Dr. Eric W. Gritsch

The Intersection of Liturgy and Ecclesiology
as an Ecumenical Resource

Susan K. Wood Marquette University  

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Lutherans and Catholics have been engaging in ecumenical dialogue officially since right after the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965. Developing from a former comparative theology methodology, ecumenical dialogue has now entered a new era of constructive theology that seeks to propose new lenses to look at ecumenical relationships. In the past, understandably and necessarily, topics for ecumenical dialogue were identified from the doctrinal loci that were church-dividing at the time of the Reformation: individual sacraments such as baptism, eucharist or the Lord’s Supper, theological topics such as justification or apostolicity, the nature of the church, issues of authority such as the Petrine ministry and infallibility, and the ordained ministry. Each of these topics has been treated in relative isolation from the other topics. After the major issues had been addressed, the question became “what now?” Progress on individual topics still had not led to appreciably closer communion with the significant exception of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999), the first official reception by the Catholic Church of the results of dialogue with an ecclesial tradition issuing from the Reformation. 

I believe that ecumenical dialogue has entered a new era of constructive theology in this country proposes new lenses to look at ecumenical relationships. For example, Round X of the U. S. dialogue, The Church as Koinonia of Salvation: Its Structures and Ministries, used an ecclesiology of communion to correlate different levels of ministry with different realizations of the church such as the parish or congregation with the pastor/priest, and the diocese or synod with the bishop, raising the question of the fittingness of a pastor who oversees the communion of particular churches, that is, the communion of synods or dioceses. It was also able to address the asymmetry between Lutherans and Catholics in their understanding of the basic ecclesial unit, namely the congregation for Lutherans as the place where the Gospel is purely preached and the sacraments are rightly celebrated (CA 7), and the diocese for Catholics as the altar community under the sacred ministry of the bishop (LG 26). The current round of the U.S. dialogue on the teaching ministry of the church is another attempt at constructive theology, although it also, at least in the draft that is developing, also has strong comparative dimensions.

A second creative approach to ecumenical dialogue would now be to correlate various topics with each other so that they mutually inform each other, incorporating the agreements achieved on them individually within the correlation. I suggest that a correlation of ministry with ecclesiology, taking ecclesiology as the point of departure for reflection on the ministry, yields possibilities for at least a limited recognition of ministry comparable to the real, but imperfect communion recognized between ecclesial communities. Ministry, in turn, is never separable from liturgical reflection since its service to word and sacrament relates primarily to a worshipping community. The church itself as a baptismal community gathered around font, pulpit, and table is liturgically defined prior to any subsequent description. Similarly, a correlation of the notion of eucharistic sacrifice to the churches’ relationship to Christ as his body has the potential of preventing any description of sacrifice that may sounds like works righteousness to Lutheran ears.

Finally, a correlation between ecclesiology and liturgy places ecumenical agreement within an environment of reconciled diversity. As Donald Rooney has stated, “Often misunderstood by those unaccustomed to formal structures of worship, liturgy does not have uniformity as a goal as much as unanimity expressed through the diversity of members.”1

Perhaps I am overly optimistic in what I see as ecumenical possibilities through such correlations. A friendly Lutheran listening in to my resolution of seemingly intractable differences may also object that I am approaching them through Catholic categories that may seem one-sided rather than identifying new categories that are more confessionally neutral. Nevertheless, we see what we see through our own lenses. It is the task of dialogue to then fuse these horizons and thus arrive at unity.A Liturgical Ecclesiology

