The Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at St Patrick's College Maynooth, Father Enda McDonagh, has said "members of other churches with a basic belief in the Eucharist as instituted by Jesus Christ should be invited and encouraged to participate in the Catholic Eucharist". He has also spoken of the "failure" of the Catholic bishops' One Bread, One Body document on Communion "to convince so many".
Writing in the January issue of the Furrow, under the title Invite and Encourage - a millennial proposal for sharing the Eucharist, Father McDonagh said sharing communion had many gospel parallels. "Generosity in sharing with those from other churches who wish to receive communion in the Catholic Church, for example, has many gospel analogies in Jesus's feeding of the multitudes and his fellowship meals with the excluded."
He continued that "in conventional theological terms it recognises these Christians' basic membership of the Body of Christ and so of Christ's Church and their faith in the one Lord and in his presence in this celebration".
However, he felt that "the power of arbitrary exclusion, so typical of the princes of this world, is not without its attractions for church leaders. To protect and to witness against such power exclusion should be the dominant church attitude and practice".
Referring to the One Bread, One Body document, published last September by the Catholic bishops of these islands, which outlined why Catholics cannot receive communion in non-Roman Catholic Churches, while non-Roman Catholics may do so in Catholic Churches only in rare circumstances, Father McDonagh said "the key to its failure to convince so many" may be the absence of "any sense of conversion to other churches". ("Conversion" in the context is used to mean an openness, "a radical change of mind and heart" towards other Christians).
He believed One Bread, One Body was strong "not just in its [widely unwelcome] negative regulations on Eucharistic sharing, but in its [widely welcomed] positive teaching on the Eucharist itself". This conflict in its strengths was compounded by a conflict of source and timing, he felt. "For the first major inter-island Catholic Church document to emerge in the aftermath of the Good Friday peace agreement should have been a reinforcement of the process had it not been so restrictive of practices already developing and so inevitably offensive to "sister" churches.
"In a situation where political settlement within Northern Ireland and between Ireland and Britain was and is still so delicately poised and where the churches have always been part of the problem, more generous practical directives or a patient and silent waiting upon the working of the Spirit among all God's people would have been more Gospel-like," he said.
He continued that "the belief that consultation was as usual unnecessarily limited and that canonical regulation finally took precedence over theological agreement or pastoral awareness seems borne out by the structure and content of the document itself".
The thrust of his millennial proposal was "that members of other churches with a basic belief in the Eucharist as instituted by Jesus Christ should be invited and encouraged to participate in the Catholic Eucharist as a manifestation and means of that reconciliation" (to one another and to God through Christ).
"In similar fashion Catholics should be invited and encouraged to join in the Eucharistic celebrations of other churches and for the same reasons. Only with such conversion process of Eucharistic sharing may the hoped for millennial breakthrough in inter-church relations emerge and new patterns in convergence, co-operation and community develop."
The theological basis for all this had already been established in the agreed statements arrived at by the churches, he said. This had been tested in many pastoral situations and had been acknowledged in the Vatican's 1993 Directives document on ecumenism.
Referring to "the extraordinary reversal" in inter-church relations since Vatican II's Decree on Ecumenism he felt that the continuing requests for clarification, the clouding by qualifications and the persistence of negative regulations left many Catholics with the growing feeling that the early openness of Vatican II had run out of energy, with nothing new on the horizon.
"This appeared to be most sharply illustrated in refusal of shared Eucharist and despite the range and depth of carefully negotiated and agreed statements by commissions appointed officially by the churches themselves," he said.
As to the ecumenical movement, he wondered whether "perhaps not enough has been made of our shared baptism". The full restoration of mutual acceptance of baptism demanded "a fuller practical, theological and liturgical expression".
In societies with a Christian component, such as Northern Ireland and Bosnia, inter-church celebration of baptism "could release vision and energy beyond the tunnel visions and destructive energies characteristic of so many close combinations of politics and religion". The usual difficulties raised in regard to shared Eucharist "such as precisely the same understanding of particular items of doctrine, orders and devotion, do not apply here. Shared baptism would shed further light on the significance of these items in relation to shared Eucharist".
Looking at the different understandings of the Eucharist, he said Roman Catholics, Orthodox and many of the reformed churches agreed on both the memorial and sacrificial dimensions. There was considerable convergence also on the meaning and origin of the ministry. "In graceful recognition of these convergences, conversion to the point of sharing Eucharist is no longer unthinkable," he said.
The exceptions already permitted by the Catholic Church "indicate that such sharing is possible", while "a richer understanding of church and Eucharist already suggested by a fuller understanding of baptism would make that sharing less exceptional and more nourishing for believers and believing communities".
Preoccupation with difficulties where sharing the Eucharist was concerned, "should yield to concentration on possibilities. Agreed statements and occasional experiments should move to more systematic education and practice. At least this could be a millennial goal", he said.
After a millennium of Christian divisions and associated wars some deeper transformation was called for if Christ's prayer for unity was to be taken seriously and if the world is to believe, he said. The change of heart and mind this would herald could revitalise all the sharing churches and help overcome hostilities.
"It would loudly proclaim jubilee and jubilation,' he said. This "invitation and encouragement" to share would have to be accompanied by "profound preparation". In seminaries and sermons, in adult education and theology courses, stress should be laid "on the enriching possibilities of sharing the Eucharist in appropriate but generously conceived circumstances".
More than that however, would be needed. "Common service of the poor and excluded, and co-operation in response to all the needs of God's world, including its environmental needs" were also necessary.
"Shared prayer and repentance-reconciliation services should be a marked feature of inter-church relations in preparation for the Jubilee," he said, "Church Unity Octave Week could become a week of penitential preparation for shared Eucharist on the final Sunday . . . inter-church couples could be invited and encouraged to share more fully and frequently in the Eucharist of their respective churches while sharing their spiritual difficulties and achievements with family, friends or broader community."
The convergence which might be expected to be generated by all these activities "would undoubtedly lead to the deeper conversion to unity for which Jesus prayed", he concluded.