Has the Body of Christ been Made into a Commodity?

Have communion wafers, which, after consecration in the Catholic Church, are considered to be the body of Christ, to a large extent become commodities? Such a definition may be reached once the impact of technology on wafer production in the USA is realised. But the idea that the ‘body of Christ’ has become a commodity is a preliminary answer that opens up the scenario surrounding the production of communion wafers in the USA to further analysis. The question provides a framework in which to analyse the intersections of religion, media, and technology in the light of the theories of Bruno Latour and Karl Marx. After providing a brief history of communion wafer production, this paper will set out their theories before undertaking a survey of the modes of production and their significance.

A confluence of religion, media, and technology can be acutely felt when the history of the production of communion wafers in the USA over the past seventy years is uncovered. The focus can be boiled down to two competing methods of production and the question whether they have an influence on the perception of the body of Christ as a commodity. The two opposing mediums, which produce the same mediator (communion wafers) are: the secular business of the Cavanagh Company and the deeply religious work of Catholic convents. In 1943, on visiting the convent that provided his parish with altar bread, a Jesuit Priest discovered the hard labour and stressful work that the women had to undertake in order to create the bread on time. Despite the production of altar bread being perceived by the nuns as not ‘work but Work, internal to the Church and accompanied by prayer…the priest was dismayed to see his Sisters toil’ so he ‘thought to ask his parishioners for help. He thought, in particular, of John Cavanagh, an inventor, and his two sons, devout young craftsmen who had smithed baptismal fonts and other objects for the altar after returning from World War II.’ ¹ The Cavanagh men then went about producing wafer ovens adapted with waffle irons and humidifiers to quicken the procedure. Such technology was then manufactured specifically and used by the Cavanagh family as tools for their business. With the ecumenically inclusive teachings of the Second Vatican Council sparking the protestant market into life, the company went from strength to strength. Currently, ‘the family-owned company makes about 80 per cent of the communion bread used by the Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran and Southern Baptist churches in the United States.’ ²

The obvious offset of the Cavanagh Company’s success was the demise of the convent way of production: ‘monastic producers have slowly disappeared—from more than two hundred in the 1960s to thirty in the mid-1990s’. ³ Despite upgrading to the new, efficient technology the religious communities would always be at a disadvantage because business in wafers was not their sole reason for existence. The distinction is clear that business for nuns is commerce in the service of religion as opposed to being religious in the service of commerce. Regardless of the change in trend, there is one order with two convents which still produce and sell communion wafers on a large scale and challenge the Cavanagh Company. They are the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration who are based in Clyde, Missouri and Tucson, Arizona. The sisters have their own 1-800 number and online store which sells a variety of wafers. The difference between the Sisters and the Cavanagh Company is not just in disparity of sales but also in the philosophy and style behind the creation of the product. As suggested above, the convents did not perceive their labour in producing altar bread as a menial job but a spiritual act, in which they were investing and taking part in a sacred process. This approach is very much still alive: ‘It is not an industry, Sister Lynn said, but “an extension of our Eucharistic charism…a way we support the faith life of the Church.”’ ⁴ Selling altar bread is some convents’ only source of reliable income but it is also a “desire, because this was our connection with the churches. These were our churches, and packing the altar breads was like a litany: Sacred Heart…San Francisco…San Jose…St James…St John…” ⁵ The act of creation is also tied up with the act of prayer: “The Sisters in Clyde tell their customers, ‘they’re not just getting a product, they’re getting a prayer,’ and consider their prayers ‘part of our promise to our patrons.’ They are enriched through prayer themselves.” ⁶ The act of prayer invokes the divine and allows people to see the production of communion wafers on a different level. It is such a difference which makes the scenario complex when it comes to determining the status of the wafers: are they capitalist commodities? How does their production affect this?

