Abusing the Eucharist

 

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.  For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.  Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.

Matthew 7:1-5 NRSV

Did Nancy Pelosi participate in a Roman Catholic service of worship yesterday? Pelosi is the feisty Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives in the United States. She has been vocal about her support of women's rights to make their own reproductive choices, including abortion, and this has drawn the ire of the very conservative archbishop in the diocese where she lives. He has banned her from receiving the eucharist or communion until she changes her stance and instructed her not to refer to her Roman Catholic faith in public.

If this sound familiar it is because a group of bishops have made a similar threat against President Joe Biden who is also a practicing Catholic. It is the height of hypocrisy for some of these same bishops who honoured former Attorney General Bill Barr in 2020 with a Faithful Christian Laity award despite the fact that he reinstated the federal death penalty, a decision which contravened Roman Catholic teaching. 

It should be noted that Pope Francis once commented that he has never denied the eucharist to anyone and observed that "a Church of the pure and perfect is a room with no place for anyone." Of course many of these bishops despise Francis because even though he may seem conservative in many areas, including abortion, his more expansive views on inclusion are anathema to them. 

How can leaders in a church which has finally, although reluctantly, acknowledged responsibility for the horrors of Residential Schools along with rampant sexual abuse by thousands of priests be so obsessed with censuring those who are acknowledging the separation of church and state? And how many of those soul-murdering clerics were banned from receiving the eucharist? Surely this picking and choosing who is worthy of coming to the table is an abuse of a sacrament. 

I know that many Catholics regard the sanctity of life as a concept which goes far beyond the narrow confines of abortion. I imagine both Pelosi and Biden are among them.