In Chile, Cavanaugh says, “It should come as no surprise that reception of the Eucharist increased dramatically among the poor during the military dictatorship.” (p. 268) The regime had claimed the whole of public space for itself. For a time the Church thought it could operate freely in what was left—the private space of individual hearts and souls. But celebrating Eucharist, i.e. “going to church,” is a public act and, for many, the only public act available.   Concluding the series on Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and... Read more

The Church in Chile had confined itself to matters of the soul and the spirit as the Pinochet regime took increasingly brutal control of the country. Eventually the Church emerged from those restrictions and became an effective, true Body of Christ in opposition to the regime and solidarity with the people. In three sections of a final chapter Cavanaugh presents three ways that the Church in Chile learned to respond to torture. One, the bishops exercised their power of excommunication.... Read more

One of my favorite images of the Church, from before the Second Vatican Council, is the Mystical Body of Christ. I was disappointed when the Second Vatican Council put People of God instead of Mystical Body in first place among its many images. But Church as Mystical Body gets some rough treatment in Cavanaugh’s fifth chapter. The Church, Cavanaugh says, is not a mystical presence behind the bodies in the real world. It is a bodily presence in that world, the True Body of Christ.  On... Read more

My last post on Chapter Three of Torture and Eucharist saw William Cavanaugh’s exposition and critique of Catholic Action. This was the early- and mid-20th-century response of the Church to new, secular, social and political realities. It grew out of a vision of the Church as a New Christendom. In the former Christendom the Church had wielded more secular power than modern states could tolerate.  Catholic theologians, like Jacques Maritain, whom I knew as a leading voice in the pre-Vatican II Church, laid the theoretical foundations for this New Christendom.... Read more