Austin Ruse asks Obama to keep his hands off Burke. It appears that our President is trying to defend Sebelius from Burke’s (and other’s) criticisms. It’s a good article, and it provides an important question about the theology (and politics) of the Eucharist.

I mean, I’m no canon lawyer, I’ll admit that, but I suppose my Eucharistic theology is quite different from Ruse’s (and there are obviously some bishops with different theology than Burke’s). When someone in my family told me he flat-out did not believe in the Eucharist, I asked him politely not to receive. But in those moments when I have seriously doubted, I still did receive, because I really wanted to believe, and I said the prayer: Lord, I believe, Help my unbelief.  I think it’s a question of good faith.

Similarly, in those times that I have been sinning, I have often refrained from receiving the Eucharist. Although the truth of the matter is–and a few priests have talked about this with me–I was not necessarily as evil as I thought I was at the time. We Catholics can be awfully hard on ourselves, and awfully hard on each other. I fully and completely recognize that there are sins that make reception of the Eucharist impossible, and there are ways of thinking and believing or operating that make it rude and inappropriate (not being Catholic, not believing at all in the real presence, etc.). But I also believe that Jesus is one tough cookie (forgive me), and that the Eucharist can generally do a lot of good. I think that those among us who are operating in good faith–but whose good intentions are paving the wrong roads–could have much more good done for them than bad by receiving.  If we really believe in the real presence, than the Eucharist is in a not-unsubstantial way (forgive me again.  the puns are too much), the person of Jesus himself, and we see from the Gospels how his touch radically changed sinners, provided those sinners came with at least some desire to be changed, with an awareness of their brokenness and a desire to be made whole, even if they were unaware of exactly how they were broken (see the woman at the well especially, but really a whole lot of the Gospels, especially Luke and Mark).  I think we ought to be less worried about the sinner and more worried about the complacent, the pharisees, those that don’t believe they sin at all.  It seems to me that that’s who Jesus was worried about.  I know that me at my worst and most worthy of Hell is when I’m in the latter category and not the former, because the latter actually invites the most insidious of the former.  It all comes back to another prayer from the Gospels: Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.  I would add to this, I think I’m doing my best in a broken world, but I’m not sure, and I need your grace to know, or at least, to see a bit more clearly than I do now.

So how do we know if certain elected officials–say, Sebelius–are operating in good faith, that they are really trying to know, that, in an imperfect world, they are doing their best? (And remeber, we Catholics aren’t pacifists–we do recognize we have to make compromises with evil to exist in the world, but always within certain parameters and for the greater good). The simple answer is that I’m not sure if we can know, barring particularly heinous disregard for life, that is, no efforts at all to reduce abortion, or any form of killing that is wholly gratuitous–ie, lots of wars, and death penalty in the US, and the allowance of killing in the form of starvation and death from diseases that could have been averted.

This is not to argue some sort of numbers game, as a lot of those on the Catholic left do: that is, I don’t think that we should claim that abortion is balanced out by all the other deaths in the world that other elected officials might turn a cold shoulder to. While I do believe that Obama’s maintenance of foreign policy might well eventually save a million lives a year more than McCain would have, and that McCain’s possible overturning of Roe would not end all abortions or even put a large dent in them, this is obviously speculative. My argument has much more to do with the politics of Eucharist, and this is related to my thoughts on Obama and Notre Dame: I simply believe that we should take on good faith that many of those who are pro-choice have considered their decisions and believe they are making the best of two difficult choices. And that we should welcome them into our community, share the Eucharist, and truth that within that community, the truth (which, I believe, is pro-life) will win.