ROME
The Daily Beast
Barbie Latza Nadeau
ROME, Italy — Forget such lofty aspirations as ridding the Church of child abusers or clamping down on financial corruption, Pope Francis’s biggest obstacle in reforming the Catholic Church comes down to a tiny round gluten-rich Styrofoam-tasting wafer.
The Blessed Eucharist, Holy Communion, the breaking of bread, panis triticeus, the host with the most – whatever Catholics call the thin round wafer made of unleavened wheat, the sacrament of the Eucharist is the culminating point of any Catholic mass. And, according to Catholic teaching, the most important of the seven sacraments.
Taking communion is when Catholics accept the ultimate sacrifice made for them– the body and blood of Christ who died for their sins– preferably on an empty stomach and with a clear conscience in a sin-free state of grace. In some Catholic families (disclaimer: like the one I grew up in), Saturday night confession was a pretty good way to ensure one could still be free of sin by Sunday morning mass (or in some cases, confession was followed directly by Saturday night mass in lieu of Sunday, just to be safe).
Communion in the Catholic Church is extremely important, but it is rife with hypocrisy. In some Catholic communities, eyebrows are raised when certain members of the congregation join the queue to take communion; in others, nobody balks because everybody’s straddling the same thin sinner-saint line. Many Catholics who stand up for communion know they are unworthy, but they are far too worried what the neighbors might think if they sit out a Sunday, speculating on what sins weren’t forgiven in time.
The sin-free checklist is no joke: no birth control, no premarital sex, no masturbation, no homosexual acts, no fertility treatments, no taking the name of God in vain, the list goes on. Oddly perhaps, the Catholics who generally do follow the rules to the letter and abstain from communion, proudly confined to the pew, are those who are divorced. For them, abstaining is a cross to bear, never mind that worshiping in a seemingly unforgiving Church at all is a major hurdle for many. The divorced are often the congregation’s obvious sinners, but the Catholic Church might consider a pre-communion litmus test questionnaire to make sure everyone who gets a host deserves it. They might be surprised how much money they would save on altar bread. ,,,
The biggest backlash on the communion question will come on October 1 with the publication of a book called Remaining In The Truth of Christ on marriage and the Catholic Church. The book will come out on the eve of the upcoming Synod on the Family extraordinary general assembly – the first for Pope Francis – to be held October 5-19 in Rome. It is jointly authored by five prominent cardinals who seek to draw a clear line among the Roman Curia on the issue of Catholic marriage, divorce and communion. The authors (Gerhard Ludwig Muller from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Raymond Leo Burke, who is rumored to be about to lose his post as the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, Walter Brandmuller, former head of the pontifical committee for Historical Sciences, Carlo Caffarra, archbishop of Bologna, and Velasio De Paolis, former Prefecture for the Economic Affairs) come down hard on Francis’s perceived leniency on the issue of communion and marriage, according to a preview piece in Italy’s Corriere Della Sera newspaper this week, which starts with the line “non possumus” Latin for “it is not possible.”
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