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Living from a Eucharistic Vision: Solidarity in the Body of Christ
Catherine Vincie, Ph.D.
How are we to understand the place of eucharist, indeed the place of all of our liturgical
celebrations, in the actual lives of the Christian community? What are the lines of connection
between our moments gathered in corporate, liturgical prayer and the quality of our living? We
are forced to ask these questions because we have made such significant claims about the
importance of worship in Christian life. We claim that gathering in the presence of God, in
praise of God, to beg a blessing of God, to receive the gift of eucharist entwines the assembly
with the very life of God. We claim that participation in liturgical memorial, in the sacramental
life, actualizes in us what the sacraments signify – participation in the very holiness of God.
Dare we engage in such weighty behavior and not live ethical lives? Should we even come to
the eucharistic table if we, like the Corinthians, do not discern the body of Christ enfleshed
among us? Will we not eat and drink to our own condemnation? But how can we be church
without celebrating the eucharist?
These are not idle questions, and they do not leave a single one of us righteously standing
on the sidelines. The cries of the victims of violence and injustice literally are shaking the
heavens and calling into question our claim to a Christian identity without a corresponding ethic
of justice. They are calling us to accountability in action if we dare call ourselves Christian and
venture to celebrate the eucharist. Moving no further away than our Christian brothers and
sisters, we are forced to explain the violence that professed Christians visit upon one another
having celebrated the eucharist for decades of our lives? The suffering and the oppressed have a
right to know there is an ethic of solidarity among the members of the body of Christ. I invite
you to ponder some new “texts of terror” that have come out of our contemporary experience.
In the midst of the civil strife ravaging the people of Sudan, the Christian community’s
belief in the unity of the body of Christ and its ecclesial practice is being severely tested. Not
only is violence being inflicted by non-Christians against Christians, but members of the
Christian community themselves are inflicting unspeakable violence upon one another. The
issue became very personal for the Episcopal bishop of Lieu, Bishop Bollen Dolli.1 Bishop
Dolli’s own brother had been seized, dragged behind a jeep for five or six miles and then doused
with gasoline and set afire. Some time later, after celebrating the eucharist that included
preaching on reconciliation, a man from the assembly who had fingered his brother came to the
bishop, weeping in grief and fear over what he had done. Would the bishop return kind for kind,
or would the reconciliation already won for us in Christ and celebrated at the eucharist fashion
his response? Could the unity of the body of Christ celebrated again and again in eucharistic
memorial and communion find expression in the lives of these two men?
To ask the question in the starkest way, can the torturer and the tortured celebrate the
eucharist side by side? During the 1980’s and 1990’s the church of Chile faced this reality
daily. Through a reign of state sponsored terror that atomized the society, no social body seemed
able to challenge the disappearance and torture of the citizens.2 In this case too, both torturers
and the tortured claimed identity as Christians and a place at the eucharistic table. As the
violence went on, the church hierarchy had to decide whether to risk their own security by
breaking the conspiracy of silence by naming and excommunicating from the eucharistic meal
those who engaged in torture or who knew about it and did nothing. The alternative was to allow
1
2
Conversation with Bishop Dolli, September 16, 2004.
William T. Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
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the continued dismemberment of the body of Christ and a eucharistic practice more vile than that
which faced Paul and the Corinthian community.
These examples are extreme cases, but unfortunately they are neither isolated nor
infrequent occurrences. What they put in bold relief is the question of the relationship between
ethical Christian ritual practice and ethical Christian living. As a way to address this question,
there are two areas that I would like to explore with you today. In the area of ritual interpretation
I will discuss ritual as orthopraxis from a philosophical viewpoint and ritual as strategic action
from the view from the social sciences. In the area of theology I will explore the traditional
image of the Mystical Body and a more recent image of solidarity. Finally, I will propose five
implications for the liturgy.
Liturgy as Orthopraxis
While we know there is some correlation between ritual celebration and behavior outside
of ritual celebration, we know from observing the behavior of living communities such as we
outlined earlier that there is no simple cause/effect relationship between the two. Ethical ritual
behavior does not seem automatically to determine ethical behavior outside of ritual space, yet so
often we hear the question posed as “why doesn’t liturgy make more of a difference in the
community’s life?” Is this a fair question, or are we a placing a burden on ritual activity that it
cannot bear?
