieps-Port le Roi & R. Temmerman, “From Rome to Jerusalem. Interchurch Families and the Domestic Church Project”, in: Id. (eds.), Being One at Home. Interchurch Families as Domestic Churches, Zürich: LIT, 2015, 5-27, 26.

Being One at Home: Review

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 16:48:07 GMT

Being One at Home: Interchurch Families as Domestic Churches, Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi, Ray Temmerman (eds.) (Zurich: Lit Verlag, 2015), 224 pages.

This collection of talks and articles is a product of what has come to be known in international interchurch family circles as the ‘domestic church project’. The idea came out of an informal visit by a number of representatives of interchurch family groups to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome in 2005. This was a follow-up visit to one that took place on the occasion of the Second World Gathering of Interchurch Families, Rome 2003. The Pontifical Council staff said that they would like to be informed of the outcome of that Gathering, and the return visit duly took place two years later.

The two appendices to the book indicate the chronological parameters of the ‘domestic church project’ to date. The first is Interchurch Families and Christian Unity: a Paper adopted by the Second World Gathering of Interchurch Families from eleven countries held in Rome in July 2003 (London, 15 pp). This still stands as the best statement in summary form of the way in which interchurch families see themselves, the contribution that they hope to be able to make to their churches as these seek to respond to their calling to be one, and the pastoral care and understanding that they hope to receive from those churches if they are to fulfil this role. The second appendix is a document also put together in consultation by interchurch families world-wide: a ‘Response to the 2015 Synod on the Family from the Interchurch Families International Network’ (15 pp). This second document is addressed specifically to the Roman Catholic Church, within the context of preparatory papers contributing to the topics on the agenda of the 2015 Synod.

The joint editors, Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi, holder of the INTAMS Chair for the study of Marriage and Spirituality at Leuven University, Belgium, and co-ordinator of the Interchurch Families International Network (IFIN), and Ray Temmerman from Canada, who administers the interchurch families website and the (English-speaking) international discussion group of IFIN, together contribute an introductory essay ‘From Rome to Jerusalem’, explaining the development of the domestic church project since the 2005 meeting with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. It began with an international consultation initiated by Thomas Knieps in late 2006, which got members of national interchurch family associations exploring how their experience could feed in to the project. There are lively quotations from the reports sent in from Britain, North America and Austria. At the same time IFIN identified a small working group to set the theological agenda of the project, identifying issues and problems related both to the ecclesiological category of domestic church in general and to its application in the context of interchurch families in particular.

This is followed by the two main sections of the book: ‘Experiential Approaches’ and ‘Theological Approaches’ – presented in that order since theology flows out of experience. Many of the contributions have been presented in seminars and conferences and previously published as the project proceeded; it is most valuable now to have them collected together in one volume. In particular, the international conference on ‘The Household of God and Local Households: Revisiting the Domestic Church’, held in March 2010 at the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic University of Leuven, was a landmark in the domestic church project. Within the wider body made up both of theologians specialising in ecclesiology, and practitioners in ministry to marriage and family life, a little group of interchurch families profited both from the wider perspective and from the opportunity to get together to reflect on their own particular concerns, and four of the contributions in the book originated at Leuven 2010. The intention of the book is to ‘provide sound evidence of the reality of interchurch families as domestic churches, and enhance the nourishment and contribution of their gift of unity to and within the churches of which they are members, and through those churches the wider Church’.

The first three of the five ‘experiential approaches’ were presented at Leuven 2010. The first, Ray Temmerman’s ‘Interchurch Families as Domestic Church: Familial Experiences and Ecclesial Opportunities’, was based on part of his preparatory work for a Master’s thesis required for a degree in Sacred Theology (University of Winnipeg, Canada, 2011). This studied how far the ‘marks’ (one, holy, catholic, apostolic) of the Church can be applied to interchurch families. His 2008 survey of American and British interchurch couples in the course of this work shows a growing sense of unity at home that is not matched by their church-going experience. This raises questions of how interchurch spouses and their children can be welcomed, heard and nourished by their communities, and thus enabled to better fulfil their calling to be ‘one’ in their domestic churches.

Mary Marrocco, associate secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches, both theologian and marriage therapist, writes on ‘The Interchurch Couple: Witness to Communion within Division’. She had done a small survey of ten couples in preparation, and began by picking out two cases in which an Orthodox husband had not received communion himself on Holy Saturday because his Catholic wife was refused, and a Catholic fiancé similarly for the same reason when the priest who was to marry them met his fiancée and her family for the first time. What are these couples carrying in such moments of silent tragedy? she asks. Why does their desire to remain together trump their desire to receive communion? Using the findings of couple-dynamic studies in the work of David Schnarch, and the communion ecclesiology of Walter Kasper and Jean-Marie Tillard, as well as extracts from the survey, Mary Morrocco points to the differences between couples. In some cases it was hard to see whether the churches’ disconnect was pulling them apart, or simply highlighting a gap already existing between them. For others it was the strength of their relationship that helped them to carry the church division – implicitly asking the churches what they are doing to help couples carry a burden they did not seek. Sometimes it is therapists in the secular world who help couples to live in communion, rather than the churches. But, ‘if Christian marriage opens the couple to the ultimate horizon of participation in the divine life as the real meaning of communion, cannot our Christian churches ever more deeply find ways to assist couples in healing where they have broken, and learn from couples who are working out communion in the most intimate aspects of human life? Can our imperfect communion be made fuller and more complete by receiving the lived witness of interchurch couples?’

George Kilcourse, Professor of Theology at Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY, who has undertaken pastoral work with interchurch couples for many years, contributes ‘Interchurch Families as Domestic Church: the Improbable Grace’. He points out that conscientious interchurch married couples and their children pioneer an ecumenical way-of-life that coincides – perhaps unexpectedly – with Catholic teaching on the ‘domestic church’. He shows how in the USA there had been a failure to distinguish authentically interchurch marriages and families from nominally interchurch relationships. This led to the ‘regrettable absence of pastoral care for interchurch families’ shown in the 2009 pastoral letter on marriage issued by the Conference of Catholic Bishops, particularly the omission of any direct mention or discussion of the pastoral possibility by way of ‘exception’ for other baptized Christians to participate in Eucharistic communion. Yet ‘if we can progress with the ecumenical trust and faith found in the homes of interchurch families who live as domestic churches, then the renewal of a broader marriage ministry may give rise to a transforming common witness among our divided churches’.

Dan Olsen, Assistant Director of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the Archdiocese of Chicago, considers ‘Educating Ecumenically: Interchurch Families as Unique Pedagogical Models’. Vatican II identified the Christian family as a ‘school’ for deeper humanity, as well as a domestic ‘church’. Interchurch families, living out their baptismal calling in relation to two distinctive Christian communities, can model ecumenical formation within the home, within their respective faith communities, and within their wider cultural milieu. The author explores with concrete examples how this can happen in the relationships between: 1) interchurch spouses, 2) interchurch families and their pastoral ministers, 3) interchurch families and their extended families and local communities, and 4) interchurch parents and children. Attending to the distinctive ways in which these families teach each other, their friends and families, and their church communities how to grow as disciples committed to spread the good news of Christ in the midst of Christian division, can become a valuable resource for the ecumenical movement.

Jean-Baptiste Lipp, a Swiss Reformed pastor married to a Catholic, contributes ‘Loving the Universal Church through a Spouse’s Church’, a paper originally presented in the context of a hearing at the Third European Ecumenical Assembly in Sibiu, Romania, in 2006. He had been deeply impressed by his future wife’s words, ‘I love my church’. As they travelled together, little by little the other’s church became their own too. He quoted a conclusion from a group that had recently met at a Swiss interconfessional families conference: ‘We love one another, but we belong to churches that do not love one another’. Yet is there not a strong link between the love of committed mixed couples and the mutual love of the churches for one another? Between the macrocosm of ecumenism (local, national, international), and the microcosm of interchurch families? We have often been told that the experience of interchurch families is valuable for the churches – but are they really interested in it? Are ‘footbridges’ used? Are ‘islands of reconciliation’ left isolated? Do ‘explorers’ have their maps studied and used? It may be that working on the theme of ‘domestic church’ will encourage a better recognition of who interchurch families actually are.

The five ‘Experiential Approaches’ are followed by six ‘Theological Approaches’, deepening theological reflection on interchurch families as domestic churches. Three of these are presentations by Thomas Knieps. ‘Family as “Domestic Church” – Opportunities and Shortcomings of a Theological Concept’ gives a historical overview of the term and the way it has come into use again since Vatican II. Interestingly, he suggests that interchurch families can be helpful to theological reflection on the concept of domestic church, since the partners are not limited to a particular set of assumptions as to church structures and life. This gives them a freedom and openness to work out together what being church at home means for them, in a way that may turn out to be a stimulus for the churches as they come together. Indeed, he points out that the British contribution to the domestic church survey had begun to work out a kind of ‘road map’ for this process.

Then in ‘Interchurch Marriage: Conjugal and Ecclesial Communion in the Domestic Church’, he explores how conjugal and ecclesial communion are related in the case of interchurch marriage. Just as Vatican II characterized the communion of other churches and ecclesial communities with the Catholic Church as ‘real but imperfect’, so an institutionally oriented approach appears to limit the reality of interchurch marriage to the imperfect ecclesial communion of the respective communities of the partners. Ray Temmerman makes a similar point in his contribution on ‘Interchurch Families as Domestic Church: More Real than Imperfect?’. These authors agree that the Catholic Church has not yet come to grips with the fact that their very real conjugal and family communion (only an ‘imperfect’ communion, in the way that a same-church couple’s unity is imperfect) is the basis of an interchurch marriage, not the imperfect communion of the ecclesial bodies. When this is recognised, it will be more possible for interchurch families to be seen and appreciated as ‘laboratories of Christian unity’, to quote Pope Benedict XVI.

Thomas Knieps’ third presentation ‘Interchurch Families – a Test Case for the “Domestic Church”’ focuses on the tension between loyalty of an interchurch spouse to his/her partner and that to his/her church of origin. In order to harmonize their allegiances, interchurch couples need to develop specific hermeneutical skills. He uncovers central elements of such skills from the experiential evidence presented in the 2003 Rome document Interchurch Families and Christian Unity. Inevitably these ecumenical households are not always in line with the prevailing understanding of ecclesial communion and therefore continually question these standard models. There is constant mutual interaction between the small unit of the interchurch family and the larger church community. ‘In this way, it becomes clear once more that interchurch families can serve as an exemplary model also for same-church families to understand and live their domestic life as an ecclesial reality and likewise as a roadmap for the divided churches on their search for forms of church unity.’

The last two articles study the possibilities for Eucharistic sharing in interchurch families. Bernard Prusak, Professor of Historical and Systematic theology at Villanova University, PA, contributed ‘The Ecumenical Household as Domestic Church: Ecclesial Threat or Pastoral Challenge and even Resource?’ to the 2010 Leuven conference. He asks whether the love and unity in an interchurch family, built upon a sacramental marriage, must necessarily be deemed secondary to wider ecclesial unity, whether the ‘mindset in which ecclesial disunity simply trumps and disregards the unitive love of spouses in an ecumenical, sacramental marriage’ must continue to prevail. He examines in detail how since Vatican II various guidelines on Eucharistic sharing issued by Vatican authorities, episcopal conferences and individual bishops have affected interchurch families – a very useful overview of this documentation. There has been pastoral progress. But he concludes that a thoroughly new mindset is needed, in which interchurch family life should be a ‘a contributing, integral component of ecumenical dialogue’.

Ernest Falardeau, SSS, Director of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, NM for twenty-four years, with long experience of pastoral work with interchurch families, contributes a final article on ‘Eucharistic Hunger in the Domestic Church: a View from Interchurch Families’ – a ‘theological and pastoral reflection on the spiritual reality of interchurch families, and how they share in the “great mystery” which is God’s love for his people and the love of Jesus Christ for his Church’. The bond between husband and wife established through baptism and marriage is a special experience of Christian love, forgiveness and compassion, and can begin to point the way to a full communion between the churches that is more than institutional or canonical, ‘but rather based on spiritual, ascetical, ecclesial and theological principles and the experience of Christian love that grows by God’s grace and power’. Interchurch families have a hunger for the Eucharist, because the Eucharist is profoundly rooted at the heart of the sacrament of marriage and of the conjugal union that comes from it. They are in real communion. They are domestic churches.

It seems providential that this book has been published just at the time when Pope Francis has written his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. In saying nothing negative about mixed marriages between Christians, and in describing the domestic church in a way that includes interchurch marriages on the level of same-church marriages, he has moved beyond previous authoritative documents that have implied they are second-class. Yes indeed, they are in a complex situation, but that very complexity is full of hope. It offers the possibility that by their existence and faithfulness within that situation, they may be able to make their own small contribution both to the study of the ‘domestic church’ which is being undertaken at present, and also to the way in which the churches and ecclesial communities to which they belong are walking together in their journey towards fuller visible unity.

Of course there are many different kinds of interchurch families – just as there are many different kinds of same-church families. Several of the contributors to this book stress these differences, and would like to be able to distinguish more clearly between them, in order to make it clearer that interchurch families are indeed domestic churches. Attempts at this have been made, but it is never possible to draw a hard and fast line. It is unwise to generalise about interchurch families, but we do know that there is always a potential for growth, growth in that love which is at the heart of family life and of the Church at every level. Couples and families do what they can, where they are; some need a helping hand, others can offer it. There is the same acknowledgement in Amoris Laetitia. All are imperfect; all need to grow into God’s gift of sacramental marriage, into the domestic church they are called to become. All those who deeply desire it are strengthened when they share the Eucharist at the heart of their conjugal and family life.

Ruth Reardon

Report by Margie Dahl

Thu, 12 Jun 2014 16:49:04 GMT

Report on the Third Receptive Ecumenism Conference

Receptive Ecumenism in International Perspective: Contextual Ecclesial Learning held at Fairfield University, Connecticut, USA 9-12 June 2014

Introduction

The conference was organized jointly by the Center for Catholic Studies at Fairfield University and the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University. It was co-sponsored and promoted by a number of organisations including the Association of Interchurch Families and the South Australian Council of Churches.

There were 130 people present including seventeen Australians, mostly from Queensland and South Australia. People came from Kenya, Japan, Malawi, Iceland, Colombia, Finland, Greece, Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, UK, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Ireland, France, Germany, South Africa and Pakistan,.

Jeff and I were there at the invitation of Ray Temmerman from the Association of Interchurch Families. We went with high hopes, but did not count on getting sick. I had a bad cold and Jeff had a tummy wog. We were both tired and washed out and did not attend every session. It was infuriating to have travelled so far and spent so much money on our registration, and then have to nap in the afternoon.

One thing that really surprised us was that there was never any acknowledgement of the traditional owners of the land. I asked the President of the University about it and he said that the traditional owners had all been killed by violence or disease and there were no descendents in the area.

Fairhaven University

The university is situated in the town of Fairfield, about two hours from New York by Amtrak. Run by the Jesuits, it is a very modern university with new buildings in an idyllic situation on 200 acres. One day we saw a deer from the dining room and someone else spoke about their encounter with a skunk.

Our rooms were Spartan, but adequate. The chapel was a masterpiece of architecture and design. Around the exterior are a series lead light windows telling the life of Ignatius of Loyola from his baptism to his death.

The front of the chapel is gold coloured. It was like a mosaic of gold Easter egg wrappers giving an interesting textured look. The crucifix was a statue of the resurrected Jesus, one arm reaching out and the other pointing upwards as the burial wrappings fell away. It is powerful and dynamic.

A team of students in red T-shirts were there to help us in every way – registration, where to get our washing done, helping us connect our computers to the wifi, driving a fleet of golf carts for those of us with mobility problems, printing papers etc etc etc. They were endlessly helpful, always cheerful and made the conference run very smoothly.

The food was abundant and delicious. My only quibble was with breakfast. I craved muesli and yogurt.

Prayer life

The conference began with an opening liturgy at which we were welcomed by the University’s President, Rev Jeffrey von Arx SJ. Messages of support were read from Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Kurt Koch, the President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, Olav Fykse Tveit, the Secretary General of the World Council of Churches and Frank Caggiano, the local Catholic bishop. We were also welcomed by Cass Shaw, a Presbyterian minister who is President and CEO at the Council of Churches of Greater Bridgeport.

Cass put our deliberations into context by telling us that Bridgeport has the greatest wealth disparity in the US. Schools are funded by local income taxes, so a desperately poor area has severely under resourced schools. 62% of students don’t graduate from high school. The churches in the area are very active in trying to promote justice and equity, but it is a thankless task. It is one step forward and two steps back.

Frank Griswold who has retired from his role as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal church was the preacher. We were then invited to renew our baptismal promises and to come forward and bless ourselves with baptismal water.

Cass led our morning prayer each day using a liturgy from the Iona Community. This was at 7.30am. With Jeff and me both feeling poorly, our attendance rate was not good. I went once and Jeff went twice.

There was Eucharist each day. On the first day the presider was Elizabeth Welch from the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom and the preacher was Timothy Lim, a Baptist (we’re pretty sure) from Singapore. We had communion in the pews which was awkward and clumsy. On the second night we had a most elegant Eucharist with Agkokhianmeghe Orobator SJ as presider and a Finnish Pentecostal preacher, Veli-Matti Karkkainen. The third Eucharist was just after our closing panel on Thursday morning. Karen Westerfield Tucker presided, using a Methodist Covenant service and Tony Currer preached the sermon. This was a really great service to use to round off the conference – except that it was long and we all had to get away to catch planes, trains and automobiles.

Plenaries.

In keeping with the theme of the conference, there were plenaries that focused on receptive ecumenism in a variety of contexts.

Plenary 1
I missed this one because I was too sick to attend. But Jeff says that David Moxon had recently helped to organize a meeting between Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Francis. The Archbishop, as a throw away line said ‘We should do something about modern day slavery.’ Pope Francis agreed and this has now become a major campaign within the two churches called ‘Walk Free.’ The Australian, Andrew Forrest, has contributed substantial funding. David Moxon challenged faith leaders to inspect the supply chains of products for their churches.

Geraldine Hawkes from the South Australian Council of Churches described the difficulties of the Council at the time that she was appointed. She changed the imagery of ecumenism from seasons to a cake. People said that ecumenism was like a pancake. What cake would people like it to be? Many groups said, ‘A wedding cake.’ Then they spent time in prayer and discernment, nurturing relationships and learning together. From 2009 receptive ecumenism was introduced as a process and in 2012 Paul Murray was invited to Australia and spent a week in Adelaide.

John Gibaut outlined some of the positives and challenges for receptive ecumenism. For example the joint working group between the Catholics and the World Council of Churches is working well. There is a stronger sense of mutual accountability and mutual vulnerability. He asked whether the receptive ecumenism movement can lead to the reception of dialogical documents.

Lastly Tony Currer spoke. He said that the Pontifical Commission for Promoting Christian Unity has worked with receptive ecumenism from the start. He said that ecumenism is not an optional extra to being a Christian. ‘We’ve got the same problems as they have.’ It becomes an ecumenism of wounded hands.

Plenary 2 was on the North American Context: the Work of the Canadian Anglican-Catholic Dialogue. ARCIC has done wonderful work, but sometimes it seems that its work is in the stratosphere and that most people do not know what is happening there. One example was the Agreed Statement, Mary, Grace and Hope in Christ. For the Anglicans, there were three doctrines that were a real stumbling block – the immaculate conception, the perpetual virginity of Mary and her bodily assumption. All the same, they continued to work hard at an agreed statement. It was especially hurtful to the Anglican members of the dialogue team who came from an evangelical perspective when their work was dismissed with facile criticisms by people who had not even read it. It was noted that no universities or theological colleges in the USA teach ARCIC or BEM. Denis Edwards, an Australian Catholic theologian said that dialogue in Australia is very difficult since reception of ARCIC documents within certain Anglican circles cannot be assumed.

Plenary 3 dealt with Receptive Ecumenism and the Local Church: A UK Regional Research Project. The north east of England has been economically depressed for the past 40 years. A five year research project was undertaken that included nine participating Christian groups or denominations at the beginning, but not all have stayed. The project included insights from social scientists as well. The presenters were very clear that they were not producing a blueprint which could be replicated elsewhere.

They found that Christians were alarmingly ignorant about each others’ churches. All meetings were structured as opportunities for learning. Any conclusions about what one church could learn from another were tested against that church’s context based on the concept of dynamic integrity. Each church is striving to become more of who they are. Hence they sensitively ask and test what they can gain from another church which they might have lost.

The project found that in all churches there was an overall decline in ordained ministers and laity. There was a need to facilitate an active laity. There was an increasing age profile of ministers and members and an increased rationalization of worship centres.

I found further information about this on the web for those who would like to follow up. https://www.dur.ac.uk/theology.religion/ccs/projects/receptiveecumenism/projects/localchurch/methodology/

Plenary 4 was about Receptive Ecumenism in a Latin American Context: Catholic and Pentecostal Learning in Relation to Mariology. Pentecostalism in Latin America is growing apace, Catholicism is slowly declining, but the biggest increase is in people who say that they have no religion.

But the dividing line between Pentecostals and Catholicism is not hard and fast. A person may very well attend a three hour Pentecostal service on Sunday, waving their arms their arms in the air the whole time. Then on Monday if someone is sick or in some other need, they pray instinctively to the Virgin. There was some discussion about the ways in which the cult of Mary contributes to the oppression of women. The members of the panel were all men and they seemed mystified by the question. A few of us could have given them some pointers, but it didn’t seem appropriate.

Plenary 5 was on the African context. Jeff and I were both too sick to attend, but by all accounts it was riveting. Bother. Joyce Kazuri-Makumi was invited to repeat her talk for the parallel session (see below). I could easily have listened to it twice.

Plenary 6 dealt with the Asian perspective. Receptive ecumenism has not gained currency in Asia because Asians are so used to listening and receiving since colonial times. Hence, the emphasis is more on mission. The Catholic Bishops Conference found that they could only make progress if there was a triple dialogue – with the poor, with other religions and with other cultures. Except for a couple of countries – Korea, the Philippines and East Timor – Christians are in a small minority in their countries and most are among the poor and oppressed. One speaker emphasized the importance of showing compassion to the poor, because churches must show that Christ brings something special to being human.

The triple dialogue means that the church must be open to being changed. Even though Christians are a small percentage of the population, they provide 25% of education and health care facilities. Christians need to participate in liberation as co-pilgrims instead of hosts. Ecumenism is exercised in coming together for the triple dialogue.

The Japanese speaker, Renta Nishihara, introduced us to the concept of the church as a birds nest. It is made up of many bits and pieces. It may have gaps, but it stands strong and it provides new life.

We were especially impressed with Septemmy Lakawa who is Dean of Postgraduate Studies at the Djakarta Theological Seminary. She talked mostly about Indonesian history. She described two qualities of ecumenism – it is prophetic and transformative. Hallelujah, sister!!! It needs to be led by passionate people for the benefit of the poor and the environment. She invited us to re-imagine oneness as togetherness.

Plenary 7
Francis Clooney SJ was the sole speaker for this plenary. His topic was ‘Receptive ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue and comparative theology: reciprocity and challenges.’ We need to allow our own faith to be challenged by the truths of another faith. This requires patient contemplation of the texts of another faith. There is a Hindu phrase. One can spend hours contemplating each word and the structure of the phrase. He had four suggestions. 1) the centrality of textual engagement 2) professionals be really engaged in this work 3) the importance of communal living 4) facing up to the reality of how each faith may have wounded the other and being prepared to repent.

Plenary 8
This was on the last morning. It was a large panel of six who were responding to the conference and highlighting what were for them significant features of it. This was introduced by Paul Murray. He highlighted the risk that receptive ecumenism might lose its distinctive contribution if it becomes all things to all people. It is more than just a new fancy name for anything ecumenical. It is an ecclesiological project focused on reform in such areas as decision making and it involves serious testing. The objectives of the last panel were to answer three questions: 1) where has the light gone on? 2) what do we want to challenge? 3) where to from here?

Elizabeth Welch from the United Reformed Church in the UK was outstanding. She had some key points to make - the importance of receiving across the breadth of local contexts and the importance of integrating heart and head. She encouraged us to hold what gives us life in common amidst the difficulties. She also encouraged the study of the Holy Spirit allowing us to be changed.

Cass Shaw quoted Leonard Cohen’s song ‘Anthem.’ ‘There is a crack in everything. That’s where the light gets in.’ She took an incarnational approach as expressed in openness and hospitality. We need to be bread for the journey for one another. Don’t just lecture, collaborate with poets, musicians, religious educators and technology geeks.

Parallel Session

This is another name for electives and there were three sessions. Interchurch families was the topic for two of these.

Parallel session 1
The first of these was chaired by Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi who is the Chair for the Study of Marriage and Spirituality, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven in Belgium. He is the editor of INTAMS, a magazine for marital spirituality. He is himself in an interchurch marriage. He was perfectly charming and very pleased to meet us.

The first speaker was our friend Ray Temmerman. He is a Catholic and his wife Fenella is an Anglican. The topic of his talk was ‘Interchurch Families in the Vanguard of Changing ecumenical Discourse’. Interchurch families focus not only on what has been or is but on what should be. Marriage creates a new situation of unity. We are sign and sacrament of that yet to be realized unity. Benedict XVI described interchurch families as a practical laboratory of Christian unity. Ray said that there needs to be a dialectic between that laboratory and the wider church.

Ray and Fenella never intended to be that laboratory. They simply fell in love. From interchurch families churches can learn to receive and love the other ‘as that church is.’ This gives the power to grow.

The second speaker was Joyce Kazuri-Makumi from Kenya, a Pentecostal who is married to David who is Catholic. They are both nurses. They also come from different ethnic and language groups. In Africa it is expected that the wife will take on the faith of the husband, but a charismatic priest who conducted their wedding said that this was not necessary. Baptism was another factor. Joyce was baptized as an infant in the Methodist church and later baptized by immersion in the Pentecostal church. This latter baptism is known as ‘baptism in many waters.’ If Joyce had become Catholic, she would have needed to be baptized a third time which she felt was unnecessary.

This has created some tension for Joyce with her in-laws who wonder if she loves them. They have also faced difficulties due to infertility. The Catholic church does not allow assisted reproduction, so this option was not open to them. As a childless African woman, Joyce is regarded as having no value. She said a couple of times that David has protected her.

One interesting aspect was that of Bible studies. In the Catholic Bible studies, women, men and children learn together. In the Pentecostal church there are separate groups. This means that Joyce can attend Catholic Bible studies with David, but they are separated at the Pentecostal studies.

We were the third speakers and our topic was ‘ The Red Dust Meets the Bitumen – an Experience of Interchurch Family Life in Australia .’

Parallel session 2
For the second parallel session we decided to stick with the topic of interchurch families. This session was chaired by Ray and the first speaker was Thomas Knieps. He is Catholic and his wife Annette is Reformed. His presentation focused on a document produced in Rome in 2003 at a gathering of interchurch families called ‘Interchurch families and Christian Unity.’

This document says that it is how the differences are managed that is important, not the differences themselves. It is important for partners to improve knowledge and to gain understanding of and respect for the other and his or her religious affiliation. This means overcoming ‘cognitive egocentrism’ and to assume the other church’s perspective.

Then Mary Marrocco, a marriage counsellor, spoke about her work in emotion focused therapy. The person is not the problem. The problem is the problem. Her desire is to heal the core wound. People need to experience their emotions and not suppress them. Forgiveness is the key. Sometimes even the change of getting out of hell can be too challenging. But the story of the gospel is a love story of God pitching a tent among us and drawing us to Godself.

The final speakers, Rebecca and Anthony Spellacy, are a young couple in a Catholic/Anglican marriage. Their talk was entitled ‘Divided we Stand: How “Mixed Marriages” can teach ecumenism.’ They are a couple who take liturgy seriously and spend long periods discussing the differences between liturgy in their churches. They were articulate and thought provoking.

Parallel session 3
When it was time for the third parallel session, I chose one at random. So many of them looked interesting. A young man read something that appeared to be a journal article, full of technical language and references to obscure writers. He read for a full twenty minutes without looking up or engaging his audience. I was bored stiff and went to have a second cup of coffee rather than stay for the rest of the session. I can’t remember his name, but even if I could my lips would be sealed to protect the guilty.

After dinner speaker

John O’Brien, an Irish Spiritan priest, was the after dinner speaker on the last evening. He has spent the last umpteen years in Pakistan, working among Indian Hindu bonded labourers whom he described as serfs. He has especially spent time with women who are especially oppressed. They are non-Muslim. They are considered even worse than Christians who at least have a book. They are poor and they are Dravidian (dark skinned). They are the first to get up in the morning and the last to go to bed. Most of them are seriously anaemic which makes pregnancy very dangerous. Some of the women made a banner of Peter sinking as he tries walking on the water towards Jesus. This was a gift for the Center for Catholic studies.

The Hindus invite John to pray with them in the name of Jesus. They understand that their prayer will go through Jesus to their own deity. John found a translation of the Lord’s Prayer in their language which he put to music and learned for a month. When he next visited, he sang this to them, only to find it was not their language. Not to be deterred, he found the right language and sang it with them, over and over, on his next visit.

When he returned, they had forgotten it completely. Finally, a young person remembered the line – “give us this day our daily bread.” John said that he thought he was going to teach, but he was going to learn. When he visits, he stays with them and eats with them, including the women. The meal becomes a small e “eucharist.”

John paid tribute to the mainly Protestant linguists who work so hard to translate the Bible into minority languages.

Final thoughts

At times I felt as if I had accidentally strayed into the big kids’ yard. I felt out of my depth. But at all times I felt incredibly privileged to have been part of this conference. I felt blessed and overflowing.

Margie Dahl

Report by Ray Temmerman

Thu, 12 Jun 2014 10:32:37 GMT

Report on the 3rd Conference on Receptive Ecumenism, Fairfield CT, June 9-12, 2014

We had two full panels, with three presenters in each. Each of us had numerous opportunities to talk with many other participants from various cultures and roles. All in all, it was terrific.

In the first panel (myself, Joyce, and Jeff and Margie), we had Dr Orobator SJ, Superior of the Jesuits in Kenya, sitting in. This played no small part later when, in a plenary in which he was a key speaker, he called attention to the situation in Africa, and asked Joyce to give her own void to the situation there, using her and David's situation as an example. As such, Joyce and the Kenyan situation was heard by all conference participants. We couldn't have asked for better representation than Joyce's voice and concrete reality.

It was good to meet Anthony and Rebecca Spellacy, both doing doctoral studies at the Toronto School of Theology. They are both from the USA. They were the final presenters, after Thomas Knieps and Mary Marrocco. All in all, an excellent presentation of practical Receptive Ecumenism, a very good balance to the very academic flavour of much of the conference.

It was interesting to talk with one of the bishops from England, who said he believed One Bread One Body contained far more generous possibilities of Eucharistic hospitality than were being applied, by either clergy or people.

Another bishop, this time from Canada, gave me the very clear impression that he recognised the painful situation interchurch families find themselves in, and was very frustrated that, so far, he had simply not found a way forward which would be faithful to who we are as Roman Catholics. It was clear, though, that he was looking and listening, and would be overjoyed to find a way forward. I told him that just hearing from him that very clear recognition and hope was itself a major form of support.

Fenella talked with a priest from the PCPCU. From what I gather (and I hope Fenella will be able to give us her own, clearer impressions), the PCPCU is concerned not to establish "lists" of times when it may be possible for Christians of other traditions to receive the Eucharist in a Catholic mass. The rationale, if I understand correctly, was that once such lists were made, they were seen as final, when they were merely examples. Better, it seemed, to leave the general criteria, and encourage people to discern whether their situation fit those criteria. I could be wrong on my interpretation of Fenella's conversation. We really haven't had time to debrief very much as yet.

If my interpretation is right, though, I think I agree. While "grocery lists" are easy to follow, they remain only occasions when it MIGHT be possible to receive, i.e. they are not automatic. And there are other situations in which reception may be equally possible, yet they won't be taken up because they are not on the "grocery list".

Better, I think, to call people to explore the criteria themselves, and discern whether or not the criteria fit their situation. I suggested to the UK bishop that the DAPNE, while providing a sound guide, was in fact almost impossible to abide by. I expressed the opinion that most Catholics in his diocese would never get a chance to see him - and they had at least some sense of Catholic language and thought. What chance, then, did Christians of other traditions, not knowing Catholic language, of meeting with the bishop to ask permission to receive. I suggested what should be a doorway to nurturing and growth became, de facto, an unscalable wall. I think he recognised the reality, but like the Canadian bishop did not know how to move forward to resolve the situation. But I didn't get the impression he was in any way minimising the reality.

I had a very interesting discussion with Timothy, who this next week is defending his doctoral dissertation (and was wondering what in the world he was doing at the conference when he had so much preparatory work to do). Timothy lectures part time at Virginia Beach and is a guest lecturer in London. Timothy told me he didn't like the term "Eucharistic Hospitality". The reason, he told me, is that hospitality is what one extends to a stranger. When we have Christians of other traditions in our churches, these are not strangers but family in Christ. We don't extend hospitality to our brothers and sisters, aunts uncles and cousins. We simply welcome and feed them, as part of our family, no matter how extended it may be. While I still see value in the term Eucharistic Hospitality, I was really tken by his logic, and impressed by the sense his ideas conveyed.

I hope that as participants gets time to reflect on what they said, saw, heard, they may contribute and so round out for us a sense of what I believe was a wonderful conference, with very solid input from interchurch families.

Ray

Report by Fenella Temmerman

Thu, 12 Jun 2014 10:29:22 GMT

Report to interchurch families on the 3rd Conference on Receptive Ecumenism in International Perspective

Fairfield is over. Memories, reflections and conversations amongst those with familiar faces and those met for the first time remain; presentations, dialogues, plenaries and panels still juggle within me for space and attention.

Receptive ecumenism: receptive ecclesiology, deep listening, moving away from our own comfort and safety, crossing boundaries, gift, humility, freedom, growth were all words expressed. Our sin is that we refuse to grow, said one speaker, that we remain within the safety of our own familiarity.

It was a real joy to have first spent 4 days in New York with Joyce from Kenya whom we had met on the list, although we did know David from his visit to Canada several years ago. It was unfortunate indeed that David could not come and we missed him. However, there was something very significant in Joyce being able to tell her own story as a woman in the African culture, as a Pentecostal married to a Catholic, that illustrated in a profoundly gentle and gracious way the reality that was being presented through academic and theological presentations. The expectations that Joyce as a woman would join the man in his faith tradition touched on very real feminist issues. There were also parallel panels on women and ecumenism, unfortunately we were unable to attend, as we were both taking in other panels. The “buffet” of choices was so rich and diverse it made selection difficult.

A talk that stayed with me from the opening panel was when Sir David Moxon spoke of receptive ecumenism as the oxygen in mission, elaborating on the conversation between Pope Francis and Archbishop Justin Welby related to their decision to work together in a response to modern slavery and human trafficking. He described it as the first collaboration of its kind since the reformation, and a recognition that the issue was too big (with some 29,000,000 people being trafficked) for any one church to resolve. For me, that gave so much purpose to receptive ecumenism in the sea of theological debate.

The two plenaries each morning, with 3 speakers in each, concentrated on different international scenes through the lens of receptive ecumenism. They provided windows of reality into what is happening on the ground. They raised my awareness of ecumenism as it relates to the global north and south, seemingly poles apart. The global north appears always to have felt it led the way, while the global south has always felt like they could do nothing but receive, their own voice consistent unheard, not listened to. The North American context through the Canadian Anglican-Catholic Dialogue and the U.K context through the research project in Durham were issues we were aware of, if not familiar with. The Latin American context “Catholic and Pentecostal learning in relation to Mariology”, as well as the Asian perspective, had more meaning because of conversations with Joyce, connecting with the African context too.

The parallel sessions each afternoon provided overwhelming choice. For both Interchurch family panels the room was full. I think Ray underestimated the numbers as Joyce and I had counted between 20 - 25 chairs, and the room was full. The value of story was evident, humour as well, as Jeff Wild and Margie Dahl, Joyce Makumi, as well as Rebecca and Anthony Spellacy, told of their journeys and experiences, reinforcing again that human story carries so much power. Mary Marrocco, a marriage and family therapist, spoke of her experience of interchurch couples and the way they, learning to receive from each other in vulnerability, become prophetic witnesses to the way the churches must come together. Thomas Knieps spoke of how interchurch couples demonstrated the way to reconcile differences and develop a shared informed conscience which may at times go beyond the institutional rules.

Joyce and I had an opportunity to talk with the priest from the PCPCU who is responsible for the Pentecostal-Catholic dialogue. Joyce was able to explain that she, having been baptised first in the Anglican church, then later as a Pentecostal, was told by the Catholic priest that before she could marry David, she would have to be baptised again, something she refused to do. The priest from the PCPCU was emphatically clear that the priest in Kenya was wrong in what he had said. I asked him how we are to communicate with priests such as this, who are clearly uninformed. I also asked about the 1993 DAPNE, and whether it would be updated. He said it was not likely that it would be updated, but that we should use it to inform ourselves. There seems to be no answer to the question of how such priests could become informed. I came away feeling that we are to use the DAPNE to inform ourselves, and to act according to our conscience.

The experience reinforced, for both Ray and I, the importance of interchurch couples continuing to press the issues both through personal story and academically, and never to lose hope. The fact our presenters were mentioned so clearly on Vatican Radio news and in The Tablet was for both of us a sign of God’s grace at work.

Fenella

Receptive Ecumenism and Couple Therapy:

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 16:02:49 GMT

Receiving the Witness of Interchurch Families

by Dr. Mary Marrocco, RMFT

Paper presented June 2014 at the Third Receptive Ecumenism Conference, Fairfield University, Connecticut.

One of the most profound experiences I have had in my years of ecumenical work occurred—of all unlikely places—at a meeting of the Governing Board of the Canadian Council of Churches. Unlikely, because the Governing Board is the legal-bureaucratic oversight body of the Council, generally engaged in fiduciary business and policy. It is also a friendly and prayerful gathering, but organizational leaders, when meeting together, tend not to lead with their dreams and vulnerabilities. Moving moments are not written into the agenda. When they happen, they are gold. A golden moment taught me about listening and vulnerability as key ingredients to true change—between persons, spouses, even churches.

The Governing Board comprises some forty church leaders from more than twenty Christian tribes – including all main-line Protestant churches, the Catholic church, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, evangelicals, free churches and peace churches. A radical mix, representing 85% of Canadian Christians. At this meeting, in 2003, after a day or so discussing business, the Governing Board held a special two-hour session: "special", in that it featured no business at all, no intended outcomes, and even no record (minutes were not taken). The session was planned and set up by the Faith and Witness Commission, the Council body devoted to theological discussion.

Faith and Witness creates a meeting-place, a forum, among our churches so they can really hear and talk to each other about what matters most. Sometimes, in our joint reflections, Commission members truly “meet” one another; the veil drops. For example, one year we were reflecting on our different churches' work with HIV/AIDS. We quickly saw a common passion as to why we went to Africa, and what it meant to us that Christ was on the cross rejected and outcast; out of this discussion and the work that followed came our pastoral resource on suffering and hope, entitled The Bruised Reed. Sometimes Commission members stay hidden and reserved, but sometimes they are relaxed and personal, as they were at one dinner meeting while discussing what to do about bats residing in the church ceiling. Occasionally they are conflictual; I recall a passionate discussion of whether Adam and Eve were historical figures, another about theosis and total depravity. In respectful but heated discussion, we can discover the real heart of the other—the other person, the other church. Polite reserve is useful in its place, but impassioned interchange can open new meeting-places.

In Canada in 2003, the constitutionality of restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples was under question. Canada's Ministry of Justice established a committee which spent a year hearing presentations on this topic from any interested Canadian. Faith and Witness learned that, on the same day, three different Christian churches had made three different presentations to the Justice Committee. What did the government committee experience of Christianity on that day? The Council's member churches took extremely different, even opposing, views on the question, so the Council was struggling to know how to respond publicly. Faith and Witness had recently published a book on our different churches' understandings of marriage, but the subject of same-sex union was new, undiscussed, and threatening. What to do? Faith and Witness invited those three churches to give a précis of their Justice Committee presentations to the Governing Board in a special two-hour session, off the record, with discussion only and no decision-making. It was an invitation to listen, and the effect was dramatic. Our churches were able to listen to each other, and (not a small thing) without wounding each other more, at a time when they easily could have damaged their relationship. A decade later, the CCC has never issued a common statement on same-sex marriage, but has written a pastoral letter to its church leaders describing what we learned and how we engaged the question.

Not long after, I began my studies to become a marriage and family therapist. I quickly found that not only my theological and pastoral formation, but also my ecumenical experience, helped prepare me to be a marriage counsellor. Ecumenism has much to say about the nitty-gritty of encountering the other, not in the imagination but in the flesh, at the level where we pay the bills and butter the bread. So too, of course, do married couples. Imagine, then, the witness of the ecumenical couple—spouses who belong to two different Christian communities--who are living at once the inter-personal encounter and inter-church encounter, in the kitchen, the bedroom, the workplace, the place of worship, the nursery and the school, in the divinely-infused experience of communion and the humanly-wounded experience of breakage and healing.

Receptive ecumenism asks us to start by learning from the other – to help “deepen our authentic respective identities” and “draw us into more intimate relationship”. A principle so profound is yet so difficult. From providing couple therapy, I have learned much about what it means to listen and learn from the other. I will draw on my best teachers, the couples I have worked with, and what they teach about intimacy and communion. From this brief reflection, we might draw inferences about the unique place of inter-church couples in the quest for full communion, as they live inter-personal communion of the deepest sort within the “real but imperfect communion” among Christian traditions.

First. The Person is Not the Problem .

