Word: intercommunion
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...chance to act on the rewritten statement. Nonetheless, the delegates were enthusiastic about the increased emphasis on prayer and multicultural worship at the assembly. They were also hopeful that a joint statement produced last year by the council's theology commission might provide the eventual basis for intercommunion...
Extending their ecumenical spirit even further last week, the three Lutheran conventions authorized occasional "interim" sharing of Communion with Episcopalians, making official what already often happens unofficially in some parishes. Significantly, the Episcopal Church at its New Orleans convention overwhelmingly passed a companion measure. The actions neither establish full intercommunion nor resolve outstanding doctrinal differences. But in history's long run they could prove even more important than the moves to unite the Lutherans...
Dutch bishops began publishing a new adult catechism, suspect in Rome because it sidestepped such teachings as the Virgin birth. Ecumenically minded parishes countenanced intercommunion with Protestants. Priests who quit to get married were retained on seminary faculties or continued, without episcopal approval, to function as parish ministers. Laymen and women began to carry out almost all tasks formerly reserved for priests. At a national meeting, Catholic delegates openly derided Vatican policy on priestly celibacy and birth control. Private confession virtually disappeared. There was even talk of breaking away from Rome, as England did under Henry VIII...