CHAPTER 6: TEMPORARY SOLUTION FOR A PERMANENT PROBLEM 181 But he knows here, normally, he has given a sort of uh… um… permission, accorded to our prior, to discern if it is the case or not. And the criteria is always um, he’s not among the four, but is implicit and we um, apply it, is not to give scandal. Uh… this, we use also for the Orthodox. Our Orthodox sister has the blessing and the permission of his own bishop to uh, communicate with us. It’s a totally exceptional this, personal, but only if there are no other Orthodox present. Because it’s too complicated to explain why he allowed her to do this. And the same was with the novice that now left the community, a Coptic novice, we obtained the personal blessing of the patriarch, to him, to join us for the Holy Communion, only if a scandal is avoided.420 Interestingly, though, BF elaborates on what, in his opinion, constitutes the scandal. He continues: This, of course, you cannot celebrate something uh… affirming Holy Communion, provoking in the same time a division in the same assembly. I mean, there are Coptic and orthodox present and so that uh… uh… one of them took the Holy Communion, you make the communion between themembers of the community and you divided uh, [-] church.421 According to BF, the practice of Eucharistic hospitality could cause a conflict and rupture within the communion of the person that is received as a guest. In this case, the practice of one Orthodox person partaking in a Roman Catholic Eucharistic celebration could stir conflict between that person and other Orthodox members who are present. It is common practice in Bose to avoid potential intra-Orthodox conflict by refraining from Eucharistic hospitality when Orthodox visitors are present. The usual practice of sharing the Eucharist, then, is interrupted for the sake of the integrity of the Orthodox community. As BF analyses in another section of the interview, the Bose community does not (any longer) view its practice of Eucharistic hospitality as a prophetic provocation. In the last decades, Bose has evolved from a miniscule, experimental community that operated in the margins of the Catholic tradition to a balanced and widely accepted ecumenical partner. In the words of Brother BF: “now we are a credible and a trustable um, reali~ ecumenical reality.”422 420 BF-1,10c. 421 BF-1,10c. 422 BF-1,10e.
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