"...to deny President Biden communion because of his support of abortion rights. The decision, made public on Friday afternoon, is aimed at the nation’s second Catholic president, perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief since Jimmy Carter, and exposes bitter divisions in American Catholicism. It capped three days of contentious debate at a virtual June meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The measure was approved by a vote of 73 percent in favor and 24 percent opposed."
Are they targeting Biden?
[T]he move to target a president, who regularly attends Mass and has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices, is striking coming from leaders of the president’s own faith, particularly after many conservative Catholics turned a blind eye to the sexual improprieties of former President Donald J. Trump because they supported his political agenda.
And many liberal Catholics turned a blind eye to the sexual improprieties of Joe Biden because they supported his political agenda. But it's important to drag Donald Trump into this article somehow.
In any case, I'm not a Catholic, but my understanding of Christianity is that your sins are forgiven. Actively furthering abortion rights, going forward, is different from the sins in your past. We're at a point where it seems that the Supreme Court may overturn precedent and withdraw the longstanding right to have an abortion, and Biden is openly committed to appointing new Justices who will preserve the right. And he actively and publicly displays his commitment to Catholicism and uses Catholic priests in this presentation of himself. One way or the other, they participate in politics.
Stray questions:
1. What was the "warning from the Vatican" that the bishops are "flouting"?
Last month Pope Francis’ top doctrinal official, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, warned the U.S. bishops in a letter that a policy on communion as relates to politicians could “become a source of discord rather than unity.”
2. Is Biden really "the most religiously observant commander in chief since Jimmy Carter"? That "perhaps" is carrying a lot of weight. When George W. Bush was President, his political opponents portrayed him as a religious fanatic.
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21 comments:
Joe writes:
"I read the text as the MSM narrative has expanded from Biden being the perfect president. Since he " regularly attends Mass and has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices", he must also be the perfect Catholic. It presumably follows for the NYT that abortion is an acceptable Catholic belief. "
I'm sure there are millions of Americans who want to be accepted as Catholics and who also support abortion rights. What is the current message to these people? You're included or you don't belong? Does the group want to be big and diffuse or smaller but more concentrated? Who decides? I'm not Catholic, but shouldn't it be the Pope? If he won't speak to the question, is it the bishops? I don't know. This is a more authoritarian set up of a religion than anything I've had to work with, so I defer to those of you with a lived experience!
Temujin writes:
There's a lot of things that stand out to me about Joe Biden. His being religious has never been one of them. In his now 48 years in US politics, aside from his occasionally using his Catholic upbringing to corral votes here and there, his actions, his comments, and his policies certainly don't reveal a streak of strong Catholic religious conviction. These days his strongest religious conviction is clearly and obviously Progressivism, which has morphed into a religion that is practiced all over our country now. In fact, it's obvious the dogma lives loudly in him, to misuse a quote by another Democratic Senator.
So with that in mind, it's hard for me to accept the portrayal of the NYT that Joe is "perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief since Jimmy Carter...". It's an absurd comment, a fictional insert that is something 'Journalists!' do all the time these days. They insert fiction to bolster their narrative. In this case, how could they take a man like Joe Biden, and not allow him the sacrament? Especially while allowing Trump to take part? The Times is perplexed by this. Frankly, I'm surprised that the Bishops actually had the balls to do it.
The thing missed by the Times is obvious: Some, no...many people consider abortion the killing of a baby, the murder of a child's soul. This is the delineation between Trump and Biden. Plus Trump may have groped women, but not in his capacity as a US Senator, a representative of the country. So the comparisons are not correct. Trump did his earlier deeds, whatever they may be, as a private citizen. Joe has been a Federal employee longer than most of your readers have been alive. That's a particularly strong finger in the eye of everyone.
Abortion is to the Catholic religion as Trump is to Progressives. An abomination. A celestial horror. And it's not like Biden has a quiet regard for the upkeep of abortion. He's a proponent of progessive dogma. That dogma speaks loudly to all of us and it's clear: Abortion uber alles. So why did the Bishops vote to not allow Biden at a 74%-23% clip? It seems pretty clear to me. With some Presidents, they can ignore it. With Biden, there's no ignoring which dogma he actually follows.
"Especially while allowing Trump to take part?"
Trump was never Catholic.
He was originally Presbyterian but later identified as "nondenominational."
He did say "I eat the cracker."
Anyway... Presbyterians, I'm familar with! I attended Presbyterian church when I was a child. My family switched to Episcopalian in early 60s because there was a new Episcopalian church 2 blocks from our new house and the vicar went about befriending the families and that worked on my parents. The vicar would be over at our house having drinks with my father. There's religion for you — communion of a sort.
