When asked for the main reasons I became Catholic seven years ago, I provide two: the Eucharist and the authority of the Church.

Those reasons have been on my mind lately as I've watched many in the media fume over the pronouncements of various bishops that politicians who support abortion should cease receiving holy Communion. In some cases you'd think the bishops had demanded that pro-death politicians commit ritual suicide on the front steps of their local parish. “How dare a bishop tell a senator how to vote!”

Never mind that the bishops aren't telling politicians how to vote. They're merely asking that they refrain from receiving Eucharist if they support killing unborn children.

Recently, Archbishop John Vlazny of Portland, Ore., wrote a rather mild letter explaining that one's communion with the Church “is clearly violated when one publicly opposes serious Church teaching.”

One Catholic, who claimed to be a convert from Protestantism, wasn't going to stand for the archbishop's heavy-handed request that Catholics be Catholic.

“The sacrament [of the Eucharist] is a symbol of my relationship with God, not with the Church,” he infallibly remarked. “I've never looked at Communion, whether given by a priest or minister, as belonging to them. They're simply sharing something that is not theirs.”

Such insolent pronouncements boggle the mind. The remark about the Eucharist is doubly sad since the man further explained that he would not leave his parish because he enjoys the “strong sense of community, ritual and scripturally based teachings.”

I wonder why he ever bothered to become Catholic. After all, becoming Catholic involves entering into a relationship with the Catholic Church. And he has to go to a Catholic parish to receive the Eucharist. Oh, and don't forget that little detail about Jesus, whom this man receives in the Eucharist whether he believes it or not, being the head and bridegroom of the Church.

“He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him,” Jesus states in John 6. Those are shocking words. Various Protestant commentaries deny this had any literal meaning and confidently explained that this symbolically expressed Jesus’ desire to “have a deeply personal relationship” with his disciples.

At the end of the chapter many of the disciples walk away from this supposedly “symbolic” teaching. Jesus asks the rest if they also will leave. Peter, the first pope, responds, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.”

One implication that can be drawn from this is that we are either with Jesus or against him. We cannot support the killing of the unborn and then receive into our bodies the One who condemned the killing of the innocent.

Another bothersome passage is 1 Corinthians 11. In it, St. Paul admonishes the Christians in Corinth for improperly receiving holy Communion. (“How dare he!” The Corinthian Gazette lamented. “Who does he think he is?”)

The apostle writes: “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” And: “[W]hoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord.”

Apparently some things are more sacred than politics.

Carl E. Olson writes from Eugene, Oregon.