If we think of ourselves as telling a story with our lives, what kind of story is it? For couples who come to us for counselling, their story seems overwhelmingly painful, tragic, desperate, often meaningless. We Christians know that our story is the love-story of God pitching his tent among us and drawing us to new life—even though the narrative includes sin and suffering. Therapists also work with story; indeed, as the couple tells their narrative, the therapist steps into it with them, recklessly inserting herself in the plot-line however messy it may be. The idea is to fill out the couple's narrative, to make it richer, “thicker,” more collaborative, beyond the problem-saturated plot-line to which the couple is accustomed.[1]

For example: Jean and George come in for marriage counselling saying they are estranged, bicker all the time, fight about the kids, and do not love each other any more. Indeed, they sit stiffly, leaning away from each other, avoiding each other's eyes. As therapist, I feel their sadness, anger and weariness, but also note their narrative is “problem-saturated”: they talk almost exclusively of their marriage and each other as “the problem”. Jean thinks George is the problem; George thinks Jean is the problem; the one thing they agree on is that their marriage is a problem. Listening, I do not see Jean as a problem, nor George as a problem: they are not problems, but people. I mirror that view back to them. As Michael White, pioneer of narrative therapy, likes to say: the problem is the problem. White calls this approach “externalizing the problem”: an astute step, because it frees the person to be again a person—the problem is outside them, not indelibly part of them. As I question, talk and collaborate with the couple, we re-write their narrative and fill out the problem-driven plot with “exceptions” to problems, and eventually with insight, understanding, hope, success, change, love, agency, healing, above all with personal relationship.

The therapist helps the couple to listen to each other in a new way: not just to hear better what they are already hearing (“you are such a problem!” “I'm so tired of this!” “I'm stuck with you!”) but also to start to hear what has been silent between them (“I'm sorry it's been hard for you”; “I'm afraid you'll leave me”; “I think you are a good parent”). Now they are consciously writing their narrative, together, with more dimensions and colours.

On the day of the Governing Board's special session, the church leaders refused to allow totally separate, divisive church narratives to be told, even though the shared narrative was brief, tentative, uncomfortable, unpolished, and unfinished. By having an authentic discussion, focused on mutual listening, they were deliberately writing at least part of their narrative together, and that in itself was transformative. Receptivity also means becoming receptive to ourselves, perhaps the hardest change of all.

The inter-church couple tells the story not only of two people brought together into one life, but also of two churches brought together in that inter-personal union Might their shared narrative help fill out the story of Christian estrangement with a story of deeper communion?

Second. Uncover the Core Wound .

It might seem more productive, in marriage therapy, to contain emotions and work things out logically. Indeed it is ever-tempting for the therapist to try to mediate arguments, come up with plans and solutions, and find a logical and sensible path. Yielding to this temptation, however, generally either backfires or stalls the process. The trouble is generally not cognitive, and the underlying solution is not cognitive: the trouble is human and inter-personal, and the solution must be human and inter-personal.

In couple therapy, the turning-point often comes when one or both spouses decide to take a risk, even in the hurt place. There has been rejection, hostility, perhaps infidelity. The couple decide to stay together and work it through; at a certain point, the unfaithful spouse truly asks forgiveness, and the betrayed spouse truly offers it. How does this change happen? The therapist can help the couple actually experience their emotions, rather than deny or ignore them, rationalize them, or hit each other with them. Going around or suppressing emotions actually disables progress and healing; talking rationally, working out mediated solutions, or implementing communication strategies, can provide an illusion of change that allows the couple to stay comfortably stuck right where they are. This is a danger ecumenists will likely recognize. It is entirely human; what is more alarming for us than change? Even the change of getting out of hell can be too much to contemplate, let alone the change of becoming united when one is accustomed to division and conflict.

Instead of staying outside our emotions, needs and wounds, the therapist boldly wades into them – bringing her own, too. Take Susan and Mark. Much of their thirty years of marriage has been conflictual. Susan and Mark can hardly talk to each other without blaming and accusations; they quickly get into well-established unpleasant pathways and old painful stories from years ago, the details of which they still argue about (“I called you two bad names on that day in 1997, not four”). Asked how they feel about a situation, they respond along these lines: “Well, I feel that he is selfish,” or “I feel she is unfair to my mother”--not realizing they are actually hiding their feelings rather than disclosing them. Feelings can be painful; feelings can lead to destructive actions; feelings often do not seem safe, honoured, or cherished, and it can be hard to know what to do with them. Moreover, most of our socialization teaches us to hide or ignore our feelings. It is understandable that two intelligent Christians can think their marriage will be better off without feelings and without access to the true inner self to which feelings can be a doorway. That doorway that may be open, closed, or ajar. Current neuroscience and brain studies have begun to demonstrate how shutting down one's feelings affects brain development, and that the process of experiencing old feelings in a new way can actually restore damaged brain tissue.

Listening to Susan and Mark, as therapist, I start to hear some of the patterns in their well-honed dance steps. He quickly accuses and blames her; she quickly contradicts him or shuts him down. I work with empathy to help them focus on their emotions. Finally, during one memorable session, he is able to name anger directly and let it be in the room with us—without judgement, without consequence. He experiences his anger in a new way, without lashing out or defending himself, and so we discover that his anger is shielding despair. Despair, for him, is a result of feeling inadequate. Discovering his core wound, and learning to let his wife in at that point rather than shutting her out, requires courage and vulnerability, and makes it possible for the dividing-wall of hostility to dissolve (cf Ephesians 2:14).

Listening to their emotions actually helped change the interaction between Mike and Susan. Something of this process happened at our Governing Board meeting. During that discussion, the participants saw that their theological understanding and moral principles were not solely “in their heads” but alive in the ways they lived. They felt emotions, anger, sorrow, compassion, hope, dared to share some of them, and so took at least a brick or two out of the dividing wall. Our church leaders were not skilled at talking to each other about homosexuality, but then they had little experience talking together about sexuality at all. There was sadness, that day, in finding themselves divided and in therefore being unable to act together; perhaps this sadness contained within it a call to action of another kind.

On a question as intimate and fundamental as relationship and sexuality, that day showed the power and pain of listening to the other. Couples know this territory well They must navigate the vivid, often-stormy waters of sexuality in faith. For inter-church couples, these waters can be especially dramatic when their different traditions offer different guidance on sexuality. Can we listen to these couples as they listen to each other?

It is tempting to do our theology and praxis as though we were not flesh-and-blood beings, humans engaged with the divine. It is difficult to know how to integrate our selves, alive with feelings and desires, wounds and sorrows and hopes, into our engagement with each other, especially the 'other' from whom we have been estranged. Being present to emotions in a context of love and non-judgement can help restore damaged brain and damaged soul. Perhaps the inter-church couple, engaged in the risky and holy work of becoming present to one another in Christ, can help restore damaged communion between their churches.

Third. Forgiveness Is Key .

This idiscovery is not new for Christian theology, but is somewhat revolutionary in couple therapy, which has tended to be reluctant to talk about forgiveness. Perhaps it seems too religious, or perhaps there is a wariness of false or forced forgiveness wreaking harm.

Often, the therapist meets couples so far gone down the road of division one might be tempted to say: “They are better to go their own ways.” Yet most couples are better to find forgiveness and a new way together. An exception would be the presence of violence within the couple, since violence must end before couple therapy can begin.

My couples have taught me that forgiveness is real and possible, even through experiences as wrenching as infidelity or addiction to pornography. Sometimes we have to stop focusing even on the urgent practical issues for a little—real and important as they are--to give attention to the relationship and re-claim its fundamental importance. When we listen to what the relationship needs, we might hear it calling for mutual forgiveness and renewal of trust. When we are open to forgiveness, we may find ourselves better able to work out the practical issues.

As Pope Francis said at a Sunday reflection to Israeli and Palestinian leaders, when he welcomed them to his home: “Peacemaking calls for courage, much more so than warfare. It calls for the courage to say yes to the encounter and no to conflict.”[2]

Conclusion

Couples tend to be pragmatic. They want therapy to work, to bring about some resolution. I hope their passion for resolution can be echoed within our churches. I hope we can be as dissatisfied with Christian division as are those who by their intimate marital union bring together two separated churches, and dare to experience within the heart of their Christian couple the pain of church division. Their witness, their strength, is that they hold that division within a union and bond of love, dwelling in the life of the Trinity. They work this out here in the world, with its thorns and thistles, mortgages and in-laws, sexuality and child-rearing—at the infinite, intimate meeting-point between matter and spirit, between human and divine. My years of couple therapy have given me great respect for the difficult work of marriage, but also for the power and importance of marriage to heal and transform. With these principles, in faith, inter-church couples can tackle anything, and listening to them we can hear better the word of Christ: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

[1] For this section, I am indebted to the work of narrative therapists Michael White and David Epston, as explained in their insightful work Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends (W.W. Norton, 1990). Terms such as "thicker narrative", "problem-saturated", "externalizing the problem", originate with them.

[2] http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2014/06/09/pope_peacemaking_calls_for_courage,_much_more_so_than_war/en-1101536.

Divided We Stand: How "Mixed Marriages" Can Teach Ecumenism

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 15:43:56 GMT

Rebecca and Anthony Spellacy

Receptive ecumenism in a nutshell, according to David Carter (in a paper from 2007 titled Receptive Ecumenism- An Overview), calls us to “‘accept one another as Christ accepted us’, not at the minimal level of simple tolerance, but at the level of true reception in love, preferring one another in honor”. That is a very tall order. It is also a very practical order. We’re still in graduate school, and that means that there is a great deal of talk about subjects that most people, even the ones talking about them, will tell you have no practical application at all, and some of those people are “ecumenists”. This is not the place for those sorts of discussions-receptive ecumenism is a practical and pastoral endeavor. Perhaps this is why it appeals to the two of us-neither one of us are trained in ecumenism, we are both liturgists who have found a home, for reasons that will become clear, in the ecumenical world.

The problem with liturgists is that we are forever asking that question that drives most other people batty “how”? How does the liturgy express the theology you say it does? How do we get the liturgy and the theology to work together? How do we get people to understand? This constant refrain has found its way into our work on ecumenism and notably this idea of accepting one another-how do we go about doing that? How do we know if it has happened? It is these questions that we are going to attempt to answer-albeit in a very targeted and specific way.

Before we go any further, we both feel like this is the moment to put all our cards on the table-in the interest of ecumenical honesty. Anthony is a cradle Latin Rite Catholic who has spent his academic life trying to figure out what makes Episcopalians tick. I am a cradle Episcopalian who has gone to Catholic Colleges for undergrad and my Masters and only for my doctorate come back to an Anglican College. The point of us telling you this is so that you know where we are coming from as the paper progresses and so that what follows might make a bit more sense.

The 1993 Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism[1] lays out that “marriage between persons of the same ecclesial Community remains the objective to be recommended and encouraged.” (§144) I personally encourage my university to fully fund me and for immigration to not require so much paperwork, sometimes encouragement just does not work. According to CARA (The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate) in a study done in 2007, 72% of Catholics in the United States were married to Catholics, for the math challenged, like Rebecca that means 28% of Catholics are married to non-Catholics. This gets even more significant when the study continues that younger Catholics are more likely to be married to non-Catholics. In short, marriage has become an ecumenical reality and it looks as if it is going to stay that way.

Now, this might not seem like a terribly significant statistic, 28% of Catholics in the U.S, that isn’t even a significant minority. Further, not all of them are practicing or married to a practicing member of another denomination. That trend however is also reversing as more and more mixed marriages are between two people of strong religious backgrounds. You might be wondering what on earth this has to do with receptive ecumenism-more than you might think.

The Catholic Church rightly calls the family the domestic church-and many Protestant denominations, while not using the same language, tend to agree. Faith starts at home, faith is nurtured at home, if a family has a strong faith life it can and does go far in helping children carry on that faith, more than just with children however, the family, no matter the size, is called to live as a Christian witness in the world-and married people have a special vocation within that context. If then a married couple is in a “mixed marriage” it stands to reason that there are some ecumenical lessons and implications when it comes to accepting people as Christ accepts them based on the living out of this vocation in a unique context. We in no way want you to view this list as comprehensive; it is a starting point for discussion. Nevertheless, we do feel that it hits all the high points in this area.

1: The Art of the Compromise-Or not (Anthony)

Compromise is a great skill in marriage-as in most of life. Every person, clerical or lay, that has ever done any marriage counseling or marriage prep class, or even just been married, will tell you how important compromise is to a healthy marriage. This is especially important when a large part of your life is in direct conflict with your spouse.

David Archard, in his article “Moral Compromise” defines compromise as the “making of mutual concessions by two or more parties who disagree.”[2] He also asserts that it will only be achieved if both parties are willing to give away something, and agree at an inferior position.[3] This leads to an agreement of disagreement where both parties feel it is better that they come together in a mutual understanding and resolving of tension, than to continue in disunity.[4]

However, virtue is a mean between extremes, and that does mean that not all ought to be compromised. How does one compromise with their spouse when to compromise may very well be a betrayal of faith or cause thoughts of damnation and separation from their own faith traditions? At the very least the compromise might be a barrier to ones own faith journey. Being married to someone that does not share our denominational affiliations, we learned quickly that some things are just non-starters.

2: Not Everything is as important as you think (Rebecca)

That being said, not everything is something to live and die by. I once heard someone ask the question, “is this really the ditch you want to die in?” when talking about picking your battles. There are some things that just are not as important as we would like to make them out to be. This requires both self-reflection and some knowledge. One needs to know what the rules of their denomination are, what the tradition says must be and must not be, so that they are not going against their faith. This requires a little more than just an 8 ^th grade education in their faith, something Catholics and Anglicans often have trouble with achieving. One also needs to do some self-reflection upon this knowledge to determine what unessentials they are willing to give up when needed.

Perhaps the best example of this for the two of us is Holy Week. As the Triduum is not essential but important for the proper liturgical understanding and celebration of Easter, we feel it is necessary to attend the entire liturgy, and therefore must decide how it will be split up between our two Churches. We, on the regular Sundays of the year, normally attend Church at both a Catholic and Anglican church each week (one after the other) and most of the time that works. It gets a bit more challenging during Holy Week when both churches want to do Holy Thursday at 7pm and the Easter Vigils within an hour start time of each other. At some point we had to decide that it is more important for us to be together than for us to be going to our respective churches during all of Holy Week. How did we solve this problem, we rotate each year.

3: Understanding is Key (Anthony)

By that we mean it isn’t enough just to know what the other person does but it is important to understand why they do it. If all Rebecca knows about Catholic observances of Lent is that it means she can’t have a steak on Friday, well that isn’t going to get either of us very far theologically or as a couple. It really is the only way to ensure that Rebecca knows that I am not just trying to save some money on a steak, that there is actually a theological underpinning for the Catholic observance of Lent and it might be beneficial practice for her to take up as well. This again requires some work. It might not be to the extent that either of us have researched (graduate school), but some investigation of each other’s faith tradition is needed. It should also go without saying that for this system to work it is important to know your own tradition. It is also important that you give correct answers and are not afraid to say “I don’t know” as long as it is followed by attempting to discover the correct answer. Asking clergy is always an appropriate recourse but don’t be surprised if/when they also say “I don’t know”. The questions of outsiders are often more inquiring then those questions asked by lifelong adherents (just ask any RCIA facilitator).

Because we are both constantly around each other’s respective churches and theologies, there are inevitably questions about why things are done the way they are: “Becca, why do Anglicans cross themselves when they pray for the dead?” “Anthony, why do Catholics bow for the whole of the Gloria Patri?” New questions come up all the time. This is our attempt to figure out what makes the other tick.

4: Not everything is as different as it seems...but some things really are (Rebecca)

Having grown in understanding it becomes clear that there are some similarities that might not be as readily apparent as one might think. This may be historical interpretations of an action that convey the same thought or idea but have appeared in different manners down the centuries. A good example of this is the Liturgical prayer that occurs at the end of the work day. In the Catholic Church we have Evening Prayer with one Gospel canticle, while Anglicans have Evensong with two Gospel canticles. This prayer has the same purpose, to glorify God at the end of the day, and ask his protection through the night, it just occurs in a slightly different format. Just because it is not the same doesn’t really mean it is different.

(Anthony) However, it is not all agreement. Let us ask you a question: What happens on November 2? For whom do you pray? Catholics and Anglicans (currently, not necessarily historically) call this day All Souls Day. Same title, different theology. Catholics pray for the dead, Anglicans will tell you they pray with the dead, remembering specific loved ones, but will not (a few high Anglo-Catholics and Rebecca excepted) say that they are praying for the dead. Same title, different theology.

Moving to the Big Ecumenical Picture (Rebecca)

You might now be wondering what on earth this has to do with anything that comes to receptive ecumenism. We want to now apply what we have learned on a small scale and show how those lessons can be used/received on a larger scale.

Lesson Number One (Anthony): This is not a zero-sum game. By that we mean that ecumenism cannot be viewed as a system of “I’ll give up X and you give up Y” Yes, compromise is a key component of all of these discussions, but that does not mean that everything equals out in the end. In practice this means we might be uncomfortable. Roman Catholics will not “give up” the idea of the Immaculate Conception and Episcopalians will not comfortable saying one must believe in the Immaculate Conception.

We have to learn that acceptance means there are things that there are things that will not change about the other and that that is alright. Perhaps one of the clearest examples of this comes into light with the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church. For the Catholic Church this is a non-starter, it isn’t going to happen. For most Episcopalians women not being ordained is a non-starter. It is just the way it is.

Lesson Number Two (Rebecca): Sometimes you have let things go. If this truly is not a zero sum game then we have to be open to the idea that some people may “come out ahead” and that is alright too. It does mean however that there are times where something is more important to the “other side” and we have to be alright with that. For example: My academic work is on death and dying and if you want to see a place where Anglicans and Catholics can really get into it, come talk to me. That being said, and you may just have to trust me on this, Anglicans do not have to be allergic to the idea of prayers for the dead, but it is of fundamental import to Catholics. Anglicans need to give up/get over Reformation prejudices and move to accept the Roman Catholic concept around prayers for the dead is not going anywhere and Anglicans might be able to learn something theologically from the practice.

It also means that Catholics need to actually understand what the Catholic Church thinks about Protestants, particularly Anglicans. Yes, most every Catholic document on Ecumenism stresses a desire for full unity with Rome; that is not to say that the Catholic Church does not value the role of Protestants. It is not to say that the Catholic Church views all Protestants as going to hell and having nothing to contribute to society and religion. This is perhaps even more important when it comes to Anglicans. Anglicans are not “Catholic Lite”, they are not just viewed as a schismatic sext, there is a tradition, a theology and a value in Anglicanism, officially recognized by the Church in Rome. The moral of this lesson seems to be: let go of historical prejudices.

Lesson Number Three (Anthony): Rebecca calls this one the “Mantillas really are nifty” rule. The rest of us might say it is something more like “adaptation and cooption is at times necessary for survival” and even when it isn’t, sometimes it is still a nice thing. For example, we have seen a Catholic embracing of Biblical criticism that was often the realm of the Protestant World. On the other hand, the Protestant world is starting to embrace traditions like the Liturgy of the Hours, vestments, prayers for the dead and yes, even mantillas.

(Rebecca) Given all of this you might now be wondering what in God’s holy name has this to do with liturgy and perhaps more to the point what does this have to do with receptive ecumenism? The answer is at once beautifully simple and painfully complex: It has everything do to with both of them. So often it seems that we are quick to point out where others fail and we succeed and liturgy is no different. Looking over the lessons we have learned from marriage however we can apply them not just ecumenism in general, but liturgical ecumenism in particular.

1: Some change is good and some isn’t (Anthony)

Of course we can learn from various traditions. A great example of this is the liturgical changes that have been taking place from the Oxford movement on (and perhaps even in the Anglican Church from its very foundation). Both the Anglican Churches and the Catholic Church have a history of changing the liturgy both significantly and insignificantly, and sometimes, as with the changes due to the Oxford movement, those changes come in the form of “copying” the other.

We have already seen movements embracing preaching, vestments, prayers for the dead and many other things that we’re sure almost everyone can agree are good examples of this kind of sharing. However, there are also some examples where it did not work so well. Trying to import wholesale the Catholic devotions to Mary for example tended not to work in Anglican Churches. Protestant theology around the priesthood is very different than the Catholic Church and when clergy attempt to join the “other side” there are often re-entry problems because the theology is so different. Importing liturgical colors into a church that does not have a theology that clearly differentiates liturgical seasons might not be the best course of action, and yet it has happened.

2: Sometimes the “other” has a good idea (Rebecca)

That leads quite naturally into this point; sometimes the “other” really has a good idea. Sometimes those ideas are a simple as “hey vestments, good idea”. It could also be something much more significant like bringing the epiclesis back in the Eucharistic Prayer, or including a reading from the Old Testament in the Liturgy of the Word. The other might have a good point, and organic growth in Theology is not only the realm of the “us” whomever we are.

3: Sometimes the “other” has really bad ideas (Anthony)

This is not to say that everything is good or bad, but that sometimes it is not for every place and time. This means it might not be right to co-opt a historical practice, or a current practice. One example of this is the use of Sarum blue during Advent. Originally used for the Feast of St. Michael, these vestments have been co-opted by the Episcopal Church as the proper liturgical color for the season of Advent to denote a lack of penance in preparation for Christmas. This co-option would not be appropriate in the Catholic Church because the season of Advent for us does have a slight penitential nature. The ringing of bells at the Sanctus is a Catholic practice that makes no real theological sense in the Anglican world, nor does Adoration and yet, at times it has happened. Really, there some liturgical actions that require a theological context that is not shared. We have already been over this idea and so we won’t repeat it much here, but it warrant repeating-JUST BECAUSE IT WORKS IN ONE PLACE AND IN ONE TRADITION DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT WILL WORK IN OTHER PLACES AND TRADITIONS.

4: Sometimes you just won’t agree . (Rebecca)

This has nothing to do with correctness, or even with practicality. Sometimes we, as married or as churches, just won’t agree and to try and force agreement leads to resentment and failure.

So, what does all of this mean? For those who strive for full visible unity, the prognosis is not good. For those, like you gathered here, who are striving for receptive ecumenism, the prognosis is much better. Catholics and Anglicans, Catholics and other Protestants, are not the same and we never will be, any more then Rebecca is not Anthony and trust us, it would look strange if she tried to be. It does mean that we have much to learn from each other and can grow in that relationship. It is a relationship that seeks the mutual good of the other, allowing for compromise when prudent and stands firm when essential, all the while acting in the love of Christ and seeking to bring the other to know Christ more fully. Hey, that sounds like a marriage!

[1]http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_25031993_principles-and-norms-on-ecumenism_en.html

[2] David Archard, “Moral Compromise,” Philosophy 87, no.3 (2012), 403, http://dx.doi.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1017/S00318 (accessed March 3, 2014).

[3] Archard “Compromise”, 403.

[4] Archard “Compromise”, 403.

The ‘Hermeneutics’ of Interchurch Families – A Practical Model for Receptive Ecumenism?

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 15:18:54 GMT

Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi
Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

Presented at the 3 ^rd Conference on Receptive Ecumenism in International Perspective, June 9-12, Fairfield CT, USA

Receptive Ecumenism and Interchurch Marriages

Paul D. Murray succinctly describes the principle of “Receptive Ecumenism” as operating a “programmatic shift from prioritizing the question ‘What do our various others first need to learn from us?’ to asking instead, ‘What is that we need to learn and can learn, or receive, with integrity from our others?’”.[1] He further call this “third-phase” ecumenism a process of “patient, grace-filled learning of how each is called to grow to a new place where new things become possible”.[2]

It is quite obvious that such a programmatic shift calls for a real conversion of mentality and attitude. According to Murray, a number of pragmatic insights and assumptions are at the basis of such a conversion within the ecumenical movement:

First, there is a growing awareness within the Christian traditions of their “own respective wounds, difficulties and needs” which cannot be resolved from within the own existing resources and consequently call for “refreshment and renewal from without, from the alternative logics and ecclesial experiences of other traditions”.[3]

Second, there is the assumption that any further progress will only be possible if each tradition moves away from ideal, theoretical ecclesiological constructs and moves towards the lived reality, taking into consideration its best practices as well as the difficulties and problems, tensions and contradictions to be found there.

A third insight here is that the idea of “getting the best china tea service out” has in the end not served the ecumenical movement. Instead of showing oneself in the best possible light to one’s distant relatives who come to visit, the Christian churches have realized that they should allow the elements which they kept “locked behind the close doors of the intimate family space” to come to view.[4]

Overcoming self-enclosure and openness to the other, a realistic look at one’s own strengths and shortcomings, and honesty and transparency vis-à-vis oneself and toward others – these seem to be three key principles for receptive ecumenical learning.

In this paper I would like to briefly present and analyse an “ecumenical methodology” that has a lot of similarities with the one suggested by Receptive Ecumenism; one, however, that has a slightly longer state of history and practice and therefore is perhaps less likely to share in one of the limitations Murray notes for the Receptive Ecumenism project, namely that it operates “along the lines of an external consultancy model” and therefore militates “to some degree against achieving strong ownership” of the results by its respective agents.[5] The “hermeneutics” of interchurch couples, as I call it, provides a practical model in line with the concept of Receptive Ecumenism that has so far not adequately been acknowledged, neither by the official churches nor by the ecumenical movement – despite a glossy rhetoric that has at times referred to these marriages as “builders of unity” (Paul VI), symbols of “the hopes and difficulties of the path to Christian unity” (Pope John Paul II), or “practical laboratory of unity” (Pope Benedict XVI).

I will first define what I understand by “interchurch couples/marriages/families” and explain why it is vital for individuals in such relations to work through their religious differences by engaging in a mutual learning process. In a second step, I will briefly portray and analyse some of the specific hermeneutical skills that interchurch families have developed and then provide a concluding remark.

Interchurch Couples: Loyalties Divided between Partner and Church?

When referring to couples and marriages in which the partners are two baptized Christians from different church traditions, many church officials and academics today refrain from using the former and more generic term “mixed marriages”. They prefer the term “interchurch marriage”. “Interchurch” then denotes a marriage or family in which each partner or spouse participates actively in his or her particular church and to various degrees also in the partner’s church; he or she is also supposed to take an active, conscientious role in the religious education of their children. ^[6] This definition explicitly distinguishes between authentically interchurch marriage and family life and nominally “interchurch” relationships. In numerous, religiously indifferent types of mixed marriages one spouse often drops out of the church and children receive religious education from only one parent; or, in a worse case when both parents drop out of religious affiliation, their children may have no religious education at all. Strictly speaking then, the term “interchurch” applies only to the first category.

George A. Kilcourse has recently complained that a lack of terminological distinction in this regard may yield misleading conclusions about the religious profile of authentic interchurch couples.[7] He was referring to the emerging body of empirical research that is investigating what is now commonly called “religious heterogamy”, the fact that couples come from different religious backgrounds, and its effects on the marital relationship. What Kilcourse is preoccupied with is that without any conceptual differentiation some of this research seems to substantiate the churches’ former warning that marriage with a partner from a different denomination leads into religious indifferentism and lowers the couples’ church involvement. For example, a 1995 study of the Center for Marriage and Family at Creighton University on marriage preparation in the Catholic church in the US found that individuals in what was indiscriminately called there “interchurch” marriages, were less likely to participate in church activities or the sacraments and equally less likely than those in same-church marriages to experience a strong sense of religious belonging. The study suggested that these couples might be more at risk for drifting away from church practice, and place less emphasis on religion in raising children than do same-church and interchurch couples who have changed to same-church affiliation. ^[8]

Likewise, based on a US national sample of Catholic and Protestant homogamous and heterogamous marriages Williams and Lawler have corroborated earlier research according to which religiously heterogamous respondents reported lower levels of religiosity than same-church respondents on a number of religious variables and were less likely to emphasize religion in raising their children. ^[9] While the findings showed that individuals from different church traditions already came into marriage with a weaker sense of denominational identity, no evidence was found for an overall decline of church attendance during their marriage. The only area where interchurch respondents were more at risk for drifting from church involvement than same-church respondents was in terms of change to no religious affiliation.

These findings appear in new light when one considers whether cross-denominational individuals on average are more likely to drift away also from their partners. Studies over the past decades have provided consistent evidence that marriages in which husband and wife hold similar religious beliefs and participate jointly in religious practice have higher marital stability and report higher marital quality.[10] As interchurch couples usually report greater religious differences and less joint religious activities than same-church couples, one may assume that they score lower in marital satisfaction. Williams and Lawler, however, found no significant differences in marital satisfaction between different-church and same-church respondents when putting different denominational affiliation in line with other socio-demographic or heterogamous variables such as ethnicity, age or education. ^[11] They concluded that there is no relationship between religious heterogamy and marital satisfaction if religious heterogamy is measured in terms of different church belonging.

The tableau changed, however, when perceived religious differences concerning a number of topics (e.g. religious beliefs, importance of prayer and of church attendance, etc.) and joint religious activity were included in the analysis. Both became significant predictors of marital satisfaction, but in the positive direction: more joint religious activities and fewer perceived religious differences were associated with greater marital satisfaction. “This suggests there may be unique benefits or advantages to being interchurch in addition to its potential disadvantages…Those interchurch couples who successfully find a way to deal with their religious differences and fashion a joint religious life may enjoy marital benefits not available to same-church couples.” ^[12]

One conclusion which may be drawn from these findings is that religious differences matter the more important religion is to the individual or couple. Interchurch individuals for whom religiosity does not mean much are obviously not very likely to withdraw even further from church practice (and if they do, they may lose any religious affiliation at all); nor will they easily drift away from the partner for purely religious reasons. Low religiosity may therefore contribute to religious factors having less influence, either positively or negatively, on the marriage. High religiosity, by contrast, is found to aggravate religious differences and will probably put these couples at greater risk for marital problems.

However, religion can not only be a “divisive force” in marriage, it can also be a “cohesive or bonding force”as evidenced by the positive marital outcomes when the spouses manage to cope with their religious disparities and create a shared religious life. This suggests, and herein lies a second conclusion, “that it is not religious differences per se that are problematic, but how they are managed”. ^[13] In other words, interchurch individuals who do not want their religious beliefs and practices having a negative effect on the quality of their marriage need the ability to communicate with and mutually respect one another while exploring their differences – including the religious ones.

“Interchurch Family Hermeneutics” in Practice

A first-hand account of how interchurch couples very practically manage to make a positive use of their religious differences is offered in a document entitled “Interchurch Families and Christian Unity”that was adopted as a kind of manifesto by the Second World Gathering of Interchurch Families near Rome in 2003.

This text provides a narrative account of how authentic interchurch couples and their families self-describe the specific learning process they have gone through when building up a shared religious life. Put in a systematic way, four competences in particular are referred to here. I will very briefly summarize them:

1. In its second part entitled “The Contribution of Interchurch Families to Christian Unity”, the Rome document starts out to describe the initial phase of an interchurch marriage:

When an interchurch couple first meets, the two individuals often share the mutual ignorance and prejudice of their fellow church members. They can easily assume that the differences and tension between their two ecclesial communions, which have been causes of separation in the past, are irreconcilable. But because they love and respect one another, and try to forgive each other’s weaknesses, they soon grow to love and respect each other’s churches. (C 1)

It is important to note that this approach conceives of the loving relationship as embracing the partners not only in their personal characteristics but also in their social connectedness and thus also as bound up with a religious community. The document explicitly points out that “as marriage partners…(interchurch couples, TK) want to share all that is of value in each other’s lives, and as Christian marriage partners this includes especially the riches of their respective ecclesial communions” (B 2). Thus, in a process of exploring and of getting to know the other in his/her ecclesial involvement, ignorance and prejudice toward the other church are said to be overcome and mutual respect to take place. Likewise, the process of exploration pertains also to the partner’s church community in its concrete reality including “ways of worship, church life, doctrine, spirituality, authority, and ethics” (C 2). This can lead to “a mutual appreciation of the positive gifts of each other’s churches and a mutual understanding of their weaknesses” (C 2). We find here a first basic criterion for a specific “interchurch hermeneutics” which is to improve knowledge and gain understanding of and respect for the other and his/her religious affiliation.

2. A further stage is reached when in that same spirit and practice of “mutual immersion and participation in the life of their two church communities” (C 1) the spouses are enabled “to evaluate the other church in terms of its own language and ways of thought, action and being” (C 2). The document distances itself from a form of perception and judgement that is determined by one’s “own values, emphases, use of language and structure of thought” – a perception and attitude that has been characteristic for a past polemical mentality “in which one church often defined itself by what another was not”. Interchurch couples who are able to overcome such “cognitive egocentrism” and empathize with the other and the other’s church by assuming his/her perspective thus witness to a second hermeneutical skill.

3. A third competence emerges when interchurch families report on their coming to understand “that the same truth can be expressed in a variety of forms, and that very often the more ways in which it is expressed, the deeper we penetrate into its reality” (C 2). Through their way of living in each other’s religious tradition “they realize that all differences are not church dividing, but many are complementary and can lead to the enrichment of diversity” (C 1). What is described here is the cognitive ability to transcend the own and the other’s position and attain a meta-perspective from which initially perceived divergences appear reconcilable and new sense is generated. The relevance of this ability can hardly be overestimated when interchurch families are to develop a shared religiosity rather than leading a religious life in parallel. To do so, a fourth and final competence is needed which leaves the realm of pure cognition and turns into practice.

4. What is meant here is the capacity for self-conscious ethical decision making and action. Interpersonal identity development requires that a person who has got insight into the relativity of his/her own and the other’s perspective is able to suspend and revise his/her previous reliance on and trust into external sources of authority and the value systems connected to them. Successful interchurch families will automatically develop a critical judgement vis-à-vis particular beliefs and practices of the denominational churches if they are to construct a shared religious identity. The Rome document welcomes this last competence for instance when interchurch couples are granted the right “to forge their own particular family traditions which may incorporate much of the (Christian spiritual, TK) traditions of the two families in which they were brought up, but now fused into a new pattern” (B 2). It is taken into account that “(t)here can be a clash between what…(interchurch families, TK) wish to do and judge to be right for their family life and its unity, and the (often conflicting) attitudes and rules of their respective two ecclesial communions” (B 5). In cases of conflict, the principle is recognized “that to go beyond the rules is not always to go against them” (B 5).

Concluding remark

It has become clear that such hermeneutical competences appear as an indispensable tool for interchurch individuals to strike a balance between their loving commitment to the partner on the one side and allegiance to their own church community on the other. The intrinsic connection between partnership quality and religious involvement shows that satisfying spousal community in the interchurch family cannot be achieved by ignoring or putting aside religious differences but only by working them through and by reaching new common ground beyond formerly held religious positions. Could it be that authentic interchurch couples and families have practiced already for quite some time what the ecumenical movement is now discovering under the term of receptive ecumenism?

Return to Conference Panel index

[1] P.D. Murray, “Introducing Receptive Ecumenism”, in: The Ecumenist 51 (2014), 1-8, at 1.
[2] Ibid. 4.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid. 5.
[5] Cf. ibid. 6.
[6] Cf. G.A. Kilcourse, Double Belonging: Interchurch Families and Christian Unity, New York, NY: Paulist, 1992.
[7] Cf. G.A. Kilcourse, “Interchurch Families as Domestic Church: The Improbable Grace”, in: T. Knieps-Port le Roi et al. (eds.), The Household of God and Local Households. Revisiting the Domestic Church, Peeters: Leuven, 2010, 335-348.
[8] Center for Marriage and Family, Marriage Preparation in the Catholic Church: Getting it Right (Omaha, NE: Creighton University, 1995).
[9] L.M. Williams & Michael G. Lawler, “Religious Heterogamy and Religiosity: A Comparison of Interchurch and Same-Church Individuals,” in: Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40 (2001), 465-478; see also Center for Marriage and Family, Ministry to Interchurch Marriages: A National Study (Omaha, NE: Creighton University, 1999).
[10] Cf. L.M. Williams, N. Ulm & J.E. Baker, “Addressing Religious Differences in Couples: The Two Churches, One Marriage Program”, in: Journal of Family Psychotherapy 24 (2013), 93-109.
[11] L.M. Williams & Michael G. Lawler, “Marital Satisfaction and Religious Heterogamy: A Comparison of Interchurch and Same-Church Individuals,” in Journal of Family Issues 24 (2003), 1070-1092.
[12] Ibid. 1088.
[13] Ibid. 1089.

Interchurch Families in the Vanguard of Ecumenical Discourse

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 14:07:37 GMT

Ray Temmerman
Winnipeg, MB Canada

Presented at the 3rd Conference on Receptive Ecumenism in International Perspective , June 9-12, Fairfield CT, USA

I am indebted to the work of Dr Neil Ormerod of Australia. The introduction to his recent book, “Revisioning the Church: An Experiment in Systematic-Historical Ecclesiology” was the instigation of a significant change in this paper’s focus.

If we wish to look at how far we have come in our ecumenical discourse, we need do not more than to compare the 1928 papal encyclical Mortalium Animos, which warned Catholics against having anything to do with the movement for reunion, [i] with the wondrous reality of this conference.

While this movement is true within ecumenical circles in general, my focus will be interchurch families, that subset of mixed marriages in which both spouses seek to participate fully, to the extent they are able, in the lives of both their churches, and to raise their children within both.

Interchurch families have in many cases been at the forefront of changing ecumenical discourse. As we have discussed our differences and commonalities, we have not only talked of what is, but also what should be; not only what the Spirit has said and what has been formulated within Church polity, but what the Spirit is saying and what must yet come to be. And we have worked toward what must be, so that we might live our vocational unity.

Ian Walter, Diocesan Ecumenical Officer for the Anglican Diocese of Manchester, recognized this when, in 1990, he wrote of interchurch families that “It could be heart-rending to hear of the problems surrounding say, their weddings or the baptisms of their children. But what impressed and encouraged me was how they were not to be put off, how they did not take the easy way out and say "A plague on both your houses". Instead, convinced of God's will to reconcile his separated people, they strove to join both Christian traditions in their own lives.” [ii]

Each church has its own doctrine, dogma and polity. Each church rightly calls its adherents to live by that doctrine and polity, as parameters for what it is to be part of the ecclesia.

Yet scripture proclaims, our churches believe and teach, and we experience and believe, that in marriage, two individuals join to become one body. While we still see two, there is now in reality one, just as while in the Eucharist we still see bread and wine, yet we believe there is now the invisible but totally real presence of Christ himself. Marriage is understood to create, to make real, a new situation, that of unity. How, then, shall we live that new situation of unity?

Allow me to propose a somewhat simplistic, but I believe apt basis for our discussion.

Same-church couples live that new situation according to the very same ecclesial parameters that existed prior to their marriage. While they are now one, both spouses share the same doctrine and polity. Nothing has changed in that regard.
Mixed-marriage couples live the new situation of unity according to the parameters of the old situation of ecclesial division, while patiently waiting in hope (and in some cases diligently working) for the parameters of the new situation, that of unity, to develop between their churches.
Interchurch couples, while aware that the parameters of the old situation of ecclesial division may impact heavily on them, still choose to live as much as possible according to the new situation of unity, while (perhaps impatiently) working to help develop the parameters of the new situation. We are, to quote Monsignor David Donnelly in his 1990 article Mixed Marriages: The Revised Directory, “here and now the people oftoday's Church,not yesterday's and not yet tomorrow's, although we are affected by the former and can affect the latter.” [iii] In signifying the new situation surrounded by the old, and working to bring the new into being, interchurch families become “signs and instruments” [iv] of that yet-to-be-fully-revealed future.

This was recognized years ago. Ruth Reardon wrote of the formation of the Association of Interchurch Families in 1968:

“We seemed to be so unusual in being two practising Christians who wanted to conserve our links as a couple with both the churches that had nurtured us.” [v] Continuing in the same article, she says “We were, too, very concerned to promote Christian unity, and to bring our churches together so far as we could. Thus the Association, besides being a support network, also became a voice in the churches. We tried to explain the kind of pastoral care we needed for the sake of our marriages, and also how we thought the churches could come together more readily if they worked at their unity in the way married couples have to work at theirs.”

Her husband Martin connected this with the call to ecclesial communion:

“If our churches are really to be motivated to move to the next stage, they need not just to remove obstacles, but to see that the other churches may have preserved some Christian gifts and values better than ours have, or discovered new gifts which they also would like to share. They need to move from defining their own identity as distinct from, and in some cases over against, that of other churches, to a common identity. This, after all, is what we experience in a good marriage. Husband and wife remain distinct individuals, with their own individual identity, but they gradually establish also a common shared family identity, and it is this shared family identity on which their children build, and into which they grow.' [vi]

These statements have all been descriptive, or what John L Austin of Oxford called “constative”. I wish now to point to two specific statements which are descriptive, but have also what Austin called “performative” power, making real that which they signify.

In 1982, Pope John Paul II, speaking at York, said of interchurch families: “You live in your marriages the hopes and difficulties of the path to Christian unity.” This statement was descriptive, in that it stated an existing reality. It was, however, also performative, in that it called forth within interchurch families that deep, integral and indeed essential reality of who we are before God.

The second is by Pope Benedict XVI, speaking in Warsaw in May 2006, when he described interchurch families as “a practical laboratory of Christian unity.” As with the statement by John Paul II, it was descriptive of our reality. But it, too, was performative, in that it caused us, and hopefully our churches, both to recognize ourselves in those words, and to conscientiously take on our reality as ecclesia domestica, places and spaces where the unity of Christians is being realized in human terms before our very eyes, as a labour of unitive and procreative love. The interchurch family is

“a microcosm of the whole movement for promoting Christian unity… In it things happen that cannot yet happen on the scale of the church communities as a whole. But what happens in laboratories and workshops is intended to have a larger reference, to show what could happen more widely. For this to be effective, however, the wider communities must trust the process and attend to it in both a supportive and a constructively critical way.” [vii]

This is not to say that all is perfect in the world of Christian unity as lived in interchurch families. As Ormerod states so succinctly, “While the churches may be united eschatologically, in the here and now they are divided on many scores, and it would be methodologically unsound not to recognize this.” [viii] This applies as well to the ecclesia domestica of interchurch families. We continue, as Pope Francis has said, both within our families and with our churches, to have to say at times “Please”, “Thank you”, and “Sorry”. But regardless of any flaws, this laboratory of Christian unity exists and continues. It is practical and empirical. The dialectic which takes place within that laboratory, and which should take place between that laboratory and the churches, is critical, always searching, challenging, calling. This laboratory is also normative, in that it speaks not only of what is, but also of what should be. And it is evaluative. Together as Church we can determine whether the changes evidenced in this laboratory contribute to the purpose of the Church, “an incremental realization of the kingdom”. [ix]

It is particularly in that sense of lived reality that I say interchurch families are not only in the vanguard of ecumenical discourse, but also an excellent resource for ecclesiological exploration. We did not set out to do this. We fell in love. And everything else, any gift that we are or may become, flows from that.

Paulist priest Tom Ryan says “‘Interchurch families stand at the very heart of the conversion which ecumenism requires. ... they put the truths of their faith in order, so as to unite around a central core of belief, accepting a certain diversity at the periphery. They are a moving force because they already live as reconciled Christians. Everything that is gained by them and for them serves the whole Church.” [x]

We have also learned something of vital importance within our interchurch families. Jesus says it is better to give than to receive. But we have learned that authentic receptivity is itself a gift. In marriage, I give myself to my wife Fenella who is a deeply faithful Anglican, yes. But it is her reception of me, receiving me as I am, and encouraging me to be faithfully who I am as a Catholic, which provides me the security and safety to become the person I am called to become. In her reception of me, she becomes for me the incarnational call of Christ to conversion.

It is important that our churches begin to recognize that it is not only what they have to offer each other that is important. Their capacity to receive and love the other as that church is will also be the key element in calling both churches to become what God calls them to become.

I therefore invite and encourage you, as you go home to your colleges, congregations and churches, to do several things. Firstly, recognize the mixed marriages in your midst, not as problematic, but as potential gift from God for the unity of the Church. Secondly, welcome them into your community specifically as mixed marriages. Thirdly, and I recognize this is for many counter-intuitive, encourage both spouses in such marriages to explore, nurture, and share that “pearl of great price” that each spouse brings to their marriage in the form of their respective Christian tradition. As they do so, and begin to feel safe in doing so, they are likely to become laboratories of Christian unity. Fourthly, ask yourself how the gift of unity that is their ecclesia domestica, to whatever extent they feel they can live it out, can be incorporated into the larger ecclesia that is your congregation, your church. And finally, ask yourself what needs to change within your congregation or church, while remaining faithful to your core doctrine, so that their gift of ecclesial unity may be fully realized within you. As you do so, you will, as Fr Rene Beaupere of France said in 1996, “integrate these 'islands of reconciliation' where they appear into the life of the churches at the structural level too”. [xi]

The hockey great, Wayne Gretzky, was once described as “small but agile”. I suggest that had he been described as “agile but small”, he would today be working in an office or a factory.

If you take nothing else away from all the speakers you hear at this conference, I ask that you take a recognition that we as individuals, as families and as churches have grown, well beyond Mortalium Animos in our self-understanding of who we are as brothers and sisters before God. It is my hope and prayer that we no longer speak of our unity as real but imperfect. Rather, as evidenced in a variety of areas, and concretely and immediately in the lives of interchurch families, we have grown over time into a self-understanding where we can say, with confidence, that our unity as Christians is “imperfect, but real”.

[i] Cf Ruth Reardon, A Source of Joy: Ut Unum Sint and interchurch families, Interchurch Families Journal, Vol 4, #1, January 1996, P 4. VIEW JOURNAL HERE Accessed 22 May 2014
[ii] Ian Walter, Mixed Marriages Spearhead the Interchurch Process, Interchurch Families Journal, Summer, 1990 http://interchurchfamilies.org/journal/n23p04a.html , accessed 7 May 2014
[iii] Mgr David Donelly, Mixed Marriages: The Revised Directory” Interchurch Families Journal, Summer 1990. http://interchurchfamilies.org/journal/n23p05.html . Accessed 7 May 2014
[iv] Cf Walter Cardinal Kasper, A Message Addressed By Cardinal Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, to the Second World Gathering of Interchurch Families, Interchurch Families Journal, Vol 12 # 1, January 2004, P 3. VIEW JOURNAL HERE accessed 8 June 2014
[v] Ruth Reardon, A Short history of the Association of Interchurch Families, published in Interchurch Families Issues and Reflections, October 2007, VIEW HERE, accessed 20 May 2014.
[vi] Martin Reardon, Why? What? And How? Address at Swanwick Annual gathering, 2001, VIEW HERE accessed 20 May 2014
[vii] Ruth Reardon, Pope Benedict XVI on Interchurch Families: “laboratories of unity”, in One in Christ, vol.41, no.2, April 2006, pp.85-87.
[viii] Neil Ormerod, Re-Visioning the Church: An Experiment in Systematic-Historical Ecclesiology (Kindle Location 185). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition.
[ix] Cf Neil Ormerod, Re-Visioning, Location 234.
[x] Tom Ryan CSP, Interchurch Families: Sign and Summons, Interchurch Families Journal, Vol 10, #2, p7, VIEW HERE access 26 May 2014
[xi] Rene Beaupere OP, Foyers Mixtes Chretien, no 115, Jan-March 1997, cited in Interchurch Families Journal, Vol 5 #2, p 12. VIEW HERE , accessed 8 June 2014

RE III Conference Overview

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 12:12:39 GMT

3rd Conference on
Receptive Ecumenism in International Perspective: Contextual Ecclesial Learning,
held at Fairfield, CT, USA, June 9-12, 2014

Two panels of Interchurch Family speakers were organized. The following papers were presented by those speakers:

Interchurch Families in the Vanguard of Ecumenical Discourse
- Ray Temmerman
Receptive Ecumenism: A Lived Experience in Africa
- Joyce Makumi - to come
The Red Dust Meets the Bitumen – an Experience of Interchurch Family Life in Australia
- Jeff Wild & Margie Dahl
The 'Hermeneutics' of Interchurch Families - A Practical Model for Receptive Ecumenism?
- Thomas Knieps
Communion in Division: Receiving the Witness of Interchurch Families
- Mary Marrocco - to come
Divided we Stand: How “Mixed Marriages” can Teach Ecumenism.
- Anthony & Rebecca Spellacy - to come

Reports and Reviews:

Prayers Interchurch Family

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 12:02:45 GMT

Prayer and Interchurch Families

There have been times when I’ve thought that spirituality might be different as part of an Interchurch family but in preparing to write this piece I have come to the conclusion that prayer is different for families whether they are same denomination or not. My father regularly quoted that ‘the family who prays together, stays together’ but failed to demonstrate this in his daily living. I personally believe more than that; a family who can pray together not only stay together but foster an atmosphere in which thoughts, feelings and actions are open, honest and focussed. I also want to assure anyone that prayer within families can take many forms and does not have to include every member of the family.

In recent times there has been research into family spirituality. In 2004 the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales undertook an exercise named ‘Listening 2004’ to try and understand how people experienced their faith. They started several programmes including ‘Home is a Holy Place.’ This particular initiative was launched with a symposium in Durham which used a book of the same name by Mark Boyer , published by ACTA publications and now unfortunately out of print.

During the symposium I met David Thomas and read his book on family spirituality. His research was down-to-earth and grounded in personal experience and reality. He shared that a God-graced moment occurred whilst he was bathing his children. In that activity he recognised the service he was giving; making him Christ-like in washing the disciples’ feet.

The Redemptorist Publications in the UK have recently published a book on family spirituality by Bairbre Cahill. The title is simply “ Family Spirituality ” encouraging families to recognise God’s presence in their home. I’m particularly impressed with the author’s choice of scripture readings which highlight families. For example the blurb on the back of the book begins with a verse from Micah, ‘This is what the Lord asks of you, only this, that you act justly, that you love tenderly, that you walk humbly with your God.’

My deliberations have been grounded in personal experience. Richard and I began using ‘Home is a Holy Place’ with Ruth when she was younger. However, she is currently in a phase of finding prayer and church ‘boring’. We have tried to pray together since then and recently completed a yearlong set of readings and decided that to wait until Advent before beginning a new regular book would be the ideal for us. However, we didn’t want to find ourselves in a vacuum so we have revisited Mark Boyer’s book.

It has been ideal for us containing thirty seven scripture readings with reflections, meditations and prayers. Each reading is focussed on an aspect of the home. The only drawback for us is that it is oriented towards an American audience and is written within a Roman Catholic context. However, it is still useful as it has the complete scripture reading written out saving us from looking it up and many of the themes are universal.

Another book which I found helpful is ‘ The Heavenly Party ’ by Michelle Guinness. Michelle is an Anglican Jewish woman. Whilst not being specifically on prayer Michelle looks at ways of rediscovering the Jewish traditions and celebrating them. The recipes and reflections are taken from the Jewish tradition ‘but subjected to Messianic amendment in order to make it a mine of rich and relevant celebration’. This provided a welcome contrast to some of the other books which I used.

At various times we have had no shared prayer at all but the best times in our family are definitely when our lives are grounded in some form of daily prayer. About two years ago the annual conference of AIFGB looked closely at prayer and spirituality. Three independent people with different worship backgrounds shared ideas on prayer. We also had workshops on prayers and one of my personal favourites was lectio divina. This is a combination of traditional and formal with free-flowing.

So, if you are wondering how you might pray within your family, my advice would be, is to experiment and find out what fits your family. Don’t assume that what works now will always work: be open to change and go where God the Holy Spirit leads you.

Helen Connell
31st December 2012

IFIN December 2011 Newsletter

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:26:42 GMT

Interchurch Families International Network December 2011 Newsletter

Dear friends

Here is some of the news of activities during the past year from groups and associations of interchurch families around the world which are part of the Interchurch Families International Network (IFIN).
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Australia
Bev Hincks sends best wishes to everyone, and sends the following report:
In Australia together with much of the world, it appears that energy is subsiding in ecumenical involvement, yet existing activity denotes it as ongoing. Interchurch families are found actively playing a role in these events in many places. This report will focus on two Australian Catholic dioceses where this has occurred, namely the Archdiocese of Brisbane headed by Archbishop John Bathersby, whose retirement and replacement after 25 years has just been announced, and Maitland-Newcastle where Bishop Michael Malone retired and was replaced last May. Both men have contributed enormously to the field of ecumenism but, in keeping with this report, the interests of interchurch families under their watch will be noted.

The publication of the Directory for Ecumenism in 1993 marked a milestone for Interchurch Families. (Cardinal Cassidy, responsible for the Directory, is Australian, and lives retired in Maitland-Newcastle.) The Directory, among many issues, called for bishops’ conferences to establish norms for ecumenical sharing which would reflect the individual criteria of different regions. In the event that this did not occur, individual bishops were asked to create their own. The first bishop to do so was Archbishop Bathersby. His document, Blessed and Broken: Pastoral Guidelines for Eucharistic Hospitality appeared at Easter 1995. It reflected changes within Australian Society where, for example, people can no longer enjoy care in organizations and institutions operated by their own denomination, and 70% of marriages of a Catholic are to a person from another denomination. At that time an interchurch families group was active in Brisbane. His example was followed later when the Brisbane document was adopted in 2000 as Norms for the Diocese of Broken Ba y , in New South Wales, Australia. Similarly, the Diocese of Rockhampton, Queensland, produced a different document in May 1998.

In 1996 copies of Blessed and Broken were issued by Bishop Malone to his Ecumenical Commission. A group of interchurch families became active in the diocese a little later. The bishop requested that Diocesan Ecumenical Commission work towards a document, grounded in the long history of ecumenical activity in the diocese, to provide independent pastoral guidelines. As a result, two documents were launched in May 2001: Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations within the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle , a companion to the document Real Yet Imperfect - Pastoral Guidelines for Sacramental Sharing - a condensed version. The Maitland-Newcastle Guidelines owed much to the Guidelines of the Diocese of Santa Fe, USA, produced by Fr Ernest Falardeau, as well as Blessed and Broken . (Note: All documents may be found on the interchurch families international website, as well as those of the individual dioceses.)

Impetus was given to these Australian documents through the activities of interchurch families. For example, the presence of Brisbane interchurch family members who travelled 800 km to a gathering of Australian Catholic Diocesan Ecumenical Commissions in Sydney NSW led to a chance meeting with a Catholic member of an interchurch family from Maitland-Newcastle, which led this family to Geneva in 1998 for the First World Gathering of ICF . Here they met Fr Falardeau and many other ICF now friends. This in turn led to exchanges of documents and insights which in turn led to other new documents and guidelines. Additionally, it led to further national conferences which in turn led, amazingly, to an international event in Newcastle in 2005 . Australians were able to attend gatherings in Rome in 2005 and later Leuven in 2010. World-wide networking can produce unexpected, fruitful results.

Acknowledgement and gratitude is recorded for the support received world-wide from some clergy and bishops. As we live our lives of Receptive Ecumenism, the journey has been made more harmonious and at peace than would have been possible without support and pastoral understanding from them. Pioneers like the Emeritus Archbishop Bathersby and Bishop Malone, who reached out to so many Christians of other denominations, including members of interchurch families, are no longer serving us personally. We pray that their example will be followed, both within the whole area of ecumenism and particularly for interchurch families

Australia was originally known as the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit. Our prayer is that the Holy Spirit will continue to guide us toward that Unity for which Jesus prayed. We are totally indebted to people such as Bishop John Bathersby and Bishop Michael Malone. We thank God for the leadership and vision which they have given to an Ecumenism which included Interchurch Families, even if not widely acclaimed within their dioceses.
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Austria
Klemens Betz sent a summary of the recent annual conference of Austrian interchurch families. Here are some details:
The Austrian group of interchurch families ARGE ÖKUMENE hold their annual conferences in a different region each year, and in October 2011 it was held in the Maria Trost Religious Formation Centre in Graz, on the subject of In what sense does the church see its ecumenical and peacemaking mission, as an advocate for justice, human dignity and spirituality in our rapidly and radically changing times? Members were able to visit interesting historical sites within the city before and during the conference, and were pleased to welcome a wide variety of speakers from the academic world as well as church leaders from different denominational traditions. Reports were given by participants from various parts of the country to introduce the conference.

There were sessions on the tensions between hope and experience, on climate change and its demands on the churches and their mission to care for the world, and on the growing global crisis (food, energy, debt) with a resulting call for a radical change in our way of life, including the life of the churches. Addresses by significant speakers led to much consideration among those attending of their own responsibility as Christians and that of their churches. The consequences for day to day life were drawn out well.

As usual there was still enough time for more informal sharing over a meal at a local inn, which fed both body and spirit! The final morning was used to look at the future of the group. The Kärnten group had already agreed to prepare and organise the 2012 conference, and in 2013 the Tyrol group were asked to be the organisers. Various administrative matters were dealt with, with a newly formed committee selected. Before the final act of worship Professor Peter Trummer from the University in Graz gave an address from the exegetical viewpoint on the Eucharist and the Lord’s Supper, commenting particularly on eucharistic hospitality between churches. A celebratory meal was held after the service in the chapel.

Further information on the conference may be found on the ARGE-Ökumene website: www.arge-oekumene.at .
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France
The Association Française de Foyers Mixtes Interconfessionels Chrétiens (AFFMIC) has moved into a new stage of its long existence, with the Foyers Mixtes bulletin coming to an end, and Père René Beaupère, its founder, no longer quite so active. The AFFMIC website has been renewed and made more accessible, and along with the use of Facebook, a blog and e-news several times a year, interchurch couples in France and French-speaking Switzerland can access information and support in new ways.

Groups in Paris, Lyon and Lille continue to meet regularly and a new group has formed in Reuilly. During the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and Holy Week the groups are often involved in local ecumenical celebrations. In Lyon there were a number of events this year, including ecumenical Bible study groups and acts of worship, and ecumenical witness in the city. Père Beaupère gave a series of talks to older school students about the origins of the Week itself and the ecumenical movement in general, which were a great success. The Lyon Association has been offering ecumenical religious education for children at the Centre St Irénée for many years now, and is now working in collaboration with RC and Reformed parishes in Ouillins nearby. The curriculum has developed over a long time and is very rich.

Interchurch couples in Paris recently attended an excellent conference organised by l’Institut Supérieur d’Etudes Oecuméniques, with input from Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant speakers, on the theme: The Changing Family: Ecumenical Issues. Professor Noël Ruffieux, who has worked for many years alongside Père Beaupère in Lyon, gave an address on the situation of two-church couples, who live their lives in their church communities alongside their life united as a couple or family.

AFFMIC plans for the future include a possible international conference in 2012, and the production of information leaflets on such subjects as Baptism, Marriage, and Confirmation. Many more details of activities can be found on the website www.affmic.org .
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Germany
The latest newsletter from the Netzwerk Konfessionsverbindender Familien shows that they have been very busy. There are regular regional meetings of interchurch families round the country. There has been a reorganization of the committee to allow Rudolf and Rosmarie Lauber to share more widely some of the responsibilities they have held for many years, but they still maintain the registered address of the Netzwerk, and produce the printed newsletter.

In March the annual conference was again held in Schwarzenshof near Rudolstadt in the eastern part of the country on the theme Giving a common witness; passing on a common hope. Excellent speakers and workshops, interesting discussion, a strong parallel programme for children and young people and a warm welcome from the centre were all much appreciated. Stephen Judd was able to attend as a visitor from England. The next annual conference is planned for 24-26 February 2012 in Braunfels bei Wetzlar (near Frankfurt), on the theme Interchurch families in the life of the community. See the Netzwerk website at www.netzwerk-oekumene.de

In June 2011 Netzwerk members were active with a publicity stand at the biennial Kirchentag organized by the German Protestant churches in Dresden, which attracted 120,000 visitors. To celebrate Ascension Day during the week, the whole of the River Elbe was lit up. The Netzwerk stand enabled conversations with many people, church leaders as well as lay people. For the biennial Katholikentag organized by the Catholic Church in Germany in alternate years to the Kirchentag, to be held in May 2012 in Mannheim, a presentation in words and music based on the experiences of interchurch families is being planned. During the four days of the gathering, members are also planning an ecumenical act of worship, a podium discussion with significant speakers, and their usual busy exhibition stand.
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Great Britain
Paul Docherty, AIF Chair, mentioned during his 2011 AGM address that a past President of the Association had said a while ago that he saw AIF as a real gift to the church: Whilst for much of the time we played our roles quietly in the life of our various churches, every now and again we rose into the limelight for a “Day in the Sun” when people stopped and took notice. He was referring of course to the visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury to deliver the 2010 John Coventry Memorial Address, one of a series of lectures founded by the Association in memory of our founder, and by implication to the first strand of our Mission Statement, that of being a Voice in the Churches . Six months later, the invitation for 25 AIF members to attend the Service of Evensong jointly celebrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope in Westminster Abbey – apparently the largest invitation to any one grouping - was a ringing endorsement of the fact that this Voice, which has been a constant and carefully moderated influence over the years, really is widely recognised and respected among the churches and ecumenical bodies. This gave us an opportunity to give thanks for the efforts of so many members over 40 plus years whose quiet work has brought about this degree of influence, and allows us to meet this particular strand of our Mission.

Our Executive Secretary Keith Lander participated in several meetings of national ecumenical bodies over the course of the year, including those of Senior Church Representatives, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland and Churches Together in England. Members continue to be involved in local and regional ecumenical activities, as officers on Churches Together groups, on liaison groups and many others – often with the AIF boards on display. Our work to provide a Support Network has focussed, in recent years, on our two top priority gatherings, the Swanwick Conference and the spring London Meeting. At our London Meeting we had an embarrassment of riches when we were addressed by two key speakers – Professor Antoine Arjakovsky from the Ukraine, who is an Eastern Orthodox in an interchurch marriage with a French Catholic; and Commissioner Betty Matear from the Salvation Army who, as the Free Churches’ Moderator until this April, was one of our Presidents.

One particular plus of the past 12 months was a Considering Confirmation Weekend held in May for seven of our younger members who are trying to determine what (if anything – and I don’t say that negatively) they want to do about committing themselves in the sacrament of Confirmation. This was a really good example of an activity being proposed, sponsored and implemented from within the membership, hosted by Liz & Rufus Ballaster and facilitated by Bev Hollins and Helena Mayles. The 2011 annual AIF conference was held at Swanwick as usual at the end of August. It included the joyful celebration of several significant wedding anniversaries of long-term members. See a report with lots of photos on the international website HERE

We continue to receive enquiries at the office in London and on our website, but fewer than in previous years. There has been little activity amongst local groups of members this year though the re-formed Midlands Group has met a couple of times, including once with the Archbishop of Birmingham Bernard Longley; and the Herts ‘n Beds group met with the Bishop of St Albans – both occasions being an opportunity not only for group support but also for giving an opportunity for our voice to be heard. Fulfilling our mission to provide an Information Service , the design and purchase of some printed roll-up banners to replace or complement the AIF travelling boards has been a significant step, and they are now available for use by members when they attend local events, and are much more easily transportable. The AIF triptych features on one of these, and has been bought with some of the proceeds of the money donated in memory of Martin Reardon. A number of volunteers maintained a substantial presence at the four-day annual National Christian Resources Exhibition, attended by over 11,000 people. AIF is in the middle of some re-organisation and administration changes which we hope will enable us to continue to work effectively in the changing life of our churches and through our lives as couples and families living in unity every day.
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Northern Ireland
The Northern Ireland Mixed Marriage Association has a well maintained website at www.nimma.co.uk . NIMMA’s 2011 conference was held in St George’s Church, Belfast. For many years the Association has had a unique ministry among interchurch family groups and associations, being involved in depth in the political and social world, particularly through responding to consultations and lobbying on such subjects as mixed social housing (Catholics and Protestants are still often living in separate areas), and integrated schooling (not denominationally exclusive) in the province, as well as supporting couples and families in their individual situations. NIMMA newsletters can be found on the website by following the links About Us and News Index. All are welcome to sign up for the online newsletter on the website.

You will also find on the website links to their leaflets, and to a history of the Association and its origins during much more troubled times in the region. Members and NIMMA literature have been consulted as a background to two studies in past years: a doctoral work by an Australian student on intergroup relations in post-conflict societies, and Mixed Emotions: Real Stories of Mixed Marriage in Northern Ireland, a book which appeared this year.
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United States
The American Association of Interchurch Families www.aifusa.org is planning its next biennial conference, to be held from July 13-15 2012 at St John's University (SJU), Collegeville, Minnesota. St John’s University is in the suburbs of St. Cloud, Minnesota, about 60 miles NW of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. It is beautifully situated with woodlands, lakes, hiking trails and wildlife on its 2,500 acres. AAIF gives a warm welcome to visitors from other countries to its conference. For more details, please contact one of the AAIF officers from the website.

Mary Jane Glauber produces a regular online AAIF newsletter, copies of which can be found on the international website www.interchurchfamilies.org . More details of the conference will be given as they become available, and you can contact her via the website if you would like to be kept in touch.
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World
The 10th General Assembly of the World Council of Churches is planned for 30 October – 8 November 2013, and is to be held in Busan, South Korea. The theme has been announced as God of life, lead us to justice and peace. It will bring together Christians from many different countries, backgrounds and traditions. At the last Assembly held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2006, the Interchurch Families International Network was invited to send a delegate. Rev Beverley Hollins from AIF GB was accompanied by Melanie Finch as a participant, and during the Assembly they organised a workshop entitled Interchurch Families: Living Unity Every Day and also mounted an exhibition of the work of interchurch families in several countries. They were able to meet members of other IFIN groups who were attending the Assembly from their own country, and to talk to a wide variety of people interested in our work over the past 40 years, including some significant church leaders.

Although it is nearly two years till the next Assembly, AIF GB has been discussing the possibility of some of our members participating in 2013. It would be great to meet with some of you there! We would like to encourage other groups and associations to sign up to bulletins from the WCC at www.oikoumene.org to follow the planning, and we will try to keep in touch with developments.
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Conclusion
The variety of activity amongst groups and associations of interchurch families around the world is very encouraging, and thank you to those who have contributed to this newsletter. Please contact me or the group concerned if you would like reports in their original languages, or if you find any errors. We hope you will continue to share your news!

Compiled by Melanie Finch
Association of Interchurch Families GB

Swanwick 2011

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:28:51 GMT

Stanwick 2011

View the full Review document here

Interchurch Families – Standing in the Gap

Diocese of Helana and Great Falls

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:57:11 GMT

The Eucharistic Sharing Guidelines for the Dioceses of Helena and Great Falls-Billings, Montana, U.S.A., was issued in April 1982, and were originally posted on the diocese's website. It was missed in the modifications of their website. A request has been made to the diocese to once again post those Guidelines. Meanwhile, a subsection of them, referred to in a paper entitled " The Ecumenical Household As Domestic Church? Ecclesial Threat or Pastoral Challenge and Even Resource? " by Dr Bernard Prusak of Villanova University, is posted below. Hopfully the entire document may soon once again be posted.

“In our time there are significant events in the lives of individual Christians and their families when spontaneous requests to receive the Eucharist are possible. If we consider the high frequency of marriage between Roman Catholics and other baptized Christians, the fact that many of our people are well informed about other Churches, the extensive sacramental preparation programs which require the participation of parents, and the increasingly favorable ecumenical climate in our dioceses, it is very likely that such requests for sharing the Eucharist will be forthcoming on a variety of occasions, for example, when a baptized Christian of another denomination is: a. a parent of a child baptized within the context of a Mass; b. the parent of a child receiving First Communion within the context of Mass; c. the parent of a child receiving First Communion or Confirmation and has taken part of the child's preparation for the sacraments; d. the spouse in a mixed marriage celebrated with a Nuptial Mass; e. attending a funeral of a relative in the Catholic Church; f. confined in a health care facility; g. subject to some form of institutional confinement; h. living in an ecumenical marriage and wants to celebrate in faith a significant event in the marriage. The aforementioned occasions are not mentioned by way of category for which a general regulation is issued. Each particular request must be evaluated on an individual basis”.

[1] Eucharistic Sharing Guidelines for the Dioceses of Helena and Great Falls-Billings, 12.04.1982, available online at http://www.dioceseofgfb.org/userfiles/file/Policies/29_Eucharistic%20Sharing%20Guidelines.pdf ; accessed 21.07.2011.

The Ecumenical Household As Domestic Church

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 13:30:59 GMT

THE ECUMENICAL HOUSEHOLD AS DOMESTIC CHURCH?

Ecclesial Threat or Pastoral Challenge and even Resource?

I. “Domestic Church” within the Broader Ecclesial Context of Lumen Gentium

The Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church describes the Church “as a kind of sacrament, or sign and instrument of intimate union with God and of unity among all humans” (article 1) [1] . The foundational role of the Eucharist is emphasized in articles 3, 7, 10, 11 and 26. Article three declares that “in the sacrament of the Eucharistic bread, the unity of believers, who form one body in Christ (cf. 1 Cor 10,17), is both expressed and brought about” [2] . Article 7 discusses the ongoing, manifold presence of Christ within the church: in those who minister; in the Eucharist; in all the sacraments; in the proclamation of the scriptures; and wherever two or three are gathered together in his name (Mt 18,20). It emphasizes that the life of Christ is communicated to believers through the sacraments. In baptism, “fellowship in Christ’s death and resurrection is symbolized and brought about”. In the Eucharist, “[r]eally sharing in the body of the Lord in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, we are taken up into communion with him and with one another”. The same article further declares that “Christ loves the Church as his bride, having been established as the model of a man loving his wife as his own body” (cf. Eph 5,25-28).

Lumen Gentium (articles 9 and 10) presents the people of God as a priestly people (1 Pet 2,9-10), meaning that all the baptized and the ordained together share a “common priesthood of the faithful” in which all have equal dignity. That common priesthood of all who form the church is said to be essentially different from “the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood”, although there was much discussion within the conciliar sessions about the ways in which the “priesthood of the faithful” and the “ministerial priesthood” are both dissimilar and similar [3] . The conciliar text describes ministerial priests as endowed with a sacred power by which they “form and rule” the priestly people, but at the same time declares that the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood are mutually ordered to one another. Both participate, in distinctive modes, in the one priesthood of Christ.

Article eleven of Lumen Gentium emphasizes that, having been deputized to worship by their baptismal character, the unity of the priestly People of God is “aptly signified and admirably realized (effected)” in their celebration and reception of the Eucharist. Turning to the sacrament of Matrimony, by which the faithful “signify and share (cf. Eph 5,32) the mystery of the unity and faithful love between Christ and the Church”, the council teaches that “Christian married couples help one another to attain holiness in their married life and in the rearing of their children … by reason of their state in life and of their position they have their own gifts in the People of God (cf. 1 Cor 7,7)”. The marriage of Christians gives rise to the family in which, “by the grace of the Holy Spirit in Baptism”, offspring “are made children of God so that the People of God may be perpetuated throughout the centuries”. It is here that Lumen Gentium uses the term “domestic Church” in reference to the family, in which “the parents by word and example, are the first heralds of the faith for their children”.

II. Perspectives on “Domestic Church” in the Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has further developed this concept [4] . Section 1666 declares that “the Christian home is the place where children receive the first proclamation of the faith. For this reason the family home is rightly called ‘the domestic church’, a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and of Christian charity”. In section 1655, it affirms that “[f]rom the beginning, the core of the Church was often constituted by those who had become believers ‘together with all [their] household.’ When they were converted, they desired that ‘their whole household’ should also be saved. These families who became believers were islands of Christian life in an unbelieving world”. Section 1656 then declares, “In our own time, in a world often alien and even hostile to faith, believing families are of primary importance as centers of living, radiant faith. It is in the bosom of the family that parents are ‘by word and example … the first heralds of the faith with regard to their children”. Section 1657 observes that “[i]t is here that the father of the family, the mother, children, and all members of the family exercise the priesthood of the baptized in a privileged way ‘by the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of a holy life, and self-denial and active charity.’ Thus the home is the first school of Christian life and ‘a school for human enrichment.’ Here one learns endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous – even repeated – forgiveness, and above all divine worship in prayer and the offering of one's life”. That stands in stark contrast with the experience of ecumenical families, particularly because the Catholic Church has not fully developed a common pastoral practice regarding Eucharistic hospitality.

III. An Ecumenical Household as “Domestic Church”

The council and the catechism appear to presuppose that the domestic church under discussion involves two Catholic parents. How should one think about the shared life of two baptized spouses in an ecumenical household? That is a family in which we have a Catholic spouse and a baptized non-Catholic spouse. For liceity (but not for validity), the Catholic spouse would have requested permission to enter such a marriage “for a just and reasonable cause”. Canonically, such permission is given if the Catholic party has fulfilled the following conditions: “he or she is prepared to remove dangers of defecting from the faith and is to make a sincere promise to do all in his or her own power so that all offspring are baptized and brought up in the Catholic Church” and the other party is “informed … about the promises that the Catholic party is to make, in such a way that it is certain that he or she is truly aware of the promise and obligation of the Catholic party” [5] .

As Heinrich Fries has noted, “an inter-confessional marriage, earlier referred to by the derogatory term ‘mixed marriage’”, was, in the past, “considered a very great misfortune that could wound a family and for this reason people of all the Churches were expressly warned about such marriages. The Catholic Church forbade them in principle and allowed exceptions only with strict stipulations”. Speaking from his German context, Fries further observes that despite all these warnings and prohibitions the number of inter-confessional marriages has constantly increased; today they include more than a third of those couples who still wish to have a church wedding; they have almost become the rule”. He advocates that “this situation must not simply be deplored, nor should it be regulated as a matter of pure discipline. Instead everything must be done so that such marriages are not discriminated against or made the focus of constant insults and rejections or a cause of religious indifference or alienation from the Church” [6] . Fries does acknowledge that much has happened between the churches in the legal and pastoral areas to moderate the previous harshness.

The official church’s ambiguous view of such marriages is still evident in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Section 1634 asserts that “[d]ifference of confession between the spouses does not constitute an insurmountable obstacle for marriage, when they succeed in placing in common what they have received from their respective communities, and learn from each other the way in which each lives in fidelity to Christ. But the difficulties of mixed marriages must not be underestimated. They arise from the fact that the separation of Christians has not yet been overcome.The spouses risk experiencing the tragedy of Christian disunity even in the heart of their own home”. The Catechism goes on to acknowledge that “[t]hrough ecumenical dialogue Christian communities in many regions have been able to put into effect a common pastoral practice for mixed marriages. Its task is to help such couples live out their particular situation in the light of faith, overcome the tensions between the couple's obligations to each other and towards their ecclesial communities, and encourage the flowering of what is common to them in faith and respect for what separates them” (section 1636). In that regard, this paper will propose that the lived experience of ecumenical households might further be considered an ecclesial resource for growth toward unity – after first reviewing selected pastoral initiatives regarding Eucharistic hospitality for ecumenical households.

IV. Ecumenical Families and the Issue of Eucharistic Hospitality

As noted above, Vatican II saw the Eucharist as both sign and source of unity. Reiterating the theme emphasized in the Constitution on the Church, the Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio (article 2) declared that Christ instituted "the wonderful sacrament of the Eucharist by which the unity of the Church is both signified and brought about”. It went on to say that worship in common (including shared Eucharist) should express the unity of the church and provide a sharing in the means of grace. The expression of unity was said to “generally forbid common worship”. Yet the gaining of grace “sometimes commends it”. The course to be adopted, after considering all the circumstances of time, place, and personage, is left to the prudent decision of the local episcopal authority, unless the bishops’ conference according to its own statutes, or the Holy See, has determined otherwise” (article 8).

In his article on “Eucharistic Sharing as an Ecumenical Problem”, Avery, later cardinal, Dulles noted a “deficient yet helpful analogy” of the Eucharist as a family meal to which only acknowledged members of the family have a right to come. He asked whether members of other ecclesial families might, as friends, be invited to participate [7] . I would take the analogy a step further and ask whether the familial meals of church should be hospitable to the non-Catholic spouse living as a companion, that is “sharing bread” and daily meals with a Catholic spouse in the unity of a sacramental marriage within an ecumenical family. Must such love and unity in an ecumenical family, built upon a sacramental marriage, be deemed secondary to ecclesial unity? That appears to be the case when a bishop refuses to grant the request that a Protestant mother receive communion at her child’s first communion because he judges that is a special but not an exceptional occasion, without even seeking any input from the Catholic pastor who knows the couple.

A mindset in which ecclesial disunity simply trumps and disregards the unitive love of spouses in an ecumenical, sacramental marriage has too often prevailed. In the years after the council, official Catholic Church documents more and more emphasized that shared Eucharist expressed or was a sign of communion in faith and therefore could occur only if there was full unity in faith. That Eucharist as a participation in grace made Eucharistic sharing desirable in individual cases was scarcely mentioned. A protective rigorism was the tone established in the Ecumenical Directory of 1967 and the Instruction of 1972. The Ecumenical Directory issued by the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity stated that Protestants may receive the Eucharist at a Catholic liturgy in cases of danger of death or urgent necessity, such as during persecution or imprisonment. Even then the Protestant had to meet four conditions: no access to a minister of his/her own faith; spontaneously ask for communion from a Catholic priest; Eucharistic faith in harmony with that of the Catholic Church; and be rightly disposed. In other cases, the judge of the “urgent necessity” was the diocesan bishop or the episcopal conference [8] . In 1972, the Secretariat loosened the notion of “urgent necessity”, no longer restricting it to persecution or danger of death. It spoke of “serious spiritual need”, defined in relation to personal spiritual growth and deeper involvement in the mystery of the Church and its unity. But the instruction now more stringently specified that the unavailability of a minister of one's own community must go on “for a prolonged period”. It also emphasized that allowing non-Catholics to receive the Eucharist should not endanger or disturb the faith of Catholics [9] . A further explanatory Note issued in 1973, reminded local ordinaries that they could not dispense from, or ignore, any of the conditions set forth in the Instruction, but rather that they could, in particular cases, judge whether the conditions were verified [10] .

As Dulles noted, in comparing Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism with these documents, “one may note a movement toward greater strictness … The Directory and the subsequent Roman clarifications are more legalistic in tone. They greatly restrict the discretion of local authorities, including the local bishop. The Directory and the Instruction seem to emanate from a mentality that looks upon intercommunion not as an ambiguous and partly desirable phenomenon, but as an evil not to be permitted without serious justifying reasons. This represents, in [Dulles’s] opinion, a recession toward the preconciliar theology of ‘communicatio in sacris’” [11] .

Dulles argued that “[i]f one were to see occasional intercommunion not simply as a concession to weakness but as an appropriate sign of the partial but growing unity among separated churches, one could take a more positive view than these Roman documents do. A certain liberalization would have the advantage of bringing the directives into closer alignment with what many conscientious and committed Christians are now doing, and would thus tend to make such persons better disposed toward church authority and toward ecclesiastical legislation”. From this point of view Dulles proceeded to question the necessity of some of the conditions laid down. He advocated that the negative language, such as “urgent need” be dropped, in view of the fact that the Decree on Ecumenism indicates that intercommunion may be positively desirable. He added that intercommunion is especially commended by the “grace of showing forth and fostering the partial but growing unity among churches that are as yet imperfectly in communion with one another”. In determining Eucharistic faith in harmony with the Church, Dulles noted that a “correct worshipful attitude is more important than an exact theological expression”. In his view, the stipulation that the communicant be rightly disposed “should not be separated from a sense of needing God's pardon for one's sins” and “communion should not be interpreted if it were a reward for merit rather than a remedy for weakness”. Finally, Dulles noted that, “[a]lthough some are perhaps shocked by the practice of intercommunion, others are scandalized by the refusal of communion to a baptized Christian who approaches the sacrament with sincere faith and devotion. Indifference is fostered not only by indiscriminate eucharistic sharing, but also, and perhaps more virulently, by the inability of Christians, even on exceptional occasions, to share in altar fellowship. Bigots who resent it when anyone outside their own denomination is treated as a Christian should not be confirmed in their obsessive attitudes, but should, on the contrary, be educated to appreciate better the real and growing unity of which we have spoken”.

Dulles concluded “that the present instructions could suitably be liberalized to include the idea that suitably disposed baptized-Protestant believers who feel spiritually united to the Catholic Church and to its leaders, and who recognize the sacramental presence of the Lord in a Catholic Eucharist as Catholics do, might on certain special occasions be permitted or invited to receive Holy Communion at a Roman Catholic service. The determination of the kind and number of occasions might be further specified by the regional conference of bishops or by the local episcopal authority; considerable discretion in applying the directives might appropriately be left to the local pastor or celebrant” [12] .

V. Eucharistic Hospitality for Ecumenical Families – Selected Pastoral Initiatives

In stark contrast to the Ecumenical Directory of 1967 and the Instruction of 1972, issued by the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, Bishop Elchinger of Strasbourg took a courageous, pastoral position in his 1972 Instruction on Eucharist hospitality, addressing the spiritual need of ecumenical couples to nourish their love by receiving the Eucharist together. Elchinger extended the notion of serious spiritual need “to include the need to foster the growth of an ecumenical community” [13] . This approach was replicated by some other European bishops.

The Eucharistic Sharing Guidelines for the Dioceses of Helena and Great Falls-Billings, Montana, U.S.A., issued in April 1982, likewise showed a remarkable pastoral sensitivity [14] . “In our time there are significant events in the lives of individual Christians and their families when spontaneous requests to receive the Eucharist are possible. If we consider the high frequency of marriage between Roman Catholics and other baptized Christians, the fact that many of our people are well informed about other Churches, the extensive sacramental preparation programs which require the participation of parents, and the increasingly favorable ecumenical climate in our dioceses, it is very likely that such requests for sharing the Eucharist will be forthcoming on a variety of occasions, for example, when a baptized Christian of another denomination is: a. a parent of a child baptized within the context of a Mass; b. the parent of a child receiving First Communion within the context of Mass; c. the parent of a child receiving First Communion or Confirmation and has taken part of the child's preparation for the sacraments; d. the spouse in a mixed marriage celebrated with a Nuptial Mass; e. attending a funeral of a relative in the Catholic Church; f. confined in a health care facility; g. subject to some form of institutional confinement; h. living in an ecumenical marriage and wants to celebrate in faith a significant event in the marriage. The aforementioned occasions are not mentioned by way of category for which a general regulation is issued. Each particular request must be evaluated on an individual basis”.

The guidelines then noted that, according to the 1972 Instruction issued by the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, it often falls to the bishop of the diocese to make a decision. “He alone will know all the circumstances of particular cases”. The bishops of Montana chose to share this authority with the priests and deacons of their dioceses. “The priest or deacon in the local situation will know best all the implications involved in responding to a request for Eucharistic sharing on an individual basis”.

Later Vatican pronouncements created more room for a pastoral response. Canon 844, § 3-4, of the revised, 1983, Code of Canon Law declares that, beyond danger of death, bishops can judge whether “some other grave necessity” urges reception of the Eucharist by Christians not having full communion with the Catholic Church. The canon lists four conditions: 1) that the person cannot approach a minister of his or her own community for the sacrament desired; 2) that the person ask to receive on his or her own initiative; 3) that the person manifest Catholic faith in the sacrament desired; and 4) that the person be properly disposed.

The Note on Eucharistic Hospitality with Christians of churches coming from the Reformation in France, issued in 1983 by the French bishops’ Episcopal Commission for Christian Unity, considered conditions under which exceptional Eucharistic hospitality might be envisaged for spouses in ecumenical families [15] . Recognizing that such Eucharistic sharing can be “a means of grace”, it spoke of real need and spiritual desire arising from deep, ongoing bonds of personal relationship, shared Eucharistic belief – including Real Presence, and an active engagement in service toward the unity that God wants.The note did not list particular occasions for Eucharistic sharing, but directed that a decision made in conscience be discerned by the local bishop or the priest appointed for ecumenical relations. Ten years later, in 1993, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity issued its Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism [16] . It stated that “[i]n general the Catholic Church permits access to its Eucharistic communion and to the sacraments of penance and anointing of the sick, only to those who share its oneness in faith, worship and ecclesial life. For the same reasons, it also recognizes that in certain circumstances, by way of exception, and under certain conditions, access to these sacraments may be permitted, or even commended, for Christians of other Churches and ecclesial Communities” (Section 129). The directory also made explicit reference to the decision about admitting the non-Catholic party to Eucharistic communion at the wedding celebration. It is said to involve “taking into account the particular situation of the reception of the sacrament of Christian marriage by two baptized Christians” (section 159). But section 160 then declared that, “[a]lthough the spouses in a mixed marriage share the sacraments of baptism and marriage, Eucharistic sharing can only be exceptional”. In section 130, the Directory strongly recommends “that the diocesan Bishop, taking into account any norms which may have been established for this matter by the Episcopal Conference or by the Synods of Eastern Catholic Churches, establish general norms for judging situations of grave and pressing need”. In that regard, the French bishops indicated that their earlier Note on Eucharistic Hospitality had already implemented that directive.

