The Eucharist and the Transformation of Politics

Pope Francis calls politics “a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it seeks the common good” (Evangelii Gaudium, §205). Indeed, it is “the field of charity at its most vast” (Fratelli Tutti,§180, quoting Pius XI). “If someone helps an elderly person cross a river, that is a fine act of charity. The politician, on the other hand, builds a bridge, and that too is an act of charity. While one person can help another by providing something to eat, the politician creates a job for that other person, and thus practices a lofty form of charity that ennobles his or her political activity” (FT, §186).

Ask a random American voter to put a dot on a line where politics goes and another where charity goes, however, and the only vastness you are likely to see is the distance between those two points. According to a 2023 Pew Study which asked what Americans think when they turn their minds to politics, nearly two-thirds “always or often feel exhausted,” more than half feel angry, and only ten percent always or often feel hopeful. Almost ninety percent think that “Republicans and Democrats are more focused on fighting each other than on solving problems.”

These bleak sentiments surely come as no surprise. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution may say that the Republic was founded “to form a more perfect Union” and “to promote the general Welfare,” but when things like poverty, abortion, racism, euthanasia, and even political violence are widely accepted and even exalted, it is obvious that hyper-individualism and hyper-partisanship have shoved human dignity and the common good aside and left the body politic lying by the side of the road to Jericho.

This is a watershed moment for the Catholic Church in the United States. Will we stop to render aid, or will we simply pass by on the other side of the road and leave the body politic to fend for itself? If we are who we claim to be, there is only one way to respond.

The Eucharist and Politics

The celebration and worship of the Eucharist enable us to draw near to God’s love and to persevere in that love until we are united with the Lord whom we love. The offering of our lives, our fellowship with the whole community of believers, and our solidarity with all men and women are essential aspects of that spiritual worship, holy and pleasing to God, which transforms every aspect of our human existence, to the glory of God.
—Pope Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, §94.

In his Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict laid out a sweeping vision of the mission that the Eucharist confers on the Church. In a memory turn of phrase, Pope Benedict said that the conversion of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus “introduces within creation the principle of a radical change, a sort of ‘nuclear fission’ . . . which penetrates to the heart of all being” and sets off “a process which transforms reality, a process leading ultimately to the transfiguration of the entire world, to the point where God will be all in all” (SC, §11).

The infinite love that God has revealed to us in the Paschal Mystery is not something that can be kept locked away. Missionary outreach is “an essential part of the eucharistic form of the Christian life” (SC, §84). The mission needs “convincing witnesses” who will make the fruits of the Eucharist known in the world and bring Christ to others by the things they do and say and by their entire way of being (SC, §§79, 84-86).

To the average American, the idea that politics might be part of a love story undoubtedly sounds preposterous. But Sacramentum Caritatis makes no bones about it: the political world is one of the aspects of life that the Eucharist calls us to transform in the love of God. “The worship of God in our lives cannot be relegated to something private and individual but tends by its nature to permeate every aspect of our existence” (SC, §71). “The Christian laity, formed at the school of the Eucharist, are called to assume their specific political and social responsibilities” (SC, §91). Catholic voters and politicians must embody “eucharistic consistency” in their lives (SC, §83). The Eucharist “compels all who believe in [Christ] to become ‘bread that is broken’ for others, and to work for the building of a more just and fraternal world” (SC, §88).

This is not how we tend to view the Church’s mission in the public square, however. We are not accustomed to entertaining the notion that the Eucharist has anything to do with politics, let alone that it might serve as a call to the actual transformation of the political world. To most people, a mention of the words “Eucharist” and “politics” in the same sentence probably conjures up disputes over whether certain Catholic politicians should be excluded from going to communion. It is instructive that the only place that the word “Eucharist” appears in the US Bishops’ valuable document on politics and voting, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (2023), is in a brief segment of the document that addresses the topic of “eucharistic consistency” on the part of Catholic citizens and politicians.[1]

Although a substantial portion of FC is devoted to explaining why Catholics are called to be active participants in the public square, the parts of the document that usually attract the most attention are the ones that address specific aspects of Catholic Social Teaching. As this would suggest, we have come to conceive of the Church’s mission in the world of politics as being about issues, not transformation.