Both Catholics and Lutherans describe the local church liturgically. For Lutherans it is where the Gospel is pure preached and the sacraments are rightly celebrated (CA 7). For Catholics, “the principal manifestation of the church consists in the full, active participation of all God’s holy people in the same liturgical celebrations, especially in the same Eucharist, in one prayer, at one altar, at which the bishop presides, surrounded by his college of priests and by his ministers” (SC 41). Since the eucharist is only celebrated locally, by a specific assembly of the faithful gathered in the same place, and since Christ is wholly present at each eucharist, it follows that the local church celebrating the eucharist in a particular place is wholly church, the church catholic in this particular place. The one body of Christ, the one Church, is present and visible in each local church. The latest document from the World Council of Churches, The Church: Towards a Common Vision, § 31 similarly identifies the local church as “a community of baptized believers in which the word of God is preached, the apostolic faith confessed, the sacraments are celebrated, the redemptive work of Christ for the world is witnessed to, and a ministry of episkopé exercised by bishops or other ministers in serving the community.”2 More briefly stated, the critera of a church are: word, apostolic faith, sacraments, witness, and episkopé, a particular kind of ministry.

Yet, one must hasten to insist that while each of these local communities are wholly church, they are not the whole church. They cannot be wholly church in isolation from other churches, but only in communion with them. If ministry serves the diaconal, liturgical, and martyriological life of the local church in its service, worship, and witness, it also serves the communion of that local church with other local churches. We confess together: “one Lord, one faith, one Baptism” (Eph 4:5). We can also add “one Eucharist, one Church” on the basis that faith, baptism, eucharist, and church have no identity apart from the one Christ. In this confession we assert unity at the same time each of these elements only exists in the multiplicity of particularity.

 The ecumenical question I raise here is how beginning with the local church rather than the universal church, beginning with a liturgical identification of the church rather than its juridical identification, may affect the mutual recognition of ministry.

For decades, we have recognized a real, but imperfect communion among Lutherans and Catholics. Can the recognition of an imperfect communion between churches lead to an incremental recognition of ministry? The Declaration on the Way (2015) suggests that “a correlation of ecumenical progress made on the church with issues of ministry is an especially urgent task, since such a correlation could support a qualified but immediate mutual recognition of ministry in such a way that a partial recognition of ministry would correlate with the real but imperfect communion of churches.”3 In Catholic theology, reflection on the church has usually followed upon reflection on ministry. The ecumenical question of the mutual recognition of ministry, however, raises the question whether it should instead follow upon the mutual recognition of churches.4

A bit of history explains this shift in perspective as it applies to Catholics. The traditional point of departure for Catholics has been to begin with a theology of ministry and then to develop a theology of the church with respect to this ministry. For example, when a reflection on the church follows upon reflection on ministry, a theology of the church universal follows from a consideration of universal primacy in the bishop of Rome. Reflections on both were a notable achievement of Vatican I, where the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war prevented a corresponding consideration of the episcopacy. Had Vatican I been able to develop a theology of the episcopacy, this would have balanced the emphasis on papal primacy and the emphasis on the universal church with a fuller emphasis on collegiality and a theology of particular churches.

The derivation of an ecclesiology from a theology of ministry is evident in the constitution entitled “First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ” from Vatican I. It has four chapters: Chapter I, “On the Institution of the Apostolic Primacy in Blessed Peter; Chapter 2, “On the Permanence of the Primacy of Blessed Peter in the Roman Pontiffs; Chapter 3, “On the power and character of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff; Chapter 4, On the Infallible Teaching Authority of the Roman Pontiff. In other words, in a constitution on the church all the chapters are about primacy, Peter, and the pope. Such an approach not only derives a theology of the church from ministry; it largely identifies the church with the hierarchy.

Vatican II’s document, Lumen gentium, took up the unfinished task and developed a theology of the particular churches through a theology of the episcopacy. While the constitution begins with the chapters on the mystery of the church and the people of God before treating the hierarchical constitution of the church and the episcopate in chapter three, the discussion of the particular churches and their relationship to the one catholic church is presented with respect to the collegial unity in the mutual relations of individual bishops with particular churches and with the universal church (§ 23). Since a particular church is identified liturgically as an altar community under the ministry of a bishop, the paradigm for the episcopacy is a residential bishop, who is the principal Eucharistic minister of his diocese (SC 41), the unity of which is constituted by the Holy Spirit and its Eucharistic worship (Church and Justification, § 92; LG 26-27 and CD 11). The bishop represents his church within the communion of churches such that the college of bishops becomes a ministerial sign of the communion of churches.

