The pastor of my sister’s ELCA church said in a sermon that very recently an agreement
was reached between the RCC and ELCA allowing members of each to share each other’s
communion. I haven’t heard of any such thing. Have any of you? Have I missed the
biggest ecumenical news story of the year somehow? A Google search seems to confirm
my immediate suspicion that the pastor is grossly misinformed. Can anybody shed
more light on this?
Jul 30
Or perhaps the ELCA would let Lutherans receive communion with Catholics, but the Catholics don’t know it?
(I seem to recall someone telling me that this is sort of the case with Catholics and Eastern Orthodox — the Catholic Church would permit you to receive communion at an Eastern Orthodox liturgy, but the rules of the Eastern Orthodox Church don’t permit that. Of course, I could be wrong about that too.)
What the pastor was talking about, was what the RCC and the ELCA did a few years back. And that was they signed some thing that basicly stated the disagrements on salvation. Also remember the ELCA does not represent all Lutherans, I am a Lutheran, but I will not commune at a ELCA church, I am a member of a more conservative synod, and there are some major fundimatal diffences between the two, I am a member of the LCMS.
The ELCA has I think reached an agreement for common communion with the ECUSA in the past year or two. To the particularly untrained eye, the ‘Piscopalians might appear to be Catholic. I think in fact that the less Protestant and more orthodox among them (an unfortunately rare breed) tend to call themselves “English Catholics”, which may increase the confusion among translators. In fact, the ECUSA (at least our parish here) has open communion. The only requirement is that one simply be baptized (presumably by trinitarian formula, tho’ I wouldn’t stake my life on it).
Cheers!
I’m sure the Lutheran pastor is quite wrong. He must be thinking about the Lutheran/Episcopal concordat.