The election of Joe Biden as president is a threat to all people of faith, but particularly to the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.
It is common for politicians claiming to be Catholic to favor policies that are in direct opposition to the church’s enduring teachings on abortion, marriage, sexual morality and religious liberty. Many, if not most, of these “check-the-box Catholics” have purely nominal connection to the church. Joe Biden is very different. He made his Catholicism a significant part of his campaign. He touted his Mass attendance and claimed that Pope Francis gives him communion – an act considered by Biden to be the pope’s stamp of approval. He even threatened to choke critics of his character with his rosary which he always carries with him. Who would have thought that the rosary was an instrument of violence rather than an instrument of prayer!
progressives see Biden as a tool to radically transform Catholic teaching which reaches back to the time of Christ and the patriarchs.
Biden presents the Catholic hierarchy with one of its greatest challenges. While aggressively promoting an agenda that undermines Church teaching, Biden has also appointed a significant number of self-described Catholics to his cabinet. These progressive Catholics have, by word and action, threatened Catholic institutions, individuals, and religious orders such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, with a ferocity usually directed at America’s foreign enemies.
The Catholic Church is split, like the country and mainline Protestant denominations, into progressive and orthodox camps. The resulting disunity has severely damaged the church just as it has virtually destroyed the American Protestant mainline. The United Methodist Church is an example. A proposal to divide the church and split assets currently awaits a vote among the now dis-united United Methodists.
What will the American bishops do now? Political progressives see Biden as a tool to radically transform Catholic teaching which reaches back to the time of Christ and the patriarchs, with Biden and his cronies superseding the bishops as the authoritative voice of Catholic belief and practice.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is the national organization for the Catholic hierarchy. It is not a governing body, so each bishop still governs his own diocese. It does speak on policies, however, and establishes standards that are widely accepted by individual Bishops. The Dallas Charter on the protection of minors is one such example.
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When Biden was elected, the USCCB, headed by Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, issued a statement of concern about Biden’s policies, especially on abortion, which the Conference declared to be the “preeminent issue” in the public square. That assertion was disputed by several progressive bishops, but their efforts to dilute the statement failed. Archbishop Gomez appointed a working group to draft a statement on the reception of Holy Communion by Catholic politicians.
In the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, the substance of the bread and wine of Communion is changed into the actual body and blood of Christ, though the appearance does not change (John 6:48-58). This is different from the general view in many Protestant churches that the eucharist is symbolic. The reception of Communion, therefore, has greater significance in the Catholic Church, especially by a person publicly and consistently denying a fundamental moral law and actively promoting secular laws that sanction violence against the unborn – the most vulnerable of all human beings.
The USCCB working group on reception of Communion has completed a draft for circulation among the Bishops. It has not yet been released to the public. The final product will probably be voted on at the USCCB’s June meeting this year. The bishops appear to be very aware of the challenge and danger to the church posed by Biden and similar progressive Catholics who occupy public office and other influential positions. There is every indication that most bishops are prepared to meet the challenge firmly in accord with their duty as successors to the 12 Apostles. If they fail, the bishops will disappear into irrelevance just as many mainline Protestant denominations have.
This very situation has persisted for many years in Alaska.
The issue forced on the bishops by Biden is not limited to the presidency. There are many Catholic politicians around the country who have long posed the same challenge. The response to these challenges has been mixed, to say the least. The current and previous Bishop of Springfield, Illinois, barred U.S. Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill) from Communion because of his actions on abortion. Other bishops have been silent in the face of similar challenges and allowed offending politicians to publicly receive Communion while publicly supporting grave moral sins like abortion. This very situation has persisted for many years in Alaska.
What the bishops decide at the national level will likely influence approaches at the local level. The Catholic Church in the United States is at a crossroads on fundamental issues. At the moment, the focus is on the June meeting. The controversy is sure to escalate in the meantime. Each side recognizes that this is a turning point. Stay tuned.
The views expressed here are those of the author.
11 Comments
Is Biden even ‘all there’? From my perspective it sure seems he is not, and it is yet another heinous crime committed by the left putting him in office as basically a puppet to do their bidding. He might actually be devout catholic. Meaningless though when he appears o struggle mightily to have enough cognizance to even understand what is before him or the brevity of his position. I predict within a year or so we will be looking at President Harris. I do hope I am wrong but I am certainly not alone in this concern. There are few scruples at all with leftist thinking. It is a worldview that is indeed anti-Christ and dark. Human life matters little but power, control and luxury matter much. There are no statesman within their world.
Biden was not “put in office”, he was elected in a landslide by a majority of Americans and a majority of electors. His support came from both the left and the right, an indication of the bleak option provided by the Republican Party in the 2020 election.
I pray that the Republican Party finds the integrity to nominate a man of honor and ability in the next presidential election. I fear, however, the worst. Based on their performance last week, they are *literally* worshipping a golden idol, a false God.
Fred with all due respect the evidence runs counter to your fantasy of Biden winning a Landslide. Clearly all 5 States that stopped counting at the same time isn’t important to you, Massive identical vote dumps are meaningless as well States reporting half a million more mail in ballots then had been printed are not concerning either?. But what really is interesting is your juxtaposition of Trump to Biden, you insinuate that Trump is not a man of honor and without ability. I disagree and the facts are obvious to anyone unless they are so obsessed with disdain for Trump that they are literally blinded by hated. B.T.W. could hating Trump be a false God?
Well said Robert A Schenker. People like Fred Lee need to understand reality with gentle facts. Clearly he has been told
it’s acceptable to focus on emotions above facts and to blindly accept what he’s been told on the very same networks who have spent the last four years attacking President Trump like children.
Keep up the great explanations, some people, will eventually come around to reality,
Bull shit. This election was fraudulent from the beginning to the end. Pull you un American head out of your rear.
Biden’s “Presidency” represents a stolen election and Chinese Communist led Coup to destroy the Republic. The entirety of the Government in the District of Communists is treasonous. From the Congress that certified this coup, to the Courts which refused to hear the evidence of this coup. It is a Vichy Government of Traitors.
Exactly! Well-said. We have to keep this in the forefront of our minds and our words, not fall into the complacency of accepting any legitimacy of a “President” Biden.
Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I find it at least nominally heartening to hear that the USCCB is tackling this issue head-on, but realistically the USCCB has been irrelevant to Catholics who believe as the Apostles taught. The USCCB takes money from human traffickers who bring illegals across national borders, They support groups who give money to abortionists. They allow all manner of ministerial errors. And in general, those who run the USCCB are the leftists who prize power and money over the saving of souls. Just look at how they actively worked to protect homosexual bishops from allegations of abuse; it is because is mostly run by fellow travelers. Just as Catholics are forced to tolerate our current Pope, who is a died-in-the-wool communist rather than a pastoral leader, we are force to tolerate the nonsense promulgated by the USCCB, so don’t look to them for a solution or a spine.
Ummm… you mean to say “dyed-in-the-wool…”
The present pontiff does have his “stamp of approval” on Mr. Biden. That’s easy to see.
Now the USCG(lobalist)B pose to do something after they backed themselves into a corner – after they failed to speak out about some of the atrocious policies they knew his party espoused, soft peddling the most important issues by promoting equalization of optional matters as compared to intrinsically evil ones. The USCGB have their collective eye on the money pot that they garner by lobbying and their first priorities are to protect that revenue. Now when the damage train comes rolling down they scramble to present yet another document and expect to have impact and collect respect. What’s new? Is this going to be another half-baked document? We’ll see. Lay people, some not even Catholic have more respect, influence and right thinking capabilities than some of these prelates wish to display — maybe by design.