Within this paradigm, the mutual recognition of a community as church has followed upon the recognition of its ministry as apostolic. This correlation privileging ministry as the starting point for reflection on the church is most evident in the declaration from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus (2000), which states that “the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery, are not Churches in the proper sense; however, those who are baptized in these communities are, by Baptism, incorporated in Christ and thus are in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church (DI § 17.). Note first, that the status of “church in the proper sense” is based on the character of ministry, and, second, that in this text, individuals are in imperfect communion with the Catholic Church, not necessarily their ecclesial communities. This latter point raised the ecumenical problem of ascertaining the communion of ecclesial communities as a whole, and not simply or exclusively the communion of their members.

Dominus Iesus appears to build on the distinction in Unitatis Redintegratio between ecclesial communities and churches, although a number of theologians, including George Tavard and Hermann Otto Pesch, who were at the Second Vatican Council, have argued that the phrase “ecclesial community” was meant to be inclusive of those communities who do not self-designate as a church, such as the Salvation Army, rather than exclusive of those communities who do not have apostolic episcopal succession. Exploration of the intention of the council is not my present subject, but it illustrates how designation of churches “in the proper sense” has followed upon recognition of ministry. Furthermore, recognition of ministry has up to now been in terms of “all or nothing.” Either ministry is recognized as valid or invalid. The present official position of the church is that valid ministry confers the identity of “church” on an ecclesial body. In its absence, one is left with an “ecclesial community.

”Correlations of Church and Ministry Beginning with “Church” The recent Lutheran-Catholic document, Declaration on the Way (2015), proposes an alternative approach, suggesting thatnewly identified theological frameworks offer perspectives allowing for nuanced, graduated, and differentiated evaluations that provide an alternative to sharp either/or assessments of ministry. A correlation of ecumenical progress made on the church with issues of ministry is an especially urgent task, since such a correlation could support a qualified but immediate mutual recognition of ministry in such a way that a partial recognition of ministry would correlate with the real but imperfect communion of churches.5

Essentially, this requires correlating the church conceived of as a communion of local churches with the collegial notion of ministry as a corporate body intrinsically related to the communion of churches. In Catholicism, the bishop represents his particular church in the episcopal college, following the adage of Cyprian “The bishop is in the church and the church is in the bishop.” Within a model of the church as communion where each church is united to the bishop, who in turn is in a relationship of communion with the bishop of Rome and the college of bishops by virtue of his ordination, ministry becomes a sign, or if you will, a sacrament of the church in the sense that it signifies the church. This means that the bishops in communion within the college of bishops are the visible sign and representation of the communion of particular churches. Membership in and union with the college of bishops is an essential element within episcopal consecration and arguable represents the “fullness of orders,” which sets the episcopacy apart from the presbyterate and the diaconate. The latter do not have a representational function within their order as do the bishops.

Following this, an imperfect communion of particular churches-presupposing that these include churches from different denominations not in communion with each other- leads to the recognition of the imperfect communion of the ministers of these churches, particularly those exercising episkopé.

Can there be an incremental recognition of ministry, where mutual recognition is not all or nothing? Round X of the U. S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue cites a letter written by the then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to the German Lutheran bishop, Johannes Hanselmann: “I count among the most important results of the ecumenical dialogues the insight that the issue of the eucharist cannot be narrowed to the problem of ‘validity.’ Even a theology oriented to the concept of succession, such as that which holds in the Catholic and in the Orthodox church, should in no way deny the saving presence of the Lord (Heilschaffende Gegenwart des Herrn] in a Lutheran [evangelische] Lord’s Supper.”6 Certainly, Unitatis Redintegratio, without affirming or denying the real presence of the Lord in the liturgical celebration of separated Christians, stated that many sacred actions…most certainly can truly engender a life of grace in ways that vary according to the condition of each church or community, and must be held capable of giving access to that communion in which is salvation” (UR § 3).

