Torture and Eucharist Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ

by Cavanaugh, William T.

• ISBN13: 9780631211198
• ISBN10: 0631211195
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-02-12
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

In this engrossing analysis, Cavanaugh contends that the Eucharist is the Church's response to the use of torture as a social discipline. The author develops a theology of the political which presents torture as one instance of a larger confrontation of powers over bodies, both individual and social. He argues that a Christian practice of the political is embodied in Jesus' own torture at the hands of the powers of this world. The analysis of torture therefore is situated within wider discussions in the fields of ecclesiology and the state, social ethics and human rights, and sacramental theology.The book focuses on the experience of Chile and the Catholic Church there, before and during the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, 1973-1990. Cavanaugh has first-hand experience of working with the Church in Chile, and his interviews with ecclesiastical officials and grassroots Church workers speak directly to the reader. The book uses this example to examine the theoretical bases of twentieth-century "social catholicism" and its inability to resist the disciplines of the state, in contrast to a truer Christian practice of the political in the Eucharist.The book as a whole ties eucharistic theology to concrete eucharistic practice, showing that the Eucharist is not a "symbol" but a real cathartic summary of the practices by which God forms people into the Body of Christ, producing a sense of communion stronger than that of any nation state.

Author Biography

William T. Cavanaugh is Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of St Thomas, St Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of several articles, including A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House: The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State (Modern Theology, Vol. 11 No. 4, 1995).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	1	(18)
PART I: TORTURE	19	(102)
1 Torture and Disappearance as an Ecclesiological Problem	21	(51)
1 Torture as Liturgy	23	(11)
2 Torture and Fragmentation	34	(14)
3 The Striptease of Power	48	(10)
4 Habeas Corpus	58	(12)
5 Conclusion	70	(2)
2 The Church Learns How to be Oppressed	72	(49)
1 Christians for Socialism	74	(6)
2 "Torture Isn't Everything"	80	(17)
3 The Stubborn Monkey	97	(14)
4 "I Am Jesus, Whom You Are Persecuting"	111	(6)
5 The Church as Russia	117	(4)
PART II: ECCLESIOLOGY	121	(82)
3 The Ecclesiology of a Disappearing Church	123	(28)
1 An Amiable Divorce	124	(13)
2 The Rise of "Social Catholicism"	137	(4)
3 Catholic Action in Chile	141	(10)
4 A Distinction of Planes	151	(52)
1 Maritain among Us	151	(6)
2 The Minimum of Body	157	(9)
3 New Christendom	166	(11)
4 The Disappearance of the Church	177	(20)
5 The End of the Story	197	(6)
PART III: EUCHARIST	203	(79)
5 The True Body of Christ	205	(50)
1 The Mystical and the True	207	(15)
2 Until He Comes	222	(7)
3 Re-membering Christ	229	(5)
4 Making the Body Visible	234	(19)
6 Performing the Body of Christ	253	(29)
1 "But Father, Look at this Body"	253	(11)
2 Knitting the Social Fabric	264	(9)
3 Mysterious Channels	273	(5)
4 Torture and Eucharist	278	(4)
Index	282