Of course, advocacy around specific issues is an indispensable aspect of the mission in the public square. But the ultimate goal of the mission is considerably more momentous and far-reaching: the transformation of the political world itself. This end goal is the linchpin of the mission. An issue-centric approach which is separated from that goal offers up only a shadow of what the Eucharist calls us to do, and it actually presents three significant obstacles to the accomplishment of the mission.

First, until we come to see political activity as one part of the all-encompassing mission of service which flows from our sharing in the Eucharist, it is unlikely that there will ever be widespread buy-in to the Church’s mission in the public square. The strong cultural bias against combining faith and politics cannot easily be ignored. Because the Eucharist is common and holy ground which bears singularly unimpeachable authority, it is the crucial key to unlocking an understanding of the call to mission which the Lord has bestowed on us.

Second, an issue-centric approach that is untethered to the end goal of the mission is susceptible of being misappropriated for partisan political purposes. Although documents like Faithful Citizenship and the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church expressly provide to the contrary, it has become commonplace in some quarters to treat Catholic Social Teaching as if it consisted of just one or two issues chosen according to the preference of the person making the pick. Given the political binary that exists in the US today, this approach inescapably links the perceived success of the Church’s mission in the public square with the electoral success of one political party or another. This suppresses the prophetic voice of the Church and mires the Church in the endless cycle of hyper-partisanship which characterizes our national political culture today.

Third, to the extent that this hyper-partisanship is taken as a given or even as a benefit, we fail to offer any hope to society that there is something more to politics than what the national political culture has on offer today. The cycle of despair that is illustrated in the Pew study will only be disrupted by a competing vision that is strong enough to offset the current political state of affairs.

The Eucharist is that competing vision. It is around the Eucharist that we need to refocus and re-imagine our work in the world of politics.

The Liturgy as the Source of the Mission to the Political World

As “the fount from which all the Church’s power flows,” the liturgy is the natural jumping-off point for any consideration of the Church’s wider mission (Sacrosanctum Concilium, §10). If full and active participation in the liturgy is “the primary and indispensable source” from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit, then full and active participation in the liturgy is the sine qua non of the Church’s wider mission to the world. To that degree, as goes the liturgy, so goes the Church’s work in the world of politics.

That said, Catholics are not formed solely by the liturgy. Timothy O’Malley has persuasively argued that “the liturgical act unto itself cannot militate against . . . the cultural liturgies of (post)modernity.”[2] He refers here to the work of the theologian James K.A. Smith, who gives the name “cultural liturgies” to those aspects of culture which, like religious rituals, exercise power over us through their ability to form our habits and to shape what we love. Smith proposes that politics is one of the most formidable of these cultural liturgies because “the political is not content to remain penultimate.”[3] Even after two thousand years, Caesar brooks no rivals.

O’Malley pinpoints the practical problem which this presents: we spend far more time participating in the “cultural liturgies” than we do participating in Catholic worship. As a solution to this dilemma, O’Malley offers that “the unfulfilled task of liturgical renewal is adopting an approach to liturgical formation that attunes the human person to fruitfully perform the liturgical act.”[4] He turns to Romano Guardini and Dietrich von Hildebrand (among others) for the proposition that the liturgy “enables through its practice the taking up of a posture toward all reality because of the encounter with Jesus Christ in the liturgical act. It infuses through the mediation of the reflective practitioner a sense of reverence for all existence.”[5]

Guardini advances a similar vision. “Every spatial thing and temporal event leads in some way to God and from God.”[6] To Guardini, “the liturgy has the sense of taking [things] from the earthly hand to bring them to the rightful hand, to take them out of the hand of the ‘Lord of the world’ (Jn 12:31) and to bring them into the Father’s.”[7] Guardini maintains that, in order to be able to fully participate in the liturgy, we need to relearn “how to gaze lively at something.”[8]