If the Lord’s Super gives access to that grace necessary for salvation, this would seem to suggest that the ministry which serves and presides over that Supper is not null and void any more than the liturgical celebration is null and void. Note that here an evaluation of ministry follows upon a recognition of grace present liturgically within a local community. The characteristic of the local church as graced in its liturgical celebration leads deductively to an assessment of both the necessity and effectiveness of the ministry which makes that liturgical celebration possible.In a similar line of argumentation, the Declaration on the Way remarks that the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification implies a ministry that has effectively kept Lutherans in fidelity to the Gospel with respect to the central question of faith in the Declaration:

The Catholic view of the ministry of the Lutheran churches, along with the Lutheran view of ministry in the Roman Catholic Church, cannot remain untouched by the Joint Declaration. For, even if preserving correct doctrine is not the task of the ordained ministry alone, it is still its specific task to teach and proclaim the gospel publicly. The signing of the Joint Declaration therefore implies the acknowledgement that the Holy Spirit fulfilled its service of maintaining fidelity to the apostolic gospel regarding the central question of faith set forth in the Declaration (Apostolicity 288; emphasis added).7

Here again, the argument for a recognition of ministry follows upon the recognition of a church with respect to its apostolic faith. The recognition of the effectiveness of ministry results from a recognition of a characteristic of apostolic faith and thus an apostolic element within the church served by that ministry.

The ecumenical problems associated with the proposal of this paper, namely that there be recognized ecumenically a correlation between the communion of churches and the mutual recognition of ministry are many. Let me name them:1.

1. Many Catholic documents speak of the communion of Christians, not of the communion of ecclesial communities or churches. Thus, it is common to speak of a soteriological communion achieved in baptism and in grace. Thus a first ecumenical and theological task is to address the communion of communities.

 2. Even where an episcopal order is retained, many ecclesial communities have yet to develop a robust communal theology of the episcopacy. Ministry is conceived of individually rather than as an order in the church, in the traditional sense.

3. Many traditions do not have a symbolic or representational theology of ministry as representing the church. The theology proposed here presupposes a college of bishops representing a communion of churches.

4. This model is difficult to apply to those church traditions that exercise episcope through structures other than a bishop.5. Many Catholics would have a difficult time thinking of ministry in terms other than of validity. One is a minister with the power to confect the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist or not. There is no in-between status. To move beyond this requires a very nuanced view of how the eucharist is confected within a eucharistic assembly and a view of the ministry within a relational ontology

.An Ecclesiological Argument for a Liturgical Understanding of Eucharistic SacrificeIf ecumenical dialogue can gain clarity on the ministry through a correlation with church, by starting with reflection on the church and then drawing conclusions about ministry, differences with respect to liturgical issues can also be illumined by bringing in ecclesiological dimensions. One of the liturgical differences still potentially dividing Lutherans and Catholics is the question of whether the church offers Christ in the Eucharistic liturgy. The issue here will be whether or not the church offers Christ as separate from Christ, or whether it is joined to Christ as his body in his self-offering to the Father.

Luther was convinced that one of the most substantial differences between his teaching and that of the Catholic Church was the question of the sacrificial character of the Mass.8 From very early on Luther emphasized the Eucharist as a sacrifice of praise and tried to eliminate every trace of the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice of the Church. Luther considered that the notion of Eucharist sacrifice violated what he saw as the essential character of the mass, which was first of all God’s own service, a beneficium received rather than a sacrificium offered.9 Last but not least, Luther found the logical conclusion of the theology of Eucharistic sacrifice was that the Eucharist is a bloodless repetition of the Lord’s sacrifice and thus a repudiation of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ.10

Luther insisted that in the Lord’s Supper Christ gives himself to those who receive him, and that, as a gift, Christ could only be received properly in faith and not offered. Luther thought that understanding the Eucharist as sacrifice would mean that it is a good work that we perform and offer to God. This would transform what was a most precious gift into a good work. In the course of the Reformation, the order of the Mass was changed so that it was no longer celebrated as a sacrifice. Nor could it be understood as a good work. Nevertheless, Luther considered the Mass to be a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise insofar as in giving thanks a person acknowledges that he or she is in need of the gift and that his or her situation will only change by receiving the gift. Thus, true receiving in faith contains an active dimension not to be underestimated.

