Eucharistic Ring-Around-the-Rosy
Ever since our New Oxford Note on a column by Fr. Ron Rolheiser (“Archbishop Levada: Call Your Office!” March), we’ve been deluged with material sent by our readers on or by Fr. Rolheiser. It appears that Fr. Ron, who has a syndicated column appearing in diocesan papers across the U.S. and Canada, has quite a track record of ticking off his readers.
One reader sent in a Rolheiser column from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s paper (March 21) entitled “Eucharist as Molding Us Into Community.” Rolheiser asks: “Why does the Eucharist have such unique power?” Surely, we thought, he’d say because it is the very Body and Blood of the Son of God; it is grace, strength to bear our burdens, a gift advancing our hoped-for rendezvous with our Lord in the heavenly Jerusalem. Oh, did we ever miss the mark! There wasn’t a word about any of that.
His one-sentence answer: “Because it creates community in a way that cannot be explained in terms of normal group process.”
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We do hope that Fr. Neuhaus will fully recover from his Lutheranism.
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Author’s Note: The following was recently presented as an informal lecture to the Theology Forum…