“The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops … has voted to proceed with drafting a formal statement on the meaning of communion, which will include whether President Biden and other politicians should be denied the rite based on their stance on abortion,” The Hill reported on Friday, June 18, 2021. Read story here.
“When asked at a press conference on Thursday following the vote if Biden, who is only the second Catholic president, should be able to receive communion, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, said, ‘I can’t answer that question. We will be looking at that whole issue of eucharistic consistency. … When you look at canon law, that is a decision of his bishop,’ he added,” The Hill said.
From a purely secular, political, social, and non-religious point of view, this is a lousy idea.
When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, “Many Americans held anti-Catholic attitudes, but Kennedy’s vocal support of the separation of church and state helped defuse the situation,” Wikipedia says (here). I was in my teens then, and I well remember what a big deal his Catholic religion was — it was a big deal. No Catholic had ever been elected president. Kennedy broke through that barrier by promising voters the Church would not dictate his presidential decisions.
Biden is only the second Catholic president, and by trying to pressure him on public policy by threatening his personal standing in the Church, these stupid bishops are resurrecting that issue, and making it harder for any Catholic to become a president in the future.
Their own leader knows better. “Pope Francis this week cautioned American bishops against denying communion to politicians and warned that communion can’t be used as a political weapon. The group moved ahead with their debate this week, despite the pope’s warning,” The Hill said.
The Church is against abortion, and that’s its prerogative. It can lobby in the political arena for policies consistent with its religious doctrines all it wants to. It has a First Amendment right to do so. But personally sanctioning Catholic politicians for not using their public offices to enforce Church religious policy on all Americans — in a country that is barely one-fifth Catholic — smacks of coercion, dictatorship, and violation of the separation of church and state.
When politicians are elected to a state legislature, Congress, governorship, or the presidency, their job is to represent the voters, and act on their behalf, not at the behest and behalf of whatever church, synagogue, mosque, or temple they belong to. Biden, rightfully, is telling the bishops as politely as he can to take a hike. (Read that story here.)
They’re making a big mistake. The evangelical anti-abortion may like this, but outside that group, it’s going to harden whatever anti-Catholic attitudes that still persist in our society. It will further undermine the general public’s already-shaky willingness to trust the Church as an institution. And this retaliatory behavior is inconsistent with the most basic precepts of Christianity itself — tolerance, acceptance, and forgiveness.
They should listen to their Pope and scrap this project. He’s right, they’re wrong.