The Council of Trent reaffirmed the traditional teaching of the Eucharist as the sacrifice of both Christ and the Church. The Council stated that Christ has given the Church a visible sacrifice, “by which the bloody sacrifice which he was once for all to accomplish on the cross would be represented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power applied for the forgiveness of the sins which we daily commit.”11 The two main points of the teaching are: (1) the sacrifice of Christ, which he offered as gift of his entire life, and (2) the Eucharist as sacrifice, which is offered by the priest in the person of Christ and on behalf of the Church. The Mass makes present, commemorates, and applies to the living and the dead the merits of the sacrifice of Christ.

It was not fully grasped at the time that the sacrifice of the Mass precisely as sacrament makes present the unique sacrifice of Christ on the Cross without repeating that sacrifice.12 Today, a stronger connection between sacrifice and sacrament along with the retrieval of the liturgical notion of anamnesis in Eucharistic doctrine and practice make it possible “to express together the faithful conviction of both the uniqueness and full sufficiency of the atoning event in Jesus Christ.”13 Therefore, canon 4 of the Council of Trent is essentially not applicable today to Lutheran Eucharistic theology, and the sharp criticism of the Roman Mass in the Smalcald Articles and even the (Reformed) Heidelberg Catechism cannot be said to apply to the actual teaching of the Roman church.14

Catholics understand memorial (anamnesis) and the invocation of the Spirit (epiklesis) in a strong sense. The Church not only calls to mind the Passion and resurrection of Christ Jesus in the Eucharist, but also “presents to the Father the offering of his Son which reconciles us with him.”15 The once-for-all sacrifice of the Son becomes sacramentally present, that is, in a certain way is made present and real.16 This is not a repetition of the sacrifice of Christ, but a re-presentation of it by means of anamnesis through which the Church joins itself to Christ’s sacrifice in his self-offering to the Father to intercede for all of humanity.

Eucharistic Sacrifice in Ecumenical Dialogues

The Lutheran-Catholic dialogues proposed using the category of memorial as understood in the Passover celebration at the time of Christ, the making present of an event in the past, as the way to understand between Christ’s sacrifice and the Eucharist (Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue, The Eucharist [1978], §36). The agreement on the sacrificial character of the Eucharist follows from an agreement on the real presence for Christ, who “is present as the Crucified one who died for our sins and rose again for our justification, as the once-for-all sacrifice for the sins of the world. This sacrifice can be neither continued, nor repeated, nor replaced nor complemented; but rather it can and should become effective every anew in the midst of the congregation” (Lutheran-Catholic, The Eucharist [1978], §56). Because Christ who is present is the sacrificed one, the sacrifice of the Eucharist is inseparable from his presence. Once again, the category of sacramentality provides the modality of this sacrifice, so that the once-for-all sacrifice is present with the modality of sacramentality, and therefore is not a repetition or continuation of Christ’s sacrifice.