Birches writes (email time stamped 7:08):
"Perhaps the American Bishops didn't speak out on Trump's philandering because he's not Catholic..."
Rose writes:
What is the real reason for this distraction right now?
The issue of whether or not a politician can take communion in the Catholic Church seems to pop up every few years. Sometimes it is a Catholic leader who wants the attention and sometimes it is a politician who wants be seen as the crusader for what is right. I have no doubt that some people feel the ethics of the situation deeply but I am not sure was often hear from those people.
I am not Catholic and think the Catholic Church has a right to make what decision they want. Joe Biden has a right to remain a member or not depending on the decision of the Catholic Church.
My sister-in-law, who passed away several years ago, was a strong Catholic in a more traditional sense. Her mother attended mass daily into her 90’s. As individuals I think each would have said he should still be allowed communion but also had a serious talk with him about what they thought he was doing wrong. I think my nieces would have chosen NOT to allow Communion but had a serious talk with him about what he was doing wrong. (“Good” Catholics can disagree.)
But what the Catholic Church says on the subject is what the Catholics say and do not speak for all Christians. When this issue comes up, I seem to hear more from people who think all Christians adhere to the exact same principles. (See: Reformation)
To be honest I think Joe Biden – over the years – has behaved in ways that are both sexist and racist. I never got the impression that he was particularly religious let alone the committed Catholic he is being portrayed as now. BUT, he also lost a son (who may have been the best man of the bunch) to brain cancer. Cancer is never pretty but brain cancer seems to be especially difficult and had to have some impact on his faith.
David writes:
I don't get it. There are other Christian churches. If you don't like what your church preaches, find another. Heck, the Episcopalians/Anglicans split from the Catholic Church over divorce (albeit at Henry the 8ths decree). As an Episcopalian myself, the similarities in liturgy, rites and music haven't drifted that far apart (we even have nuns!). We even have our own schisms over doctrine if you enjoy that sort of conflict and theological inconsistency. Heck, the average Episcopalian church has become almost radically politically liberal progressive, which is why I don't go there as much, but prefer the Catholics.
Nancy writes:
I’m not Catholic but it seems politically convenient to suggest one thinks it is wrong and a serious sin but it’s ok if others do it. Since when did the Catholic Church become non judgmental?? I was talking to a friend who is Catholic and suggested those who are pro choice can switch to the Episcopalian church. She said “you can’t switch if you are a cradle catholic.” Interesting dilemma.
Tom T. writes:
"I'm sure there are millions of Americans who want to be accepted as Catholics and who also support abortion rights. What is the current message to these people?"
One might just as well ask about people who want to be accepted as Democrats but who do not support (unlimited) abortion rights. What is the current message to those people?
And in both cases, why does the answer matter to outsiders? I'm not a member of a church or a political party, so what is it to me how someone else's church or party defines itself? Put another way, I can choose whether or not to support a particular candidate based on the policies that person supports, but why should it matter to me whether that candidate is in good standing with his or her own church or party?
Amadeus 48 writes:
My vote on this controversy: chum for the chumps. We are venturing deep into JoeWorld.
Joe Biden is a devout Catholic the way lots of blowhards are. If you listen to him, he is more Catholic than the Pope. If you watch him, you are pretty sure he isn’t. He’ll drop to his knees and say Hail Marys at the drop of a hat, and he is always a great friend of the Sisters according to him (and boy did they teach a fresh young fella named Joe a thing or two about life. They kept him in line!). If you let him go, he’ll tell you how he was intended for the priesthood, but a nun told him he could do so much more good in politics, and he had too much of an eye for the girls to last as a priest. If they deny him communion, he’ll mutter about how those bishops always looked down on working class micks like him.
I expect a lot more colorful but insignificant controversies like this. They give so many great ways to posture, and in some ways they are enhanced by his emptiness. They are the stock in trade of Blowhard Biden.
K writes:
Catholics in democratic societies have to abide by majority decisions - not agree with, but abide by. Yet in Catholic doctrine abortion is the taking of an innocent human life and so on this issue the requirment to abide by society's decisions is as difficult as conforming to the Fugitive Slave Act before the Civil War for an abolitionist. But however a Catholic resolves the question, there is, at any rate, a clear obligation not to make things worse and Biden intends to make things worse. Giving him Communion amounts to saying that open support for abortion is not a moral issue. There are bishops who feel that way and they are ruining souls every day. Picture to yourself Hunter Biden in a rare moment when he surfaces and asks himself what the hell he is doing. Then he thinks about a bishop giving his father Communion after his father increases abortion funding and he thinks "I'm not THAT bad" and sinks back into his piggish wallowing. There's a lot of that going on.
