46 PART ONE: INTRODUCTION seek full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, together with their community and through ecumenical effort. This is, in my view, the light in which the issue of Eucharistic hospitality towards mixed marriages should be discussed. Pope Francis raises the question of whether the Eucharist can be a “viaticum for journeying together.”115 The fact that he raises this question indicates that he is thinking in this direction and, at the very least, suggests that he considers it an option. The Eucharist as a ‘means for the restoration of Christian unity’? Can sharing the Eucharist be a “means to be used (…) for the restoration of Christian unity?”116 No, says Vatican II’s decree on ecumenism; at least not “indiscriminately” (Latin indiscretim, the word left blank in the above quotation). George Tavard, co-author of this section of the decree, states that the two guiding principles (expressing unity and a means of grace) cannot be separated, but that they stand in dialectical relationship to each other, which “implies that each side relates intimately to the other in creative tension. (…) Indiscretim means ‘indiscretely’ in the sense of ‘indiscontinuously’, rather than ‘indiscreetly’ in the sense of something needing to be done ‘with discrimination’.”117 This understanding of the intimate relationship between the two principles prevents the Roman Catholic Church from using it as means to promote unity, Tavard explains. Therefore, abstention of common worship is preferred in general in the absence of fully realized unity, with the possibility of exceptions based on the principle of the Eucharist as channel of divine grace. 118 In another article, however, Tavard himself arrives at a rather generous interpretation of the space for exceptional cases: 115 Francis, “Visit to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Rome.” 116 UR, sec. 8. 117 George H. Tavard, “Praying Together: Communicatio in Sacris in the Decree on Ecumenism,” in Vatican II by Those Who Were There, ed. Alberic Stacpoole (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1986), 214.; Cf. Thomas P. Rausch, “Occasional Eucharistic Hospitality: Revisiting the Question,” Theological Studies 74, no. 2 (2013): 401, https://doi.org/10.1177/004056391307400207. 118 Tavard recollects how the minds of the drafters of the decree and of the Council Fathers went through different stages, from maintaining the clear prohibition of the 1917 Code of Canon Law towards adopting the juxtaposition proposed by Tavard allowing for some communicatio in sacris based on the Council’s new ecclesiological and ecumenical insights, cf. Tavard, “Praying Together,” 213. For an understanding of the Council’s use of juxtapositions, cf. Henk Witte, “Reform with the Help of Juxtapositions: A Challenge to the Interpretation of the Documents of Vatican II,” The Jurist: Studies in Church Law and Ministry 71, no. 1 (2011):
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