The One Bread One Body document on Communion, published by the Catholic bishops last September, has been described as "a faulty or at least a premature project" by a Catholic theologian.
Father Patrick Lyons, professor of ecumenical theology at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute of Sant Anselmo in Rome, also said: "There is [a] question as to whether any church, in the present situation of commitment to dialogue both here [in Ireland] and in Britain [where for years the churches have been "pilgrims together"] should issue such a document unilaterally." Writing in the current issue of Doctrine & Life magazine he said the ecumenical structures were already in place at Ballymascanlon in Ireland and the Council of Churches in Britain to allow for discussion with the other churches, particularly where pastoral problems relating to the possibility of sharing the Eucharist were concerned.
Such consultation "would approximate to the discussions which led to the Good Friday agreement in a way which the process of producing One Bread One Body does not". It would be "trying and complicated, as was the political one, and could well feel like a surrender of sovereignty on the part of the Catholic church, but that feeling - and it would only a feeling - is the price to be paid for being truly ecumenical," he said.
He also said there was evidence that the consonance between pastors and Catholic faithful on the document, "a fundamental value in the Church", had not so far emerged. A reaction of disappointment appeared to be widespread, he said. "Such a situation is unhealthy for the church, in which the people should be a mirror in which the bishops see themselves," he remarked.
The teaching in the document, he said, could "hardly be said to correspond to the articulated belief in the Eucharist among Catholics in Ireland". The fact was that people had not been asked to share their experience or insights on the impact of such teaching on their lives, he said.
