Can a sinner receive communion? and a (mis?)reading of Evangelii Gaudium

Last updated on: October 20, 2015 at 8:01 am by Jane the Actuary

Can a sinner receive communion? and a (mis?)reading of Evangelii Gaudium 2015-10-20T08:01:41-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Yesterday I griped that Archbishop Cupich was starting to sound an awful lot like a German Bishop (except for the part about banning non-Church Tax-payers from communion) and quoted a line from an article in the Tribune:

“Are sacraments rewards for good behavior or are sacraments, as the pope would say, medicines for mercy?”

not a direct quote from Cupich, but from a priest who was portrayed as thinking as Cupich wanted him to think.

This is similar to the aphorism that “the church is not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners,” as quoted, for instance, in a piece at the National Catholic Reporter from 2013, which then goes on to say

I think most priests evolve. When I was first ordained at the age of 36, I thought it was my job to enforce the rules. “No Communion for you.” But gradually, I came to see that the sacraments are not a reward for good behavior but the medicine of sinners.

Now, I can’t figure out if this NCR article made such a strong impression that it’s being quoted two years later by this Chicago priest, or if there was an underlying source to both these essentially similar statements, but this isn’t exactly what the pope said.

Here’s the text, from Evangelii Gaudium (the Joy of the Gospel), published in November of 2013:

The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine for the weak.

“Medicine for the weak” . . .

But “weak” has been modified into “sinners” — and further into “unrepentant sinners” (and “the church” in that aphorism, has morphed into “the sacraments”), but that’s not what it says.

When the Pope says that the Eucharist is “medicine for the weak,” he’s not issuing an open invitation for everyone to come to communion, believers and unbelievers alike, nor is he welcoming unrepentant sinners. (At least, I hope not!) I see this as offering hope for those who struggle deeply to stay true to their pledge to “sin no more” — whether it’s succumbing to temptations to sexual sins, or greed, or garden-variety anger and discord in family relationships.

He uses the term “medicine” — and I think it’s significant. One takes medicine if one wants to get well. Someone who thinks they’re doing just fine as it is, and it’s only those other people who refuse to see that, has no interest in medicine. Only if you know you’re in need of healing — in this case, forgiveness — do you seek medicine.

Now, I was thinking of this during my workday today, while reviewing a Chinese post-retirement benefit curtailment calculation, and as it happened, an opinion piece by Ross Douthat popped up in my twitter feed, addressing this very issue. He says,

But the key debate at and around the synod in Rome right now is not a broad one about whether the church should look outward or look in, focus on missionary work or focus on its own internal rubrics. . . .

No: It’s a very specific debate about whether conversion and repentance are necessary, not for community, but for communion: The reception of the eucharist, the body and blood of Christ, during the central act of Catholic worship, the sacrifice of the mass. And by claiming — or at least very strongly implying —that Jesus’s meals with sinners are the template for how the church should think about communion, Father [James] Martin is effectively rejecting the entire sweep of our common church’s own tradition on this question. . . .

If the eucharist is basically a form of food-based Christian fellowship, a means to outreach and welcome and hospitality rather than a sacred mystery for believers to approach with reverence and not a little fear, then forget the divorced and remarried; barring anyone from receiving makes no sense at all.

Which is quite well expressed.

UPDATE: Hey, I got Elizabeth Scalia’s attention! True, she rejects what I have to say and, says “it is our weakness that keeps us from having either the understanding or the courage to repent,” and you can check out what she has to say and see what you think.

My first reaction is that this reads as if someone who refuses to repent that they get a pass because they just don’t understand, and this spooks me a bit. Besides, when I read the phrase “medicine for the weak” I immediately connected this to a particular situation, of someone who indeed has repented but struggles to keep the sin in check. When It comes down to it, reality is, outside of these hot-button issues such as homosexuality and remarriage, most people don’t, in fact, reject the fact that their sinful actions are, well, sinful, but it is their weakness (not their blindness to the reality of what they’re doing) that causes them to keep stumbling.

This is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and there are purple ribbons on the trees at church and at village hall. Sure, many abusers reject that there’s anything wrong with what they’re doing, and stereotypically say, “she had it coming for looking at the waiter too long,” but isn’t it equally the case that plenty of people want to do the right thing, and know what the right thing is, and know when they’ve done wrong, and are even able to apologize and promise it won’t happen again, but struggle to keep their anger in check?

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