Without Having Seen: ecumenism

While reading a bit about the Solemn Feast of Christ the King, I came across this Methodist website and this Calvinist (Presbyterian?) one. I was startled to say the least, but these appearances serve as an anecdotal confirmation of something I heard a year or so ago.

About a year ago, Archbishop Wuerl spoke at the Catholic University of America about the Synod of Bishops he had just attended. The purpose of the synod was to discuss the role of the Sacred Scriptures in the life of the Church and to put together its findings and views in a brief to the Holy Father for his consideration, and ultimately for his use in the development in an exhortation to the whole Church. The Synod was a great mix, he said. Its voting members were of course only bishops, but collaborating experts and guests included any number of others, even non-Catholics. In Archbishop Wuerl's working group there was the publisher of a Bible society of particular importance in the English-speaking world. The publisher was a conservativish mainline-evangelical. He said to the rest of the working group, "You Catholics have a major problem regarding the rest of the world." At that, they all perked up. I speculate that some were thinking, "Who is this joker? Does he know where he is?" The publisher continued, "Your problem is that you don't understand your relationship to the rest of the Christian churches. We might be 'separated brethren', but we still look to you constantly... we can't help it, we always have, even when we'd prefer not to." The Protestant world, even with regard to its highest earthly good - the Bible - rebelled against the Church, has constantly kept one eye on her, and nowadays finds herself looking over the Church's shoulder frequently, to see what the Church is "reading," as it were.

So in 1925, Pope Pius XI declares that henceforth, the last Sunday in Ordinary Time (then simply called "after Pentecost"), the Sunday before Advent, will be kept as the Solemn Feast of Christ the King. The declaration was a response to the rise of Fascism in Italy in the early 1920s. It remained as a challenge to National Socialism (Nazism) in Germany in the 1930s, and it remains as a challenge to secularism in the last days of the second millennium and the first days of the new one. Mussolini might be Il Duce ("the Leader") and Hitler might be Der Fuhrer ("the Leader"), but Christ is King!

And interestingly enough, mainline Protestant churches started celebrating it as well, sometime between 1925 and the 1980s, as they adopted the Revised Common Lectionary, their cycle of readings based on the order of our (Catholic) lectionary. So in this matter, on some level or levels, the Protestant world has looked to the Catholic again. Let's see if, by our reverent devotion to our King, and our insistence upon his Lordship, we can set a good example.

I am not immensely intrigued by Protestants who want the Eucharist, because their desire makes sense to me. I want the Eucharist, too. It is interesting to note that most mainline denominations in the U.S. celebrated "the Lord's Supper" regularly until about a hundred years ago, when fear of seeming "too Catholic" caused their ministers to reduce the frequency of communion services dramatically, from weekly to monthly, or even yearly. A friend of mine, a conservative Presbyterian, recently shared his frustration with me at hearing from his minister on Holy Thursday how the Eucharist is spiritual food. He summarized his frustration thus: "Then why doesn't [that minister] feed us more often than once a year?!"

What does impress me is how many Protestants seem to take it personally that we (Catholics) will not share Communion with them. They seem to take it as a sort of snootiness or arrogance on our part, as if we feel we are better than them. Feelings haven't anything to do with any of it, though. Nor does the status of their communion celebrations, or their beliefs and feelings regarding communion. While few Protestants have beliefs about the Eucharist the same as ours, most that I know do believe that is Jesus is somehow manifest in the Eucharist. That's great. It's a start. It also has nothing to do with why we will not share Communion with them. What is forming our stance is a matter of fact: in very substantial ways Protestants are not in communion with us and to share the Holy Communion with them would be to falsify communion.

When a Protestant is submits in matters of faith and morals to the authority of Church, who teaches on behalf of Christ, then the Protestant will have moral unity with the Church, and may share in our sacramental communion. Sharing sacramental communion before there is moral unity is like sharing sexual relations before there is sacramental marriage: it puts the cart before the horse, falsifies the nature of the relationship, and thereby cheapens the sacrament.

And the thing is that this teaching isn't personal. It's not like the Church has it out for Protestants or think we are better than them (although, sadly, there are many arrogant asses like myself among us). In fact, Catholics living in sin (I don't just mean sexually) aren't to go to communion either. Nor are Catholics who have eaten too recently. Of course, when the pews empty at communion time, a number of Catholics are going to communion who probably should not be - either for committing some sin, dissenting from some teaching, or from casually eating Cheetos before going to Mass. This careless communion gives cause for scandal to our Protestant brethren. "If all those flaky Catholics can go to Catholic communion, then why can't I?" The question is pretty legitimate. It would be easier to explain our doctrine about reception of the Eucharist if we as a community lived it out better ourselves.
If, at communion time, a significant number of Catholics-in-the-pew refrained from communion, as used to be the case, guests in our community would probably not feel so left out in the cold. For now, a good second best is probably to encourage friends that come with us to Mass to go up to receive a blessing - arms folded across chest, head bowed, mouth closed. And of course, there is the old multiknife of solutions - prayer.

I think there really is a reason, though, that they want our Eucharist. As previously noted, they have been starved by their own denominations from the spiritual blessing of reenacting the Lord's Supper. But there's more. Because we have priests successively ordained from generation to generation back to the apostles and our Lord himself, we offer the sacrifice that He taught us, and in that we sacrifice have Him for Whom we were made, in what merely appears to be bread and wine. We haven't just got mere symbols, or memorials, or spiritual presences. We have Him. He's attracted such a magnetic relationship upon the world for two thousand years so that one must, after reflection, either love Him or hate Him. Our hearts were made for Him, and as He predicted, the more Holy Church lifts Him up, the more He draws all men to himself (Jn 12:32).