My partner and I affectionately call our 7 year old golden retriever, Amber, the “food whore.” That’s because, whenever she sees any food any where (on the street, on someone’s plate, in our hands, you name it), she immediately wants it and tries to get it. We have to monitor her constantly so that she doesn’t scarf something down that could hurt her. It’s a constant struggle, but we do it for her own good.
Apparently Cardinal Egan has the same relationship with former Mayor Rudy Giuliani around communion wafers.
During the recent Mass welcoming the Pope to New York at St. Patrick’s, Mr. Giuliani took communion, apparently as powerless to resist the sight of the wafer as Amber is when confronted with a doggie bone. “Bad dog!” shouts Cardinal Egan in news reports in today’s New York Times, claiming that he had an “agreement” with Mr. Giuliani that he would not take communion because he supported a woman’s right to choose (apparently the former Mayor’s two divorces and well-publicized extramarital affairs weren’t a problem: just the abortion thing). Rumors are that the good Cardinal was going to use today’s Times to smack Mr. Giuliani on the nose, and might even pry his mouth open and pull the wafer out should he do it again, just like I have to do with Amber if she finds a chicken bone on the street.
This absurd moment is just the latest in the ridiculous ”Wafer Wars” that continue to roil the Catholic Church. In 2004 bishops debated denying Democratic nominee Senator John Kerry (who would have been only the 2nd Catholic in history to become President had he won) communion because of his belief in a woman’s right to choose. The same summer the bishop of Camden talked of denying former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey (who is now studying to be an Episcopal priest) communion because of the circumstances around his divorce. Then a bishop in Colorado proposed denying communion to any Catholic who votes for candidates who support a woman’s right to choose. The utter hypocrisy is that these same bishops never threaten to withhold communion from politicians who support the death penalty, which is just as much a violation of Catholic teaching as abortion, or for those who supported the Iraq War, which the Pope spoke out against. It’s a selective and political enforcement of theology. But then again, politics is what the Church does best sometimes.
This behavior would have shamed Jesus, who welcomed all (even the apostle who betrayed him with a kiss) to break bread with him in the Last Supper that is the basis for the communion ritual. He would have found it impossible to understand how those who claim to follow in his footsteps could turn away people seeking to be closer to God. But this is the way of a Church that drives away those who love it and which is rapidly becoming a dying, irrelevant institution in American society. Only 2 of my partner’s 10 nieces and nephews, all of them raised by Catholic parents who graduated from Catholic schools, have any intention of practicing Catholicism as adults. You do the math. Maybe they just don’t like being asked to sit up and beg when they want to take Communion.