So many of the tensions in the Church today relate to a single theme. Consider some of the developments in the past week.
• Last Thursday, German bishops announced that they had “overwhelmingly” backed the creation of a guide advising non-Catholic spouses when they can receive Holy Communion.
• On the same day, Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship, said we were witnessing an “insidious diabolical attack” on the Sacrament. Writing in the preface of a new book, he also denounced “certain forms” of “intercommunion” as outrages.
• On Saturday, the American theologian Fr Thomas Weinandy argued in a lecture in Sydney that the Church’s holiness was “under siege”, especially regarding the Eucharist. He said that churchmen who reduced commandments to mere “ideals” were engaged in an “overt public attack on the holiness of
what John Paul termed ‘the Most Holy Sacrament’ ”.
Each of these news items provoked uproar, especially on Twitter. What they have in common, of course, is the Eucharist. Why is this Sacrament the subject of so many disputes in the Church today? At one level, that’s easy to answer. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Eucharist is the “source and summit” of Christian life. It matters so much to Catholics that it is not surprising that it is the focus of the fiercest arguments. Yet the disagreements today seem especially dramatic. They are so ferocious that they seem at times to threaten Church unity.
Catholic attitudes towards the Eucharist vary quite widely worldwide. In Germany, for example, the vast majority of the faithful receive Communion at every Mass. In Poland, however, many remain in the pews, believing that they need to confess before they can receive again. (Admittedly, Polish Mass-goers are, on average, significantly younger.)
It is inevitable that these contrasting practices lead, however subtly, to divergences of belief. If an anthropologist questioned an average German and Polish Catholic about the Eucharist, they might be struck more by the differences than the similarities between the two.
These differences have preoccupied popes of the 21st century. Pope John Paul II’s final encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, urged Catholics to rediscover what he called “Eucharistic amazement”. He said that without this the Church’s mission to the postmodern world would bear little fruit, because the Eucharist is also “the source and the summit of all evangelisation”.
Benedict XVI also promoted Eucharistic devotion, not least when he presided at Adoration in Hyde Park during his visit to Britain. Pope Francis has joined this effort, notably in his recent cycle of general audiences dedicated to the Mass. In these strikingly underreported addresses, he has offered down-to-earth advice on everything from the importance of arriving early to the need for silence in church.
But despite these papal efforts, the gap is growing between those who have (to borrow a term from Anglicanism) a “high” theology of the Eucharist and those who have adopted a “low” one. Rome cannot, surely, allow this to continue indefinitely. The time is coming when it will need to restate Church teaching on the worthy reception of Holy Communion with the utmost clarity and compassion. The aim would not be to exclude millions of Catholics from the graces of the Eucharist, but to ensure that they can experience them at their fullest.
The case of Asia Bibi, the Christian woman held on death row in Pakistan for the last nine years on the charge of blasphemy, is well known to readers of this magazine, though the story has not had the wide coverage it deserves.
Last week Asia Bibi’s husband and daughter met Pope Francis, to appeal to him on behalf of Asia Bibi. The very fact that the Pope met them, and assured them of his prayerful support, will not only have been a huge help to the family, but will also raise the profile of the case.
The fate of Asia Bibi rests in the end with the Pakistani courts and the Pakistani government. Despite the fact that the accusation of blasphemy seems to have been a ploy used against Asia Bibi to settle a personal score, and despite the fact that the blasphemy laws are per se unjust, no Pakistani authority has the courage to declare Asia Bibi innocent and the victim of a grave injustice, given the mood of popular opinion in Pakistan, where regular demonstrations occur calling for her death. Pakistan, sadly, is still a country where Christians are regularly murdered by mobs. For the sake of everyone, this has to change.
It is doubtful that even the Pope can secure the release of Asia Bibi. But his intervention can perhaps alert the world to the problem it faces in Pakistan.
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