He had expressed some interest in attending the information day on Anglicanorum coetibus that we're having here on December 12th, and he mentioned that he'd like to stop in and meet me sometime soon. I let him know I'd be delighted to see him, and we exchanged some possible dates and times. One of my suggestions was a time right after a weekday Mass which is attended by the students in our parish school. "In fact," I said, "maybe you'd like to come to the Mass, and we can meet right afterwards." That sounded like a great idea to him, and I thought we were set.
Then I got another email. "Am I ok for Holy Communion?"
I knew what he was asking, and I wondered why he would even ask. "Sadly, no," I wrote back, "I'm a man under orders, as I know you understand."
His response? Here's what he wrote: "This is one of the things that stands in the way of real unity—the RCC treats other Christians as though they aren’t really Christians—denying them the Body and the Blood. This is especially problematic in light of the fact that you and I do nearly the same service, and our ordinations share many of the same apostolic roots, along with a common apostolic succession. That’s gotta hurt the cause of Christ in a world that desperately, desperately needs Him."
It's probably my fault because I invited him to attend the Mass. Maybe that's why he took it as more than just an invitation to be there, although his response makes it obvious that he knew the answer before he asked the question. His blanket statement that Catholics treat others as though they're not really Christians is based solely upon the fact that we don't have a "come one, come all" policy at the Communion rail. He knows the Church doesn't deny that he's a Christian. In fact, the Church teaches explicitly that all those who are validly baptised belong to Christ. And then there's the subtle slap, that I'm hurting the "cause of Christ" because I won't give him Holy Communion.
The problem is, most protestants view Holy Communion as a means of achieving the unity Christ desires; whereas the Catholic understanding is that it's a sign of the unity of faith we're supposed to have already. How can we best understand the vast difference between those two understandings? Maybe St. Paul can help.
In his epistle to the Ephesians, he holds up the relationship Christ has with the Church as an image of the marriage relationship. And that image provides a helpful picture to us, when it comes to Holy Communion.
Probably we've all known young couples who decide that they're going to live together, and have a sexual relationship, because they think it will somehow bring them closer together, and help them find out if they should get married. In effect, they want to pretend they're married, in the hope that it'll lead to the real thing. Of course, it doesn't. It cheapens God's gift of sexuality. And even if they do eventually marry, you can be sure that the anniversary they keep isn't going to be the anniversary of the first time they slept together.
Having a sexual relationship outside of marriage gives a fake impression of a sacred union. It's unsatisfying, and eventually one or both of the partners starts to feel used. At some point there comes a desire either to end it, or else to make it permanent. It's only when a man and a woman have bound themselves together before God by "pledging their troth each to the other" - by making solemn vows to one another before God - it's only then that their sexual relationship can become what God intends it to be.
Keep that image in mind - the image of a man and woman bound by vows made before God. Now think about trying to achieve Christian unity by having everybody receive Holy Communion, no matter what they believe. It's like sex before marriage. It's only an illusion of unity.
9 comments:
Father Phillips,
Did you respond to him at this point to reinforce our view that we do not look down upon them as non-Christians simply due to our stance on communion? And furthermore, express interest in still meeting him?
The door of evangelization needn't be shut simply due to his harsh response.
God Bless!
What do you take me for, anonymous?! Of course I'm maintaining a nice correspondence, and we're still trying to find a time when we can get together.
Nice analogy linking the sacrament of the Eucharist and the sacrament of marriage.
I asked the same question before I began RCIA. The priest said, "That would be premature, like shacking in before you get married." My wife thought I'd be mad, but I finally realized that my priest had a backbone and was absolutely right.
No Episcopal priest would say the same thing because the Episcopal church is almost incapable of disciplining a priest who committed abominations and sacrileges with the Holy Communion, much less denying communion to someone who is a vocal dissenter from orthodoxy. By abdicating moral authority, the Episcopal church has by default surrendered its sacramental authority as well.
I must admit, however, that the first time a Catholic priest told me I was not to receive communion in a Catholic parish, I was offended. Ten years later, however, I accepted the Catholic Church's authority to referee the holy sacraments. However, many of my Episcopal friends and family cannot understand that Henry VIII severed the Church of England from the Holy See. It was not a gentle step away, but an ecclesial earthquake.
