A Communion War from the Left?

 A very curious op-ed in the NY Times from Mr. Perriello, the U.S. executive director of Open Society Foundations, who is a former diplomat and member of Congress. A Catholic, he tells us that he takes communion only when he is outside of the United States because of his displeasure with the American bishops!  

So are we now going to have liberals decide that they are not going to go to communion, and perhaps not go physically to Mass, and perhaps no longer contribute to the collection box because American bishops have become involved in politics?  That would be real escalation in weaponizing the Eucharist. 

What happens if the end result of the Bishop's weaponizing the Eucharist is that many liberals decide that they basically want nothing to do with local churches and only identify with the Universal Church outside the USA?

Perriello does not explicitly advocate this but he certainly seems headed in that direction.

  The Bishops Betray a Faithful President

Perriello has a strange ecclesiology.  The American Bishops Conference is certainly not the American Church, it isn't even over the American Church. It is in fact an organization that assists the bishops in their governance of their dioceses. In most cases its actions are not binding upon individual bishops. The only way that it can issue binding legislation, e.g. on liturgy, is by a two-third vote plus approval from Rome. Theoretically it can teach unanimously but that just says all the bishops are on the same page (unlikely to ever happen). 

He expresses deep admiration for the former liberal Bishop of Richmond, Virginia. Would he be abstaining from communion with him if he were still bishop? This gets to the more basic and more interesting question. When we go to communion whom are we expressing communion with? the Pope? Catholics throughout the world? the bishops of our country?  Catholics in our country? our local bishop? Catholics in our diocese? our local pastor? Catholics in our parish? Jesus Christ?

Obviously all of the above. But with whom do we really experience communion?

For over a year now I have not been to Communion. If anything I would say that my communion with Jesus has intensified during that period with the daily celebration of Lauds and Vespers. My communion with Pope Francis has become more prominent in my life since I celebrate the Eucharist with him more often even though I cannot have physical Holy Communion with him. My communion with the Monks of Saint Meinrad has become a pronounced feature of my life every day at Vespers even though it cannot be physically expressed by Holy Communion.  My communion with my local parishes has greatly diminished since they not only don't celebrate Lauds and Vespers publicly (I presume their priests and deacons do so privately) but have also failed to attract me to their livestreamed Masses. 

As a single person I have long conceived of my life as a solitary life. Solitary spirituality has a long and venerable tradition in the Church throughout the ages but was particularly valued in the early church. Solitaries were not good at church going. Some of them who lived close to villages did come in for weekend liturgies. Some who lived close to communal monasteries did the same. But many, perhaps even most, lived far from villages and monasteries, although many of them lived within earshot of each other in single cells. These often did not go to Mass for weeks, months, years, or decades. Among the latter were some of the holiest. 

The solitaries failure to celebrate the Eucharist and receive Communion did not mean that they were out of communion with the rest of the Church. In fact concern about the welfare of the Church and prayer for the Church were prominent among them. (Remember the Church had only recently emerge from persecution) What is most intriguing in that they often knew of things from afar out in the desert and had an influence on the Church without any human mediation. One might regard this as super-natural, i.e. miraculous. However the pastor of my local Orthodox Church says that the church fathers regarded this as a restoration of the abilities of Adam before the fall! That is we humans were destined for something like the virtual world.

This is all interesting from the perspective of Teilhard de Chardin's approach to evolution. Are we in fact entering through the digit world and virtual reality into an evolution of the Church and the World in our  journey to the Omega point?   We have discussed before on this blog that we have deeper relationships with one another than are experienced by causal encounters in parish life.

Sometimes Roman Catholicism has been perceived as a hierarchical society in the sense that it is like corporate bureaucracies.  One management guru even touted the efficiency of our system which goes from pastor to bishop to Pope. He did not understand the Popes, bishops, and now pastors are assisted by "curia"s that is courts that immensely complicate that simplicity. And that popes, bishops and pastors can be imprisoned by their assistants.

The reality is that Catholicism is a communion of communions that not only includes dioceses and parishes, but also schools, health care organizations, social service organizations, abbeys and religious orders, shrines, retreat houses, public and private associations, and maybe most importantly households! Practically with whom I am in communion is very complex, especially since that communion exists over time. In some ways I am still in communion with my parents who have been long dead, with the parishes where  I grew up (although some of them have ceased to exist). I have a relationship with the Jesuits since I was a Novice. (I have a deep bond with Francis was one about the same time although in a far off country). Also I continue a relationship with the Benedictines at Saint Johns where I went to college. (Besides buying Liturgical Press books, I also participated in their PrayTell blog. My dozen posts and perhaps my many comments over four years are still out there.) This could go on and on...

What does this elaborate pattern of communion have to do with the Eucharist and Holy Communion?  In my Latin Missal before Vatican II there was information about the ancient practice of the Popes to keep station, i.e. to celebrate the Eucharist in the different basilicas and churches of Rome.  Early on when I was in college, I began to think of my celebration of the Eucharist as keeping station. For example when I came back home I often went to the church where I was baptized rather than the parish where I received First Communion and Confirmation. My keeping station across three dioceses (my house, my parent home, and our Cabin) was determined by a complex of symbolic and practical reasons. What it did was affirm that I live within a community of communities and expression of my relationship to the whole complex is determined largely by my choices. Increasing those  choices for celebration will be likely be determined by my  participation in the virtual world.

As for bishops, they are far in the background of my community of communities. I regard them as church politicians and have the same interest and skepticism of their doings as I have of secular politicians.  They are very irrelevant to my decisions about when and where to celebrate the Eucharist and take Communion.