In 1995 Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter, Ut Unum Sint, declared “[I]t is a source of joy to note that Catholic ministers are able, in certain particular cases, to administer the Sacraments of the Eucharist, Penance and Anointing of the Sick to Christians who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church but who greatly desire to receive these sacraments, freely. Conversely, in specific cases and in particular circumstances, Catholics too can request these same sacraments from ministers of Churches in which these sacraments are valid. The conditions for such reciprocal reception have been laid down in specific norms; for the sake of furthering ecumenism these norms must be respected” (par. 46) [17] . Subsequently, there have been a series of pastoral guidelines regarding Eucharistic hospitality issued by bishops on multiple continents.

In 1995, the Archdiocese of Brisbane, Australia, issued Blessed and Broken: Pastoral Guidelines for Eucharistic Hospitality [18] . Noting “our Church's openness to responding to the spiritual need of other Christians”, the guidelines spoke of special occasions or significant events in the lives of individual Christians and their families. It provided examples of possible spiritual need: “for the partner at a marriage celebrated with a nuptial Mass; for the parent of a child baptized at a Catholic Mass; for the parent of a child receiving confirmation and first holy communion; for the family of the deceased at a funeral Mass”. The guidelines deem it sufficient for the presiding priest to establish, by means of a few simple questions, whether or not the canonical conditions are met.They direct that, when a Christian from another Church makes frequent requests to receive holy communion, there should be a mutual ecumenical deliberation about the case.

In October of 1996, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A., issued Guidelines for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. In section II it noted that the Catholic Church has dramatically changed since 1917 when the old Code of Canon even forbad joining other Christians in prayer. Keeping with the spirit and norms of the Pontifical Council’s 1993 Directory, “[i]t should be noted that there is a difference between the Code of Canon Law #844, n. 4 (grave necessity) and the New Ecumenical Directory 130 (grave and pressing need). This difference and the context established by the Directory indicate that occasional Eucharistic sharing may be both permissible and even commended. The following pastoral situations deserve special consideration: 1. Ministry to the Sick and Dying; 2. Weddings and Funerals; 3. Baptisms and First Communions; 4. Ecumenical Celebrations; 5. Retreats, Cursillos”.

In November of 1996, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the United States approved a new set of guidelines regarding the reception of communion [19] . These replaced the earlier guidelines approved by the Administrative Committee of the NCCB in November 1986. The new guidelines state: “We welcome our fellow Christians to this celebration of the Eucharist as our brothers and sisters … Because Catholics believe that the celebration of the Eucharist is a sign of the reality of the oneness of faith, life, and worship, members of those churches with whom we are not yet fully united are ordinarily not admitted to Holy Communion. Eucharistic sharing in exceptional circumstances by other Christians requires permission according to the directives of the diocesan bishop and the provisions of canon law (canon 844 § 4)”. The tone of these guidelines, included in missalettes and other participation aids, is more exclusionary than the statement found at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, France: “The bread distributed during mass has a high significance for Christians: It is the body of Christ, their Lord and God. If you do not share our faith in the living presence of Christ in the Eucharistic bread, we ask you not to join your neighbours at communion time”.

In February, 1997, responding to a request from the Council of Churches in Nuremberg, that all member-churches exercise mutual Eucharistic hospitality in the case of interchurch marriages and families, the Ecumenical Commission of the German Bishops’ Conference issued Guidelines for Eucharistic sharing in Interchurch Marriages and Families [20] . The guidelines recognized thatfamilies in interchurch marriages may experience “serious (spiritual) need” in certain situations.They acknowledge that being separated at the Lord's table may lead to serious risk to the spiritual life and the faith of one or both partners. It may endanger the integrity of the bond that is created in life and faith through marriage. It may lead to an indifference to the sacrament and a distancing from Sunday worship and so from life in the church. It noted that married partners who are endeavoring to build their married life on religious and spiritual foundations are precisely those who suffer by being separated at the Lord's table. It is said to be essential that the church pastorally respond to their particular situation.

The commission declares that the norms for the admitting a non-Catholic Christian to receive communion are grounded in the firm belief of the Catholic Church. The norms state “that in certain circumstances, in exceptional cases and under certain conditions” admission to communion of Christians of other churches and ecclesial communities may be permitted or even commended (Ecumenical Directory 1993, n. 129). In paragraph 2, the guidelines specifically direct that, in situations of pastoral need, spouses in interchurch marriages may be admitted to receive communion in the Catholic Church under certain conditions. Paragraph 5 explains that establishing objective criteria for “serious (spiritual) need” is difficult and can usually only be determined by the minister concerned, in pastoral discussion. In that regard, one should consider whether being separated at the Lord's table places a hurtful burden on the shared married life and faith of the spouses (and their children).By contrast, paragraph 4 cautioned that neither a refusal for all, nor a permission for all spouses who are not Catholics to share in the Eucharist would be appropriate. When full sharing in the Eucharist is granted to the spouse who is not a Catholic, care must be taken that an individual case such as this does not become a general precedent. The guidelines state that, in the ecumenical time before full unity of faith and church communion, “the Roman Catholic Church is convinced that its responsibility is to grant communion at the Lord's table to Christians of other denominations only in exceptional cases”.

In 1998, the Bishops’ Conferences of England and Wales, Ireland, and Scotland issued One Bread, One Body: A Teaching Document on the Eucharist in the Life of the Church, and the Establishment of General Norms on Sacramental Sharing [21] . It “envisages that a grave and pressing need [for Eucharistic sharing] may be experienced in some mixed marriages”. It allows Eucharistic sharing at unique occasions for joy or sorrow in the life of a family or an individual in which there may be an objectively grave and pressing spiritual need for a person to receive Holy Communion. It insists that “[a] Catholic priest may not make such a decision himself unless duly delegated by his bishop”. That requirement contrasts with the French bishops’ 1983 Note on Eucharistic Hospitality which states that “the specific needs of particular couples” be determined at the local level. It likewise differs from paragraph 5 of the guidelines of the Ecumenical Commission of the German Bishops’ Conference, which states that “ascertaining such a need can as a rule only be done by the minister concerned”.

In 1999, the Diocese of Rockville Center, New York, issued norms regarding Special Circumstances for the Admission of Other Christians to Communion at Catholic Celebrations of the Eucharist [22] .The norms list situations when, with due consideration of canonical norms, “a ‘grave necessity’ may be discerned and Eucharist may be shared with Episcopal or Protestant Christians if all the conditions are met”. The list included 1) Catholic Eucharist in Institutional Settings: People who out of necessity are confined to institutions … may seek out the comfort and healing of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, from a minister and with a community with whom they share a spiritual kinship … Their situation may indeed be judged by Catholic ministers as constituting a grave spiritual need … When in the prudent pastoral judgment of the local pastor all five conditions of canon 844.4 are met, no further permission is needed”. 2) Catholic Funeral Mass: “At a funeral, a Christian spouse, family member, relative or friend of a deceased Catholic might be drawn to Eucharistic communion as a source of strength and consolation in his or her sorrow. This might well be judged as a moment of grace and fulfill the condition of a grave and pressing need …”. 3) Catholic Nuptial Mass: “A decision as to whether the spouse who is not Catholic may be admitted to the Eucharist is to be made according to applicable general norms, ‘taking into account the particular situation of the sacrament of Christian marriage by two baptized Christians.’ The spouse who is not Catholic already shares with the Catholic spouse the sacraments of baptism and marriage. There may be an occasion where the spouse who is not Catholic desires to receive the Eucharist at the nuptial Mass. A spiritual need constituting a ‘grave necessity’ may indeed be present on such an important occasion”. Because of the very public nature of the wedding ceremony, the diocese requires that in such cases a specified process be followed.

In March 2001, the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, Australia, issued Real Yet Imperfect: Pastoral Guidelines for Sacramental Sharing [23] . The guidelines acknowledge that “[t]he situation for eucharistic sharing between spouses in mixed marriages (interchurch families) has been specially noted in the Directory for Ecumenism (#145-151). Those who attend Mass together in a Catholic Church, present a unique case in that their baptismal unity has been further sealed by the Sacrament of Marriage. Conscious of the pain of the present division within the body of Christ, both may experience a real need to express their unity by receiving the Eucharist whenever they attend Mass together. If this occurs infrequently, both may receive the Eucharist provided that it is the spontaneous desire of the non-Catholic spouse to do so, and provided that the non-Catholic spouse professes Catholic faith in the sacrament and is properly disposed. This need may arise on the occasions listed above, and other special occasions known to the family. If this occurs frequently, the non-Catholic spouse may request permission to receive the Eucharist every time s/he attends Mass with his/her spouse, but joint pastoral care by the clergy of both denominations should be offered to help the person understand the significance of such requests. Cases where the only Church the non-Catholic partner attends is the Catholic Church should be referred to the bishop through the parish priest”.

The final, second revision of the Directory on Ecumenism for Southern Africa was issued by the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference in January 2003 [24] . This version followed two previous editions of 1998 and 2000, and incorporated revisions requested by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. (The first edition dated February 26, 1998 drew critical attention after U.S. President Bill Clinton, a Southern Baptist, received communion at a Mass in Soweto, South Africa, in March 1998.)Citing the Pontifical Council’s 1993Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism (section 129), sections 6.3.1-7 present a summary of governing principles for sacramental sharing and the general rule about shared worship, while noting that “circumstances can exist in which such a sharing becomes not only permissible but commendable”. The circumstances are said to include “cases of grave and pressing need determined by proper authorities”. Conditions that must be met for such sharing are likewise spelled out. In regard to the condition that the person admitted to such sharing “must manifest Catholic faith in the sacrament,” section 6.3.8 notes “that there is a crucial distinction between the substance of the faith and the way in which it is expressed. What is required is unity in the substance of the faith. Moreover, in judging whether or not such unity is present, one could consult those ecumenical agreements that display the existence of a substantial agreement in faith, while recognising that such statements are not binding on the Catholic Church until they have been approved by appropriate ecclesiastical authorities (cf. Directory on Ecumenism 178). But in the final analysis what is required is that the individual requesting admission to the Eucharist must personally manifest Catholic faith in the sacrament”.

The Directory goes on to make recommendations that are said to be “permissive, not prescriptive, since they clarify what can be done within the framework of Church discipline”. Section 6.5.3 states: “As regards the Eucharist, a spiritual need can arise for a Christian from another church or Ecclesial Community when attending a Eucharistic celebration for special feast or event or when accompanying his or her Catholic marriage partner at Sunday Mass”.

The first version of the Directory, issued in January 1998, said that, in making a judgment about unity in faith, “due cognizance must be taken of those ecumenical agreements that display the existence of a substantial agreement in faith” [25] . One example of such an agreement is that which was reached by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission regarding the Eucharist. In the light of that agreement, “members of the Anglican Communion may be presumed to share the essentials of Eucharistic faith with us” (section VI.A.8). The 2000 edition and the final 2003 Directory declare that “such statements are not binding on the Catholic Church until they have been approved by appropriate ecclesiastical authorities”. The 2003 Directory likewise makes no reference to Eucharistic sharing as expressing “the degree of unity that the participating Christians already have with each other (1998 edition, VI.B.3)” or “the real but imperfect communion that already exists between that Christian and the Catholic Church (2000 edition, 6.5.3)” [26] .

The first version of 1998 further stated: “A unique situation exists as regards spouses of a mixed marriage who attend Mass together in a Catholic Church. The uniqueness consists in the fact that their baptismal unity in Christ has been still further sealed by the sacramentality of their marriage bond. Hence both may experience a real need to express that unity by receiving Holy Communion whenever they attend Mass together. If such couples attend Mass together only infrequently, then they may both receive Communion on those occasions, provided that it is the spontaneous desire of the non-Catholic partner to do so. In cases where both parties attend Mass together virtually every Sunday, then the non-Catholic party may approach the local Ordinary through the parish priest for permission to receive Communion every time he or she attends Mass with his or her spouse. In all the above cases it is assumed that the non-Catholic lives devotedly within his or her tradition. Cases where the only Church that the non-Catholic partner attends is the Catholic Church must be referred to the local Ordinary through the parish priest”(VI.B.3.b). The revised version of 2000 kept the first two sentences ending with marriage bond and added “a bond that of its very nature seeks to be expressed and deepened by the unity of the couple at the eucharistic table. Hence a spouse in such a marriage, now commonly called an interchurch marriage, could well experience a serious spiritual need to receive holy communion on occasions when he or she accompanies the family to a Catholic Mass” (7.13). The final version of 2003 completely dropped the paragraph.

The Pastoral Notes for Sacramental Sharing with other Christians in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon, Canada, issued on August 22, 2008, had been reviewed by The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and found worthy [27] . That fact buttresses the Saskatoon document’s application of the Pontifical Council’s Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, namely, that by “acknowledging that the other Christian party to an Interchurch marriage may be permitted to receive Communion at a wedding Mass and in exceptional cases afterwards”, the Holy See thereby broadened the category of grave need “to include the spiritual need of a Christian spouse who wants to participate fully in the Eucharist at his or her wedding Mass and other important occasion in the family’s life. All the terms of the Policy are subject to broad interpretation: ‘regular access to their own minister’, ‘serious spiritual need’, ‘manifest catholic faith’, ‘proper disposition’, ‘occasions of ecclesial and familial significance’”. The document goes on to observe that “Interchurch marriages are a particular life situation for many Christians whose communion is rooted in baptism and strengthened by the sacramental nature of their Christian marriage. They require special consideration and pastoral sensitivity. A heavier burden of the pain of church divisions is felt by these committed families”. The Notes then state that “[t]he partner who is a baptized Anglican or Protestant in an Interchurch marriage may wish to receive Holy Communion in a Catholic Church on occasions of ecclesial or familial significance, when he or she experiences a serious spiritual need. In such a case the normal canon law requirements are in effect. Prior consultation with the pastor will assist such a person to consider all the criteria for proper discernment. In light of such discernment, the spouses themselves will recognize occasions when they have a strong spiritual need to receive Communion, and the conditions are met”. It adds that “[t]here should be special meaning to such occasions; they are not meant to become routine practice”. Examples of such special occasions are then provided: “a) their marriage and subsequent anniversaries celebrated with a Mass; b) the Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation, graduation Mass and wedding or ordination of a child, grandchild or close family member; c) major Feast days: Easter, Pentecost and Christmas; d) times of serious illness and/or approaching death; e) funerals of their partner, child, or grandchild; f) at retreats, Marriage Encounters, Parish Missions and religious workshops attended with their partner; g) other special circumstances in consultation with the pastor”.

“The baptismal and marital oneness of an Interchurch marriage may draw a particular couple, in a singular way, toward further sacramental sharing as a sign of deep unity in Christ and as a source of grace for their marriage. Such oneness offers a particularly strong basis for exceptional admission to the sacrament of the Eucharist”.

VI. Need for a New Mindset – Ecumenical “Domestic Churches” as Ecclesial Resource

Sadly, despite the many initiatives described above, there are still bishops who tell non-Catholic spouses that they may not receive the Eucharist at the First Communion of a daughter or son because that occasion is special but not exceptional. Karl Rahner’s earlier observations thus remain on the mark: ”[t]he basic question of what our attitude should be to unity in the sphere of ritual observance seems … to remain unresolved … since the prior question of what unity of faith can really be achieved, demanded, or looked for in the future remains obscure” [28] . Moreover, many questions bearing upon so-called “mixed [ecumenical or inter-church] marriages” have still not received sufficient attention. “In practice there is often a complete failure to draw the necessary distinction between that which pertains to genuinely divine law and that which pertains merely to ecclesiastical law. Over and above this, it is often wrongly assumed that everything in this sphere depends on the free consent of the Church’s authorities, and there is a failure to recognize that the matter itself and the concrete circumstances prevailing today impose their own norms and limitations upon the Church’s authorities” [29] .

In a 1971 lecture entitled “Ecumenical Theology in the Future,” Rahner noted that “we have Churches which are separated from one another institutionally and in terms of religious sociology”. He added that “in terms of faith the same Churches are at one so far as the majority of their members are concerned”. They are separated “only so far as minor groups within them are concerned, groups with a higher degree of theological awareness, and so constituted particularly by officials and theologians” [30] . Ecumenical dialogues usually gather such ecclesial representatives, ministerial office holders or theologians. Drawing upon doctrinal, liturgical and spiritual sources, they probe the nuances of diverse terminology, and seek to clarify the criteria and boundaries of legitimate diversity.

Rahner observed that “[t]he separation that is truly based on faith, which should correspond to the institutional separation, is in no sense present in the great majority of the members of all these churches”. The reasons why most belong to either this or that Church are the outcome of a long historical line of succession. “But properly speaking these reasons are not covered by those decisions of faith which could justify a separation between the Churches” [31] .

In his 1971 lecture, Rahner proposed a converse possibility, namely, forming “a Church which was single in institutional terms and in terms of religious sociology in which of course the plurality of creeds upheld by those maintaining theologically distinct doctrines would be recognized as legitimate within this institutional unity” [32] . The shared life experience that Rahner proposed for the macro-ecumenical situation is already a feature of ecumenical families. At the micro-ecumenical level, the sacramental married life within ecumenical households may be seen and studied as an experiential/experimental domestic Church in which the baptized spouses live in mutual fraternal exchange of all aspects of their life, so that the previous history and experience of their churches separated earlier become effective and recognized as legitimate in their unity of life together.

As Fries remarks, the task regarding inter-confessional marriages is certainly not completed. “An aid and a solution are possible only when such marriages become more and more a form and expression of Oikoumene in which communality in faith is realized and differences treated with respect. The partners can and should be mutually enriched. From confessionally-different marriages there should be more and more confessionally-unifying marriages” [33] .

If, as Paul Murray has proposed, “receptive ecumenism” involves asking “whether we can live difference for mutual flourishing” and “show signs of this in … relations with … close but nevertheless separated brothers and sisters in Christ”, the ecumenical family is an existing micro-model of “living and working together to be sacramental of – a living witness to – difference well-lived” and “correlatively learning from and receiving of each other’s particular gifts” [34] . It reflects an already existing “strategy for living between the times” of our present ecclesial disunity and the fulfillment of the hope for being one. The life of ecumenical families should be a contributing, integral component of ecumenical dialogue. They are an experiential resource in which an ecumenical relationship is being lived through the unitive sacramental love of spouses who with their children form an ecumenical “domestic Church”. As the 1993 Pontifical Council’s Directoryacknowledges, quoting John Paul II’s Familiaris consortio (78), these marriages “contain numerous elements that could well be made good use of and develop both for their intrinsic value and for the contribution they can make to the ecumenical movement” (145).

Bernard P. Prusak

Villanova University
Theology and Religious Studies Faculty
Villanova, PA
USA

bernard.prusak@villanova.edu

This paper is reproduced here with permission of the publisher of The Household of God and Local Households, Peeters Publishers, Leuven, Belgium, and of the editors, Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi, Gerard Mannion, and Peter de Mey.

For information on purchasing the volume of which this forms a part, please see the information from Peeters Publishers, below.

We also offer you an overview of the Interchurch Families Domestic Church project, at
http://interchurchfamilies.org/dc/DomesticChurchProject.html .

[1] Translation is mine: “veluti sacramentum seu signum et instrumentum intimae cum Deo unionis totiusque generis humani unitatis”; Latin text in N.P. Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, v. 2, Trent to Vatican II, London, Sheed & Ward – Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press, 1990, pp. 820-1135.

[2] Unless otherwise noted, citations are from A. Flannery (ed.) Vatican Council II, v. 1, The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, Northport, NY, Costello Publishing, 1992.

[3] See A. Grillmeier, The Mystery of the Church, in H. Vorgrimler (ed.), Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, v. 1, New York, Herder & Herder, 1967, pp. 157-158.

[4] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Mahwah, NJ, Paulist Press, 1994.

[5] CIC 1983, can. 1124 and 1125, § 1 and 2.

[6] H. Fries, Suffering from the Church: Renewal or Restoration? Collegeville, MN, Liturgical Press, 1995, p. 59.

[7] A. Dulles, Eucharistic Sharing as an Ecumenical Problem, in Idem, The Resilient Church: The Necessity and Limits of Adaptation, Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1977, pp. 154-155.

[8] Ecumenical Directory, 55, cf. 59, in Flannery (ed.) Vatican Council II, v. 1, pp. 499-500.

[9] On Admitting Other Christians to Eucharistic Communion, IV.2, ibid., pp. 557-558.

[10] Note, 6, ibid., pp. 561-562.

[11] A. Dulles, Eucharistic Sharing as an Ecumenical Problem, p. 158.

[12] Ibid., pp. 158-160.

[13] Ibid., p. 163.

[14] Eucharistic Sharing Guidelines for the Dioceses of Helena and Great Falls-Billings, 12.04.1982, available online at http://www.dioceseofgfb.org/userfiles/file/Policies/29_Eucharistic%20Sharing%20Guidelines.pdf ; accessed 21.07.2011.

[15] Commission épiscopale pour l’Unité des chrétiens, L'hospitalité eucharistique avec les chrétiens des églises de la Réforme en France: Note de la Commission épiscopale pour l'unité des chrétiens aux prêtres et aux fidèles catholiques, 14.03.1983, available online at http://cdo-lyon.cef.fr/spip.php?article20 ; accessed 21.07.2011.

[16] Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, 25.03.1993, available online at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_25031993_principles-and-norms-on-ecumenism_en.html ; accessed 21.07.2011.

[17] John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, 25.05.1995, available online at http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0221/_INDEX.HTM ; accessed 21.07.2011.

[18] Archdiocese of Brisbane, Blessed and Broken: Pastoral Guidelines for Eucharistic Hospitality, 1995, available online at http://www.litcom.net.au/documents/eucharistichospitality.php ; accessed 21.07.2011.

[19] United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Committee on Divine Worship, Guidelines for the Reception of Communion, 14.11.1996, available online at http://www.nccbuscc.org/liturgy/current/intercom.shtml ; accessed 21.07.2011.

[20] Ökumene-Kommission der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, Zur Frage der eucharistischen Gastfreundschaft bei konfessionsverschiedenen Ehen und Familien, in: Una Sancta 52 (1997) 85-88. Text also in Arbeitsgemeinschaft christlicher Kirchen in Nürnberg, Zur Frage der eucharistischen Gastfreundschaft bei konfessionsverschiedenen Ehen und Familien: Eine Problemanzeige: Text und Dokumentation, 4. Aufl., Nürnberg, Peter Athmann, 2003, pp. 29-32 (available online at http://www.ack-nuernberg.de/ack.php?problemanzeige.pdf ; accessed 21.07.2011). An English translation is found at http://www.interchurchfamilies.org/journal/98ja10.shtm ; accessed 21.07.2011.

[21] Bishops' Conference of England & Wales – Bishops' Conference of Ireland – Bishops' Conference of Scotland, One Bread, One Body: A Teaching Document on the Eucharist in the Life of the Church, and the Establishment of General Norms on Sacramental Sharing, 1998, available online at http://ecumenism.net/archive/docu/1998_one_bread_one_body.htm ; accessed 21.07.2011.

[22] Diocese of Rockville Centre, Special Circumstances for the Admission of Other Christians to Communion at Catholic Celebrations of the Eucharist in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, 28.11.1999, available online at http://www.drvc.org/the-chancery/special-circumstances-for-the-admission-of-other-christians-to-communion-at-catholic-celebrations-of-the-eucharist-in-the-diocese-of-rockville-centre.html ; accessed 21.07.2011.

[23] Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, Real Yet Imperfect: Pastoral Guidelines for Sacramental Sharing, 03.2001, available online at http://www.mn.catholic.org.au/about/policies/policies_real_yet_imperfect.htm ; accessed 21.07.2011.

[24] Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, Ecumenical Directory for Southern Africa: Final Text, in Origins 33 (2003) 91-96.

[25] Bishops of Southern Africa, Directory on Ecumenism for Southern Africa, in Origins 27 (1998) 505-510.

[26] Bishops of Southern Africa, Revised Directory on Ecumenism for Southern Africa, in Origins 29 (2000) 733-737.

[27] Diocese of Saskatoon, Pastoral Notes for Sacramental Sharing with other Christians in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon, 22.08.2008, available online at http://www.saskatoonrcdiocese.com/pages/ecumenism.cfm ; accessed 21.07.2011.

[28] K. Rahner, The Congregation of the Faith and the Commission of Theologians, in Idem: Theological Investigations, v. 14: Ecclesiology: Questions in the Church, The Church in the World, trans. D. Bourke, New York, Seabury, 1976, p. 114.

[29] Ibid., pp. 113-114.

[30] K. Rahner, Ecumenical Theology in the Future, Ibid., p. 268.

[31] Ibid., p. 269.

[32] Ibid., p. 268.

[33] H. Fries, Suffering from the Church, p. 59.

[34] P.D. Murray, Receptive Ecumenism and Ecclesial Learning Receiving Gifts for Our Needs, in Louvain Studies 33 (2008) 30-45, pp. 31 and 33.

Rite of Bringing a Baptised child into the church

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 13:51:45 GMT

Rite of Bringing a Baptised Child to the Church

(This Catholic rite can be adapted for the reception of a child of an interchurch family who has received baptism in the church of the other partner.)

RECEPTION OF THE CHILD

165 The people may sing a psalm or song suitable for the occasion. Meanwhile the celebrating priest or deacon, vested in alb or surplice, with a stole (with or without a cope) of festive color, and accompanied by the ministers, goes to the entrance of the church where the parents and godparents are waiting with the child.

166. The celebrant greets all present, and especially the parents and godparents. He praises them for having had the child baptized without delay, and thanks God and congratulates the parents on the child's return to health.

167. First the celebrant questions the parents:

Celebrant: What name have you given the child?

Parents: N.

Celebrant: What do you ask of God's Church, now that your child has been baptized?

Parents: We ask that the whole community will know that he (she) has been received into the Church.

The first reply may be given by someone other than the parents if local custom gives him the right to name the child.

In the second response the parents may use other words, such as that he (she) is a Christian or that he (she) has been baptized.

168. Then the celebrant speaks to the parents in these or similar words:

Celebrant: Do you realize that in bringing your child to the Church, you are accepting the duty of raising him (her) in the faith, so that by observing the commandments he (she) will love God and neighbor as Christ taught us?

Parents: We do.

169. Then the celebrant turns to the godparents and addresses them in these or similar words:

Are you ready to help the mother and father of this child to carry out their duty as Christian parents?

Godparents: We are.

170. The celebrant continues:

N., the Christian community welcomes you with great joy, now that you have recovered your health. We now bear witness that you have been received as a member of the Church. In the name of the community I sign you with the cross of Christ, who gave you a new life in baptism and made you a member of his Church. I invite your parents (and godparents) to do the same.

He signs the child on the forehead, in silence. Then he invites the parents and (if it seems appropriate) the godparents to do the same.

171. The celebrant invites the parents, godparents, and all who are present to take part in the liturgy of the word. If circumstances permit, there is a procession to the place where this will be celebrated, during which a song is sung, such as Psalm 85:7, 8, 9ab:

Will you not give us life;

and shall not your people rejoice in you?

Show us, O Lord, your kindness,

and grant us your salvation.

I will hear what God proclaims:

the Lord-for he proclaims peace to his people.

CELEBRATION OF GOD'S WORD

SCRIPTURAL READINGS AND HOMILY

172. One or even two of the following gospel passages are read, during which all may sit if convenient.

John 3:16 The meeting with Nicodemus

Matthew 28:1-20 The apostles are sent to preach the gospel and to baptize.

Mark 1:9-11 The baptism of Jesus.

Mark 10:1316 Let the little children come to me.

The passages listed in nos. 186194 and 204215 may also be chosen, or other passages which better meet the wishes or needs of the parents, such as the following:

1 Kings 17:1724

2 Kings 4:8-37

Between the readings, responsorial psalms or verses may be sung, as given in nos. 195203.

173. After the reading, the celebrant gives a brief homily, explaining to those present the significance of what has been read. His purpose will be to lead them to a deeper understanding of the mystery of baptism and to encourage parents and godparents to a ready acceptance of the responsibilities which arise from the sacrament.

174. After the homily, or in the course of or after the litany, it is desirable to have a period of silence while all pray at the invitation of the celebrant. A suitable hymn may follow, such as one chosen from nos. 225245.

PRAYER OF THE FAITHFUL

175. Then the prayer of the faithful is said:

Celebrant: Let us ask our Lord Jesus Christ to look lovingly on this child, on his (her) parents and godparents, and on all the baptized.

Leader: May this child always show gratitude to God for his (her) baptism and recovery.

All: Lord, hear our prayer.

Leader: Help him (her) always to be a living member of your Church.

All: Lord, hear our prayer

Leader: Inspire him (her) to hear, follow, and witness to your gospel.

All: Lord, hear our prayer.

Leader: May he (she) come with joy to the table of your sacrifice.

All: Lord, hear our prayer.

Leader: Help him (her) to love God and neighbor as you have taught us.

All: Lord, hear our prayer.

Leader: May he (she) grow in holiness and wisdom by listening to his (her) fellow Christians and following their example.

All: Lord, hear our prayer.

Leader: Keep all your followers united in faith and love for ever.

All: Lord, hear our prayer.

176. The celebrant next invites all present to invoke the saints:

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saint Peter and Saint Paul, pray for us.

The names of other saints may be added, especially the patrons of the child and of the church or locality. The litany concludes:

All you saints of God, pray for us.

Then the celebrant says:

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, source of all life and love, you are glorified by the loving care these parents have shown this child. You rescue children from danger and save them in baptism.

Your Church thanks you and prays for your child N. You have brought him (her) out of the kingdom of darkness and into your marvelous light. You have made him (her) your adopted child and a temple of the Holy Spirit.

Help him (her) in all the dangers of this life and strengthen him (her) in the constant effort to reach your kingdom, through the power of Christ our Savior. (U1e ask this) through Christ our Lord.

All: Amen

FURTHER RITES

ANOINTING WITH CHRISM

178. Then the celebrant says:

God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has freed you from sin, given you a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into his holy people. He now anoints you with the chrism of salvation. As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.

All: Amen.

Then the celebrant anoints the child on the crown of the head with the chrism, in silence.

CLOTHING WITH WHITE GARMENT

179. The celebrant says:

N., you have become a new creation, and have clothed yourself in Christ. See in this white garment the outward sign of your Christian dignity. With your family and friends to help you by word and example, bring that dignity unstained into the everlasting life of heaven.

All: Amen.

LIGHTED CANDLE

180. The celebrant takes the Easter candle and says:

Receive the light of Christ

Someone, such as the father or godfather, lights the child's candle from the Easter candle.

The celebrant then says:

Parents and godparents, this light is entrusted to you to be kept burning brightly. This child of yours has been enlightened by Christ. He (she) is to walk always as a child of the light. May he (she) keep the flame of faith alive in his (her) heart. When the Lord comes, may he (she) go out to meet him with all the saints in the heavenly kingdom.

A baptismal song is appropriate at this time, such as:

You have put on Christ,

in him you have been baptized.

Alleluia, alleluia.

Other songs may be chosen from nos. 22~245.

CONCLUSION OF THE RITE

LORD'S PRAYER

181. The celebrant stands in front of the altar and addresses the parents, godparents, and the whole assembly in these or similar words:

My dear brothers and sisters, this child has been reborn in baptism. He (she) is now called the child of God, for so indeed he (she) is. In confirmation he (she) will receive the fullness of God's Spirit. In holy communion he (she) will share the banquet of Christ's sacrifice, calling God his (her) Father in the midst of the Church. In the name of this child, in the spirit of our common sonship, let us pray together in He words our Lord has given us:

182. All present join the celebrant in singing or saying:

Our Father....

BLESSING

183. The celebrant first blesses the mother, who holds the child in her arms, then the father. and lastly the entire assembly:

Celebrant: God the Father, through his Son, the Virgin Mary's child, has brought joy to all Christian mothers, as they see the hope of eternal life shine on their children. May he bless the mother of this child. She now thanks God for the gift of her child. May she be one with her son (daughter) in thanking God for ever in heaven, in Christ Jesus our lord.

All: Amen.

Celebrant: God is the giver of all life, human and divine. May he bless the father of this child. He and his wife will be the first teachers of their child in the ways of faith.

May they also be the best of teachers, bearing witness to the faith by what they say and do, in Christ Jesus our Lord.

All: Amen.

Celebrant: By God's gift, through water and the Holy Spirit, we are reborn to everlasting life. In his goodness, may he continue to pour out his blessings on these sons and daughters of his. May he make them always, where ever they may be, faithful members of his holy people. May he send his peace upon all who are gathered here, in Christ Jesus our Lord.

All: Amen.

Celebrant: May almighty God, the Father, and the Son, ~ and the Holy Spirit, bless you.

All: Amen.

For other forms of the blessing, see nos. 247249.

184. After the blessing, all may sing a hymn which suitably expresses thanksgiving and Easter joy, or they may sing the song of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Magnificat.

Where there is the practice of bringing the baptized child to the altar of the blessed Virgin, this custom is observed if appropriate.

185. The above rite is followed even when the baptized child is brought to the church after other difficulties (such as persecution, disagreement between parents) which prevented the celebration of baptism in the church. In such cases, the celebrant should adapt the explanations, readings, intentions in the prayer of the faithful and other parts of the rite to the child's circumstances.

Reprinted by the Association of Interchurch Families , England

Plan 2010 AAIF Conference

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 17:25:57 GMT

AAIF Conference

Holy Wisdom Monastery

Madison, WI

July 9-11, 2010

Friday, JULY 9

▪11:30 – 1:00 p.m. Naturalist-led “easy” Hike into nearby Pheasant Branch Conservancy to observe area eco-systems (reservations necessary)

2:00 – 5:00 p.m. AAIF Registration (Guest House, Holy Wisdom Monastery)

4:30 p.m. Evening Prayer

5:15 p.m. Dinner

6:30 p.m. Welcome (AAIF Co-Chairs, Laura and Franz Green)

6:40 p.m. Fr. Ernie Falardeau, “Eucharist: Challenge to the Churches”

7:00 p.m. Opening Plenary: Benedictine Women of Madison

8:30 p.m. Wisconsin Wine and Cheese Party

Saturday, JULY 10

7:00 – 9:00 a.m. Continental Breakfast (Guest House residents)

8:00 a.m. Morning Prayer 9:45 a.m. Announcements (AAIF Co-Chairs, Laura and Franz Green)

▪10:00 a.m. Fr. George Kilcourse, “IFIN Developments: Leuven 2010, the ʻDomestic Churchʼ” ◦10:30 a.m. Keynote Plenary: Prof. Lynn Turner (Marquette University)

12:00 Noon Lunch

▪2:00 p.m. Panel Plenary: Invited Wisconsin Clergy and Representative Interchurch Spouses

4:30 p.m. Evening Prayer

5:00 p.m. Mass at nearby Catholic Parish

6:30 p.m. Dinner

▪8:00 p.m. Plenary Session: Interchurch Couples (Open Discussion and Conversation) ◦ 9:15 p.m AAIF Business Meeting

9:45 p.m. Social Hour

Sunday, JULY 11

7:00 – 9:00 a.m. Continental Breakfast (Guest House Residents)

8:00 a.m. Morning Prayer ▪Morning Worship at nearby Protestant Church

9:00 a.m. “Sunday Assembly [Worship]” – Holy Wisdom Monastery

12:00 Noon Closing Lunch

___________

▪12:00 – 4:00 p.m. Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings ($10.00 / person)

▪1:00 – 4:00 p.m. Transportation to Art Fair on Madison Square (FREE but reservations required)

▪6:00 – 9:00 p.m. Buffet Dinner and chartered boat tour of Lake Mendota $39.00 adults; $25.00 children (We must have 20 to reserve boat)

Interchurch Families: An Indespensable Microcosm

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:56:06 GMT

Interchurch Families :
an indispensable microcosm in the macrocosm of the church(es)?

Extract of Ten Arguments For and Against Supporting a Pastoral Ministry to Interchurch Families - Paper of Rev Jean-Baptiste Lipp

10th and last reason for not supporting a ministry to interchurch families / from interchurch families.

It would be an illusion to think that interchurch families could be an ecumenical motor. To develop the question I will use two metaphors: the body, which is ill, and the parents, who divorced. What can “the cell” do to promote the unity of a “body” which is supposedly ill? Also, just as children should not carry the weight of their parents’ divorce, it is not the task of interchurch families, suffering from the division of their churches, to be charged with a fundamentally impossible mission, I mean “the reunification of the parental couple”. Ecumenism is too serious a matter, institutionally and theologically, to be left to mere lay people.

Interchurch families have no original contribution to make to the ecumenical movement! Their life, love, faith, experiences, etc…, should be considered as a private thing. Their experiences are interesting, maybe, but have to remain in the area of practical theology and not in the area of dogmatic theology, and even not in the area of ecclesiology. I think, we had a good example this morning of the limitations of the problematic (and the problem of the limitations), with the contribution of Professor Stephanie Klein (and the question asked by Professor Michael Fahey).

I would like to suggest a diagram to explain the two different points of view of a “high ecclesiology” (Catholic and Orthodox churches) and a “low ecclesiology” (Protestant churches).

“High ecclesiology”:

Dogmatic theology
//

Ecclesiology

/
Practical Theology

“Low ecclesiology”:

Dogmatic theology

/
Ecclesiology
//
Practical theology

According to the pattern of the “high ecclesiology”, ecclesiology should not be changed because of us, interchurch families. Ecclesiology should keep her place as servant of dogmatic theology and avoid any contamination from domestic churches. Ecclesiology – and even ecumenism – should be separated from practical theology. It would be an illusion to think that interchurch families could bring any contribution to the ecumenical movement. There is no link between the microcosm of our families and the macrocosm of the churches! Now “respondeo”, I will give my answer to my own doubts…

10th and last reason for supporting a ministry to interfaith families / from interfaith families.

« Acting as if» is not, in the long run, worthy of a Gospel which calls us to truth, light and testimony. And this Gospel also calls for new conversions, new deaths and new resurrections. There is a truth which will soon be inescapable to the eye – but which many eyes are still voluntarily closed to: growing interfaith mixity in our populations must, sooner or later, have implications for the theology of each individual church, and particularly its ecclesiology. This thesis is defended, among others, by Father René Beaupère, a pioneer in our francophone ministry to “foyers mixtes”. Our churches act “as if” their tissues were homogeneous, which they are less and less (this is obvious in reading statistics!).

The Catholic Church tends to view mixed marriages as problematic, without having many more solutions to offer in the name of a strong and self-satisfied ecclesiology (particularly in the area of Eucharistic sharing), while the Reformed churches tend to view the problem as no longer existing, in the name of a weak but also self-satisfied ecclesiology. The catholic (or orthodox) “high ecclesiology” stresses the “not yet” of Christian unity. The protestant “low ecclesiology” stresses the “already” of Christian unity. However the situation has become increasingly unbearable for interchurch families: they are conscious of their identity as ecumenical “little churches”, or “domestic churches” (according to the patristic expression), yet they lack complete recognition of their full ecclesiality by some (Catholic or Orthodox churches), while others (Protestant churches) trivialize the pertinence of an ecclesiological debate.

Although the Eucharistic question is not an issue for Protestants but remains one for Catholics and Orthodox, Protestants cannot say it is not their problem. Some of us may remember of the celebration given by the Arge Oekumene of Austria (Association of Austrian interchurch families) at the 2nd Ecumenical European Gathering at Graz. At the end of the prayer - in the tradition of the famous prophetic acts in the Old Testament - a table was sawed in two parts. This symbolic action was unbearable for every participant! After the service, one part was sent to the Catholic Archbishop of Vienna, and the other part to the protestant Bishop, both with the same message: “Wir bitten um Reparatur!”, which means : “We want the table to be repared”. The protestant answer was: “It is not our problem!”. The Catholic Church did not answer…

As long as the issue is problematic for one party, as such, it involves the other. When a parental couple has separated, no dispute is the responsibility of one member only. Both churches together should then seize the opportunity of conversion and renew their efforts to address the BEM issue and pending questions.

So I conclude. Interchurch families and their associations will never be more than secondary characters or mere extras, in the great and long drama of the ecumenical movement, but they do have a role to play, and it is - no more and no less – the size of life!

Presented by Rev Jean-Baptiste Lipp at the conference on " The Household of God and the Local Household ", Catholic University of Leuven, 10-13 March 2010. Used with permission.

Letter to Prairie Messenger

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:14:05 GMT

The Editors,

The Prairie Messenger &
Catholic New Times

As a Catholic and Anglican interchurch couple, my wife and I worship together on alternate Sundays in the two churches which gave us spiritual birth and nurtured us in our faith journies. In the last couple of weeks at St. Thomas’s Anglican, and again at St. John’s Catholic, we have been struck by the Gospel reading (Mk 10:2-16).

Christ clearly states something that we have both experienced: namely, that two individuals come together in marriage and, by the grace of God, are made one. He goes on to state that what God has thus joined together, no one is to put asunder.

Then, elsewhere in the Gospels, Christ also tells us that unless one eats of the flesh and drinks of the blood of the Son of Man, one cannot have life within.

This ‘one’ that God has created then wonders: where is this ‘one’ to worship; to take and eat the body of Christ; to take and drink His blood? In the Anglican church? In the Catholic church? Where is the justification for implying and at times clearly stating that the non-Catholic member of that ‘one’ cannot be invited to receive at the Lord’s table in the Catholic community? How many more Sundays must that one whom God has joined together be put asunder - and how can such sundering continue to be justified in the name of a lack of unity, a unity which the Church proclaims (and we believe) that God has already effected in the sacrament of marriage?

Sincerely,

Ray & Fenella Temmerman

Interchurch Families: Witness to Christian Unity

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:10:13 GMT

All cross-frontier marriages – whether they cross national, ethnic, faith or denominational boundaries – offer a challenge to their communities. They cannot help it. Here are two people belonging to two human groups which are distinct and different from one another and have allowed those differences to become dividing lines. Romeo from one group and Juliet from the other group are saying in effect: "We love one another; we want to spend our lives living together; we believe we can handle differences between ourselves which our communities cannot yet handle."

Fragile but full of potential

Such marriages have a built-in fragility if they do not have the support of their two communities. There are many degrees of difficulty. In some places a couple who love one another may not even be legally entitled to marry – this was the case for blacks and whites under the apartheid system in South Africa. In some countries one of the couple may be a resident, and the other be refused a residence permit; this can happen in England. Or it may simply be that at the first sign of difficulty in the marriage, people will be only too pleased to rush in and say: "We told you so! We knew what would happen if you married one of them." Wherever people think in terms of "them" and "us" there are likely to be problems.

