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<TITLE>Re: non-Catholics and communion on the Camino</TITLE>
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<BLOCKQUOTE>Dear Gene,<BR>
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<BLOCKQUOTE>> <FONT SIZE="2"><FONT FACE="Arial">Just to round out your message, Jeff, transubstantiation is both dogma and <BR>
> doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. First adopted in 1215 by the fourth <BR>
> Lateran Council, it was reconfirmed by the Council of Trent in 1551, <BR>
> reconfirmed repeatedly since then by church leaders and theologians, and <BR>
> affirmed again in Pope Paul VI's encyclical Mysterium Fidei as recently as <BR>
> 1965. The doctrine was declared as essential to the faith of the Orthodox <BR>
> Church in 1672. <BR>
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</FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial">The 1672 reference is to the Confession of Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem. It's the first time any Orthodox teacher used such language and he did so specfically to repudiate his predecessor who had been, though the Patriarch of Jerusalem, a very eager student of the writings of John Calvin. <BR>
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I offer this on Dositheus' 1672 language from Fr. John Meyendorff, a noted Orthodox priest and scholar who was for many years dean of St. Vladimir's Seminary in Crestwood, New York,<BR>
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</FONT>"Orthodox teaching always has emphasized the reality of the sacramental change (METABOLE) in the Eucharist, by which the bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. However, neither the Orthodox liturgy nor the Fathers nor any authentic text prior to the Sixteenth Century uses the term 'transubstantiation' (Greek METOUSIOSIS) to describe this mystery. The term is employed in later Orthodox confessions of faith intended to define the teaching of the Church with respect to Protestant opinions on this matter, but there is always the reservation that the term is only one of sevferal that could be employed and does not imply that the Church intends to adopt the Aristotelean philosophical theory of form and matter."<BR>
John Meyendorff, The Orthodox Church, p. 72<BR>
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</FONT>> The dogma has been repudiated by the Church of England.<BR>
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And yes, while that is formally true, Anglicans/Episcopalians have consistently taught and believed the Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, so the argument is about the necessity (or even adequacy) of the particular Aristotelean definition. It is also true that ARCIC, a commission of Roman Catholic and Anglican scholars formulated an agreed on understanding of Eucharistic presence in the last twenty years.<BR>
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I'm sorry that this is all a little obscure and remains in the realm of controversy. What seems quite clear to me is that the pilgrim practice and experience of walking together patiently and in love reveals a great deal more about our Christian and human unity than our historical arguments about doctrine.<BR>
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I offer this irenically and hope the conversation can accept it as such where we meet in a spirit of peace and delight in mysteries deeper than we can speak.<BR>
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Donald Schell <BR>
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