Hundreds of the country’s Catholic bishops, their names on tags hanging from green lanyards around their necks, sat at long tables inside a conference room in Baltimore on Wednesday to vote on pressing issues facing the American Catholic Church.
First, they tested the electronic keypads of the bishops. They voted whether or not to have ice-cream at break. The votes went for ice cream. But later in the day, a more significant decision came up, when the bishops voted on a 30-page teaching about the Eucharist, Catholicism’s central ritual of taking bread and wine to be in the presence of Jesus Christ.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
The vote and the document’s wording were closely watched for signs that the bishops may include a rebuke of President Joe Biden, the country’s first Catholic President to support access to abortion, and open the door for priests to deny the Communion rite to public officials like the President who hold policy positions that run counter to church teachings.
But that didn’t happen. In an attempt to maintain unity, the hardliners gave in and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops changed its wording. Instead of calling out Catholic politicians who support access to abortion, the document included instructions for Catholics “who exercise some form of public authority” to look inward. Those worshipers, the document states, “have a special responsibility to form their consciences in accord with the Church’s faith and the moral law, and to serve the human family by upholding human life and dignity.” The document passed by a wide margin.
Continue reading: Joe Biden’s Presidency Has Highlighted the Rifts in the American Catholic Church
At a time when there are sharp divisions within the American Catholic Church regarding social issues, the debate on the status of Communion in Catholic Life and the responsibility of Catholic politicians to advocate policies supported by the church comes at a critical moment. Biden’s presidency has highlighted those fissures. The bishops’ decision to avoid a direct confrontation with Biden followed a lengthy, warm meeting between Biden and Pope FrancisIn Rome, Oct. 29. After their rare 90-minute conversation in the Vatican, Biden said Francis called him “a good Catholic” and said he “should keep receiving Communion.” The Pope himself didn’t make a public statement on their meeting. Pope Francis has called for unity among the bishops and has counseled a “pastoral” approach to congregants like Biden, saying that the matter of taking bread and wine should be handled in discussions between priests and individual churchgoers.
There are still disagreements among bishops. At the Baltimore conference on Wednesday, Archbishop Joseph Naumann from Kansas City, Kansas, encouraged fellow bishops that they spend more time caring for Catholic politicians who have acted in ways contrary to Catholic teachings. “I’m not sure that we’ve taken that seriously as bishops our responsibility for the care of the souls of these politicians—to really enter into a dialogue,” Naumann said, a blue mask reading “Remember the unborn” hanging from one ear. “I think it is important that each of us take to heart this and have these dialogues with people in public life.”
A committee of bishops spent months writing and revising the document, titled “The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church.” The idea to lay out in more detail how the faithful should think about Communion came out of a closed-door “working group” that senior bishops convened in the months after Biden was elected. Some bishops were concerned that Biden’s high profile as a Catholic who also campaigned on expanding access to abortions would cause confusion in congregations over church teachings. It has revealed the importance of this debate.American Catholic Church: Rifts over church teachings on gay marriage, the role of women in the leadership of the church, and whether objections to abortion extends beyond an individual’s personal conscience to broader policy decisions.
This fight between Catholics can have wider political implications. Biden was voted by half the Catholic voters, and one in five 2020 presidential election winners were Catholics. The Catholic Church has lobbied for Biden’s next major legislative package, the Build Back Better plan, to include a prohibition on federal funding going to abortions. Getting rid of the Hyde Amendment—the measure that prohibits federal funding for abortion except if the woman’s life is in danger or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest—has been a priority for progressive Democrats, and they have successfully pushed Biden to the left on the issue. Biden supported the amendment in 1976. However, he changed his mind and renounced it when he ran for president in 2019.
Biden removed the Hyde Amendment earlier in the year from his budget proposal. This week’s House vote is scheduled to take place on the Build back Better package. The Senate is likely to then consider it. It could be left to Biden to referee whether federal funding for abortions stays in the bill or gets cut—perhaps once again putting his political policy positions at odds with the Catholic Church.
Abigail Abrams/New York reporting
