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At risk of division within the U.S. Catholic Church, the bishops are targeting a Catholic president who supports abortion rights.
A separate conference of Roman Catholic bishops in the United States announced that they would make a declaration on Holy Communion that Catholic politicians could dream of, including President Joe Biden abortion rights.
The decision to write a teaching document on the Eucharist, 168-55, the holy sacrament of Roman Catholicism, came after a two-hour debate on June 17 at the virtual assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in which bishops reaffirmed the merits of partisanship.
This week’s debate has revealed some of the cultural and political ruptures that have shaken the church in recent years. US Catholic Church membership has fallen nearly 20% in the past two decades, according to a Gallup poll released in March sexual abuse scandals involved predatory priests have been published and members are increasingly divided on social issues.
Biden is a lifelong Roman Catholic who supports the ability of U.S. women to terminate unwanted pregnancies, a basic policy of the U.S. Democratic Party that he now directs. Many Catholics in the U.S., however, are opposed to abortion, believing that the fetus has the right to live for religious reasons.
The bishops in favor of writing the document stressed that he did not have a politician to call by name, but the issue of Biden’s social opinions repeatedly appeared in the debate. Biden, the second Catholic to hold the presidency of the United States, has overwhelmed many bishops by providing support same-sex marriage and the rights to abortion, in their view, are contrary to the doctrine of the church.
At a ceremony at the White House on Friday, Biden declined to comment to a reporter on the bishops’ decision. “That’s a private account and I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Biden said.
Some bishops who advocated writing the document argued that they had a duty to clarify the teachings for all the Catholic Church, given the inconsistencies in the faith and actions of public officials like Biden.
“I talk to people, Catholics almost every day … that we have a president who recognizes the faith of Catholicism and yet is confused with the one who advances the most radical pro-abortion program in our history,” said Bishop Donald Hying Madison of Wisconsin. helped write the document.
Opponents said they feared that writing the document could sow more divisions within the party within the church, and that bishops would need more time to discuss the issue before moving forward.
A Vatican official, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, wrote the conference in May, urging caution in the debate over politicians’ abortion and communion, and said it could become a “source of disagreement,” the Catholic News Service reported.
Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego opposed the writing of the document, saying the move would run counter to the intent of bishops to unite Catholics through the sacrament.
“The Eucharist … will inevitably become a tool in the vicious unrest of partisanship that is upsetting our nation. It will be impossible to prevent the disarmament of the Eucharist in partisan struggles,” he said.
Polls in the 2020 presidential election showed that the Catholic vote was almost split between Biden and former Republican President Donald Trump.
Pope Francis he congratulated Biden in a phone call after the election was won, some Catholic bishops refused to recognize Biden’s rise to the presidency because of support for abortion rights.
The Doctrine Committee of the Congress is expected to draft the document before the November meeting, as the bishops will consider the draft amendment.
In 2004, the conference released a statement that bishops could individually decide whether or not to deny communion to Catholic politicians who had the right to abortion.
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