Volume 6, issue 1 (summer 1998)
Gouden Hoorn Discussion
An essayistic discussion on current affairs that have roots in the (Late Antique/Byzantine) past. In this issue: Ecumenic Communion?
A discussion broke out in the Netherlands on the topic of Roman Catholic Communion at an ecumenical weddingservice in Apeldoorn, where, on the Saturday before Pentecost, the Royal wedding took place of Prince Maurits and his spouse Marilène. The church authorities of the Roman Catholic Church had made an exception, that the Dutch Reformed Prince could alongside his R.C. wife, take part in the Eucharist. But at the handing out of the Communion, several members of the Royal Family also received the Communion. This encited an angry response of the Dutch cardinal, Simonis, who was quoted in the newspapers to say that the Royal Family should have been more aware of the church protocol, just as much as the church was aware of the royal protocol.
This incident set off discussion among letter-writers in newspapers on the question what is more important, that two young people are married in church in an era of secularized societies, even if members of their family show no respect for the meaning of the Communion-service, or that the Eucharist remains strictly for those who have been through First Communion, excluding other christians from the Body of Christ.
Interested readers of Gouden Hoorn wondered about these ancient rites in the church, of which they nowadays hardly know the background. This encited our search for the opinion of the Orthodox churches on this issue. In Jean Meyendorff's L'Orthodoxie: hier et aujourd'hui1, he states that the Orthodox church stresses the metabolè of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, but that it was not until the post-16th century creeds (that intended to pose the Orthodox dogma against the reformationist theology) that the Orthodox church used the term 'transsubstantiation', or 'metousioosis'.
But while the Orthodox church stresses the reality of the change, it does not attempt to give an explanation of the manner of the change, as Timothy Ware puts it.2
In the following article, Gabriel Rabo demonstrates how the Hostie functions in the Syrian Orthodox church.
Notes
1 Translated into Dutch: De Orthodoxe kerk, verleden en heden, Roermond [etc.], 1964, see p. 86.
2 See Timothy Ware: The Orthodox church, [1983] (1963-1), p. 290-295.