One way of addressing this issue is to ask if ritual is to behavior as theory is to practice.
Philosophers and theologians have been helpful in this discussion because of their renewed
exploration of the terms “theory” and “practice.” Traditionally, theory has been understood in
terms of meaning and the human orientation toward cognition and knowing, while practice has
been understood as the human orientation toward doing. There has also been a tendency in
Western philosophy and in Christian theology to give theory pride of place over practice;
practice is, therefore, derivative of and dependent upon theory. Further, theory is idealized while
practice bears the limitations of human frailty.
This view has been challenged in the light of the massive numbers of humanity who are
caught in cycles of oppression, violence, poverty and suffering. Social norms and principles,
however exalted, have not prevented humanly inflicted misery, and too often these norms and
principles have been formulated without due reference to human experience, particularly of those
on the margins of society. With such a challenge hovering over the discussion new approaches
to theory and practice are called for and their relationship with one another rethought.
Contemporary philosophers and political and liberation theologians have suggested that
theory and practice must be understood in dialectical relationship in such way as a critical
correlation exists between the two.3 The aim is to collapse the space between knowing and
doing or the dichotomy between the truths of the faith and faith in action. Without reducing one
to the other, this scholarship emphasizes the mutual dependence of one upon the other. Both
theory and practice retain distinctive characteristics, but each serves the ongoing development of
the other. Theory is reshaped by reflection on the experience of praxis and praxis is rethought in
light of the ongoing developments of theory.
Scholars have also rightly critiqued the innocence of theory and its isolation from
experience. In all honesty we must admit that theory is already tied to multiple forms of human
3
See for example Matthew lamb, Solidarity with Victims: Towards a Theology of Social Transformation (New
York: Crossroad 1982), chapter 3; David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination Christian and the Culture of Pluralism
(New York: Crossroad, 1983); Clodovis Boff, Theology and Praxis; Epistemological Foundations, trans. Robert R.
Barr (Maryknoll: Orbis 1986).
2
action in the world. Bias and distortion, abuse of power and avoidance of responsibility are real
possibilities, and there is nothing inherent in theory that makes it immune from such liabilities.
Therefore, the authenticity of its theoretical tradition is an ongoing concern for any community.
A renewed understanding of practice has also been developed. Practice or, more
correctly, praxis is explained as committed action exercised in light of critical reflection. If one
can speak of theory as the human concern of meaning and value, then praxis may be seen as
concern for the embodiment of those meanings and values in social interaction. Praxis is of the
existential order; it is our concrete way of being in the world. Praxis is not to be misunderstood
as the implementation of theory. It is subject to its own criterion for truth and authenticity, yet is
dynamically related to theory.
Another contribution of recent scholarship has been its differentiation between practice as
a productive technique and praxis as an activity that is a good in itself. In other words, the value
of an activity is not be judged by its ability to produce something outside of itself. Yet praxis is
self-involving and has an effect on the ongoing development of the self. In the words of
Matthew Lamb, practice includes “involvement and commitment; by our actions we become
who we are.”4
What does all this mean for our question of the relationship of liturgy and ethical
behavior? First, it allows us to speak of worship as a community’s praxis and not purely as
theory waiting to be put into practice outside of ritual space. Neither is it an instrumental action
whose sole aim is the production of justice in Christian life. Liturgy or ritual action as praxis has
a value in and of itself. As our liturgy has reminded us for centuries, “It is truly right and just to
give [God] thanks and praise.” Yet Christian liturgy must be right worship; it must profess
authentic Christian faith. Therefore, in a moment of critical reflection all discrimination in the
eucharist or at any other liturgy must be denounced and eliminated at Paul did with the
community at Corinth. Their eucharistic praxis did not discern the true body of Christ and as
such was not orthopraxis.
If Liturgy is not to be reduced to a “theory” in relationship to Christian discipleship, we
still have a right to expect any form of Christian praxis to shape the character of those
participating in it. Life-long proclamation and testimony of God’s infinite love for all of
humanity and the earth in Jesus Christ and the Spirit has the potential for shaping Christians
exactly in this image, provided that multiple obstacles do not prevent such appropriation. In
addition, we can expect that what is learned in one sphere of Christian life will be carried out in
another. Both liturgical orthopraxis and ethical behavior outside of liturgy are mutually
enhancing; both contribute to the development of Christian character and to social
transformation.
