Wednesday, June 11th, 2008...10:40 pm
Politicizing the Eucharist
Back in 2004, Arizona had a delegate to the national convention named Father Bill Fitzgerald, better known to the parishioners at Our Lady of Professional Help as “Father Fitz.” Yep, he was a for-real Catholic priest, and one that supported his fellow RC Wesley Clark even.
This was around the time that a couple of conservative bishops proclaimed that they would deny John Kerry communion if they had the chance. Ironically, Kerry was not only the first Catholic nominated for president since 1960, but was one that prayed the rosary on a daily basis.
Father Fitz became a favorite go to guy for reporters who wanted to ask an expert about this issue. His stock response: “We are all imperfect, that’s what communion is for.”
Anyway, I thought about this story when I ran across this article by a couple of Catholic scholars about the current hoo hah in over denying communion to Douglas Kmiec, a former member of the Reagan administration. You see, since Barack Obama isn’t Catholic, the next best thing is to deny communion to his supporters. Anyway, the folks writing the article are far better at explaining this than I could ever be so check it out.
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