"Why not ask your pastor?"

Even in solid, smaller American Catholic Parishes, confusion can, and often does, reign !

This example is typical not only of St. Mary Magdalen's Catholic Church in Brackettville Texas, but for thousands of others across America.

A confused parent of some middle school student has been told, presumably by the child's Public School teacher, that she (or he) can go to an Ecumenical Summer Camp of one kind or the other.

Among other things the parent is given to understand that the child in question will get religious instruction, good fellowship, and, above all, "be preached to."

All fine and dandy, so far as it goes.

What bothers a potential sponsor, however, is that the religious side of the equation will also include religious intercommunion, as the parent has been apparenty assured by the child's public school teacher that "Protestant Non - Catholics have holy communion, too, just like us."

Since the potential donor is in the happy position of being an outsider, the parent is advised to "go ask your priest for sure," and then to, "do as he tells you."

This is a tricky situation in terms of so-called pastoral theology, as a glance as the Mass Missalettes in any pew in America will show you a lot of seeming ambiguities as to what the American Catholic Church actually teaches on inter-religious communion.

Oddly enough, much of the resulting ambiguity is loosely based on the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which is not ambigious at all!

My own personal opinion is that it is this ambiguity, deliberate or not, that helps fuel the ongoing confusion among many faithful today as to what we can and cannot do in terms of ecumenical activites with fellow Christians.