My story is here:
http://burketokirk.blogspot.com/2007/08/my-journey-home-to-rome-part-vii-four.html
Dear Father,
Thank you for your fine explanation, one that will be helpful to my own communications with relatives and friends outside of the RCC who claim that our practices divide rather than unite all Christians.
I remember a Methodist professor at Boston University School of Theology answering a Methodist student who made the exact same remark about "inhospitable, judgmental Roman Catholics . . . "
The professor said, "You may want to hold off condemning the Roman Catholic position until you've studied a little Methodist history to find out that we Methodists - as indeed almost EVERY OTHER Protestant Church - had NO tradition of 'open Communion' until the 20th century ecumenical movement decided to simplify everything into an 'it-really-doesn't-matter-what-you-believe-as-long-as-you-believe-in-something' principle."
He went on to say, "To the best of my knowledge, Roman Catholics coming to Communion never had to present 'Communion Tokens' as we Methodists once did, tokens passed out after members were interviewed and approved for acceptability at the Communion rail. Oh no, 'Open Communion' is something relatively new.'"
Ironic that when the Methodist ecclesia was most vibrant, it was even more exclusive in its communion than the Catholic Church.
Dear Fr. Phillips,
I am an admirer of your parish from afar--Vancouver, BC--where I serve as subdeacon in the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of New Westministe. I too am a convert, from Protestantism, currently completing my doctorate in theology at the Sheptytsky Institute in Ottawa.
While I very much appreciate your analogy for communicatio in sacris, and have employed in on numerous occasions myself, it breaks down somewhat, I daresay, when one considers the policy of the Church toward the Orthodox. We are indeed allowed to avail ourselves of their mysteries, in certain circumstances, although they generally do not permit us so to do, nor their own folk to do likewise chez nous. But the fact that it is even allowed--before we reach full, ecclesiastical communion--suggests the following adaptation to your analogy:
If a couple have been separated, even divorced, and decide to go on a date, and revisit their past, perhaps to sort our issues with their kids, and end up returning to one or the other's home to make love, might one not reasonably imagine how it might prove the beginning of a formal restoration of their marital relationship?
I know many Catholics, including myself, who feel probably similar feelings to your Anglican friend, when denied communion in Orthodox churches. They too respond that unity in the faith must precede sacramental unity. To which I am inclined to wonder whether the Catholic policy of welcoming Orthodox is not actually more appropriate--restoring intimacy, as it were, in order to build the trust necessary to heal the wounds of the past. I can see that your Anglican friend might think likewise.
Filial regards,
SbDcn. Brian Butcher
Thanks, Brian. I should think more about this before responding, but I won't let that stop me.
My first thought is that the relationship between Catholics and the Orthodox isn't so much a divorce as it is a separation. We acknowledge we have the same sacraments and a common belief about the sacraments. Not to press the analogy of marriage too far, but it seems to me that we're like a couple that is sacramentally married, but legally separated. Would it be immoral for such a couple to have sexual relations? Not at all. They are married.
But our relationship with the Anglicans is quite different. Their own teaching, as it is contained in such things as the 39 Articles, indicates that theirs is something quite new. They specifically deny the sacrificing priesthood, they count only two sacraments as being instituted by Christ, and the list could go on. Indeed, if we used the analogy of marriage in this case, I think a Tribunal would judge that there was no sacramental marriage because of the incapability of one of the partners to contract a marriage.
Those are just my initial thoughts, crude as they are, but you raise an interesting point.
for protestants who are used to identifying The Church universal with the set of all Christians, perhaps one should extend the analogy to:
The world says "if I'm in love, I have a right to sexual intimacy" (where "in love" might better be phrased "believe I'm in love"). The Church says "no, sexual intimacy is a sacrament of the institution of marriage"
So, the author makes an analogy of Church~marriage, not Church~in love.
Being a Christian is analogous to being in love, not to being married. Of course there is complex interrelationship between love and marriage; however, they are two very different conceptual categories.
The sacraments are sacraments of the Church, not of the individual Christian. Again it comes down to the Church as apriori incarnate entity rather than as set of all "Christians," however defined.
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