Clinton and Communion
On March 29, the Rev.
Mohlomi Makobane, a Catholic priest in Soweto, South Africa, gave Holy
Communion to the president of the United States, a Jesuit-educated Southern
Baptist who worships at his wife's Methodist church in Washington, D.C.
The
policy of the Roman Catholic Church is that except in extreme circumstances,
only Catholics (and sometimes Eastern Orthodox Christians) are invited to
consume the consecrated bread and wine at a Catholic Mass. Makobane was
criticized for his action, as was Bill Clinton, who was judged to have
characteristically grabbed something to which he was not entitled. Cardinal
John O'Connor of New York used his Palm Sunday sermon to declare the episode
"legally and doctrinally wrong" and added this grace note: "Some undoubtedly
believe that if one has enough prestige or money, anything goes."
Clinton isn't the first Protestant politician
to have been warned he would never eat Communion in this church again. Several
years ago, Clinton's 1992 rival Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., a Congregationalist,
stopped taking Communion at a Catholic church after the Catholics-only policy
was called to his attention. And the president's British soul mate, Prime
Minister Tony Blair, an Anglican, was reported by British papers to have
complied with a request that he no longer receive Communion at his wife's
Catholic parish. The Catholic Church's scruples about intercommunion cut both
ways: The Republic of Ireland's President Mary McAleese, a Catholic, was
lectured by the hierarchy after she took Communion at an Anglican cathedral in
Dublin.
A
generation ago, a Protestant president of the United States who took Communion
at a Catholic ceremony would have had to worry about censure not from Catholics
but from co-religionists appalled at the spectacle of a Bible-believing
Protestant participating in the "popish superstition" of the Mass. It's a
measure of the self-confidence of the American Catholic hierarchy that the flak
in the Clinton flap came from the other direction.
Did Clinton and Makobane pull a fast one? Not
really. Their supposed transgression is a common occurrence at American
Catholic churches and the logical outcome of the ecumenical movement energized
by the Roman Catholic Church itself.
Returning to my childhood Catholic parish for Easter Mass a couple of years
ago, I was struck by the thought that the service (a term never applied to
Catholic worship in my altar boy days in the early 1960s) would have
scandalized past pastors. Not only was the Mass in English, celebrated by a
priest facing the congregation, but at Communion time, the sacrament was
distributed in both "species" (wine as well as bread) by ministers of both
sexes--though some older parishioners, after receiving the consecrated wafer
from priestly hands, avoided the female eucharistic minister (a laywoman)
offering the chalice.
Conservative Catholics call this
"Protestantizing" the Mass. But ecumenical cross-pollination has led to at
least as significant a "Catholicization" of Protestant worship. Once
infrequently celebrated in many Episcopal and Lutheran churches, Holy Communion
is increasingly the principal act of worship on Sunday. Episcopalians,
Lutherans, and some Methodists have rediscovered rituals, ornaments, and
clerical vestments (the "rags of popery" of Protestant polemic) discarded
during the Reformation. The result is a consensus Communion ceremony that might
be called "Catholic lite."
Yes,
differences in interpretation remain and, after the Clinton Communion,
commentators ritualistically recited the theological boilerplate I learned in
parochial school: Catholics regard the Eucharist as a sacrifice, while for
Protestants it is a mere memorial. Writing in the Washington Times ,
Robert Alt contrasted the Roman Catholic belief in transubstantiation, "whereby
the bread and wine, while maintaining their ordinary physical qualities, are
substantively transformed in the Eucharist into the body, blood, soul and
divinity of Jesus Christ," with consubstantiation, the Methodist (and Lutheran)
teaching that "the bread and wine and Christ's presence exist
simultaneously."
The nature of the Eucharist was a defining
issue in the Reformation. Two issues loomed large: the nature of Christ's
presence in the bread and wine of Communion and whether the Eucharist was a
sacrifice offered for the forgiveness of sins. Reformers objected to the latter
as a derogation of Jesus Christ's redemptive death on the cross and a
theological close cousin to the selling of indulgences. But these once-bright
lines have become blurred.
Four
centuries later, partly due to new scholarship about the Jewish roots of the
sacrament, a panel of Anglican and Catholic theologians released an "Agreed
Statement on Eucharistic Doctrine." This 1971 document affirmed the "true
presence" of Christ in the Eucharist, "effectually signified by the bread and
wine, which, in this mystery, become his body and blood." As for the T-word:
"The word transubstantiation is commonly used in the Roman Catholic Church to
indicate that God acting in the Eucharist effects a change in the inner reality
of the elements." It "should be seen as affirming the fact" of Christ's
presence, but not as explaining "how the change takes place." (Despite this
fudge, the new Catechism of the Catholic Church retains the term.)
As for the divisive issue of whether the Mass
is a sacrifice for the remission of sins, the statement affirms that "Christ's
death upon the cross ... was the one, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the
sins of the world." However, the Eucharist is a memorial (Greek anamnesis) in
which "the atoning work of Christ on the cross is proclaimed and made effective
in the life of the church."
This and
a similar ecumenical agreement with Lutherans have not been embraced as
authoritative by the Vatican. Nevertheless, they have affected not only
Catholic academic theology but also popular teaching and practice. These days
the Eucharist is likelier to be described as a meal, albeit one graced by the
saving presence of Christ, than as a propitiatory sacrifice.
Many Protestants have no doubt that Jesus is
really present in the Communion distributed at Catholic Masses. And they reject
the notion that they are ineligible to partake of a gift that ultimately comes
from God, not from the pope or O'Connor. Anglicans are particularly aggrieved
by the no-Protestants policy. Preaching recently in Luxembourg's Catholic
cathedral, the Most Rev. George Carey, the archbishop of Canterbury, noted that
"it hurts to be denied the Lord's Supper by a fellow disciple of Jesus Christ."
Carey urged the Roman Catholic Church to adopt the open-rail policy followed by
Anglican churches.
Thanks to Vatican II (and
one of its little-noted consequences, an ebbing of American anti-Catholicism),
Catholics unself-consciously socialize with other Christians and attend their
christenings, weddings, and funerals. On the same Palm Sunday that saw O'Connor
chastising Makobane for sharing Communion with Clinton, I wandered into St.
John's Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square, opposite the White House. This is
the historic "Church of the Presidents," though Bill Clinton was not in
attendance that day. I was edified by the hospitality extended to tourists at
Communion time. Inviting non-Episcopalian Christians to partake, the priest
explained, "This is God's altar; this isn't the Episcopal Church's altar." If
Communion is a meal, it is rude not to reciprocate.