Historically, a major point of difference between Catholics and traditions issuing from the Reformation has been whether or not the church “offers” Christ in the Eucharistic celebration. This problem recedes when the issue is no longer treated extrinsically as if the Church were separate from Christ. When the category of participation is introduced, the members of the body of Christ are united with him in such a way that they become participants in his self-offering and sacrifice to the Father.17

The fact that Christ offers himself to the Father and not merely to the people is evident in his prayer from the cross: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:460, although in the Last Supper narrative Jesus also says, “This cup that is poured out for you….” and “this is my body, which is given for you” (Lk 22: 19, 20). The directionality of these two accounts both bear on the notion of Eucharistic sacrifice. There is an ascent to the Father in order for Jesus’ life to be poured out for the disciples. The first, Jesus self-offering to the Father, makes the second offering, one directed toward the disciples, possible even though the narration, the symbolism of death by being broken and poured out, occurs before Jesus’ actual physical death.

The Eucharistic anaphora contains both movements. The words of institution repeat the scripture texts of the “for you.” Interestingly, these are the only words of the anaphora spoken in first person singular by the priest. They repeat the words of Jesus and the recipient of the words are the assembly. The rest of the anaphora is prayed in first person plural directed to the Father, the priest praying in the name of the assembly. The double epiclesis transforms the bread and wine into the sacramental body and blood of Christ and the community into the ecclesial body of Christ:

Father, may this Holy Spirit sanctify these offerings.
Let them become the body and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord
As we celebrate the great mystery
Which he left us as an everlasting covenant. (Eucharistic Prayer IV)
Lord, look upon this sacrifice which you have given to your Church;
And by your Holy Spirit, gather all who share this one bread and one cup
Into the one body of Christ, a living sacrifice of praise. (Eucharistic Prayer IV)

Christ is sacramentally given to the people and the people in union with Christ participate in his self-offering because he said “Do this in remembrance of me.” The “doing” entails not only gathering to bless, break, and share the meal of the Last Supper, but also to participate in Jesus’ surrender to the Father. One cannot be joined to Christ and not do both, for communion in Christ leads to both communion with the Father in Christ and also to being sent to imitate his self-gift on behalf of us in missional service to others. Jesus’ last meal with his disciples symbolically anticipated his death. The liturgical anamnesis makes sacramentally present this once-for-all sacrifice of the cross. Thus, both the self-offering of the cross in Jesus’ surrender to the Father and the sacrifice “poured out” and “given for you,” are present in the Eucharistic liturgy.

The assembly does not offer Christ as if it were apart from Christ, but in union with Christ the assembly consents to be included in his self-offering. The international Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, The Eucharist [1978], addressed this:

All those who celebrate the Eucharist in remembrance of Him are incorporated in Christ's life, passion, death and resurrection… So they give thanks "for all his mercies, entreat the benefits of his passion on behalf of the whole church, participate in these benefits and enter into the movement of his self-offering." In receiving in faith, they are taken as His body into the reconciling sacrifice which equips them for self-giving (Romans 12:1) and enables them "through Jesus Christ" to offer "spiritual sacrifices" (1 Peter 2:5) in service to the world. Thus is rehearsed in the Lord's Supper what is practiced in the whole Christian life. "With contrite hearts we offer ourselves as a living and holy sacrifice, a sacrifice which must be expressed in the whole of our daily lives" (§36).

This statement says that those who celebrate the Eucharist are taken up into the sacrifice of Christ. However, it does not yet say that the Church “offers” Christ, which was the point of contention at the time of the Reformation. The statement, however, addresses this point where it says,

As members of His body the believers are included in the offering of Christ. This happens in different ways: none of them is added externally to the offering of Christ, but each derives from him and points to him: The liturgical preparation of the Eucharist with the offering of bread and wine is part of the Eucharistic sacrifice. Above all, inner participation is necessary: awareness and confession of one's own powerlessness and total dependence on God's help, obedience to His commission, faith in His word and His promise. It is in the eucharistic presence of the offered and offering Lord that those who are redeemed by Him can, in the best sense, make an offering…It is this act of testifying to one's own powerlessness, of complete reliance on Christ and of offering and presenting Him to the Father which is intended when the Catholic church dares to say that not only Christ offers Himself for man, but that the church also "offers" Him. The members of the body of Christ are united through Christ with God and with one another in such a way that they become participants in His worship, His self-offering, His sacrifice to the Father. Through this union between Christ and Christians the eucharistic assembly “offers Christ”, consenting in the power of the Holy Spirit to be offered by Him to the Father. Apart from Christ, we have no gift, no worship, no sacrifice of our own to offer to God. All we can plead is Christ, the sacrificial lamb and victim, who the Father himself has given us" (§ 58).

