I read Torture and Eucharist some years ago; it's a revision of Cavanaugh's Duke PhD dissertation. Cavanaugh's book is an analysis of the Catholic church's response to the torture program under the Chilean dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet took power in a coup d'etat in September 1973. After taking power Pinochet's regime, particularly in the early years, intimidated, killed and tortured rivals and those not supportive of his government. Many Chileans were arrested in the middle of the night and never heard from again.
Cavanaugh discusses how the Catholic Church was slow to respond to the torture but how it eventually gathered itself. According to Cavanaugh, the slowness of the initial response had to do with bad theology, particularly bad Eucharistic theology. Eventually, the Church found her voice in using the Eucharist as a "counter-politics" to the politics of the torturing state.
The argument begins with Cavanaugh arguing that the church in Chile had, in the years prior to Pinochet, accepted a division of labor with the state, a Gnostic division between the body and the soul. According to this division the state had control over the bodies of Chileans while the church would restrict its attentions to the souls of Chileans. This was, in essence, the classic separation between the political and spiritual where churches restrict their attention to issues of personal piety and withdraw from the political wranglings of the state. What is interesting in Cavanaugh's framing is how he identifies the political with the body -- politics is essentially what the state is allowed to do to the bodies of citizens (and aliens within her borders). For the most part, we accept this power and when the state is working well we really don't notice this power. But the power is there. The state can incarcerate a body or demand, in times of conflict, that bodies go to war.
Torture, according to Cavanaugh, represents the logical outworking and endpoint of this power of the state over the body. In torture we see that the state can do whatever it wants to the body.
Thus we confront the problem when the Church has withdrawn its claim over bodies, we see here the impotence of the Church when she restricts her witness to issues of personal piety. Initially in Chile the Church was in this powerless position, ineffectual and confused by bad theology in speaking out about how the state was using bodies because the church had ceded its own right to lay claim to bodies in the name of Christ. The Church in Chile regained its footing when it began to exert its claim over bodies, to enter into a dispute with the state over the state's self-appointed right to do with bodies whatever it saw fit.
In summary, the Church becomes "political" when it enters into a dispute with the state over bodies.
(This might seem to be an abstract conversation so let me give a few other examples.
Consider America's own torture program during the Bush administration. The American state claimed it had sole and unrivaled power over those bodies. The questions Cavanaugh helps raise are these: Did the church have any claim over those bodies? Or did the state stand unopposed?
Consider a different issue, the deportation of illegal immigrants. The American state claims it has sole and unrivaled power over these bodies. Again, the questions are: Does the church have any claim over these bodies? Or does the state stand unopposed?
Consider a final issue: Capital punishment, execution. The American state claims it has sole and unrivaled power over these bodies. Again: Does the church have any claim over these bodies? Or does the state stand unopposed?
Other examples can be offered, and feel free to do so in the comments, but the point of conflict has been highlighted. The church gets "political" when it disputes the state's claim that it can do whatever it wants to bodies.)
Here is how Cavanaugh summarizes the issue:
[The] ecclesiology which dominated the Chilean Catholic church between the separation of the church in 1925 and the coup in 1973 had theorized the church not as a social body but as the 'soul of society.' The church would be responsible for the souls of Chileans, in effect handing their bodies over to the state for political and military duty. The church would supposedly form their individual consciences, and people would enter public life as individual Christians, but the church as a body would not act politically. I will argue that imagining that it could become society's soul, the church had already begun to forfeit its own discipline and to disappear itself.The church in Chile began to recover her voice when she began disputing the state's claim to sole ownership of bodies:
In the face of constant accusations of interfering in politics, the church gradually made clear its refusal to leave bodily matters such as unemployment and torture to the state -- in other words, to hand over the bodies of its members to the state.According to Cavanaugh a strategy of the torture program in Chile under Pinochet was to "disappear" the body of Christ and, thus, deny the church the ability to stand in opposition to the state. The state would proceed with its torture program but never publicly or visibly attack the church. The state secretly arrested, tortured and killed individuals. Consequently, if the church wanted to oppose the torture program she would need to publicly claim those individuals as her own. This would make the conflict between the church and the state visible. And this visibility, that the state was torturing and persecuting the church, would function as a rallying cry for resistance, protest, civil disobedience, and standing in solidarity with the oppressed.
Basically, by keeping its actions clandestine and targeted at individuals (rather than institutions) the state hoped to avoid a public and institutional confrontation with the church and, thus, proceed unopposed. So if the church was to resist the state she would have to fight against this disappearance. She would have to pick a public fight. And the first step in this fight would be to claim tortured bodies as her own. To say, in effect, "If you torture them you torture us".
