258 PART THREE: CONCLUSIONS The monastics indicate that they have gone through a process, maybe even a paradigm shift, regarding their understanding of the relationships between the concepts of the church of Christ and of denominational identity. They acknowledge the former to include the latter and the latter to be the historical manifestation of the former. Since they believe this to be true for all denominations, denominational identity, in their understanding, can never be exclusive. In contrast, they feel that the unity given in Baptism is stronger than any division. In the communities, they substantiate and cultivate this conviction, especially through the practice of Eucharistic sharing. Even though the monastics indicate that they remain faithful to multiple ecclesial traditions, they struggle to balance the concrete allegiances towards each of them. One reason for this difficulty is the technical inability to prolong the membership of a particular church and congregation due to the fact that their denomination does not exist in France or Italy, combined with their geographical organization. Another reason is the simple fact that the monastics share in the sacramental life of the Roman Catholic Church on a daily basis, while having access to the sacraments in their churches of origin only occasionally, if ever. They acknowledge that their adherence to their churches of origin runs the risk of becoming merely spiritual or symbolic. This makes for a challenging situation. Discussion The cases of Taizé and Bose substantiate Ivana Noble’s claim that “[t]he problem of multiple belonging as related to the churches does not start at a speculative theoretical level, but at a practical one, and has implications for how we perceive and articulate our traditions concerning church belonging.”544 The communities display the dynamics of double or multiple belonging at this practical level. Noble argues that belonging is based on love above anything else (for example, habit or duty).545 The interviewees indeed mention that love fuels their desire to belong to different traditions. BE especially speaks lovingly about his Reformed origins, while also referring to himself as a “philo catholique.”546 It seems to me that the ecumenical process could benefit from communities like Taizé and Bose, that is, places that are in between the 544 Ivana Noble, Essays in Ecumenical Theology 1 : Aims, Methods, Themes, and Contexts (Boston, MA: Brill, 2019), 199. 545 Noble, 201. 546 BE-1,12.
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