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Corruption Begins at Home?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Bernard Sharratt
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Anyone sensitive to symbolism must normally shudder at the words of eucharistic consecration. Not because of the current English translation. Something that cuts deeper: the priest takes the chalice and says: ‘And when supper was ended, he took the cup, saying: This is my blood. . . .’ Most chalices are still lined with gold, a mark of respect, the most precious metal alone allowed to touch the consecrated wine. Yet that gold, enshrined at the heart of our celebration of love and peace, is also, still, at the base of the international monetary system; more specifically, it underpins the economy of South Africa, the world’s largest gold-producing country: the blood that is relevant here is also the blood of apartheid. The hasty response, that a gold-lined cup is a mere container, can only be dubious in the light of a sacramental theology that recognizes the sign-value of form. More honest to admit the contradiction, acknowledge indeed the wider interlocking of the eucharistic community itself with that systematic exploitation revealed in a minor, everyday detail.

The other words of consecration, ‘This is my body’, have resonance for another sacrament: matrimony. Bellarmine traced a further echo: ‘The sacrament of marriage ... is similar to the Eucharist, which likewise is a sacrament not only in the moment of its accomplishment, but also as long as it remains.’ But the eucharistic bread, one might argue, can decay and corrupt; it may not ‘remain’; an opening, by analogy, towards divorce appears: individual relationships may cease adequately to measure up to the form of marriage; the core corrupts, the sign decays.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 52 , Issue 609 , February 1971 , pp. 69 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 De Controversiis III (de Matrimonio), cont. 2, c. 6; quoted by Pius, XI, A.A.S. 22 (1930), p. 583Google Scholar.

1 Cf. my concluding remarks in ‘Revolutionary Intersections?’, The Newman, 5, 3, July 1970Google Scholar. This article develpos the final paragraph of the Newman article.

2 Cf. Slant Manifesto, 1966, pp.42‐45; A. Cunningham, in The Christian Priesthood, 9th Downside Symposium, ed. N. Lash and J. Rhymer, 1970, pp. 261‐3.

3 M. Lawlor, Out of this World, 1965, pp. 71‐73.

1 Quoted by J. F. Thiel, in Concilium, May 1970, p. 15: the whole issue (vol. 5, no. 6) is devoted to ‘The future of marriage as an institution’.

2 E. Hillmann: The development of Christian marriage structures, Concilium, V. 6.

3 Cf. Hegel, Early Theological Writings, Harper ed., p. 304ff.

1 Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, ed. Easton and Guddat, p. 303.

2 Cf. Carr, E. H., Socialism in One Country 1924‐1926, Penguin ed. 1970Google Scholar, I, 37‐48; Sheila Rowbotham: ‘Alexandra Kollantai’, The spokesman, nos. 4, 5.

3 Cf. China Readings 3, ed. Schurmann, F. and Schell, O., Penguin 1968, pp. 87Google Scholar, 176‐188, 452.

1 Cf. e.g. Report of the National Advisory Commission On Civil Disorders, Bantam 1968, pp. 251‐265, 280.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Trade Union Register I, 1969: John Hughes, A Note On Low Pay, pp. 133‐138, and Table 3. Household income and expenditure, pp. 334‐335. Cf. also the arguments of the Child Poverty Action Group—e.g. in Poverty No.7 and BRPF London Bulletin No. 18; also Coates, K. and Wilburn, R., Poverty: The Forgotten Englishman, Penguin Special 1970Google Scholar.

3 E.g., 30 percent of the top 116 U. K. companies still have family boards; cf. M. Barratt Brown, The Controllers of British Industry, in Can the Workers Run Industry? Sphere/I.W.C. 1968.

4 Cf. M. Abrams, ‘The Home‐Centred Society’, The Listener, 26 Nov. 1959; R. Fletcher, The family and Marriage in Britain, 1966, ch. 5; J. H. Goldthorpe, et al., The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure, 1969, esp. pp. 50, 99‐105, 152‐53.

5 H. Garvon, The captive Wife, 1968, p. 43. For class‐difference in motivations of working wives, cf. pp. 112, 117f, 125f.

1 T. Veness, School Leavers, 1962.

2 Figures are not available for U. K., but one estimate for Sweden points out the while industry uses 1,290 million labour‐hours annualy, housewives donate 2,340 million unpaid domestic labour‐hours annually.

3 Cf. figures in P. Anderson, Towards Socialism, 1965, pp.276‐277. Without the female vote, England would have had a continuous Labour government since 1965.

4 Cf. Janet Blackman, The Campaign for Women's Rights, in Trade Union Register I; for effect of unionzation on voting, cf. Anderson, p. 262f.

5 R. Miliband, The state in capitalist Society, 1969, pp. 263‐4.

1 Goldthorpe, et al., op. cit., ch. V, pp. 116‐156.

2 Cf. J. M. Mogey, Family and Neighbourhood, 1956, and R. Hoggart, Uses of literacy, 1957. Cp. Gavron, op. cit. ch. 11,'Social contacts’, and Goldthope, op. cit., ch.4, ‘The pattern of sociability’.

3 Cf. Basi Bernstein's work, most easily available in the Routledge series ‘Primary Socialization, Language and Education’, or, summarizing the work up to 1967 D. Lawton, Social Class, Language and Education, 1969.

4 Cf. R. D. Laing's work, esp. Sanity, Madness and the Family, 1964.

5 Schilebeeckx, E., Marriage: Secuar Reality and Saving Mystery, 1965, I, pp. 1, 18, 170Google Scholar.

1 ‘Marriage as Sacrament’, Concilium, V. 6, p. 103Google Scholar.

2 E.g. L. M. Weber, On Marriage, Sex and virginity, Quaestiones Disputatae 16, 1964.

3 Vatican II's rhetoric on marriage is equaly irrelevant—e.g. Documents of Vatican II, ed. Abbot, pp. 249‐258.

4 Schillebcckx, op. cit., I, p. 197‐199.

1 Cf. the ironic ‘Discourse on Birth Control’, by Ipousteguy, in Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1968 ed. C. Posner, 1970; Juliet Mitchel, ‘Women: the longest revolution’, New Left Review 40: Sheila Rowbotham, Women's Liberation and the New Politics, M.D.M. pamphlet no. 4; E. R. Leach, A Runaway World?, 1968, ch. 3; etc.

1 Cf. Michael Parsons, Rolling Stones, New Left Review 49, for an analysis of Backstreet Girl's contradiction between the overtly arrogant and patronizing words and the gentle tenderness of the melody’.

2 Only one couple in the sample still went dancing, though 81 per cent of the wives mentioned it as their favourite activity before they were married’, Gavron, op, cit., p. 110.

3 Hillmann, Concilium V. 6, p. 29.

1 Cf. my remarks on baptism, Absent Centre, Slant 25, pp. 15–20Google Scholar.

1 Hoffmann, Paul, Jesus's saying about divorce and its interpretation, Concilium V. 6, p. 53Google Scholar.