What is Pope Francis saying about Communion?

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FirstFiveEighth

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So the Pope has thrown out some more interesting “off the cuff” remarks to journalists on an airplane. This time he seems to be suggesting that anyone can receive the Eucharist as a vessel for ecumenism.
On the plane ride back from his trip to Romania, Pope Francis told reporters that since “there is already Christian unity,” there is no need for the faithful to “wait for the theologians to come to agreement on the Eucharist.”
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I know people will poo-poo this and say “oh that’s not what he really meant, journalists just twist his words”. Frankly that doesn’t fly anymore. If he was worried about the dozens of instances that journalists have “twisted his words” I would expect him to say so. But he just lets ambiguity hang around until people accept it as fact. And he is quite capable of condemning things he disagrees with clearly, concisely, and precisely, as he does with gender theory.

Anyways I thought this summed up the issue pretty well:
As the liberal priest Father Thomas Reese suggests, dissolving the statutory boundaries that surround reception of the Eucharist is part of Pope Francis’s broader insistence that “facts are more important than ideas.”
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If Catholic life is a series of brute “facts” with no broader intellectual coherence (“ideas”), then the entire practice of faith is a futile exercise. That intellectual novelty can be used to justify almost any change in the Church’s Magisterium, while those who insist on the preservation of the “ideas” that buttress Catholic faith are presumed to be angry scholastics and reactionaries thwarting the springtime of Vatican II. If “facts” and the Catholic intellectual frame (“ideas”) are at odds, then the entire Catholic understanding of the natural law and the broader philosophical project of the Church are a laughable sham.

…These statements, inasmuch as they appear to challenge settled matters of Church teaching, have left the faithful to wrestle with a recurring series of questions about the integrity of dogma and the difference between discipline and doctrine, and existential questions about inerrancy.

…To what degree can any pope change quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est — that which has been believed always, everywhere, and by everyone?
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So I’m reading the full text of the press conference and I’m not seeing a quote about that in there (I’m reading the CNA article). There is this direct quote from Pope Francis that I think is the one being referenced:
I always have this idea: Ecumenism is not reaching the end of the game, of the discussion. Ecumenism is walking together, walking together, praying together… The ecumenism of prayer. In history, we have the ecumenism of blood. When they killed Christians they did not ask: Are you Catholic? Are you Orthodox? Are you Lutheran? No, [they asked] are you Christian! And the blood mixed together. It is the ecumensim of witness. Another ecumenism, of prayer, of blood… and then the ecumenism of the poor, those that work together. That we must work to help the sick, the inferm, for example, the people that are a little at the margin, below the poverty line, to help. “Matthew 25” is a beautiful ecumenical program, it comes from Jesus. To walk together: this is already Christian unity, but do not wait for theologians to agree to arrive at communion. Communion happens every day with prayer, with the memory of our martyrs, with works of charity and even of loving one another.
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To me it seems that he is not speaking about the Eucharist here, but a looser sense of communion between Christians. I am open to correction if I am mistaken about this. Maybe there is another version of the transcript somewhere that is being referenced.

In the RNS article, they quote the National Catholic Reporter as saying:
But during the press conference Francis went further. As he explained on the plane, “there is already Christian unity,” according to the National Catholic Reporter “Let’s not wait for the theologians to come to agreement on the Eucharist.”
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I’m not actually seeing that quote in the full text provided by CNA. Doing a ctrl+F on the text of the press conference, the word “Eucharist” came up one time, and it wasn’t in a quote like this. The only source I can find for this quote about the Eucharist comes from NCR. Perhaps this is just another example of NCR pushing their agenda again?
 
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I wonder if they are using a different speech or press conference all together because many things in the NCR article don’t match the CNA transcript. Even accounting for different translations, I am not seeing how they are referencing the same speech.
 