Liturgy as Performance and Strategic Action
Ritual theorists have also been struggling with the relationship between ritual and social
life, and have provided significant insights into this question. Their work suggests some ways in
which religious and/or social ritual affects individual character and social behavior.5
Early “functionalists” (e.g., Durkheim, Mauss, Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowsky)
suggested that ritual formed and maintained social bonds. Through unconscious means it
socialized the individual to appropriate common values and common categories of knowledge
and experience.
4
Lamb, Solidarity With Victims, 62.
I am indebted to Catherine Bell for her incisive synopsis of vast amounts of ritual theory. See Ritual Perspectives
and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), especially chapter two and three.
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3
Other functionalists whom we may call structuralist (Van Gennep and Gluckman) argued
that rituals helped to order chaotic social change. Theorists such as Gluckman were much more
sensitive to the degree and role of conflict in society and suggested that rituals are expressions of
complex social tensions rather than the affirmation of social unity. Gluckman’s contribution was
to suggest that ritual is a major means of working and reworking social relations.
Still others whom we may call “symbolic culturalists” (Levi-Strauss, Geertz and Turner)
considered ritual symbols as a means of communication (much like language), and emphasized
the “meaningfulness” of ritual. According to Edmund Leach, “We engage in rituals in order to
transmit collective messages to ourselves.”6 In his analysis ritual is a medium for expression of
cultural ideals and models that orient other forms of social behavior.
Victor Turner was particularly helpful in analyzing the dynamics of ritual symbols and
their meaningfulness in context, but he is perhaps most helpful in recognizing ritual’s role in
negotiating social change. Rather than exhibiting a bias toward social stability as Van Gennep,
Turner suggested that ritual enabled a society to re-evaluate is norms, values and structures at
moments of conflict and crisis. For our interests this is particularly provocative as it suggests
that liturgy can play a role in negotiating the social crisis we are in brought on by oppression,
radical poverty and inequality in the ecclesial body and human community. Through ritual,
participants can bring to visibility the inequalities that fracture the community and through the
ritual itself work toward the repair of the social fabric.
Turner was also helpful in turning our attention to the “performance” aspect of ritual
behavior. Performance theorists stress the dramatic nature of social ritual and ask how symbolic
activities like ritual enable people to appropriate, modify or reshape their cultural values and
ideals. This implies a very active role for ritual participants and it suggests that cultural life is
something constantly being created and modified by the community. Ritual theorist Catherine
Bell suggests that “ritual as a performative medium for social change emphasizes human
creativity and physicality: ritual does not mold people; people fashion rituals that mold their
world.”7 One way in which they do this is by “framing,” that is, “by setting up an interpretive
framework within which to understand other subsequent or simultaneous acts or messages.”8
This dynamic understanding of ritual and its role in reshaping society is furthered by
those who espouse a “practice theory” approach. Catherine Bell suggests “practice theories
claim to take seriously the ways in which human activities…are creative strategies by which
human beings continually reproduce and reshape their social and cultural environments.”9 In
addition, according to Marshall Sahlins, ritual is a human activity that brings traditional structure
to bear on new situations. Thus ritual is a human strategy that engenders either continuity with
the past or change to a new and different future.
These more recent studies of ritual have moved away from the “meaningfulness” of
social systems and gone on to explore the effect of rituals on the construction of the self. This
approach is perhaps the most provocative for our present concerns of the relationship between
ritual and ethical behavior. Talal Asad, for example, speaks of ritual as a technology of the self.
It is an acquired aptitude or an embodied skill aimed at the production of a virtuous self. Michel
Foucault spoke of the technologies of the self as “permit[ting] individuals to effect by their own
6
Edmund Leach, Culture and Communication: The Logic by Which Symbols Are Connected: An Introduction to the
Use of Structuralist Analysis in Social Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
7
Catherine Bell, Ritual Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 73.
8
Ibid., 74.
9
Ibid., 76.