Caroline writes:
Actually the bishops who have been most vocal on this — Salvatore Cordelione, to name one— Nancy Pelosi’s bishop— are interested in saving the souls of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi. That is their mandate, as shepherds to teach, to admonish, in order to bring the sinner back to the fold.
Catholics hold that the Eucharist is transubstantiated into The body of Christ, body, blood, soul and divinity. It is not merely a symbolic gesture of communion.
In order to receive, Catholics must be “in a state of Grace,” meaning, free of any unconfessed (therefore un forgiven) mortal sin. Abortion is a mortal sin; meaning, without repentance, your soul is in mortal peril. St. Paul warns us that: “whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 11:27).
They know, because Pelosi and Biden have made a public issue of it, that not only are they participants/architects of the abortion regime, but by receiving the Eucharist, they add the sin of profanation to their souls.
There is a second aspect to the Biden dilemma, and that is that he is perceived as some kind of paradigm of a new, nonexistent American Catholic Church which absolutely coincides with Democratic Party principles. The bishops were silent as long as he was a wayward senator, let it be a private matter. But now he has his own pulpit, and he’s using it to spread the heresy that somehow creating the most radical abortion regime in history is not a problem if you’re Catholic. And it’s not just abortion. Biden has also drifted from the underpinning of natural law, from the understanding of the human person as created male and female, from the understanding of the nature and purpose of sex and marriage. This is fundamental.
Biden and Pelosi have removed themselves from communion with the Catholic Church, and they know it. If the Bishops are becoming more vocal, be assured it is because they are out of options. The first thing they would have tried would have been private meetings.
holy Communion is reserved for Catholics. By taking the sacrament, and declaring “amen”, you are assenting to The whole of Catholic belief. The question is not, “why can’t non Catholics receive communion”; the question is, “why aren’t you Catholic?”
Joseph writes:
Abortion is a doctrinal issue with the Catholic Church and has been for ages, even before other Christian denominations started caring about it as a political issue in the 70s. Catholics are free to quietly disagree, and many do, as they do with the question of birth control.
If, however, you are in politics and you present yourself as a devout Catholic, it's naïve to openly defy the Church's stand on abortion and expect it to roll over on the issue. Biden is committed to a woman's right to choose, and as a voter and Catholic he can quietly have that conviction. As a politician in a prominent role, he has less wiggle room. At some point, the Church has to assert its right to stand firm in its positions, or its role in society is meaningless. Frankly, the Catholic Church could go as far as excommunication.
I'm not surprised that the NYT doesn't grasp this basic concept. I read the Times and the Post and the lack of any doctrinal or historic understanding of Christianity in its various forms is just astonishing to me, as are the responses of its readers.
As for memory loss, I also remember when GWB's faith was considered dangerous, and I also remember when news outlets said Clinton was among our most devout presidents. Only serves to illustrate what I just pointed out.
Tina writes:
Biden can participate in mass. And during communion, he can approach the priest with his arms crossed and receive a blessing, but not partake in the communion wafer, unless he first attends confession, confesses his sin of supporting abortion, changes his position on abortion, and pledges to not sin that way again. Women who have had abortions can seek counseling and confidential-setting confession through Project Rachel, which is a very affirming nationwide organization that can be found online. Those committing other sins, from being cruel to someone, to stealing, to murder, even, to premarital sex or extramarital sex or same-sex sex can also attend mass and be blessed, and also confess and pledge to stop sinning and then receive communion again.
Many people attend mass without taking communion. With the exception of blithering politicians who tell us why, it would be considered poor form to ask someone why they are just seeking the blessing or quietly praying in the pew during communion. But all are welcome. And all can be blessed.
It is actually upon Biden to respect the rules and rituals of the Catholic Church. By openly flouting those rules, he is mocking the religious belief of millions of observant Catholics, as well as Church doctrine. There's a difference between obedience -- or striving, even imperfectly, to be obedient -- and pimping religion for political gain. I am sure the Church was a comfort to Biden when he suffered through losing three immediate family members far too early -- unthinkable horror. I don't know why he doesn't return that comfort and grace. And appreciation and respect.
LA_Bob writes:
I don't give a hoot about Biden's Convenient Catholicism, which Amadeus dissected deliciously. But I did enjoy, "The vicar would be over at our house having drinks with my father. There's religion for you — communion of a sort."
Must have left an interesting impression on a young Ann.
Paul writes:
You wrote: "We're at a point where it seems that the Supreme Court may overturn precedent and withdraw the longstanding right to have an abortion..."
