Saturday, October 3, 1998

Communion crossovers in Britain balked by Catholics

By MADELEINE BUNTING

The Guardian

LONDON -- The Roman Catholic Church in Britain has delivered a sharp rebuff to other Christians by refusing to relax rules for members to take Communion in each other's churches, even in cases of mixed marriages.

The document "One Bread, One Body," published jointly Wednesday by the Roman Catholic bishops' conferences of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, was greeted with dismay by other churches as a setback to ecumenical progress, and as presenting particular difficulties for inter-church families in which one of the partners is not a Catholic.

It rules out sharing sacraments on a regular basis, barring exceptional circumstances, when there is a "grave and pressing spiritual need." Other churches, including the Church of England, allow Christians in good standing to take Communion.

The Blair family is the most famous to have encountered inter-church difficulties. Cardinal Basil Hume this week admitted that he wrote to Tony Blair, an Anglican, clarifying Catholic teaching, after it was revealed in 1996 that he had been receiving Communion when he attended a Catholic parish church in London with his Catholic wife and children. Blair subsequently stopped.

However, Cardinal Hume said that Blair taking Communion in Tuscany last month while on holiday was acceptable because there was no Anglican church nearby.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, criticized the document, saying it would disappoint people in mixed marriages and that it did not acknowledge "the position they are in," the archbishop's spokeswoman said. She added: "The two churches do differ over this aspect of the ecumenical journey to unity."

Earlier this year, Carey called on the Roman Catholic Church to give a "bold sign of hope" for the millennium by extending Eucharistic hospitality, and urged Catholics to recognize that mixed marriages "cry out for special consideration".

Bill Ind, chairman of ARC, the Anglo Roman Catholic Committee in England and Wales, said: "Obviously there will be a lot of disappointment around that the position hasn't changed very much."

The Methodist Church said there would be "pain and disappointment to many" who had hoped for progress.

The Association of Inter-church Families pointed out that the document has interpreted Vatican rules more strictly than many other parts of the Catholic Church such as Germany, South Africa and Brisbane, Australia. The document tightens and reiterates Catholic teachings including the ban on remarried divorcees taking Communion.

In recent years, an increasing number of priests and bishops had used their discretion about giving Communion to non-Catholic partners and divorcees. In part, it was the inconsistency around the country which has prompted this document.

Cardinal Hume, aware of the sensitivity of the issue, was at pains to stress the ecumenical commitment of the Catholic Church to greater unity with other Christian denominations, but insisted that given the centrality and significance of the Eucharist, differences could not be swept aside.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)