So what is needed in the fight against torture, according to Cavanaugh, are a set of practices that allow the church to resist being disappeared by the state, a way to make the persecuted body of Christ visible so that the church can pick a fight with the state and mobilize collective resistance.
The main way the church becomes visible is to claim the victims of the state as martyrs of the church. In operating clandestinely and moving against individuals the state hopes to fracture communities using fear to keep the population quiet and docile. If the state shows up at the Smith's house and arrests Mr Smith in the middle of the night that's a sad and tragic thing for the Smiths. By acting against Mr Smith as an individual citizen the church and Mr Smith's neighbors are left on the sideline. The problem is between Mr Smith and the state. So the church and concerned neighbors stay sidelined. What business is it of ours? It's just a sad and tragic day for the Smith's, but not for us or for the body of Christ. It's a private matter
This is what Cavanaugh means by the state disappearing the church. What right does the church have to insert itself in a matter between the state and Mr Smith?
But if the church lays claim to the body of Mr Smith -- if Mr Smith isn't an individual but one of us, a member of the body of Christ -- then the church is collectively mobilized to protest Mr Smith's disappearance and demand his safe return. This action makes the body of Christ visible with a group of individuals now identifying with each other and standing in solidarity with one another. Rather than picking off individuals the state now has to deal with the church. The battle has been joined between church and state and resistance can begin in earnest.
Here is Cavanaugh making these points:
If we are to understand properly the workings of terror and the church's response ... we must see the strategies of disappearance and torture as ways to deny martyrs to the church ... [because] martyrdom makes the church visible ... torture works to create victims, not martyrs.By laying claim to bodies -- when you torture Mr Smith you torture us -- the church was able to resist the state's desire to deal with its citizens as isolated individuals, picking them off one by one. To resist the torture regime individuals needed to stand together in community, to recognize themselves as a social body, to identify themselves and each other as the body of Christ.
... the strategy of repression employed by the Pinochet regime in Chile [was] not the production of martyrs but rather the denial of martyrs to the church. The effect of the regime's strategy was to produce not martyrs but victims. Martyrs by their public witness build up the body of Christ in opposition to the state. For precisely this reason the regime's strategy was predicated on the elimination of spectacle, and therefore the disappearance of the visible church ... Those that were killed had their bodies disposed of secretly, left in clandestine graves, dumped into rivers or the ocean, or dynamited ... It was crucial to the Pinochet regime to have complete control over bodies. The regime understood perfectly well that the body could become a focus of resistance to the state's power.
The techniques of invisibility which the secret police structure perfected were capable of fragmenting the church body while depriving the church of martyrs, visible witnesses to the conflict between the church and the powers of the world. The bodies of the martyrs make the church visible as the body of Christ.Now I want turn to summarize three practices described by Cavanaugh that allowed the Chilean church to become visible, claim martyrs, create solidarity, and mobilize resistance to the state. The last of these practices -- Eucharistic discipline -- is the reason why I'm discussing the book at all, to wrestle with Cavanaugh's argument about the need for denying communion to certain individuals.
So what are practices by which the church becomes visible?
1. Providing tangible support and relief for those victimized by the state
This seems obvious, but the key is to do this visibly and institutionally. In response to the torture and other state abuses the church in Chile established institutions that guided efforts to help and support the victims. These institutions became rallying points for those wanting to come together and resist the state. As Cavanaugh describes it:
Offering a wide range of programs covering legal and medical assistance, job training, soup kitchens, buying cooperatives, assistance to unions and more, these organizations became the focus of church resistance to the regime ... the church provided a space in which organization could take place and social fragmentation could be resisted ....Cavanaugh describes this action as Eucharistic in that it allows the persecuted body of Christ to come together and be visibly recognized by ts members and the onlooking state.
[These] organizations help to "knit the people together" ... The church in Chile resisted [the] strategy [of the state to disappear the church by isolating individuals from one another] precisely by knitting people back together, connecting them as members of one another.
