Eucharist

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U.S. bishops wrestle with 'Eucharistic coherence,' a topic that mixes politics and doctrine

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U.S. bishops wrestle with 'Eucharistic coherence,' a topic that mixes politics and doctrine

Archbishop Salvatore Joseph Cordileone leads the Archdiocese of San Francisco, a symbolic city in debates about modern American culture.

But what matters the most, as tensions rise among Catholic leaders, is that Cordileone is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's hometown bishop. Thus, it's hard for politicos to avoid blunt passages in his new pastoral letter, "Before I Formed You in the Womb I Knew You."

Citing centuries of church doctrine, the archbishop argued that Catholics who "reject the teaching of the Church on the sanctity of human life and those who do not seek to live in accordance with that teaching should not receive the Eucharist. It is fundamentally a question of integrity: to receive the Blessed Sacrament in the Catholic liturgy is to espouse publicly the faith and moral teachings of the Catholic Church, and to desire to live accordingly."

There is, he added, "a great difference between struggling to live according to the teachings of the Church and rejecting those teachings. … In the case of public figures who profess to be Catholic and promote abortion, we are not dealing with a sin committed in human weakness or a moral lapse: this is a matter of persistent, obdurate and public rejection of Catholic teaching. This adds an even greater responsibility to the role of the Church's pastors in caring for the salvation of souls."

Citing a famous example, Cordileone recalled when former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani received Holy Communion during a 2008 Mass led by Pope Benedict XVI. This caused scandal and, according to the late Cardinal Edward Egan, violated an agreement that Giuliani would not receive the Sacrament because of his public support for abortion rights and other clashes with doctrine.

The big issue, as U.S. bishops prepare for June discussions of "Eucharistic coherence," is not how to handle a former New York City mayor. The question is whether bishops can address their own divisions about the status of pro-abortion-rights Catholics such as Pelosi and President Joe Biden. While vice president, Biden also performed two same-sex marriage rites.

San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy, firing back at Cordileone in America magazine, stressed that the "Eucharist must never be instrumentalized for a political end. … But that is precisely what is being done in the effort to exclude Catholic political leaders who oppose the church's teaching on abortion and civil law. The Eucharist is being weaponized and deployed as a tool in political warfare. This must not happen."

Meanwhile, the prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith warned the leader of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that these issues could become a "source of discord rather than unity within the episcopate" and among all American Catholics.

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Anglican debate in 2020 crisis: Can clergy consecrate bread and wine over the Internet?

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Anglican debate in 2020 crisis: Can clergy consecrate bread and wine over the Internet?

In the late 1970s, the Episcopal Ad Project began releasing spots taking shots at television preachers and other trends in American evangelicalism.

One image showed a television serving as an altar, holding a priest's stole, a chalice and plate of Eucharistic hosts. The headline asked: "With all due regard to TV Christianity, have you ever seen a Sony that gives Holy Communion?"

Now some Anglicans are debating whether it's valid -- during the coronavirus crisis -- to celebrate "virtual Eucharists," with computers linking priests at altars and communicants with their own bread and wine at home.

In a recent House of Bishops meeting -- online, of course -- Episcopal Church leaders backed away from allowing what many call "Virtual Holy Eucharist."

Episcopal News Service said bishops met in private small groups to discuss if it's "theologically sound to allow Episcopalians to gather separately and receive Communion that has been consecrated by a priest remotely during an online service."

Experiments had already begun, in some Zip codes. In April, Bishop Jacob Owensby of the Diocese of Western Louisiana encouraged such rites among "Priests who have the technical know-how, the equipment and the inclination" to proceed.

People at home, he wrote, will "provide for themselves bread and wine (bread alone is also permissible) and place it on a table in front of them. The priest's consecration of elements in front of her or him extends to the bread and wine in each … household. The people will consume the consecrated elements."

Days later, after consulting with America's presiding bishop," Bishop Owensby rescinded those instructions. "I understand that virtual consecration of elements at a physical or geographical distance from the Altar exceeds the recognized bounds set by our rubrics and inscribed in our theology of the Eucharist," he wrote.

However, similar debates were already taking place among other Anglicans. In Australia, for example, Archbishop Glenn Davies of Sydney urged priests to be creative during this pandemic, while churches were being forced to shut their doors.

During a live-streamed rite, he wrote, parishioners "could participate in their own homes via the internet consuming their own bread and wine, in accordance with our Lord's command."

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Official stamp of history for Flannery O'Connor

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Famous authors are often invited to elite dinner parties in New York City, a setting in which the rich Georgia drawl of Flannery O'Connor stood out like a dish of cheese grits next to the caviar. 

At one such event, O'Connor ended up talking to author Mary McCarthy, who opined that her childhood Catholicism had faded, but she still appreciated the Eucharist as a religious symbol. The reply of the fervently Catholic O'Connor became one of the most famous one-liners in a life packed with them.

"Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it," replied O'Connor, as reported in a volume of her letters. "That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me."

The fact that this literary legend now graces a U.S. postage stamp -- more than 50 years after her death -- is a testimony both to the greatness of O'Connor and to the fact that her radical, even shocking, vision of life has always been impossible to pigeonhole, said scholar Ralph C. Wood of Baylor University.

In particular, O'Connor refused to bow to man-made idols -- including the U.S. government and the civil religion many attach to it, said Wood, speaking at a National Philatelic Exhibition rite in McLean, Va., marking the release of the author's commemorative stamp. She refused to make her faith private and polite.