One example of this art of “gazing lively” is Guardini’s description of fire as a liturgical symbol—a description which, as it happens, has a curious applicability to the world of politics as well:

Plentiful is the symbolism of fire and light. . . . Brought from a rock during the Easter Vigil, fire has an evil, destructive, and elementally fierce aspect, which can only be half-contained by man. Then, once consecrated, it is transformed into an analogy of heavenly heat and divine glow, which becomes love and truth: Lumen Christi.[9]

Here then is the starting point for the transformative eucharistic mission in the public square: a liturgically formed ability to see that the glory of God can be revealed in all creation, even in as unlikely a place as the world of politics. Instead of viewing politics as something to be feared and avoided, we should conceive of it as one aspect of the created order which can be consecrated to God and which can help lead us to God. Ubi caritas et amor Deus ibi est.

The Eucharistic Mission and Three Features of Political Culture

Of course, it is not quite that simple. If politics is a “cultural liturgy” that competes against Catholic liturgy for our attention and our affections, there are three particular features of modern political culture which impede the establishment of a transformative eucharistic mission in the public square. Looking at the mission against the backdrop of those competing cultural forces is a useful way to understand what the mission means.

The Exclusion of Faith From the Public Square

One of the ideas most strongly ingrained in modern western culture is the concept that faith does not belong in the public square. As Pope Benedict said in an address at Westminster in 2010, the modern world insists that “the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere.” This principle of exclusion is strongly wedded to a central narrative of our culture: that faith is about the next life, not this one. It also goes hand in hand with the view, highly entrenched even within some corners of the Church, that the Christian faith is “a let-the-world-stew-in-its-own-juice religion instead of a kingdom-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven religion.”[10]

Modern society is at ease with this view because, as Pope Benedict acknowledged at Westminster, “distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves.” In the US, it obtains added traction under the erroneous claim that the First Amendment requires faith and politics to be kept apart. We also see it manifested in the argument that Catholics are “imposing their beliefs” on the wider society when they weigh in on a piece of legislation (an argument sometimes advanced by Catholic politicians in order to justify political decisions that are at odds with Catholic Social Teaching.)

This principle of exclusion obviously poses a fundamental challenge to the Catholic mission in the public square because any Catholic who subscribes to it will be operating under the assumption that faith can have nothing to do with politics.

It also presents a deeper-seated problem for the Church. If we take as a given that liturgical attunement is necessary to set the stage for the Church’s wider mission, and that the wider mission in turn fosters liturgical attunement, then it logically follows that the doing of the work of the Church’s mission in the political world is one of the things that can stimulate liturgical attunement. Seen in this light, the mission in the public square serves as a bold object lesson in “taking things out of the earthly hand to bring them to the rightful hand.”

Conversely, however, if we accede to the proposition that there is a sphere of life from which God is definitively barred (especially when that sphere of life is as important and conspicuous as the world of politics), then we are forming people in exactly the wrong direction. If unchecked, the belief that faith does not belong in the public square hampers the process of liturgical attunement.

This tells us that one of the threshold tasks in launching a Eucharist-centered mission must be to counter this way of looking at the Church’s role in the public square. There are several aspects of Church teaching which merit to be more widely known in this regard. For instance, since CST is based on reason as well as revelation, Catholic participation in politics is by no means an exercise in advancing uniquely Catholic beliefs (See Compendium, §§12, 75.) Moreover, faith and reason are not opposed to one another; they are intimately connected. “The world of reason and the world of faith—the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief—need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization” (Westminster Address). Lastly, the Church and the political community in their own fields are autonomous and independent from each other. The Church does not seek to replace the political community but simply to serve as its conscience (see Gaudium et Spes, §76).