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means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls,
thoughts, conduct and ways of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain
state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.”10
This suggests that rituals can function as a kind of “discipline,” shaping individuals and
communities in a certain form. Thus practices like eucharistic participation, particularly
understood as orthopraxis, have the potential for both individual and communal transformation,
and the transformation of the whole social order. Interestingly, this line of thought places great
emphasis on the inscription of the “body” and the understanding of the body “as an arena for the
ritual negotiation of power and politics….”11 As Paul so eloquently described in his letter to the
Corinthians, the ritual of eucharist is about discernment of the true body of Christ. Eucharist as
orthopraxis has to involve not only discernment of the eucharistic body but the body of Christ in
his members. Eucharistic practice is a discipline not only for creating a communal identity but a
communal practice of inclusion and non-discrimination. Failure to engage in this holistic
embodiment results not only in the negation of the eucharist but the condemnation of the
participants. Understood in this way, eucharist is not a set of meanings to be understood or
decoded, but “abilities to be acquired;” it is an embodied form of learning. If one wants to speak
of meanings, it is meaning, “inscribed on the skin, borne by the blood, carved in the bone.”12 To
behave ritually is to practice virtue; to celebrate eucharist is to practice the virtue of solidarity in
the body.
Theological Themes
It seems important that we take a fresh look at one image that we have traditionally
associated with the eucharist and with the eucharistic community, the church. Images give us
clues to the operative theology of eucharist and of our ecclesiology and perhaps show a way
forward to a more adequate orthopraxis of eucharist and Christian life in the world.
The image that I would like to explore with you is that of the Body of Christ under the
term corpus verum and corpus mysticum, the true body and the mystical body of Christ. The
image and its elucidation under these two terms is important because of its prevalence in
eucharistic theology and ecclesiology throughout the entire history of the church, and because
shifts in the understanding of the corpus verum and the corpus mysticum has also indicated the
church’s understanding of its place in the world. We cannot even ask the question of the
relationship between liturgical praxis and action for justice without exploring to some degree the
investment of the church in the temporal and political realms.
The Church as the True Body of Christ
My remarks on this topic are drawn principally from an important study on ecclesiology,
eucharist and violence by William Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist. His context is the
Pinochet regime in Chile during the 1980’s and 1990’s, but I believe that his work has
applicability far beyond that particular situation. His overall project is to account for the
church’s failure to be a visible force for justice and human rights during a period of extreme
oppression. Toward that end Cavanaugh explores the controlling ecclesiology that allowed for
the dismemberment of the person into discrete elements of body and soul, for the creation of a
false dichotomy between liturgy and politics, and for the disappearance of the church from social
dialogue. Part of the answer to these questions, he suggests, is found in the history of the “Body
10
Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton, eds., Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel
Foucault (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 18.
11
Nathan D. Mitchell, Liturgy and the Social Sciences (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999), 66.
12
Ibid., 73.
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of Christ image,” found throughout the tradition, but one which received new life in the 19th and
first half of the 20th century.
The New Testament use of the “Body of Christ” image includes the human body of Jesus,
the eucharistic body and the body which is the church. Paul, in particular, who was able to hold
all three meanings together, castigated the Corinthian community for drawing a false distinction
between the eucharistic body and the body of believers who also were the “true body of Christ.”
In Patristic thought the corpus verum, the true body, was a reference as much to the body of the
church as it was to the eucharistic body of Christ. If there was a “corpus mysticum,” a mystical
body, it was more likely to be a reference to the eucharistic body than to the church. 13
Beginning in the ninth century theological debates about the real presence brought a
change to the references of these two terms. The phrase “the true body of Christ,” formerly a
reference to the church, turned into a technical term referring exclusively to the eucharistic real
presence, while the church in its turn became the “mystical body.” The simultaneous decline of
communion by the laity and the rise of eucharistic adoration and other forms of eucharist piety
characterized the scholastic period. The eucharist increasingly was referred to as an object rather
than as an action, while the church becomes the corpus mysticum whose essence is hidden. As
Sarah Beckwith states, “the emphasis was increasingly on watching Christ’s body rather than
being incorporated in it.”14 “The real life of the church is relegated to the “mystical,” the hidden,
that which will only be realized outside of time in the eschaton.”15
The theology of the Mystical Body took on fresh life in the 19th and 20th centuries
principally as an effort to counterbalance the juridical and institutional emphasis that was
pervasive since the Reformation. In the 20th c. it became particularly visible through the work of
Jacque Maritain and his efforts to create a “New Christendom” against the inroads being made
by Fascism and Bolshevism between the World Wars, but his work was extremely influential in
Chile.16 While undoubtedly providing an important foundation to many of the social action
movements of the 20th century (e.g., Catholic Action, Campion Propaganda Movement et al.) the
theology of the Mystical Body had serious limitations.
