Perspectief 2016-34

2016-34 Eucharistic hospitality 51 Com ment connected to the term intercommunion found their way into the works of the Lund Conference (1952) organized by Faith and Order, a meeting that gave birth to an accurate list of the various terms used to describe different forms of Eucharist sharing. Already in this same year Yves Congar wrote, referring to intercommunion: “I believe that questions of vocabulary are of great importance, and that the study of words, of their use, and of their relations, often throws considerable light.” 2 Nevertheless, in the catholic world, debates about intercommunion became more intense above all thanks to the new ecclesiology which arose from the Second Vatican Council, and particularly as a consequence of the three well-known episodes of Eucharistic sharing in 1968. The first one took place in an apartment in a banlieue of Paris, during the Pentecost of 2 June 1968; the second occurred during the World Council of Churches conference in Uppsala (7 July) on invitation by the Lutheran Swedish Church; the last and most significant episode took place at the end of the second General Conference of the Latin-American Episcopate in Medellín (Colombia), where the three presidents of the conference, starting from Cardinal Samoré, admitted five non-Catholic observers to participate at the Eucharistic liturgy on the 5 th of September. In this way, the presidents gave birth to the only case in which Protestants were officially admitted to the Catholic Eucharist. Significantly, the Holy See immediately distanced itself from the decision and repudiated what happened. These three “prophetic episodes” evidently encouraged the debates on the matter of intercommunion (even if in none of these episodes it is possible to properly talk about intercommunion) and they also gave a new impetus to the old terminological controversy, as we can see both in ecumenical and Roman Catholic magazines 3 . The terminological 2 Yves Congar, ‘Amica contestatio’, in D. Baillie and John Marsh (eds.), Intercommunion. The report of the Theological Commission Appointed by the Continuation Committee of the World Conference on Faith and Order Together with a Selection from the Material Presented to the Commission (London: 1952), pp. 141- 151, p. 141. 3 Cfr.: Alfredo Marranzini, ‘Il problema dell’intercomunione oggi’, in La civiltà cattolica pp. 228-241, 4 (1969), the author writes: “Prima però di esporre le diverse posizioni, ad evitare ogni equivoco riteniamo necessario precisare la terminologia, perché si nota in questo campo una certa fluidità di espressioni”, p. 233; Jerôme Hamer, ‘El problema de la Intercomunion’, in Dialogo ecumenico , (1968/10), pp. 189-204; ‘“Le cose nuove” di Uppsala; rassegna e bilancio conclusivo della IV assemblea generale del C.E.C.’, L.