A friend of mine texted me last week to say that she’d found a nice church round the corner from her office and had just “popped in for a lunchtime Communion service”.
Which puzzled me, because this lady is a Catholic and the word we use is “Mass”. I associate “Communion service” with the Lowest reaches of the Church of England – vicars who “preside” from the “north end” of the “table” (ie sideways, to the left of the congregation, to avoid any Popish implication of sacrifice). Was this my friend’s way of letting me know that she’d swum the Tiber in the wrong direction? Or had she been listening to one of those continental Catholic prelates who think one wafer is as good as another? (I have with my own eyes seen a French bishop distribute Anglican hosts to an Anglican congregation. But I’m won’t name him in case someone reports him to Pope Francis and he gets promoted.)
