Correspondence
WYK, CHRISTOPHER J. VAN & LANE, FRANK P. & HALEY, JUDY
CORRESPONDENCE Illicit intercommunion Chatham, N.J. To the Editors: When I finished Rev. Richard Mazziotta's article ["How I Declined the Invitation," January 29] about his declining to share...
...Berengar's subjective faith, Abelard's conceptual presence, the intersubjective ontological presence of recent years...
...Despite the LutheranCatholic Dialogue, we are not really sure that Luther's "Gottesfleisch" is the body and blood of the ancient sacrament...
...If that witness reveals a heavy burden, then perhaps tomorrow could be different, freer, more (Continued on page 287) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 258) faithful to the possibilities of the parables...
...Such a scenario is not possible because there exists the haunting reality that fellowship and mystery are not yet truly one...
...What of the faith struggles of the centuries...
...I therefore abstain from communion when I worship with Roman Catholic friends...
...Father Mazziotta need not apologize for his excuse...
...To the Editors: As often happens, what is prudent tangles with what is right in Richard Mazziotta's reflections on intercommunion ["How I Declined the Invitation," January 29...
...Do they not have a relevance to the faith consciousness of a people...
...But outside the gates, picketing the event, would have gathered the faithful Matthean community, that found in the parable of the Marriage Feast (Matt...
...Among all Christians, there is not yet a faith resolution as to whether the body and blood of the Lord is the creator of unity, the sign of unity, or both...
...Others consider it their Christian duty to violate official teaching, especially when that teaching is the subject of some dissent...
...I would be interested to read him "supposing himself" to be "the man who was determined to have a great banquet" composed only of those who can offer "complete creedal consent...
...I understand someone who receives Roman Catholic communion to be affirming not only the Nicene Creed and the belief in the real presence, but also such dogmatic teachings (affirmed by the Second Vatican Council) as the direct divine institution of the papacy and the non-existence of any right of conscience for Roman Catholic communicants...
...JUDY HALEY...
...The "afterlife" of the experience is also well articulated and seems to have brought him to a mixture of remorse and heightened awareness of the sadness of Christian division...
...Mazziotta's article also set me to wondering (again) why the Roman Catholic eucharistic liturgy contains no hint of the requirement for complete creedal consent...
...Revise and probe the limits of the past, as we may, they are real until we, as a people, have transcended them...
...What he might now share with his students is the story of how our own sinful-ness shattered the Christian community, how our own pride and narrowness keeps us unreconciled...
...22:1-14) an invitation to the feast of the king that was reserved for those who were worthy...
...FRANK P. LANE Tangling with right Stow, Mass...
...JUDY HALEYht thing...
...It is not unusual in such an experience to seek answers in the benevolence of the human heart and, perchance, in Scripture alone...
...If, however, it is any consolation for him, his decision to decline has deep roots in Scripture and the human heart...
...Many of them, however, dismiss my understanding of complete creedal consent as cranky...
...I would suggest that we have not transcended our multiple limitations concerning the acceptance of the eucharistic Jesus...
...Many of us have shared his experience and empathize with him...
...Richard Mazziotta's article ["How I Declined the Invitation," January 29] about his declining to share Holy Communion in a Lutheran church, I hoped that he would write again some time, after he has invited his Lutheran colleague to preach, but not share in the Eucharist, in his Roman Catholic parish...
...illicit intercommunion was one of the charges against Archbishop Hunthausen, and the bishops periodically ask that the ban on intercommunion be stated, if not carefully explained, in Sunday bulletins...
...The Roman Catholic church obviously considers its ban on intercommunion important...
...He might also suggest that his "excuse" had simply been a truthful witness to the reality of who we all are as Christians today...
...Can we, because of the longing of the human heart, proclaim real that which does not yet existentially exist...
...No doubt Luke and even Mark would joyfully have joined the throngs invited to Fr...
...CHRISTOPHER J. VAN WYK We are not reconciled New Lexington, Ohio To the Editors: The struggle to experience unity and peace in the midst of plurality is well expressed in Father Mazziotta's account of a declined invitation on Reformation Sunday...
...If it did not, the struggle would be over and we could all relax together on a grassy hillside and be communally fed with the bread of life...
...Does this parable, too, "stav[e] off the ordinary rules of understanding which have been imposed by self or others...
...Perhaps there would be fewer instances of illicit intercommunion if the eucharistic liturgy made it clearer to worshipers what they affirm implicitly when they share communion...
...Mazziotta's Eucharist in the stadium...
...their arguments are curiously reminiscent of Oliver North's defense of his part in arranging supplies to the Nicaraguan resistance...
...I myself would have attended the celebration, but as I walked past the protesters, I might have wondered whether, in doing what seemed to be the prudent thing by attending, I had failed to do the right thing...
...Some propose such remarkably deconstructive readings of Roman Catholic teaching that the sacrament truly could mean whatever they choose it to mean, in the tradition of Humpty Dumpty...
Vol. 115 • May 1988 • No. 9
