CHAPTER 2: A PRACTICAL THEOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY 63 admission to Communion.163 The ecumenical optimism of the post-conciliar era, the spiritual integrity of Taizé’s founder and first prior Brother Roger, the community’s close contacts with (local and universal) church leaders, and its relevance for ecumenism and evangelization all contributed to this development. Yet, the question remained what this practice ‘means’ theologically and what its implications are for Roman Catholic thinking about the place of the Eucharist in the ecumenical process. These questions are the focus of the current study. It was clear that the Taizé community would be part of the current project. The community, however, insisted that it is not unique in its practice and wished not to be the sole focus of the study. Responding to this request, I have searched for additional research locations. I encountered Bose, which offers a similar context to study the phenomenon of a durable practice of Eucharistic hospitality sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church. This phenomenon itself is the fundamental interest of this study, which departs from the theological and epistemological presupposition that a concrete reality contains theological truth for the magisterium and theologians to discover and to contemplate the implications. The object of this study, therefore, is defined as the theological rationale embedded in the practice of Eucharistic hospitality as articulated by members of Taizé and Bose, in which the Roman Catholic Church extends Eucharistic hospitality towards the non-Catholic monastics, at least partially inspired by ecumenical motives. The remainder of this chapter elaborates on the methodological presuppositions and introduces the methods used, offering a detailed account of the empirical process. Part Two of this study describes the communities and their practice of Eucharistic hospitality in past and present and presents the results of the interviews with some of their members as entry-points to the theological rationale embedded in this phenomenon. 2.2 A PRACTICAL THEOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY Matching question and methods The theme of this thesis was defined in Chapter 1 as the place of Eucharistic sharing, as part of lived ecumenism and as a particular act of spiritual 163 Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, Directory for the Application of the Decisions of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican Concerning Ecumenical Matters, May 14, 1967, Part I (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1967), sec. 55.
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