Thus, Catholics should not think that the eucharistic mission constitutes an assertion of political power by the Church. Precisely the opposite: the mission is a work of humble service which is undertaken for the good of others, especially the poor. We seek to persuade only through the force of our reasoning and the strength of our example. The goal of the mission in the public square is transformation, not conquest.

Radical Individualism

Another aspect of modern political culture that competes against a Eucharist-based mission is the idea that politics is a project centered around self-interest rather than the common good. “Radical individualism is a virus that is extremely difficult to eliminate, for it is clever” (Fratelli Tutti, §105).

Like the ideology of exclusion, individualism presents a formational challenge for the Church because it makes an appearance within the liturgical assembly as well as the body politic. In his 1964 letter to the Third Liturgical Congress in Mainz (in words that referred to the liturgical assembly but which obviously could apply with equal force to the body politic), Guardini wrote:

Many separating factors must be overcome: most of all the isolation of the modern individual, but also all things that cause aversion and repugnance toward the neighbor—indifference toward the many who do not seem to concern me, but who are, in truth, members of my community.[11]

Guardini urged that we look at ourselves not as isolated individuals, but rather as “the chain of a community in which the Church becomes realized.”[12] In his view, the liturgy teaches that “self-interest must be broadened until it has learned to take upon itself the content of the lives of others, their worries regarding salvation, their suffering, and their intentions.”[13]

Thus, the liturgy forms us away from the temptation to self-interest. The Eucharist “draws us into Jesus’ act of self-oblation” and causes us to “enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving” (Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, §13). As the enduring sign of God’s compassion and love, the Eucharist calls us to solidarity and obliges us to look beyond ourselves, so that “in all those I meet, I recognize brothers or sisters for whom the Lord gave his life, loving them ‘to the end’” (SC, §88). The Sacrament of Love “commits us to the poor” (Catechism of the Catholic Church,§1397) and it “gives rise to a service of charity toward neighbor” which consists in loving “even the person I do not like or even know” (SC, §88).

Sacramentum Caritatis discusses some of the concrete ways that this service of charity is to be carried out. These include:

· Decisions that show respect for human life, family, freedom to educate children, “and the promotion of the common good in all its forms”;
· A constant impulse towards reconciliation;
· A determination to transform unjust structures and to restore respect for the dignity of all men and women;
· Action on behalf of refugees and those who are displaced; those who are in extreme poverty; and those who suffer from “the scandal of hunger and malnutrition”;
· Work for the protection of creation (SC, §§83, 88-92).

This inventory provides us with some valuable insights into what the eucharistic mission demands of us, and what it frees us to do.

The first thing to recognize is that the tasks named here do not correspond to the platforms of the Republican or Democratic parties. The round peg of Catholic Social Teaching does not fit into the square hole of American party politics; indeed, a lack of regard for conventional political lines of demarcation is one of the things that makes CST so unique and so transformational. Because CST is a consistent and logically coherent whole, it frees Catholics from the constraints that ideology and political allegiances artificially impose on other participants in the public square. CST enables Catholics to shine new light on old issues, and to introduce novel combinations of advocates and unexpected policy connections into the debate on any given legislative matter. Pope Francis’s linkage between abortion and care for the environment is one outstanding example of this (Laudato Si’, §120.)

Note that Pope Benedict does not single out any one issue as being of such overriding importance that Catholics are required to disregard all the other issues when discerning whom to vote for in an election. This approach is consistent with the Compendium’s directive that a review of the individual principles of CST (human dignity, the common good, solidarity, and subsidiarity, and a fortiori the individual issues that relate to those principles) “must not lead to using them only in part or in an erroneous manner, which would be the case if they were to be invoked in a disjointed and unconnected way with respect to each of the others” (Compendium, §§9 and 162). As SC exemplifies (and as FC reflects), the only way to act in a truly coherent and transformative way is to approach the mission to the public square on the broad front contemplated by CST.[14]

We also should see that the issues enumerated in SC arise in a variety of different situations. Some of them, like legislation or voting, are quintessentially political. Others are less obviously so because they simply involve the way that we live our lives. While politics gives us the opportunity to carry out our mission of service on a far wider scale than we could do as individuals, this broader enterprise does not relieve us of our individual responsibilities toward the service of charity.