2. Subversive street liturgy
The state wanted to keep its activities out of the public view, to disappear the bodies. Resisting this, the church wanted to make the tortured bodies visible. This was accomplished in Chile by the Sebastian Acevedo Movement against Torture. Members of the movement would appear in a public place, perform a subversive act of liturgy, and then melt away. Sort of like a flash mob. Cavanaugh describes an example:
On September 14, 1983, a group of seventy nuns, priests, and laypeople appeared suddenly in front of the CNI clandestine prison at 1470 Borgono Street in Santiago [where most of the torture occurred] and unfurled a banner: A MAN IS BEING TORTURED HERE. They blocked traffic, read a litany of regime abuses, handed out leaflets signed "Movement against Torture," and sang.Subversive street liturgy made the tortured body of Christ visible and made martyrs of previously anonymous victims:
Suddenly the invisibility under which the torture apparatus operates are shattered, interrupting its power. In an astonishing ritual transformation, clandestine torture centers are revealed to the passerby for what they are, as if a veil covering the building were abruptly taken away. The complicity of other sectors of the government and society is laid bare for all to see. The entire torture system suddenly appears on a city street. Techniques of torture are detailed, places of torture identified, names of victims and names of those responsible -- including sometimes the names of the immediate torturers themselves -- are made publicly known. Victims are thus transformed into martyrs, as their names are spoken as a public witness against the powers of death.3. Eucharistic discipline
The final practice of making the body of Christ visible is the reason why I've tackled Cavanaugh's book. Specifically, one way the church resisted torture in Chile was denying communion to those involved with the torture program. The Eucharist was denied to torturers as they were excommunicated. This action drew a sharp line between the torturers and those being tortured. And in drawing this line the church clarified where the persecuted body of Christ was located. The body of Christ was visibly aligned with the victims over against the excommunicated torturers.
Cavanaugh making some of these points:
Unity in the church is much more than agreement on doctrine or the general ability of the members of the church to get along, nor is it just participation in a common project or community. It is participation in Christ, and so requires a narrative display of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Unity is based on assimilation to Christ, and so the unity and the identity of the church are the same issue. Jesus was tortured to death. Tortured and torturers in the same church therefore threaten the transparency of the church as the body of Christ.I think you can see Cavanaugh's argument. If the church is to stand in solidarity with the victims of torture, claiming these bodies over against the state, a line needs to be drawn between the tortured and the torturer. Eucharistic discipline draws that line and, thus, makes the persecuted body of Christ visible.
The gravity of an offense is often invoked in separating ordinary sins from sins meriting excommunication. I would argue that this not be understood as simply a matter of degree but of kind. In other words, excommunication is not reserved for those individuals who simply outdo the rest of the church's ordinary sinners in the number or degree of their sins. Excommunication is better understood as applicable to those kinds of sins which impugn the identity of the body of Christ. Excommunication, by definition, is for ecclessiological offenses. If, as I have already argued, the excommunicated person puts herself outside the church in the very act of her sin, then the sin itself must be construed as a sin against the body of Christ. I am arguing, then, that the use of excommunication should not be extended, but rather limited to those sins which threaten the very visibility of the body of Christ.
If anyone is to "discern the body," then it must become visible in present time. [It was the effect] of some state disciplines [under Pinochet] to render the church invisible, to "disappear" the body of Christ. The Eucharist, as the gift which effects the visibility of the true body of Christ, is, therefore, the church's counter-imagination to that of the state. Formal excommunication makes the church visible, if only temporarily, by bringing to light a boundary between church and world which those who attack the church have themselves drawn.
If Eucharistic discipline is rightly understood, then excommunication does not rend the unity of the church, but makes visible the disunity and conflict, already so painfully present, between the body of Christ and those who would torture it. Only when this disunity becomes visible can real reconciliation and real unity be enacted.
In the Eucharist the poor are invited now to come and to feast in the Kingdom. The Eucharist must not be a scandal to the poor. It demands real reconciliation of oppressed and oppressor, tortured and torturer. Barring reconciliation, Eucharist demands judgment.
How can my vision of open communion embrace Cavanaugh's vision of eucharistic discipline? If I'm right, that Jesus' radical ministry of table fellowship serves as the basis for an open communion, what's the place for excommunication?
A place to start is to think about the limits Cavanaugh puts on his own project. Specifically, Cavanaugh shares the worries we all have about excommunication. Cavanaugh recognizes the abuses that are concomitant with the practices of closed communion and excommunication. He does worry about top-down power-plays involved in purity policing. Those are the very things I'm worried about when I advocate for an open communion.
