On political piety.

"So what's the story?" I asked my travel editor on his return from a recent press trip to Italy's Adriatic coast. "Transubstantiation," he said.

"Huh?"

I was shocked, particularly since he's Jewish and devoutly so.

He then launched excitedly into the story of Lanciano, a town in Abruzzo, where the reality of the Holy Eucharist was brought home to him in a startling way, eclipsing all else on his tour.

Catholics know that every Mass is a miraculous transformation of bread and wine--transubstantiation--into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. But in Lanciano, there is proof.

It is said that the miracle of Lanciano occurred around 700 AD when the town was still known as Anxanum, an ancient Roman city where the monks of St. Basil had established a monastery under the patronage of St. Longinus, traditionally believed to be the centurion at the crucifixion who proclaimed, "Truly, this was the Son of God."

The story goes that one morning while saying Mass, a Basilian monk who doubted the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist discovered that the host he had just consecrated had changed in physical appearance. At first, the monk tried to conceal what had happened. But unable to hide his emotion, the congregation approached the altar and saw for themselves.

The host had turned into flesh, the wine into blood.

Lest you suspect fraud, you should know that the transformed host and wine, which had been kept in reliquaries since the eighth century and occasionally examined by experts, were last scientifically analysed in November 1970 by an histologist from the University of Arezzo who examined both substances microscopically.

This is what he found. The host was determined to be striated muscle tissue of the myocardium (heart). The solid lumps in the chalice were identified as human blood of group AB. The same antigens were found in the heart tissue.

Professor Odoardo Linoli, the histologist, also stated that in his opinion fraud was unlikely for several reasons. Only a hand very practised at anatomical dissection could have cut such a uniform transverse section from human heart tissue, showing various veins and arteries of different cross-sections, and the endocardial membrane.

The blood also tested as if fresh after almost 1300 years. Had it been taken from a dead body, the blood would have altered rapidly by putrefaction and decay. No salts or preservatives known from antiquity as preservatives for mummification were found in the analyses. His findings were checked and corroborated by Professor Ruggero Bertelli, an anatomy professor from Siena University.

Other scientists were then invited by the Holy See to verify these findings. When all the data were accumulated, the scientists were in accord: "Without reservation, this is a slice of tissue from a human heart, as though it had been expertly sliced by a surgeon's scalpel through the centre of the heart." And the blood was found to be incorrupt. The results were published in September 1971 in the official newspaper of the Vatican, L'Osservatore Romano.

Also worth noting: the AB blood type of the flesh and the blood matches that of the Holy Shroud of Turin.

The travel editor was dazzled. Me? I was embarrassed ... and thrilled.

Embarrassed because I'd never heard of Lanciano. Thrilled not only by the miracle itself but by its precision. The host was not just human flesh but actual tissue of the heart--the Sacred Heart of Jesus; the wine was not simply blood but incorrupt blood of a confirmable group, shed for us.

The miracle of Lanciano means that Jesus' words are literally true. "Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you have no life within you. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day."

Which got me to thinking all over again about whether or not Catholic politicians should be publicly refused the Holy Eucharist while espousing deadly policies diametrically opposed to the teachings of the Catholic Church, founded 2000 years ago by Jesus Christ whose heart and blood the Eucharist is and who appointed Peter His first pope, through whom a direct line of divinely ordained pontiffs continues to this day.

On this, North American bishops are deeply divided, some unable, it seems, to find guidance in a recent Vatican document targetting abuses against the Eucharist. "The Mystery of the Eucharist is too great for anyone to permit himself to treat it according to his own whim, so that the sacredness and its universal ordering would be obscured," states Redemptionis sacramentum: On certain matters to be observed or to be avoided regarding the Most Holy Eucharist, written at the request of Pope John Paul II.

So what is the average Catholic to think of a Catholic politician publicly receiving Holy Communion when his political policies directly contradict teachings of the Church?

Being in a state of sin often means being in a simultaneous state of blindness--being literally unable to see the living truths so blindingly obvious to those who, through regular reception of both the sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist, try to remain in a state of grace.

Which suggests to me that Catholic politicians purporting to serve God while supporting death-dealing legislation are suffering a self-imposed, self-sustaining blindness to truth and to its consequences--not only for themselves but for their constituents whose welfare they purport to care so much about.

God so loved the world that He gave His only son. This is an eternal fact to which miracles like the one at Lanciano attest.

And so-called "Catholic" politicians? What are they giving? In the old days, we had a word for it. It began with an S, ended in L and usually caused redness in the face. (Editor." see editorial on p. 3, Leishman on p. 13, and Ratzinger on p. 23)