When the secular press covers the meeting between the president of the United States and the Bishop of Rome, there is heightened interest because both men are Roman Catholics.
At this moment, however, the issue of President Biden’s orthodoxy is being questioned. For non-Catholics, who are more than 80 percent of the U.S. population, the issue of who is a good Catholic and who gets to receive Catholic Holy Communion has to be mystifying.
Even for Catholics, trying to understand this is like inside baseball, major league minutiae that puts casual fans to sleep. This communion issue, nonetheless, will not go away.
No sooner had President Biden been elected than some members of the Catholic hierarchy began talking about refusing Holy Communion to the new president, a practicing Catholic who goes to church regularly.
This boiled over into the bishops’ June meeting where they voted to produce a new document some referred to as “eucharistic coherence,” or the need for adherence to Church teaching as a condition for receiving Holy Communion.
The complexity of this issue is hard to capture in a sound-bite. But it is worth exploring for the benefit of our nation’s non-Catholic population.
Ever since Roe v. Wade in 1973, the Catholic bishops have waged an unrelenting campaign against abortion. Though opposition to abortion is often cast as a Catholic issue, many non-Catholics are opposed to abortion, as well.
The right-to-life of the unborn has become juxtaposed to a woman’s right to choose. This has become a flagship issue in the culture wars. Sadly, the debate for the past 48 years has produced far more heat than light with both sides painting the issue in black-and-white terms.
Poll after poll reveal a general discomfort with the reality of abortion. Depending upon how the questions are asked, public opinion varies widely between the two camps, but with a broad consensus that abortion should not be outlawed or go back to pre-1973 status.
The Supreme Court is currently set to review state laws in Texas and Mississippi that effectively outlaw abortions. These cases have been crafted to allow the Court to review the 1973 decision, a desire of culture warriors because of the newest Supreme Court appointees.
While the Court should technically be above politics, the lip service given to this notion has grown paper-thin in the recent past. Its current composition reflects a litmus test that few observers would deny. Inescapably, abortion has become the most highly-charged issue on the political landscape. This is the minefield that Catholic politicians have had to traverse and continue to walk through in the present.
Just as the abortion issue has added to division within our nation, it has equally become divisive within the Catholic Church. While very few people believe that abortions are good things in and of themselves, the general population of Catholics hold similar views to the population of the country as a whole.
Catholic teaching with regard to the reception of Holy Communion says that communicants need to be in communion with the Catholic Church. If a person has committed a grave sin, he or she should refrain from Holy Communion until they have been absolved in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, i.e. Confession.
Because the Catholic Church teaches that abortion is objectively a grave sin, some bishops believe that office holders like President Biden who support current laws regarding abortion should be denied Holy Communion or refrain from doing so.
The implication is that President Biden is guilty of a grave sin and, therefore, not in communion with the Catholic Church.
As this Communion controversy has been unfolding in the United States, Pope Francis has encouraged the American bishops to become wary about becoming too political over this issue.
He has also pointed out that Holy Communion is not a reward for the righteous but a medicine for sinners. His comments underscore that no one can judge the sinfulness or purity of another person’s soul. Objective wrongdoing and subjective culpability are two very different things. (A man who steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving family is not guilty of a sin.) God is the only person who can look into our souls and determine the moral content of our actions.
Because other religious traditions do not share the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church, those outside the Catholic community may be perplexed by Catholic bishops being unhappy with this Catholic president.
For his part, President Biden has generally chosen to ignore his detractors and resists being drawn into the controversy. Besides providing fodder for the 24/7 news cycle, this controversy is not likely to change either the behavior of President Biden or the unhappiness of some Catholic bishops.
Msgr. Paul V. Garrity is the former pastor of St. Mary’s Parish in Lynn and the current pastor of St. Brigid and Sacred Heart Parishes in Lexington.
