Targeting Biden, Catholic Bishops Advance Controversial Communion Plan

[maestrob]

The decision was aimed at the nation’s second Catholic president and exposed bitter divisions in American Catholicism.


By Elizabeth Dias
June 18, 2021

The Roman Catholic bishops of the United States, flouting a warning from the Vatican, have overwhelmingly voted to draft guidance on the sacrament of the Eucharist, advancing a push by conservative bishops to deny President Biden communion because of his support of abortion rights.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.

The Eucharist, or holy communion, is one of the most sacred rituals in Christianity, and bishops have grown worried in recent years about declining Mass attendance and misunderstanding of the importance of the sacrament to Catholic life.

But the 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. It reveals a uniquely American Catholicism increasingly at odds with Rome and Pope Francis.

Asked about the bishops’ decision at a vaccination event on Friday, Mr. Biden said it was “a private matter and I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

The action is the latest sign of how the nation’s bitter political divisions are shaping religious life. Christians across denominations are facing similar divides. Earlier this week at the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Nashville, a more moderate majority narrowly headed off a takeover attempt by a hard-right movement.


The text of the proposal itself has not been written and would ultimately require approval by a two-thirds majority vote. The proposed outline, earlier reported by America Magazine, said it would “include the theological foundation for the Church’s discipline concerning the reception of Holy Communion and a special call for those Catholics who are cultural, political, or parochial leaders to witness the faith.”

Some conservatives want to use such a statement as theological justification to deny communion to Mr. Biden and Catholic politicians like him who support abortion rights.

The decision immediately drew criticism from 60 Catholic Democrats in Congress, who urged the bishops “to not move forward and deny this most holy of all sacraments” and who challenged the bishops by outlining their own commitment to “making real the basic principles that are at the heart of Catholic social teaching.”

But the fact that Mr. Biden’s views on abortion are even a matter of public discussion is already a victory for conservative Catholics.

Mr. Biden, like Pope Francis, embodies a liberal Christianity focused less on sexual politics and more on racial inequality, climate change and poverty. His administration is a reversal of the power that abortion opponents, including bishops who advanced the measure, enjoyed under Mr. Trump.

The fight comes as anti-abortion activists across the United States are emboldened and as reproductive rights activists want Mr. Biden to speak more forcefully in their defense. State legislatures have introduced more than 500 abortion restrictions over the past five months, and the Supreme Court, with its newly expanded conservative majority, agreed to take up a case on a Mississippi law that bans most abortions at 15 weeks, which could challenge the constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade. Five of the court’s six Catholic justices were appointed by Republicans.


The bishops are expected to vote on the forthcoming statement in November, ahead of the midterm elections, giving conservatives a tool to criticize Democratic politicians throughout the campaign cycle. Abortion has long been one of the most mobilizing political forces for the religious right.

That subtext was made plain as the bishops debated the topic for more than two hours on Thursday: “I can’t help but wonder if the years 2022 and 2024 might be part of the rush,” Bishop Robert M. Coerver of Lubbock, in Texas, said.

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, who leads the bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, which put forward the communion effort, replied in a news conference that the upcoming midterm and presidential elections “never entered my mind, or the committee’s.”

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, an assembly of the country’s 433 active and retired bishops, can issue guideline statements, but it does not have the authority to decide who can or cannot receive the sacrament of communion. That power is reserved for the local bishop, who has autonomy in his diocese, or the Pope.

Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington and the nation’s first African-American cardinal, has made it abundantly clear that he does not support denying communion to Mr. Biden. Bishop-elect William Koenig of Wilmington, Del., Mr. Biden’s hometown, has remained largely quiet on the issue ahead of his installation next month.

Usually the bishops’ annual June meeting is a dry affair. But this week’s was the most riveting in years, not only because of the topic but also because it revealed the stark divide, theologically and politically, among the church’s U.S. leaders.

The vote was technically about drafting a theological statement on the Eucharist, and in part comes from the bishops’ long-term strategic plan to address declining Mass attendance and misunderstanding about the sacrament.


Bishops grew alarmed about communion in 2019, before Mr. Biden was a front-runner in the presidential race, when a Pew poll found that only about a third of U.S. Catholics believed central Catholic teaching that the communion bread and wine literally becomes the body and blood of Christ during Mass.