On the other hand such marriages are full of potential. Learning to live with differences is necessary in every marriage, if it is to survive. Coping with gender differences can be a big enough task in itself, without other complications thrown in. But learning to live with cross-frontier differences as well can be enriching and exciting; whole new worlds can be opened up for both partners. At the same time it can be enlightening for their respective communities to see that a cross-frontier couple are able to remain together in harmony, because they love one another sufficiently to work at living with the inevitable tensions involved. If they can do it, why cannot whole communities do it too? The moment of recognising that "one of them" can become "one of us" – yet without losing their identity or cutting themselves off from their own community – can be a very precious one.

So there are two sides to the coin. Cross-frontier marriages need special support from their communities. At the same time they have something special to offer to their communities.

The problem of Christian divisions

So far we have spoken in general terms about cross-frontier marriages. You might expect the problems (and therefore equally the potential) of intermarriage to pale into insignificance where interchurch families are concerned. After all, the couple share their Christian faith; as interchurch families we are always quick to point out that we are not interfaith marriages when people get it wrong! It is just that the couple live out their one Christian faith in two different church communities. Today, however, those church communities are committed to growing into full unity with one another. So why a problem?

What we are considering here is the marriage of a Roman Catholic to a Christian of another communion – a marriage which crosses the Reformation divide. In Northern Ireland such a marriage is a cross-community union with all the tensions which that involves, but this is not so in England. Society in general does not condemn interchurch marriages. But an interchurch couple has to face the fact that their churches are still divided, and that this fact of division is going to cause all kinds of practical difficulties to them as they live out their lives as Christian partners and parents. In which church are they going to marry? Where will their children be baptised and nurtured in the faith? Will they worship separately or together?

This is the nub of the problem. The two partners are called together to form one church in their home, one "domestic church" in the terminology of Vatican II. However, their one little church is linked to the whole Church of Christ which exists throughout all ages and in all places through two separate and divided churches – both in the sense of denominations and in the sense of local congregations. They are trying to hold the two together, somehow, in their one marriage, which is in itself an image of the bond between Christ and his Church (Eph.5). How can they possibly do it?

The mystery of Christian unity

The simple answer is that they cannot, which is why the Catholic Church and other churches too have traditionally discouraged mixed marriages as strongly as they could. But there is a way forward, and it is good to be reminded of it when we come round each January to celebrating the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The founder of the Week of Prayer, Abbé Paul Couturier, was an obscure French Catholic priest living in Lyons in the 1930’s who had come to feel deeply the scandal of Christian divisions through his friendship with Russian Orthodox refugees whom he had been trying to make welcome in France. It is often through coming to know other Christians on a deep level that we become aware of how scandalous our divisions really are.

But Abbé Couturier also became aware that the mystery of Christian unity is greater than the scandal of Christian divisions. Christian unity is not a problem to be solved; it is a mystery to which we must open ourselves. Christ has already won for us unity with God and with one another, and it is only our own sinfulness that hinders us from accepting God’s gift. We shall be given unity, therefore, as we grow in holiness, as we grow closer to Christ. Jesus prayed for the unity of all his disciples on the eve of his passion: "Father, that they may be one as we are one; that they may be one in us, that the world may believe" (John 17:21). Christ is now alive with the Father interceding for us, continuing to pray for the unity of his disciples. If all Christians from within our divided churches, and faithful to the witness of those churches, place themselves within the prayer of Christ for unity, open themselves to allow Christ to pray his prayer for unity in them, then God will be able to give us the unity which is his will for us. In his own time many Catholics condemned the teaching of Abbé Couturier, but a quarter of a century later the Second Vatican Council called the "spiritual ecumenism" for which he stood "the heart of the whole ecumenical movement", and the Week of Prayer which he founded has entered into the life of our churches.

The mystery of marriage

Marriage, like Christian unity, is a mystery (mysterion is the Geek word for sacrament); it opens us up to share in the life of God. It is "an intimate community of life and love", in the words of Vatican II, which reflects the union between Christ and his church, and draws the spouses into the communion between the Son and his Father, in the Holy Spirit.

In interchurch families these two mysteries come together. "You live in your marriage the hopes and the difficulties of the path to Christian unity", said Pope John Paul II to interchurch families at York in 1982. "Some people play at ecumenism but we live it", said one interchurch couple many years ago. It is this living out of Christian unity day by day in the tiny community of marriage and family life that is the vocation of interchurch families. It is by committing themselves to love one another for life, and by taking into that committed relationship their two different and distinct church traditions that the spouses make their unique witness to Christian unity. They share the everyday struggles of all married partners – how to communicate with one another, how to achieve cohesion in their life together through the inevitable conflicts that arise, how to work daily at deepening their commitment to one another. But they have this added dimension: living within the mystery of their marriage the mystery of Christian unity.

Interchurch marriages need support

We said at the beginning that cross-frontier marriages are fragile; they need support. Paradoxically it is simply in asking for the support that they need to live the life of their one domestic church within two divided Christian communities that interchurch families contribute to and influence the movement towards Christian unity.

Recently we have had a powerful example of this. For many years some interchurch families have been saying that they need to share the eucharist in order to build up their marriage and family life. Now, in their teaching document on the eucharist, One Bread One Body, our Bishops have echoed the Ecumenical Directory issued from Rome in 1993 in pointing to the unique identification of those who share the sacraments of baptism and marriage as in possible need of eucharistic sharing. It is not that they are moving towards "intercommunion"; it is important for the Catholic Church to continue to hold to the close link between communion in the eucharist and communion in the whole of church life. But it is a recognition that in the context of developing relationships between the churches it is possible in some exceptional cases to go beyond what is normal practice and admit the other Christian spouse to communion on occasion. Interchurch families have spoken urgently and insistently of their need to share, and we now have a demonstration that there is room for flexibility within the Catholic position as the churches move closer together.

A witness to offer

When they receive the pastoral support they need, interchurch families can be very powerful witnesses to unity. When two ministers take part together in a wedding celebration, when a shared celebration of baptism takes place, when interchurch spouses can share communion on the occasion of a wedding anniversary and be welcomed to do so by the whole parish, they become visual aids which demonstrate the real, if not yet fully realised, communion of all baptised Christians in a way which no amount of talking can do.

But above all, in living out their marriage commitment to one another, interchurch partners can show the churches something of the nature of Christian unity. It is their love for one another and their long-term commitment to one another which is the necessary context in which they can grow into unity as partners and can undertake their mission together as parents. They live under the same roof. They share all their possessions. They hold together in sickness and in health, in all life’s ups and downs. In doing this they grow in mutual understanding and mutual enrichment, and they learn to distinguish the fundamentals of belief that they need to share from the complementary attitudes and insights which enrich their lives with their variety. This is the kind of relationship they would want to commend to their churches as these grow into unity.

Ruth Reardon

Interchurch Families - Domestic Church Thesis

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 14:10:17 GMT

INTERCHURCH FAMILIES AS DOMESTIC CHURCH

Familial Experiences and Ecclesial Opportunities

I. Introduction

Theological deliberation on the topic of “domestic church” has until now focused almost entirely on same-church couples. And yet, in North America today some 32% of couples are in mixed-church relationships at the time of their engagement [1] .

Since one may receive an answer one does not want to hear, I as a spouse in an interchurch family experience some trepidation in posing the question. Yet it seems important to directly ask: are interchurch families, where each spouse is a baptized Christian from a different tradition who, while retaining his or her original church membership, is also committed to live, worship and participate in their spouse’s church as much as they are able [2] , truly to be considered “domestic church”? If they are not, we must surely question how our theology of marriage could, unnoticed, leave millions of faith-filled and faithful couples around the world in a sort of quasi-ecclesial state of unity. Alternatively, if they are, then not only do these couples and their churches have responsibilities each to the other, but these couples offer prophetic gifts and opportunities for their churches to explore unity, to nurture it in their midst, and together to grow into that unity which is at the heart of God.

It is as a contribution to answering that question that I chose to research indicators of “domestic church” in the experience of interchurch families and in their own words, then to explore what opportunities their experience might offer to the churches of which they are members.

The genesis of this project lies in two concrete experiences. The first is my marriage, as a Roman Catholic, to a woman of the Anglican tradition. What began as a journey of love developed into a life-long ecumenical journey. We began living in our marriage the already of Christian unity within the not yet of unity between our churches. Such families are known variously as interchurch families (Anglophone countries), foyers mixtes (France), konfessionsverbindende Paare und Familien (Germany), Coppie interconfessionali (Italy). The second is more prosaic. I participated in a meeting in Rome, Italy, in 2005, between representatives of the Interchurch Families International Network and some members of the staff of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity [3] where we were invited to begin exploring the reality of the term “domestic church”.

II. Research

Rev. Dr. Jamie Hawkey, a rapporteur for the 2008 Lambeth Conference, suggests churches need to “forge new and imaginative methods of appreciating and evaluating each other’s – and our own – ecclesiality”. He suggests that

one way of doing this might be to refocus our attention on the four classic “Marks” or “Notes” of the Church which embody the nature of the Church, and on how different Christian communities might appreciate each other through these four essential prisms [4] .

This exploration of these “marks” is situated within the larger context of a thesis in partial completion of the designation of Masters in Sacred Theology (S.T.M.) through the University of Winnipeg, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Written surveys were distributed to people identified as interchurch couples, registered either for the American Association of Interchurch Families biennial conference (Louisville, KY, 2008), or the 2008 British Association of Interchurch Families annual conference, Swanwick, England, or Canadian interchurch couples personally known to me. Their participation formed an invaluable component of my work, giving concrete, particular, personal witness to the reality of the domestic church.

The research was carried out as a qualitative process, giving participants free range to response to a variety of questions posed to them. The survey questions were on topics familiar to the couples, quite possibly the subject of discussion around their dining tables and in their congregations. In other words, the topics focused on their lived reality. Included were questions concerning the “marks” of the church, elements of koinonia, and funeral preparations. [5]

Of fifty-three survey questionnaires distributed to interchurch couples in Canada, the USA and the United Kingdom, a total of twenty-four (45%) were returned: five (21%) from the American Association, nineteen (79%) from participants at the United Kingdom Association’s conference at Swanwick, and none from Canadians (0%). Of the responding couples, twenty had a total of 51 children, while three had no children. One respondent was an adult child of an interchurch couple, who offered to fill in the survey as well. While this was not part of the original survey methodology, I accepted the offer as a way of comparing the parents’ perception of what their children received and lived with the child’s perception of the same reality. The results were purged of personal identifiers. [6]

Several realities call for this paper to be written from a predominantly, though not exclusively, Catholic perspective. One is that the phrase “domestic church” has gained prominence primarily within the Catholic Church. Also, while clearly a significant number of couples marry across Protestant denominational lines [7] , in each and every response to this survey, one of the spouses was a Roman Catholic. Finally, I am a Catholic writer, and am particularly concerned to address the unique and often challenging barriers to ecclesial unity that exist within my own tradition.

While the research project as a whole focuses on the “marks” of the Church, in this paper, a first fruit of my research, I focus specifically on indicators best summed up under the term communio.

It is perhaps helpful to clarify what I mean by communio.I am speaking of the organic unity which is found, by faith, in the mutuality and reciprocity of the Trinity. As Ladislas Orsy says:

Through faith, we discover communio in the inner life of God, who is one God in three persons. … In the church an organic unity exists among individual persons; they are bonded together. The one Spirit of Christ dwells in many and holds them together … This is the theological reality of communio. All external manifestations of unity … flow from it [8] .

This is something given, which comes from God, and which is made concrete and then shared in real time.

Jesus prayed that we might share in this unity [9] . We enter into it in baptism, where we are made part of the family of God. According to scripture [10] and the teachings of the Catholic Church [11] , in marriage, where two individual persons within that family are bonded together, by God, to become one, this organic unity is enhanced, and experienced in a new way. The resulting unity is so powerful that it is understood to be indissoluble in this life.

III. Experiences

And so, we turn to the work at hand. In the first couple selected, it would seem that communio in faith was not very present at the beginning, but grew through the couple's marriage. In fact, at first the wife “deferred on marriage”, as her future husband “seemed to have no particular commitment to church” [12] . The husband says of the situation, “… she impelled me to study the basis of my own belief, and I came back to the Catholic Church out of deep conviction”, so much so “that I excluded other Christian beliefs and practices from the household” [13] . This restricted any possible discussion prior to marriage: “We agreed that the children would be raised Catholics. I allowed no possibility of anything else” [14] . More than 25 years later, this same couple can say “[w]e are glad to have people of different traditions gather with us” [15] . Also, “[b]eing involved in ecumenism has been a tremendous eye-opener and opportunity for spiritual growth” [16] . Clearly, there has been growth in communio in the intervening years, with a far greater openness to the faith tradition of the “other”. Evidence can be seen in the way they approached the education of their children. “In [one state] our children attended a Baptist elementary school because it clearly had the best educational program. In [another state] they went to Catholic schools” [17] .

Both now worshipping in both churches, the husband says, “[w]e have become an interchurch couple. … There has been a kind of evolution toward this. We are still discovering what it means, and still exploring how to build Christian unity, both within our household and in the broader church community” [18] .

The second couple, married 34 years, has no children. Asked about expectations he may have had in marrying someone of another Christian tradition, the husband says: “Not a lot of thought was made concerning religious tradition. I was so comfortable and confident of our sound relationship that there was no need to consider this part of our lives” [19] . In an indication that understandings developed and deepened over the years, he says: “For a few years, we both attended the local Catholic church on Sundays. Later, I would accompany [my wife] to her Baptist church on occasion. Then, more and more frequently, I would go to Sunday worship with her (as well as to my own church) as well as other services and events” [20] . They are today both involved in both the Baptist and Catholic churches. In the former, both find themselves called on to provide the “Catholic” perspective on many topics.

When asked what makes living their interchurch life joyful, the husband replies: “The appreciation, love, acceptance, interest, support, encouragement and Christian joy encountered when either of us participates in the other's denomination or participates in an ecumenical situation in our own denomination. When experienced from clergy, this is especially exciting and motivating” [21] . The wife says: “The acceptance and encouragement from clergy is especially motivating” [22] .

Both spouses expressed a desire to have both their churches involved in their funerals: “clergy, choirs, congregations, liturgy, music, and lay ministers …, a wake at one church and funeral at the other. How better to wind up my life in which ecumenism and interchurch marriage have meant so much” [23] ?

How has their interchurch marriage impacted on their faith life? Listen to the husband: “My original unthinking espousal of Catholic teaching has been reshaped by our joint religious experience into a thinking appreciation and support of the truth that is behind Catholic thought” [24] . The wife says: “Over the course of our marriage, I have asked many questions, and have learned much, not just about Catholicism specifically, but about the larger issues of Christianity” [25] . These, and many more, are examples of communio, of growing organic unity in their marriage.

We turn now to a couple married over 40 years. Their story gives evidence of how far we have come in our ecumenical understanding, while underscoring how far we have still to go.

Speaking of their time of marriage preparation, the husband says: “I was aware of the difficulties that would lie ahead but, somewhat simplistically, assumed that because [my wife] had agreed to sign the promise at that time required that she would be able to accommodate herself to the requirements that the Catholic Church imposed on her; and that thereafter ‘things would work out’” [26] ! His wife was somewhat more realistic: “I was fearful as I knew it would be difficult, although I do not think I realized how difficult it would be in those early years. I was very unhappy about some issues, [for example] having to sign a promise that the children would be brought up as Catholics; [my husband's] not being allowed to come to my church with me; our being debarred from taking communion in each other's churches” [27] . Such were the ends to which people had to stretch in order that their love might bear fruit. A significant event shows the painful gravity of their situation. The husband again: “In December 1962, a Catholic priest thought it would be all right if I attended [my wife's] church on Christmas day ‘provided’ that I ‘did not take part in the service’. So I accompanied [her] as a spectator (a compliment she returned by accompanying me to mass), but the thought that we would not be together for another year was all so distressful that we repeated the practice at Easter, and then again and again as we felt the need to be together” [28] . This sense of, and need for, communio is expressed by the wife: “During the first year we worshipped separately after which I always worshipped, … for the sake of family unity, with [my husband] and the children in [his] church. Very soon in our marriage we felt an overwhelming need to worship in both churches … ” [29] .

These interchurch couples give evidence that communio is, however imperfect, nonetheless possible in a very real way across denominational lines.

IV. Opportunities

What are places of opportunity for our churches, that they might benefit from this experience, help such couples, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church suggests, “live out their particular situation in the light of faith” [30] , and might grow in the unity for which Christ prayed? For this, we look to where there is pressure against communio.

Couples speak of “artificial barriers / ignorance of current rules, particularly by vicars and priests” [31] , an indicator that the problem transcends denominations. Nor is it limited to churches. Indeed, the issue is an indicator of just how much marriage has a societal dimension. Couples speak also of “family attitudes to what we are doing” [32] , of “opposition and misunderstanding from family and friends” [33] , and “the sense that I was not socially a member of the club” [34] . One wife talks about her husband seeming “to want to expedite a marriage agreeable to his parents” [35] , then asks that people “not constantly question why I have not changed to be like [my husband]” [36] . Blood family and church family bring pressure to bear on couples, especially on the spouse of the “other” tradition, to put aside that spouse's beliefs and persona.

Incorporation into the church becomes problematic when baptisms are not mutually recognized, the parents’ intent not respected to raise their children in (again as per the Catechism) a “flowering of what is common to them in faith and respect for what separates them” [37] . Parents come to their decisions in different ways, from the straightforward “I allowed no possibility of anything else” to “if 1st child was a girl, all kids would be raised Catholic, if 1st child was a boy, all kids would be raised Lutheran” [38] . Whatever the choice, however, insistence by the churches on a single way of being incorporated into the Body of Christ can place great stress on the communio of the family.

We turn now to the question of Eucharistic sharing, the neuralgic issue facing interchurch couples. One woman says: “It was almost unbearable to sit in the pew with everyone tripping over me while [my husband] and the children went up to the altar rail. It seemed that the unity we had achieved at home was being shattered by the Church”. She speaks of “the exclusion and non-acceptance experienced by her and by their children” [39] . Her husband likewise names the issues which caused difficulty, “the baptisms; the exclusion of [my wife] from unity with us all at communion” [40] . These sentiments are expressed by couple after couple.

Perhaps the words of the husband in our first couple are most illustrative: “I see great need to work out in practice how the Catholic Church can reach out to interchurch couples and other churches in respect and love, so as to show forth the gospel and build Christian unity, while seeking always the truth” [41] . And so, we turn now to some questions, and some proposals by way of exploration.

How can we come to know the riches of each other’s traditions if we will never spend time with each other in our liturgies? There is room for pulpit exchanges [42] to be encouraged, so not only interchurch couples but the congregations of which they are members can begin experiencing the riches of other Christian traditions. Our churches could begin sharing space and resources together, learning to live, as married couples do, under one roof, where gifts can be discovered and magnified, the shadows of our deepest selves brought into the light and expunged. Though always challenging, this can help create and nurture respect for the “other”.

How can the gift of interchurch families in our midst be recognized and developed, if they are kept relegated to the shadows? Pastors could begin inviting interchurch couples to gather for times of discussion, where those pastors can listen to their voices, hear of their joys and difficulties, and together begin developing ways to respond pastorally within the parameters of their tradition. This would contribute greatly to making interchurch families feel respected and valued, enabled and encouraged to share their particular gifts of unity.

How can spouses of other traditions be made welcome if they are seen as a threat to our faith? That is, intended or not, the effect of Canon 1125 of the Code of Canon Law, often known simply as “the Promise”. Article 1 of this Canon states: “The Catholic party is to declare that he or she is prepared to remove dangers of defecting from the faith and is to make a sincere promise to do all in his or her power so that all offspring are baptized and brought up in the Catholic Church” [43] .

Several options are open to us. One, given that handing on one’s faith is seen as so important, is to have the promise made by all Catholics in every marriage, interchurch and same-church alike. Another is to have the promise continue, but worded such that one promises to ensure the children “brought up in the fullness of faith”. For the Catholic Church, that faith would be as per its Catholic expression. But it would open the door to, and make room even to encourage, other Christians to give expression to the seriousness with which they take raising the children in the faith which has given them life. These options would contribute to removing the sense that the person who is not Catholic is a threat to faith. Even better, however, would be to remove entirely the canonical requirement for the promise, instead moving the value of handing on one's faith to the forum of pastoral care and concern, where it can be seen as the sharing of a great gift rather than a legal requirement where one may fall short.

How can the communio of interchurch families be strengthened through their children? As a foundation, common agreements on baptism could be developed (as they already are in some countries), along with common baptismal certificates. In addition, churches could welcome these certificates from “other” churches, and duly recognize the child's baptism as reception into one's own church, the intent of the parents being sufficient for that reception. When churches do that, however, it is imperative that this joyous reception of the “other” not be perceived as a rejection, by the parents or child, of the church where the baptism took place. There is real need to receive, not just the person of the other tradition, but also the gift of lived ecumenism which that person brings.

How can the churches enable that one made so by God in marriage to take and eat, take and drink at the Eucharistic banquet? How can the churches remove the impossible choice to be made, the option of both spouses refraining from Eucharist in favour of the unity of their marriage, or that of denying the unity of their marriage in order to receive – and in that very denial making themselves no longer disposed to receive?

There is an urgent need for the issue of intercommunion to be clearly separated from that of Eucharistic sharing, of making the Eucharist accessible to individuals of other traditions who, by virtue of baptism, are brothers and sisters of each other in the same household of God.

In keeping with the need for that one to take and eat, take and drink, should the churches not allow interchurch couples a far greater role in determining the depth of their own need? Too often, the wording which greets Christians of other traditions worshipping in Catholic parishes dictates that they follow unfamiliar processes and speak to unnamed, unknown, and usually unavailable church leaders to obtain permission to receive. As an example, we can turn to the guidelines of the Committee on Divine Worship of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The part of interest here is as follows:

For our Fellow Christians:We welcome our fellow Christians to this celebration of the Eucharist as our brothers and sisters. We pray that our common baptism and the action of the Holy Spirit in this Eucharist will draw us closer to one another and begin to dispel the sad divisions which separate us. We pray that these will lessen and finally disappear, in keeping with Christ’s prayer for us “that they may all be one” (John 17:21 ).

Because Catholics believe that the celebration of the Eucharist is a sign of the reality of the oneness of faith, life, and worship, members of those churches with whom we are not yet fully united are ordinarily not admitted to Holy Communion. Eucharistic sharing in exceptional circumstances by other Christians requires permission according to the directives of the diocesan bishop and the provisions of canon law (canon 844 § 4). Members of the Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Polish National Catholic Church are urged to respect the discipline of their own churches. According to Roman Catholic discipline, the Code of Canon Law does not object to the reception of communion by Christians of these Churches (canon 844 § 3). [44] .

The language asks no questions, invites no dialogue. It calls no one, not even Catholics, to learn anything more about the Eucharist, or why one should or should not receive. The wording needs to change, to that which calls for and encourages prayerful discussion and discernment, and signifies trust in the answer which emerges.

Should the Eucharist not be more generously shared with persons of faith, couples who, experiencing this grave need, are unable to have recourse for the sacrament to a minister of their own church or ecclesial community because they are at this liturgy in this place in the communio of their marriage, ask for the sacrament of their own initiative, manifest Catholic faith in the sacrament, and are properly disposed? In this, do they not meet the exceptions specified in the Directory on Ecumenism, Article 131 [45] , as well as Canon 844, Article 4 of the Code of Canon Law?

These proposed changes would go far in making interchurch couples feel recognized, welcomed, and nourished within both their churches. That, in turn, would contribute greatly to receiving the gift of the communio of their domestic church, leading in turn to the communio of the ecclesia universal.

Ray Temmerman

879 Dorchester Ave.
Winnipeg, MB
CANADA R3M 0P7

ray.temmerman@gmail.com

Appendix

Questions for written response:

How many years have you been married? __________
On a scale of 1-7, with 7 being the highest
What expectations did you have in being married to someone of another Christian tradition?
What kinds of discussions did you have prior to marriage, about things like
Looking back at the topics for discussion in the previous question, after your marriage how did you actually deal with
How do you as an interchurch family experience unity in your marriage and family life?
What kinds of things have you done to create an atmosphere in which God is central?
Do you think your home is a place where people of different Christian traditions feel welcome? If so, what have you done to achieve that?
What kinds of ways have you attempted to hand on your faith, and the tradition in which it is formed and nurtured, to your children? To others around you?
What issues have made living your interchurch life joyful? Difficult?
How do you want your spouse to handle your funeral service? Why?
What kinds of things have you discovered about your spouse’s religious tradition?
What kinds of things have you discovered about your own religious tradition?
What impact do you think interchurch family life has had on your children?
What impact do you think your children have on your churches?
In what ways do you think your churches could more clearly enable you to ‘be church’?
How has your understanding of the church(es) changed since your marriage?
Do any scripture passages, formal church teachings, or church documents come to mind that encourage or discourage you in your interchurch life? How do these passages speak to you?
Why do you continue to live an interchurch family life, i.e. one in which you both remain within your specific Christian traditions rather than one of you becoming a member of the other’s tradition or both of you becoming together members of another tradition?

___1

___2

___3

___4

___5

___6

___7

what was your level of involvement in your church prior to getting married?

Where to worship Eucharist Baptism of children

First communion Confirmation Religious education

Where to worship Eucharist Baptism of children

First communion Confirmation Religious education

On a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being the most important, how important is this to you?

___1

___2

___3

___4

___5

___6

___7

Why?

On a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being the most important, how important is this to you?

___1

___2

___3

___4

___5

___6

___7

Why?

On a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being the most important, how important is this to you?

___1

___2

___3

___4

___5

___6

___7

Why?

On a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being the most important, how important is this to you?

___1

___2

___3

___4

___5

___6

___7

Why?

Note: The full list of responses, as well as the thesis which resulted from the project, have been posted at http://www.interchurchfamilies.org/STM/

This paper is reproduced here with permission of the publisher of The Household of God and Local Households, Peeters Publishers, Leuven, Belgium , and of the editors, Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi, Gerard Mannion, and Peter de Mey.

We also offer you an overview of the Interchurch Families Domestic Church project, at
http://interchurchfamilies.org/other-publications/domestic-church-project/overview.

[1] M.G. Lawler, et al., Ministry to Interchurch Marriage: A National Study. Omaha, NE, Center for Marriage and Family, Creighton University, 1999, p. 5.

[2] Cf. Interchurch Families and Christian Unity: Rome 2003, paper formally adopted by the Second World Gathering of Interchurch Families held at the Mondo Migliore Centre near Rome, 24-28 July 2003; available on http://interchurchfamilies.org/confer/rome2003/documents/roma2003_en.pdf ; accessed 22.02.2011.

[3] G. Kilcourse, Meeting of Representatives of the Interchurch Families International Network, in Interchurch Families: Issues and Reflections (April 1996), no. 4; available on http://interchurchfamilies.org/ifir/2006/ifir04-200604Romevisit.pdf ; accessed 22.02.2011.

[4] J. Hawkey, Renewing the Marks: Called to be One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, in One in Christ 43 (2009), no. 2, p. 184.

[5] The questions are included in the Appendix.

[6] The respondents’ answers, interspersed throughout this paper, can be understood according to the following format, e.g. Q3, R1078, H:C/W:A, Y:3, C:Y, where Q refers to the question number in the survey; R refers to the number assigned to the respondent; H and W refer to the Husband or Wife. Within that, the following apply: A=Anglican/Episcopalian, B=Baptist, C=Catholic, D=Disciples of Christ, F=Free Church, M=Methodist, P=Presbyterian, R=Reformed. Y refers to the cohort of years married, with 1 being newly married to 10 years, 2 being 11-20, 3 being 21-30, and 4 indicating having been married for more than 30 years. C indicates whether or not the couple had children, i.e. Yes or No.

[7] Cf. M.G. Lawler – G.S. Risch – L.A. Riley, Church Experience of Interchurch and Same-Church Couples, in Family Ministry: Empowering Through Faith 13 (1999), no. 4, p. 36, drawing on the research of A. Greeley, N.D. Glenn, D.R. Hoge & K. Ferry, and others.

[8] L. Orsy, Receiving the Council: Theological and Canonical Insights and Debates, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009, p. 5.

[9] Jn 17,20-23.

[10] Gen 2,24; Mt 19,6; Mk 10,8.

[11] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Rome, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1995, Part Two, Section Two, Chapter Three, Article 7.

[12] R1058, Narrative, H:C, Y:4, C:Y.

[13] Q3, R1058, H:C, Y:4, C:Y.

[14] Q4, R1058, H:C, Y:4, C:Y.

[15] Q8, R1058, H:C, Y:4, C:Y.

[16] Q7, R1058, H:C, Y:4, C:Y.

[17] Q5, R1058, W:B, Y:4, C:Y.

[18] R1058, Narrative, H:C, Y:4, C:Y.

[19] Q3, R1061, H:C, Y:4, C:N.

[20] Q5, R1061, H:C, Y:4, C:N.

[21] Q10, R1061, H:C, Y:4, C:N.

[22] Q10, R1061, W:B, Y:4, C:N.

[23] Q11, R1061, H:C, Y:4, C:N.

[24] Q12, R1061, H:C, Y:4, C:N.

[25] Q12, R1061, W:B, Y:4, C:N.

[26] Q3, R1070, H:C, Y:4, C:Y.

[27] Q3, C1070, W:M, Y:4, C:Y.

[28] Q5, R1070, H:C Y:4, C:Y.

[29] Q5, R1070, W:M Y:4, C:Y.

[30] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part Two, Section Two, Chapter Three, Article 7, Section 1636.

[31] Q10, R1066, H:A, Y:3, C:Y.

[32] Q10, R1068, H:C/W:A, Y:4, C:Y.

[33] Q10, R1069, H:C/W:F, Y:1, C:Y.

[34] Q10, R1070, W:M, Y:4, C:Y.

[35] Q3, R1058, W:B, Y:4, C:Y.

[36] Q16, R1058, W:B, Y:4, C:Y.

[37] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part Two, Section Two, Chapter Three, Article 7, Section 1636.

[38] Q4, R1059, H:L/W:C, Y:3, C:Y.

[39] Q10, R1070, W:M, Y:4, C:Y.

[40] Q10, R1070, H:C, Y:4, C:Y.

[41] Q17, R1058, H:C, Y:4, C:Y.

[42] The term “pulpit exchange” refers to the practice, at least in North America, of inviting clergy from another tradition to preach the sermon in “our” church.

[43] Code of Canon Law. Rome, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983, Can. 1125.

[44] United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Committee on Divine Worship, Non-Catholics and Holy Communion, 14.11.1996, available online at http://nccbuscc.org/liturgy/q&a/mass/communion.shtml ; accessed 02.02.2011)

[45] Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, Rome, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993.

The Interchurch Couple Witness to Communion

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:41:07 GMT

THE INTERCHURCH COUPLE:

WITNESS TO COMMUNION WITHIN DIVISION

I. Introduction

It was Holy Saturday. Traditionally, in the Greek Orthodox Church, members come before dawn on this day to receive communion. The church was overflowing, even in the parking lot. The priest had been feeding communion to the people for a couple of hours; many of them, people he hadn’t seen in church since the previous Easter. He observed a man and woman approaching together with their three children. The man told him how much they wanted to receive communion as a family, and that they’d all kept the fast, though his wife was Catholic, he and the children Orthodox. The priest explained he could not give the wife communion. Visibly upset, the man declined to receive at all since his wife could not, and the family left together, unfed. The priest found himself wishing they hadn’t told him she was not Orthodox.

In another church on another day in the same city, a man and woman were coming with her parents to Catholic Mass. The couple was there to meet with the priest, who was to marry them; the fiancée and her family were Protestant. The couple remembers the priest’s handing them, with little introduction, “the red book” which contained rules for reception of communion and celebration of Mass, without any word of welcome. The man in the couple, a lifelong Catholic, remained in the pew with his fiancée’s family during communion, and they all left together, unfed [1] .

What are these couples carrying in such moments of silent tragedy? Why does their desire to remain together trump their desire to receive communion? By their union, which includes belonging to two separated Christian communities, they carry in a special way the wound of Christian division and the reality of the “real, but imperfect communion” among Christian communities. A prime work of the modern ecumenical movement has been to remind churches not to be content with the present situation of division, but to remember it is scandalous and painful. For interchurch couples, it may be harder to forget the pain of division than to remember it. Here is at once a pastoral need, all too often unmet, and a hidden resource which may also be an agent of urgency and transformation in the quest for full, visible Christian unity.

This paper draws on three sources to examine the interchurch couple as domestic witness to communion among divided churches: first, reflections of interchurch couples themselves [2] ; second, contributions of couple-dynamic studies in family-systems theory, through therapist David Schnarch [3] ; third, some basic concepts of Catholic communion ecclesiology, through the work of Walter Kasper and Jean-Marie Tillard [4] .

II. Couple Dynamics and Communion

When two people marry, as priest-psychiatrist Dr. George Freemesser observed, two universes collide [5] . When two Christians of different denominations marry, do two churches collide? The couple find themselves simultaneously in communion (through the marriage) and out of communion (ecclesially). The couple sets out on a dangerous journey in little-charted waters, but they also are explorers whose adventures and discoveries can change and benefit their communities. As a theologian and therapist, I find it blindingly clear: Christian couples must work out the meaning of communion, not in the universal or the abstract but in the practical, earthly experience of day-to-day life in all its aspects, one day at a time. Even in their struggles and failures along the way, they can be witnesses and teachers, not to mention cross-bearers, and pilgrims who make the path by walking it.

Without using the term “communion”, couple sex therapist David Schnarch describes the healthy marital relationship: as both wife and husband gradually let go their fear of being flawed or unworthy, they learn to “hold on to themselves”, rather than depending on the other for identity and self-worth. Ironically, the more they are able to let their weaknesses and vulnerabilities become part of the relationship, the more they are strengthened as a couple. Schnarch sees “differentiation” as the goal and work of couple life: “the process by which we become more uniquely ourselves by maintaining ourselves in relationship with those we love” – not a trait, but a lifelong process of “taking our own shape” [6] . Couples are often undifferentiated as individuals, which may lead to their being fused or disconnected as a couple [7] . They become frustrated and lonely, either losing self in favour of the other, or ignoring the other in favour of self. Schnarch believes self is developed in relation to the other. Differentiation means finding a real meeting-place that involves the essence of each person, spirit and body, such that neither is forgotten, ignored nor absorbed into the other but both are truly present in their differentness; a reality that the couple does not create, but enters into; by which healing and transformation take place [8] .

Several elements of Schnarch’s non-religious approach to couple dynamics are relevant to our concept of communion. First, he sees the relationship as involving both flesh and spirit [9] . For example, he finds that often couples do not wish to be “seen” by each other, literally and figuratively; the barrier is not perceived lack of desirability in the partner, but rather in the self. The spouses prefer to hide themselves, even in physical intimacy; hence they never really meet, and become frustrated, angry or despondent – or one of the spouses may look outside the marriage for intimacy. A common Schnarch intervention is to encourage them to keep their eyes open in physical intimacy, starting with kissing. The spouses thereby become more comfortable in themselves, and less imprisoned by distorted self-image, fear of rejection, and lack of self-worth. Thus the barrier becomes a doorway, the capacity for an “I-Thou” relationship dramatically increased, and the couple’s sexual life becomes a means of interpersonal communication rather than a place of mutual hiding and wounding [10] .

Second, couple communion involves every aspect of life. Schnarch finds that, by hearing about their sexual dynamics, he can understand their relational dynamics, in all its dimensions: the inter-personal dynamics are reflected in the sexual dynamic. For the couple in difficulty, this may feel like the problem, as their troubles seem to show up everywhere and they can find fewer and fewer ways to escape. For the therapist, however, it means the couple is more likely to seek healing, and allow it to touch their whole lives, which become the field of work and potential transformation.

Thus, Schnarch’s approach takes the mystery of communion into the earthiness of daily life. In marriage, the transcendent and interpersonal dimensions can seem swallowed up by the practical, the very sphere in which couples must live [11] , leaving no time or energy to focus on the couple relationship. A key element of the therapeutic process is simply that it carves out a sacred space for the couple’s life of communion ad intra, and opens it ad extra by inviting the therapist into that communion [12] . Communion is bigger than the couple – not that which they create, but that in which they partake.

Fourth, this work of communion is a lifetime process. Schnarch likes to ask, in public lectures, “At what age do men/women reach their sexual prime?” noting that eventually someone will answer, “sixty” – because a person more self-possessed and able to disclose is a person more capable of profound intimacy [13] . Finally, Schnarch works not by avoiding tensions and conflicts, but by entering into them (even amplifying them) so as to discover the teaching hidden within them. Therefore he also emphasizes the power of long-term commitment, which gives the couple the space and context to stay with conflicts, rather than running from them, as couples are so creative at finding ways to do.

III. Couple Communion and Communion Ecclesiology

If the mystery of marriage ad intra can be said to be the mystery of communion lived out within a couple, how is this communion expressed ad extra, in the larger context in which the couple lives [14] ? For the Christian couple, the ad extraincludes the larger reality of church communion. When both spouses are baptized into the Catholic Church, according to Catholic ecclesiology, their larger context is full communion with the perfect communion of the Church [15] . When the spouses are baptized into different Christian churches, the larger context is, at best, one of “real but imperfect communion” [16] . These separated Christian communities are challenged and potentially enriched by the ad intra of the couple’s shared life. Walter Kasper reminds us that, in the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council, though other images may seem to predominate, all of them are based on communion ecclesiology [17] .

First, communion implies both a “vertical” and a “horizontal” dimension, that is, humanity in communion with God and therefore in communion with one another. The horizontal dimension includes mission to humanity and creation, and continuity with the apostles and all generations. Second, it is worked out in day-to-day existence. Kasper observes that “ecumenism of love” and “ecumenism of truth” must be complemented by “ecumenism of life”, that is, the way we live in the world. Though he does not mention the life of the interchurch couple, theirs is a prime place in which communion between churches unfolds in day-to-day living, and thereby opens new ways of receiving each other in love and truth. “We cannot share the Eucharistic bread without also sharing our daily bread”, says Kasper. The interchurch couple shares daily bread; can that bring their churches closer to sharing the Eucharistic bread? One Catholic-Protestant couple noted that they have become the first interchurch couple, in their parish, to be part of the baptismal and adult baptism preparation teams: “we are very blessed”, they write; “ … what we have is very special [to share these denominations]” [18] .

As Jean-Marie Tillard observes, communion is an interpersonal reality – by opening oneself to others, one enters into one’s own character as image and likeness of God, and so can enter into communion with the other [19] . And it is an ecclesial reality – the communion among local churches realizes the full ecclesial nature of each local church [20] . Communion is of the essence of the church, not additional to it: “humanity is truly itself only in communion” [21] , says Tillard, and by the church’s life in communion each baptized person enters into reconciliation and salvation.

Tillard is strongly aware of sin, weakness, poverty, and misery as part of the real human context, including the ecclesial context [22] . True communion does not reject the other in his weakness and sinfulness, but rather reaches into poverty and so transforms it. It is communion “in the victory over hatred” [23] . The isolation, misery, and even non-existence of humanity are taken up into salvation. Ecclesial communion itself has always been marked by tension and conflict [24] ; it is an eschatological reality experienced already in the here-and-now but not yet fully.

These aspects of communion ecclesiology have echoes in Schnarch’s exposition of couple relations: as involving every aspect of life, flesh and spirit; as participation in a bigger reality; as a lifelong process; as embracing both strength and weakness, beauty and uncomeliness; as accepting and transforming tensions, sadness and misery. However, communion, in its Scriptural and theological foundations and in its sacramentality, refers not only to “togetherness” or “community” but to participation in the life of the divine Trinity – a key patristic concept [25] . And “the summit of communion is participation in the Eucharist” [26] . By this participation, we are brought into the reconciliation and re-creation accomplished in the crucifixion and resurrection. How much do couples, struggling to live the daily life of communion, need to hear and receive this horizon of Hope! Our North American context of rampant individualism, isolation, violence, loneliness, and despair is witnessed by statistics on suicide rates, numbers taking anti-depressant medications, domestic abuse, abuse of substances such as alcohol and drugs (legal or illegal). Christians who marry dare to defy these statistics and this fragmentation by committing their lives to faith that communion can take flesh in our world. Asked if she had any fears about marrying someone of a different denomination, a Catholic who married a Protestant responded: “No major fears. I had trust in my mate and our relationship” [27] . How much do interchurch couples, carrying a legacy of schism and division they did not create, need the larger church communion to acknowledge their special role and breathe back a witness that communion is real and possible – not a theory, but a present experience.

IV. Couple Communion and Imperfect Church Communion

Christian theology thus opens out a whole new horizon for the couple, unveiling the nature of reality as participation in the life of the Trinity, and Christian marriage as a particular, and particularly significant, way of working out that participation already on earth, awaiting the “not yet”. The interchurch couples can become instruments of interchurch communion. Another Protestant-Catholic couple writes that they have been enriched by participating in each other’s liturgical services but “doing so also regularly confirms that we have chosen the denomination that suits us best”; husband deeply living the Catholic tradition, wife deeply living as a United Church of Canada member, and having the courage to receive deeply each other’s traditions and, especially, each other’s love of their own tradition [28] .

Ecumenical work, too, has highlighted communion theology. Kasper notes that the ecumenical dialogues of the past thirty-five years have, without preconceived plan, centered on communion, adding that the distinction today is not between communion and non-communion – we are already in communion through Christ – but rather, between full and incomplete communion [29] . The “real but imperfect communion” which Vatican II and subsequent Catholic teaching have acknowledged between the Catholic Church and other Christian churches is a place of hope and life; but it can also be a painful and dangerous place, especially in the most profound moment of ecclesial communion, namely Eucharist itself. Interchurch relations have continued and developed even though it is often in this deepest expression of communion that the unyielding nature of church division is experienced most powerfully [30] . Interchurch couples, like the two described in our introduction, may be unprepared for the power of that sword of division which runs right through their couple. The primitive sense of Christian marriage was an initially legal contract, sealed in the couple’s reception of communion together with blessing of the Bishop at the next Sunday’s Eucharist. Today, our churches’ differing understandings of communion is one of the fundamental church divides. No wonder the ad extra of separation and division may weigh heavily on the interchurch couple’s life. One Catholic-Protestant couple described church as “the box” – subsequently expanded to “the concrete box”. The Orthodox wife in an Orthodox-Protestant couple writes: “[My husband] also feels an outsider because of his ignorance about Orthodoxy (he just hasn’t shown interest in learning although he is very generous about participating with me) and because he is excluded from the Eucharist which has always been important to both of us for spiritual nourishment and communion with God. This is very hard for him and for me” [31] .

