Pope Francis has caused controversy by appearing to suggest that a Lutheran wife of a Catholic husband could receive holy Communion based on the fact that she is baptized and in accordance with her conscience.
During a question and answer session at an evening prayer service on Sunday in Rome’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Pope urged the Lutheran woman, Anke de Bernardinis, to "talk to the Lord" about receiving holy Communion "and then go forward", but added that he "wouldn’t ever dare to allow this, because it’s not my competence."
The Pope was responding to de Bernardinis who asked him how she could finally achieve Eucharistic communion with her Catholic husband.
The Holy Father answered by firstly posing the question whether the Eucharist is the goal of walking together, or acts as the sustenance (viaticum) of such a path. The answer, he said, should be left to theologians.
He then went on to say that, when sharing, “there aren’t differences between us” and doctrine becomes the “same”. Doctrine, he said, is a “difficult word to understand but I ask myself: don’t we have the same Baptism? If we have the same Baptism, shouldn’t we be walking together?”
He said Lutheran and Catholic language are “the same” when it comes to teaching children why Jesus came among us and what he did for mankind.
Moving on to the Lord’s Supper itself, the Pope said there are “questions that, only if one is sincere with oneself and with the little theological light one has, must be responded to on one’s own.”
He added “See for yourself. This is my body. This is my blood. Do it in remembrance of me this is a viaticum that helps us to journey on.”
Continuing with his answer, the Pope recalled a Protestant pastor-friend who once told him that they, too, believed that the Lord is present in the Eucharist and wondered what the difference was. “Life is bigger than explanations and interpretations," the Pope said. "Always refer back to your baptism. ‘One faith, one baptism, one Lord.’ This is what Paul tells us, and then take the consequences from there."
The Pope added “I wouldn’t ever dare to allow this, because it’s not my competence. One baptism, one Lord, one faith. Talk to the Lord and then go forward. I don’t dare to say anything more.”
The Holy Father's words have been causing widespread concern in Rome, leading some to go as far as to describe them as an attack on the sacraments. “The Rubicon has been crossed,” said one source close to the Vatican. “The Pope said it in a charming way, but this is really about mocking doctrine. We have seven sacraments, not one.”
The issue is particularly sensitive at the current time given the continuing pressure to allow remarried divorcees to receive holy Communion within the "internal forum", guided by their confessor.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that, because ecclesial communities derived from the Reformation and separated from the Catholic Church "have not preserved the proper reality of the Eucharistic mystery in its fullness, especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Holy Orders," Eucharistic intercommunion with these communities "is not possible.”
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