Earlier this week, MP Chris Coghlan was denied Communion by his parish priest for voting for assisted dying. The story hit the press and “Eucharist” was briefly trending on Monday. Here, the Theos team reflects on this affair from a diverse range of political beliefs and Christian traditions. 03/07/2025
Who’d have thought it? Ecclesiology in the press! For that is, surely, what the furore about Chris Coghlan, the Lib Dem MP denied communion by his parish priest on account of voting for assisted dying, is about.
When we’re not analyzing data tables or poring through the Summa Theologica at Theos, we talk about stuff. In particular, at Tuesday lunch, as we munch through our ethically–sourced mung bean and tofu salads, we discuss some of the more theological news stories of the week (there seem to more and more of these; a sign of the times?) So this was prime material.
What struck me was the way in which opinion divided around the table.
To be fair, there were several points of consensus. Everyone agreed, for example, that a Catholic MP who could tweet, in all seriousness, “my private religion will continue to have zero direct relevance to my work as an MP” probably hadn’t thought very deeply about his Catholicism.
Moreover, pretty much everyone agreed that, rights and wrongs of the case aside, it could have been handled better. The disagreement has all the hallmarks of a personal spat. As far as I can tell, the priest told the MP what to do. The MP took exception. The priest was cross and denounced the MP to the congregation even though he wasn’t in the room. The MP was furious and ran off to the press and social media to complain. Whatever the substantive issues of the case, this clearly could have been handled better.
But beyond that agreement, the team was divided. The Catholics and Orthodox among us thought the priest’s actions were perfectly justifiable, indeed obligatory (see George Lapshynov’s well–argued piece below). The Protestants saw the logic of the action but thought it unnecessary, ungracious, or even a bit of a power play.
The division was matched, albeit in a more angrily – Theos lunches are awfully polite affairs – across the mainstream press. Some (Telegraph, Spectator, etc.) said, ‘Good. Of course the priest was right. More of this please. There is no room in the Catholic Church for “for those who don’t subscribe to all of it.”’) Others (Guardian, Observer, Coghlan himself) said, ‘This is an example of religious interference. Ecclesiastical bullying. Priestly threats. An attempt “to coerce members of parliament.” Unacceptable in a modern society.’
And just for a moment we were back in the nineteenth century, when British politics was fixated by Catholic emancipation, and the formal re–establishment of the Catholic hierarchy, and ecclesiological differences mattered, and it was priestcraft vs Protestant liberty, and there were endless and really quite viscous arguments about “church or chapel”, or, as it was later put, “Rome or Home”.
Such arguments don’t die; they just change clothes. In many ways, recent battles about progressive fundamentalism, wokery, academic freedom, and the like are reincarnations (not an ideal word, but you know what I mean) of these earlier battles. The tussle between loyalties, between conscience and responsibility, between “Freedom and Order” as I once called it, is intrinsic to who we are.
So, what should we take away from this? In no particular order:
One: don’t claim to be Catholic/ Christian/ religious if you’ve not given it much thought (or, worse, if you simply want your kids to go to a faith school). In this regard, the MP’s critics are right. Christianity has content. Your ‘pick and choose’, or worse ‘completely ignore’, strategy is a bit dishonest.
Two: don’t wield your disciplinary authority without comparable grace (or, worse, as if you’re on a power trip). In this regard, the MP’s supporters are right. Those who have vigorously piled in to tell the MP that people like him have no place in the Catholic Church, likely have little idea how graceless, legalistic, unwelcoming and unkind it makes the Church appear.
Three: don’t lament the passing of an age when Christianity stood central to our politics. We work hard at Theos to show what the gospel has to offer our selves and our age, including its politics. We sincerely believe in that case. But we are not deaf to the lessons of the past. We have been here before. We should learn from it.
Nick Spencer
It is a strange thing to be asking if there is room in the church for a Liberal Democrat, so accustomed are we to debates about whether there is room in the Liberal Democrats for Christians.
But no matter the rights and wrongs of the priest’s actions in this situation, for me it raises much bigger questions about what we mean when we call ourselves Christians, or Catholics, or indeed any label of belief. These identities cannot come without consequence or change.
Yes, personal faith is nuanced and complex. There is, and must always be, room at the table for the doubters, imperfect triers and those who wrestle with particular aspects of their church’s teaching. The pews would be empty otherwise. And yes, there is more than enough internal wrangling and theological difference within the church as to reject the notion of faith as immutable or absolute. The same might be said of political parties, where MPs who ‘don’t subscribe to all of it’ risk losing the whip, however moral or courageous their stance and rebellion may be.
But even the more expansive understanding of faith involves assent to something. It means living in response to something and owning the ways in which your life is shaped by that something. It renders it impossible to say, as Chris Coghlan appears to, that faith plays no part in decisions of conscience.
Hannah Rich
The great RH Tawney wrote that “[the Church] ought to be the greatest of societies, since it is concerned with the greatest and most enduring interests of mankind. But, if it has not the authority to discipline its own members, which is possessed by the humblest secular association, from an athletic club to a trade union, it is not a society at all.”
If one believes that the consecrated bread and wine are the real body and blood of Christ, as one would expect of a Roman Catholic, then one must ask oneself what that entails. It means that the mystery of the Eucharist is so profound that when we commune with Christ, we also enter into communion with all those who have partaken in the Eucharist throughout history, both sinners and saints. It means that when we partake in the Eucharist, the Body of Christ – both as His literal Body and as the Church which is His Body – becomes part of our body and we become part of it. In short, it means we must be willing to live in harmony with its members and teachings as part of one great, universal, extemporal, extraspacial collective organism.
How much more, then, ought the Roman Catholic Church have authority to discipline its own members. The humble parish priest has an immense responsibility to protect and safeguard the Eucharist from abuse or a lack of due reverence. For obvious reasons, he cannot let those unwilling to be reconciled to the body of the Church and all its members and teachings partake in it.
To my knowledge, no one has ever asked Chris Coghlan MP whether he believes in the real presence of Christ Jesus in the Eucharist; the Roman Church, however, does. We also know that he was aware of his Church’s position on assisted suicide (or ‘kakothanasia’, the bad death, as I believe it should be more appropriately called), as well as that of his bishop and parish priest. We know he has personal sympathy for the cause and was not voting in favour merely in order to limit its negative aspects, despite being personally opposed to it, as is permitted by the Catholic Church. Rather, he voted in full knowledge of his opposition to the Church’s teaching on the matter.
Therefore, it should not have surprised anyone, least of all Coghlan himself, when his priest decided to withhold the Eucharist from him. The priest had a canonical duty to do so, for the simple reason that Coghlan excommunicated himself by willingly and knowingly going against the Church of which he claims membership.
Coghlan has been very open about his dissatisfaction with the way things have turned out, but his estrangement need not be permanent. To re–commune with the Body of Christ, he need not be blameless, but he must be repentant. The Father awaits the return of the prodigal son, and the Shepherd rejoices more over the return of the one lost sheep than over the ninety–nine that never wandered off.
George Lapshynov
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