The Catholic bishops' One Bread One Body document on the Eucharist has been described as having had the effect of a large door slamming shut on relations between the churches.
Writing in the current issue of Ceide magazine, Father Brendan Hoban says the document indicated little appeared to have been learned by the Catholic Church despite documents on the Eucharist agreed with the Anglican churches.
He referred to a joint meeting between Catholic and Church of Ireland clergy in Ballina after publication of the agreed documents. The Church of Ireland bishop of Tuam at the time, the Right Rev John Neill, explained what the Eucharist meant in his tradition. Bishop Thomas McDonnell, then the Catholic bishop of Killala, replied that he could see nothing to disagree with in what Bishop Neill had said.
"It appeared a defining moment," Father Hoban recalled. "Surely, we believed, the road to unity had opened out in front of us. So it was no longer just a matter of friendship or mutual respect or even public relations. It was now, it seemed, just a matter of time."
However, somewhere along the line matters got stuck. There were tensions over mixed marriages and "the agreed documents were placed carefully on a shelf somewhere and someone, somewhere, lacked the courage to give an added impetus to the enterprise".
Father Hoban referred to words in the document which were "breathtaking in their arrogance and in their dismissal of other churches". Words which "in all humility" described the Catholic Church as "endowed with all the gifts with which God wishes to endow the church. . ." and which said those Christian communities rooted in the Reformation had not "the authentic and full reality of the Eucharistic mystery".
"The hard word was being spoken." he concluded. "That word fell on stony soil." People were unhappy with the language the document used and "the rigid unyielding message" it conveyed along with its timing, which was "breathtakingly poor".
"Many Breads Many Bodies was the hard message. Sometimes silence can be a better choice," he concluded.
