Peter Costello
Professor Thomas O'Loughlin Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking up Pope Francis’s Call to Theologians
by Thomas O’Loughlin (Liturgical Press Academic, $US29.95/£19.99; available in several formats, search www.litpress.org.uk; orders@norwichbooksandmusic.co.uk)
This is the latest book by well known historian Thomas O’Loughlin, the prominent Irish theologian and liturgist, who was elected president of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain in 2016. He is currently the Professor of Historical Theology in the University of Nottingham.
“My specialism is the origins of Christianity, but, more widely, I am interested in how Christianity has been transmitted down the centuries, and how its expressions have changed in that process,” he said. This concentration is very relevant to this new book.
According to the author himself, it explores various ways of thinking about what Catholics do in the liturgy that should lead them to see intercommunion between Christian denominations as enhancing their participation in the mystery of the Church and the mystery they celebrate as the central feature of their religious lives.
Purpose
Here for once, an author gives an exact account of the occasion and purpose of what he is writing. Professor O’Loughlin writes: “The idea of this book can be traced to a few off-the-cuff remarks that were made in a Lutheran church in Rome in November 2015, when Pope Francis replied to a question about intercommunion and suggested that theologians should address the question!
“I had by then lost count of how many times I had been asked a version of that question in churches, in class, in meetings with clergy and even once while waiting for a plane in India: why will the Catholic Church not allow other Christians, whom they acknowledge as Christian, to share their table?
“I then recalled that I could not think of a single book that presented the arguments in favour of a change in Catholic practice – the very sort of examination Pope Francis was calling for.
“So the idea took root, and I desired a small book that would address the several dimensions of the question (theological, liturgical, and pastoral) in a unified way.”
This concise book is the result. It is indeed a short book, as some theological books go, the main text running to only 158 pages. But it is densely packed with detail, presented in a clear and well articulated form.
The aim is less legalistic than pastoral, which is very much what is needed today. The author writes, he says, from within the broad stream of Catholic theological tradition: the ideas he advances are well established, and central rather than extreme. He writes for a general audience of readers, who like his students at Nottingham and elsewhere will be from a wide range of religious backgrounds, and of no faith at all, who are interested in the human phenomenon of religion.
Old situation
I was reminded on encountering this book of the old situation where Catholics were prevented from attending a Protestant funeral service. This within families was the cause of great pain, even to the point of public scandal where government minsters declined to attend the funeral of President Hyde but stayed outside St Patrick’s Cathedral in their cars.
Today we cannot image such a situation which went against all the traditions of Irish attitudes to funerals. Intercommunion has already been the cause of controversy here in Ireland. So perhaps future generations will look back with wonder and disbelief from a time when such ceremonies will be commonplace.
When we sit down at home to our family meals, we do not say to strangers in the house this is not for you”
This book is a first response to the Pope’s query. Others from different viewpoints ought to follow. But the book ends on the sober note that that it is time the matter was dealt with. It is perhaps a question of now … or never.
Think about it. The Passover that Jesus was celebrating with the Apostles was for them, as it is for Jews today, essentially a family meal. When we sit down at home to our family meals, we do not say to strangers in the house this is not for you, it is ours only. No, we ask them to eat with us. And those we eat with are embraced into the family circle.
So too with the Eucharist that derives from the events on Holy Thursday; this, too, Thomas O’Loughlin argues on the basis of his reading of history, is for the Christian family to share among themselves.
This new book ought to be read in tandem with the author’s earlier book from 2015, The Eucharist: Origins and Contemporary Understanding (T&T Clark £95.00) where he argues that in recent decades, historical research and new discoveries have changed our view of the origins and the development of the Eucharist.
By bringing history into a fruitful dialogue with sacramental and liturgical theology, he shows “not only ways how theology and practice can be brought closer together again, but also how current ecumenical divisions can be overcome”.
An article about the cover of the artwork on the cover of this book will appear on this page next issue.