In a homily based on a Gospel lesson from John 22 that I delivered during our Friday joint evening prayer service for the 2017 College Theology Society annual convention at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, I asked this by way of very specific application:

While I am not claiming credit for this year's panel session devoted to the question of intercommunion in the context of College Theology Society's convention with Baptist participation, I am deeply gratified that we as the church's theologians, Baptist and Catholic, are now raising the question in this manner, and that Professor Freeman has made clear for us what the ground rules seem to be for playing the hypothetical game of Baptist-Catholic intercommunion at a CTS convention. I have nothing to add to his spot-on summary of the Baptist “rules” for open communion and the Catholic “rules” for exceptional intercommunion articulated in the documents he has cited.

In my years attending the CTS convention, I have been content to follow Dulles’ commendation of penitent abstention noted by Freeman,Footnote ⁷² understanding it as a painful motivation to work toward a unity we do not currently have. I have found deeply meaningful other acts of worship during the Mass in which we are able to embody our unity—our common confession of the apostolic faith in creedal recitation, something I do not always get to do in Baptist worship;Footnote ⁷³ the singing of hymnody that often turns out to be shared between our traditions;Footnote ⁷⁴ the passing of the peace; our hearing together of the word of God that comes through Scripture, which has a sacramentality to it in which we mutually participate; the sign of the cross, which in this context I am able to make without the slightest bit of self-consciousness or worry about being scorned as a papist by my Baptist coreligionists.Footnote ⁷⁵ But Curtis Freeman's article has made me considerably less content for us to maintain the status quo ante.

I have previously experienced a Catholic-Baptist intercommunion individually—when I was doing a year of graduate studies in patristics at the Catholic University of America during the 1994–95 academic year. A couple of my fellow students were preparing for the priesthood as Eastern Rite Maronites, and they invited me to join them for Mass on the Feast of the Holy Cross at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Church in northwest Washington, DC, across the street from Walter Reed Hospital, where the Maronite bishop was to be the celebrant. At this stage in my acquaintance with proper decorum for participating in Catholic worship as a non-Catholic, I did not yet know about the practice of crossing my arms to receive a blessing, though I did know that according to the rules I was not supposed to receive communion, so when the time came for the Eucharist I simply stepped into the aisle to let my friends walk forward and to return to my seat. But though they knew I was Baptist, they motioned me toward the altar and said, “No, you should go.” I told them that I should not, since I was not Catholic, but by this time the bishop noticed what was happening and started gesturing for me to come forward. So I did, and I received communion from him—possibly against the rules. But I was separated from my usual eucharistic community for an academic year, and while I did attend regularly two Baptist churches in Washington and my church in Texas on trips home during that year, the infrequency of typical Baptist observance of the Lord's Supper—for some churches, as seldom as four times a year, and not necessarily on the same quarterly schedule—meant that I never managed to be in the right Baptist church at the right time to commune. So I arguably met that condition, and the bishop did invite me—though he did not know anything about my faith or intention.

As an ordained minister working in theological education who occasionally preaches and teaches in other churches than my own congregation on Sunday, this sometimes means that now I go long stretches without receiving the Eucharist. I am chronically eucharistically malnourished. But I can count on spiritual food on which I might feed being available in the Saturday mass at our CTS conventions—available, and yet held just beyond the reach of me and my fellow Baptists, whom I suspect are likewise malnourished. We desire this food, with what I believe is a right faith and right intention, in a circumstance in which it is unlikely that we can easily find a Baptist church that can feed us the Supper during our Sunday morning schedule. (I point out that last year when we met in Newport, Rhode Island, some of us departed early on Sunday morning to worship at the First Baptist Church in America in Providence—and there was no communion that day.) Will this food always remain just beyond our reach? I believe it is time for us to ask to be fed. Asking is our first step toward communing according to the rules.

In the meantime, I wonder if there is another baby step that could be taken toward intercommunion, but it requires a clarification of the Catholic rules regarding concelebration. Is it possible for us to have two Eucharists simultaneously, in the same space, but separately at the Saturday mass—with one of the ordained Baptists consecrating and administering communion to the Baptists? Is this possible, according to the rules? I suggest this in part not because it would make it easier for us to have communion, but because it would make our division at the table even more starkly obvious than proceeding toward the priest, blending in line with our Catholic sisters and brothers, but with arms crossed for a blessing instead of the bread and wine.Footnote ⁷⁶ I look forward to any answers and alternative proposals that may emerge from the discussions and research that this theological roundtable might inspire.