June 20, 2021 | The New York Times
EPPC President Ryan T. Anderson and EPPC Cardinal Francis George Fellow Mary FioRito offered comments in a recent New York Times article on U.S. Bishops’ decision to draft guidelines on the Eucharist:
Ryan T. Anderson, the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative organization in Washington, said that bishops’ taking action on a contemporary political issue was simply a matter of obedience to church teaching, regardless of partisanship.
He pointed to the example of Joseph Francis Rummel, the archbishop of New Orleans in the 1950s, who proclaimed racial segregation “morally wrong and sinful” and eventually excommunicated three prominent church members who opposed him.
Outside observers, and even many lay Catholics, don’t understand the deep sacredness of the Eucharist in church teaching and tradition, said Mary Hallan FioRito, a Catholic lawyer and commentator in Chicago.
If Ms. FioRito’s children violate the church instruction to fast for one hour before receiving the Eucharist, she tells them not to receive it. She has friends who attend Mass frequently but do not even request the Eucharist because they were married outside the church and are therefore not in “valid” marriages. Mr. Biden, she said, should know better than to try to receive communion given his position on abortion.“For Catholics, the Eucharist is not a symbol,” she said. “It’s Christ himself.”
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