It’s a good question - I’m assuming that they did their own translation of the press conference, but how or why they are so different I do not know. My guess is that they gave preference to translations that would further the point of view that they want to advocate (in this case, open communion). In any case, this story hasn’t gained that much traction, and every article that I can find that contains this supposed quote about the Eucharist is referenced back to the NCR version of the press conference translation, and CNA doesn’t match it. And well, I’ll trust CNA over NCR any day of the week. I feel pretty safe in classifying this as “fake news” at this point as this story would surely have been picked up by a more numerous and diverse array of sources if it were real. None of the reputable Catholic sites have published anything on it, and even other liberal publications like America haven’t picked it up yet, and those that have are again referencing NCR.
 
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The National Catholic Reporter isn’t the best source of Catholic news. I wouldn’t trust what they say.
 
FirstFiveEighth said:
I know people will poo-poo this and say “oh that’s not what he really meant, journalists just twist his words”. Frankly that doesn’t fly anymore. If he was worried about the dozens of instances that journalists have “twisted his words” I would expect him to say so. But he just lets ambiguity hang around until people accept it as fact. And he is quite capable of condemning things he disagrees with clearly, concisely, and precisely, as he does with gender theory.
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I’ll happily poo-poo it. Some people just can’t wait to find scandal in anything Pope Francis says.
 
You can pick from a ton of news stories about this.

One thing is for sure. The amount of clarification and scandal that will be handled by a future pope is as daunting as it has ever been. I do hope Pope Francis’ time in the pontificate has an era of clarity.

All things will be clarified and decided in time. Pope Francis has the opportunity to have it be him that decides and clarifies.
 
Romanian Christians are primarily Orthodox, right? Under current canon law, as promulgated by St John Paul II, properly disposed Orthodox Christians can already receive communion in the Catholic Church. That was a radical ecumenical step already. Perhaps this is part of the context? He was coming from Romania.
 
Tell that to all the liberal Catholics and priests happily taking Pope Francis’ ambiguous words as support for their doctrinal reforms. They keep chugging along, uncorrected and the pontif never corrects or condemns. Which would be fine if that was his style but meanwhile he vocally calls out “rigidity” and “traditionalists” and tells them they have to change and even calls them friends of Satan. But not a peep to Cardinals, Bishops, and Priests openly challenging what has been Church doctrine for 2,000 years. See Father Reese in the article:
This fits with his famous statement that “facts are more important than ideas.” How we live our faith is more important than how we explain it.

But during the press conference Francis went further. As he explained on the plane, “there is already Christian unity,” according to the National Catholic Reporter. “Let’s not wait for the theologians to come to agreement on the Eucharist.”

Is the pope signaling his willingness to move toward Eucharistic sharing without total theological agreement?

This would be consistent with everything else he is saying. If it is the journey, not the destination, that is important, then why not share food during the trip? Why wait until we arrive?

Such a view would see the Eucharist as a unifying sacrament rather than a celebration of unity.
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Today, Catholics are encouraging their Protestant spouses to join them at Communion. Divorced and remarried Catholics are returning to Communion. Gay couples approach Communion ministers together. Catholic couples are practicing contraception.

The laity have moved forward; they are not waiting for theologians or the hierarchy to lead them. They are waiting for them to catch up.
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Call me when Pope Francis takes such Priests and Bishops to task like he does Catholics who like the perfectly valid Latin Mass, worshiping ad orientum, like he publicly smacked down Cardinal Sarah, or when he calls “orthodox” Catholics rigid Pharisees. The man is brutally direct when he wants to get a point across, but has not uttered a word against priests who vocalize ideas like Father Reese that explicitly call for doctrine to radically change.
 
Firstly who is Fr Reese and what are you referencing?

Give an example of Bishops and Cardinals who are preaching against Church doctrine.
 
twf said:
Romanian Christians are primarily Orthodox, right? Under current canon law, as promulgated by St John Paul II, properly disposed Orthodox Christians can already receive communion in the Catholic Church. That was a radical ecumenical step already. Perhaps this is part of the context? He was coming from Romania.
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This is a very good point. But again, I did not see anything in the transcript that points to that. It seems that either the transcript is a completely different transcript or the article is fictitious.
 