But debates over two days this week revealed the political contours of the fight, as bishop after bishop defended his corner of a polarized American Catholicism.

The meeting opened on Wednesday with a 45-minute debate over whether to even approve the agenda because it would include the controversial vote. A retired bishop, Michael Pfeifer of San Angelo, in Texas, urged the conference to address the “new abortion initiatives of our president, especially the one about infanticide.” (Mr. Biden does not support infanticide.) Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski of St. Louis attempted what was effectively a filibuster of the communion discussion entirely.

Conservative bishops pressed their case in a more than two-hour debate on Thursday afternoon.

“We’ve never had a situation like this where the executive is a Catholic president who is opposed to the teaching of the church,” Bishop Liam Cary of Baker, in Oregon, said.

Bishops from places like Tyler, Texas, and Sioux Falls, S.D., argued that the people in their churches wanted bishops to create the communion document. Bishop Donald J. Hying of Madison, in Wisconsin, said he speaks almost daily with Catholics “who are confused by the fact that we have a president who professes devout Catholicism and yet advances the most radical, pro-abortion agenda in our history.”

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, the home diocese of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is a Catholic Democrat, said bishops would not be taken seriously if they did not create the communion document. “Our credibility is on the line,” he said. “The eyes of the whole country are on us right now.”

Bishops seen as allies of Pope Francis’ direction for the church pushed back. Bishop Robert W. McElroy of San Diego cautioned that moving forward would make it “impossible to prevent the weaponization of the Eucharist in partisan battles.”

“Once we legitimate public policy-based Eucharistic exclusion as a regular part of our teaching office — and that is the road to which we are headed — we will invite all of the political animosities that so tragically divide our nation into the very heart of the Eucharistic celebration,” he said. “That sacrament which seeks to make us one will become for millions of Catholics a sign of division.”


When Bishop Joseph J. Tyson of Yakima asked if the debate was focusing on abortion to the exclusion of other issues on which public figures might disagree with the Church’s teachings, Bishop Rhoades blamed the publicity for overly focusing on abortion instead of other issues like human trafficking and white supremacy.

About 56 percent of U.S. Catholics support legalized abortion, but about two-thirds of Catholics who attend Mass regularly do not, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in March.

Catholics in general are divided on party lines over whether Mr. Biden should receive communion: 55 percent of Catholic Republicans think he should be denied communion, and 87 percent of Catholic Democrats think he should not, according to Pew.

The tension over Mr. Biden’s abortion policies has been growing for months. Shortly after Mr. Biden’s election in November, Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced the unusual creation of a working group to address conflicts that could arise between his administration’s policies and church teaching.

On Inauguration Day, Archbishop Gomez issued a statement criticizing Mr. Biden for policies “that would advance moral evils” especially “in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender.”

Mr. Biden and Pope Francis have been political allies for years, especially because of the partnership between the Vatican and the United States during President Barack Obama’s tenure on issues like the normalization of relations with Cuba and the Paris Climate Agreement.

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.”

The debate will grow in the months ahead, as the doctrine committee moves forward. The document will be one for all Catholics, not individuals, Bishop Rhoades told the bishops.

“We need to accept the church’s discipline that those who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion,” he said.

But, he added, “We haven’t even written it yet.”

Elizabeth Dias covers faith and politics from Washington. She previously covered a similar beat for Time magazine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/us/t ... e=Homepage

[Rach3]

While they sit on their gilded thrones.

Is the Church's position still that contraception, other than the "rhythm" method , is forbidden ?

[jserraglio]

While they sit on their gilded thrones.

Here are some firmly seated powers that cannot be so easily ignored, nor scorned.

[maestrob]

While they sit on their gilded thrones.

Is the Church's position still that contraception, other than the "rhythm" method , is forbidden ?

The Roman Catholic Church believes that using contraception is "intrinsically evil" in itself, regardless of the consequences. Catholics are only permitted to use natural methods of birth control. But the Church does not condemn things like the pill or condoms in themselves.

However, Father Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania stated in March 2016 that contraceptives are permissible if the sex is non-consensual, such as events of rape and sexual assault.[24]

So women should plan on getting raped so they can take the pill?