As Henri de Lubac pointed out, mystical body ecclesiologists of the twentieth century
had the unfortunate tendency to set up a dichotomy between the external, institutional church and
the body of Christ which is interior, hidden, and invisible. The emphasis of this theology was on
the spiritual communion of the members; it could not be a “real” organic body, a social body in
any sense.17 This theology of the Mystical Body reached its culmination in Pius XII’s 1943
encyclical Mystici corporis. Written in the midst of the horrors of World War II, the Pope
decries the violence and blood-soaked fields, but suggests that such calamities “naturally lift
souls above the passing things of earth to those of heaven that abide forever” (MC no. 4). He
also finds it consoling that despite the reality of warfare, Christians the world over belong to a
wonderful union all of whom all appeal to a loving God who is father of all (MC 6).
Cavanaugh criticizes Maritain’s understanding of the church as beyond culture and,
especially the view that in spiritualizing the church, it vacated the temporal sphere, leaving all
power and influence to the state. In refusing to account for the church as a “social body”
Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: L’Eucharistie et L’Eglise au moyan age, 2nd ed. (Paris: Aubier, 1949), 13-19.
Sarah Beckwith, Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings (London: Routledge,
1993), 36.
15
Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, 213.
16
See particularly Integral Humanism and Scholasticism and Politics. Reference in Cavanaugh, Torture and
Eucharist, 166.
17
Henri de Lubac, The Splendor of the Church, 87-89.
13
14
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Maritain, he argues, “does not allow the possibility that the Gospel may have its own bodily
performances, its own “politics,” it own set of social practices which are neither purely
otherworldly nor reducible to some “purely temporal” discourse.”18 Cavanaugh suggests that
Maritain falls prey to the Kantanian notion of the “noumenal and phenomenal” in which religion
belongs to the supernatural realm “which is not subject to phenomenal cause and effect, but also
cannot directly intervene as cause.”19
An ecclesiology such as this has the dangerous potential of making the church “invisible”
and ineffectual in society. In Cavanagh’s view this ecclesiology separates a supratemporal
church from the very temporal real world; the church becomes invisible and the state takes on the
prerogatives of the temporal and the physical. In Chile the Pinochet dictatorship was only too
happy to fill the void left by the church (and any other social organization); it took over the body
politic, torturing it, and scattering it into so many broken pieces.
Social transformation, in this ecclesiology, is not really the work of the church, and its
liturgical practice can be divorced from action for justice. The only discernment is that of the
eucharistic body of Christ, not the body of Christ in his members. Eucharist remains object
rather than an action of the church and remains powerless to re-member the fragmented and
broken body of Christ. In Cavanaugh’s view the Chilean church needed to reclaim its focus on
the church as the true body of Christ in order to move the church back into the struggle for
human rights.
Solidarity in the Body of Christ
If the medieval emphasis on the sacramental presence of Christ as the “true body” left the
“body which is the church” as a mystical, supratemporal body divorced from action in the world,
then we must suggest that a return to an understanding of the church as the corpus verum or the
true body might be a helpful move. However, rather than redeveloping this term, a new image
arose in Catholic social teaching and has been claimed by various liberation theologies. The
image was that of “solidarity.” It would be the evolution of the church’s teaching of its place in
the world that would expand the notion of solidarity from a narrow view of the Catholic church
to include other Christian bodies, other religious and philosophical traditions, and finally even to
the cosmos itself.
The social teaching of the church gradually adopted the term “solidarity” employed by
Catholic social theorists (e.g., H. Pesch, G. Gundlach, O. v. Nell-Breuning) to differentiate
Catholic social theory from modern theories of liberalism and communism.20
Particularly through the work of Nell-Breuning Catholic solidarity found its way into the
social encyclicals of the 20th c. beginning with Pius XI’s Quadragesimo anno, written for the
40th anniversary of Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum. “No long able to content himself, as Leo XIII
had, with speaking up for the workers, Pius XI felt compelled to offer an alternative model of
society, based on Christian Principles.”21 Quodragesimo anno emphasized society and economy
as ontologically and ethically oriented toward cooperation and harmony. Against liberalism, it
spelled out the responsibilities of individuals and groups for the common welfare, while against
communism it emphasized the dignity of the human person, the importance of subsidiarity, and
18
Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, 181.
Ibid., 181.
