C of I regrets Catholic stance on Communion

The Church of Ireland has said it is "a matter for profound regret" that inter-church Communion has been "so severely, and it would appear, unnecessarily, restricted by the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church".

In an official response to the Catholic Church's 1998 One Bread One Body document, the C of I Committee for Christian Unity regretted that "there was no ecumenical consultation prior to the publication of the document, as in fact was required in the Vatican's 1993 Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism.

It said it was "unacceptable to us that the Roman Catholic Church should absolutely prohibit its members from receiving Holy Communion in the Church of Ireland and to suggest that other churches should actively discourage (their emphasis) Roman Catholics from receiving Communion in their churches."

It said it appeared One Bread One Body was drawn up "with the ecclesiastical situation in England and Wales rather than Scotland or Ireland primarily in mind".

The effect of the One Bread document "seems to have been negative. Particular pain has been experienced by inter-church families and in those areas where ecumenical activity was already marked", it said.

It queried the use of the words "the Church" in the document to indicate the Roman Catholic Church alone and suggested that "rather than being referred to as a `Christian community' the Church of Ireland should have been referred to as a church.

The Church of Ireland recognised the Roman Catholic Church as an authentic part of the church universal and for that reason members of the Church of Ireland would receive Holy Communion in the Roman Catholic Church, it said.

It also it welcomed members of other Christian churches to receive Holy Communion in its churches. This implied that there was "sufficient agreement on eucharistic teaching between the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions for this to be meaningful . . . the criterion, it is felt, must be that of `sufficient' agreement; `total' agreement not being attainable."

The denial of the reality of Anglican ordinations in One Bread One Body was "totally unacceptable to the Church of Ireland. Being described as `communities rooted in the Reformation' ignores the fact that our roots lie in the primitive church. It is a matter of great concern that such a proposition has been restated recently in Cardinal Ratzinger's commentary on the Pope's apostolic letter Ad Tuendam Fidem . . .", it said.