We need a revival!

…and the bishops are on it.

On the docket for the next USCCB gathering is discussion of a proposed 3-year long “Eucharistic revival,” inspired in part by that oft-lamented 2019 Pew research survey that showed only 31% of Catholics believe in the Real Presence.

I’m going to write two or three posts on this. Let’s go.

I would hope – perhaps vainly – that the bishops’ discussion of this matter will be conducted with absolute, brutal, even reckless honesty about past and present. But it probably won’t be. What we’ll probably hear is the usual narrative-exchanging via catchphrases, slogans and sound-bites with a few minor flare-ups here and there. Strickland v. Cupich, etc.

But just in case!

A succinct history of the past sixty years:

Bishops of the Whole World in the Second Vatican Council Then:  

The Eucharist!

Source and Summit!

Super important! Most important!

Must make accessible and understandable! The Eucharist!

Western Catholics Now:

Eh.

Maybe begin by looking at that reality. That truth. The causes of which are not, indeed, one thing, and are not even only about the Church, and certainly not only about the Second Vatican Council.

But you really can’t propose a “Eucharistic Revival” in 2021, sixty years after the Second Vatican Council’s focus on energizing Catholics for their role in the world by making the Mass more understandable and accessible to modern man in the modern world – without taking that history into consideration and asking….um…what happened?

To ignore it is dishonest.

Another factor that would ideally be taken into account and honestly laid on the table is this:

The varied understandings of what “eucharistic revival” would look like and whether some church leaders are actually almost fine with the way things are today. Fine, except for diminished collections, that is.

We again, reach back. Not too far. Just to these past few decades. Again – if you were aware, involved and formed during those years, you know.

You know that parishes without Adoration, with tabernacles in side chapels, with casual, ad-hoc liturgies, are not a bug, but a feature, because they might just indicate that those particular People of God have actually absorbed the good news that God is not in a box – that that hyper-localized, minutely philosophical understanding of Eucharist has been shed in favor of a deeper understanding of the Real Presence of Christ among us all – after all, we call ourselves the Body of Christ.  

But then it seems we’re deep in a puzzle, aren’t we? A tension, as we like to say.

The Second Vatican Council didn’t call for a low understanding of Eucharist. Read the documents. After all – the Council Fathers enshrined the phrase we all know so well, defining the Eucharist as the “source and summit” of Christian life. Their stated intentions were to reshape and reform in order to center that Realty in the hope that Catholics would be even more deeply engaged by a fuller understanding of authentic, empowering Communion in all respects  and more energized in their mission to the world.

One of the hard questions to ask, then, is a “Eucharistic revival” even possible given the current, dominant, self-understanding of Catholic life, as articulated by Catholic leaders? Is it – if they are honest – even desirable?