Why, people may ask, am I still talking about this question when almost all Anglican parishes have restored Communion in Both Kinds? And why have I chosen today for ongoing commentary upon it?
The answer to the second question is, that today is fifteen years from the day when, where I was, the laity were first deprived of the full Communion in 2009 over the swine flu fears. (That is, the celebrating priest and the concelebrants, if they wished, received the Body and Blood of Christ, and then allowed the gathered congregation to receive only His Body, with no reference to their conscience or distress).
Of the last 15 years in the Church of England, the laity have been denied Both Kinds for, I would reckon, between two and four years depending on local decisions. That is, about one fifth of those years have been spent by the laity being made to receive in One Kind, by clergy who are receiving in full whenever they celebrate.
This denial of Both Kinds was planned in 2009; I read the documents. The narratives that make out that we were suddenly overtaken by a crisis and that no-one had any time to think about what to do, might have passed in 1580, but four centuries later, it is straightforwardly absurd! There have been plenty of non-crisis years in which to decide on a reverent method of ensuring that all Christian people receive in Both Kinds alike even in times when sharing the chalice may be unwise.
Besides, which, if crisis had been what was going on, the clergy would have been trying to sort it out as soon as they did have space, rather than explaining to us that it didn't matter due to their theological views and their spiritual experience, regardless of the fact that we are not supposed to be obliged to agree with those theological views on this point and have our own different charisms.
The answer to the first question - why am I still talking about this - is, therefore, that this is not an issue that has gone away. What is at stake here is not a perhaps badly judged response to a once in a couple of centuries' crisis, but the repeated use of possible crisis to clandestinely impose a non-Anglican theological view of the Eucharist upon the entire Anglican laity.
That is, no-one is now able to coherently practice the Christian faith as a lay Communicant in the Church of England, who does not accept a theory of the Eucharist which involves reduction of that mystery to the human philosophical theory of Concomitance, and therefore indifference to whether or not they receive in Both Kinds. This has never been an Anglican doctrine, and while it may be acceptable for individual people, whether they are clergy or laity, to hold this particular reductionist view (and it is certainly legitimate to have the experience of not minding much), it is not acceptable for these people to demand that other Anglicans practice in a manner that requires them to believe it.
Unless things have very much changed since I last heard - which is unlikely because someone would almost certainly have told me - attempts to assert genuine freedom of conscience in the direction of traditional Anglican practice have only applied to the clergy. As the whole thing also seems to involve the imposition of an inherently clericalist theology (I do not feel it would help clarity to digress to explain this in detail here, but do ask me if you want to know) this is not at all surprising.
The very fact that this refusal of Both Kinds has happened twice in considerably less than a quarter of a century, in response to crises of which the logical way of dealing would be to have a high-infection-risk-protocol of simultaneous administration or the use of separate cups* (with all the clergy absolutely obliged to use this protocol or to allow the chalice to all present on every occasion under every circumstance), should be quite enough witness to the fact that these one-kind crises policies are being misused in order to impose this very narrow Eucharistic theology on all communicant members of the Church of England. The underlying reason for this denial of freedom of conscience seems to be that it is possible to use infection risk as an way of promoting and indeed forcing the acceptance of this particular theological view via a backdoor.
How very narrow this particular theology is, may be seen in the fact that I myself am an traditionalist Anglo-Catholic, agreeing with a lot of the Catholic Eucharistic theology such as the Real Presence and Concomitance, and the theology behind requiring the laity to receive in One Kind excludes me merely because I do not accept the reductionism of the Eucharist to Concomitance. There are other things that matter. For instance, the Divine command involves receiving in Both Kinds. It is not up to me to judge anyone who themselves chooses not to do so - that is between you and your God - but I have every reason to protest against one member of the church being prevented from obeying it by other people, whether they be clergy or laity, and regardless of the reason they give for doing so.
The Eucharist is a Mystery. To come up with a human philosophical theory, and then to decide that that theory is a full understanding of everything in the Eucharist, and that it is more important than the actual command of Christ, is not legitimate theological reasoning. I believe Concomitance true. It is simply not relevant to the importance of doing what the Lord actually said, or of receiving that which He gave the specific meaning of His Covenant in His Blood.
It is not a matter of reality or symbolism, with the reality being denied by those who affirm the symbolism, but a matter of a reality being communicated to us through a tangible symbolism, which when denied, denies us conscious access to the reality that it communicates, and the corresponding capacity to be conscious of the possibility of relationship with the Divine Person.