[In North America] Catholics for Choice stated in 1998 that 96% of U.S. Catholic women had used contraceptives at some point in their lives and that 72% of U.S. Catholics believed that one could be a good Catholic without obeying the church's teaching on birth control.[33] According to a nationwide poll of 2,242 U.S. adults surveyed online in September 2005 by Harris Interactive (they stated that the magnitude of errors cannot be estimated due to sampling errors, non-response,etc.), 90% of U.S. Catholics supported the use of birth control/contraceptives.[34] A survey conducted in 2015 by the Pew Research Center among 5,122 U.S. adults (including 1,016 self-identified Catholics) stated 76% of U.S. Catholics thought that the church should allow Catholics to use birth control.[35] However all polls make no distinction between faithful practicing Catholics and baptised Catholics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian ... rrent_view

[maestrob]

Pope’s Silence Speaks Volumes on Controversial Communion Vote by U.S. Bishops

The divergence of the conservative American church from Francis’ agenda is now so obvious as to be unremarkable, even when U.S. bishops ignore a Vatican warning.


By Jason Horowitz
June 19, 2021

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Saturday put a founder of the European Union on the track to sainthood, told Roman deacons to take care of the poor and met with a top prelate who once defended him against wild allegations by the Vatican’s former ambassador to the United States.

But the most telling thing he did was stay quiet about the extraordinary vote by America’s Roman Catholic bishops to move ahead — despite the warning of the pope’s top doctrinal official — with the drafting of new guidance that conservatives hope will eventually deny communion to President Biden for his support of abortion rights.

The pope said nothing, church officials and experts said, because there is nothing else to say.

The divergence of the conservative American church from Francis’ agenda is now so apparent as to become unremarkable, and Vatican officials and experts said Saturday that the pope’s silence also underlined just how unsurprising the American vote, made public on Friday, was to the Vatican.


The deeply conservative American bishops conference has already flouted a remarkably explicit letter from the Vatican in May urging it to avoid the vote. It has disregarded years of the pope’s pleas to de-emphasize culture war issues and expand the scope of its mission to climate change, migration and poverty.

On Friday, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voted in a large majority at an often bitter virtual meeting to begin drafting guidance on the sacrament of the Eucharist. That guidance could become a vehicle for conservative leaders in the U.S. church to push for denying communion to prominent Catholics like Mr. Biden who support abortion rights.

But the public silence at the Vatican on Saturday, the officials said, also reflected that the pope and his top officials remained confident that the American conservatives would never actually pass such a doctrinal declaration on banning communion.

Church law says for that to happen, the bishops’ conference would need either unanimous support, which is essentially impossible, or two-thirds support and the Vatican’s approval.

“It’s not going to get to that point,” said one senior Vatican official with knowledge of the thinking inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church’s doctrinal watchdog. “It’s inconceivable.”

President Biden, when asked about the vote yesterday, had a similar view.

“That’s a private matter,” he told reporters. “And I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

The greatest threat posed by Friday’s vote was to the unity of the American church itself, and not to Mr. Biden and other Catholic politicians who supported abortion rights.


The vote to go ahead and draft new guidance on the issue guarantees that it will stay in the political bloodstream, and grow only more potent as the American bishops’ doctrine committee works on the guidance ahead of a planned November meeting.

And officials and clergy close to Francis worried that the communion document could be used as a wedge issue to get Republican voters to the ballot box, as much as to put Catholics in the pews.

Several experts said that ultimately, they expected a document that strongly asserted the importance of the Eucharist, one of the most sacred rituals in Christianity, but that would reflect the pope’s concerns and not explicitly call for denying communion to Mr. Biden and other influential political and cultural figures who support abortion rights.

The feeling in the Vatican is that the status quo will prevail, and that discretion on communion will be left to individual bishops. Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington has made it clear that he will not deny the president communion.

“I don’t think they are worried in Casa Marta,” Paolo Rodari, a Vatican reporter at Rome’s La Repubblica newspaper, said referring to the pope’s residence.

But there remains among Francis’ allies in the Vatican a concern that the conservatives who dominate the conference will use the rite of communion as a political weapon, setting a bad global precedent for the politicization of a church that Francis wants to keep above the fray.

