The Eucharist: A crisis well beyond the USA

Source: Fear of ICE has created a Eucharistic crisis - Michael Fox

Some years ago, the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States launched a National Eucharistic Revival, an initiative aimed at renewing faith in and devotion to the Eucharist. One of its principal goals was to deepen Catholics' understanding of what the Church teaches about the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

The timing was hardly accidental. In 2019, Pew Research found that only 31% of self-identified American Roman Catholics said they believed that the bread and wine used at Mass truly become the Body and Blood of Christ, while 69% regarded them as symbols. Even among Roman Catholics who attended Mass weekly, only 63% accepted the Church's teaching on the Eucharist. Clearly, there has been a disconnect between what the Church teaches and what many Catholics say they believe (even aside from what they actually believe which may not be entirely evident to themselves).  

The challenges arising from a poor understanding of the Eucharist, widespread ignorance of Church teaching and a failure to receive or assimilate that teaching remain a matter of concern. Although I do not have comparable data to hand, I suspect that if a similar survey were conducted in Ireland, the results might not be radically different.

Yet understanding the doctrine of the Eucharist is one thing; living its implications is another.

It does not escape my attention that a significant number of Catholics who would describe themselves as staunch, traditional and orthodox often have little difficulty affirming Christ's presence in the consecrated host while struggling to recognise his presence in the poor, the marginalised, the refugee and the stranger.

It is a strange old world.

Recently, some dioceses in the United States have taken extraordinary pastoral measures in response to fears surrounding immigration enforcement. In the Diocese of San Bernardino, for example, Bishop Alberto Rojas formally dispensed from the Sunday Mass obligation those Catholics whose fear of immigration enforcement prevents them from attending Mass.

Michael Fox of the US Catholics for the Common Good over on Substack has written the following (in an excellent and timely post that triggered my thinking for this blog - Fear of ICE has created a Eucharistic crisis):

That is why fear of ICE has created a Eucharistic crisis. It has not changed what Catholics believe happens to bread and wine at Mass. It has changed who can safely gather around the altar where it happens.

This raises a profound theological, pastoral and, indeed, political question. If Jesus Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, as Catholics firmly believe, then where is our recognition of Christ present in the poor and the outcast, those whom he explicitly identifies with in Matthew25:35-40?

I take the liberty of quoting from another excellent post by Rev. Benjamin Cremer (We are causing Jesus to live in fear):

We are racially profiling Jesus.

We are brutalizing Jesus.

We are unlawfully detaining Jesus.

We are denying Jesus due process.

We are detaining Jesus in inhumane conditions.

We are laughing at Jesus’ pain.

We are cheering on harsh treatment towards Jesus.

We are causing Jesus to live in fear.

We have made Jesus the scapegoat for so many of our nation’s problems.

We have no compassion for how hard it is for Jesus to navigate our broken immigration system.

And, the same can be said to a greater or lesser extent in many other parts of the world.

‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’ (Matthew 25:40).

The Christ whom we adore in the Blessed Sacrament is the same Christ who confronts us in the hungry, the stranger, the vulnerable and the forgotten.  If we fail to recognise him there, then our Eucharistic crisis runs deeper than surveys about belief in the Real Presence can measure.

Ultimately, none of us, neither me nor you, neither us nor them, will escape the judgement of Christ when he comes again. And according to the Gospel, the question of questions that He will ask is how we treated ‘the least of these’ (Matthew 25:31-46). The Eucharist calls us not only to adore Christ on the altar, but to recognise and serve him wherever he is found – and (this is often the part that is overlooked) – work and pray, day and night, to get rid of the sinful structures and power structures that enable dehumanisation. God became one of us that we might become more fully ourselves.