20
This summary is taken from Matthew Lamb’s “Solidarity” in The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought
(Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1994), 908- 912.
21
Mark Searle, “The Liturgy and Catholic Social Doctrine” in The Future of the Catholic Church in America
(Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1991), 49.
19
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the orientation of governmental and economic orders toward the service of the transcendent
values of persons. If the document had limitations it was in seeing the church as the model for
the organization of society and in its stress on nation states to the exclusion of a global vision. A
revised vision of the relationship between the church and the world would have to await the
insights of Lumen gentium and Gaudium et spes.
In the encyclicals of John XXIII the national solidarity of workers spoken of by Leo XIII
was expanded to a global solidarity. Following the lead of the Council in dropping the Mystical
Body image in favor of a Pilgrim People of God, John led the church into an understanding of
itself as more historically conditioned and dedicated to working with all people of good will for
the realization of the kingdom of God. Stressing the interdependence of modern nations and
their economies and concerned especially with the fate of developing nations, Paul VI’s
Populorum progressio stressed the “spirit of solidarity” needed for integral human development
of all people. In Laborem exercens, John Paul II acknowledged the importance of the historical
movements that had promoted worker solidarity. He also stressed that solidarity is both
ontological and historical. In other words solidarity is a challenge and a task to work for the
common good in the concrete exigencies of the times: unequal distribution of wealth, imbalances
of power, crisis of extreme poverty, economic exploitation and more.
Speaking to the church of the Americas in 1997, John Paul II in his Ecclesia in America22
spoke of the need to develop a “culture of solidarity” that is capable of “inspiring timely
initiatives in support of the poor and the outcast, especially refugees forced to leave their villages
and lands in order to flee violence.” Likewise he urged the church “to establish an economic
order dominated not only by the profit motive, but also by the pursuit of the common good of
nations and of the international community, the equitable distribution of goods and the integral
development of peoples” (EA, no. 52). If globalization has had devastating effects particularly
on the poor and marginalized, John Paul suggests that Catholic social teaching provides a
globalized vision, “which aims to encourage governments, institutions and private organization
to shape a future consonant with the dignity of every person” and works toward greater
integration between nations (EA no. 55). He urges us to create an “authentic globalized culture
of solidarity” that will speak in favor of the marginalized in a world dominated by the rich and
powerful (EA no. 55).
As can be seen, solidarity has become a significant image in Catholic social teaching, and
it has the potential for use in every realm of Christian life, including the liturgy. Unfortunately,
neither our current liturgical books nor recent instructional documents have picked up this image
and worked with it. Like much of the church’s social teaching, it remains an untapped resource
for the imagination and will of the church.
Conclusions
The task I have set before us today is to explore how we are to conceive the relationship
between Christian liturgy and action for justice outside of ritual behavior. I have suggested that
reflection on praxis can help us to rethink our understanding of ritual and its relationship to other
forms of social praxis: they must be in dynamic relationship. Secondly, using the social sciences
I have suggested that rituals can continue to be understood as carrying the meaning and values of
community, and in addition they can be conceived of as strategic action. They can be a force in
history. Lastly I suggested that theological images of the church and of eucharist as the Mystical
Body were important incentives to Catholic action, but ultimately failed to insert the church the
22
This document evolved out of the Special Assembly for America of the Synod of Bishops that took place from
Nov. 16 – to Dec. 12, 1997.
8
world in a meaningful and productive way. I suggested that the image of solidarity taken from
Catholic Social thought is a most provocative if untapped image that we might usefully add to
our ritual repertoire.
Finally, I would like to draw out five implications of these discussions for Christian ritual
and social praxis.
1. Even in its present state the liturgy of covenant memorial through sharing the
eucharistic bread and cup provides a vision for orthopraxis within and without ritual space.
Liturgy well-celebrated with the fullness of signs and with discernment of the true Body of
Christ can shape lives formed in these meanings and values and can discipline the body in ethical
ways of acting.
Bishop Dolli and the man who implicated his brother found that their ritual performance
and practice did indeed shape their lives. The man was driven to ask forgiveness for what he had
done and the Bishop was driven to forgive the man from his heart. Interestingly enough, the two
chose to ritualize their response to one another. As they had shared eating from the one bread
and drinking from the one cup in the eucharist, so they shared a meal eating out of a common
bowel and drank tea from a common cup. This combination of traditional and improvised ritual
behavior engendered a changed way of life. The man who was forgiven became one of the
Bishop’s chief co-workers in ministry. For those who are open to change, ritual performance
becomes a discipline of right virtue.