The real motivation of the May letter by the pope’s top doctrinal official, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, the Vatican official said, was to avoid that and the weakening, dividing and politicizing of the American church by preserving unity among its bishops.


That clearly failed.

Francis has repeatedly argued that collegial dialogue between bishops is key to lasting reform in the church.

Austen Ivereigh, a biographer of Francis, pointed out that even when bishops called to Rome voted overwhelmingly to ordain some married men as priests in remote locations, a position championed by liberals and opposed by conservatives, Francis did not ratify it, because, the biographer said, of the polarization the debate revealed. (Some of the pope’s disappointed backers thought he simply folded under conservative pressure.)

While he doesn’t expect unanimity among his bishops, the pope does want a convergence of opinion, Mr. Ivereigh said.

“For Francis, a majority vote by a deeply divided bishops’ conference is not a sign that one should proceed, but the opposite,” he said. He added that, on substance, the vote by American bishops on Friday — with 73 percent in favor of drafting guidance and 24 percent opposed — was clearly not aligned with the pope’s priorities.

“Francis has been consistent in his message to the American bishops: ‘Don’t get trapped in culture wars and give a witness of unity,’” Mr. Ivereigh said. “I don’t think this vote does that.”

On Saturday in the Hall of Blessings in the Apostolic Palace, Francis reasserted his priorities. When a group of Roman deacons asked him what he wanted from them, he responded, “humility,” and urged them to put themselves “at the service of the poor.”

As the deacons left the meeting and walked out onto St. Peter’s Square, several said that they had never heard of an Italian priest denying communion to a politician for any reason and that there was a clear divide between politics, which belonged in Parliament, and faith, which belonged in church.


“We’ve never sent a person away from communion,” said Rafaelle Grasso, a deacon at a parish in Rome. “It never ever happens here.”

Throughout much of Europe and Latin America, it is essentially unthinkable for bishops to deny communion to politicians who publicly support abortion rights. John Paul II famously offered communion to Francesco Rutelli, a former mayor of Rome and candidate for prime minister who supported abortion rights.

“Almost all of the bishops of the world at this moment look at the United States church,” said Mr. Ivereigh, “and wonder, ‘What is going on?’”

The American effort is “a very dangerous initiative” said Alberto Melloni, a church historian in Rome who said the Vatican had long abandoned the notion that the Catholic Church’s job is to guide politics.

Francis, on the papal plane in September 2019, acknowledged the sharp opposition he has faced from conservative Catholic detractors in the United States. Presented with a book that explored the ties of conservative American bishops to a well-financed and media-backed American effort to undermine his pontificate, Francis responded that it was “an honor that the Americans attack me.”

Asked in another flight to expand on the sustained opposition he faced from Catholic conservatives in the United States, Francis said, “I pray there are no schisms,” adding, “But I’m not scared.”

Friday’s vote showed that not much had changed. Those ideologically driven American bishops “are still against him,” said Nicolas Senèze, the French Vatican reporter who had presented Francis with his book, “How America Wanted to Change the Pope.”

“They are still against the reform of the church that Francis wants and they still continue to be on the same political agenda of the Republican Party,” he added. “The American church is as divided as the people of the United States.”

From even before President Biden’s inauguration, conservative bishops seemed intent on a showdown with him.

In November 2020, Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, whom Francis has repeatedly declined to elevate to the rank of cardinal, wrote a letter warning Mr. Biden that his position on abortion rights created a “difficult and complex situation.” Support for abortion rights among prominent politicians “who profess the Catholic faith” the archbishop wrote, “creates confusion among the faithful about what the Catholic Church actually teaches on these questions.”

The archbishop then formed a working group on the issue. On Inauguration Day, Archbishop Gomez greeted the new president with a long statement warning that “our new president has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils.”

The Vatican, on the other hand, sent a congratulatory telegram urging the president to pursue policies “marked by authentic justice and freedom.”

In the end, Mr. Senèze said, Francis understood that only time would change the composition of the American Bishops conference and put the American church in alignment with Rome.

“There has to be a biological solution,” he said. “Francis has to wait for them to retire.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/worl ... ime-weight

[barney]

A friend sent me this comment, not sure where he got it, but it is spot on.

"Instead of asking whether they think President Biden is worthy of communion from them, I pray that they ask what they must do to rebuild the moral authority that would have them offering communion to any of us."