For example, a Catholic-Orthodox couple each remained active in their own churches’ liturgical and community life, leaving little time to visit each other’s. As a result, she had little inner experience of Orthodoxy, and always felt alien in his church; he, meanwhile, came to Catholic liturgy only as a visitor and outsider, even to his Catholic children. A Protestant-Catholic couple found it difficult to discern which was interpersonal and which was interchurch in their relationship: for him, attending Bible study regularly was essential, but when she went for his sake she could not feel part of the process; for her, attending liturgy was indispensable, but when he went for her sake he could not experience the closeness to God that he found in studying the Scriptures. Did the churches’ disconnection pry them apart, or did it only highlight a gap that already existed between them? Was it a personal difference, a church difference, or some of both? They continued to attend their own church activities separately, but wistfully. If the churches’ division is not actually a negative influence in such instances, at least it fails to be a positive one; as one husband expressed it, their couple is affected“not so much negatively (because I have made our relationship the top priority, and rightly so), but rather for the lack of a positive (the chance to share more together)” [32] .

Nonetheless, much has changed, and rapidly, in regard to our view of interchurch couples. Growing up on the Canadian prairies in the 1930s, my mother, raised Catholic by her Catholic mother, spent her childhood praying that her Lutheran father would not go to hell. Though her family suffered from the centripetal forces of their respective churches, the centrifugal force of their married life – and their shared love of Christ – held them together; the pain of their ecclesial non-communion was eased by the communion of faith they lived in their understanding and in their way of life. Many couples who completed the questionnaire emphasized that the couple relationship itself provided the solid base that helped them carry the church division. This affirmation is a positive witness for the strength of couple communion; but it implicitly asks the churches what they are doing to help couples carry the burden they did not seek out. Why is it that therapists working in the secular world are doing the work of assisting couples to live in communion, whereas the churches seem at times to forget that when it blesses a couples’ marriage, it makes a commitment to that couple; for an interchurch couple, two churches commit to the couple, and thereby in some way to one another – or at least, to the one Christ who unites them.

V. Conclusion

These couples mostly come together with the blessing of both church communities, who nevertheless may fail to help when the couple finds itself in difficulties or even on the verge of dissolution, and may lose the benefit of their witness and experience. The secular world of couple therapy has begun to probe ways in which couple communion can break, and has sought ways to help heal the brokenness and open out a life of more profound communion than the couple knew before. As one couple told me, after engaging in the therapeutic process: “We have discovered a connection between us we’d never experienced in our fifteen years together”. If the Christian marriage opens the couple to the ultimate horizon of participation in the divine life as the real meaning of communion, cannot our Christian churches even more deeply find ways to assist couples in healing where they have broken, and learn from couples who are working out communion in the most intimate aspects of human life? Can our imperfect communion be made fuller and more complete by receiving the lived witness of interchurch couples?

Mary Marrocco

29 St. Hubert Ave
M4J 3Z1
Toronto, ON
CANADA

For information on purchasing the volume of which this forms a part, please see the information from Peeters Publishers, below.

We also offer you an Overview of the Interchurch Families Domestic Church project .

[1] Interchurch couple questionnaire, completed February 2010. This questionnaire, designed by the author, was completed by ten couples, of whom nine were in interchurch marriages and the tenth in a same-church marriage. The two members of the couple each completed her or his own questionnaire; it was up to them whether to write them together or separately, and whether to read each other's. It consisted of five parts: information about the couple themselves (including religion(s), education, children, previous marriages or long-term relationships); scaling questions (including on how religious they see themselves as being, whether they feel their being interchurch had a negative influence on their marriage, whether their church attendance and religious participation improved through their marriage); questions for written response, about their faith and church lives and their understanding of communion; and about their marriage relationship and its changes over time, especially in regard to faith and church; and finally, an invitation for comments.

[2] For the purposes of this paper, I am referring to married, heterosexual couples. The important question of children in an interchurch couple will not be dealt with in this paper, but discussion will be restricted solely to the relationship between the spouses.

[3] Christian theology is an ancient, highly-developed discipline; couple dynamic theory, by comparison, has hardly yet come to birth. Moreover, psychological and therapeutic schools of thought and practice have often worked independently of, if not in hostility to, religious and theological studies. This paper cannot review the development of couple theory, nor the place of Schnarch’s work within it. However, since Schnarch himself willingly embraces “spirituality” as an essential dimension of couple life including sexuality, and even draws on theological concepts to explain why this is so, his approach to couple theory has a capacity for dialogue with theology, specifically (in this paper) with communion ecclesiology.

[4] We will not be able to touch here on communion ecclesiology as it has developed in Orthodox thought, where it is a central concept, nor in Protestant and ecumenical work.

[5] Personal comment to author.

[6] D. Schnarch, Passionate Marriage: Love, Sex, and Intimacy in Emotionally Committed Relationships, New York, Henry Holt, 1997, p. 51.

[7] Schnarch suggests that his understanding of differentiation is comparable to Carl Jung’s concept of individuation. The term “differentiation” tends to be adopted by couple and family theory.

[8] The implication that sin is present is touched upon, but undeveloped by Schnarch.

[9] Though this may seem self-evident, sometimes couples live as though they were connected only in the flesh. And conversely, at least one spouse has said to me directly, “no, marriage is not about the flesh at all”.

[10] Note that couples who self-present for therapy have already, by that fact, shown a willingness and capacity for healing and relationship as a couple. Note also that factors such as domestic violence, abuse and addiction tend to take priority over couple therapy; in other words, those problems must be addressed before the process of couple therapy, especially such as practiced by Schnarch, can begin.

[11] At the simplest but most common level, couples often find their best, if not all, energy goes to children, work, household or financial duties, and seems to drain away energy that might go towards personal or mutual engagement.

[12] As the controversial psychiatrist and recanting-psychiatrist R.D. Laing observed succinctly in regard to the therapeutic process, “it’s about communion, isn’t it?” Spoken in 1989 documentary produced by Third Mind Productions and associates, entitled “Did You Use To Be R.D. Laing?”

[13] Schnarch, Passionate Marriage, pp. 75-76.

[14] Schnarch himself does not particularly engage this question, focusing mainly on the relationship. Though his purpose is not to consider the effect on the larger community of couples who undertake this process, he does mention leading couple retreats and illustrates ways in which couples can benefit from each other’s witness and experience. And by entering into the therapeutic relationship, the couple is opening its relationship beyond itself.

[15] This is to speak in conceptual terms. The couple’s lived experience of Catholic life may not always be one of perfect communion; but they may be fed together at the same Table.

[16] Again, this is speaking conceptually. They may in fact experience deep connection with their churches and between themselves in their church commitment.

[17] Kasper also recalls that the extraordinary Synod of Bishops of 1985 calls communion ecclesiology, centered on Eucharist, the “basic and central idea” of Vatican II. W. Kasper, Communio: The Guiding Concept of Catholic Ecumenical Theology, in his That They May All Be One: The Call to Unity, London – New York, Burns & Oates, 2004, p. 58. Tillard likewise notes that communion ecclesiology, though rarely mentioned explicitly, is “perceptible everywhere” in Vatican II; J.-M. Tillard, Church of Churches: The Ecclesiology of Communion, trans. R.C. De Peaux, Collegeville MN, Liturgical Press, 1987, p. xi.

[18] Interchurch couple questionnaire, completed February 2010.

[19] Tillard, Church of Churches, p. 31.

[20] Ibid., p. 13.

[21] Ibid., p. 12.

[22] “It is a question of Christ who is in communion with human misery and in whom God himself is in communion with human misery.” Tillard, Church of Churches, p. 30.

[23] Ibid., p. 48.

[24] Cf. Ibid., p. 33.

[25] Kasper, That They May All Be One, p. 56.

[26] Ibid., p. 55.

[27] Interchurch couple questionnaire, completed February 2010.

[28] Interchurch couple questionnaire, completed February 2010.

[29] Kasper, That They May All Be One, p. 51.

[30] Often, though, the ecumenical solution is not to talk about it. For example, the Canadian Council of Churches welcomed the Canadian Catholic Church into membership in the 1980s. The then-president of the Council wrote to the then-president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, asking what the Council could do to make Catholic representatives comfortable to participate in ecumenical Eucharistic celebrations, which accompanied Council gatherings. Suffice to say that by the 1990s, the practice of ecumenical Eucharist ceased, and since then communion has rarely been a subject of direct discussion. Omitting the practice eased the participation of several member churches, not only the Catholic; but is also a source of sadness, as witnessed recently by a long-time Council member’s wistful recollection of shared Eucharist at Council meetings. (If it seems odd that our churches should be satisfied to interact without reference to that which is most precious to us, we might take comfort in knowing this is a not uncommon couple solution to their inability to be united in the deepest moments of family life.)

[31] Questionnaire completed by wife in interchurch couple, February 2010.

[32] Couple interview, conducted February 28, 2010.

Interchurch Marriage: Conjugal and Ecclesial Communion

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:05:09 GMT

INTERCHURCH MARRIAGE—CONJUGAL AND ECCLESIAL COMMUNION IN THE DOMESTIC CHURCH

Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi

PRECIS

The author argues that applying the concept of “domestic church” to interchurch couples would give interchurch families an ecclesial status with the Roman Catholic Church and thereby enable them to become legitimate builders of Christian unity. This approach should prevail over the current understanding that interprets interchurch marriages along the same lines as the Catholic Church understands its relationship with non-Catholic churches: as real but imperfect communion. If one were to give primacy to an experiential approach over the institutional one now operative in the Catholic Church, it would mean that interchurch marriages would not primarily be viewed as victims of divisions but as foretastes of reunion.

Interchurch Marriages—Laboratories of Christian Unity?

A close look at the post-conciliar pronouncements of the Roman Catholic Church on interchurch marriages leaves one with an ambivalent impression. On the one side, respect, appreciation, even encouragement characterize the Magisterium’s teaching when it comes to acknowledging the contribution that interchurch families can make to the search for Christian unity. [1] The 1993 Ecumenical Directory singles them out as potential “builders of unity,” [2] thus repeating an expression that Pope Paul VI had used earlier in Evangelii nuntiandi. [3] Pope John Paul II’s memorable phrase, “You live in your marriage the hopes and difficulties of the path to Christian unity,” pronounced during his visit to England in 1982, [4] has since then become a much cherished dictum for interchurch families worldwide. More recently, while addressing the member churches of the Polish Ecumenical Council, Pope Benedict XVI declared that the decision to enter an interchurch marriage “can lead to the formation of a practical laboratory of unity.” [5]

One may wonder, however, how seriously such rhetoric is to be taken. Is not a laboratory a place where people put all their energy to search for new insights, experimenting with new ideas, new methods, new instruments, and eventually make new and fascinating discoveries that may have the potential to alter previous understanding and practice? So, what the pope seems to suggest is to go and invent, get new ideas, experiment with them, take risks, and—although no one knows yet what the solution will be and how to get there–have faith that there is there something worth all the effort, namely, the unity of all Christians. But, what if our “interchurch researchers” will really get there one day and cry out their “eureka! we have found it!”? Is there any chance that their findings will be hailed, accepted, and received by the official church bodies and ultimately make a difference in their teaching and discipline?

The reason for such skepticism can be found in another layer of the magisterial teaching and legislation that strikes a different tone compared to the rhetoric referred to above. What used to be the tenor of a long-standing doctrinal and pastoral tradition before Vatican II, when the ecclesiastical authority uncompromisingly condemned mixed marriages and dissuaded people from entering into them, [6] has not completely disappeared from the current teaching. That the Catholic Church accepts interchurch marriages only with some reservation is reflected in a phrase of the Ecumenical Directory wherein it says that “marriage between persons of the same ecclesial Community remains the objective to be recommended and encouraged.” [7] To substantiate this stance, this and other documents constantly refer to the intrinsic problems and difficulties that impose themselves on the conjugal union if the spouses come from different faith communities. Since there is indeed some evidence that interchurch couples are at a higher risk of marital instability and of giving up on their religious practice, [8] the pastoral concern that is expressed in the Church’s attitude of reservation should certainly be acknowledged and taken seriously. Apart from these pastoral considerations, however, there is a deeper, theological ground on which the Church’s discriminating position against interchurch unions seems justified. It says that marital unions in which one of the spouses is a baptized non-Catholic cannot possibly attain the same degree and intensity of conjugal communion than do same-church Catholic marriages. If, however, marital unity has as its prerequisite ecclesial communion, which the Catholic Church can guarantee only for its full members, as this position upholds, then it is hardly thinkable that interchurch marriages can play any significant role in bringing the separated churches more closely together as the image of the “laboratory for Christian unity” suggests. [9]

In what follows, I will first summarize the position of the Catholic Church with regard to interchurch marriages and focus in particular on the relationship between ecclesial and conjugal communion. It will be shown that the Catholic position imposes the model of real, yet imperfect communion, developed by Vatican II to describe the relationship of the Catholic Church toward the other Christian churches, on the conjugal relationship of interchurch couples. In this institutionally oriented approach, couples from different denominations seem to be able to realize spousal unity only to the extent that the concerned church bodies are willing or able to admit ecclesial communion among their respective communities. It is obvious that grassroots ecumenism is not given much credit in this perspective.

The “ecumenism of life,” though, is exactly what interchurch families are increasingly discovering and claiming for themselves, as is evident from the document “InterchurchFamilies and Christian Unity,” [10] adopted by the world gathering of interchurch families in 2003, which I will analyze in a second step. In what can be qualified as an experiential approach, interchurch families admit that their spousal and family union is as imperfect as any other on a level of human achievement, but that such union nonetheless realizes true spiritual and conjugal communion across the boundaries of separated churches and, therefore, that it cannot be without implications for the ecclesial bodies involved. Whether or not this approach must remain unacceptable for Catholic ecclesiology will be examined in a last part. For that purpose I make reference to the concept of “domestic church,” which Vatican II and post-conciliar theology have retrieved to underline the ecclesial status of marriage and family life. The key idea behind this concept is that conjugal communion is a genuine and legitimate form of ecclesial communion and that, on the basis of baptism, neither form of communion may claim precedence nor take priority over another. If Catholic ecclesiology could agree to apply this concept to interchurch marriages—and there are good reasons to do so—then new perspectives could be opened that would give interchurch families an ecclesial status within the Catholic Church and likewise would enable them to become legitimate “builders of Christian unity,” whereas to date they are more like pioneers in an unexplored area of ecclesial union that the institutional churches are so far unable to access.

The Catholic Church’s Perspective on Interchurch Marriages—

Real yet Imperfect Communion

The Catholic Magisterium has never undertaken to present a coherent theology of interchurch marriage. The official decrees of Vatican II do not deal with interchurch marriages, and post-conciliar documents usually restrict themselves to offering pastoral considerations and/or issuing legal regulations for what are usually regarded as exceptional or difficult cases. [11] As far as doctrinal questions are concerned, the underlying theological vision largely pays tribute to the council’s renewed ecclesiology as mainly expressed in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church [12] and to the guiding principles of ecumenism as presented in the Decree on Ecumenism. [13] Strikingly, the revised theology of marriage and the family as enshrined in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes [14] does not seem to play any significant role in the church’s treatment of interchurch marriages, as we will see in the following.

The church’s primordial and pervading perspective on interchurch marriage is what I would call an institutional one. By this I mean that the spouses are primarily looked upon as members of the respective faith communities to which they belong. This approach corresponds to a commonly accepted definition of interchurch marriage. “The term ‘mixed marriage’ refers to any marriage between a Catholic and a baptized Christian who is not in full communion with the Catholic Church,” defines the 1993 Ecumenical Directory, referring to the Code of Canon Law. [15] As is immediately clear from this definition, the individual spouses are treated here as representatives of the ecclesial communities of which they are members. Consequently, their marital union is subsumed under the category of ecclesial communion and falls under the norms and principles established to determine the sort and degree of communion a non-Catholic community may or may not have with the Catholic Church. The 1970 Motu proprio “Matrimonia mixta”is the first official document that is most explicit in that regard:

Neither in doctrine nor in law does the Church place on the same level a marriage between a Catholic and a baptized non-Catholic, and one between a Catholic and an unbaptized person for, as the Second Vatican Council declared, men who, though they are not Catholics, “believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are brought into a certain, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church.” [16]

To determine the “level on which to place” or, in other words, the ecclesial status of an interchurch marriage, the text adopts the terminology the council Fathers had chosen to describe the Catholic Church’s relationship toward the separated Christian churches and communities. Through marriage and the shared faith in Christ and common baptism, a non-Catholic Christian enters into some real, yet imperfect communion with the Catholic Church. What to a common understanding appears as the joining of two individuals into a lifelong marital commitment becomes the affair of two ecclesial bodies. We will briefly look into the council’s understanding of ecclesial communion and then uncover the limits of a conception that regards the marital union primarily or even solely through the lens of ecclesial belonging.

The Decree on Ecumenism affirms a communion that goes beyond denominational boundaries and includes all those who have received baptism: “Whenever the Sacrament of Baptism is duly administered as Our Lord instituted it, and is received with the right dispositions, a person is truly incorporated into the crucified and glorified Christ, and reborn to a sharing of the divine life . . . Baptism therefore establishes a sacramental bond of unity which links all who have been reborn by it.” [17] Although one is always baptized into a particular church and through a particular rite, the sacramental act of baptism incorporates the person into the one church of Christ, which has remained intact in its unity in spite of the ecclesial divisions. Even though the baptismal vocation has to be lived out in a particular church, in a particular rite, or in a particular denomination to which one belongs, henceforward, through baptism one becomes a member of the church of Christ, thus entering into communion with God and all members. [18] This church of Christ, however, is not only an invisible or spiritual one; it takes concrete shape in this world, foremost in the Catholic Church, but also in a variety of other ecclesial communities that the council has explicitly recognized as its visible expressions:

. . . some and even very many of the significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church itself, can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church: the written word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, and visible elements too. All of these, which come from Christ and lead back to Christ, belong by right to the one Church of Christ. [19]

Pre-conciliar ecclesiology and legislation also presumed that all baptized were sacramentally incorporated into the body of Christ and had become members of the one church of Christ but insisted at the same time that the church of Christ was identical with the Roman Catholic Church. Consequently, non-Catholic baptized were to be regarded as heretics or schismatics who had severed themselves from Christ’s church. Vatican II corrected this view with a stroke of the pen by changing from “is” to “subsists in” to describe the connection between the church of Christ and the Catholic Church. [20] Giving up on the absolute and exclusive identification enabled the Catholic Church to revise its relation to the other Christian churches and to acknowledge that they have an ecclesial status. The key term the council Fathers used to do so was “communio.”

If the members of the one church of Christ have communion with God and among themselves through the sacramental bond of baptism, then it is evident that such communion persists also among the visible ecclesial bodies in which the church of Christ finds its expression. As we have seen, the conciliar documents recognize such an existing communion between the Christian churches in principle, but they differentiate as to its degree. Those in “full” or “perfect” communion (communio plena) [21] are those who belong to the Catholic Church and

who, possessing the Spirit of Christ accept her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her, and are united with her as part of her visible bodily structure and through her with Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops. The bonds which bind men to the Church in a visible way are profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical government and communion. [22]

As the council uses the notion of communion in an extensive, rather than exclusive, way, it leaves room for gradation by which closer and looser grades of communion can be achieved. It is in this way that we have to understand the passage from the Decree on Ecumenism quoted in “Matrimonia mixta” in which it is stated that the non-Catholic churches and ecclesial communities and their members “are in communion with the Catholic Church even though this communion is imperfect.” [23] Answering to the question why baptism, which “establishes a sacramental bond of unity,” allows at the same time for different, more or less perfect grades of communion, the Decree continues that “of itself Baptism is only a beginning, an inauguration wholly directed toward the fullness of life in Christ. Baptism, therefore, envisages a complete profession of faith, complete incorporation in the system of salvation such as Christ willed it to be, and finally complete ingrafting in eucharistic communion.” [24]

In this and the previously quoted passage from Lumen gentium the conciliar documents indicate what is needed for full communion and what, accordingly, stands in the way of perfect unity. In a nutshell, the obstacles are situated in the realms of doctrine (complete profession of faith), sacramental practice (sharing in the system and means of salvation, especially eucharistic communion), and church discipline and structure (integration into the church’s bodily structure and government). Consequently, discrepancies in these fields remain the biggest stumbling blocks on the way to Christian unity, at least from a Catholic point of view. Before we take a look into how they also affect the Catholic Church’s position on interchurch marriages, we should bear in mind, however, the council Fathers’ insistence that, despite all obstacles to full ecclesial communion, “it remains true that all who have been justified by faith in Baptism are members of Christ's body, and have a right to be called Christian, and so are correctly accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church.” [25] As we have seen, “Matrimonia mixta” also explicitly uses the conciliar concept of real, though imperfect communion to characterize the marriage between a Catholic and a baptized non-Catholic partner. I have indicated the underlying institutional perspective that regards the spouses first and foremost as members of their respective ecclesial communities. I will have to analyze in greater detail now how this perspective determines the Catholic Church’s attitude toward interchurch marriages.

A first observation is related to the role of shared faith in Christ and its expression in baptism. Undoubtedly, the council’s recognition of common baptism as “a sacramental bond of unity” [26] and “foundation of communion among all Christians” [27] has paved the way for a more welcoming attitude toward interchurch marriages. “Neither in doctrine nor in law,” insists the above-quoted introduction to “Matrimonia mixta,” “does the Church place on the same level a marriage between a Catholic and a baptized non-Catholic, and one between a Catholic and an unbaptized person.” If one asks, however, what implications common baptism has on the conjugal relationship of interchurch couples, the official documents remain largely silent. [28] According to “Matrimonia mixta,” through baptism the non-Catholic spouse is “brought into a certain . . . communion with the Catholic church.” This is true, however, for all non-Catholic baptized, whether they are married to a Catholic or not. We may conclude from here that, in terms of communion, the marriage of an interdenominational couple does not add anything in particular to what can be lived in any ecumenical relationship between Catholics and any other non-Catholic persons. This would in any case confirm our initial presumption that the official stance regards interchurch marriages as ordinary cases of interchurch relations to which the current norms for ecclesial communion are to be applied. But, we can also reverse the argument and conclude that in the Catholic view common baptism does not have any effect on the marital union of an interchurch couple that would allow for a deeper communion than that achievable between persons who have been baptized into different denominational churches. In both respects, the dominating institutional perspective prevents any further insight into the particularity of an ecumenical relationship in which the partners are not only united through common baptism, but in which such unity finds an additional expression in the bond of marriage.

The question arises of whether this approach is the only possible one on the ground of Catholic doctrine. It seems to me that it is not. There is a broad agreement among the Christian churches that baptism is a basic bond of unity by which all Christians are incorporated into the one body of Christ, thus being united with Christ and with each other. [29] As we have seen, the texts of Vatican II fully endorse this view, which belongs to the uncontested depositum of current Catholic teaching. [30] Likewise, the Catholic Church recognizes that the big scandal of the division of Christianity lies in that such indestructible unity does not find its visible expression, [31] since under the present conditions baptism incorporates a person into one of the denominational churches that are separated and do not have a visible unity. [32] There is solid theological ground and good reason to argue that the marital union between two baptized Christians who belong to different communities is a visible manifestation of, and gives shape to, that indestructible unity of Christians that is willed and maintained by Christ in spite of the ecclesial divisions. The ecclesiological issue at stake here is whether one is willing to recognize forms of visible unity that are not modelled upon the structural components of coherence that characterize social institutions. The magisterial position sees in common baptism only the remote beginning of a unity, which for its full visible expression requires complete profession of faith, full communion in sacramental practice, and complete incorporation into ecclesiastical structures—all elements that have a strong institutional connotation. [33] The interpersonal communion of marriage, however, provides a complementary model of unity reflecting in a visible way that Christians are united with Christ and with each other.

A second observation is due to the fact that the Catholic Church in its doctrinal and legal stance distinguishes between marriages of Catholics and Eastern Christians and those contracted between a Catholic and a Protestant partner. If further evidence were needed as to the Church’s guiding principle in its approach to interchurch marriages, it is to be found here. Already “Matrimonia mixta” had taken up the idea of higher or lower degrees that was implied in the council’s nuanced teaching of “real, yet imperfect communion.” After emphasizing the particularity of marriages between baptized Christians, the text immediately (albeit in a somewhat cryptic manner) states that Eastern Christians “are joined to us in a very close relationship,” [34] thus suggesting a more distanced relationship with the churches of the Reformation. This position on the level of ecclesiology finds its corresponding expression in the legal prescriptions for interchurch marriages. Thus, while for a marriage of a Catholic with a Protestant partner the canonical form has to be respected for validity of marriage, the mixed Catholic-Orthodox couple may validly contract marriage in the presence of an Orthodox minister; the canonical form is required here only for liceity. [35]

More relevant, at least in the perception of interchurch families and of a broad public, are the norms regulating eucharistic sharing. Here, the 1993 Ecumenical Directory simply refers to the directions that regulate the sharing of sacramental practice among the Christian churches in general and clearly distinguish, as to the administering and receiving of the sacraments of penance, the eucharist, and anointing of the sick, between the Eastern and the “other” churches. [36] Whoever is familiar with the ongoing theological discussions on eucharistic sharing [37] will notice, however, how problematic it is to apply to interchurch families the norms that govern the relationships between ecclesial bodies in principle. All efforts to adapt the ecclesial practice in this regard come down to the request that the ecclesiastical authorities may recognize what is the particular situation and the “spiritual need” in which interchurch couples, for the most part mixed Catholic-Protestant couples, find themselves when being prevented from sharing the eucharist in their respective communities.

In a third and final reflection I want to ask in what way the Catholic Church regards interchurch marriages as imperfect realizations of communion. That it does so is not only a logical consequence of the ecclesiological principle that it applies to interchurch marriages, but it finds its explicit expression also in the major documents. Although tone and terminology have changed, the post-conciliar documents keep on pointing to the difficulties and risks of mixed marriages. [38] We may differentiate between three different levels on which a certain reluctance seems appropriate. The first one betrays the unease of an institution that is concerned about the integrity and loyalty of its members. According to “Matrimonia mixta,” “the fulfillment of the Gospel teachings is more difficult” for interchurch spouses, “especially with regard to those matters which concern Christian worship and the education of the children.” [39] The traditional concern here has been that the Catholic spouses give up on their private and public worshiping and do not take seriously the Catholic education of their offspring. The post-conciliar documents suggest a more positive reading when they place the risk in both spouses and caution against religious indifference in general. In this sense, the Ecumenical Directory refers to practical experiences and observations suggesting that “mixed marriages frequently present difficulties for the couples themselves, and for the children born to them, in maintaining their Christian faith and commitment.” [40]

On a different level, the documents are anxious about the harmony of the family itself that may be hazarded by virtue of divergent religious mentalities and differences of opinion in religious and moral questions as well as in matters of church discipline. [41] The most urgent and powerful warning, however, is expressed with regard to what the documents interpret as spiritual communion of the married partners. Interchurch marriage “is by its nature an obstacle to the full spiritual communion of the married parties,” as “Matrimonia mixta” puts it bluntly, [42] having explained earlier that the church “discourages the contracting of mixed marriages, for she is the most desirous that Catholics be able in matrimony to attain to perfect union of mind and full communion of life.” [43] The term “full communion of life” obviously echoes the well-known definition of marriage as “intima communitas vitae et amoris coniugalis” in Gaudium et spes, [44] and with a similar connotation one reads in the 1993 Ecumenical Directory: “The perfect union of persons and full sharing of life which constitutes the married state are more easily assured when both partners belong to the same faith community.” [45]

This wording makes it difficult, if not impossible, to escape the conclusion that in the view of the Catholic Church full conjugal communion requires ecclesial communion and that interchurch marriages are likely to miss the requirements of a totius vitae consortium. [46] This may seem a harsh conclusion, but it is consistent with an approach that regards the marriage between two Christians from different denominations exclusively as a matter of ecclesial belonging. In this perspective, the difficulties of mixed marriage “arise from the fact that the separation of Christians has not yet been overcome.” [47] They will not disappear unless the full visible unity of all Christians has been re-established, or, put differently, unless all marriages are same-church marriages. One may wonder how long interchurch families will have to wait for the sanatio in radice of their conjugal relationship by means of the churches. The more important question in theological terms, however, is whether this position is in tune with the current theology of marriage. Ultimately, “Matrimonia mixta” also concedes that “there exists in a marriage between baptized persons, since such a marriage is a true sacrament, a certain communion of spiritual benefits which is lacking in a marriage entered into by a baptized person and one who is not baptized.” [48]

How Interchurch Families See Themselves—

Living in Imperfect yet Real Communion

It is true that interchurch “spouses risk experiencing the tragedy of Christian disunity even in the heart of their own home.” [49] It is, however, not less true that there are also interchurch families who experience in their sharing of love and life an interpersonal and spiritual unity that gives a foretaste of what it could be like when the ecclesial divisions will be overcome. Thanks to various groups of interchurch families in many countries, these experiences have been given a clear voice over the last decades. A milestone in the process of becoming aware of and raising consciousness for their special situation is the document “Interchurch Families and Christian Unity: Rome 2003” that was adopted by the Second World Gathering of Interchurch Families held near Rome in 2003. [50] In this document, interchurch families from all over the world explained how they see themselves by witnessing to their particular experience. I will briefly show how much their experiential approach differs from the perspective adopted by the official Church.

In their self-portrait interchurch couples describe themselves as spouses “who come from two different church traditions (often a Roman Catholic married to a Christian of another communion)” whereby “[b]oth of them retain their original church membership, but so far as they are able they are committed to live, worship and participate in their spouse’s church also. If they have children, as parents they exercise a joint responsibility under God for their religious and spiritual upbringing, and they teach them by word and example to appreciate both their Christian traditions.” [51] The document in no way ignores or underestimates different church membership: Interchurch “partners remain faithful members of two as yet divided church congregations in their neighbourhood, and two as yet divided ecclesial communions in the world.” [52] They have to live out what is called their “two-church character” [53] and do not want to establish a “third church” alongside the institutional churches. [54] While acknowledging in a realistic way that they are inescapably part of the bigger scenario of the divided Christian communities, the document opts for an inside perspective and focuses on the conjugal and family project that is at the basis of an interchurch marriage. [55] As the partners “have come together in the covenant of marriage to form one Christian family,” they quite naturally also “grow into that unity.” [56] It is precisely in describing that process of growth into communion and what it entails for the church communities involved that interchurch families provide a rich and compelling reading of their lives and of the rapprochement they bring about between their respective congregations.

A key principle in this reading is what I would call a “marital hermeneutic” and is introduced as follows:

The gifts given to all married couples are mutual love, a marriage covenant that supports it and helps it to grow, and a mutual knowledge that can be discovered only through living together in the closest proximity over a very long period. . . .

. . .

The partners start with two separate identities. They retain these all their lives, but by living together and mutual sharing they gradually build upon these a new family identity that their children inherit. [57]

The latter is not less, but all the more, true if the partners’ religious and spiritual identity has been formed in different faith communities with diverging traditions of worship, spirituality, teaching, and authority. Forging a new pattern of Christian family life, interchurch spouses become a “visible sign of unity,” [58] first by virtue of their marital union and second by a particular attitude of spiritual mutuality that also brings their communities of origin closer together. We will briefly look into both components in turn.

The Rome document does not cast any doubt on the full interpersonal communion that interchurch marriages are able to realize. In a short but comprehensive account, the cornerstones of the Christian ethos of marriage are exposed and claimed for its interchurch variant. They include: a mutual love that strives for deeper unity; its formal expression in the marital covenant that “provides a support and framework”; the “[a]ctual living together under the same roof,” enabling “the couple to enter into each other’s . . . life” and to know each other profoundly; the sharing of resources for the benefit of the whole family; the practicing of mutual forgiveness; shared responsibility for the education of the children; and a spirit of hospitality and sensitivity for the needs of others. [59] One may regret that the document fails to refer to the conjugal union as an image of Christ’s unity with the church. Rooted in Holy Scripture (Eph. 5:21–33) and part of the common theological tradition of all Christian churches, this idea would have persuaded Catholics more easily that what is described here in terms of marital communion converges with the anthropological underpinnings that Catholic theology requires for sacramental marriage.

When it comes to spiritual communion, interchurch families report a very particular experience that they characterize as “mutual insertion and participation in the life of their two church communities.” [60] It starts when spouses incorporate attitudes and practices that were formerly distinctive of one or another ecclesial tradition into their new religious identity, but gradually they become engaged in a much more challenging process of mutual exploration and learning. [61] The document describes the various elements and the particular dynamic that are characteristic for this learning process: Initial ignorance and prejudice give way to a growing understanding and a mutual appreciation of each other’s way of worship, church life, doctrine, spirituality, authority, and ethics. On a more profound level, the “immersion in the ethos of a partner’s community can enable a spouse to evaluate the other church in terms of its own language and ways of thought, action and being,” [62] thus making interchurch couples familiar with the basics of an ecumenical hermeneutic. Finally, by their very presence and participation in each other’s congregation, interchurch spouses gradually build up an “inter-personal bridge of understanding and trust,” thereby contributing directly “to the formation of a connective tissue which supports, connects and heals parts of the Christian body that have been cut or broken in our sinful divisions.” [63]

As we have seen, interchurch couples deem themselves capable of achieving full interpersonal and spiritual communion by virtue of their marital union. Their communion shares in the weaknesses and contingencies that are characteristic on a human level of any intimate community of life and love, be it between partners of one church or of different churches; the divisions on an ecclesial level, however, do not eo ipso render it more deficient or imperfect than any other union. Rather, committed mutual love pushes interchurch spouses to develop a love and understanding of each other’s churches and to share in the life and worship of each other’s faith community. It is this experience that makes them claim to “become both a sign of unity and a means to grow towards unity.” [64]

A New Perspective: Interchurch Communion in the DomesticChurch

We can now collect the results of our analysis and roughly summarize the two perspectives on interchurch marriage in the following way. From the official point of view, neither conjugal communion nor the practical and emotional insertion into each other’s faith community qualifies interchurch spouses for ecclesial communion. However fulfilling the partnership of life and love may be and however deep the bond with each other’s church may be experienced, the partners realize ecclesial communion at best in an initial, yet always deficient way. We find here the main theological reason why eucharistic sharing in each other’s congregation cannot be admitted on a regular basis, since from a Catholic standpoint eucharistic communion presupposes full ecclesial communion. [65] From their own perspective as marriage partners, however, interchurch spouses “want to share all that is of value in each other’s life, and as Christian marriage partners this includes especially the riches of their respective ecclesial [communities].” [66] To the extent that they are able to do so, they claim to anticipate and prefigure an ecclesial communion that is otherwise not achieved by the official ecclesial bodies. It seems logical that they regard themselves, just as every other Christian family, as “one church at home” or, using an increasingly familiar metaphor in Catholic theology, as a “domestic church.” [67] If one asks whether there is any chance that the Catholic position may take seriously the experience of interchurch families and attend to its ecclesiological implications, it is indeed the concept of domestic church that seems to indicate an alternative approach to that offered by the official standpoint.

The vision of the Christian family as “domestic church” is an ancient one in both West and East, shared by patristic Fathers such as Augustine and John Chrysostom. ^[68] While always having occupied a prominent position in Eastern theology and liturgy, ^[69] it has become familiar in the Catholic Church only since it was used by Vatican II in Lumen gentium and in the decree on the apostolate of the laity. ^[70] These two seed texts have been widely welcomed in post-conciliar Roman Catholic theology for marking the beginning of a renewed theological interest in the family that reflects “the need to articulate ordinary family life as a sphere of grace and a medium of encounter between humans and God.” ^[71] Much more controversial since then have been discussions with regard to the ecclesiological implications of the notion of domestic church and to the ecclesial status of the family, which the council texts had insinuated but for which they failed to provide theological grounding. The harshest critique of the new parlance came from scholars who pointed out that from a New Testament perspective church does not originate on the basis of blood, kin, or any other preferential social relationship but from God’s call into a new community of discipleship that transcends the boundaries of family, clan, or nation. ^[72] Some theologians and canonists were quick in recalling that, for a community to form a “particular” or “local church” as defined by Vatican II, the proclamation of the Word must be officially authorized and the eucharist celebrated in union with the bishop—all of which is not realized in the family. ^[73] Surprisingly, the magisterial teaching strongly insisted on the ecclesial nature of the family. In his Apostolic Exhortation “Familiaris consortio,” John Paul II argued that the family shares in a number of ways in the life and mission of the Church; furthermore, it “constitutes a specific revelation and realization of ecclesial communion, and for this reason . . . it can and should be called ‘the domestic Church.’” ^[74]

Although the official discourse has undoubtedly contributed to keeping alive the ecclesiological interest in the family, it has not provided a clear answer to two central questions at the heart of the concept of domestic church—namely, what exactly qualifies the family to form the smallest ecclesial unit, and what type of family is actually required to fulfill this role. While baptism is generally accepted as the foundation of the domestic church, theological debate is going on as to what else is required for making the ordinary household a realization of the church. Some theologians consequently derive its ecclesiological title from the marital sacrament and thus follow the line of argument Karl Rahner had already developed in the 1960’s when he pointed out that, being an image of the alliance between Christ and the church, the sacrament of marriage renders the church present in the form of “the smallest of local churches, but a true one, the Church in miniature.” ^[75] Others emphasize the Christian family’s vocational character, which makes it an ecclesial reality only to the extent that it fulfills its mission of evangelization and transmission of faith. ^[76] Since these ecclesiological concepts cannot simply bypass the multi-colored reality of contemporary family life, there is also discussion about which family type counts for domestic church. Whereas for some a normative concept of the family is needed to bring out its authentic theological nature, ^[77] others opt for recognizing the diversity of contemporary households and trust in the quality of interpersonal relationships lived out in them, whether they are based on marriage or not. ^[78]

Notwithstanding these doctrinal inconsistencies, the concept of domestic church has a great potential to inspire ecclesiological thinking in a fresh way. As one author has unmistakably put it, the term “domestic church”

suggests a calling into question of (modern) conventional ways of working with church as organisational, political, structural, institutional. At the same time, the domestic church’s emphasis on the sanctity of household relationships, with their particular, every-day ties, duties and responsibilities refers us to a primary discipline of affection or agape which challenges the pastorally burdensome emphasis on church as koinonia, interpreted practically as “community”, “fellowship”, and the like. Discussion of the “domestic church” recalls our thinking to the ways in which all church activity—liturgy, order, governance, and, of course, teaching—is to be ordered to the living of baptism. And this baptismal living is—for the most part—done “in ordinary”. The nurturing of and equipping for this baptismal vocation in ordinary is, perhaps, the way of understanding the church’s life and purpose, and the end to which all teaching in the Christian community is directed.” ^[79]

From a practical point of view, a major shortcoming of the concept of domestic church so far has been that couples have found themselves trying to model themselves on what is commonly understood by church and have not been encouraged to recognize the proper theological status of their own experience, which is a gift—and sometimes a critical gift—to the larger church. If the ecclesiological “challenge to the (organisational) centre from the margins” ^[80] is to lead into renewed perspectives in ecclesiology, concrete examples of “good practice” in the domestic church will be needed. Sharing in a common baptismal vocation and in what the Catholic tradition regards as the “sacramental” bond of marriage, interchurch couples provide such examples just as same-church spouses do. Moreover, they may even play a prominent role in this regard. As we have seen, interchurch couples build their marital and spiritual communion by drawing on the respective ecclesial traditions by which the spouses have been shaped, to which they remain attached, and from which they continue to receive spiritual nourishment. Yet, their shared religious profile is not just the sum of two previously distinct confessional identities but a genuine creation of their own. The learning process by which they accede to such a new spousal and religious identity draws its creative force from a constant interaction between the ecclesial communities to which both spouses adhere and the couple’s specific spiritual needs to which these communities as separated entities are often unable fully to respond. [81]

The larger church communities as well as the small unit of the interchurch family thus appear to be distinct yet interrelated actors who mutually receive from and give to each other in terms of religious practice and ecclesial communion. Their relationship would seem to be mutually informative and also one in which the large church cannot do without the smallest unit and vice versa. The case of interchurch families reminds every Christian family not to build their domestic communities alongside or even in opposition to the existing ecclesial communities. Just as interchurch families should not establish a fictive “third church,” the domestic unit is not served if detached from the ecclesial realities, however unappealing they may appear. Likewise, the confessional churches are called upon to trust in the unity-building capacity of interchurch and same-church families alike, even if they do not correspond to the standard models of unity that prevail in the official ecclesiological discourses.

Whereas the same-church family is easily downgraded to becoming a prolongation of the large church into its marginal edges, the “little church” in the interchurch scenario has a genuine and irreplaceable part to play in bringing about the smallest possible but real ecclesial community in the face of the divided Christian churches. The kind of ecclesial unity it expresses and realizes has no equivalent in the larger churches; ^[82] that is why interchurch couples can rightly be called “builders of unity” in an area that is largely uncharted terrain for the confessional churches.

Reprinted with permission from the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 44:3, Summer 2009. ( http://journal.jesdialogue.org/ )

Return to Domestic Church overview ( http://interchurchfamilies.org/dc/DomesticChurchProject.html )

[1] See, e.g., John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation “Familiaris consortio” (1981), no. 78 (hereafter, FC): “Marriages between Catholics and other baptized persons . . . contain numerous elements that could well be made good use of and developed, both for their intrinsic value and for the contribution that they can make to the ecumenical movement”; available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/ john_paul_ii/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio-en.html.

[2] Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism (1993), no. 66 (hereafter, DE); available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_

curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/general-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_19930325_directory_en.html.

[3] Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation “Evangelii nuntiandi” (1975), no. 71; available at http://www. vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_p-vi_exh_19751208_evangelii-nun tiandi_en.html.

