Restrictions at Eucharist?

Joel J. Miller takes exception to Gene Robinson’s claim the Catholic church is doing politics at the Eucharist when it says some are not to be communicating at the Table if they don’t get their faith right.

What do you think? Here are Joel’s opening lines…

Gene Robinson, retired Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, says the Catholic church is playing politics with the Eucharist.

The comments stem from recentpronouncements that Catholics who oppose the church’s moral teaching should refrain from taking the Eucharist. Neither should they be surprised if denied the sacrament.

“For a Catholic to receive holy Communion and still deny the revelation Christ entrusted to the church is to try to say two contradictory things at once: ‘I believe the church offers the saving truth of Jesus, and I reject what the church teaches,’” said Allen Vigneron, Catholic archbishop of Detroit.

But to bar abortion or same-sex marriage advocates from the cup is “a manipulative tool” that “surely profanes the sacrament,” according to Robinson.

On what grounds? “Reception of the body and blood of Christ at Communion is God’s gift to God’s people, not a reward for right behavior,” he says. “We receive Communion not because we are worthy of it, but because God’s offers us the body and blood of Christ despite our unworthiness.”

But that’s not entirely correct.