Glad I Wasn’t on Sixth Avenue That Day

I really hate to be lumped with Protestants who reject the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament, but sometimes it can’t be helped. On the one hand the Church of Rome is right to insist on the real presence, a matter of far greater importance than, say, transubstantiation. Somewhere Luther quipped that he’d rather have only the Body of Christ with the Pope than only bread with Zwingli, and that’s a thousand times true. Transubstantiation is a Thomistic attempt to use Aristotelian categories to explain how the presence of Christ is real in the Sacrament, and as such it is deficient, but I could probably live with it if I had to; it isn’t as gravely a matter of theological importance than to deny altogether that Christ’s Body is received by mouth in the Supper, or to try to say that his presence is there in the same way that he is present everywhere, or to believe that only worthy communicants actually receive his Body. Yes, against those kinds of things we are glad to affirm with Rome, Christ’s Body is exactly where he says it is: here, in the Supper, truly and substantially, because of his clear words.

On the other hand, though it pains me to say it on account of its putting me uncomfortably on the Protestant side, I do really cringe at the abuses of Rome. Abuses such as their ghastly Corpus Christi processions. Christ did not give us his Supper to put in a monstrance and parade around with. I did not know what to do when, some fourteen years ago, I was in a little Bavarian town on the very Thursday after Trinity Sunday, walking on the very street where their annual Corpus Christi parade happened to come along. It was quite a festive occasion, I recall, with a band playing, prominent city officials walking, priests, nuns, then a float, with some sort of image of the Blessed Virgin, and then, last of all, a monstrance being carried aloft. There it was, the Body of Christ. What to do? Genuflect where I stood, because there was the Body? Or turn away, because of the abominable misuse. This was no Sacrament, as the Confessions say, but then again, though no Sacrament for me, was it nonetheless still the Body of Christ, however abused? One of those I wish I weren’t here moments in life.

Which brings me to another Corpus Christi parade the other day on Sixth Avenue in New York City the other day. It was not Corpus Christi Day, but Columbus Day, hours after a better-known parade is annually held on Fifth Avenue. But on Sixth Avenue there was this second, this Corpus Christi parade of about a hundred Roman Catholics. The report of it, by a Tim Busch, co-founder of a Catholic lay organization, the Napa Institute, details how bystanders didn’t quite know what to make of their parade, some marveling, some inquisitive, some disgusted. What would I have done, were I there? I don’t quite know. I wouldn’t want to be lumped with the pagans who mocked, but I wouldn’t want to be on the side of the Catholics who were abusing Christ here either.

Without question, this was abuse. Corpus Christi parades are always abuse. It’s arguably the worst kind of abuse, for although they do rightly believe in the real presence of Christ, a rare and beautiful thing to affirm, it should not be affirmed and confessed here, not in this way. Thus a beautiful affirmation in itself becomes ugly by the abuse. This, in my view, comes pretty close to the devil disguising himself as an angel of light. It’s a clear case of a good thing taken too far, way too far. Christ did not give us the Sacrament for this purpose. He did not tell us to parade with it, to carry it about in a monstrance, or any such thing.

I found the headline rather jarring in the first place: “Marching Christ Down Sixth Avenue” (The Wall Street Journal, Friday, October 15th, 2021). This is a classic Romanist error. Friend, we do not march him anywhere, for he is the Lord, not we. Come to think of it, this is precisely what a Roman Catholic priest believes himself to be doing when consecrating—they call it confecting—the elements in the Mass. They say that at this moment—I’ve actually heard it explained this way—they call Christ down upon the altar. See there? They pull him around, they make him go where they want. No, I say, this is all backwards, Christ goes where he wants, and further, he tells us where he is going, that we may find him there. And it certainly isn’t down Sixth Avenue. Was it the Body of Christ they paraded there, or in any Corpus Christi parade? I am supposed to say No, because I am Lutheran, but then again there are his words, “This is my Body,” and without getting into the whole receptionist controversy here, I’ll simply remark that he didn’t say if. What he did say is that it was for me, for the remission of sins, and that I am to eat it for that reason. That much I do know. As for all the outside-the-use questions into which debate I have already entered elsewhere, for now let me just say this: I’m glad I wasn’t there.