[4] Pope John Paul II, The Pope in Britain: Collected Homilies and Speeches (Slough: St. Paul Publications, 1982), p. 30.

[5] Emphasis mine. The text of this speech is available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/ benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/may/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060525_incontro-ecumenico_en. html.

[6] For a historical overview of the Catholic and Protestant churches’ attitudes toward mixed marriages, see Silvia Hell, Die konfessionsverschiedene Ehe: Vom Problemfall zum verbindenden Modell (Freiburg: Herder, 1998).

[7] DE, no. 144.

[8] See Center for Marriage and the Family, Ministry to Interchurch Marriages: A National Study (Omaha, NE: Creighton University, 1999); Lee M. Williams and Michael G. Lawler, “Marital Satisfaction and Religious Heterogamy: A Comparison of Interchurch and Same-Church Individuals,” Journal of Family Issues 24 (November, 2003): 1070–1092.

[9] There is an underlying tenor in some magisterial texts saying that interchurch marriages, because they “are a consequence of the division among Christians, do not, except in some cases, help in reestablishing unity among Christians” (PaulVI, Motu proprio “Matrimonia mixta,” 1970, introduction, 4th par. [hereafter, MM]; available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/motu_ proprio/documents/hf_p-vi_motu-proprio_19700331_matrimonia-mixta_en.html).

[10] National associations of interchurch families saw the light of day in the 1960’s, first in France and in the United Kingdom. See Ruth Reardon, “The Association of Interchurch Families: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” INTAMS review 6 (Autumn, 2000): 183-191. A first international gathering bringing together members of the various national associations and groups was held in 1998 in Geneva; the second meeting, to which we refer here, took place near Rome in 2003. For more information on the international network of interchurch families, see also http://www. interchurchfamilies.org. “InterchurchFamilies and Christian Unity” (hereafter, IFCU) is available at http://www. interchurchfamilies.org/confer/rome2003/documents/roma2003_en.pdf.

[11] In FC, interchurch marriages are dealt with under Section IV, “Pastoral Care of the Family in Difficult Cases” (nos. 77–85).

[12] See Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, “Lumen gentium” (hereafter, LG); available at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_ lumen-gentium-en_html.

[13] See Decree on Ecumenism “Unitatis redintegratio” (hereafter, UR); available at http://www. vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_en_html.

[14] See Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, “Gaudium et spes”; available at http://www. vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207

_gaudium-et-spes_en.html.

[15]DE 143, referring to the 1983 Codex Iuris Canonici (hereafter, CIC 1983), can. 1124; available at http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104_INDEX.HTM.

[16] MM, introduction, 8th par.; the quote is from UR, no. 3.

[17] UR, no. 22.

[18] Georg Gänswein, Kirchengliedschaft—Vom Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil zum Codex Iuris Canonici: Die Rezeption der konziliaren Aussagen über die Kirchenzugehörigkeit in das nachkonziliare Gesetzbuch der Lateinischen Kirche. Münchener Theologische Studien 47 (St. Ottilien: EOS, 1995), pp. 23–24, suggests distinguishing between “church belonging” (Kirchenzugehörigkeit) and “church membership” (Kirchengliedschaft). While the latter describes the baptized person’s incorporation into the church of Christ, the former refers to the particular church in which such incorporation is lived out.

[19] UR, no. 3. A similar idea is expressed in LG, no.8: “. . . many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its [the Catholic Church’s] visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity.” See also LG, no. 15.

[20] See LG, no. 8: “This Church [of Christ] constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church.” The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has recently undertaken to clarify the authentic meaning of some ecclesiological expressions used by the Magisterium and underlined that the terminological change from “est” to “subsistit in” does not imply any discontinuity with previous teaching; see Responses to Some Questions regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church, 2007 (available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070629_respnsa-quaestiones_en.html). See also Alexandra von Teuffenbach, Die Bedeutung des subsistit in (LG 8): Zum Selbstverständnis der katholischen Kirche (Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag, 2002); and Francis A. Sullivan, “Quaestio disputata: A Response to Karl Becker, S.J., on the Meaning of subsistit in,” Theological Studies 67 (June, 2006): 395–409.

[21] See UR, nos. 3, 4, 14, and 17.

[22] LG, no. 14.

[23] UR, no. 3.

[24] Ibid., no. 22.

[25] Ibid., no. 3.

[26] Ibid., no. 22.

[27] Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, Directory for the Application of the Decisions of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican Concerning Ecumenical Matters, 1967, no. 11 (in Information Service, 1967/2, p. 7).

[28] FC, no. 78, contains the vague statement that “common Baptism and the dynamism of grace provide the spouses in these [interchurch] marriages with the basis and motivation for expressing their unity in the sphere of moral and spiritual values.”

[29] The Lima Document formulates: “Through baptism, Christians are brought into union with Christ, with each other and with the Church of every time and place. Our common baptism, which unites us to Christ in faith, is thus a basic bond of unity” (Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper 111 [Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982], no. 6; available at http://www. oikoumene.org/fileadmin/files/wcc-main/documents/p2/FO1982_111_en.pdf ).

[30] See, e.g., UR, no. 22; and Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992, no. 1271 (hereafter, CCC), available from http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM . The Final Report of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission on the Theology of Marriage and its Application to Mixed Marriages, 1975, explicitly records “as a fundamental principle of our discussions ‘that Holy Baptism itself confers Christian status and is the indestructible bond of union between all Christians and Christ and so of Christians with one another,’ and that ‘this baptismal unity remains firm despite all ecclesiastical division’” (Anglican-Roman Catholic Marriage: The Report of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission on the Theology of Marriage and Its Application to Mixed Marriage, no. 15; available at http://www.prounione.urbe.it/dia-int/arcic/doc/e_arcic_ classific.html).

[31] See, e.g., John Paul II’s Encyclical, “Ut unum sint” (1995), no. 6 (available at http://www. vatcan.va/edocs/ENG0221/_INDEX.HTM .

[32] See DE, no. 97.

[33] See in particular UR, no. 22, and LG, no. 14. The criteria named here for ecclesial unity clearly go back to the three vincula (symbolicum, liturgicum, sociale vel hierarchicum) formulated by Robert Bellarmine.

[34] MM, introduction, 9th par.

[35] See CIC 1983, can. 1127, §1.

[36] See DE, nos. 129–136; and CIC 1983, can. 844.

[37] See, e.g., Peter Neuner, “Ein katholischer Vorschlag zur Eucharistiegemeinschaft,” Stimmen der Zeit 211 (July, 1993): 443–450; Georg Hintzen and Peter Neuner, “Eucharistiegemeinschaft für konfessionsverschiedene Ehen?” Stimmen der Zeit 211 (December, 1993): 831–840; Ernest R. Falardeau, “The Church, the Eucharist, and the Family,” One in Christ, vol. 33, no. 1 (1997), pp. 20–30; Thomas J. Scirghi, “One Body, Two Churches: Sharing the Eucharist in an Interchurch Marriage,” The Jurist, vol. 59, no. 2 (1999), pp. 432–447; and Jeffrey Vanderwilt, “Eucharistic Sharing: Revising the Question,” Theological Studies 63 (December, 2002): 826–839.

[38] An unambiguous warning against interchurch marriages from a Catholic point of view is also expressed in the Final Report of the Roman Catholic-Lutheran-Reformed Study Commission on The Theology of Marriage and the Problem of Mixed Marriage, 1976, no. 70 (available at http:// warc.jalb.de/warcajsp/news_file/30.pdf): “The Catholic Church, like other churches, for that matter, advises against mixed marriages insofar as they can easily cause difficulties in families, since in such cases living together can endanger the faith, and divisions in the faith can create problems in married life.” It has to be added, however, that while this reluctant or even disapproving attitude is still characteristic for the documents of the Roman Magisterium, several national bishops’ conference have adopted over the last decennia a much more welcoming and approving stance with regard to interchurch marriages; see the study of respective documents of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany in Uwe Bögershausen, Die konfessionsverbindende Ehe als Lehr- und Lernprozess(Mainz: Grünewald, 2001), pp. 102–138.

[39] MM, introduction, 4th par.

[40] DE, no. 144.

[41] “There is often a difference of opinion on the sacramental nature of matrimony, on the special significance of marriage celebrated within the Church, on the interpretation of certain moral principles pertaining to marriage and the family, on the extent to which obedience is due the Catholic Church, and on the competence that belongs to ecclesiastical authority” (MM, introduction, 10th par.).

[42] MM, no. 1.

[43] MM, introduction, 5th par..

[44] No. 48.

[45] DE, no. 144.

[46] CIC 1983, can. 1055 §1. See Karl-Theodor Geringer, “Die konfessionsverschiedene Ehe im kanonischen Recht,” in Franz Böckle et al., eds., Die konfessionsverschiedene Ehe: Problem für Millionen—Herausforderung für die Ökumene (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1988), p. 69.

[47] CCC, no. 1634.

[48] MM, introduction, 9th par.

[49] CCC, no. 1634.

[50] See note 10, above.

[51] IFCU, B,1.

[52] Ibid., B,3. At variance with the terminology I have used so far, the document uses the term “ecclesial communion” to denote “those autonomous, international or national churches that are variously described as ‘denominations’, ‘confessions’, ‘communions’ or ‘churches’” (B,2).

[53] Ibid., B,1.

[54] For further reading, see George Kilcourse, Double Belonging: Interchurch Families and Christian Unity (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1992).

[55] Calling interchurch families a “visible sign of unity” to the churches, the document underlines that “[i]nterchurch couples do not get married in order to provide such a sign!” (IFCU, C,3; emphasis in original).

[56] IFCU, A (Introduction).

[57] Ibid., C,1.

[58] Ibid., C,3.

[59] See ibid.

[60] Ibid., C,1.

[61] The specific learning process that is characteristic for interchurch families is addressed in Bögershausen, Die konfessionsverbindende Ehe; see also Placido Sgroi, “Le coppie e le famiglie interconfessionali: problema o risorsa del cammino ecumenico?” Studi Ecumenici 22 (January–June, 2004): 191–213.

[62] IFCU, C,2.

[63] Ibid., C,4.

[64] Ibid., A.

[65] See DE, no. 129.

[66] IFCU, B,3.

[67] See ibid.

[68] For a general overview of the concept, see Michael A. Fahey, “The Christian Family as Domestic Church at Vatican II,” in Lisa Sowle Cahill and Dietmar Mieth, The Family, Concilium (1995/4), pp. 85–92; Mary Anne Foley, “Toward an Ecclesiology of the ‘Domestic Church,’” Eglise et Théologie 27 (October, 1996): 351–373; Ennio P. Mastroianni, “Christian Family as Church? Inquiry, Analysis, and Pastoral Implications” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, 1999); and Florence C. Bourg, Where Two or Three Are Gathered: Christian Families as Domestic Churches (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004).

[69] See Paul Evdokimov, Sacrement de l’amour: Le mystère conjugal à la lumière de la tradition orthodoxe (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1988), pp. 168–171; and A. M. Stavropoulos, “The Understanding of Marriage in the Orthodox Church,” One in Christ, vol. 15, no. 1 (1979), pp. 57–63.

[70] See LG, no. 11; and Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity “Apostolicam actuositatem,” no. 11 (available at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_ decree_19651118_apostolicam-actuositatem_en.html ).

[71] Bourg, Where Two or Three Are Gathered, p. 3. See also Achiel Peelman, “La famille come réalité ecclésiale: Réflexions sur la famille comme facteur de transformation d’une Eglise qui veut renaître à partir de la base,” Eglise et Théologie 12 (January, 1981): 95–114.

[72] See, e.g., Gerhard Lohfink, “Die christliche Familie—eine Hauskirche?” Theologische Quartalschrift, vol. 163, no. 3 (1983), pp. 227–229.

[73] See Normand Provencher, “Vers une théologie de la famille: L’église domestique,” Eglise et Théologie 12 (January, 1981): 33; Jan Vries, “Die christliche Familie aus kanonistischer Sicht,” in Winfried Aymans and Karl-Theodor Geringer, eds., Iuri Canonico Promovendo:Festschrift für Heribert Schmitz zum 65. Geburtstag (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1994), pp. 97–125.

[74] FC, no. 21. Authors in particular who see themselves as authentic interpreters of the theological heritage of Pope John Paul II keep to the full ecclesiality of the Christian family; see, e.g., Marc Cardinal Ouellet, Divine Likeness: Toward a Trinitarian Anthropology of the Family (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006), pp. 38–56.

[75] Karl Rahner, The Church and the Sacraments (New York: Herder & Herder, 1963), pp. 111–112; for a similar view, see Mastroianni, Christian Family as Church? The “marriage or baptism” issue is discussed at some length in Bourg, Where Two or Three Are Gathered, pp. 69–80.

[76] See Clare Watkins, “Traditio—The Ordinary Handling of Holy Things: Reflections de doctrina christiana from an Ecclesiology Ordered to Baptism,” New Blackfriars 87 (March, 2006): 166–183.

[77] See Joseph C. Atkinson, “Family as Domestic Church: Developmental Trajectory, Legitimacy, and Problems of Appropriation,” Theological Studies 66 (September, 2005): 592–604.

[78] See, e.g., Joanne Heaney-Hunter, “The Domestic Church: Guiding Beliefs and Daily Practices,” in Michael G. Lawler and William P. Roberts, eds., Christian Marriage and Family: Contemporary Theological and Pastoral Perspectives(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), pp. 59–78; also see Bourg, Where Two or Three Are Gathered, especially pp. 81–92.

[79] Watkins, “Traditio,” p. 169, emphasis in original.

[80] Ibid., p. 177.

[81] For a further elaboration, see Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi, “Interchurch Families—A Test Case for the Domestic Church,” in Peter De Mey and Minna Hietamäki, eds., Believing in Community: Ecumenical Reflections on the Church (Leuven: Peeters, forthcoming in 2009).

[82] Sgroi speaks in this context of a “novum ecclesiale” (Sgroi, “Le coppie e le famiglie interconfessionali,” p. 210).

Toward a Language of Faithful Possibilities

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:04:54 GMT

Toward a Language of Faithful Possibilities:
Interchurch Families and Receptive Ecumenism

A paper presented at the conference on
Receptive Ecumenism and Ecclesial Learning: Learning to Be Church Together,
held at Ushaw College, Durham, England, 11-15th January 2009

Riccardo Larini, in his presentation at the first Conference on Receptive Ecumenism, held in Durham, England, in 2006, said. “Whenever two different Christian communities meet, what actually occurs is the encounter between different cultural-linguistic worlds.” (1)

We interchurch couples find ourselves squarely situated in that statement. We come together in love, and find ourselves in an encounter between different cultural-linguistic worlds. It is in this concrete circumstance that we experience the call, and discover our vocation, to the work of receptive ecumenism, a work which remains part and parcel of our lives 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, for as long as we live. Rejection or discouragement of the vocation can lead to disastrous consequences for our lives of faith, and even our marriages. Entry into that vocation, grounded in our firm and abiding love for each other, and especially if supported by those around, can bear the most wondrous fruit, for ourselves, our families, our churches, and our world. We discover and receive not only the gift the other brings and is, but the gift we bring and are, in new and wondrous ways.

But to return to the concept of cultural-linguistic worlds… When my wife and I married, I a Roman Catholic and she an Anglican, we discovered that while our faith was in the same Lord, our language of faith seemed to differ from that of the other. Indeed it was so. Over time, we had to listen, learn, come to understand each other’s language. Then we found we had to go beyond, to develop a new language, because neither the language that fit beautifully the world of her tradition, nor the language that fit, equally beautifully, the world of my tradition, fit our world. Let me give you one simple reason why that might be. From canon 1060 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law expressly forbidding any and all mixed marriages (2) , we now have some 50% of all marriages in our Catholic diocese denoted as ‘mixed’. This is a new situation, one which calls for a new way of thinking, and a new language to make sense of that experience.

We find ourselves living a tension not of our own making, but very real nonetheless. The scriptures proclaim (3) , our churches believe and teach (4) , and we experience and believe, that in marriage we two become one, a unity so real, so profound, that it is recognized as being indissoluble. Then we find ourselves facing the neuralgic question: where does that one made so by God take and eat, take and drink? Phrased in the language of negation, if one/half of that one is not welcome to receive at this Eucharistic celebration in this place, how can the other half of that one be welcome, and receive? Do we live faithfully the unity of our marriage, and forego the Eucharist? Or do we divide, go to our respective churches to receive the great sacrament of unity – and in dividing, deny the unity of our marriage? And if we deny the unity of our marriage, can we still claim to be in a state of grace such that we can receive?

We are called to be God’s sacrament of love for each other and, as one, for the world. And yet, our churches find themselves seemingly unable to enable us to receive and respond to what Professor Peter Ochs, speaking at the 2nd Conference on Receptive Ecumenism in Durham, 2009, aptly described as God’s attractive energy, the Eucharist. If God attracts us, calls us forward as one, how can we not be welcomed and enabled to respond?

I turn now to a linguistic issue: in the English-speaking world, we use the phrase ‘double-belonging’. This sense of belonging to the Body of Christ through two local churches becomes, over time, a very powerful and beautiful reality. Yet, with some validity, the Catholic Church has great difficulty with the term, as it seems to imply a sense of belonging to two Churches, when in fact there is only one Church, no matter how many different expressions there may be of it. The French at times use the term ‘double insertion’, which to some extent attempts to address this concern by suggesting that there is one reality into which we are inserted, though through two different insertions; but frankly, it doesn’t have the same linguistic sense in English.

We find ourselves today, like the early Church, attempting to develop a language which makes faith sense of a very real experience in a new and ever-growing situation, a language which speaks of living today in our marriages the unity for which Christ prayed (5) , even while that unity remains still in the making.

This language which we are moving toward must be faithful to the apostolic tradition. Yet it must be open to new possibilities consonant with the new situation.

And so I invite you to consider what you have received from interchurch families, in what you may have seen, heard or read. I invite you also to reflect on that reception, with a view to developing new language which may, at last, enable us to live fully our vocation of unity, to be nourished as one at the Eucharistic table, and as one to be a sign and sacrament of God's complete and irrevocable love for the world.

Ray Temmerman ( ray.temmerman@gmail.com ) is actively involved in the Canadian Association of Interchurch Families. He administers the http://www.interchurchfamilies.org web site and the aifw@mylist.net listserv.

References:

(1) Riccardo Larini, “Text and Contexts – Hermeneutical Reflections on Receptive Ecuemnism” Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism , ed. Paul D. Murray, 89-101. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press Inc. 2008

(2) Bp Mark Ouellet, speaking at the 10th international conference of interchurch families, Edmonton, Canada, 2001.

(3) Gen 2:24, Mt 19:6, Mk 10:8

(4) cf Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part Two, Section Two, Chapter Three, Article 7

(5) Jn 17:21

Interchurch Families as Domestic Church: Arge Conference

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:18:54 GMT

Interchurch Marriages and Families as Domestic Church
Summary of ARGE Conference, Pinkafeld, 23-25 October 2009
by Klemens & Elisabeth Betz

Interchurch families as Domestic Church – is this idea surprising, unusual, presumptuous, exaggerated, appropriate, an expression of our deepest feelings?

* Unusual
In that the term Domestic Church might be used for interchurch marriages and families at all, since these kinds of union did not exist in the early church.

* Surprising
The idea of the Domestic Church has been in existence since the very beginning of Christianity and appears already in NT texts.

The model of celebrating faith in God in a small group is the original practice, which was only later developed in order to keep the church alive.

The family is regarded as the smallest unit (of church) which has to provide priestly vocations, and therefore there is presumably some overreaction if the term is applied to unions which include a non-Catholic partner.

* Expressing our deepest feelings
It enables us to live Church within the family. The idea of Domestic Church allows us to choose our own way and to serve and worship

God within the family.

In many regions in Austria, the Protestant tradition has only survived because it has been lived as a sort of “secret” Protestantism within families. This is still the case in countries where Christians are persecuted.

Congregations without priests are in danger of disappearing. The family has a vital role to play here, just as in the early church.

The practice of merging parishes into large pastoral units reinforces the tendency to worship within the family. In many parishes there is a growth in a Liturgy of the Word with the distribution of Communion, which only emulates the Eucharistic celebration.

What does the Domestic Church have which is lacking in the (larger) church?

* The Domestic Church has an individual spirituality. It has its own forms of celebrating, and leaves room for spontaneity and the expression of emotions.
* The Domestic Church has no hierarchy. Everybody participates according to his or her abilities. Each member is an actor, and not just a consumer.
* The Domestic Church does not excommunicate. Each person remains a family member, independently of his or her attitudes or actions. Communal celebration has priority over disciplinary actions. A spirit of reconciliation should prevail.
* The Domestic Church enforces honesty. “Unchristian” behaviour will come to light. Sincerity and a readiness to forgive are expected. Trusting the other is a basic principle.
* The Domestic Church provides a spiritual education and enables spiritual accompaniment and development for children which is appropriate at every age and stage of development. Faith can be experienced through the example of parents.

How, when and where do we experience unity and community in personal partnerships, marriage, family, family circles etc.?

* In everyday family life even if there are different opinions.
* Whenever we act together: go to church, do the shopping, go out for the day, etc.
* Whenever we face problems: when somebody is sick, gets hurt or has difficulties. In these cases, we all together take care of the family member who is in need.
* At events, parties, family celebrations etc.
* Whenever we make plans together, e.g. to go on holiday
* When the extended family is gathered
* In Bible Study groups or house groups
* As a couple, particularly in older age when one partner needs the other progressively more
* When the Protestant mother prepares her child together with other children for First Communion or Confirmation
* Whenever we have time for each other and do something together
* Whenever we spend time together with our children
* When it happens that my partner tells me: “that is exactly what I was going to say or to do”
* When we come to agreements despite having different opinions and needs
* When we realize that we are in close agreement with each other in spite of our different Christian traditions
* Whenever I experience the other church as enriching.

How can the lived unity in the interchurch family have its impact on the Church as a whole?

A successful interchurch family can be a model for the separated churches. Interchurch families offer added value. They live out new forms of consideration for others.

* It is enriching whenever children grow up in an interchurch family. Our children experience ecumenism and this widens their horizon.
* There are priests who deliberately make contact with interchurch couples and families and who accommodate them (not at a higher level).
* If the churches would meet each other on an existential level as intensively as interchurch families do, the unity of Christians would be much closer.
* For the churches to see each other as enriching, just as we as interchurch partners do in our families, they should not only talk to each other, but live with each other.
* The churches ought to learn that the truth is not owned by just one partner, but that the other’s opinion also counts.
* The churches need to develop a mutual understanding just as family members have to do every day if they want to live together.
* Unfortunately, the churches do not regard interchurch families as Domestic Churches. Not much can be expected in this regard. The question then arises, however, what will be the consequences if our experiences are permanently ignored by the churches?
* In the present situation (large pastoral units, foreign priests) the church is no longer experienced as a home. The domestic church will become ever more important.
* A concrete example in the RC parish of Axams: parents have brought their family celebrations with young children on to the parish level; every Sunday there is now a child-friendly celebration by and for families with young children in the parish hall.

Concerning the notion of “Church” with regard to the spiritual household:

* Church is perceived in different ways. On the one hand it is a celebrating community consisting of people who know each other and who meet each other in daily life, beyond the church. In this case, church would be an extension of the Domestic Church. But today this is only the case in small villages. As a rule, church attendance has become anonymous. Church goers do not know each other, and often they even do not know the priest either.
* On the other hand, the Church is perceived as a moralizing and disciplining institution. The Catholic Church’s self-understanding is that of a universal church that issues universal rules and does not allow any separate provision for local problems.
* The notion of “Church” has a rather negative connotation today – because of its history (inquisition, burning of witches, Renaissance papacy etc.) and because of current events (paedophile priests and bishops, obscure money transactions, supporting conservative rulers in Latin America etc.).

Loving the Universal Church through a Spouces Church

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:26:40 GMT

Loving the universal Church through a spouse’s church

by Pastor Jean-Baptiste Lipp

The context from which I speak is that of being both a Pastor of the Reformed Church in Switzerland and also a member of an interconfessional family. My wife is a practising Catholic, and with our three children our religious life is shared within our two churches.

Through the centuries Switzerland has learned peaceful confessional co-existence, and the two majority Christian confessions are on an equal footing. At the national level, they are more or less equal in strength. In spite of a difficult ecumenical summer, following the publication of recent Roman documents, our churches know that it is in their interest to work together.

I come from the Canton of Vaud, where the two main Protestant churches – the established church and the free church – came together to form one body in the mid-1960s. My father came from the free church, my mother from the established church. In the Canton of Vaud the ecumenical climate is such that recently the Cathedral of Lausanne was loaned by the Protestants to Christians of other confessions, and notably for the celebration of the Roman Catholic mass. In addition an ecumenical celebration takes place there each month, for which the member-churches of the Council of Christian Churches in the Canton of Vaud are responsible in turn. Various ecumenical groups are also invited to lead it, such as the foyers mixtes, who did so in September 2006…

I must explain why I, a Pastor, am committed to the movement of the foyers mixtes, or rather as we call them today foyers interconfessionelles (since it is not all mixed marriages – far from it – who practice in both their churches). To do so I need to quote two phrases that have left their mark on me. They both date from the late 1980s, one when I was on the threshold of my married life, and the other on the threshold of my life as a Pastor in my church.

When I was on the point of becoming a probationer Pastor, I got to know my future wife, and we talked together of our links with our respective churches. Dominique said to me: ‘I love my church.’ This ‘declaration of love’ for the church that had led her to faith and offered her spiritual nourishment deeply impressed me! And the further we have travelled together, the more I have learned to respect, and even to love, my wife’s ‘I love my church’. Still, it was clear to me that while marrying a Catholic in a Catholic parish church, I was not marrying the Catholic Church. This was a position that I had to defend in 1987 when I went before the ordination board. They had a double anxiety about my case. Not only were we married in the Catholic church (anxiety in spite of the presence of my Pastor at the ceremony), but also I was intending to serve in the Reformed parish in Fribourg, the capital of a Canton with a Catholic majority. However, it seemed to me very clear that I could have a greater confidence in my relations with the Catholic Church, thanks to Dominique’s attachment to her church. Together, we were going to live the joys and the sorrows of the other’s church, that other church that little by little was to become our own too …

I also remember what was said by my sponsor for ordination, Bernard Reymond, a liberal theologian and professor of pastoral theology at the University of Lausanne. When I asked his advice as to my participation from time to time at mass and the eucharist, in company with my spouse, he replied: ‘Be careful, because you, as a Pastor, are a representative figure’. I realised on the one hand that my Fribourg parishioners saw no problem with this occasional participation, and on the other hand that more and more couples are confessionally mixed (25% in the Canton de Vaud). So it seemed clear to me that the point about a ‘representative figure’ could – indeed should – be reversed. It should be reversed so that I could be at the service of the new socio-ecclesial reality that we are experiencing. I could become a representative figure for increasing numbers of parishioners, refusing to accept the current idea that the mixed confessionality of our family is simply a private matter …

Thus I have called my presentation ‘Loving the universal Church through the church of a spouse’. For basically, ecumenism can be compared to the life of a couple. To make progress, it needs committed partners. But commitment requires certain conditions: mutual knowledge, recognition, dialogue, respect, and even … love. Ecumenical living certainly has something in common with the life of a couple. And yet, during a recent weekend conference of Swiss foyers mixtes, a group reflected that ‘We love one another, but we belong to churches that do not love one another!’.

‘We love one another, but we belong to churches that do not love one another!’ The sentence is shocking, perhaps unjust. But it reflects how many interconfessional couples feel. (I pay tribute, in passing, to the happy expression of our Austrian friends on the subject of the particular contribution made by the ‘Konfessionsverbindenden Familien’ to the ecumenical movement: ‘Wir haben die Kompetenz der Betroffenen!’. That is: ‘We have the authority of those who are affected!’) If the churches do not always love one another, or do not show it enough, they know all the same that they are called to love one another more, and to keep together. This is so even in times of ecumenical bad weather and storms (as was the case in the summer of 2007 in Switzerland!).

It has been repeated often enough: the ecumenical movement is irreversible. But we have to choose between an irreversibility that comes from reason and an irreversibility that stems from love … . Using the metaphor of marriage, I would put it like this, on the European level: the churches can no longer ‘divorce’ from their ecumenical Charter. They have signed it! And do we need a reminder that the pastoral care of the churches for mixed marriages is an explicit commitment of the Charta Oecumenica? In fact, in section 4 it is stated that ‘Couples in interdenominational marriages especially should be supported in experiencing ecumenism in their daily lives’. We were glad to hear the message of our friend Cardinal Walter Kasper, in the plenary session this morning: ‘We have stretched out our hands to each other and do not want to let them go again.’ The churches have held out their hands to each other; fine. So have mixed couples! Should we not think – and more seriously than ever before – of these two realities together, and do so on the pastoral, spiritual and theological levels?

Whenever the churches are tempted to halt or turn back, interconfessional families are faced with the prospect of continuing their ecumenical journey alone. In this situation they are strongly tempted to be discouraged, to distance themselves from one or other of their churches, if indeed it is not from both of them! I would like to defend the idea that the love of committed mixed couples and the mutual love of the churches for one another are more strongly linked than might have been thought. There is a link of solidarity, an interdependence between the family cell and the big ecclesial bodies to which we belong by our baptism. This relationship can be expressed in four simple phrases:

1. The husband loves his church;

2. The wife loves her church;

3. The husband loves his wife, and the wife loves her husband;

4. But what about the love that the husband has for the church of his wife (and vice versa)??

We dare to believe, when we try to draw out the inescapable consequences of the teaching of our churches on marriage and family life, that a link exists between the macrocosm of ecumenism (local, national, international), and the microcosm of interconfessional families. Of course it would be very practical for the churches if all the mixed couples simplified their mixedness. And most of them do. Here, it is the case of the partner who changes his or her confession. There, it is that of the partner who renounces the task of passing on his or her faith to the children. Sometimes it is the mother’s confession that is deemed more important. Sometimes the Prussian model is followed … . But is it really acceptable to renounce such a responsibility?

In practice, one has to be glad when one of the two partners is practising, and wants to pass on the faith to the children. But in a Christian family the churches expect the commitment of both parents, not the disengagement of one of them – see the promises made at baptism. The need for the commitment of both parents is taken seriously by committed mixed couples. It is not enough for them to be mixed sociologically, statistically or culturally; they intend to remain faithful to, linked with, both their churches and to love them both, without any exclusion. As time passes, they will learn to love both their own church and that of their partner at the same time. As the years go on, they will pass on the love of the one and of the other church to their children … .

To finish, how can I define interconfessional families? A number of images have been used by these families, or by the ministers who accompany or advise them. As we know, images have both their strengths and their weaknesses. Here are a few:

1. Footbridges. That is the image chosen by the young Association of Interconfessional Families of Switzerland (AFI-CH). The foot-bridge has a lot in common with the weightier structure of a bridge, but it is more fragile. However, the function of a footbridge is to link together two banks, sometimes over a very deep ditch. Thinking of bridges, my wife and I stopped for a while at Budapest, en route between Lausanne and Sibiu. We saw in the guide-book that there are eight bridges which link together the two ancient cities of Buda and Pest, signifying both their unity and their difference. Do our churches realise that they are linked together like Buda and Pest, by a growing number of families who are footbridges?

2. Islands. Sometimes they are seen as islands of reconciliation. That is good, but in the long term an island risks being considered isolated, in an exceptional situation. Have the churches realised how much population movements have broken up their traditional lands? Have they understood the great opportunity they have if there is a real pastoral encouragement for mixed marriages to become interconfessional families?

3. Explorers. This image has its possibilities. But are we as explorers really considered to be such by the groups to which we belong? The role of the explorer is to be a kind of go-between for the territory that is being explored and the land occupied by the group. When we see the number of people at this hearing (the representatives of Associations of Interchurch Families and a few sympathisers) we may well doubt it! The churches, our churches, are they seriously interested in thinking of us as explorers of new possibilities? In the excellent letter that he sent to the 300 participants in the Second World Gathering of Interchurch Families at Rocca di Papa in 2003, Cardinal Kasper wrote to us: ‘We have much to learn from your experience’. But where are the places of real sharing? Where is the real interest of church leaders, at the level of national conferences, of dioceses, of parishes?

4. Domestic church. The term is patristic, a promising one for a better recognition of interconfessional families, especially for the thorny question of eucharistic hospitality. At the First World Gathering of Interchurch Families in July 1998 at Geneva, the then Secretary-General of the World Council of Churches, Konrad Raiser, encouraged us to explore this traditional term in order to get a better recognition of the reality of who we are. In the informal meeting that some of us had at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity at Rome in October 2005, our hosts listened to us carefully and warmly encouraged us to explore that paradigm, rather then the problematic one of ‘double belonging’. As a result we have decided to study ‘domestic church’ as a theme for our on-going theological reflection, both in our national associations and in our international network. For an update I hand over to my neighbour, Thomas Knieps Port-le-Roi, Professor at the University of Louvain and a committed member of our movement.

Fourty Years of InterChurch Families

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:23:16 GMT

The British Association of Interchurch Families celebrated its fortieth anniversary at The Hayes conference centre in Swanwick, Derbyshire over the Bank Holiday weekend, August 23-25 2008. Forty years earlier, in November 1968, the first national conference for mixed marriage couples had gathered at Spode House, the Dominican conference centre in Staffordshire. It was at that first meeting that the term ‘interchurch marriages’ was coined, to distinguish couples where a Roman Catholic is married to a Christian of another communion and both are committed to their respective churches, from other kinds of mixed marriages. The term has gained acceptance in many parts of the English-speaking world.

The Second Vatican Council had brought the Roman Catholic Church into the ecumenical movement. Pope John XXIII created a Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity early in the preparatory period, observers from other Christian churches were invited to the Council and treated as honoured guests, and the conciliar Decree on Ecumenism was promulgated in 1964. Inevitably the attitude of the Catholic Church to mixed marriages would have to change. In 1963 Dr Visser ’t Hooft, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, called mixed marriages and religious liberty test cases of the reality and depth of Catholic commitment to Christian unity. The conciliar Declaration on Religious Liberty was agreed in 1965, and the council fathers debated mixed marriages during the final session, but ran out of time and voted that the practical outcome should be left to the Pope. What was clear was that change was inevitable; in the light of Vatican II no longer could the Catholic partner be exhorted to ‘convert’ the other, nor the other partner be made to promise not to ‘pervert’ the Catholic’s faith and practice. No longer could both partners be required to promise that all the children of the marriage should be baptised and brought up as Catholics.

The Eastern Churches Quarterly changed its name to One in Christ in 1965, marking the fact that it was concerned not only with Catholic relations with eastern churches but also with general ecumenism. Spiritual ecumenism and pastoral questions were given particular importance. Even before this the ECQ had shown itself concerned with Anglican-Catholic marriages by publishing a dialogue on the subject between Martin Reardon and Fr Henry St John OP in the spring of 1964. The latter raised as a possibility, in cases where both partners were practising, ‘educating some of the children in the Catholic faith and others in that of the non-Catholic parent’. But a much bolder proposal was put forward in an editorial in One in Christ four years later (no.2, 1968). Here the suggestion was that in some cases it might be possible for parents in a mixed marriage to bring up their children within both their churches, and the children might not need to opt for one or the other until they left home. Responses to the proposal were requested.

In the meantime One in Christ had been reporting on the dialogues on mixed marriages that had begun between the Roman Catholic Church and other churches. These had taken place both in the Joint Working Group with the World Council of Churches, and in bilaterals with Methodists and Anglicans, and more locally in a Catholic/Reformed colloquium in the USA. It had published the text of the Instruction Matrimonii Sacramentum, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1966, and compared it with both the 1917 Canon Law and with the conciliar Votum on mixed marriages. It had studied the way in which the Instruction was being applied in France and in other continental countries, and this was important, as it seemed to be ignored in England. New things were happening elsewhere. There were dispensations for mixed marriages where no promise was made by the non-Catholic partner about the Catholic upbringing of the children, and simply a promise ‘to do what was possible’ by the Catholic. There were weddings in the other partner’s church, weddings in the context of Mass at which the other Christian partner could receive communion, and joint pastoral care of mixed marriages. But nothing of the kind was happening in England.

This was the climate in which the first Spode meeting took place. The idea of mixed marriage couples getting together came from a Congregational husband who had not spoken to his wife for a week after their baby was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church. His minister referred them to a mixed couple he had heard of: Martin and Ruth Reardon. Martin knew of many cases of difficulty over the promise on the Anglican side, as a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Roman Catholic relations. I had been trying hard as a member of the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Commission for England and Wales to work for implementation of the 1966 Instruction in England, together with the Secretary, Fr John Coventry, SJ. (The episcopal chair said it was impossible that Catholics would ever be allowed to bring up their children in a non-Catholic church.) We had at Spode 68 a Catholic girl who had married an Anglican priest earlier in the year in an Anglican church because they could not make the promise. They had tried hard to get a dispensation, and since the wedding they had been trying to get a convalidation, but the condition remained that the promise must be made. She had not been able to receive communion for months. But we also had at Spode an Anglican husband who had been given communion in Italy when he married an Italian girl the year before.

I think that all the future developments in the Association of Interchurch Families over the next 40 years were there in embryo at Spode 68. There was the sheer liberation of finding that there were other couples like ourselves – so many had felt isolated, treated as oddities by Catholic clergy if the non-Catholic partner in the marriage was practising in another church. I remember John Coventry’s big smile on the first evening when he said: ‘They’re so pleased to meet one another – we must do this again.’ There has been an annual conference ever since, moving to Swanwick in 1987 when Spode House closed. We formed an association for mutual support in 1969, and in 1970 we set up the first area groups, in London, Liverpool and Sheffield. Later we became a support network that could offer information to couples and clergy far beyond our own membership. In the 90s we moved our headquarters out of a private home into an office in London, where we patiently collected papers on different topics into packs that we could dispatch to enquirers – now of course we can use the internet.

Then, there were the canonical questions and how we were going to deal with them, and the underlying issues of conscience and authority which came to have great importance for interchurch families. The question of getting married and the promise dominated Spode 68. John Coventry gave a learned account of how the 1966 Instruction was being applied by some of the bishops in other countries of Europe. In 1970 the papal motu proprio Matrimonia Mixta used the experience gained from the 1966 Instruction to extend to the whole Roman Catholic Church the practice of asking only a qualified assurance from the Catholic partner about the Catholic baptism and upbringing of the children (to do all they could). No promise was asked from the other partner. This was an enormous change, absolutely crucial for interchurch families. Dispensations from canonical form could be given for the wedding to take place in the church of the non-Catholic partner, and there was provision for weddings to take place in the context of Mass. One in Christ studied the different ways in which Matrimonia Mixta was applied in different countries.

A very important question raised at Spode 68 was that of the upbringing of children in both churches as suggested in the One in Christ editorial of spring 1968, and the underlying issue of double belonging for the whole family. We did not then have the benefit of the responses to the editorial that were later printed in One in Christ. However, at Spode 68 a Catholic sister who was a child psychologist envisaged no psychological problems for the children provided the parents were fully united in their approach – and startled us by suggesting that the children might never need to choose between the churches. And whereas the changes to the promise made in the motu proprio of 1970 envisaged cases in which the children would not be brought up in the Roman Catholic Church but in another church, Matrimonia Mixta could actually be used as a basis for dual upbringing. If the Catholic had to do all possible for the baptism and upbringing of the children in his or her own church, well so in conscience did the other partner – and they could do it together, and not in opposition. In the forty years since then we have garnered the reflections of young adults who have had the experience of dual upbringing. They have discovered it to be enriching rather than confusing.

At Spode 68 we had a Bible study on marriage as a covenant relationship, reflecting the love of God for his people, of Christ for his church. It moved right through from the ‘one flesh’ of Genesis to the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation. One family put their talk on family prayers and worship in a mixed marriage on tape for the conference, because one of their five children went down with chicken pox on the very day they were all setting off for Spode. Later we realised that marital spirituality is fundamental for interchurch families – and family spirituality too. We applied the term ‘domestic church’ to interchurch families and are now exploring it further. We also discovered that our experience of cross-frontier marriage was of use in marriage preparation for all kinds of ‘mixed’ marriages, not just for interchurch marriages like ours.

Spode 68 was itself an exercise in the pastoral care of mixed marriages, in which couples themselves could help and support one another, encouraged by the clergy. A young priest with pastoral experience in a new town talked about the pastoral care of mixed marriages, and what might be possible. Soon after that we had considerable input into the document prepared by the Joint Working Group of the British Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales and in Scotland, entitled The Joint Pastoral Care of Interchurch Marriages in England, Wales and Scotland, published in 1971. Twenty years later the Association was involved in preparing the guidelines for the pastoral care of interchurch families, Churches Together in Marriage, prepared by the Group for Local Unity of Churches Together in England in 1994. We are still trying to encourage greater pastoral understanding of the need experienced by interchurch families for sacramental sharing – shared celebrations of weddings and baptisms, as well as sharing communion – as an expression and a deepening of their belonging in one ‘domestic church’ which is nourished by two church traditions. Much progress has already been made.

We claimed, in our final statement from Spode 68, that some mixed marriage couples had experienced the reality of Christian unity in a way not yet experienced by all members of their churches. This is still true. A desire to promote Christian unity has been a constant for interchurch families throughout the past forty years. They have a particular incentive to take part in ecumenical work, and many have been found working for unity at local, national and international levels. Their experience of living in one another’s traditions and growing in mutual understanding and love is a particular contribution they can make to the ecumenical movement; they can be signs to the churches on their way towards unity.

Spode 68 produced a final statement, which was sent to the meeting of the Anglican Communion-Roman Catholic Commission on Mixed Marriages that came together at Pineta Saccetti a few days later. It was the first of many papers sent to church leaders and theologians over the years. An outstanding one was that entitled Interchurch Families and Christian Unity adopted by the Second World Gathering of interchurch families from eleven countries held near Rome in July 2003. A small representative group from associations and groups of interchurch families including those from North America and Australia went in 2005 to discuss it with some of the staff of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and were much encouraged by their visit. Spode 68 had studied what had become possible in other countries, so far as the promise was concerned. At Spode 1969 we had speakers from France and Holland. In 1970 the joint pastoral care guidelines already mentioned were heavily influenced by some recently produced in France. International English-speaking conferences of interchurch families began in 1980, and the Rome Gathering in 2003 used four official languages. There is now an International Network of Interchurch Families.

