It is a real challenge we face here, particularly because it is difficult to imagine the tensions or uncomfortable situations that might lie behind concrete cases.

The long history of the Church has witnessed a need for correction of various forms of rigorism (i.e., when believers wrongly insist that we must be a Church only for the “perfect” or “pure”), as well as forms of undue laxism (i.e., when practically no sin or error is considered serious enough to hinder full ecclesial unity or sacramental practice).

Rigorism and laxism are both offenses against unity. Rigorism is considered as such because the invitation to unity should be universal, at least, in the sense of continually seeking mutual reconciliation; while laxism is so, because unity, to be authentic, does entail obligations to overcome our own self-centeredness and conforming our thoughts and actions to the word of God.

You ask about the situations “besides the question on the Eucharist,” but it seems necessary to begin with this question, since other questions of “hospitality” are closely related to it.

Several years ago, at a public conversation among Christians of different communions in observance of the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s 95 theses, I was questioned as a Catholic about our requirements for receiving Holy Communion. Since the Catholic Church sees Eucharistic communion as a sacramental expression of lived unity, we invite anyone — including Catholics — to come up to receive Communion if and only if one’s own “Amen” can forthrightly express an intention to align oneself fully in belief and action with the beliefs and moral responsibilities that unite us in the Church.

When we have sinned, we can be reconciled and then receive Communion, but if incompatible beliefs or ways of acting are ongoing, we rightly refrain from expressing sacramentally a union that is not yet authentic.

As St. Paul advises us: “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord; a person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup” (1 Cor 11:27–28).

The reason I think this is relevant to your question is that it helps us see that the goal is never simply to exclude someone from the Church, the parish, or full sacramental life. Instead, it may, at times, be an invitation — albeit perhaps a painful one — to pursue a unity that is full, profound, and real, rather than accepting an expression of unity that remains only on a purely superficial level.

Our attitude must be to welcome those whose unity with us is not yet complete, to engage in dialogue with them, seeking to deepen that unity. Their honesty in this struggle is often very edifying, and they deserve accompaniment along this path.

Common to all problematic forms of rigorism is an “all-or-nothing” attitude aiming at the exclusion from church life altogether of any person whose doctrinal adherence or moral conduct is found wanting. Such an attitude is inconsistent with the example of the Good Shepherd, who goes in search of the sheep that may be far from the rest of the flock.

Pope Francis has recently compared the Church to a field hospital; it is not a place where we come only when we are healthy. On the contrary, it is the place where we come to be cured. Such reflection on the Church is not new; already in the fourth century, the Bishop Saint Augustine wrote that it is better “to be cured within the Church’s community than to be cut off from its body as incurable members.”

Since we have the Gospels, we do not have to ask, “What would Jesus do?” We see what he does. He does not condone sin, and he sometimes points out a path that still needs to be traveled in order to reach the holiness to which he calls his listeners.

But he never says, “You are only 30% or 60% with me; go away and come back when you are 100%.” Instead, he meets them where they are and invites them closer.

In the same way, in our parishes and communities, even when confronted with the painful situation when full sacramental communion may not yet be possible for someone, then let us begin with what is possible. Let us make their struggle ours and work to help each other toward the moment when our unity, as God’s gift to us, will be complete.

Msgr. Michael Magee

(Living City, USA)