Finally, as demonstrated by the document’s emphasis on the goal of transformation, the individual issues which Pope Benedict saw fit to expressly mention in SC must be seen in union with that goal and not as a substitute for it.[15]

It is easy to fall prey to the idea that the measure of the mission’s success is whether we have prevailed on one or another of those issues. But the goal which the Eucharist sets for us is far more audacious. As the Compendium declares, what the Church proposes is nothing less than an “integral and solidary humanism capable of creating a new social, economic, and political order, founded on the dignity and freedom of every human person, to be brought about in peace, justice, and solidarity” (Compendium, §19).

The Eucharist is the unfailing antidote against the toxin of radical individualism. It directs us away from a focus on ourselves and impels us toward the selfless service of others. We who share in the Supper of the Lamb must think of politics as just one more way to carry out the Lord’s command that we wash the feet of our brothers and sisters.

Hyper-Partisanship

I feel the question posed by Cardinal Etchegray of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and the answer he received, needs to be seriously attended to. When he visited Rwanda on behalf of the Pope shortly following the genocide, he asked the assembled church leaders, “Are you saying that the blood of tribalism is deeper than the waters of baptism?” One leader present answered, “Yes it is.”[16]

Hyper-partisanship is the most dangerous of all the challenges to a transformative mission because it is the antithesis of the communion that the Eucharist effectuates and signifies. It is inherently reductive because it elevates the interests of the party or the “tribe” above other considerations, and it makes the principles of human dignity and the common good subservient to whatever is advantageous to one party or another.

As the 2023 Pew study highlights, American politics have become increasingly polarized along ideological or party lines. A sense of broad civic unity and responsibility has given way to what Professor Emmanuel Katangole refers to as “tribalism”: a primary allegiance that is not to things like the nation or the principle of the common good, but rather to the political or ideological “tribe.”

In the US, hyper-partisanship makes its appearance in many forms, including outbreaks of actual political violence. Political opponents are called enemies of the people. Vitriol is poured out on the members of one’s own “tribe” who are perceived to be lacking in the necessary levels of ideological purity.

Given the heat that this hyper-partisan conflict generates, it is not surprising that it can infiltrate even into the Church. As James K.A. King observed, “‘merely’ political and social allegiances trump religious allegiances all the time, whether in presidential primaries, under the grotesque shadow of the lynching tree, or in horrifying cases like the Rwandan genocide.”[17]

Partisanship is on display within the Church when Catholic politicians or Catholic voters pay more heed to party platforms and political ideologies than they do to CST, or when they feel a greater affinity toward their political allies than they do toward those with whom they share in the Eucharist. It is sharply in evidence when priests or deacons use a celebration of the Eucharist to enter the partisan political fray by issuing public endorsements or condemnations of candidates or parties. These activities harm ecclesial communion, as those whose consciences take them in a different political direction than the one that is being urged or endorsed—and most certainly this will include fellow parishioners, other priests, and even bishops—are painted not just as politically misguided, but unfaithful.[18]

What is the message that we send out when we act in hyper-partisan ways? Are observers likely to think: See how they love one another!” (Tertullian, Apology, 39)? Or will they conclude that there is More substance in our enmities/Than in our love (WB Yeats, “The Stare’s Nest By My Window”)? As Pope Paul VI said in Evangelii Nuntiandi,

If the Gospel that we proclaim is seen to be rent by doctrinal disputes, ideological polarizations or mutual condemnations among Christians, at the mercy of the latter’s differing views on Christ and the Church and even because of their different concepts of society and human institutions, how can those to whom we address our preaching fail to be disturbed, disoriented, even scandalized?[19]

Hyper-partisanship also weakens the prophetic voice of the Church. Can the partisans of an incumbent be expected to set to work transforming unjust structures, as Pope Benedict called for in SC? What is the chance that a priest will speak out against immoral policies of the candidate he has just told his parishioners that they are morally obligated to vote for?