In order to understand these questions better it is important to consider Bruno Latour’s idea of an ‘iconoclash’. An iconoclash is a neologism created by Latour to explain the suspension of iconoclastic gestures. For Latour, the destructive act of breaking images (“and by image we mean any sign, work of art, inscription, or picture that acts as a mediation to access something else”) has become one of the hallmarks of the modern mind, ‘the highest piety’ in intellectual circles. ⁷ In order to remain ‘cool as a rational being’ one is expected to destroy all things that one has created, the aim being to live in an objective world where no fetishes or creations of one’s own hands can hold power over a person. ⁸ However, such a perspective misinterprets its own complex relationship to images because, by destroying an object, one who holds the hammer is at the same time creating a new object and exposing the influence that images can have. Defacement and ‘refacement’ are necessarily coeval. ⁹ This paradoxical tension is inherent to the meaning of iconoclash. While suspending the unambiguous breaking action of iconoclasm, “one hesitates, one is troubled by an action for which there is no way to know, without further enquiry, whether it is destructive or constructive.” ¹⁰ Following from this thought is the question of what hand is at work in the production of an image? Is it one which looks to break down and expose or create and accommodate? Transposed into the context of communion wafer production, the idea of the iconoclash can gain traction. By inviting the Cavanagh brothers, in the 1940s, to change the production method of the communion wafers, the Jesuit Priest unwittingly allowed the destruction of an old image and the creation of a new one. The sanctity of the pre-consecrated wafer was damaged and the toiling, creative human hand which made it, hidden. Within this understanding, our question concerning the the wafers is solidified and given the useful definition of an iconoclash.

The recognition of the iconoclash means the status of the wafers as a commodity is discernible in their reconstruction from object of religious practice to object of business venture. It is on this distinction that Marx’s definition of a commodity comes to hand and deepens the pause for critical thought. At first, in his writing, the breadth of his definition makes it appear as though everything could be a commodity:

A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another… Every useful thing, as iron, paper etc., may be looked at from the two points of view of quality and quantity.” ¹¹

Such breadth supposedly solves the debate surrounding communion wafers. Regardless of whether it is a nun or a paid worker making the bread, the product would be a valuable thing to be bought and sold. Such a conclusion would make the development of the production of communion wafers an interesting focus, as the growth of the Cavanagh Company arguably represents what Marx calls the ‘disillusionment of labour’. This disillusionment occurs when

we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them [useful products], and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract. ¹²

Human labour in the abstract does not realise the variety of labour possible, “congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour-power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure.” ¹³ As is evident from the different philosophies and practices of the Cavanagh Company and the Benedictine Sisters, modes of labour do differ but, in the capitalist market, this is not accounted for. Homogeneity is fostered by the bottom line, which looks for the cheapest way to produce commodities. The decrease in value of a commodity occurs if the labour-time required for its production decreases too. “This productiveness is determined by…the average amount of skill of the workmen, the state of science”, and so forth. It is this progression of the levels of skill involved and the ‘state of science’ which brought down the value of communion wafers and decreased the importance of their associated labour.

However, despite this bleak outlook on the significance of the type of labour required, Marx provides a nuance which revitalises the discussion and shows what is at stake when religion and technology collide. In opposition to the previous assumption that everything could be considered a commodity, he opens up a grey area:

A thing can be a use-value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity. ¹⁴

Such a ‘thing’ could well be the communion wafer. When produced in the convents, the wafer is seen as a religious and communal thing and not simply as X result from Y amount of labour. Marx goes on to clarify that “whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed use-values, but not commodities.” ¹⁵ One can read into this that the nuns satisfy their wants with the production of the wafers but a Cavanagh Company employee, who believes that “all (they’re) making is bread”, does not. ¹⁶ As a result the body of Christ can be saved from commodity status and an iconoclash, the suspension of the iconoclastic gesture, can be realised.

The historical and theoretical foundations have now been set for the modes of production to stand on. First, the Cavanagh Company and its technological and media innovations have to be encountered. Clearly the body of Christ appears to have been commodified and the original religious image broken: “there is no doubt that the Cavanagh company has played a role in reshaping the way that priests, as consumers, perceive and experience Communion wafers.” ¹⁷ The company, as an object itself, entails the technological developments that were made in the 1940s and its modern marketing campaigns. Despite its secular business style of production, the company would still play off religious beliefs in their marketing media. One example of this is in their ability to proclaim that “Our wafers are untouched by human hands.” in one of their promotional brochures. This claim is in line with a prescription from Vatican II, which was “that the hosts be uncontaminated during production.” ¹⁸ Luckily, this also coincided with general hygiene rules from the Food and Drug Administration, so that two birds could be killed with one stone. Jumping on this convergence, the head of production exclaimed in an article that he felt “pretty strongly that the host should not be touched”: “His view makes it easier to comply with legal guidelines for industrial food production, but it also gives the company something to market.” ¹⁹ This marketability cleverly plays off the religious beliefs of buyers while not actually committing to any changes in the production process.

