By Judie Brown
It is heartbreaking for me to have to once again discuss why it is a moral imperative for Catholics, especially those in public life, to defend Christ from sacrilege. But address it we must.
For those unfamiliar with Catholic canon law, the specific law pertaining to the protection of Christ in the Eucharist states that “those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”
While this law applies to all Catholics in the same way that federal and state laws apply to every American citizen, there are many Catholic priests, bishops, and others who do not recognize or obey it. This sad fact was a primary focus of Father James Buckley, former spiritual director of American Life League. Now that he has died and we find no bishop acting in accord with this law, it is up to us to sound the alarm.
One of the primary lessons Father Buckley instilled on our hearts was that if the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is ignored, so too will the baby prior to birth be ignored. Echoing this truth, Cardinal Raymond Burke said, “Christ remains always alive for us in the Church, most perfectly in the Holy Eucharist, in order to meet us with divine love, ‘to win our hearts,’ that is, to free our hearts from the slavery of sin and to free them for the faithful and enduring love of God and of our neighbor.”
One has to wonder where the courage to speak this truth is to be found, if not among the priests and bishops within the Church. And yet it is clear that men ordained into the Catholic priesthood have either not understood what it means to teach the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or they have been cowed into silence by the political atmosphere that has invaded every nook and cranny of our lives.
When Catholic priests advocate for the election of Donald Trump to public office, even though Trump has said he would veto a national ban on abortion, something is sorely amiss. And that something is truth.
As our dearly departed friend and mentor Father John Hardon, SJ, once wrote,
The first definition of the Council of Trent is on the Catholic meaning of the Real Presence. The definition reads: “If anyone says that the body and blood together with His whole Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore the whole Christ, is truly, really and substantially contained in the Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist, but says that Christ is present in the Sacrament only as in a sign or figure or by His power, let him be anathema.”
Today Catholic men ordained by the sacrament of holy orders have grown silent on this truth. It occurs to us that their lack of teaching is at the core of the rise we see among those who equivocate on human dignity, shy away from divine truth, and yammer about so-called issues instead of absolute truth.
This tragic situation is in direct contradiction with the heroic actions of Father Leo Heinrichs. His story of martyrdom is a reminder of his devotion, for as he lay dying, he chose to protect the Eucharist from attack. According to the Denver Catholic:
The front page of the February 27, 1908 edition of the Denver Catholic Register described Father Leo’s final moments: “Father Leo reeled and sank to the floor of the sanctuary, striving with the instinct of the priest to collect the consecrated particles which had been scattered from the chalice. Father Wulstan, being called, was just in time to administer the last sacraments when he expired, his last act being to point mutely to the fallen contents of the ciborium.”
In closing, it seems to us that defending the Eucharist unto death is the fundamental reason for becoming a Catholic priest.
