Breaking bread together – is there a price to pay?

On Wednesday, an Ecumenical Service will be held at St Publius’ Church, Floriana, at 6.30 p.m. presided over by Archbishop Paul Cremona. This year’s theme is: ‘The Early Christian Community remained faithful to the teaching of the Apostles, the brotherhood, the breaking of bread and to the prayers’. How come the breaking of bread in many parts is given as a symbol of communion?

My guess is that the central symbolism of the Eucharist is meant to point to the paradox of the Salvation Event itself. It is the very breaking of the earthly body of Christ that becomes the condition of His rising transfigured insplendour.

I gave you this answer after a longish pause. I confess that your question at first had me foxed enough to make me feel acute pangs of regret that I was no longer able to follow my usual past practice of referring such conundrums to my senior colleague, the erudite Jesuit Maurice Eminyan.

He was a pioneer of Ecumenism in Malta, the successor of Mgr Sant, through whom Malta also became an active participant in the worldwide ecumenical activity of the Bible Society, which is still flourishing.

Prof. Eminyan’s ecumenical drive was perhaps related to his uncanny skill at providing apt and brief answers when quizzed by viewers in the long-running TV programme Djalogu on thorny topics ranging from how to put a tipsy husband to bed to how to discern a diabolic tale beneath a banker’s tail-coat.

I used to attribute both these traits – ecumenism and finding exit routes from quandaries – to the Armenian origins of the family of the professor (who was as proud of being born in Valletta and loved the city as myself). He is sadly missed by many of all religions or none.

Can you explain more clearly your initial remark about the paradox of “the breaking of bread” in the ecumenical perspective?

It is striking that from very early on, fragmentation of the community occurred among Christians in connection with the Eucharist, as appears from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, but the cause was not at all theological in nature, but social and cultural.

It was the same two reasons as, for instance, make contemporary caterers vie for inclusion in the Guinness Book of World Records for supplying the most expensive pizza (ostentation).

Or the group of guests at a Christmas-tide wedding who complained because they did not make it in time to reach the buffet table before their more agile fellow-invitees had gulped down the entire, ample supply of fig-filled pastry cakes (greed).

The interest of this point in relation to the theme of this year’s ecumenical service is that as the great although now almost forgotten historian Christopher Dawson said in his book, The Dividing ofChristendom, the main sources of Christian division and the chief obstacle to the fullness of Christian unity have been and are cultural rather than theological.

Thus, for instance, ThomasCorbishley, SJ, in his book One Body, One Spirit with a foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury, has clearly shown there are no longer any sufficiently deep theological reasons why mostChristians, including Lutherans as well as Anglicans and Orthodox, cannot share in a common“breaking of the bread”.

The only reason intercommunion is so severely restricted at present is just for the sake of not blurring the significant differences that still exist between the denominations mainly concerning Church structures and administration.

Do you think that the recent influx into the Roman Catholic Church of Anglican groups mainly because of their rejection of the ordination of women and of gays as bishops will slow down the more general rapprochement between the Roman Catholic and its fellow Christian Churches?

From a positive angle, clear proof has been given that even a Pope and a Curia notorious for their conservatism are still open on two very important issues.

First, the distinctive traditions, liturgical, spiritual and more generally cultural developed within each separate Church are to be allowed to continue to flourish even when full communion with Rome is established.

Secondly, much greater scope can be envisaged even within the Latin rite of the Church for married clergy.

On the other hand, it is a pity the faction that might be called Liberal or Progressive within the Church of England should have pressed forward with ideas known to immediately harden the fences separating them from Catholics and Orthodox.

St Paul’s exhortations for patience are still worth listening to.

Had there been a more consensual desire for all the three main types of Christian in the globalised environment of today to move forward not in a divergent manner but coming closer together, through calm dialogue and sharing of best experiences in something like the open method of collaboration adopted by the European Union in the Lisbon Strategy, it would have been a lateral way of allowing discussion of even such hot topics as women and gays’ ordination to take place.

When we meet in the church of St Publius on Wednesday evening, we can silently pray for the way of dialogue and joyful acceptance of cultural differences to resume the strength which seems to have somewhat weakened in recent years.

Success in achieving co-existence of different cultural attitudes will be followed, I am sure, by the theologians quickly finding the correct formula for full Communion.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.