Catholic bishops this week will discuss if Biden qualifies for Communion.

[Person Man]

Catholicism is a joke

Most of it is fine, it just needs a purge of much of its leadership, the far right bigots, homophobes, and pedophilia enablers and the like.

Francis is working on it, but it's going to be a multi-Pope process for sure.

Isn’t the word of God supposed to be absolute. Funny how these religions keep on changing their values in a way that conveniently makes them more appealing to modern society…

God doesn’t change but he’s still speaking and the March towards modernity isn’t this march towards Randian amorality that Republicans are always being triggered over.

[Person Man]

Will be really interesting if they do this. Aren’t all sins the same? At the very least, it’s either going to give Protestant churches a real shot in the arm as more Protestants become atheist or Fundamentalists or maybe many Catholics will become Atheists. I doubt it, though. Who knows?

I want to rewind here. Can any Sunday School teacher tell me what happens if someone is denied communion. Are they excommunicated? Do they go to hell? Are they still Catholic? Christian? What happens to them when they die? What if communion is then denied to not just politicians who openly tolerate grave moral evils but also those who actually participate in grave moral evils?

[Person Man]

Any religious person who would deny someone else a part in their religion  is not actually religious.

I do not believe in God. Should I be able to "take part" in the Catholic faith?

I don't need to because the Anglicans will accept me

That’s a reasonable answer if you take the question literally but not as it was intended to be taken.

[Person Man]

https://mobile.twitter.com/johngramlich/status/1406231954584965130

The fact that 44% of Republican Catholics are OK with Biden receiving the Eucharist is actually kind of surprising, and goes to show how poorly this will be viewed in public opinion (not that the Bishops care, of course).

This really shouldn’t matter. The Church doesn’t give a heck about what anyone thinks except for God. (In Theory).

Why this is important is whether something like this can be just jammed down people’s throats or whether there will be a backlash.

[Person Man]

Any religious person who would deny someone else a part in their religion  is not actually religious.

I do not believe in God. Should I be able to "take part" in the Catholic faith?

I don't need to because the Anglicans will accept me

That’s a reasonable answer if you take the question literally but not as it was intended to be taken.

Why not? As I understand it, opposition to abortion and supporting the "sanctity of human life" is a very important part of Catholicism.

It was established in a different thread by a good student of this subject that though opposing making abortion illegal made you “heterodox”, it didn’t make you a “heretic” or a non-believer.

Again, I want someone to clear this up for me. I was Christened Catholic and went to mass off and on growing up and for a while when I was  to marry into a Catholic family. They were very upset with mass sometimes with church teachings even though they were otherwise slightly conservative. I didn’t know why they still identified as Catholic.

[Person Man]

As I understood it last time I read about it, this wouldn’t actually forbid priests from giving communion to Biden or anyone else, but would simply be more advisory. And the archbishop of DC supports Biden, opposes this, and said he would still allow him to take it.

Has that changed?

No. This is purely cancel culture virtue signaling.

If anything it's less likely now than it was a week ago that the final document will mention any particular issue or even occupation at all. Gomez and Rhoades are both on the record now as wanting more general/vaguer language.

But that really doesn't matter because the bishops have lost control of the narrative, as they should have seen coming for months now.

It definitely seems like a new opportunity in identity politics where a major religion wants to make a political stance a condition of membership or at least has inadvertently given that appearance.

[Person Man]

Any religious person who would deny someone else a part in their religion is not actually religious.

     This is a severe misunderstanding of the Catholic position. They are not excluding Biden, but calling him to repent for his own good. Unfortunately Americans have an entirely alien dialectic concerning communion, so the Catholic rationale is lost on the people.

Biden is pushing for policies that will lower the abortion rate. He is a pro-life Catholic hero, unlike that pro-abortionist Trump who would have caused more abortions.

You are the one who needs to repent from your sins of supporting pro-abortion Republican policies.

     Catholic (and also Orthodox) moral theology is not utilitarian, so the argument that Biden has reduced the number of abortions carries little to no weight within that paradigm so long as he supports them being legal.

