SEATTLE – Concerned that a U.S. bishops’ proposed teaching document on the Eucharist has become politicized, Archbishop Paul D. Etienne joined a minority of bishops in voting against the proposal June 17. 

“The thing we cherish most as Catholics, as brother bishops, is Christ, is his Church, is the Eucharist, his very presence that he left to nourish us,” Archbishop Etienne said in remarks recorded during the virtual spring assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. 

“That this topic, this cherished source of our life and charity and unity, is now enmeshed in a conversation about politics … that’s a very difficult place for us to be,” Archbishop Etienne told his brother bishops. 

Attention on the proposed document, both inside and outside Catholic circles, has focused on “eucharistic consistency” and whether Catholic politicians, including President Joseph Biden, should be allowed to receive the Eucharist if they espouse political views, such as supporting abortion rights, that are contrary to Church teaching. 

Conversation about the proposed document, to examine the “meaning of the Eucharist in the life of the church,” came as part of the USCCB’s 2021–24 strategic plan, Created Anew by the Body and Blood of Christ: Source of our Healing and Hope. 

“That is a great focus,” Archbishop Etienne told the June 17 assembly of bishops. “I think if we could elevate the focus of this teaching document to that topic, we’d be well advised.”

The action to move forward with drafting the document passed with 168 votes in favor and 55 votes against; there were six abstentions. The results, announced June 18, allow the bishops’ Committee on Doctrine to draft the document and present it for discussion when the bishops reconvene in person in November. (Read Catholic News Service coverage of the story.) 

Archbishop Etienne told the assembly he has been thinking about the topic for weeks, if not months. 

“I just keep coming back to the person of Jesus, to the person of Christ,” he said. “And the Eucharist, the grace and the power that it offers us, is through the cross, it’s through his passion, death and resurrection.” 

“Jesus came into the world to save, not to condemn,” Archbishop Etienne said, and to reveal “the perfect love of God, the unconditional love, the sacrificial salvific love of the Father.” 

The bishops, he said, “are sent by the Lord himself to continue that same ministry, to continue that same mission and to be the face of the Risen Christ to the Church and the world today.” 

The document proposed to the bishops is “enmeshed in a way … that makes it very difficult for us to keep the Eucharist as it’s, I think, intended by the Lord himself,” Archbishop Etienne said. “So I will not be supporting the proposed document.”

More on this topic:

Q-and-A with Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine 

Archbishop Paul D. Etienne's pastoral letter on the Eucharist, The Work of Redemption

Watch Archbishop Etienne’s full June 17 statement: