190 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT in a sort of uh, pseudo-prophetical way, uh, while it would, yes, it would not be understood, uh, so for this… And of course, the context makes so that we’re only… very few protestants, and the majority of us is uh… is Catholic, so, of course, it’s also natural to celebrate it in this way… ….440 The struggle remains Indeed, the current context of Bose’s ratio of Catholics versus non-Catholics speaks to the community’s exclusive choice for a Catholic member to preside over the Eucharist. However, the situation was different in the community’s early days. In Taizé, moreover, the situation was drastically different given its exclusively Reformed roots. There, the great majority of the community accepted the restrictions imposed by the Roman Catholic Church. The monastics stress that the struggle is not over. TB, for example, does not think that Taizé’s practice of Eucharistic sharing liberates the community from the struggles of the wider ecumenical process. On the contrary, the community actively invites ecumenical partners to visit Taizé: It's not that we think, we have made it, but let the others continue in their trouble, because we have found of this brotherly love, and this communion, it would never be like this. That's why all the time the welcome of... of church leaders, of... ... I mean, welcoming also our history and our past and our heritage of churches, so... .... welcoming all this, not to, to... ... to set ourselves apart from that struggle and searching, all the difficulties which exist....441 The individual monastics themselves, too, struggle with the solution they have adopted as a community. TA speaks about an encounter that exemplifies the struggle the community continues to go through even when, on the surface, a suitable solution has been found. At a meeting with some 150 Dutch guests in Taizé, TA has a conversation with a woman about the Eucharist: Fine, this woman, well, she said: ‘yes, I quite like it,’ she was very positive, you know, ‘yes, I quite like it, everyone is able to do whatever I likes, everything is permitted when it comes to the Eucharist.’ I responded: ‘No! Not at all, that’s not what it’s about. It rather is very problematic here, you know, I mean, it’s very sensitive, it’s very difficult, you know, because, because, that’s how some look at it, 440 BE-1,88. 441 TB-1,52.
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