FirstFiveEighth said:
Call me when Pope Francis takes such Priests and Bishops to task like he does Catholics who like the perfectly valid Latin Mass, worshiping ad orientum, like he publicly smacked down Cardinal Sarah, or when he calls “orthodox” Catholics rigid Pharisees. The man is brutally direct when he wants to get a point across, but has not uttered a word against priests who vocalize ideas like Father Reese that explicitly call for doctrine to radically change.
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I do agree with this.
 
13pollitos said:
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FirstFiveEighth:
Call me when Pope Francis takes such Priests and Bishops to task like he does Catholics who like the perfectly valid Latin Mass, worshiping ad orientum, like he publicly smacked down Cardinal Sarah, or when he calls “orthodox” Catholics rigid Pharisees. The man is brutally direct when he wants to get a point across, but has not uttered a word against priests who vocalize ideas like Father Reese that explicitly call for doctrine to radically change.
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I do agree with this.
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It’s really worrying that Catholics have become so comfortable slamming the Holy Father like this. Fundamentalism has plagued the Church since the beginning and is a devastating cancer on the transmission of the Gospel. That is why Popes have needed to speak out against it in the strongest way. Pope St John XXIII specifically addressed it at the beginning of the Vatican II council.

"In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure. In these modern times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse, and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life. They behave as though at the time of former Councils everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea and life and for proper religious liberty.

We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand."

To talk about the Pope in the way you guys talk about him is surely a hellish lack of ‘discretion and measure’.
 
Weserthy said:
So I’m reading the full text of the press conference and I’m not seeing a quote about that in there (I’m reading the CNA article). There is this direct quote from Pope Francis that I think is the one being referenced:
I always have this idea: Ecumenism is not reaching the end of the game, of the discussion. Ecumenism is walking together, walking together, praying together… The ecumenism of prayer. In history, we have the ecumenism of blood. When they killed Christians they did not ask: Are you Catholic? Are you Orthodox? Are you Lutheran? No, [they asked] are you Christian! And the blood mixed together. It is the ecumensim of witness. Another ecumenism, of prayer, of blood… and then the ecumenism of the poor, those that work together. That we must work to help the sick, the inferm, for example, the people that are a little at the margin, below the poverty line, to help. “Matthew 25” is a beautiful ecumenical program, it comes from Jesus. To walk together: this is already Christian unity, but do not wait for theologians to agree to arrive at communion. Communion happens every day with prayer, with the memory of our martyrs, with works of charity and even of loving one another.
Click to expand...
To me it seems that he is not speaking about the Eucharist here, but a looser sense of communion between Christians. I am open to correction if I am mistaken about this. Maybe there is another version of the transcript somewhere that is being referenced.

In the RNS article, they quote the National Catholic Reporter as saying:
But during the press conference Francis went further. As he explained on the plane, “there is already Christian unity,” according to the National Catholic Reporter “Let’s not wait for the theologians to come to agreement on the Eucharist.”
Click to expand...
I’m not actually seeing that quote in the full text provided by CNA. Doing a ctrl+F on the text of the press conference, the word “Eucharist” came up one time, and it wasn’t in a quote like this. The only source I can find for this quote about the Eucharist comes from NCR. Perhaps this is just another example of NCR pushing their agenda again?
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Yeah I think this whole quote is made up by the National Catholic Reporter. They’ve never been known for their journalistic integrity. It’s clear to me that from the real transcript posted by Catholic News Agency he’s talking about a fraternal communion and not literal communion, as in the Eucharist.
 
tseleehw said:
Yeah I think this whole quote is made up by the National Catholic Reporter. They’ve never been known for their journalistic integrity.
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That’s far too common on both sides of the artificial, human-created “liberal/conservative” divide. Cherry-picking out of context quotes to create new memes to support an agenda.

National Catholic Reporter, meet LifeSiteNews…
 
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