Attempts to politicise or weaponise the doctrines around the Eucharist threaten to divide the Catholic Church in the US, The Tablet’s Rome correspondent Christopher Lamb has warned.
Lamb was speaking at aReligion Media Centre briefing, along with five other panelists discussing the recent moves made by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in drawing up a document which has the potential to ban President Joe Biden from taking Holy Communion due to his views on abortion rights.
The vote on whether to draw up such a document was 168 in favour and 55 against.
Lamb started the discussion by reiterating the fact that the Vatican had previously warned of the politicisation of the Eucharist, and that attempts to politicise or even weaponise the doctrines around the Eucharist will serve to be more divisive than unitive.
Regarding the negative implications of the document proposal, Steve Schneck, executive director of Franciscan Action Network in Washington DC, also warned of the danger of the Eucharist is being politicised and said it was not worth harming the relationship between the Church and the Biden administration.
With America gradually coming out of the pandemic, Schneck said there is now a good chance for cooperation between the two institutions, chances to help each other on issues like immigration, building communities and defending human rights.
Dr Kurt Martens, professor of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC and editor of The Jurist, concurred by stating that the document would be “muddying the waters” in the opportunity to cooperate with the second ever Catholic president as a way to strengthen American Catholicism overall, stressing dialogue to be the best tool for conciliation and resolution between the USCCB and the President.
On the issue of politicisation, Dr Massimo Faggioli, professor of historical yheology at Villanova University and author of Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, said that the conference was more an “instrument of politics than of religion” and noted that there were no such documents drafted against Catholic politicians in the past who were in favour of the death penalty, in spite of capital punishment being something the Church opposes.
In America, the two-party system has created a two-party Church, he continued, with fears of the growth of sectarianism within American Catholicism emerging as a result of the vote. Similarly, Susannah Cornwall, advanced research fellow in theology and religion at the University of Exeter, added that the use of the Eucharist as “political manoeuvring” simply undermines the importance and power of its doctrine.
However, Matthew Bunson, executive editor and Washington bureau chief for EWTN News, said it was not accurate to say the bishops are targeting Biden and insisted they have no intention to target any group, stating that no names have been nor will be mentioned in the document.
Instead, Bunson commented that the documnet should be viewed with a greater emphasis on the teachings of the Eucharist and the real presence rather than queries of politicisation – citing the work of the USCCB on eucharistic revival and the fact that just 69 per cent of church-going Catholics in the US believe in the real presence as the true problem the bishops are trying to tackle.
Loading ...