(Hence, A Cry of Women. I commend Father Alexander Schmemann's "The Eucharist," and, "For the Life of the World," on how much we are actually missing the immense power and reality of what the Lord gave us in the Eucharist to empower us to live as Christians. I owe this understanding of symbolism to him, and I am extremely grateful to him for the articulation of this element that I experience so strongly. God may work with others in different ways, and therefore they may experience it differently; God is person, not a mechanical force!).
Plenty of people in the Anglican Church would disagree with my commentary on Eucharistic theology in all sorts of ways and in all sorts of directions; that is completely legitimate and may well be fruitful. But for one group to manipulate the crisis policies in order to deny another group the freedom of Conscience to practice in a manner that is at least totally scripturally valid, is not legitimate. It goes completely against the way authority is supposed to be understood.
It matters to bring up the importance of the laity's freedom to receive in Both Kinds (at all times and in all places) before crisis strikes again. This is because at any time at which the Precious Blood is actually being denied to the laity, the clergy reject protests on the basis that they are unreasonable demands upon the church (meaning the clergy) while they are in the middle of a crisis**.
It is not for the Anglican clergy or any other Anglican body to impose a completely non-scriptural Eucharistic theology on the other members of the Anglican Church as a condition of being a practicing member of the same. And that is what has actually happened. The Anglican laity should be able to expect the Anglican clergy to respect- always and everywhere and under all circumstances - the fact that is theologically permissible to mind about reception in Both Kinds. The fact that they themselves do not mind, or do not think it matters, is totally irrelevant.
I would therefore suggest that anyone reading this, who values the breadth or the Protestancy of the Anglican Church, alerts their priest and parish bodies and any other relevant person to the fact that now is an appropriate time to sort out a workable alternative manner of reception in Both Kinds for when the next epidemic or epidemic scare is mooted, that real freedom of theological and spiritual conscience on the part of the laity is easy for the clergy to provide even under those circumstances.
Even if there is no response, it makes it much harder next time it happens, for the clergy to refuse to listen on the basis that it is a crisis: they were asked to sort it out when it was not a crisis, and would not do so.
It would seem to me that the first thing that needs to happen is for this One Kind policy to be seen for what it is, that is, an attempt to impose a particular minority Eucharistic theology by the back door. The more the matter is pressed outside crisis circumstances, the harder it becomes to use those circumstances as a cover for this theological imposition.
Cherry Foster
*Does the washing of cups and vessels according to human tradition, really matter more than the capacity of the whole people of God to obey the Divine Command to receive? It would seem to me that this attitude falls totally foul of many of our Lord's rebukes to the Pharisees. The human traditions of reverence are good in their place, but become massive stumbling blocks as soon as they start to be set up as reasons for preventing people doing what He actually told us to do.
**It is worth noting, if you ever do encounter, "Don't make such unreasonable/selfish demands on the Church in the middle of a crisis," over the Both Kinds issue at any point, that besides everything I have already said as to why I do not think this is about crisis, this way of refusing to sort things out is clericalist, for the clergy are not the church, and we, the laity, the people of the Covenant out of whom they are appointed as stewards to feed the flock, are not making unreasonable demands on them but expecting them to fulfil this most basic of the tasks for which they were appointed.
While everyone at least in my part of the Anglican Church still recognises the fact that clericalism is wrong, this reducing of the church to the clergy, prevents any recognition of the fact that allowing the celebrating priest to deny the congregation Both Kinds is inherently clericalist. Any attempt to point out that the Emperor has no clothes on is generally short-circuited and denied via this assumption that the clergy are the church, resulting in what is basically the nonsensical argument that it isn't clericalist because it's easier for the clergy! (As we do not have lay presidency, any difference in access to Reception of Communion between the president and the people is automatically a difference between the spiritual resources available to the clergy and laity).
A note for Roman Catholics dealing with similar spiritual problems but within a different doctrinal framework: while I wanted to make this post primarily about the imposition of non-Anglican theology on Anglicans, and the issue of the constitutional problem that has arisen in our church because of it, I have done a fair amount of work on why it is consistent within Catholic Eucharistic theology (of which I hold a variant similar enough for the differences not to matter much in this context) to mind about the Precious Blood. The rejection of reductionism: concomitance is true, but it isn't the whole truth, the Divine Command, and the Divine Communication issue are, in my experience, all arguments that also make sense within Roman Catholic theology.
Moreover, if people are trying to make a thing of believing in the equality of women along with a gender-specific priesthood - it's exactly this sort of refusal to allow the laity freedom of conscience in spiritual matters, that causes the actual, real lack of equality. I reject the actual Ordination of women - I think it is Gnostic, and I think what needs sorting out is entrenched clericalism. It is not enough to say that women are equal because the laity are equal, the laity have to actually be treated as equal in practice in the things that truly matter.
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