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

[Bootes Void]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/06/14/biden-catholic-president-usscb-bishops-abortion-communion/

President Biden has often described his spiritual need as a Catholic to attend Mass each week and receive Communion. But making that happen isn’t always simple.

In recent years, an increasingly focused group of conservative Catholics has been pressing the prioritizing of opposing abortion above all else,and is seeking to keep Catholic politicians who in any way support abortion access from the sacrament, considered the core rite of Catholic worship.

For Biden’s team, that sometimes has meant dedicating staffers during busy travel weeks to make sure Biden, who supports abortion rights, avoids priests and bishops who would deny him the sacrament over his stance on the issue. The president was denied Communion in 2019 by a South Carolina priest who said any leader “who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching.”

John Kelly, who did Catholic outreach for the Democratic National Committee, was part of a team in 2008, during the Obama-McCain race, that would find welcoming parishes for Biden. He remembers the angry backlash from Biden’s staff when he suggested one of Biden’s priest friends simply travel with the campaign to avoid complications.

“They felt, and they were right, that he wants to go to church and should have the right to. He wants to worship with his community. His understanding of the Eucharist was it shouldn’t be done hidden in private. I very much felt the Eucharist was being weaponized,” Kelly said.

This week at their annual spring meeting, the bishops of the U.S. Catholic Church — the largest faith group in the country — will debate the meaning of Communion and whether Catholic politicians who support abortion rights should be barred from receiving it. The conversation and a vote among the church’s top clerics could have significant ramifications because it centers on one of the most intimate moments of Catholic worship and binds it uniquely to a specific political and policy position.

The vote comes after two decades of deliberate, passionate focus by Catholic political and theological conservatives to make abortion a litmus test for the sacrament, while church teachings on poverty, climate, racism and authoritarianism, among other things, become more subjective to follow. It also comes after years of hardening toward abortion opponents within the Democratic Party.

The Catholic School(atleast from where I am from) has gotten alot of negative press coverage especially since one of the former residential schools was found with 215 bodies buries. Can't imagine this helping them out.

[The Free North]

Biden is complicit in war crimes and should be excommunicated immediately.

[7,052,770]

LOL, his own priest will correctly continue giving it to him regardless of what these out-of-touch, grandstanding attention whore bozos "decide"

[Bootes Void]

Biden is complicit in war crimes and should be excommunicated immediately.

if you read my post below, you would probably know that the catholic church isnt exactly very clean on morality( and just maybe even worse)

[VBM]

Catholicism is a joke

[7,052,770]

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.

[VBM]

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…

[7,052,770]

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…

Yeah, but that's good, right? When you realize you're wrong, you have to get it right.

No more Crusades, no more haciendas, no more slavery, pedophilia is being addressed, and soon enough no more homophobia, at least officially from the Church.

[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.

[If my soul was made of stone]

The idea of a single-issue purity test for such a central part of one's faith is despicable, and buys further into the deadlocked and combative politicization of abortion that folk like this supposedly have pretenses of defusing through this sort of gesture. By this logic, there should've been talk of denying Scalia Communion because of his staunch support for the death penalty, but people like this love to claim him as their own nonetheless. Even as someone who's personally quite squeamish on abortion and prefers to defer to those who actually might face the decision on whether or not to have one, something like this happening in an organization that I belonged to would make me reconsider my ties to it.

I still have much respect for Catholicism as a spiritual path, despite inevitable parts of its theology that are irreconcilable with mine and a distaste for much of its leadership, but some of these takes on it as a whole are a bit much. I'm sure that the Catholic voices on this forum will have more of note to say than I do, and probably have a field day with some of the mess above me.

[VBM]

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…

Yeah, but that's good, right? When you realize you're wrong, you have to get it right.

No more Crusades, no more haciendas, no more slavery, pedophilia is being addressed, and soon enough no more homophobia, at least officially from the Church.

If a religion asserts that their God is infallible, but then that religion’s followers decide that he/she/it actually got something wrong, then doesn’t that invalidate the entire religion?