C'mon, man! This "longstanding right" first of all has no basis in the natural rights framework the founders relied on in the writing of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of the United States of America, and we both know you know it; and secondly, 2021 - 1973 = 48, and 1973 - 1776 = 197. This "right" was "found" in the "penumbra" of the "right" to "privacy," a "right" that itself is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, in our lifetimes. You and I may be old, but we're not 197 years old. Whatever your stance on the issue, it would be nice if you didn't smuggle a stare decisis fetish into the discussion with a ridiculous claim like "longstanding right," both words of which are very questionable.
Readering writes:
Quite the contrast with Britain, where the Church recently created a stir by permitting the Tory PM to celebrate the sacrament of marriage at Westminster Cathedral. (After abruptly clearing the premises of other worshippers.) Few knew Boris had received the sacrament of baptism as an infant, perhaps because his marital and procreative history suggested otherwise. 2 prior marriages, with children fathered in and out of wedlock, notwithstanding the ready availability of contraceptives and abortion in the UK. And pretty sure Boris had not formally received all the other available RC sacraments in the usual sequence. In particular, he was confirmed as an Anglican while attending Eton.
If this plan of the American bishops goes through, I wonder what will happen when the not too distant day comes for Biden to seek the sacrament of extreme unction, as it was known when I was being instructed. It will be moot, since meanwhile Biden will have had little trouble finding persons to continue to administer communion, just as he has had no trouble from around 1950, and continuing from 1973, when he became a Senator at an auspicious moment in American constitutional history.
PS. An opponent of W, I never considered him a religious fanatic, and don't remember that charge being leveled against him much. He seemed to take pains not to let his crusade in the Middle East be so characterized.
Washington Blogger writes:
I've seen a few commenters saying that if one does not approve of Catholic teaching they can just switch to another denomination. It doesn't work that easily for Catholics. Catholics believe that only Catholic priests can administer a true Eucharist, anything else is just juice and a cracker. So there are NOT options to leave. THe same does not hold for many non-Catholic denominations. Once you have accepted that there are acceptable alternatives, then you are more able to make a change.
It is critical to understand just how important the Church considers the seven sacraments. They are not just good ideas. To be able to accept the Eucharist you must be in good standing. to quote Catholic.com:
"The Catholic Church sets out specific guidelines regarding how we should prepare ourselves to receive the Lord’s body and blood in Communion. First, you must be in a state of grace. “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup” (1 Cor. 11:27–28). This is an absolute requirement that can never be dispensed. To receive the Eucharist without sanctifying grace in your soul profanes the Eucharist in the most grievous manner.
A mortal sin is any sin whose matter is grave and which has been committed willfully and with knowledge of its seriousness. Grave matter includes, but is not limited to, murder, receiving or participating in an abortion, homosexual acts, having sexual intercourse outside of marriage or in an invalid marriage, and deliberately engaging in impure thoughts (Matt. 5:28–29). Scripture contains lists of mortal sins (for example, 1 Cor. 6:9–10 and Gal. 5:19–21). For further information on what constitutes a mortal sin, see the Catechism of the Catholic Church."
This would mean that the Bishops are correct in their position. It would appear that the Pope is putting politics above doctrine to avoid a controversy.
R.T. O'Dactyl writes:
Is Joe Biden "really" a Catholic, even though he advocates beliefs and actions that are antithetical to the Catholic Church's official positions?
I think it comes down to a question of branding and authenticity. If IHOP claimed to provide a bottle of Aunt Jemima pancake syrup with every meal, and it turned out that they had cut it with 30W motor oil, don't you think the Quaker Oats Company -- the owner of the Aunt Jemima trademark -- would object? And wouldn't they be in the right?
Jack writes:
Job one, as they say, of priests is to attempt to save human souls. If they see sinning, their purpose in pointing it out is not Puritanical control of actions and thoughts, but to get the sinner to confess and repent the sin in order to return to a “state of grace” with God by removing an obstacle to life everlasting with God. To ignore a mortal sin would be a failure to help and a violation of the priest’s mission. After the fall in the Garden of Eden, God made it clear that he would never give up on his creation and priests are committed to following God in this matter. Forbidding communion to those who not only accept but fund and push for greater access to abortion and a greater number of abortions is not giving up and represents an act of love for the sinner’s soul. It is also a sham to let Catholics believe that they can be in a state of grace if they receive communion without confession and repentance.
It has been a disgrace for the Catholic Church to not be clear on abortion and communion all along. I don’t view the current push for clarity as related to politics for those who support the clarity. It’s my understanding that the bishops who opposed the motion did so for political reasons. The church should stay true to God’s will, support life, and let the political chips fall as they may. The larger impact of the clarity will be on non-politician Catholics who have skirted the abortion sin while knowing better.
Joseph writes:
I think Washington Blogger really clarifies the importance of Communion as a sacrament. In fact, while earlier my e mail describes how many Catholics practice their faith, WB describes how the Church expects it to be done.
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