Oddly enough no one has asked me to weigh in on the Biden communion controversy, despite the fact that I’ve made known on several occasions that I have an advanced degree in theology, strictly of the Roman Catholic variety, from Our Lady of Sorrows Grammar School, late of Hartford, Connecticut.
As has been reported, the Bishops are proposing that Biden be denied communion, because while he is personally opposed to abortion, he has not seen fit to impose his views on others.
First a little background. Communion is a “sacrament”, allegedly instituted by Christ at the last supper. During Mass, the priest waves his hands over some foul tasting wafers, says some magic words, and presto-chango, the wafers become Jesus, and every good Catholic gets to eat him. (The magic doesn’t change the taste at all) Well, you don’t exactly eat him, as you’re not allowed to chew. You have to wait until he sort of melts in your mouth, then get him down in a single swallow. You get used to it.
You are supposed to be free from sin before receiving communion. The easiest way to get free from sin is to go to confession right before Mass, as regardless of what you’ve done, as long as you say a sincere act of contrition, and the priest buys into it by saying the magic words, you’re sins are washed away. But the truth is, generally, everyone’s on the honor system, all you have to do is walk up to the communion rail and stick out your tongue, and the priest is going to give you your wafer. But, the priest can always just walk on by a really notorious sinner, say, someone who has been divorced multiple times and has more or less publicly committed adultery while married to one of the women he eventually divorced. Or someone who, for another instance, publicly supported a political leader who tore innocent children away from their parents and put them in a concentration camp. The priest could do the same thing to a politician, who supported the death penalty, something the church now opposes, though truth to tell, there was a time when the church spent a lot of time imposing that sort of penalty. But that was long ago in a continent far away and it is not convenient to remember such things at the moment, nor should we dwell on the abuses in which the Church engaged here in North America, not to mention the odd sexual predilections of so many Catholic priests. In any event, politicians who are all in favor of doing terrible things to people who have actually been born have nothing to fear from the Bishops or the priests, the theoretical right of the priest to pass them by notwithstanding. They can get their wafer, no questions asked. Despite some offhand remarks by Jesus, the church establishment has no problem with whited sepulchers.
It is also the case that the Church has always put its own interests ahead of some narrow minded principles of equity or fairness, and right now it sees itself in competition with the evangelical right for the ever more dwindling stock of sectarian adherents in this nation These people need red meat and the Church has every right to serve it up. Whether it will ever be able to compete in the whackjobbery department with the more experienced fundamentalists is quite another story, since it may have trouble disassociating itself from its troubling past, such as its recognition that the Earth may actually be more than 4,000 years old, humans may in fact have evolved from monkeys, and the earth actually does orbit the sun.
So my considered opinion is that what the Bishops are doing is thoroughly consistent with Catholic doctrine and the Church’s historical mission. Some might argue that the Church could gain more adherents by trying to appeal to the non-Foxified who might still be interested in a religious affiliation consistent with reason and mutual respect, but the Catholic Church has a long history of rejecting the rational until it’s far too late to derive any benefit from accepting it. So while the Bishop’s obnoxious proposal is thoroughly consistent with Catholic theological teachings, we OLS graduates (most of whom, of which I’m aware, have made the transition to agnosticism, if not atheism) can take some comfort in the fact that it will likely drive more of today’s Catholics into our ranks.
AFTERWORD: Speaking of my Alma Mater, Our Lady of Sorrows School, once located on Grace Street (how did they get the city to give it that name?) in Hartford: it is with mixed emotions that I learned that the convent in which the nuns who taught at OLS resided is being converted into housing units for anyone who wants to buy or rent them. You don’t even have to be Catholic! The few remaining nuns are getting a “modest portion…for their housing, offices and a worship space”. The actual chapel is being converted into a gym!
I lived a block away from the convent when I was a very little kid. At the time, there were lots of nuns and they even had cows that they milked. That part was sort of neat, and truth to tell, while the net effect of their teaching was pretty horrible, individually some of the nuns were good people. The truth is that nowadays women have more options, so they are less inclined to follow Hamlet’s advice and get themselves to a nunnery. I often wonder if, and hope that, the nuns I liked escaped the convent, but I’ll never know. Anyway, one more brick torn from the wall.
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