Years ago, shortly after entering the Catholic Church, I had some conversations with Andy, a former Bible college classmate. One of those conversations, about the Holy Eucharist, remains clearly imprinted in my memory.
Andy believed that communion—bread and grape juice at his Evangelical church—was symbolic only, the same belief that I held before studying Church history and Catholic theology. I went over some of the history, explained pertinent points of Catholic doctrine, and noted how the two beliefs are quite different, even diametrically opposed.
Andy listened politely and closely to what I had to say, and then said, “Well, I don’t really think it’s a big deal. You believe it’s Jesus Christ, and I don’t. But I don’t see why it’s an issue.” I was stunned by his expression of indifference. I had expected him to argue for his position while rejecting the Catholic position. (I’ve had plenty of those conversations, but this wasn’t one of them.)
“But,” I said, “if you’re correct, then I am worshiping bread and wine, which is idolatrous. But if the Catholic Church is correct, why wouldn’t you want to receive Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist?”
Andy shrugged. “I don’t,” he repeated, “think it’s that big of deal.”
That conversation came back to me when I recently read an essay titled “A call for Catholics and Protestants to receive Communion—side by side,” written by Meg Giordano, who teaches “philosophy at a Jesuit liberal arts college” and is “an ecumenical chaplain at that same Jesuit school”—Le Moyne College, in Syracuse, New York. That explains, perhaps, why her curious essay appears in America magazine, a Jesuit publication.
I say “curious” because Giordano—unlike certain Protestants and Catholics—does not argue for Protestants receiving Holy Communion. Rather, she writes,
What I have in mind is the idea of Catholics and Protestants sharing the experience of partaking in the Eucharist each according to their tradition—that is, side by side in a shared space with a Catholic priest serving the consecrated Eucharist to Catholic believers alongside a Protestant minister serving the Communion elements to Protestant believers. In all the places I’ve gone, all the shared spaces of ecumenical Christian experience, this one aspect of Christian identity—some might say the definitive aspect of Christian identity—remains a moment of division among us.
I don’t doubt Giordano’s sincerity, but I’m quite certain that she is “out-Jesuiting the Jesuits” with a combination of loaded sentiment, dismissal of doctrine, and rhetorical sleight-of-hand. Furthermore, despite her apparent protests to the contrary, she ends up in the clutches of indifference that my friend Andy refused to acknowledge and abandon.
Giordano’s approach involves the classic feint of giving lip service to “A” while promoting “Z,” which directly undermines “A.” So the “real presence of Christ in the Eucharist,” she writes, “is a profound and sacred mystery,” but her “experiences of fellowship, love and ecumenism” convince her that doctrinal differences, though important, must give way before a “shared Christian faith” that puts Christ before doctrine.
She appeals to a September 9, 2022 address given (via video) by Pope Francis to an ecumenical gathering involving Catholics and Episcopalians. It doesn’t help, alas, that Pope Francis refers to both groups as “denominations,” but Giordano’s focus is on these statements:
Yes, we do not agree on everything. Yes, we have convictions that sometimes seem incompatible, or are incompatible. But that is precisely why we choose to love each other. Love is stronger than all disagreements and divisions. It brings peace, and peace does not seem possible.
That is why I want you to continue to work together on this to achieve unity. . . . Jesus Christ is a bond that is stronger and deeper than our cultures, our political options and even than our doctrines. The Lord! Jesus the Lord!
Giordano apparently takes this to mean that love for Christ can somehow trump or supersede doctrine, but this is a faulty reading. The pope’s point, I think, is that our shared love of Christ—who is always first and foremost—must inform how we approach and understand doctrine, as there is no conflict between the Incarnate Word (logos) and his words or his teaching (doctrina). If we love Christ, we must embrace and follow his teachings.
It’s notable, then, that Giordano makes vague references to the Last Supper and Christ’s high priestly prayer (John 17) but does not mention John 6 or 1 Corinthians 11. But the cherry-picking, emphasizing unity, ignores the historical and, yes, doctrinal basis of unity: apostolic authority and succession, Catholic unity centered on episcopal and Petrine authority, and the reality of magisterial teaching guided and protected by the Holy Spirit. Of course Christ desires that “all of them may be one,” but that fact should raise questions (How so? In what way? By what means?) rather than promote a pick-and-choose approach to faith and doctrine.
The great British priest, author, and apologist Ronald Knox—a convert from the Anglican Communion—addressed this serious Protestant problem nearly a century ago in The Belief of Catholics, in discussing sola scriptura:
The Protestant had no conceivable right to base any arguments on the inspiration of the Bible, for the inspiration of the Bible was a doctrine which had been believed, before the Reformation, on the mere authority of the Church; it rested on exactly the same basis as the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Protestantism repudiated Transubstantiation, and in doing so repudiated the authority of the Church; and then, without a shred of logic, calmly went on believing in the inspiration of the Bible, as if nothing had happened! Did they suppose that biblical inspiration was a self-evident fact, like the axioms of Euclid? Or did they derive it from some words of our Lord? If so, what words? What authority have we, apart from that of the Church, to say that the epistles of Paul are inspired, and the epistle of Barnabas is not?
In similar fashion, Giordano wants to hold on to belief in Christ, love, unity, and fellowship—all of them good things—but avoid the real problem of authority. This should not be a surprise, as every form of Protestantism—however sophisticated or fundamentalist—eventually smashes headlong into the divinely instituted wall of ecclesial authority.
To circumvent this looming obstacle, Protestants can ignore it, deny it, or attack it. Giordano chooses to ignore it, but she does so with clever appeals of sentiment while relying on an indifferentism that is, ironically, quite secular in nature. She would put Catholic and Protestant “side by side in a shared space,” thus implicitly indicating that the differences are inconvenient rather than consequential. Further, this would lead either to confusion and scandal or to further indifference. In both cases, any real unity would be eroded and diminished.
The obvious (to me) question from a Catholic is simple: why bother becoming Catholic when you can mimic Catholic praxis side-by-side and be “accompanied” by Catholics in the process? Well, perhaps that is a feature, not a bug. Could it be, in fact, that Giordano recognizes the real issue and is simply seeking to run around it?
Whatever her exact motives, it is troubling that a Catholic publication such as America magazine features an essay by a Protestant that undermines not only Catholic teaching, but basic theological thought. As any decently catechized Catholic knows, reception of Holy Communion indicates full and public communion with the Church, which is the household of God (1 Tim 3:15), headed on earth by the successor of St. Peter (cf. Matt 16:16-20), and which is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.
And that really is a big deal.