Consequently, Cavanaugh is keen to point out that what he's talking about is a really severe situation, one of the most catastrophic moral breakdowns imaginable within the body of Christ -- Christians torturing Christians. And in such extreme situations extreme counter-measures are required. Thus, Cavanaugh argues that excommunication shouldn't be reserved for failures of piety and hedonic excess. Excommunication should only be reserved for sins against the body of Christ, sins that threaten the ability of the church to be the body of Christ -- the Persecuted One in the midst of the world. Torture is such a sin. By creating victims in the face of the Divine Victim, by nailing people to crosses under the sign of the Cross, by torturing at the feet of the Tortured One, and by persecuting under the eyes of the Persecuted One the church is no longer the church. Only by drawing a line between the perpetrators and the victims can God be visibly seen hanging on the cross in the midst of history and human affairs. (Incidentally, this is the same argument made by James Cone in his recent book The Cross and the Lynching Tree.)
If this is so, then how are we to sort out which sins deserve excommunication? To get at this Cavanaugh make a distinction between degrees and kinds of sin. We shouldn't think of Eucharistic discipline as being reserved for the really, really bad sins. It is, rather, reserved for a certain class or kind of sin, sins -- like torture -- that threaten the identity of the body of Christ as described above. This is a key paragraph in Cavanaugh's argument:
The gravity of an offense is often invoked in separating ordinary sins from sins meriting excommunication. I would argue that this not be understood as simply a mater of degree but of kind. In other words, excommunication is not reserved for those individuals who simply out do the rest of the church's ordinary sinners in the number or degree of their sins. Excommunication is better understood as applicable to those kinds of sin which impugn the identity of the body of Christ. Excommunication, by definition, is for ecclesiological offenses. If, as I have already argued, the excommunicated person puts herself outside the church in the very act of her sin, then the sin itself must be construed as a sin against the body of Christ. I am arguing, then, that the use of excommunication should not be extended, but rather limited to those sins which threaten the very visibility of the body of Christ.This, I think, sits comfortably with my on an open Table. We're not talking here about excessive sinfulness, about the prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners Jesus associated with. We are, rather, talking about Christians who are acting violently against other Christians. These actions indicate that the Christian communion has been shattered and lost. Basically, the church no longer exists. Excommunication in this instance is simply the attempt to recover and resurrect the church in the face of its destruction. More from Cavanaugh on this point:
It should be apparent that this social practice [i.e., excommunication] is not based on any perfectionistic ethic for the church. My argument that torture, as an anti-liturgy of absolute power which attacks the body of Christ itself, should be met with excommunication is by no means an argument for the use of excommunication in general for other types of sin. This is torture, not theft or masturbation. If accepted, my argument would limit excommunication, to keep it from being used in the service of right-wing ecclesiastical politics. Furthermore, formal excommunication is not the only key to the church's visibility. It is not so much a solution as a recognition that something has gone terribly wrong.My concern with eucharistic discipline yesterday was with things like "right-wing ecclesiastical" power-plays, where a "perfectionist moral ethic" is used to judge people engaging in sins like "theft or masturbation". That is, I'm pushing back on using closed communion to morally police the congregation. As I read him, Cavanaugh would agree with me. His argument for excommunication is limited to situations where the social body of the church has been torn apart. And excommunication in this case isn't about fixing anything as much as it is a public declaration that the church -- as a whole -- has lost its way and has disintegrated into moral chaos. We might say that excommunication signals the failure of the church as a whole.
And it's important to note in all this that excommunication isn't being used to monitor the moral lives of Christians as much as it is being used to highlight the conflict between the church and the state, the conflict between the church and the principalities and powers (which seems the opposite direction from the trajectory of the "Disciplinary Rubrics" from The Book of Common Prayer that I mentioned yesteryday). The Eucharist keeps alive the memory of Jesus as one tortured and killed by the state and functions as an ongoing sign and symbol that Jesus is Lord in the face of the principalities and powers.
According to Cavanaugh, then, excommunication is simply bringing to the surface a conflict that already exists. Excommunication doesn't create the separation and rift. Excommunication simply names the rift and brings it out into the open. And the goal of this isn't judgment but restoration and reconciliation. Cavanaugh:
If Eucharistic discipline is rightly understood, then excommunication does not rend the unity of the church, but makes visible the disunity and conflict, already so painfully present, between the body of Christ and those who would torture it. Only when this disunity becomes visible can real reconciliation and real unity be enacted.Again, a key insight here is that "reconciliation" isn't about an individual member repenting of, say, some sexual sin and being welcomed back by the church. That is, the reconciliation isn't between the sinner and the judging church. It is, rather, the reconciling of two tragically divided groups of Christians, of the church reconciling with itself so that its resistance to the principalities and powers has moral integrity, force, and public visibility.