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Catholic World News News Feature

Cardinal Kasper backs "Eucharistic hospitality" June 18, 2004

Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, has said that "Eucharistic hospitality" is licit in some circumstances.

Speaking at a major conference of German Catholics in the city of Ulm on June 18, Cardinal Kasper said that "there are circumstances when a non-Catholic can receive Communion at a Catholic Mass."

The question of "Eucharistic hospitality"-- sharing communion with other Christian churches-- has been the topic of heated debate in European Catholic circles. The widespread practice of Eucharistic hospitality, particularly in Germany and Switzerland, has been a source of deep concern to the Holy See. In his 2003 encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia , Pope John Paul II devoted most of a chapter to the issue, stressing that non-Catholics should not receive Communion. The Pope argued forcefully that the practice of intercommunion is an offense against ecumenism, not an aid, because it creates the false impression that non-Catholics share the Church's teaching on the nature of the Eucharist.

In the recent instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum , the Congregation for Divine Worship reiterated that stand, emphasizing that under any normal circumstances "Eucharistic hospitality" is a grave abuse.

Both Ecclesia de Eucharistia and Redemptionis Sacramentum recognize that non-Catholics may be admitted to Communion under certain very restricted conditions, which are set forth in the Code of Canon Law . The passage cited by the Congregation for Divine Worship, Canon 844, specifies that non-Catholics can receive Communion in times of "grave and pressing need," such as the immediate danger of death, if they "demonstrate the Catholic faith in respect to these sacraments and are properly disposed."

Speaking to a conference session on ecumenism, Cardinal Kasper told his audience of about 2,000 people that he would not take time to enumerate the circumstances under which a non-Catholic could properly receive Communion. He simply emphasized that there are circumstances when the practice" is licit.

Cardinal Kasper said that ecumenism is at a crossroads today, because while the "defensive walls have fallen" that once divided Christian denominations, there are still many roadblocks to bar the path to unity.

The cardinal cited two contrasting attitudes toward ecumenism, each of which he described as unhelpful. On one hand, he said, some proponents of ecumenism subscribe to an unrealistic, even utopian attitude, pretending that all differences among Christians have already disappeared. On the other hand, he continued, some Church officials take a "clerical-integrist" line, believing that all remaining differences can be overcome by regulation. "This second position destroys all possibility of development," Cardinal Kasper argued.