That argument does weaken the entire narrative of opposing anti-poverty measures because there a possibly  more effective libertarian alternatives.

[Person Man]

the early Church's position on abortion.

Universal opposition.

Nothing was universal back then.

Find one example of Christians supporting abortion before the 20th century.

LOL, I'm no historian, but it's glaringly obvious that you're laying it on way too thick with your "universal opposition" assertion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_thought_on_abortion

Or they could have universal opposition but it vary in degrees. Obviously not everyone thought about it the same way. Regardless of the nuances, many more people are now going to think the central tenet of the Church is about abortion.

[Person Man]

the early Church's position on abortion.

Universal opposition.

Nothing was universal back then.

Find one example of Christians supporting abortion before the 20th century.

LOL, I'm no historian, but it's glaringly obvious that you're laying it on way too thick with your "universal opposition" assertion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_thought_on_abortion

They all viewed it as sinful.

but not murder to a point.

[Person Man]

the early Church's position on abortion.

Universal opposition.

Nothing was universal back then.

Find one example of Christians supporting abortion before the 20th century.

LOL, I'm no historian, but it's glaringly obvious that you're laying it on way too thick with your "universal opposition" assertion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_thought_on_abortion

They all viewed it as sinful.

but not murder to a point.

Also never forget that Southern Baptists used to be OK with abortion until they realized it would be a politically expedient issue to rally around at about the same time as the "Reagan Revolution:"

https://billmoyers.com/2014/07/17/when-southern-baptists-were-pro-choice/

That's a big part of why the most devout Southern Baptist president in history, Jimmy Carter, was voted out by white evangelicals in the South in favor of a divorced irreligious B-movie star from California.

Some Southern Baptists were okay with abortion.  The SBC had a lot more liberals back then than they do now.  It wasn't a fully Evangelical denomination until the 1980s (there was a conservative resurgence in the late 70s, and about that time the denomination became solidly pro-life).

Southern Baptists are not the only Evangelicals in America.  Let's take a look at a resolution from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Georgia two years before Roe v. Wade:

https://www.opc.org/GA/abortion.html/

1. That the general assembly adopt the following resolution: Unborn children are living creatures in the image of God, given by God as a blessing to their parents. Between conception and birth they are the objects of God's particular providence and care as they are being prepared by God for the responsibilities and privileges of postnatal life. Scripture obligates us to treat unborn children as human persons in all decisions and actions involving them. They should not, therefore, be destroyed by voluntary abortion in the absence of valid medical grounds demonstrating the necessity of such abortion to save the mother's life.

2. That presbyteries, sessions and congregations be encouraged by the assembly to carry on further study of these matters, so that Christians may be better instructed concerning the Scriptural principles involved, and so that they might be motivated to take appropriate action relative to pending civil legislation or other pertinent situations in their communities.

3. That the stated clerk be instructed to prepare this report or a summary of this report in an acceptable pamphlet format, and that this publication be commended to Christians as a guide to their study and action, and for distribution by them to government officials and others.

I could go on further, but this is a thread about Catholics, not Evangelicals.

“Some” is not “All”. I think the point is that whether or not abortion is a sin or some heinous and cruel thing doesn’t mean that it’s somehow worse or should be the only sin that matters. For the longest time, the only major consensus was that abortion is bad. It used to be seen, both by secular and ecclesiastical authorities, in some extreme situations as the same as murder but much more often as something like marijuana, DUI, or Domestic Violence. A crime in bad taste that especially offended the sensibilities of the community but was ultimately something that made you an annoying instead of a violent, untrustworthy, or antisocial  person. Especially if you hadn’t been a problem in the past. The entire point of denying communion to liberal Catholics is that abortion is so bad that it is at  least temporarily the primary concern of the Church when there are so many other misdeeds that are actively being engaged in by the authorities instead of simply tolerated.

Maybe it’s because 90% of everyone thinks that abortion is a negative outcome rather than half of everyone thinking that the death penalty, gratuitous law enforcement tactics, or a motivational level of unnecessary poverty, or offensive warfare is good.