The 2004 presidential election is at hand. Unlike some columnists in the Catholic press, one of whom appears on the same op-ed page as this column in a major archdiocesan weekly, I have never used this platform to endorse political candidates.
As the U.S. Catholic bishops have pointed out every four years, beginning with the election of 1988, there are two ways of endorsing candidates: one is by an outright statement of support, and the other is by voicing opposition to the other candidate.
Given the bishops' unhappy experience during the 1984 presidential campaign, when a few bishops --- two of whom were cardinals --- went too far in their criticism of the Democratic candidates, particularly the vice presidential candidate, Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, they decided thereafter to add the words "or opposing" after the word "endorsing" in their quadrennial statements on presidential campaigns.
The bishops issued their most recent statement last October, well in advance of this fall's election. They emphatically declared: "As bishops...we do not wish to instruct persons on how they should vote by endorsing or opposing candidates. We hope that voters will examine the position of candidates on the full range of issues as well as their personal integrity, philosophy and performance. We are convinced that a consistent ethic of life should be the moral framework from which to address issues in the political arena" ("Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility," Origins, Oct. 23, 2003, p. 325).
Not all bishops have honored this policy during the current campaign, but that is the policy. Any bishop whose words or actions even imply support for President Bush's re-election or for Senator Kerry's election to the presidency --- for whatever morally high-minded reason --- is in violation of that policy.
On another, completely unrelated matter: The media's attention has been drawn recently to a seemingly trivial dispute in New Jersey over whether an 8-year-old girl who suffers from celiac disease can receive Communion baked with an ingredient other than wheat. The disease is said to cause severe illness if even a trace amount of wheat is ingested.
Last winter, when the girl's mother made a formal request for a wheat-free Communion wafer for her daughter, she was told that this was against the teaching of the church. Only bread made solely of wheat is valid matter for Communion, according to canon 924.2 of the Code of Canon Law, revised in 1983.
The New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law, commissioned by the Canon Law Society of America and published by Paulist Press in 2000, notes that "Persons who suffer from celiac disease may be given permission from the ordinary [that is, the local bishop] to receive communion in the form of bread which is low in gluten content. In fact, so-called 'gluten-free' wafers have been found by scientists to contain trace amounts of gliadin and would therefore be valid matter. Bread without any gluten is invalid matter" (p. 1116). The last reference is to a letter from the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, issued in June 1995.
In May of this year, however, a priest in the Trenton diocese, sympathetic to the family's concerns, gave the young girl a Communion wafer made of soy. The local bishop found out about it and declared that the Communion was invalid.
The controversy has evoked expressions of support for the girl and her mother, especially from those with family members afflicted with celiac disease. One of my fellow student-priests in Rome back in the 1960s, while the Second Vatican Council was in session, said of church officials in the New York Times, "Jesus was compassionate. Why can't they be?"
The attitude of other priests, however, is encapsulated in the remark of one local monsignor: "The rules are the rules. And they're coming from Rome."
One Vatican official indicated that the church has "never made any exceptions on this because we have to safeguard the sacraments." He then went on to say, "I get the sense this mother is a little bit stubborn."
Many reasonable people would probably say the same about the church officials.
One of the oldest principles of sacramental theology is "sacramenta propter homines." Sacraments are for the people.
When Jesus was chastized by the religious leaders of his time for curing someone on the sabbath, he answered: "Which of you who has a sheep that falls into a pit on the sabbath will not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable a person is than a sheep" (Matthew 12:11-12).
Is this a case perhaps of making a mountain out of a molehill? Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. |