Eucharist as Weapon

*pic from life teen
If there's anything that the past two election cycles have proven, it's that the Catholic tribe is a much sought after bloc of voters that is as complex a group as the generalization "white people" (as opposed to hard working, hard working white Americans).

A majority of Catholics have been, historically, aligned with the Democratic party since the 1940's and have proved pivotal in recent years as enough of the tribe was swayed to vote for George Bush in 2004. This gave him the Presidency for a second term over, ironically, his Catholic opponent - Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

Navigating the electoral waters for Catholics has proven to be a process of great discernment, highlighted with points of even greater contention, as the Bishops have appealed to the electorate with a rhetoric of thoughtful engagement with all the issues, while many have then turned around to punish certain politicians by with holding communion for their public support for a single issue, Abortion rights. In 2004 it was Sen. Kerry being disavowed the bread and wine from the Archbishop of St. Louis (if he ever attended Mass in his archdiocese).

This year the matter is on the verge of exploding back to the for-front, especially in the wake of the Apostolic Visit of Benedict XVI, who has reinvigored the Bishops and given them the confidence of legitimacy they've not had since prior to the sex abuse crisis. It's also stirred a frenzy among the young conservative elites who, in the wake of the abuse crisis, have seized the reigns of lay leadership and involvement away from the older liberal generations who were disaffected from the church because of the crisis (for many this was the proverbial straw for the camel's back).

These young elites and their Bishops have become more brazen to participate in partisan politics, and in some cases the Bishops have ignored their own directives to the Catholic electorate not to focus on single issues. Such was the case of Kathleen Sebelius (D), the Catholic Governor of Kansas. It was recently reported in Commonweal online that "...with the Democratic governor’s political star rising, the registered Republican Archbishop of Kansas City revived the use of Holy Communion as a political weapon to take her down. He publicly called on her to stop taking Communion with her Catholic community, because of her widely-known opposition to the use of criminal law in dealing with abortion. In a Catholic newspaper column, Archbishop Joseph Naumann indicated that he had made the request because he had been angered by her vetoes of several Republican bills restricting abortion in Kansas. In her most recent veto message, Gov Sebelius offered a detailed description of the lengths to which she had gone to address the abortion issue constructively, and lauded the success her administration had achieved in decreasing its incidence."

But refusing communion to Democrat Politicians, as we've noted with Sen. Kerry and the Archbishop of St. Louis in 2004, while certainly becoming more partisan and brazen is not new. Public lashing of moderate Republicans, who are moderate on abortion rights issues, is. Recently Rudy Guliani (former contender for the Republican nomination for President), was publicly censured by Cardinal Egan of New York.

But it doesn't stop there! Now you don't even have to be a Politician moderate on, or in favour of, abortion rights to be barred from Communion.

Most recently Doug Kmeic, perhaps one of the country's most revered opponents to abortion, a constitutional lawyer who served under that paragon of conservatism, Ronald Regan, was even denied communion. From his own words at Catholic.org:

On the blogs, I have been declared “self-excommunicated,” and recently at a Mass before a dinner speech to Catholic business leaders, a very angry college chaplain excoriated my Obama-heresy from the pulpit at length and then denied my receipt of communion.

A slap in the face for a man who discerned with great diligence that which the Bishops asked him to do when it comes to exorcising his constitutional and moral right of voting. All because he supports a Democrat who, while by virtue of his own conscience has passed the test for acceptable and worthy of his vote, is ok with Abortion Rights.

Does anyone else find it absurd that a political party is being systematically anathematized by a virulent, vitriolic unsympathetic group of elites and their hierarchical collaborators? Is anyone else perturbed that the Bishops should be so beholden of such a group and to that group's ascetic interpretations of law, scripture, and tradition, that they would disregard their own directive to voters at the behoovement of such a class of young Theocons and Clericalists, using Eucharist as a weapon against someone well regarded as friend to their cause?

And why are we using the Eucharist as a weapon? It is the most supreme Irony that the Sacrament of Love, compassion, and forgiveness - should become a weapon of segregation, denigration and saddest of all, a mere prop in the ongoing supposed "culture war," a war that only exists in the ethos of a lost generation and perpetuated and embodied in their indoctrinated and anointed heirs who can't see beyond the notion of us-versus-them into the post-modern reality in which the world resides - that its not necessary to be either ideological victim or warrior, but rather consensus maker or to borrow one of the titles of the Pope - Pontifex, bridge builder.

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