The Catholic ethic of life comes from Jesus Christ.  It is his death and resurrection, the ultimate opus Dei that leads us to consider his teachings as our means of touching the grace of God.  For Catholics, the Eucharist is a primary means of touching the paschal mystery (his death and resurrection) and its unfolding power.  Catholics (including our Orthodox brethren) hold that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ.  Many Protestant brethren cannot grasp what we can possibly understand by this.  Let’s take a look.

First, we are following Christ’s commandment to “Do this in memory of me.”  The early Christian community celebrated the “Breaking of the Bread,” along with the Liturgy of the Word (derived from the synagogue service), on Sunday, that weekly anniversary day of the resurrection of the Lord.   They were not remembering past history, but the continuing history of salvation.  We are not play-acting, but act as the Body of Christ offering a sacrifice.

Second, what we receive is the body and blood of Christ, not of the Jesus-of-history.  We don’t receive the pre-resurrection Jesus in communion; we receive the Risen Christ in his glorified body under the sign of bread and wine.  What God has done in the Risen Christ is beyond Nature, and so we do something beyond this “natural world.”  
The Eucharist keeps us in touch with the sacrifice of grace on Calvary.  We have doctrine, but it is sacrament (celebration, thanksgiving) that is primary to us.  The vision of Eucharist is a people who believe that God can make good of any worldly situation by heavenly means.  Coming to Mass means coming to our “disciple dress rehearsal.”  We encounter the salvific story that God is writing in humankind, and then enter the mystery of this as it is revealed in the Cross.  Fortified with God’s fidelity and power, we are sent out (Go, the Mass is ended.) to continue the sacrifice of Christ in time and space, “insofar,” says St. Peter, “as you are sharing in Christ’s sufferings” (1 Pet 4:13).  Only the Holy Spirit can make us bold enough to do that!  But that precisely is what the Spirit is about in the world.

A key dimension of this bold Christian ethic is doing no harm to others.  The greatest reach of this stance is refusing to take revenge on an enemy.   Not to return pain for pain, injury for injury or death for death is difficult for the most ideal person (cf. Rom 5:7-8).  Jesus practiced this refusal precisely at his trial and execution (cf. Is 53:7).  Clearly, he endured much, so much (too much?).  Only with the Holy Spirit can we hope to reflect this attitude in our daily lives.  

Thus it is in the panorama of life issues that we Catholics strive to do no harm to all humans involved.  We have not found the perfect remedy for this, but we continue to stand up to name the lives that are threatened.  Others do not have to adopt our modus operandi, and many won’t.   That is not ultimately our concern.  How we collectively act is our concern.  Therefore, the engagement in discussion leading to action on how to protect the unborn and their mothers, the abused, the mentally and physically incapacitated, the aged, the homeless and socially vulnerable ones is key for American Catholics.  Our greatest contribution will not be in political or juridical solutions, but in viable means to alter hearts and minds to what is at stake.