Abortion and racism provide a ready example of how this dynamic plays out on the ground. The Church opposes both as violations of human dignity. Each arises out of the same destructive principle that some human beings have less value than others. An objective observer looking at these issues for the first time might reasonably assume that the same groups of people would be working in tandem to bring them to an end.

That is not how it works in modern politics, however. Here in the US, we rarely see anti-abortion advocates and anti-racism advocates working together on any broad level, even though the root problem they are fighting against in both cases is exactly the same. It is hard not to attribute much of this to the fact that people see opposition to abortion as a Republican issue and opposition to racism as a Democratic issue. Under the unwritten rules, one may never cross political lines or expose a standard-bearer to criticism.

The Eucharist, standing “at the root of the Church as a mystery of communion” (SC, §15), tells us that we cannot imitate these divisive aspects of political culture. As the sure remedy against temptations to division, the Eucharist establishes us in communion with God, with the other members of the Church, and with every other human being (SC, §76). In this sacrament of communion, the Lord “unites us with himself and with one another by a bond stronger than any natural union” (Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, §48).

The Eucharist compels us to see all people, including political opponents, as “brothers or sisters for whom the Lord gave his life, loving them ‘to the end’” (SC, §88). A politics based on the Eucharist leaves no room for vilification, mockery, or any sort of action which is “contrary to the spirit of the Gospel” (Dignitatis Humanae, §14). As we are reminded by the famous antiphons from the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, since “the love of Christ has gathered us together as one,” we must “keep our minds free from division” and bring an end to “malicious quarrels and strife.”

Professor Katangole’s examination of the Rwandan experience perceptively shows how the Eucharist shines a path beyond tribalism. In Katangole’s view, the Church in Rwanda was unable to head off genocide because it failed to provide an alternative conception or imagination to the prevailing tribalism.[20] The Rwandan Church understood its mission in terms of providing relevant contributions to the politics of the day rather than in offering “a challenge and an alternative to a tribal imagination of politics.”[21]

The moral of that story should be obvious for us in the US today. If we take as a given that the current ways of American politics are acceptable or unchanging, then we will have failed in the task of becoming a eucharistic community which “can stand as a witness and an alternative to the politics that would have us live as tribes, each set against the other.”[22] The Eucharist enables us to re-imagine a world of politics where the Eucharist becomes “the primary way in which Christians view and respond to the challenges of the world, [and to shape] a world in which there are no Hutus or Tutsis (or, as St. Paul would put it, ‘no more Jew or Greek or Samaritan or Gentile, male or female’).”[23]

A Eucharist-centered mission in the public square points us beyond the limits which partisanship seeks to impose. The Sacrament of Charity is God’s definitive declaration to us, and to anyone else who will listen, that whether it is the American ship of state, the Bark of Peter, or spaceship earth, we are all in the same boat.

Conclusion

In his Second Annual Message to Congress in December of 1862, President Lincoln exhorted his fellow citizens to recognize that

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

These words should have a special resonance for us in our own stormy present. As members of the Body of Christ, we are called to disenthrall ourselves from politics as it is, and to renew our enthrallment with the Eucharist: the presence of the Risen Lord in our midst, and the enduring sign of God’s love, communion, justice, and peace.

This is the first step in transforming the world of politics in the love of God. By re-imagining politics in the light of the Eucharist and carrying the fruits of the Eucharist into the public square, we will serve as examples of a new mode of political engagement which cultivates communion and solidarity and brings politics and charity back together. Through “the offering of our lives, our fellowship with the whole community of believers, and our solidarity with all men and women,” the eucharistic mission promises the world a new way of politics which finds its source not in wellsprings of selfishness or division, but in the pierced heart of the Crucified One.[24]

SEE ALSO: The Diocese of Manchester’s guide for voting as a Eucharistic people here.

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Tags: Eucharist Politics Transformation