David Crary of the Associated Press reports that when U.S. Catholic bishops hold their next
national meeting in June, they’ll be deciding whether to send a tougher-than-ever message to President Joe Biden and other Catholic politicians: Don’t receive Communion if you persist in public advocacy of abortion rights.
At issue is a document that will be prepared for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops by its Committee on Doctrine, with the aim of clarifying the church’s stance on an issue that has repeatedly vexed the bishops in recent decades. It’s taken on new urgency now, in the eyes of many bishops, because Biden — only the second Catholic president — is the first to hold that office while espousing clear-cut support for abortion rights.
Such a stance, by a public figure, is “a grave moral evil,” according to Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, who chairs the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities and believes it’s necessary to publicly rebuke Biden on the issue.
“Because President Biden is Catholic, it presents a unique problem for us,” Naumann told The Associated Press. “It can create confusion. ... How can he say he’s a devout Catholic and he’s doing these things that are contrary to the church’s teaching?”
The document, if approved, would make clear the USCCB’s view that Biden and other Catholic public figures with similar viewpoints should not present themselves for Communion, Naumann said.
In accordance with existing USCCB policy, it would still leave decisions on withholding Communion up to individual bishops. In Biden’s case, the top prelates of the jurisdictions where he frequently worships — Bishop W. Francis Malooly of Wilmington, Delaware, and Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C. — have made clear that Biden is welcome to receive Communion at churches they oversee, reported Mr. Crary.
As we see it, Bishop Malooly and Cardinal Gregory are part of the most serious problem the Church is facing today – the erosion of fundamental elements of church doctrine from within.
Where was Cardinal Gregory’s outrage when a government led by two allegedly a practicing Catholics, President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, repealed the Hyde Amendment, thereby causing every Catholic to fund abortions.
Where was Cardinal Gregory’s outrage when Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi reaffirmed the Democratic Party’s commitment to a woman’s right to kill a child through unlimited abortion right up to the moment of birth?
More importantly, where was Cardinal Gregory’s appreciation or recognition of the Trump administration’s fidelity to Catholic teaching and Christian values when the Trump Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under Attorney General William Barr and Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband went before a federal appeals court to argue that the unborn have civil rights worthy of protection?
Today, the Catholic Church struggles to find a place of relevance in the lives of parishioners and potential converts precisely because many of its leaders, such as Cardinal Gregory, have abandoned all pretense of preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Church’s Catechism in favor of preaching a form of Far Left politics divorced from the Gospel and virtually indistinguishable from that advocated by the Church’s socialist oppressors.
It is clear to us that prelates, such as Cardinal Gregory and Bishop Malooly, have abandoned holding Catholics who attain high political office to the same standards to which they would hold parishioners in any church in their Diocese. In this they have become like the Democrat politicians whom they worship – administrators of a corrupt two-tiered system of justice – one that demands penance by the little people while ignoring, and even facilitating, the sins of the politicians.
We urge all our Catholic friends who seek to direct the Church and its leaders, such as Cardinal Gregory, away from the error of the Leftist politics of a “Gospel of revolution” back to right path of doing the work of Christ’s Great Commission to call Cardinal Gregory at 301-853-4500 and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops at 202-541-3000 to demand that they send a tougher-than-ever message to President Joe Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Catholic politicians: Don’t receive Communion if you persist in public advocacy of abortion rights.
You may also email the USCCB through this link or mail the Bishops at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 3211 Fourth Street NE, Washington DC 20017. You may mail Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory at PO Box 29260, Washington, DC 20017-0260 or email the archbishopric’s secretariat of communications at communications@adw.org.
Joe Biden
Communion
Joe Biden abortion position
same-sex marriage
social issues
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
religious freedom
Catholic politicians
Committee on Doctrine
Great moral evil
Joseph Naumann
Committee on Pro-Life Activities
Bishop W. Francis Malooly
Cardinal Wilton Gregory
Hyde Amendment repeal