OBEDIENCE BEFORE HOSPITALITY

I've been talking with a priest about the vexed question of 'intercommunion' - giving Holy Communion to non-Catholics.

It's got more vexed since Pope Francis failed to clarify Church doctrine to the German Bishops' Conference, who want to offer Communion to Lutherans married to Catholics, a response which Cardinal Willem Eijk of the Netherlands finds "completely incomprehensible".

Father said he gives Communion to non-Catholics because the charism of his Order is hospitality, which means everyone is treated as another Christ. I said I thought obedience to the Magisterium should come before hospitality. (St John of the Cross, for instance, has said that God wants "the least degree of obedience, rather than all the works we desire to offer him".)

Father said the bishop had given permission. I said New Zealand's bishops are notoriously liberal.  (Cardinal Gerhard Muller has put it beautifully: "Episcopal conferences can exceed their competencies".) 

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "Catholic ministers may give the sacrament of Eucharist to other Christians only when a grave necessity arises". That means danger of death. It  doesn't mean handing out (and I mean that literally) the Body of Christ to Protestants on a routine, daily basis.

The Protestant religions reject the doctrine of the Eucharist. In effect, Protestants are the people who, when Christ taught that doctrine, "walked no more with him" (Jn 6, 67).


I asked Father if he'd heard what the Dutch Cardinal Wilhelm Eijk has to say. He had. I said if anyone sincerely believed the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ they would ask to be received into the Catholic Church.

Turns out Cardinal Eijk says the same thing. Nice.