194 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT The monastics clearly consider their personal and communal struggle unresolved and ongoing. They regard their practice of Eucharistic hospitality as beautiful and helpful but not as unproblematic. They express their doubts and hesitations about their ‘local solution’ and acknowledge that it cannot be anything other than a step along the way towards full visible unity. 6.4 A SIGN FOR THE CHURCHES A meaningful, local practice… The monastics have spoken at length about their understanding of the place, significance, and function of their communities’ Eucharistic practice with regard to the wider ecumenical process of the churches. As depicted in the previous sections, they regard their own practice as a local and temporary solution, appropriate for their specific situation as ecumenical monastic communities. Yet, even though they consider it a valuable option for the current situation, they do not perceive it as flawless. BF concludes: So, uh… this… for me… well, it's a sort of appeasement, a sort of… I don’t call it a compromise, but it’s a… the… only thing we can do, without contrasting several things that are all important for us. And it’s not a… not a good solution, I mean, it’s not a solution that you can propose to everybody, it’s not, it’s no more, because things change in our church, it’s no more a sort of prophetic provocation, uh… It's a… a situation~ the Orthodox would call it a… a oikonomical situation. (…) Uh, it's a situation that takes into account who we are, which is our history, uh… in, where are our churches, things that would be possible in another time, uh… were not~ are no more possible now and vice versa.”448 BF defines Bose’s practice primarily as a local solution that takes the specific situation of the community into account. Solving an urgent spiritual need in the community first and foremost, it can be characterized as an answer to a particular pastoral problem. In this sense, it resonates with the considerations of the German Bishop’s Conference, mentioned in section 1.3, which also focus on pastoral rather than ecumenical concerns. However, the monastics also attribute another meaning to their practice, one transcending their local situation. TB states: “it's particular, and at the same 448 BF-1,10c-d. Cf. TA-1,16a-b, TB-1,4f.
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