Angelus News | June 4, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 11

In 1973, after the Supreme Court’s
Roe v. Wade decision legalizing
abortion, Biden expressed reservations
about what the court had done. Then,
for four decades he supported the
Hyde Amendment barring the use of
federal funds for abortion. Two years
ago, however, under pressure from
abortion activists, Biden reversed on
Hyde and promised that as president
he’d get rid of it.
During the presidential campaign he
said he supported abortion “under any
circumstances,” promised to make the
Roe decision federal law, and chose aggressively
pro-abortion California Sen.
Kamala Harris as his running mate.
Since becoming president, he and his
administration have acted repeatedly to
expand the availability of abortion.
At the same time, Biden, a lifelong
Catholic, continues to declare his allegiance
to the faith and receives Communion
at Sunday Mass. According
to critics, that is something he simply
shouldn’t do, in light of the Church’s
clear teaching on abortion and the
prohibition in canon 915 of the Code
of Canon Law, which says people “who
obstinately persist in manifest grave sin
are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”
Taking note of all this, Archbishop
José H. Gomez of Los Angeles,
president of the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops (USCCB), last year
set up a working group chaired by the
conference’s vice president, Archbishop
Allen Vigneron of Detroit, to make
recommendations on how to proceed.
It proposed writing
and publishing
a statement
on “eucharistic
coherence,”
outlining why
Catholics who
receive Communion
should
live and act in a
manner consistent
with the faith
of the Church.
Whether to
proceed with
a statement is
the question
the bishops are
expected to face
at their June assembly. And here there
is disagreement.
Several bishops lately have issued
statements of their own strongly arguing
that politicians who support abortion
should not receive Communion.
One of them is Archbishop Salvatore
Cordileone of San Francisco, whose
archdiocese is home to another wellknown
pro-choice Catholic politician,
Speaker of the House of Representatives
Nancy Pelosi.
Addressing Catholics who publicly
support abortion, Archbishop Cordileone
closed his strongly worded pastoral
letter this way: “If you find that you
are unwilling or unable to abandon
your advocacy for abortion, you should
not come forward to receive Holy
Communion. To publicly affirm the
Catholic faith while at the same time
rejecting one of its most fundamental
teachings is simply dishonest.”
But some bishops — how many are
not known — don’t want the bishops’
conference to make a statement. Echoing
McCarrick in 2004, they warn
that anything the bishops might say or
do on this issue would be viewed as
playing politics.
Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego
has been particularly outspoken in
making this argument. Speaking
during a panel discussion earlier this
year, he said this: “I do not see how
depriving the president or other political
leaders of the Eucharist on their
public policy stance can be interpreted
in our society as anything other than a
weaponization of the Eucharist … to
Cardinal Luis Ladaria at a Vatican meeting
of bishops in 2019. | CNS/PAUL HARING
pummel them into submission.”
A third position, somewhere between
the strongly for and the strongly
against, was laid out by Cardinal Luis
Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a letter
sent to Archbishop Gomez in early
May.
Cardinal Ladaria expressed general
approval of the idea of a bishops’ statement
that would underline “the grave
moral responsibility of Catholic public
officials to protect human life at all
stages” while repeating that decisions
about how to proceed at the local level
are up to ordinaries.
He added that the statement should
be preceded by dialogue among the
bishops and consultation with other
episcopal
President Joe Biden and
his wife, Jill, attend Mass
at the Cathedral of St.
Matthew the Apostle in
Washington, D.C., on Jan.
20, before his presidential
inauguration. | CNS/
TOM BRENNER, REUTERS
conferences;
should point out
that abortion and
euthanasia aren’t
the only issues
of concern to
the Church; and
should make it
clear that worthiness
to receive
Communion
applies to all
Catholics, not just public officials.
That latter point is a reminder that the
issue of Communion for pro-choice
politicians exists in the context of a
larger problem — growing concern
that respect for the sacrament may
26 • ANGELUS • June 4, 2021