This statement helped to answer Lutheran fears that the sacrificial offering of the Mass detracts from the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice.

The church as the body of Christ in union with its head is united with his self-offering, which is only a work of the church insofar as it is in union with Christ, so it is essentially Christ’s work which enables the church’s work. The church’s relationship to Christ prevents an extrinsicist understanding of the liturgical action of offering and thus a works righteousness understanding of Catholic Eucharistic understanding.

Hopefully, these two examples, one the recognition of ministry beginning with a reflection on a liturgical ecclesiology, the other an understanding of Eucharistic sacrifice from the perspective of the church as participating in Christ as the body of Christ, have illustrated how a correlation of liturgy and ecclesiology can further ecumenical understanding and agreement.

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 1 Donald J. Rooney, “Catholic-Lutheran Prayer Service Recalls Past, Looks Forward,” Pastoral Liturgy 4/5 (September/October 2016): 9.

2 See the report of the joint Working Group of the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church, “The Church: Local and Universal,” § 15. This definition comes from a report of the Joint Working Group of the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church, entitled “The Church: Local and Universal.”

3  Committee on Ecumenical and interreligious Affairs, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Declaration on the Way: Church, Ministry, and Eucharist (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2015), 92.

4 These reflections represent an expansion, extension, and liturgical application of what appeared originally as Susan K. Wood, “The Correlation between Ecclesial Communion and the Recognition of Ministry,” One in Christ 50/1 (2016): 238-249.

5 Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,

6 “Briefwechsel von Landesbischop Johannes Hanselmannn und Joseph Kardinal Ratzinger über das Communio-Schreiben der Römischen Glaubenskongregation,” Una Sancta 48 (1993), 348; quoted in The Church as Koinonia of Salvation, § 107. Translation here from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith. The Church as Communion, eds. Stephan Otto Horn and Vinzenz Pfnür (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 248. The full text of the 1993 letters of Bishop Hanselmann and the then Cardinal Ratzinger are given on pp. 242–252.

7 Declaration on the Way, p. 43.

8 This section is excerpted from Susan K. Wood and Timothy J. Wengert, A Shared Spiritual Journey: Lutherans and Catholic Traveling toward Unity (New York: Paulist, 2016), 113-118.

9 For discussion of the Eucharist in ecumenical theology see Geoffrey Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 272 ff.; Risto Saarinen, Faith and Holiness: Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue 1959-1994 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), 110 ff.1997), 110 ff.

10 For Luther’s thought on the subject see The Misuse of the Mass (1521) in LW, 36, 147; The Smalcald Articles (1538), II; Babylonian Captivity (1520), LW 36, 56; Treatise on the New Testament, That Is, The Holy Mass (1520), LW 35, 86-87.

11 DH 1740.

12 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, 5.

13 Karl Lehmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg (eds), The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide? Trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 85.

14 Ibid. Canon 4: If anyone says that after the consecration is completed, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are not in the admirable sacrament of the Eucharist, but are there only in usu, while being taken and not before and not after, and that the hosts or consecrated particles which are reserved or which remain after communion, the true body of the Lord does not remain, let him be anathema; Lehmann and Pannenberg, The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide?, 85.

15 Ibid., §§ 1354, 1362-1372.

16 Ibid., § 1363.

17 See, Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue III: The Eucharist as Sacrifice (New York: U.S.A. National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation and the Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs; Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1967), 189.

Susan Wood, SCl, is a Professor of Systematic Theology at Marquette University, currently serving on the U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue, and on the International Lutheran-Catholic Commission on Unity.