Perspectief 2014-25

Perspectief 22 Communion in Taizé The community adheres to this canon by offering non Catholics the opportunity to receive Protestant communion or the blessed bread. However, in the busy periods of the year the church is so crowded that it is difficult to find one’s way to the special locations where these are administered. Adequate data about who in fact receives communion during the morning prayer lacks. This could be a field of further investigation. In any case, the situation in Taizé is rather complex. So many people from such various contexts are present that adequate control is virtually impossible. When it comes to the brothers, they all receive Catholic communion, Catholics and Protestants alike. Although a formal dispensation is absent, informally this practice has the approval of the local Bishop, ever since mgr. Armand Le Bourgeois, the then Bishop of Autun, gave communion first to brother Roger and later to all members of the community. 4 The other relevant canon at this point is canon 908: Catholic priests are forbidden to concelebrate the Eucharist with priests or ministers of Churches or ecclesial communities which do not have full communion with the Catholic Church. Catholic Eucharist and the Protestant holy Supper are not being celebrated within a single service. Every morning they are celebrated apart from each other, the Eucharist in the improvised chapel in the back of the Church of Reconciliation, the holy Supper in the Orthodox chapel, outside of the church. On Sundays and other special occasions when the Eucharist is celebrated in the prayer service, no Protestant alternative will be celebrated at the same time as well. It is clear that the community has chosen the Catholic Eucharist as their common form of worship. In that sense the Eucharist is dominant in Taizé today. 4 Guenois, ‘Something that was without precedent’.