CHAPTER 1: ECUMENICAL PROGRESS AND STAGNATION 33 and abstract legal norms.”77 This obviously does not imply ignoring, neglecting, or disregarding doctrine and canon law but it does require bracketing these perspectives for a moment. The mere idea of the Eucharist as a constitutive part of the restoration of Christian unity has often been discarded based on certain interpretations of the Second Vatican Council and canon law. However, confronted with a concrete situation in which sharing the Eucharist seems to have such a function, it is worthwhile to bracket these presuppositions momentarily in order to examine carefully whether the actual experience might offer new insights into the question. Bracketing can only be fruitful when done consciously. Therefore, the following sections are devoted to describing the status quaestionis of the debate about Eucharistic sharing in ecumenical contexts. They do so by examining the recent debate about the orientation aid issued by the German Bishops’ Conference in July 2018 as a case study. In addition, they also reflect my conviction that the issue of Eucharistic hospitality has been treated all too often only as an individual pastoral question. Instead, as I will argue, it should also be addressed as part of the broader ecumenical process: all the more reason to study the encountered practices as potentially providing new insights in the positive role that sharing the Eucharist in fact may have for the promotion of Christian unity. 1.3 EUCHARISTIC HOSPITALITY: A DEBATED PASTORAL QUESTION78 The German 2018 Orientierungshilfe : A case study Pope Francis encouraged renewed debate about the question of Eucharistic hospitality during a visit to the Lutheran congregation in Rome in November 2015. In response to an interchurch couple’s question, he replied: “Is sharing the Lord’s banquet the goal of a journey or is it the viaticum for journeying together? I leave that question to the theologians.”79 Indeed, the pope’s request 77 Peter Philips, “Receiving the Experience of Eucharistic Celebration,” in Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism, ed. Paul D. Murray and Luca Badini Confalonieri (Oxford/New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008), 461. 78 Sections 1.3 and 1.4 are based on Fokke Wouda, “Eucharistic Hospitality: From Pastoral Question to Ecumenical Quest. A Response to the German Kommunionsdebatte,” Catholica. Vierteljahresschrift für ökumenische Theologie 72, no. 4 (2018): 246–62. 79 Francis, “Visit to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Rome: Address of His Holiness Pope Francis,” 2015, https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/november/ documents/papa-francesco_20151115_chiesa-evangelica-luterana.html.
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