Canon John Longuet-Higgins oversimplifies on the matter of Good Friday (Letters, 12 August). How to handle this (yes, non-feast) day, liturgically? Some, indeed, say no communion. Other traditions say that on this day of all days – the day of the cross – there should be a full service of holy communion. And others follow the pattern of receiving communion from the “pre-sanctified” – that is, bread and wine consecrated the previous day, at the “Last Supper” eucharist, and “reserved” and simply shared the next day, as a sign that Christ’s offering at the supper and on the cross was one and the same – his whole self.
Rev Canon Michael Ainsworth
Manchester
• Sorry to be pedantic, but from an ecumenical point of view Canon John Longuet-Higgins is not correct, for not only do Catholics receive holy communion on Good Friday, but so also do high church Anglo-Catholics of his own church as a pinnacle point of the Easter Triduum. Of all days in the Christian year it would seem the most appropriate moment to receive the blessed sacrament of Christ’s body and blood poured forth as the key moment in Christian salvation history.
Nigel Eifion Rogers Hartley
Workington, Cumbria
• Any bank holiday is a feast day. Any bank holiday that changes date is a movable feast. If elements of the clergy see otherwise in the diminishing religious element of the population, just remind them they are seriously overrepresented in the hierarchy. How they mark the bank holiday is entirely up to them.
Alan Gough
Manchester
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