God in Things and People: Commodity Fetishism and the Eucharist

Experience the Event

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Wednesday, July 10, 2024 12:00 pm

In 2022, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) announced that the Church in this country would undertake a Eucharistic Revival, as a way to bolster Catholics’ belief in the real presence of Christ–body, blood, soul, and divinity–in the Eucharist. This Eucharistic Revival will culminate in a nationwide pilgrimage to the city of Indianapolis in July 2024. In the months leading up to this pilgrimage, the McGrath Institute for Church Life is contributing to this revival by underscoring the intrinsic connection between the Eucharist and Catholic social teaching. 

Why are we concerned about the link between Eucharistic devotion among Catholics and our commitment to social justice? Because the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “the Eucharist commits us to the poor” (CCC, n. 1397). Because Pope Benedict XVI declared in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est that “A Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented” (Deus Caritas Est, n.14. ). And because we have it on good authority that whenever we feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, welcome the stranger, we encounter Christ, Who assures that whatever you have done to the least among you, you do for me (cf. Matthew 25:31-46). Thus our devotion to the Body of Christ in the Eucharist must be accompanied by our equally fervent devotion to serve the entire human family, especially the poor and those who are in any way oppressed. 

This theme will be taken up by the Office of Life and Human Dignity at the McGrath Institute for Church Life in an eight-part series of The Eucharist and Catholic Social Teaching. One of the pathologies that produce poverty in the current economic system is the simultaneous deification of things and reification of people: we invest divinity in material things, while people are treated as instruments toward profit. In this final session of the series, William T. Cavanaugh explores the Eucharist as an antidote to this idolatry. The Eucharist provides a better, sacramental way of seeing God’s presence in the material world, while simultaneously offering an identification of people, especially the poor, with God in Christ.

Speakers:
William T. Cavanaugh, Ph.D., Professor of Catholic Studies and Director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University 

Jenny Newsome Martin, Ph.D., Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame

For more information visit the McGrath Institute for Church Life. Register to receive emails about upcoming events from our Religion & Spirituality learning community by clicking on the “Register Here” button.

Meet the Speaker: William T. Cavanaugh, Ph.D.

William T. Cavanaugh, Ph.D. ’84 is Professor of Catholic Studies and Director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University. His degrees are from the universities of Notre Dame, Cambridge, and Duke. He is editor of eight books and author of nine more, including, most recently, The Uses of Idolatry (Oxford University Press, 2024). He has given invited lectures on six continents, and his work has been published in seventeen languages.

Meet the Faculty: Jennifer Newsome Martin '07 M.T.S., '12 Ph.D.

Jennifer Newsome Martin, ’07 M.T.S., ’12 Ph.D. is a Catholic systematic theologian with expertise in the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Her first book, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Critical Appropriation of Russian Religious Thought, was one of ten winners internationally of the 2017 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. She serves on the editorial boards of Religion & Literature, Theological Studies, Communio: International Theological Review, and the University of Notre Dame Press and has been a leader of the Hans Urs von Balthasar Consultation of the Catholic Theological Society of America. Holding a joint appointment in the Program of Liberal Studies and the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, she will begin in July 2024 as the Director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.

Sustenance for Hungry Hearts

I meet William Cavanaugh ’84 one summer morning in his DePaul University office in Chicago. Knowing the theology professor’s research interest in contemporary idolatries, I nonetheless have worn mine on my sleeve, so to speak: a Notre Dame monogrammed button-down concealing the Bruce Springsteen T-shirt I will wear to a concert at Wrigley Field. Small talk about the Fighting Irish and the Boss, as well as Cavanaugh’s own casual attire, a T-shirt and shorts, ease my apprehension about his assessment of my idolatries. I still try to watch my words.

Forty years after his Notre Dame graduation, Cavanaugh has authored or edited 16 books, written more than 120 articles and made some 300 presentations around the world. After more than a decade at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, he has taught at DePaul since 2010 and is director of its Center for World Catholicism & Intercultural Theology. Bringing his faith to bear on “the Church’s encounter with social, political and economic realities,” he has dissected the free market and the irony that so many participants in it feel unfree and coerced. He has dismantled arguments that mass violence is driven primarily by religion. And he has identified in secular society many idolatrous substitutes for the religions it seeks to displace.

To read the article in its entirety, please visit Notre Dame Magazine’s website.

This article was written by Patrick Gallagher ’83, and was published by Notre Dame Magazine in its Summer 2024 issue.