Fokke Wouda

CHAPTER 10: IMPLICATIONS II 267 potentially) significant impact on both levels; this is the wide scope receptive ecumenism is aiming at. Therefore, the communities and practice of Eucharistic hospitality should be taken into consideration by anyone promoting spiritual or receptive ecumenism. In addition, the practice of these communities contributes to a practical lacuna signaled by German ecumenical theologians in their document Gemeinsam am Tisch des Herrn. They write that, “[m]any baptized persons are formed by their own confessional tradition and, therefore, they are hardly familiar with the way other churches celebrate Holy Supper/Eucharist.”559 The non-Catholic monastics have attested to the catechetical function that sharing the Eucharist has had for them, enhancing their liturgical and theological understanding of the sacrament from a Catholic perspective. Receptive ecumenism stresses the priority of learning over teaching as a fundamental basic attitude for exercising this strategy. Significantly, Paul Murray insists that learning be done authentically and with integrity: “Receptive Ecumenism is concerned to place at the forefront of the Christian ecumenical agenda the self‐critical question, ‘What, in any given situation, can one's own tradition appropriately learn with integrity from other traditions?’”560 Integrity for Murray, however, is not static, he adds that it should be a “creative integrity.”561 In this study, I present the practice and experiences of the communities of Bose and Taizé alongside the insights that the monastics articulate, supplemented by my reflections and attempts to formulate a theology of Eucharistic hospitality based on their experiences. It is the task of the wider theological debate and especially of the different levels of the magisterium to discern what the Roman Catholic Church can “learn with integrity” from these experiences and how these lessons should be received into the practice, theology, and discipline of the Church. 559 Sattler, Gemeinsam am Tisch des Herrn, sec. 8.5. Original text in German: “Viele getaufte Menschen sind durch die eigene konfessionelle Tradition geprägt und des-halb kaum damit vertraut, wie in anderen Kirchen Abendmahl/Eucharistie gefeiert wird“ (translation: FW). 560 Murray, “Receptive Ecumenism - Establishing the Agenda,” 12. 561 Murray, 14.

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