The Personal Is Political

My sister got married two weeks ago. I thought I knew how the preceding weeks would play out, as my brother had gotten married eight weeks earlier. But there was one conversation leading up to this wedding (which, unlike the last one, would be a full nuptial Mass) that really did surprise me. It began rather casually: “So, are you going to take communion at your sister’s wedding?”

Almost everyone in my extended family claims “Catholic” as part of their religious identity, most with qualifiers: lapsed, progressive, recovering, conflicted, faithful, or (my personal qualifier) faithfully conflicted. We all knew the “rules” around receiving communion, and knew everyone else at the wedding would, too. In this conversation, it became evident that we all had reasons why we thought that taking communion might seem improper: not having attended Mass in weeks/months/years, lacking belief but not respect for the sacred act, or having one of those markers that may or may not disqualify you, like divorced and remarried or (me again) in a same-sex relationship.

What was causing so much hesitation, I gathered, was the very public nature of this particular Eucharistic celebration. Unlike at regular parish Masses, almost everyone in the congregation at this wedding would know us in contexts outside the Church. Being seen taking, or abstaining from, communion, could be placed by anyone observing in the context of our individual histories, opinions, and commitments. What would normally be considered a personal, spiritual matter suddenly felt public and even political. If most of those present were aware of one’s opposition to the hierarchy on certain fundamental matters, not taking communion could become a political act, a way of silently but boldly registering that complaint in the minds of those present. On the other hand, taking communion in that same circumstance could be just as political – a way of saying that one’s personal faith experience need not be dictated by the hierarchy’s rules.

This was a poignant question for me, I realized, as it would really be the first time I would take communion – or not – in a setting where almost all present knew I was gay. Not taking communion could draw attention to the Church’s unjust and exclusionary practices toward LGBT people. Taking communion could be a way of standing up to these practices, of publicly stating that this is my Church, my faith, too, and I won’t let anybody decide for me whether I am worthy of it.

I’d always thought that social action belonged in the realm of faith-between-Sundays. Mass was what we did to nourish ourselves for work in the world, not itself an arena for social action. But this conversation made me rethink this division, and helped me for the first time to integrate my strongly held feminist/activist convictions with my deeply personal experience of the Eucharist, making it evident that, as always, the personal is political. Even a small and silent act has the power to make people think and question, to reorient people in unexpected ways toward injustice in the world and injustice in our Church.

Kate Henley Long is a choreographer, writer, nanny, queer activist, and avid watcher of crime shows. She and her partner live in Cambridge, MA, and will not be having a full nuptial Mass when they get married.