The Bishops and President Biden Gerry OShea
Salvadore Cordileone, archbishop of San
Francisco and a prominent leader in the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops (USCCB), declared after the recent bishops’ meeting that they wouldn’t
be taken seriously in America if they didn’t deal with what is widely described
as the Biden communion issue. “Our credibility is on the line before the whole
country” he said.
The Catholic
bishops met in mid-June to provide leadership on various matters for American
Catholics. This time they focused on the Eucharist, the most sacred church
ritual. They approved the plans of a liturgical committee headed by Kevin
Rhoades, Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, to examine how they can
improve understanding and reverence for communion, the central part of the
Catholic mass.
Nothing
remarkable about that, except that the prelates want this group to deal with
the conundrum of senior Catholic political leaders, including especially
President Biden, supporting abortion laws which are anathema to church
teaching.
A few weeks
prior to the meeting, Cardinal Ladaria, Pope Francis’ top doctrinal advisor in
the Vatican, sent an official letter to the bishops, strongly advising that
they take this item off their agenda because even discussing it would
inevitably lead to discord and disunity. Nobody doubted that Ladaria was
speaking for the pope, but the organizers disregarded his advice. The vote in
the virtual assembly to proceed was carried by 168 to 55.
This pope’s
relationship with the American hierarchy has always been testy. Most of the
members of the USCCB are conservatives, preferring to stick with what they identify
as traditional truths and pastoral approaches that worked in the past. They
have focused especially on abortion, the use of contraceptives and same-sex
relationships – all of which are deemed sinful.
Emotions run
high when abortion is on the table for discussion. Bishop Pfeifer from San
Angelo, Texas, talked about the urgency of combating an allegedly new
initiative by the president which includes approval of infanticide – a false
assertion but this kind of hyperbole fits well with the culture wars in
America.
Kevin
Rhoades, pointing his finger at Mr. Biden, talked about “people who obstinately
persist in manifestly grave sin.” And Corleone called on people to remember “the
Eucharistic martyrs who died to protect the Most Blessed Sacrament from
profanation.”
While not
deviating from traditional teaching on this subject, Francis insists on taking
a wider perspective by including in his pro-life agenda strong condemnation of
widespread poverty and inequality as well as pleading for environmental and
racial justice.
He is dismissive of leaders of the church and
state who oppose or have little to say in support of anti-poverty programs
while asserting ad nauseam their pro-life credentials.
60% of white
Catholics voted to re-elect Donald Trump, up from 40% who supported the Republican candidate in
2008. The majority of the bishops also expressed admiration for the former
president’s agenda, especially his preference for conservative judges,
including his appointment of two Catholics to the Supreme Court. They seem to
believe that criminalizing abortion would go a long way to eliminating it.
Repeated
surveys by Pew Research and other polling organizations reveal that 56% of
Catholics do not want the Roe decision overturned – no different from the wider
population. However, around two-thirds of
church members who attend mass regularly affirm the hierarchy’s
hostility to the 1973 decision.
They join
hands with the powerful Christian evangelicals who have similar beliefs and
together they form a strong voting bloc that largely accounts for the successes
of the Republican party nationwide - and the pro-life community show up at the
polls in huge numbers.
About
900,000 American Catholics leave the church of their birth every year, cumulatively
accounting for about 14% of the total population of the country. Surely, this
massive leakage of members must be a major
concern for the men assigned leadership roles in every diocese.
What parts
of the gospel message as presented by the church have turned so many away from
the catechism they learned as children? Has Christ’s enticing message of love
and compassion been conveyed so poorly that young Catholics leave in droves as
they reach adulthood?
Is the pope responsible for this disastrous exodus?
Or the pastors? Or the sisters and brothers who run many of the schools? Or
perhaps the parents must take the blame? Maybe the powerful USCCB should be on
the dock about this crisis. Right now, nobody is held accountable for the busy
exit door.
Biden and
Pelosi, churchgoing, devout Catholics, claim that they accept their church’s
teaching on the abortion issue, but their oath of office binds them to follow
the law. The bishops don’t accept this complex reasoning and condemn lawmakers
for evading their responsibility on a procedure that they call “essentially
evil.”
This
language defining some sins – nearly all related to sex - as inherently
depraved goes back to the scholastic dictionary of good and evil. This thinking
has fallen somewhat into abeyance as many moralists like to engage with all the
circumstances of a situation before making a judgement, often much more nuanced
than the bald division between good and bad.
The belief
that President Biden and his Democratic colleagues should be shunned by the
priest distributing communion may get a majority vote from the USCCB, but this
shaming tactic faces major obstacles.
To begin
with they must confront a strong minority of bishops who vehemently oppose their
thinking. These dissenting prelates argue very coherently that using the
Eucharist to punish someone for his moral choices is a complete misuse of the
sacrament, which is the church’s pre-eminent outreach to sinners. Pope Francis
has left no doubt that he affirms the thinking of this episcopal minority.
While Pew
Research reveals that a majority of Republicans - 55% - are in favor of the
bishops taking a hard line on the communion issue with this president, the
overwhelming majority – 87% - of Catholic Democrats oppose this approach.
These
statistics confirm that the United States population is deeply divided at
present. Intruding the Eucharist into the middle of that cultural cleavage
would disrespect a sacrament that has always represented Christian unity.
The Rhoades
committee will continue on their imprudent course and report to the next
bishops’ conference in November. It is likely that they will disregard Francis’
advice and recommend punitive action against the president and other Catholic
legislators for their abortion stance. Even if this garners the required two
thirds support within the USCCB, it is subject to a papal veto and local
bishops will make the final determination on exclusions from the altar rails.
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