ABSTRACT
The Church of England operates within the context of the Anglican Communion, as was commented on by Bishop Davies. From its very beginning, there has been debate about the theological legitimacy of Extended Communion. It's beginnings in Cumbria were disputed in a number of publications. The original article in the Church Times Laity to the rescue resulted in a letter to the editor from Bishop Richard Hanson, then Professor of Historical and Contemporary Theology at the University of Manchester. Hanson said that Extended Communion contradicts the Eucharist as an act of the people through the priest, obscures the truth that the Eucharist is an offering by the local church, and puts an undesirable emphasis on the technical capacity of the ordained to consecrate the elements. However, reservation was tackled in the 1979 Elucidation of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission's (ARCIC) report on Eucharistic Doctrine, later published in the Final Report.
