Worship: The Inter-Communion Barrier

In an interfaith age, Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy pray together and picket together, and hardly a church exists that has not been preached to by a minister of another faith. But there is a point where ardent advocates of ecumenism draw the line: interCommunion. To receive the consecrated bread and wine together is the ultimate expression of Christian unity, and to do so lightly is morally wrong as long as Christianity remains divided.

Yet even this last barrier is now being experimentally, and rather furtively, lowered. Last month Dr. Albert van den Heuvel of the World Council of Churches’ Youth Department told a Chicago audience that priests and ministers impatient at the slow pace of organized ecumenical progress are celebrating the Eucharist together and giving each other Communion. As many as 6,000 dedicated Catholic and Protestant laymen reportedly belong to ecumenical study groups in The Netherlands that periodically celebrate interfaith Communions; either a minister or a priest will preside, and the consecrated elements are given to all members present. And though probably most common in Northern Europe, experiments in interCommunion have taken place in the U.S. and even in Rome, where one Catholic priest privately admits that Protestant ministers have showed up for services at his church, stayed to receive Communion with the congregation.

Breaking the Law. For Catholics and most Protestants, this kind of ecumenical disobedience is a violation of church rule. Catholicism’s canon law forbids interCommunion, although an exception is made for Eastern Rite Catholics, who under certain circumstances may receive -the sacraments in Orthodox churches. While some Protestant groups —such as the Disciples of Christ—admit any baptized believer to the Communion table, most take the view that admittance to the sacrament should be preceded by a confession of faith.

Anglicans have typically mixed views on the subject. Although the Prayer Book rubrics imply that communicants should be confirmed, many churches interpret the rule liberally: Episcopal churches in Washington, for example, have allowed President Johnson, a Disciple of Christ, to receive Communion.

“Nothing More Normal.” The classic objection to interCommunion is the fact that churches disagree about what the Eucharist signifies—Catholics believe that the bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood, while Reformed churches say that he is spiritually present in the consecrated elements. The advocates of interCommunion argue that since the “church” embraces all those who follow Christ, the sacrament is not the property of a single tradition, and is thus appropriate for Christians working or praying together. Van den Heuvel points out that most cases of interCommunion have taken place in situations of “secular ecumenicity,” where Christians are working together to relate the church to social problems, and “there is nothing more normal than to express that unity in liturgical form.”

Most churchmen believe that to break down all the barriers is to create chaos, but ecumenical theologians are in fact taking a long, new look at the relation of interCommunion to organic church union. The question came up early this month at an interfaith dialogue on the Eucharist between U.S. Roman Catholic and Episcopal churchmen. At the meeting, Jesuit Theologian Bernard Cooke of Marquette argued that interCommunion could well take place before the two churches are formally united. Historically, he pointed out, the Eucharist in the church has been both a symbol of unity in faith already achieved and a means of obtaining that unity. Thus he boldly proposed that the bishops of the two churches begin by celebrating Communion together to help establish “the consensus of faith we seek.”