Catholic bishops avoid confrontation with Biden for communion

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BALTIMORE – The Catholic bishops of the United States withdrew from a direct conflict with President Biden on Wednesday, approving a new document on the sacrament of the Eucharist that does not mention the president or any politician by name.

The question was to know which Catholics, under what circumstances, could properly receive Communion, one of the most sacred rites of Christianity. For some conservative Catholics, the real question was sharper: Should Catholic politicians who publicly support and defend abortion rights be denied the sacrament?

For some of the outspoken critics of Mr. Biden and other liberal Catholic leaders, the document represented a strategic retreat. Yet its very existence has highlighted a rift between conservative American bishops and the Vatican, and pitted some of the country’s most powerful prelates against the country’s second Catholic president.

It also shed light on sprawling divisions among ordinary American Catholics, along lines that have become familiar since Donald J. Trump’s presidency blurred political and religious loyalties. An emboldened Catholic right, including media and activist groups, now feels increasingly free to oppose Pope Francis and his program.

The document, approved by an overwhelming majority, was the result of a controversial meeting in June, when the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to draft the guidance after hours of debate. The vote was a victory for conservative bishops who described Mr. Biden in particular as a serious threat to the church. On the inauguration day in January, Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the conference, issued a statement characterizing the new president as promoting policies that “advance moral evils and threaten life and death. human dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage and gender.

This time, the bishops debated the issue behind closed doors in an executive session the day before the vote.

While the new guidelines do not distinguish between individuals, they underscore the obligation of Catholic public figures to demonstrate moral consistency between their personal faith and their public actions. “Lay people who exercise some form of public authority” have a duty to “serve the human family by defending human life and dignity,” the document says. And he says bishops have a “special responsibility” to deal with situations in which there is a gap between public actions and Church teaching.

Pope Francis has not officially weighed in, but he has a warm relationship with Mr Biden, who attends mass regularly. In October, the Pope welcomed the President to the Vatican for a private meeting. Mr. Biden later told reporters that the Pope called him a “good Catholic” and that he should continue to receive communion. Mr. Biden received Communion at St. Patrick’s Church in Rome the next day.

Asked about the issue of communion by reporters in September, the Pope said that “I have never refused the Eucharist to anyone”, although he noted that he had not knowingly been faced with the dilemma. .

The practical decision whether or not to refuse Communion usually rests with the local priests. It is rare that a politician is actually turned away inside a church, although Mr. Biden was denied the sacrament when he visited a parish in South Carolina while running for president.

Archbishop Christophe Pierre, representative of the Vatican in the United States, spoke of the discord in an address to the group on Tuesday. “There is the temptation to treat the Eucharist as something to be offered to the privileged few,” he said, echoing the Pope’s maxim that the sacrament is not a “price for the perfect” .

The document approved on Wednesday does not tackle head-on the question of the right of public figures to the Eucharist as some had hoped – and others feared. And the 29-page guide barely mentions the word “abortion”.

Instead, it offers a detailed examination of the theological and spiritual significance of the Eucharist, in which Catholics believe that the bread and wine literally becomes the body and blood of Christ. The text quotes 20th century activist Dorothy Day, St. Augustine and the Pope’s Twitter feed.

For years, Catholic leaders have expressed concern that lay Catholics do not understand the church’s basic teachings on the Eucharist. These concerns escalated when a Pew poll in 2019 found that more than two-thirds of American Catholics believe that communion bread and wine are mere symbols.

But the ecclesiastical debate has also served as a proxy for the battles over politics, power, and the future of the Catholic Church.

The meeting in Baltimore was the first in-person general assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops since 2019. Last year’s meeting was canceled as a precaution during the coronavirus pandemic. In June, the bishops met virtually.

The weeks leading up to the meeting were marred by conflict. In early November, Archbishop Gomez gave a speech in which he called social justice movements and the “revival” dangerous false religions. The speech, delivered virtually to the Congress of Catholics and Public Life, drew a strong reaction from some progressive Catholics and scholars.

In an opening address to Tuesday’s meeting, Archbishop Gomez adopted a less inflammatory tone, asking how the church could engage in an increasingly secular country. He lamented the collapse of a shared national history “rooted in a biblical worldview and the values ​​of our Judeo-Christian heritage”. The speech received a standing ovation from the bishops of Baltimore.

The new document emphasizes the distinction between categories of sins and reminds Catholics that they are not to take Communion in a state of mortal sin – a serious fault committed willfully – without first confessing and receiving absolution.

The document quotes a 2007 text known as the Document of Aparecida, named after a gathering of bishops from Central and South America and published by a committee headed by Pope Francis himself, who was then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio. This document, which has come to be read as a foundational text of his approach, contains scathing words for “lawmakers, heads of government and health professionals” who violate the Church’s teaching on abortion. and other “serious crimes against life and family”. Catholics in such positions of influence may not receive Communion, he says.

In May, the Vatican warned US bishops in a letter that they should engage in “deep and calm dialogue” before drafting the document, warning that the vote could “become a source of contention rather than unity “.

The curators described the result as a document that underlines the importance of maintaining standards around the Eucharist. Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, who has sharply criticized Mr. Biden, said in an interview that while the document does not name names, it “recognizes that not everyone should just stand up and receive “.

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco called the new document flexible. “Each bishop, when confronted with this situation, must make a decision in relation to the realities on the ground in which he finds himself,” he said. Archbishop Cordileone has sharply criticized Catholic politicians who support the right to abortion, including Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, whose district is in San Francisco.

The conference drew spectators and protesters with a wide variety of theological and political objections to the procedure and leadership of the church more broadly.

On Monday, a coalition of groups supporting causes such as women’s ordination and LGBTQ rights took part in a prayer march outside the hotel hosting the conference that called on bishops to “be pastors, not political agents.” “.

On Tuesday, at a waterfront pavilion near the hotel, hundreds of conservative Catholics attended a combative prayer rally organized by right-wing Catholic media Church Militant. The rally, titled “Enough is Enough,” was intended to express a series of objections to the church hierarchy. Signs in the crowd included “No Communion for the Killers” and “Come on Brandon,” a code phrase that is a political blow to Mr Biden.

Dan Ritosa, who traveled to the rally from the Cleveland area, said he hoped the bishops would maintain the high status of the Eucharist. “Prayer is like talking to God on the phone and reading the scriptures, it’s like reading a letter that God wrote,” he said. “But consuming the Eucharist is like being intimate with your spouse.”

An expected speaker at the Church event Activist Stephen K. Bannon did not appear after being indicted by a grand jury on two counts of contempt of Congress after refusing to provide information to a House inquiry into the January 6 riot at the Capitol.

Mr. Bannon, architect of Mr. Trump’s rise to a populist hero, has positioned himself in recent years as a “gladiator” of right-wing Catholicism. The Church Militant event was moderated by Milo Yiannopoulos, a media figure who has been largely excluded from mainstream conservative venues for his comments downplaying the seriousness of pedophilia, among other issues.

Gladys Garavito had traveled from Jacksonville, Florida to attend the event with her sister. A longtime Catholic, she described feeling disillusioned in recent years by the inability of the hierarchy to stand up to politicians like Mr. Biden. “It’s like there are two Catholic worlds,” Ms. Garavito said, describing a growing divide between “country club Catholics” like the president and Ms. Pelosi, and “traditional” believers like her.

“This is the church,” she said, gesturing to the provocative crowd around her. “That’s what the church should be, and that’s what the church is meant to be.”

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