Furthermore, Cavanagh has the technology to create the best type of wafer, which is in theological alignment with the beliefs of Catholic priests. “The automation in Cavanagh’s facility is on par with that of Pepperidge Farm or Frito-Lay: they use custom-converted versions of the wafer ovens that turn out cream-filled vanilla wafers, and bake according to a patent-protected process that gives their wafers a sealed edge.” ²⁰ The sealed edges prevent crumbling, which is important if, after consecration, the bread is perceived to be the body of Christ. Evidence for this can be found in the testimony of Canon Miller, who previously oversaw the liturgy at St. John the Divine, New York, NY. He

voiced preferences that straddle the line between commerce and theology: ‘From a practical as well as a theological standpoint—since we do believe in the real presence of Christ in what we distribute and what we receive…—I always marvel at churches where people use crumbly bread and leave the altar and there’s nothing but crumbs…I think it’s sloppy. I think wafers are cleaner and more respectful.’ ²¹

Seamlessly, the Cavanagh Company shows how its iconoclastic image-breaking can be concealed, and their secular, commodity-driven business made to appear godly. In this, Marx would have seen how “the religious world is but the reflex of the real world”. ²² The bread that is broken on a Sunday morning is but a response to the secular world whence it came. The body of Christ is certainly a commodity.

The mode of production practiced by the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration challenges this conclusion. Their manufacturing and marketing is still vibrant, but the claims to theological significance are more important. From their mission statement on their website, it is clear that religiosity and the Eucharist are central to their way of life:

We Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration are a monastic community called to a ministry of prayer, with a tradition of unceasing adoration of Christ in the Eucharist… Each of our monasteries, with its distinct spirit and circumstances, unites the monastic charism with an orientation to the Eucharist in the service of the Church… Nourished by the Eucharist, we recognize his presence in the ‘breaking of the bread’ and the fellowship of our common table. ²³

It is this approach which infuses their communion wafer production and makes us pause before destroying the image of the religiously-produced wafer and resigning it to mere commodity status. The holiness invoked by the work of the convent, as opposed to the company, makes one feel as though this qualifies their produce as useful but not a commodity. In an expanded sense, the Sisters’ creation and labour resonates with Marx’s idea of a communist community:

Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour-power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour-power of the community. ²⁴

This outlines a social characteristic of labour as opposed to an individualistic one.

A potential counter to this interpretation would be the Sisters’ involvement in purely capitalist ventures such as the Prayerfully Popped business, which was set up in 2011. The description of this project can be summarised by the following statement:

In the spring of 2011, the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration approached the Eller College of Business at The University of Arizona for an idea to start a business to help support their congregation. Thus, Prayerfully Popped was formed with the idea of selling Gourmet Popcorn and other delicious products. ²⁵

The site for Prayerfully Popped can be accessed through the same portal through which the altar bread is advertised and sold online. But jumping to conclusions about how a separate secular business venture could jeopardise the sacredness of the communion wafers would be foolish. This is because the Sisters in no way claim to there being anything but human hands involved in the creation of the gourmet popcorn. The popcorn is not also a spiritual gift to the receiver, but the altar bread made by the Sisters supposedly is.

Through the eyes of Bruno Latour and Karl Marx, the topic of communion wafer production has become a prismatic spectacle. The Real Presence of Christ is not of interest but the intentions and effects of wafer production on the people involved are. To claim fully that the body of Christ has been made into a commodity is to overlook the underside of the iconoclash: the role of the Sisters in suspending the iconoclastic gesture and not emptying the divine presence from what is also a human production. To a large extent, the wafer has become a commodity in the USA. This is inevitable with the technological and business prowess of the Cavanagh Company. But the consideration of Marx’s allowance for non-commodified products of labour within the framework of Latour’s iconoclash—a suspension of the icoloclastic gesture—allows for the communion wafer to be saved from a totalizing commodified definition.