Madam, - Some letters you have published from readers commenting on the Pope's recent document on the Eucharist amused me. They remind me of the joke about the lady on the Shankill Road, Belfast, who admonished her son: "Get away from that puddle Billy. Its full o' wee popes". Full o' wee popes! Isn't that the Church today?
Please allow me to remind your Anglican - and especially, your Catholic readers - that the Catholic Church holds it to be of faith that Christ is really present in the Eucharist by virtue of transubstantiation. The Greek Orthodox Church believes in metousiosis, which means essentially what transubstantiation means. And in 1672, at the Synod of Jerusalem, they gave the doctrine formal approval. So the Latins and the Greeks are in agreement on the nature of the sacrament.
In 1673, the Test Act imposed an obligation on all persons holding civil and religious or military office to receive the Eucharist according to the usage of the Church of England and to make a declaration against transubstantiation. "I do believe that there is not any transubstantiation in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper ..." (The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church).
One must conclude that the repudiation of transubstantiation was and is a matter of great importance to the Anglican Church.
The Test Act was in force until the year of Catholic Emancipation, 1829. Its repeal didn't mean that the Church of England had changed its doctrine on the Eucharist, had brought their doctrine into harmony with that of the Latin and Greek Churches, had come to acknowledge transubstantiation.
Given these facts, it amazes me that any Anglican clergyman can even entertain the idea of - let alone write to The Irish Times decrying the papal rejection of - a sharing of the sacrament between Catholics and Protestants.
Until the doctrinal differences on the essential nature of the Blessed Sacrament are resolved, any semblance of sharing would be at best a sham and at worst sacrilegious.
And it hardly needs saying that the awesome differences will not be resolved by any change in the Catholic teaching.
There can be no meaningful sacramental sharing between Catholics and Protestants. That is the logic of the relationship. And it has nothing to do with the distinct question of where the truth lies. - Yours, etc.,
M. PHILIP SCOTT, OCSO,
Our Lady of Bethlehem Abbey,
Portglenone,
Co Antrim.