The coming Maundy Thursday will call to mind the Last Supper and Christ’s institution of the Eucharist. While it is often referred to as the sacrament of unity, the Eucharist paradoxically remains a focus of disunity.

The issue of Eucharistic sharing was highlighted with the 1998 document from the Catholic hierarchies in Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, One Bread, One Body.

It explicitly reaffirmed the teaching forbidding Catholics from taking Communion in Protestant churches and, except in extreme circumstances, vice versa.

However, while there was somewhat of an ecumenical commotion at the time, things have settled back into what appears to be a resignation over the matter. The unacceptable has come to be, to all intents and purposes, accepted. So it continues, despite recent high-level gatherings such as the sixth meeting of the World Conference on Faith and Order, held from 24th-28th October last year in Wadi El Natrun, Egypt.

Traveller feuds: How family pride and social media are driving extreme violence

Gardaí sacrificed IRA informer to protect a more useful one, ex-Special Branch officer claims

Russia-bound cargo ship seen dropping anchor near subsea cables off Irish coast

The Irish working for US firms: ‘Friday 4.30pm and somebody is trying to kick off a project’

Participation in the faith and order commission includes representatives of churches that are in membership of the World Council of Churches (WCC), embracing Protestant and Orthodox denominations, and those appointed by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome.

The commission has a long history, going back to the time immediately following the 1910 Edinburgh world missionary conference, which is seen as effectively the start of the modern ecumenical movement.

At that gathering, Protestant churches realised that if they could co-operate in mission abroad, as they determined to do, they should also be able to co-operate more closely at home.

Later in 1910, the American Episcopalian Bishop Charles Brent, who had attended the Edinburgh conference, urged that plans be made for an ecumenical world conference on faith and order, those specific topics not having been considered at the more practically focused Edinburgh missionary conference.

In 1920, Bishop Brent’s vision took definite shape with a preparatory meeting held in Geneva for the first World Conference on Faith and Order. It was eventually held at Lausanne in 1927.

Vatican representatives were not involved until after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which marked a greater Catholic openness – aggiornamento – not only to the modern world but also towards the steadily growing ecumenical movement.

Faith and order conferences are therefore important milestones on the churches’ theological journey towards unity.

Yet it would seem that increasingly in ecumenical encounters, including at the Wadi El Natrun meeting, the issue of Eucharistic sharing is sidelined and has become, to adapt the phrase, the theological elephant in the room. It is there, but is not discussed.

For example, even the September 2025 meeting of the standing WCC-Roman Catholic Church joint working group (JWG) does not seem to have had this topic on its agenda. Without mentioning Eucharistic sharing, the JWG decided to continue its work in at least three directions: to explore different understandings of salvation; to study processes that have been implemented “in different global contexts in order to offer practical tools of collective reconciliation”; and to focus on the challenges caused by intolerance and religious fanaticism.

Again, these are all worthy if somewhat esoteric matters, but Eucharistic sharing is ignored.

In 1920, Bishop Brent’s vision took definite shape with a preparatory meeting held in Geneva for the first World Conference on Faith and Order. At a meeting of a WCC delegation with Pope Leo on February 28th in the Vatican, while Eucharistic sharing was mentioned in passing, it was not actually discussed.

To return to the Wadi El Natrun ecumenical world faith and order conference, a formal message was issued at its conclusion, rejoicing “that the past century of faith and order work has revealed that on many questions we agree more than we disagree”, and adding that despite disunity, “the ecumenical journey towards visible unity” had continued.

Despite such a lacklustre tone, to its credit, the message went on to affirm that unity is not simply about agreement, but is essentially about “communion” and “begins to be visible when we live together, moving towards mutual sharing of the Eucharist and recognition of each other’s ministries”.

Yet there is no sense of urgency about healing divisions, with the message seeing the ecumenical journey in very broad terms as a call “to renew our commitment to faith, mission, and unity in Christ Jesus; to listen together to the Holy Spirit; to walk together as pilgrims: as children of the Father learning together to live out our faith, hope, and love, and in the practice of justice, reconciliation, and unity”.

While the message ended with an encouragement to “aspire to live the unity for which Christ prayed”, and while there is a degree of sadness in the churches about disunity, it seems that the scandal of Eucharistic division is not really felt as a scandal at all.

Canon Ian Ellis is a former editor of The Church of Ireland Gazette. His publications on ecumenism include Vision and Reality: A survey of twentieth century Irish inter-church relations and A Century of Mission and Unity

© The Irish Times