2. If there are questions to be asked of the relationship between ritual and ethical
behavior they are questions about the adequacy of the ritual and the obstacles of appropriation
faced by the participants. One can legitimately ask whether our present celebration of eucharist
adequately reflects not only practices of recognition of the true body of Christ, but whether our
new understandings of solidarity with all other persons and with the earth are sufficiently present
to act as a discipline of the individual and social self.
At the moment I do not believe that our present celebrations of eucharist sufficiently
reflect and embody such a conviction. As I have argued in other forums, our Proper Prefaces do
not speak adequately of Jesus’ life and ministry, particularly his action on behalf of the poor and
oppressed. The emphasis is almost completely on his suffering and death, not on what brought
him into conflict with the social and political powers of religion and state. Other proper prayers
such as our Collects do not reflect adequately the contemporary vision of solidarity with all
humanity and the cosmos that has been developed on the church’s social teachings. Theologians,
such as David Power have argued for the inclusion of lament in our eucharistic prayers. He is
convinced that this incorporation “would give voice to human suffering as well as to the church’s
belief in God’s solidarity with victims.”23
Until a significant rewriting of the liturgical books takes place, the hope for such
inclusion is at the soft points of the liturgy, those places that change constantly in the
performance of the liturgy. By this I mean the musical dimensions of the liturgy, those places
that require extemporaneous prayer, and the liturgical homily. This places significant
responsibility on the ministry of presiders, composers and musicians, but the alternative is to
keep celebrating a liturgy that does not rehearse solidarity in the Body and so does not inscribe
participants with new ways of being and acting.
3. There is need and ample opportunity to create new rituals that meet the exigencies of
our day, particularly the situations of the oppressed and marginalized. Liturgies of lament can
Margaret Mary Kelleher, “Liturgy and Social Transformation: Exploring the Relationship,” US Catholic Historian
16/4 (1998): 67.
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speak of the oppressed and violated in our societies. Litanies of naming can bring long forgotten
members to visibility. Liturgies of remembrance can bring an eloquent voice of opposition to the
studied silence of terrorists. Liturgies of resistance can bring the church back into visibility once
again. Ritual is a human strategy for action in the body politic, and we have the opportunity to
“shape the rituals that shape our lives.”
4. Some, such as Mark Searle, feel that we have reached the limits of moving from the
liturgy to action of justice in the world. “Any chances of reforging a vital link between liturgy
and justice in the future,” he suggests,” may well depend less upon moving from a liturgical view
of the world to justify social reforms, than from the view of the church and the world being
worked out in Catholic social teaching to a reconsideration of the liturgy itself.” 24 Rather than
seeing this position as opposing earlier efforts, I suggest that it finally places liturgical praxis in
dialogue with other aspects of ecclesial life. In this case Searle is arguing for the influence of
Catholic Social teaching on the liturgy. Others would argue that the praxis of historical Christian
communities is also a necessary conversation partner in this dialogue. Perhaps going even
further and taking into account our changed ecclesiology vis-à-vis the world, it is the praxis of all
people of good will that also needs to be brought to the liturgy.
5. This brings us to the final point of situating ritual praxis in mutual dialogue with other
forms of social praxis. All forms are necessary for the church’s identity and mission, but all
need to be in a dynamic system of interchange. The church of Chile found its voice in bringing
these various modes of orthopraxis together. Ritually they excommunicated the torturers from
the eucharistic table until such time as they would repent and be reconciled with the community.
They reached out in support of those victimized by the regime with legal, monetary and
psychological aid, and they openly protested the violence being inflicted on their citizens by
protesting at sites of torture or by naming the torturers. All of these actions or performances are
exercises of orthopraxis; they are right practice and they mutually inform and support one
another. As Cavanaugh writes, “the church’s performance of self-sacrifice is in the “proof” of
the presence of Christ in the bread and the wine. In order for the church at the Eucharistic table
to offer what Christ offered, the church must offer its own self in sacrifice because the
community of Christians is nothing less than Christ’s corpus verum.”25
24
25
Searle, “The Liturgy and Catholic Social Doctrine,” 63.
Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, 230.
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