Left you hanging there, didn’t I?
That’s simply because if I don’t limit myself, my thoughts tend to incoherently range all over the place and my points, whatever they are, get lost. Once I get through this, I’ll gather it all in one spot, if it turns out to be of any value at all. Which is doubtful.
So the question it would be helpful to hear answered from all sides is: “We agree we are all “unworthy” to receive the Eucharist. Joe Biden’s DC parish of choice said as much, and we declare it every Mass. What do we mean when we say we are “unworthy” to receive Christ in the Eucharist?”
As a follow up….what word follows that statement: none of us are worthy…
Is it “but” or “and” or “therefore?”
Or something else?
To briefly experiment with possible responses:
Based on my many years of life as a Catholic in the regular, in-the-pews Catholic world as well as my reading and study, I’m thinking that the, for lack of a better phrase – anti-Eucharistic-Coherence-Statement side of the discussion might say something like:
We are all unworthy because we all fall short. But God seeks us out. He’s come to earth and given us Himself as nourishment and grace. He loves us and wants to be as close to us as possible. Nothing can come between God and us except our own desires. So we may all be unworthy, but God’s love makes us all worthy, if we desire him.
Perhaps the pro-Eucharistic-Coherence-Statement end would say something like:
We are all unworthy because we all fall short. God seeks us out. He’s come to earth and given us Himself as nourishment and grace. He loves us and wants to be as close to us as possible. But we are creatures with freedom and will. God made us for him, but he made us with the capacity to say yes – or no – to him. The fruit of the sacrament in our lives depends on us. In addition to our unique individual circumstances, being in a state of sin that cuts us off from God and neighbor, or saying no to aspects of the teaching of the Body of Christ on earth renders us closed and even make our reception of the Eucharist a sacrilege – as we presume on the mercy of the God we’ve turned our back on in other ways.
Of course, you could right to the Catechism – which isn’t super specific, but there it is.
Again, this is not new ground. I’m just trying to encourage a discussion that doesn’t assume anything, that clarifies definitions.
So, would the AECS side respond to a PECS statement of concern with:
No, I’m not worthy to receive Communion, but who is? I know God loves me and wants me to be close to him, so here I am.
And, say, to the 60 Catholic Democrats who issued a statement last week, the PECS side might say – well, you distance yourself from the Church by distancing yourself from certain Church teachings.
To which the response would be, the expected – Lots of people of different views from all political sides distance themselves from Church teaching. There are Sundays where we hear a Gospel about giving away all of our possessions in order to truly follow Christ – hardly any of us do it, most of us probably say in our heart, “Well Jesus really didn’t mean that” – as we process His words right before we go to Communion. What’s the difference? We all fall short, don’t we?
And that, right there, it seems to me is one of the ill effects of abandoning, for the most part, what is today seen as a picky, overly specific spiritual anthropology. All of those definitions and subdefinitions of various kinds of sin and motivations and parsing aspects of human nature? All that discussion about what “faith” is, exactly? And the relationship of Jesus to the Church to me? So obscurantist – all that matters is your fundamental option. Is it yes or no?
There actually might be a use for that old approach, since, it seems, we’re doing it anyway with no shared definitions or framework, anymore, even in a Catholic context. We’re picking and parsing, rather blindly, anyway.
None of this is new. Others are discussing it far more ably than I, and of course the “teaching of the Church” and 2000 years of practice are clear. It’s just that when I hear discussions whirling around in circles, I try to find another way in. And much of the time I find that asking questions that I hope are tough, but fair of those seeking a change, and not resting until an answer is offered, is important.
No, I’m not worthy to receive Communion. No one is.
Okay. So what does that mean, and when you decide to receive Communion, why do you?
I will add to this randomness that when I contemplate the arguments for a more open, less traditional approach to Communion reception, I hear a couple of things:
First, I hear an almost traditionally Protestant view – not of the Eucharist, but of soteriology: I may be unworthy, but I have faith that God’s love covers me and save me.
It’s an odd combination. In regard to faith v. works – when it comes to daily life and decisions, works is all that matters. But when it comes to the sacrament, “faith” of some sort is all that counts.
Secondly, with all of the formulaic condemnations of more traditional views of the sacrament being “magical” – I hear a great deal of magical thinking in the AECS arguments, in this sense:
My disposition and the nature of my life and choices don’t really matter. Jesus will just come to me and do His thing. Doesn’t matter what I do, what I think or even the details of what I believe. Something’s good going to happen, for sure.
Yeah, thanks for coming along on the ride. I have one more little piece. I make no claims to …er…coherence. Just thinking aloud.
Charlotte was Both 