The Eucharist is indeed political

Catholic New Times, Sept 26, 2004

The American election is becoming the most religiously-charged in recent memory.

With candidate George W. Bush using abortion as the rallying cry for the Christian right, including its "pro-life" Catholics, the crucial election race is now neck and neck, with about 18 per cent of voters undecided.

And with the highly publicized announcements of a very few but insistent American Catholic bishops that they will refuse the Eucharist to "pro- choice" Catholic politicians, church and state are intertwined as seldom seen in recent U.S. history, certainly not since Kennedy's election in 1960.

Then, Kennedy had to convince American voters he would be independent of the Vatican. Now, candidates, for bishops' approval, must indicate they will conform to Rome's teachings. As writer Karen Armstrong said recently at the Couchiching Conference on Public Affairs in Ontario, "God is back, with a vengeance."

What kind of religion, what kind of Eucharistic theology, then, should inform public decision-making?

The understanding of these bishops that the Eucharist is a weapon with which to threaten and punish people for their views and votes is harmful, myopic and a misuse of spiritual power. A more inclusive and nuanced understanding of Eucharist has been articulated by theologians for 35 years: the Eucharist is the sharing of food, not only the eating, but the sharing. This underscores the mutual dependence of people and calls for, sustained action on behalf of the poorest.

Monika Hellwig, the European theologian wrote in 1976 that people have a deep hunger for spiritual meaning and belief, and at the same time, the world groans with physical hunger and starvation. The two hungers are essentially connected. Taking part in Eucharist is an "act of allegiance, of self-identification and of commitment."

This would mean, as Hellwig suggests, that believers and recipients of Eucharist "commit themselves to the future realization of yet unrealized dreams and promises." As Sojourners editor Jim Wallis said recently, that is the antithesis of the Republican platform:

Theologian Regis Duffy is more blunt. Warning against "a liturgical consumerism that cherishes relevant rituals but not the commitments they demand, participation is always associated with a deepening commitment to God's kingdom." Duffy rejects much of Western liturgy as "a joyful noise--with no liberating praxis."

We all fall short of "liberating praxis," but a vigorous pursuit of Republican aims (and it must be said of much of the Democratic thrust in recent years) is hardly sympathetic to a Eucharistic worldview and praxis.

Eucharist, as well, is an act of remembrance to which people come with reverence, contrition hope and gratitude. We touch the experience of Jesus, the whole meaning of his life and death. Then we seek to live as he lived. The Eucharist points the way.

One quarter of American voters are Catholic. Once considered loyal Democrats, sympathetic to the poor and working people, many Catholics having moved up the economic ladder, shed their loyalty to the poor, and moved into the Republican camp.

"The Catholic vote is crucial for the Democrats," said Charles Dunn of Regent University in Virginia. "Whenever the Democrats have won the White House, they have won with the Catholic vote, the Jewish vote and the union vote."

The bishops began in January to step into to the public arena this election year. Archbishop John Myers in New Jersey, Bishop Michael Sheridan in Denver and Archbishop Raymond Burke, St Louis said they would deny Communion to pro-Choice legislators. To the surprise of some observers, the bishops voted 183-6 in favour of leaving the question of denying communion "with the individual bishop in accord with established canonical and pastoral principles." A wise decision.

To us, National Catholic Reporter editor Tom Roberts phrased it well:" We are left in the end, with our wits and our consciences to puzzle things through." And with a better theology of Eucharist than what Burke, Sheridan and Myers are working from.