Bump!
VATICAN CITY – A Lutheran observer at a synod of Roman Catholic bishops told his hosts they were out of touch with trends in their own Church, where he said priests ignored a Vatican ban on sharing communion with Protestants.
An Anglican observer touched on the same issue, asking why Pope Benedict – who upholds the ban – made a surprise exception by giving communion to the Protestant founder of the ecumenical Taize community at Pope John Paul's funeral in April.
The two observers spoke on Tuesday and their remarks were distributed by the official Vatican press office on Wednesday.
Initially encouraged by his stated commitment to fostering Christian unity, Protestant leaders have recently been asking why Benedict blocks one of their most urgent requests – that Catholics be allowed to share communion with Protestants.
Norwegian Bishop Per Lonning, the World Lutheran Federation observer at the synod, said he was saddened to see that discussion documents for the meeting ruled out joint communion.
'Conclusions are presented and logically championed with no reference to what has been and is going on in your own Church,' he told the meeting.
Lonning said he had seen Catholics sharing communion with Protestants in the United States three decades ago and at a cathedral 'in the Southern Hemisphere' – with the explicit approval of the local archbishop – in the mid-1990s.
The Catholic Church bars sharing communion with Protestants, arguing they do not agree about its nature and significance, but most Protestant churches invite all Christians to take part.
The issue causes tensions among believers in countries with large Catholic and Protestant populations – such as the United States, Britain and Germany – and many mixed-faith marriages.
John Hind, the Anglican bishop of Chichester in England, echoed a persistent question among Protestants when he asked why Benedict, while he was still the top Vatican doctrinal authority, made an exception for Taize's Protestant founder.
'How should we interpret the public giving of communion to Brother Roger Schutz?' he said, according to the official summary of his speech released by the Vatican.
Vatican aides have said Benedict knew that Schutz – who was murdered by a deranged woman in August – shared the Catholic view of communion.
According to a Vatican briefer at least one Catholic participant in open discussions at the synod on Tuesday night said there should be more ecumenical dialogue among Christians of various denominations at the local level.
On Wednesday, Cardinal George Pell of Sydney defended the tradition of priestly celibacy, rejecting suggestions that allowing priests to marry would help ease a shortage in many parts of the world.
'To loosen this tradition now would be a serious error,' he said, adding that it would cause confusion and 'practical disadvantages' to the work of the Church.
Pell said he believed the recent sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Church did not invalidate what he said were enormous gains made for the Church
My point is -- all these people, including the Protestant minister from Norway, and the Catholic bishops/priests who advocate this type of stuff are relativizing the Church. The message behind this intercommunion (and there is a lot of that going on in the Middle East, which is another story) is that what our individual Churches teach is trivial and relative. Doesn't say much about the opinion these people have about their Churches, does it?
For, if the Church is only relative, and any other church is as the other, it is a statement of doubt that one's own Church teaches the truth. It is possible that they all teach the truth, but we don't agree on it and until such time that we find an agreement intercommunion is simply wrong. Shame on those believers who relativize their own Church, and even a greater shame on those bishops who allow such relativization because the Eucharist does not mean one and the same thing to all Churches.
How can a Catholic bishop allow a Protestant minister to sit next to him when the Protestant minister is not an Aposotlic minister?!!!? Where does he get his "authority" to participate in the liturgy as an ordained person? This is the kind of thing that makes the hair on my back stand up! If an Orthodox priest allowed such a charade, he should be and would be defrocked.
This is why the Orthodox Churches withdrew from these "ecumenical" charades in 2000 and this is why the Orthodox are compromising their own by being next to these clowns. Hopefully, the Orthodox will soon realize that a serious dialog is possible only with the other Apostolic Church, and limit the discussions only with Rome. The rest, well, they are not churches as far as I am concerned -- the Church was given to the Apostles. If there is no Apostolic succession, there is no Church. Last time I checked, not a single bishop joined Martin Luther in his rant, so the Lutheran church is not a valid church -- and Luther's authority, which was under a bishop, was made null and void when he was excommunicated.