English interchurch families were very pleased to have with them at their fortieth anniversary conference at Swanwick representative couples from other countries: from Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Ireland and Switzerland. There has been no large multilingual gathering since Rome 2003, although there was an English-speaking international conference in Australia in 2005, but international networking is carried on not only through the internet but by sending couples to other associations’ conferences. Recently a couple from England attended a conference in the Ukraine that was organised by the Ecumenical Institute at Lviv together with French foyers mixtes. International groups also get together to plan attendance at ecumenical events such as Assemblies of the World Council of Churches. The latest occasion was the Third European Ecumenical Assembly held at Sibiu in Romania in 2007.

At Swanwick 2008 there were reminiscences from those who had been at Spode in the early days of AIF. There were testimonies from some of those who had contributed more recently to the wider ecumenical movement – as County Ecumenical Officers, on the Roman Catholic/Methodist Committee, as interchurch family representatives in Churches Together in England, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, and so on. Have interchurch families made a difference? Our guest speakers at the conference, Canon Gregory Cameron, Deputy General Secretary of the Anglican Communion, Canon Bob Fyffe, General Secretary of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, and Fr Gerry Hughes, SJ, considered this question and seemed to think so. Another speaker was Thomas Knieps Port-le-Roi from Louvain University, who came to update the conference on the current state of the international interchurch families project on the notion of ‘domestic church’ and its relevance to our situation. Old friends came to join us at the celebration dinner, including Dame Mary Tanner, now a President of the World Council of Churches, and Fr Robert Murray, SJ, as well as some of the ‘older children’ who no longer come regularly to conferences, but want to remain in contact.

We had much to celebrate at the fortieth anniversary conference at Swanwick. But it was also a time for renewed commitment, for much remains to be done. We yearn for the time when there will be no more interchurch families, because all differences will have been gathered together and lived fully within one communion. Meanwhile, to quote the Rome paper, interchurch families ‘are called to witness by their lives, their actions and their words to the fundamental and growing unity of all Christian people, and to share a common life in the Church for the reconciliation of our churches’.

Ruth Reardon

Swanwick 2008

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:13:39 GMT

Stanwick 2008

View the Review document here

Reflections on Leaving Lviv

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:43:26 GMT

Fr René Beaupère OP of the Centre Saint-Irénée, Lyon, organised an International Seminar on Mixed Marriages together with Professor Antoine Arjakovsky, the Orthodox Director of the Ecumenical Institute of the Catholic University of the Ukraine. This took place in Lviv 17-21 July 2008, and local participants were joined by two interchurch couples from France, one from England, and a whole family of five from Switzerland. They stayed at the Greek Catholic Seminary of the Holy Spirit, while the conference sessions took place at the Ecumenical Institute. Speakers included the two organisers, Pastor Jean-Baptiste Lipp of the Swiss interchurch family association, the Rector of a Greek Orthodox parish in Lyon, and a number of clergy from the Ukraine, Latin Catholic, Orthodox, and two Greek Catholics. We give here an English translation of the ‘Envoi’ pronounced by René Beaupére at the close of the meeting.

Thanks to their ‘ecumenism of life’, interchurch families and their activity within the churches often present a challenge to ‘academic’ theologies. Indeed, not only to the theologies, but to some of those institutions themselves. I want to suggest four points for reflection on this subject.

Theology of marriage and pastoral care of the divorced

First, ecumenical families oblige the churches to revise their theologies of marriage, and their pastoral attitudes towards those who are divorced. In this particularly delicate area, today, it is probably that the positions taken by the three big confessional families are less different than would appear at first sight. Does it not seem that each of the traditions holds principally to one element of the Gospel heritage? In a world in which marriages often fail, one church is firm in holding on to ‘marriage for life’. Others practise better – each in its own way – evangelical mercy in the face of irreparable breakdown in some marriages.

Cannot the existence of mixed marriages call all these confessional families to a mutual ‘conversion’ that will allow them to rediscover the fullness of the Gospel message in this area? That presupposes a study together – hardly even begun yet – of the theology of marriage and the pastoral care of the divorced.

The practical recognition of ministries

Secondly, interconfessional families show the churches that they are further advanced than they realise or say in the recognition – at least partial – of their ministries. Half a century ago, in France and in Switzerland, pastors and priests committed themselves to journey together with interconfessional couples. But no church thought it had to verify, from one side or the other, their ‘letters of authorisation’ and ask whether such and such a minister could legitimately exercise pastoral care of sheep which did not belong to his own ‘fold’. Of course we did not speak about theological recognition of ministries, but there was a practical recognition of ministries, at least to a certain extent. Have the churches yet drawn out the ecumenical consequences of this practical recognition?

Orthodox and Greek Catholic live together within one tradition

Thirdly, along the same lines, have not we who come here from Western Europe learned that in the Ukraine marriages that we would spontaneously call interconfessional – I refer to those between an Orthodox and a Greek Catholic – are lived by the two spouses as though they are yoked together within the same confessional tradition? And even some theologians are inclined to see things in the same way. What consequences should we draw out from this for the reconciliation of the churches?

Sacramental sharing: baptism and eucharist

Fourthly, the existence of interchurch families should lead the churches to question themselves more seriously than they have yet done on the obvious contradiction between a mutually recognised baptism and a eucharist that bars sacramental sharing. Does this really give due weight to all the consequences of baptism? And why not admit that some differences may well disappear in the fire of a eucharist where mutual hospitality is practised?

We could make a longer list. But it seems to me that for now these four questions for reflection, roused in me or revived by an attentive listening to our speakers and our discussions, are enough.

It only remains for us all to commit ourselves, from the Atlantic to the Urals, to work for the increase of that little evangelical mustard seed that we have received here, in the Seminary of the Holy Spirit, in the monastery of Ouniv and in the Catholic University of this beautiful city of Lviv.

Interchurch Contribution - THE IARCCUM REPORT

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:49:18 GMT

THE IARCCUM REPORT GROWING TOGETHER IN UNITY AND MISSION

During the meeting of the General Synod of the Church of England in February 2008 one of the items on the agenda was consideration of the Report of the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission (IARCCUM). This report was entitled Growing Together in Unity and Mission: Building on 40 years of Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue: an Agreed Statement of the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission. (For an interchurch family perspective on the IARCCUM Report see IFIR no.7, October 2007.) A new member of the Synod and a long-standing member of the British Association of Interchurch Families, Lucy Docherty, addressed the Synod on this subject. She pointed to the way in which interchurch families could make a contribution to local implementation of some of the IARCCUM suggestions for deepening relationships between the churches, and also spoke of the urgent pastoral needs of such families. We give her text in full.

Mr Chairman,

Thank you for calling me to speak. This is not only my maiden speech but also my first time at Synod, and I do not think that there is any other subject that could possibly have tempted me from the security of my seat in the back row. But on this subject I have felt compelled to brave the microphone to offer an experiential rather than a theological contribution.

I speak as someone who has a great personal interest in there being at some time a successful outcome to all the discussions and deliberations between our church and the Roman Catholic church. I have been married for nearly 28 years to a Roman Catholic and throughout our marriage we have continued to practice as both Catholic and Anglican whilst also supporting each other totally in our respective churches and their communities. Indeed we are what is often called an interchurch family – and here I want to pay tribute to the work of the Association of Interchurch Families which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year and has been an absolute lifeline of support and encouragement both to my family and many others as they struggle to live out their marriages in the context of a divided church.

So I have a close and personal interest in the outcome of the various discussions and reports – and there have been so very many (some with remarkable acronyms) as our respective churches struggle with the complexities that divide us. There have been highs and lows, but on the whole, matters have moved forward, albeit at an achingly slow pace for those couples and their families who are living with the division on a daily basis and for whom there is a pastoral and personal urgency which does not allow for deliberation over the decades.

The Faith and Order Advisory Group’s response to the report, Growing Together in Unity and Mission , is measured – perhaps too measured – a breath of optimism for future processes would have been welcome, but perhaps I ask too much!

As it stands there can be little to argue with about this motion or the background report, but neither is there really anything to remember – nothing for Synod reps to write up and talk about with any great degree or enthusiasm on their return to their parishes.

So I am asking colleagues to remember that there are many things we can do at a local level to encourage better relationships between our churches - and some of these actions are helpfully listed in Part 2 of the IARCCUM report so I will not repeat them here.

But, one of the best things we can do is to make use of interchurch couples and families, if our parishes have this resource, for as Pope John Paul II said when he visited York in 1982 “You live in your marriage the hopes and difficulties of the path to Christian Unity”.

Colleagues, for many of you the disunity between our churches is, I am sure, a cause for concern, perhaps even shame; but for many, many others this disunity is a real and living pain which they live with every day, as we have already heard. I urge you not to forget the pastoral needs of these families, and to remember that we are encouraged to implement local initiatives which foster greater unity – and if you are in any doubt as to what you should do – ask an interchurch family!

Difficulties and Benefits

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 09:57:58 GMT

The following are some of the responses to an email sent to the members of the aifw listserv in January 2008

The most difficult thing I find about The thing I appreciate most about

being in an interchurch family is... being in an interchurch family is...

the feeling of having to defend my church's beliefs * meeting Christians of other denominations and learning

(at times) from their faith walk.

to respect the differences, and to learn about each * if we really care to see the good things instead of the

other faith weaknesses, you will learn lots of things

being keenly and consistently aware of church divisions * the chance to participate with two very different parishes,

which many people don't notice and aren't bothered by both of which we really enjoy.

understanding the complexities of my husband's fierce

belonging to the Roman Catholic Church. Supporting * an enhanced mindfulness of the outsider. When in a

over the past several years what seems to me to be a Christian setting, I try to speak and behave as though non-

relatively inactive style of belonging has somehow felt members of my community are present and to be included.

less straightforward than supporting regular dual

attendance and involvement. But it's about support, isn't it? * that as our marriage has matured we have grown and

matured ourselves in our individual and shared faith, and

talking to other Christians in enough depth, including the this has deepened our love for each other in its turn and

clergy, about our unity in Baptism and Marriage, as very enabled us to minister to others, not least our children.

often others just don't have the experience to identify with

our situation. * the huge amount I have learned about my personal

Christian faith and my birth family's (URC+Anglican) and

the way same-church couples or fervent + agnostic are my worship family's (Anglican - i.e. Church of England given

accepted easily and we - interchurch families - are where I live) through getting to understand and learn about

discriminated against/ treated differently at God's table/ and learn from and enjoy and value the faith-traditions of

thought difficult/challenging the actual spouse and her birth and worship family (Roman

Catholic)

I honestly believe my faith and love of God would not be as

rich and as deep and as well-founded on the Rock as it has been due to my "marrying out" and often therefore "playing

away"! I also think our children have benefited from being

brought up in a family of Christian first, church member

second and lots of flexibility in that church membership,

without preconception that they "cannot be both"; as a

matter of reality they know they belong in the family of

their mother and their father and that we belong in each

other's church family's too

The Domestic Church: Report on Conversations by AAIF

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:46:00 GMT

‘The Domestic Church’

Report on Conversations by AAIF (The American Association of Interchurch Families) for IFIN (Interchurch Families International Network) Research- / Study-Group

November 2007

Conversations among AAIF couples in the United States during late Summer and Fall 2007 offer a unique perspective on the topic of “the Domestic Church.” This report attempts: (1) to summarize; and (2) to offer a synthesis of various comments, critiques, and responses to the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on the family as “domestic church” (especially in its contemporary articulation by Pope John Paul II).

Two key comments that were frequently remarked include:

“The domestic church” is primarily intended to describe (define?) Catholic families in which the spouses are both Catholic.
The term “the domestic church” may have some resonance with interchurch families vis-à-vis their realization that both the “nuclear family” and the “extended ‘family” are where Christians learn, absorb, and practice the fundamentals of life and faith.

Other insightful points of discussion included the following:

1. One participant recalled hearing on that very day the NRP (National Public Radio) feature which reported that “the family that eats together becomes a successful family.” It echoes the familiar axiom, “The family that prays together stays together.” What is paramount is the realization that sharing ideas, talking about faith (ranging from statistics to various studies) does take place in our families. Another participant reported that one of her M.A. program teachers asked student to “journal” how different members of the extended family taught her stewardship and related values that touch upon social justice. It proved to be an important exercise in a personal history of tracing influences from the extended “family of origin”—which included various ecumenical dimensions because of “mixed marriage” and interchurch elements.

2. Several groups reported how the Jewish Sabbath Dinner has parallels in Christian families’ observance of the Sunday dinner. One remarked how the ritual preparation of the family’s bread for Sunday dinner had grown into a natural occasion to discuss faith. Another person commented upon the Sunday dinner tradition in the Protestant South of the U.S.A. Other ethnic traditions for Sunday dinner were recollected. One person identified the especially strong tradition of all the married children (now adults) gathering at the home of Italian parents every Sunday for dinner. It was remembered by this person as a key experience of “the church of their home-of-origin” and a grace for their family experience. Another participant reported that the daily dinner table was where he picked up “social ideas” and “values” in his home; the same happened in his interchurch family’s experience because both he and his wife grew up in such homes. Others remarked how even in extended family gatherings they distinctly remember how an Aunt or Uncle would narrate family stories which proved to be the source of shared history and shared identity.

3. One interchurch spouse pointed out how the discovery of “similarities” in both churches of an interchurch family affords the best example of Christian Unity—it becomes especially poignant (and ironic!) because what they find absent in both their churches becomes visible and self-evident in their home: harmony, support, and mutual loving.

4. At another extreme, one group reported at length that in the U.S.A. the use of the term “domestic church” is highly problematic. First, the word “domestic” in American parlance does not immediately connote a “warm” or necessarily “familial” context. We “domesticate” pets; we hire “domestics” to clean house, to do laundry, and to cook meals. There was a consensus in this group that “domestic church” as an image / metaphor did not communicate anything “visual” or immediately identifiable in our context of the U.S.A. culture.

5. Taking another direction, a woman from another group pointed out that we need to think of the family as “church”—but not in an institutional sense. Her group agreed that interchurch families experience a distinct sense of “unity” in their home that is different from the church-as-institution. Ecumenical couples (and their children) do talk about religion, morality, and God in the setting of their home in ways that are different from how these are discussed in the institutional church, Sunday school, or parochial school.

6. The beauty of an interchurch family was described in terms of the Protestant spouse coming to understand the “foreign” Roman Catholic Church, and vice versa. Significant “learning” of this kind takes place in interchurch families. The question of the religious identity of children is frequently raised, however. Why is it that people jump to the conclusion that these children are merely “generic” Christians? Several expressed disappointment that many unfairly label interchurch children this way (especially clergy and hierarchy / church leaders, and some religious educators).

7. One woman insisted that (all) children in our church / parochial schools need to think “what is a domestic church”? Children need to be asked, “Who passed on to you Christian values?” It may be something as simple as a recollection of who taught them to pray? What prayers? Which family member (grand-parent, an aunt or uncle) taught them to hold hands when praying together a table blessing or the Lord’s Prayer? We likewise need to take more initiative along these lines when children prepare for Confirmation (in the U.S.A., around the 8th grade or age 14-15 years). Children are starting to frame their own religious thoughts / reflections around family. In church-related high schools, the retreat programs confirm that many such young people identify as “I was raised Roman Catholic / Episcopalian, etc. but I don’t go to church.” This mirrors the sociological surveys in which many young Americans self-identity as “spiritual” but not “religious.” Several parents admitted that our young people’s Sunday athletic events (soccer, football, lacrosse, field hockey) conflict with church schedules. It may be fair to say, all agreed, that in the U.S.A. families are “over-programmed” and there are multiple distractions in teenager’s lives: Sunday athletic events, the mall / consumer culture, cinemas, etc. Yet these are the same youth who respond to spirituality and some church events because they want and need the nurture.

8. One interchurch parent described how interchurch families “go through stages” when they do not, in fact, go to their churches. “We give ourselves permission,” she said. Sometimes when there are these very immediate and real “conflicts” in the schedule, we don’t even discuss the matter,” she confessed, “because the demands are really extraordinary in the lives of our children.” In an equally honest remark, an interchurch father replied to the question, “Do interchurch children / teens claim a ‘connection’ with the Church?” He keenly described it, “The kids are not worried about it!” They don’t want to get caught up in a particular church’s rules or exclusive values. Instead, they are happy when the 2 churches of their family manifest mutual support and invite them to be involved. This man went on to say that the “gift of interchurch families” is their perception of “overwhelming similarities” in their 2 churches; they resist the common tendency to focus on “differences.” In the end, such children and teens remark that their experience in 2 such churches is healthier than that of most peers who must deal with a single church that resists ecumenical realities. They are pleased that they could go to either church without asking anybody “permission.” A related comment reminded us that these young peoples’ participation in the church needs to be seen from the perspective of a long-term spiritual journey. While fewer of the young (including interchurch teens) go to church, this person said, they identify with a “sacramentality of life” instead of identifying church as a matter of “accomplishment.” Because their diets consist of “fast foods” they face a counter-cultural challenge to return to the churches’ sense of “slow food,” i.e., to recover a sacramental ‘eating’ at the Eucharist.

9. A final topic that addresses interchurch families (and, remotely, “the domestic church”): How is ‘handing-on-the-faith’ and parenting (by both same-church and interchurch couples) affected by parents’ “nostalgia” about their own religious identity? One Roman Catholic-Protestant couple reflected on their son’s marriage to a Roman Catholic. Because his wife was Catholic, he now participated exclusively in the Roman Catholic Church. Was this interchurch son neglecting his Protestant identity—which was half of the reality of his upbringing? Another couple (Roman Catholic-Episcopalian) remarked that their daughter writes to the Episcopalian pastor because this is a person who is also a parent. She writes to discuss the identity of her unborn daughter. It would be hard to do that in the same way with a Catholic priest, who is neither a spouse nor a parent. This discussion proved very insightful and participants thought it worthy of future discussion. One woman, herself the daughter of an early interchurch marriage, recollected that she had gotten into touch with her Catholic roots when she and her husband purchased a farm—and she retrieved an emphasis on “simplicity” at the farm. She suggested there are similar ways that we can retrieve and identify with various dimensions of our interchurch genealogy. This could prove to be another frontier—exploring the sense of the multi-generational interchurch family as “the domestic church” with a marbling of traditions, religious identities, and values.

George A. Kilcourse, Jr.
Professor of Theology
Bellarmine University
Louisville, KY 40205
U.S.A.
gkilcourse@bellarmine.edu

Loving the universal Church through a spouse’s church

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 13:10:27 GMT

Loving the universal Church through a spouse’s church

Pastor Jean-Baptiste Lipp

1. The husband loves his church;
2. The wife loves her church;
3. The husband loves his wife, and the wife loves her husband;
4. But what about the love that the husband has for the church of his wife (and vice versa)??

1. Footbridges.
That is the image chosen by the young Association of Interconfessional Families of Switzerland (AFI-CH). The foot-bridge has a lot in common with the weightier structure of a bridge, but it is more fragile. However, the function of a footbridge is to link together two banks, sometimes over a very deep ditch. Thinking of bridges, my wife and I stopped for a while at Budapest, en route between Lausanne and Sibiu. We saw in the guide-book that there are eight bridges which link together the two ancient cities of Buda and Pest, signifying both their unity and their difference. Do our churches realise that they are linked together like Buda and Pest, by a growing number of families who are footbridges?

2. Islands.
Sometimes they are seen as islands of reconciliation. That is good, but in the long term an island risks being considered isolated, in an exceptional situation. Have the churches realised how much population movements have broken up their traditional lands? Have they understood the great opportunity they have if there is a real pastoral encouragement for mixed marriages to become interconfessional families?

3. Explorers.
This image has its possibilities. But are we as explorers really considered to be such by the groups to which we belong? The role of the explorer is to be a kind of go-between for the territory that is being explored and the land occupied by the group. When we see the number of people at this hearing (the representatives of Associations of Interchurch Families and a few sympathisers) we may well doubt it! The churches, our churches, are they seriously interested in thinking of us as explorers of new possibilities? In the excellent letter that he sent to the 300 participants in the Second World Gathering of Interchurch Families at Rocca di Papa in 2003, Cardinal Kasper wrote to us: ‘We have much to learn from your experience’. But where are the places of real sharing? Where is the real interest of church leaders, at the level of national conferences, of dioceses, of parishes?

4. Domestic church.

The term is patristic, a promising one for a better recognition of interconfessional families, especially for the thorny question of eucharistic hospitality. At the First World Gathering of Interchurch Families in July 1998 at Geneva, the then Secretary-General of the World Council of Churches, Konrad Raiser, encouraged us to explore this traditional term in order to get a better recognition of the reality of who we are. In the informal meeting that some of us had at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity at Rome in October 2005, our hosts listened to us carefully and warmly encouraged us to explore that paradigm, rather then the problematic one of ‘double belonging’. As a result we have decided to study ‘domestic church’ as a theme for our ongoing theological reflection, both in our national associations and in our international network. For an update I hand over to my neighbour, Thomas Knieps Port-le-Roi, Professor at the University of Louvain and a committed member of our movement.

Pastor Jean-Baptiste Lipp

This article was published in the October 2007 issue of Interchurch Families Issues and Reflections.

ARCIC AND IARCCUM: AN INTERCHURCH FAMILY PERSPECTIVE

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:54:46 GMT

Mississauga

How do we gather together the fruits of the Anglican-Roman Catholic international theological dialogue (the work of ARCIC) over the period since Archbishop Michael Ramsey’s visit to Pope Paul in 1966, and draw out the practical conclusions that should be seen in the life of our two Communions? That was the question that faced the gathering of Anglican and Roman Catholic primates and bishops convened by Cardinal Edward Cassidy, then President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, at Mississauga, Toronto, Canada, in May 2000. Without bringing the theological work of ARCIC to an end, the Mississauga gathering asked for the establishment of a new commission, composed largely of bishops. It was ‘to oversee the preparation of a Joint Declaration of Agreement, and promote and monitor the reception of ARCIC agreements, as well as facilitate the development of strategies for translating the degree of spiritual communion that has been achieved into visible and practical outcomes’.

While welcoming the prospect of a Joint Declaration of Agreement, interchurch families had reason to be particularly interested in the practical outcomes that could be drawn for the life of the two Communions from the work of ARCIC. Both the statement issued at the end of the Mississauga meeting, ‘Communion in Mission’, and also the ‘Action Plan’ put forward to implement it, contained references to interchurch families. Communion in Mission (no.7) said that:

‘Though interchurch families can be signs of unity and hope, one pressing concern has to do with addressing the need to provide joint pastoral care for them. Sometimes those in interchurch families experience great pain, particularly in the area of eucharistic life.’

The Action Plan mandated the new Commission, among other things, ‘to examine the range of possible ways, within current canon law provisions, to deal generously and pastorally with situations of interchurch marriages involving Anglicans and Roman Catholics.’

The IARCCUM report

The International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission (IARCCUM) was duly set up, and has now produced its Report. This was published by SPCK early in 2007 as a 64-page booklet: Growing Together in Unity and Mission: Building on 40 years of Anglican/Roman Catholic Dialogue: an Agreed Statement of the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission. It was jointly issued in September 2007 together with a Catholic commentary by Bishop Bernard Longley, Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster, and an Anglican commentary and study-guide by Bishop Paul Richardson, Assistant Bishop in the Anglican diocese of Newcastle.

As the two co-chairs, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane and the Anglican Bishop of the Highveld, point out in their Preface, the ‘force of events, particularly difficulties in the life of the Anglican Communion, had its impact on the work of the Commission’. Thus the high hopes that resulted from the Mississauga meeting have not all been fulfilled. Instead of a ‘Joint Declaration of Agreement’ that could be signed at the highest levels of our Communions, Part One of the Report (48 pages) gives us ‘The Achievements of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue’ for study. It is however very useful to have this overview of ARCIC’s work, with its solid achievements and also the highlighting of issues that need further study. When it comes to Part Two, ‘Towards Unity and Common Mission’ (8 pages), there are four sections. ‘Visible expressions of our shared faith’ concentrates on liturgical possibilities. ‘Joint study of our faith’ recommends joint study of the Scriptures, study of the Agreed Statements of ARCIC, encouragement of national Anglican-Roman Catholic Commissions, and sharing of theological resources. ‘Co-operation in ministry’ encourages joint annual meetings of bishops. It advocates considering the association of Anglican bishops with Roman Catholic bishops in their ad limina visits to Rome, public acknowledging the fruitfulness of each other’s ordained ministries, the strengthening of relations between Anglican and Catholic religious orders, and the sharing of pastoral and spiritual care. ‘Shared Witness in the World’ covers joint approaches to public life, evangelism, schools, other religions.

Interchurch families
The short paragraph (116) on the sharing of pastoral and spiritual care mentions mutual spiritual direction, and then states: ‘Of particular concern in the area of ministry is the need to develop programmes of joint pastoral care for interchurch families (including marriage preparation) and to find ways to minister to their concerns.’

We can reasonably ask what has become of Mississauga’s specific reference to eucharistic life? And what happened to IARCCUM’s mandate given in the Action Plan ‘to examine the range of possible ways, within current canon law provisions, to deal generously and pastorally with situations of interchurch marriages involving Anglicans and Roman Catholic’? After seven years, the IARCCUM Report appears to be weaker than Mississauga’s recommendations so far as interchurch families are concerned. Did the canon lawyers ever get together?

Far more effort seems to have gone into IARCCUM’s 48 pages of theological activity than into the 8 pages on practical outcomes. Still, interchurch families remain on the agenda. It may be that no more can be done on the international level until more has been done nationally and regionally to put into effect the pastoral possibilities that already exist. That is up to the local bishops.

Bishop Bernard Longley’s Commentary on this section however will be very welcome to interchurch families; in fact, he develops the proposal of IARCCUM with real pastoral understanding. He says:

‘It is heartening that Growing Together in Unity and Mission singles out interchurch families as especially deserving recipients of shared pastoral and spiritual care. Interchurch families have a particular ecclesial significance, in part because they experience continuously and most intimately both the reality and the imperfections of the communion which Anglicans and Roman Catholics share. So the text is careful to recommend a specific approach: ‘Of particular concern in the area of ministry is the need to develop programmes of joint pastoral care for interchurch families (including marriage preparation) and to find ways to minister to their concerns’ (116). Such pastoral care and marriage preparation would need to be attentive to the principles set forth in the Ecumenical Directory (143-160). It would help to highlight both the needs of interchurch families, and that much may be learnt from their experiences and insights, if the ecclesial significance of interchurch families could be further explored within our two Connunions.’

Interchurch families will be grateful and happy if this approach is adopted.

Ruth Reardon

Are Interchurch Families Domestic

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:37:52 GMT

Are Interchurch Families Domestic Churches?

by Thomes Knieps Port-le-Roi, University of Louvain

3rd European Ecumenical Assembly
Sibiu, Romania, 4-9 September 2007

1. Preliminary remarks

Let me first say something very briefly about the Interchurch Families International Network (IFIN) which is presently engaged in a process of reflection and study on the theme of “interchurch families as domestic church”.

Despite earlier occasional contacts, a more structured international contact and cooperation between the various national organizations and associations began to take shape in preparation of and during two world gatherings which were held in Geneva in 1998 and in Rome 2003.

A first outcome of shared experiences and reflections across the national boundaries and contexts has been the Rome Paper “Interchurch Families and Christian Unity” adopted by the second world gathering in 2003, in which interchurch families from all over the world have explained how they see themselves by witnessing to their particular experience in and with their respective churches.

In Rome for a meeting with the PCPCU in 2005, representatives of IF associations from around the world agreed to form an umbrella group, Interchurch Families International Network (IFIN). In addition to its main task of facilitating international cooperation and discussion, IFIN has also the intention of acting as a pivot for further theological reflection and study about the particular experiences of IF and the possible contribution they may make to the ecumenical movement.

“Interchurch families as domestic church” is at the moment the primary focus of IFIN’s reflection. For that purpose, two parallel initiatives have been launched:

- first, a working group has been established to devote theological study to the notion of “domestic church” and to explore whether or not the term and concept may be useful to describe the particular situation and the ecclesial status of IF;

- second, within several national associations a sort of consultation process among the member families has been started to find out whether or not the term “domestic church” resonates with the lived experience of IF in their daily doings; to guide that consultation and discussion process we have put two questions to the IF :

How do you as an interchurch family experience unity in your marriage and family life?

How does this affect your understanding of the church(es)?

The first summary report of the outcome has been submitted by the UK AIF. Others are expected to follow from Switzerland and Canada. It is hoped that by integrating both components, theological study and the testimonies of lived experience, we will be able to come to some sort of conclusion (in whatever form) which may be helpful in further profiling the ecumenical relevance of IF on the basis of both their valuable experiences and their theological expertise.

2. The term and concept of “domestic church”

As a description of the Christian family, “domestic church” is a term which has become familiar in the Roman Catholic church since it was brought to usage in two texts of Vatican II:

In the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, the council fathers develop the idea of the church as “people of God” and indicate for a number of sacraments how they constitute a perfect illustration of the priestly character of this people of God. This is also the case for the sacrament of marriage, out of which the family comes forth:

From the wedlock of Christians there comes the family, in which new citizens of human society are born, who by the grace of the Holy Spirit received in baptism are made children of God, thus perpetuating the people of God through the centuries. The family is, so to speak, the domestic church. (LG, 11)

In a similar way, in the Decree on the apostolate of the laity, Apostolicam actuositatem, we find a paraphrase of the expression ecclesia domestica :

The family received from God the mission to be the primary living cell of society. It can fulfil this mission by showing itself, in the mutual loyalty of its members and in shared prayer offered to God, to be like a domestic sanctuary in the church; when the whole family is involved together in the liturgy; and when it offers generous hospitality and promotes justice and other good works in the service of the needy. (AA, 11)

Also in more recent magisterial teaching the term is frequently used. E.g. in the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio of 1981, John Paul II sets out to

examine the many profound bonds linking the Church and the Christian family and establishing the family as a "Church in miniature" (Ecclesia domestica), (…) in such a way that in its own way the family is a living image and historical representation of the mystery of the Church. (FC, 49)

“Domestic church” is also a prominent theme in Orthodox marriage theology. As one of the highlights of an Orthodox wedding the bride and groom are adorned with crowns; one of the many symbolic meanings attached to these crowns is to remind the spouses of their role as rulers or leaders of their own domestic church.

This reference to the family as church, however, seems to be far less familiar in the churches of the Reformation. One has to go back long into history to find at least some metaphorical reference to the church-like character of the family. In his commentary on one of St Paul’s “house church” texts (1 Cor 16,19), John Calvin remarks:

“What a wonderful thing to put on record, that the name ‘church’ is applied to a single family, and yet it is fitting that all the families of believers should be organized in such a way as to be so many little churches”. (John Calvin, Commentary on 1 Corinthians)

So, one has to be aware that the idea of the family as “domestic church” is at present mainly located in RC and Orthodox theology, but even within RC theology it seems far from being commonly accepted. One of the reasons why theologians have their reservations with regard to making the family an image or even a realization of the church has to do with the fact that already the early Christian tradition had an ambiguous relationship to the family.

Already in the NT we find two divergent, if not opposing, attitudes towards the family. On the one side, there is a strand which upholds that all kinds of blood and kin relationships or any other preferential social relationship are irrelevant, if not an impediment, for those following Christ. Family relations are explicitly relativized by the Jesus himself when he responds to his mother and brothers who are looking for him

Who are my mother and my brothers?’ ³⁴ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! ³⁵ Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’ (Mc 3,33-35)

Even more rigid is Jesus’ command in the Gospel of Luke where the terms of discipleship require that

²⁶ Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. (Lk 14,26)

On the other side, however, such anti-family tendencies of the Jesus-movement are counterbalanced by a different stance adopted by later Christian communities. The Pastoral Letters e.g. see a quite natural and altogether unproblematic analogy between the family and the church. The author of 1 Timothy describes the bishop as someone who

must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way – for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church? (1 Tim 3,4f.)

This view in which the church is regarded as a household, is also reflected in several patristic texts; at the end of the fourth century, John Chrysostom e.g. states

If we regulate our households [properly]…we will also be fit to oversee the church, for indeed the household is a little church. (John Chrysostom, Homily on Eph. 20)

For us today it seems much more problematic to take the family as an image for what the church as a whole might be like. Contemporary families have turned out to be fragile and prone to the influences of a growing individualization and pluralization, as the alarming statistics about marriage and subsequent family breakdown, the increasing number of single parenthood and the evidence of domestic violence show. So, is it realistic, let be desirable, to expect a renewal of the church(es) by resorting to one of the institutions which is hardly able to resist the present trends of social decomposition?

Moreover, do we not risk to raise only a specific type and ideal of family to the dignity of emulating the characteristics of the church, while others which do not fully correspond to that ideal are left to further disregard or even discrimination? One may become particularly suspicious here with regard to the RC church’s explicit preference for the family which is based on life-long marriage.

But even if such a division into first- and second class families could be avoided, do we not ask too much of contemporary families and put an additional burden on their shoulders when expecting them to become “churches in miniature”? Is it not high time for the churches to encourage and support families in their daily needs and sorrows instead of asking of them evermore engagement with regard to the transmission of faith and to serving as the last remaining bulwark of Christianity in a context of growing secularization?

As we can see, the concept of “domestic church”, although promoted by the official teaching of the RC church, is all but an indisputable one. But if that is so already for same-church families, what could be its usefulness for interchurch families?

3. Interchurch families as “domestic churches”?

Interchurch couples have greatly profited from the rapprochement of the churches as a fruit of the ecumenical movement which has brought about considerable legal and pastoral accommodation for their specific situation. Particularly within the younger generations, previously clearly defined denominational identities have lost their relevance in the daily living together. Thus, as a first statement in the summary report of the above mentioned consultation process in the UK, interchurch families declare that

We grow in love for one another. As parents we do our best to share our faith in Christ with our children. As families we are different from one another, as all families are. (Report on the AIF groups, Spring 2007, by Ruth Reardon)

Herein lies indeed a very specific experience and achievement which interchurch families have witnessed to in the Rome 2003 Paper “Interchurch Families and Christian Unity”. They characterize their spiritual communion as “mutual insertion and participation in the life of their two church communities” (C1).

It starts when spouses incorporate attitudes and practices that were formerly distinctive of one or other ecclesial tradition into their new religious identity, but gradually engages them in a much more challenging process of mutual exploration and learning. The document describes the various elements and the particular dynamic that are characteristic for this learning process: Thus, initial ignorance and prejudice give way to a growing understanding and a mutual appreciation of each other’s way of worship, church life, doctrine, spirituality, authority and ethics. On a more profound level, the “immersion in the ethos of a partner’s community can enable a spouse to evaluate the other church in terms of its own language and ways of thought, action and being” (C2). Finally, by their very presence and participation in each other’s congregation, interchurch families gradually build up an “inter-personal bridge of understanding and trust” (C4) and in this way contribute directly “to the formation of a connective tissue which supports, connects and heals parts of the Christian body that have been cut or broken in our sinful divisions” (ibid.). This specific experience makes them claim “to become both a sign of unity and a means to grow towards unity” (A) and thus to anticipate and prefigure an ecclesial communion that is otherwise not achieved by the official ecclesial bodies.

It is exactly this connection between and overlapping of the most ordinary interpersonal communion in marriage and family life in all its positive and negative aspects on the one side and the extraordinary and totally unparalleled ecclesial communion, that bringing together of two separated church communities, on the other side which makes me think that interchurch families are in a position to blow new life into the concept of “domestic church”.

One of the problems of the concept of domestic church when used in a same-church context is that families find themselves trying to model themselves on what they understand by church or on what theologically is understood by church. They are not encouraged to recognize the proper theological status of their own experience which is a gift (and sometimes a critical gift) to that larger church. Interchurch families, however, do not have a blueprint of what the unity of the church of Christ should look like; and yet they anticipate that unity, give it a visible, albeit inchoative, outlook in the very particular way they live their spousal and familial relationships within and across the divided ecclesial bodies they belong to.

…

It will require much more theological reflection to fathom the ecclesiological implications of what interchurch families are already living and witnessing to as “domestic churches”. One clear message of their testimony, however, is that the churches need to relate to one another in the way that interchurch couples do, if they really want to grow into unity. In the UK report, some suggestions have been formulated in this regard:

Love one another – in a real and deep and lasting way. Do separate churches really do this?

Get to know one another at a deep level: work at communicating, listening, sharing, praying.

Put faith in Christ first, more important than our differences.

Focus on what unites, learn to recognise and overcome intolerance, prejudice, tribalism, to distinguish essentials from non-essentials, to correct the myths in all churches about the others.

Be committed to unity, and be prepared to go through a painful process out of disunity because we have to find a way forward together.

Stay with it, in spite of frustrations and impatience: it takes a long time, but change does happen.

Believe that divisions can be overcome because unity is God’s gift to us in Christ. But don’t expect that we can receive perfectunity.

In God’s eyes we are one; it is people who introduce divisions.

Experience differences as enrichment, value and love the differences, see all that is good in the other. Look at differences together, not from opposite sides.

Be ready to change; institutions tend to be slower than married partners to realise they need to change, if the relationship is to progress. Sticking points can become growing points.

Difference and change need not be threatening if we love one another.

Be open to valuing and liking what your partner likes, though you do not have to like it all. We can disagree without falling apart.

Welcome differences as a stimulus to develop our own faith understanding, to look deeper.

Develop an inclusive attitude, hospitable and welcoming. Do well what you do well, and join in with others when they do things better.

Spend time in other churches; this is valuable for both you and the host community. You will understand more; they will have to watch what they say when they realise you are there.

Think of the ‘other’ in terms of who they are, not in terms of who you are (e.g. why use the blanket term ‘non-Catholics’).

Return to October 2007 IFIR

Are Interchurch families Domestic Churches?

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 13:15:18 GMT

3rd European Ecumenical Assembly Sibiu, Romania,
4-9 September 2007

Are Interchurch Families Domestic Churches?

by Thomes Knieps Port-le-Roi, University of Louvain

Preliminary remarks

“Interchurch families as domestic church” is at the moment the primary focus of IFIN’s reflection. For that purpose, two parallel initiatives have been launched:

How do you as an interchurch family experience unity in your marriage and family life? How does this affect your understanding of the church(es)?

The term and concept of “domestic church”

As a description of the Christian family, “domestic church” is a term which has become familiar in the Roman Catholic church since it was brought to usage in two texts of Vatican II:

In a similar way, in the Decree on the apostolate of the laity, Apostolicam actuositatem, we find a paraphrase of the expression ecclesia domestica:

Also in more recent magisterial teaching the term is frequently used. E.g. in the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio of 1981, John Paul II sets out to

Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’ (Mt 3,33-35)

Even more rigid is Jesus’ command in the Gospel of Luke where the terms of discipleship require that

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. (Lk 14,26)

This view in which the church is regarded as a household, is also reflected in several patristic texts; at the end of the fourth century, John Chrysostom e.g. states

If we regulate our households [properly]…we will also be fit to oversee the church, for indeed the household is a little church. (John Chrysostom, Homily on Eph. 20)

Interchurch families as “domestic churches”?

If one asks interchurch families these days how they see themselves, they most likely will respond that they are just the same as any other Christian couple and family. What used to be rare and exceptional cases for the longest time in the history of Christianity, have become almost normal in many regions where sometimes up to half of all marriages are concluded between spouses of different Christian traditions. Interchurch couples have greatly profited from the rapprochement of the churches as a fruit of the ecumenical movement which has brought about considerable legal and pastoral accommodation for their specific situation. Particularly within the younger generations, previously clearly defined denominational identities have lost their relevance in the daily living together. Thus, as a first statement in the summary report of the above mentioned consultation process in the UK, interchurch families declare that

We are just the same as other couples and families, united by our faith in Christ and our commitment to one another in marriage. We share our lives, our activities, our interests. We work to understand one another and to communicate with one another. We strive for sensitivity and we forgive one another when we fail. We laugh together, and we share one another’s sorrows. We respect one another. We grow in love for one another. As parents we do our best to share our faith in Christ with our children. As families we are different from one another, as all families are. (Report on the AIF groups, Spring 2007, by Ruth Reardon)

What is, however, particular to their situation is that they come from two different churches that are not in communion with one another, and that they try to be loyal to both in their marriages and family lives. Herein lies indeed a very specific experience and achievement which interchurch families have witnessed to in the Rome 2003 Paper “Interchurch Families and Christian Unity”. They characterize their spiritual communion as “mutual insertion and participation in the life of their two church communities” (C1). It starts when spouses incorporate attitudes and practices that were formerly distinctive of one or other ecclesial tradition into their new religious identity, but gradually engages them in a much more challenging process of mutual exploration and learning. The document describes the various elements and the particular dynamic that are characteristic for this learning process: Thus, initial ignorance and prejudice give way to a growing understanding and a mutual appreciation of each other’s way of worship, church life, doctrine, spirituality, authority and ethics. On a more profound level, the “immersion in the ethos of a partner’s community can enable a spouse to evaluate the other church in terms of its own language and ways of thought, action and being” (C2). Finally, by their very presence and participation in each other’s congregation, interchurch families gradually build up an “inter-personal bridge of understanding and trust” (C4) and in this way contribute directly “to the formation of a connective tissue which supports, connects and heals parts of the Christian body that have been cut or broken in our sinful divisions” (ibid.). This specific experience makes them claim “to become both a sign of unity and a means to grow towards unity” (A) and thus to anticipate and prefigure an ecclesial communion that is otherwise not achieved by the official ecclesial bodies.

Love one another – in a real and deep and lasting way. Do separate churches really do this?

Get to know one another at a deep level: work at communicating, listening, sharing, praying.

Put faith in Christ first, more important than our differences.

Focus on what unites, learn to recognise and overcome intolerance, prejudice, tribalism, to distinguish essentials from non-essentials, to correct the myths in all churches about the others.

Be committed to unity, and be prepared to go through a painful process out of disunity because we have to find a way forward together.

Stay with it, in spite of frustrations and impatience: it takes a long time, but change does happen.

Believe that divisions can be overcome because unity is God’s gift to us in Christ. But don’t expect that we can receive perfect unity.