There are some pretty huge logs in their eyes before they tackle the mote in President Joe's.

[maestrob]

A friend sent me this comment, not sure where he got it, but it is spot on.

"Instead of asking whether they think President Biden is worthy of communion from them, I pray that they ask what they must do to rebuild the moral authority that would have them offering communion to any of us."

There are some pretty huge logs in their eyes before they tackle the mote in President Joe's.

Precisely so.

[Rach3]

The Roman Catholic Church believes that using contraception is "intrinsically evil" in itself, regardless of the consequences. Catholics are only permitted to use natural methods of birth control. But the Church does not condemn things like the pill or condoms in themselves.

Thanks for the info.
So, abortion is not permitted even though the conception could have been avoided using disallowed artificial methods of birth control.

[maestrob]

The Roman Catholic Church believes that using contraception is "intrinsically evil" in itself, regardless of the consequences. Catholics are only permitted to use natural methods of birth control. But the Church does not condemn things like the pill or condoms in themselves.

Thanks for the info.
So, abortion is not permitted even though the conception could have been avoided using disallowed artificial methods of birth control.

Oh, yes!

Consistency in doctrinal matters is everything, isn't it?

The mark of true conservatism, like doing everything to cut back budgets for school meals and other benefits for poor kids whose mothers gave birth due to unavailability of an abortion clinic.

As I've said before, the cruel impulse to punish those in poverty for "choosing to be poor" has astounded me throughout my life.

Yet massive misjudgement (It's called "gross mismanagement." and even fraud that leads to corporate bankruptcy receives a bailout. I'd love to know how many billions in junk bonds (say from independent oil drillers that were just about to go bankrupt last Spring) are currently residing on the Fed's balance sheet, but that'll never come to light, will it?

[jserraglio]

FWIW, very few Catholics I know, and I know a lot, take the Church’s teaching banning contraception seriously. The birth rate in the U.S. is below replacement! Which would hardly be the case if 22% of the population paid attention to that ban.

Abortion is another matter. But even on abortion and among devout Catholics like Joe Biden, there is a significant divide.

The problem in the Church today is not that abortion supporters are showing up at the Communion rail but that fewer and fewer are darkening the church door at all.

[maestrob]

FWIW, very few Catholics I know, and I know a lot, take the Church’s teaching banning contraception seriously. The birth rate in the U.S. is below replacement! Which would hardly be the case if 22% of the population paid attention to that ban.

Abortion is another matter. But even on abortion and among devout Catholics like Joe Biden, there is a significant divide.

The problem in the Church today is not that abortion supporters are showing up at the Communion rail but that fewer and fewer are darkening the church door at all.

Precisely, and these radical conservative bishops that are refusing to move with the times are discouraging attendance even more. It's a lose/lose position, but that doesn't seem to matter to the few who are left at the communion rail.

Oh well, they've still got tons of $$$ from the Koch brothers, or should I say the remaining Koch brother, since David is no longer with us?

[jserraglio]

these radical conservative bishops that are refusing to move with the times are discouraging attendance even more. It's a lose/lose position, but that doesn't seem to matter to the few who are left at the communion rail.

Prelatial revanchists have always been lurking in the shadows, and just like the GOPers in the national leadership today, they are deaf to the voice of their own cohort. They are only too willing to pervert a federated system (the Church in many surprising respects is a federation) to advance their ends.

Like Biden, though, I do not believe proponents of old-timey church authoritarianism will succeed in weaponizing the Eucharist. Cooler heads will, I think, prevail.

[barney]

Never forgotten the wonderful line by Irene Thomas in the Guardian in 1990: "Protestant women may take the pill. Roman Catholic women must keep taking The Tablet." (For those who may not know, the Tablet is an independent Catholic magazine in the UK.)

The Catholic doctrine is that all sexual intercourse must be open to procreation. That's why oral sex, anal sex, masturbation, homosexual sex etc cannot be approved. Onan, whose name has become a synonym for masturbation, ironically did not masturbate; he spilled his seed upon the ground (coitus interruptus), when his duty was to give his widowed sister-in-law a child. He did not want to diminish his inheritance by sharing. That is why, the Bible says, he angered God.