178 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT Therefore, all agree that the temporary solutions found in Taizé and Bose cannot be regarded as models. Section 6.4 examines what they mean by this and how they understand the place of their communities and the practice of Eucharistic sharing in the bigger scheme of things. 6.1 THE NOTION OF SCANDAL Sharing the Eucharist as a default position The current situation in Taizé and Bose allows the brothers to consider sharing the Eucharist as the norm for their daily practice. Brother BE recalls how he and his youth group had always departed from this position: BE: We always considered it possible. Perhaps it was not, really. I think we knew quite well how things should happen, that Catholics should not come to receive the Communion when a pastor was celebrating, and the other way around. It was possible for us to go and receive Communion… at certain conditions and so on. I think we knew it quite well and quite quick, and at the same time, we practiced it in a very… in a very free way uh, without asking all the permissions of all the authorities… So, I can’t remember to have had problems with uh… have had experienced sort of… to have be injured by somebody telling me, no, or the other way around, someone, my pastor saying, no, to some Catholics come… so… I [haven’t had] the, I was lucky to live this… situation in a very open… condition… FW: So, why would you call that lucky? BE: Uh, because the goal {laughs}, because the goal of this dimension of unity, of the goal of ecumenism, was, was… being shared with those who [were] together.415 The space BE encountered in Bose was not a liberating experience but, rather, one of continuity with his past. The motivation in his youth group and in Bose are similar: a shared goal of full visible unity, anticipated in sharing the Eucharist. Brother TC mentioned this as well, as we have already seen. He recalled a moment in which someone from an Evangelical background realized that, in the creed, he expressed faith in one church, without acting to restore Christian unity. After this discovery, this man started to research the gifts of other churches. Directly following this episode, TC refers to Irenaeus of Lyon: 415 BE-1,84.
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