The Ongoing Dispute About the Anaphora/Eucharistic Prayer

And when Christ becomes sacramentally or truly present on the altar.

NLM: East-West Disagreements about the Epiclesis and Transubstantiation by Peter Kwasniewski


A modified Tridentine position that is close to the "holistic" position of Fr. Louis Bouyer, who thinks that the Words of Consecration effect consecration of the sacred species but the whole anaphora is important. (But not the same as Fr. Robert Taft's, who talks of the necessity of the whole anaphora, both the institution narrative whether explicit or not and an explicit expiclesis, if there is one.) But Trent was not an ecumenical council with representatives from all of the Apostolic Churches, nor did it take into consideration the liturgies from the traditions of those Churches.

One More on Spiritual Communion

HPR: Epidemic and the Liturgical Reform by Dr. Joseph Shaw

It is not surprising to find that when medieval-style pestilence stalks the streets, the Church has to reach back into the past, before that brief gilded historical moment, for responses. The most obvious example is “spiritual communion”: the practice of uniting oneself in prayer to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, since one is not able to receive sacramentally. Our predecessors in the Faith used to do this at the great majority of the Masses they attended, either formally or informally, since they received Holy Communion only once or a few times a year. When I mentioned the practice as a response to the epidemic in a letter to the UK’s liberal Catholic weekly, The Tablet, the first response of one priest was ridicule. We wouldn’t, he wrote, have a “spiritual collection,” would we?¹

The concern that the faithful receive Holy Communion reverently and fruitfully, and not mechanically is correct. It might even be claimed that a Christian should even consider abstaining from Communion if necessary, because he does not have the right spiritual disposition, or the "minimum" that is needed for Communion to bear fruit. A spiritual father would have more to say in this regard and appropriate advice that has been fitted to an individual.

Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick on Evangelization

What Is Needed for Reconciliation with Rome

According to Fr. Thomas Hopko -- AFR: What Does Rome Need To Do? - Part 2 (and Part 1)

Some are the same demands of Rome made by Orthodox polemicsts in the immediate centuries following the supposed date of the schism.

Russian Faith has a summary: 22 Changes Roman Catholics Must Make to Repent, Become Orthodox, and Join the One True Church

The restoration of ad orientem worship was not included, but it probably should have been. Many of Fr. Hopko's demands regarding supposed "doctrinal errors" seem to ignore legitimate differences in theologoumena between the Latin and the Byzantine churches. I will have to reconsider those.

The doctrinal errors concerning the papacy are important, and considered by others to be the main or primary obstacle to full reconciliation.

• Aquiesce Papal Power
• Abolish All Pretenses of Papal Infallibility
• Actively Promote a Conciliar Approach

I agree with the demands that are based on the tradition once universally observed by the Church Universal:

• Perform Chrismation/Confirmation Immediately After Baptism
• Provide Holy Communion for Infants and Young Children, Immediately after Baptism and Chrismation
• Partake of Holy Communion Consecrated at the Present Service, Not from a Previous One  

Some comments on the following proposals:
Prepare Holy Communion with Leavened Bread
I have read that Rome used to use leavened bread as well; despite the claim that unleavened bread was used at the Last Supper, I don't see why Rome can't make the use of leavened bread at least optional.


Affirm New Bishops, Not Appoint Them
I think there need to be changes in how bishops are elected, but such a reform would require prior reforms of the local Church and its ecclesiology, and the Orthodox themselves need to consider what changes they should be making to church governance. So I don't think that should be a necessary condition for reconciliation.

Abdicate the Position as Head of State

With regards to the pope being a sort of figurehead and teacher of the universal teacher, I disagree with Hopko, who writes:

Then finally, in this area, I say: As leader of the world’s Christians, the pope of Rome would travel extensively. He would take full advantage of contemporary means of transportation and communication. He would master electronic media to serve his ministry in proclaiming Christ’s Gospel, propagating Christian faith, promoting ethical behavior, protecting human rights, and securing justice and peace for all people. He would be the servant of unity among all human beings, and first of all his fellow Christians, not as a unique episcopus episcoporum—that’s an expression of St. Cyprian—not as a bishop of other bishops—there is no bishop of other bishops, as was decreed already in the Council of Carthage in the third century: he is not the bishop of bishops; he is one of the equal bishops with all the others—so he would not have that position, but he would have the position as the leading bishop in the world, that Pope St. Gregory the Great called servus servorum Dei, the servant of the servants of God, among all the Christian bishops in the world. 

In an age of the collapse of a "civilization" powered by fossil fuels, this sort of role as "universal teacher" will pass into history. In the age of collapse, if anyone should be exercising some sort of teaching authority with regards to some political community or unit, it should be the local bishops, but within their competence, and the Christian laity must be acknowledged as having a role within the reform of political society that is partly separate from whatever teaching authority bishops may have in that area.

A Faithful Interpretation of Suarez?

forgetting that Francisco Suarez was such a Marxist pic.twitter.com/msfWIagOsZ

— Jordan L. Perkins, Doctor of Juris (@jordanlperkins) May 7, 2020

How do we get from point A (resources given by God for the benefit of all) to point Z (after being allocated and being the matter of productive labor, what is produced is nevertheless still a "common good" that can be distributed by whoever holds political authority)?

I am doubting that the distinction resulting from the mendicant controversies between ownership and use would be that helpful, though it is the case that later scholastics applied it.