Professor Freeman points out that in 1972 the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity issued the Instruction on Admitting Other Christians to Eucharistic Communion in the Catholic Church, which established five conditions for such admission. Eucharist may be given to those
• who have a faith in the sacrament in conformity with that of the Church,
• who experience a serious spiritual need for the eucharistic sustenance,
• who for a prolonged period are unable to have recourse to a minister of their own community,
• and who ask for the sacrament of their own accord;
• all this provided that they have proper dispositions and lead lives worthy of a Christian.Footnote 54
In the following year, the secretariat issued a note on interpreting the instruction. As Freeman observes, this note clarified that the requisite faith in the Eucharist “is not limited to a mere affirmation of the ‘real presence’ in the Eucharist, but implies the doctrine of the Eucharist as taught in the Catholic Church.”Footnote 55 Concerning the criteria set forth in 1972, the 1973 note specifies that they are “observed if all the required conditions are verified. An objective, pastorally responsible examination does not allow any of the conditions to be ignored.”Footnote 56
As Freeman points out, the 1993 Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism Footnote 57 generally repeats the criteria from 1972 but drops the reference to “serious spiritual need,” raising the bar to “danger of death” in paragraph 130.Footnote 58 I would add here that the 1993 Directory also says nothing about lacking recourse to the sacrament in one's own tradition for a prolonged period of time. The 1993 text states only that the person in question be “unable to have recourse for the sacrament desired to a minister of his or her own Church or ecclesial Community.”Footnote 59
Seeking a way forward for intercommunion between Baptists and Catholics at the joint annual conventions of the College Theology Society and the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, Freeman suggests that the circumstances of these joint meetings might match up with the criterion of “serious spiritual need” from the 1972 Instruction.Footnote 60 He adds that it
might also be important for Baptists and Catholics to talk with one another about what constitutes (1) lack of recourse to a sacramental community, (2) voluntary request, (3) sacramental faith, and (4) proper disposition. Determination of whether these conditions pertain and are satisfied, however, cannot be ascertained prescriptively by simply appealing to these conditions as if they were a set of immutable rules. Rather, their fitness must be discerned in conversation under the guidance of the local bishop (or perhaps the head of a religious order).Footnote 61
I agree with this line of thinking in general, but I am not sure that the “serious spiritual need” of 1972 will be of assistance. For example, the policy on intercommunion for the Archdiocese of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, within which we met in June 2018, offers as guidelines only canon 844 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law and paragraphs 129–31 of the 1993 Directory.Footnote 62 Canon 844 §4 states that communion may be given to a non-Catholic “if the danger of death is present or if, in the judgment of the diocesan bishop or conference of bishops, some other grave necessity urges it.”Footnote 63 For its part, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, my home diocese, simply provides the guidelines established by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1996. These guidelines refer, again, to canon 844 of the 1983 Code.Footnote 64 Along with discussion of no other recourse, voluntary request, sacramental faith, and proper disposition, I think we need to assess together “grave necessity.”
I can develop my point only in outline, but concerning “grave necessity” I wonder if there is something to be learned from the twentieth-century trajectory of the Roman Catholic sacrament of the anointing of the sick. At the century's start, Catholic practice typically restricted the sacrament to the deathbed, and the 1917 Code specified that a would-be recipient must be someone who has “come into danger of death from infirmity or old age.”Footnote 65 At Vatican II, the criterion shifted: “As soon as any one of the faithful begins to be in danger of death from sickness or old age, the fitting time for him to receive this sacrament has certainly already arrived.”Footnote 66 The rite promulgated after the council goes even further: “Great care and concern should be taken to see that those of the faithful whose health is seriously impaired by sickness or old age receive this sacrament.”Footnote 67 True: what is at issue here is providing this Catholic sacrament to Catholics, but the understanding of gravity has changed. The pendulum has been swinging in the other direction with respect to intercommunion, but perhaps this need not be so.
One might look to the Catholic Church in Germany, where earlier this year by a 3-to-1 margin bishops authorized giving communion in some circumstances to Lutherans who are married to Roman Catholics. Some in the minority appealed the decision to Pope Francis, who referred the matter back to the German bishops, asking them to come to a unanimous decision.Footnote 68 Initially, at least, Francis did not say no.Footnote 69 One might look to Francis once more. In his 2016 exhortation Amoris Laetitia, footnote 351 of chapter 8 speaks laconically about the possibility of providing sacraments to those Catholics who have divorced and remarried without annulment.Footnote 70
Of course, I am mixing apples and oranges here. The anointing of the sick is not the Eucharist, and in any case sacramental anointing is also governed by canon 844. The German bishops are addressing situations where a Catholic and a Lutheran are joined in the bond of sacramental marriage, not joint attendees at theological conferences. The footnote in Amoris Laetitia is not specifically addressing intercommunion. It is worth noting as well that Cardinal Francis Arinze, former prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, is among those who have raised objections to the German bishops and to the provisions on communion in Amoris Laetitia.Footnote 71
Yet I submit that there is something about changing understandings of necessity and the good of souls that might speak to our situation. Perhaps we can move back to “serious spiritual need.”