[Ferguson97]

Biden is complicit in war crimes and should be excommunicated immediately.

lol sure jan

[Calthrina950]

As I said a few weeks ago, I believe these bishops, if they follow through with this, are hypocrites. If anything, they should be directing their moral criticism at the prior occupant of the White House, Trump, a man who is morally reprehensible in many different respects, and far more so than Biden is. I say this as someone who does not entirely agree with the Democratic Party's abortion policies and who tends to support measures to keep abortion restrained.

[Calthrina950]

As I said a few weeks ago, I believe these bishops, if they follow through with this, are hypocrites. If anything, they should be directing their moral criticism at the prior occupant of the White House, Trump, a man who is morally reprehensible in many different respects, and far more so than Biden is. I say this as someone who does not entirely agree with the Democratic Party's abortion policies and who tends to support measures to keep abortion restrained.

Trump is not a practicing Catholic, and his relationship with leaders within the Catholic Church wasn't always comfortable on account of his administration's support for extremist and heterodox figures.

I know that he isn't a Catholic. The broader point I was making is that he's much more deserving of criticism from religious figures than Biden is.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Well he will always be welcome to take communion at any of DC's hipster churches if they rule against him.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Well he will always be welcome to take communion at any of DC's hipster churches if they rule against him.

He'll be welcome to take communion at any of DC's Catholic churches too. There's absolutely zero chance Cardinal Gregory enforces this.

[2952-0-0]

Their Graces are aware that if they deny Communion to Biden, it will only increase his popularity among his party's left-wing base, right??

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Their Graces are aware that if they deny Communion to Biden, it will only increase his popularity among his party's left-wing base, right??

The USCCB is interested in in-group identity reaffirmation and unnecessary coercion of the already-convinced, not in evangelization or moral leadership.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Does Bill Barr still get communion? How about noted execution aficionados Sam Alito and Brett Kavanaugh? How about thrice married Newt Gingrich?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Does Bill Barr still get communion? How about noted execution aficionados Sam Alito and Brett Kavanaugh? How about thrice married Newt Gingrich?

Gingrich technically is in the clear for complicated Brideshead Revisited-y musical chairs reasons about whom he was married to when. With regards to Barr that's an excellent question and one that left-wing Catholics have been asking for years, especially since, unlike (as far as is known) Biden, Barr has actually personally ordered that several people be killed in contravention of Catholic teaching.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Apparently Gingrich got a pass because his first wife is now dead and his second wife was herself a divorcee before marrying him.

[Crumpets]

If the Catholic church is ready to declare anyone with less adherence to doctrine than Biden to be ineligible for communion, they need to be prepared for thousands if not millions of church goers to voluntarily find other avenues to express their faith. Doesn't seem like a path they want to go down.

[emailking]

Yeah, but that's good, right? When you realize you're wrong, you have to get it right.

No more Crusades, no more haciendas, no more slavery, pedophilia is being addressed, and soon enough no more homophobia, at least officially from the Church.

Well they don't recognize gay marriage and it's still a mortal sin to have sex outside of marriage (meaning you can't go to heaven if you've done it and have not asked for forgiveness before you die). The Pope has tried to soften the rhetoric on homosexuality, but he still thinks homosexual activity is wrong.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

If the Catholic church is ready to declare anyone with less adherence to doctrine than Biden to be ineligible for communion, they need to be prepared for thousands if not millions of church goers to voluntarily find other avenues to express their faith. Doesn't seem like a path they want to go down.

That's exactly what the most reactionary factions in the episcopate do want--a smaller, "purer", wholeheartedly right-wing and nationalist American Church. It suits the ideological fancies of most American journalists as well--both conservative Catholic journalists who share these bishops' views and secular liberal journalists who are hostile to the Church--which is why the USCCB can release vague draft documents with generalized, unobjectionable (to Catholics) language about "Eucharistic consistency" and rest assured that everyone from WaPo to LifeSiteNews will report them as the crass lib-owning they're not-so-secretly intended as.

[Calthrina950]

I know that he isn't a Catholic. The broader point I was making is that he's much more deserving of criticism from religious figures than Biden is.

That's a valid point, but I don't think it has much bearing on the narrower question of whether Biden should be allowed to receive communion.

My main view on the latter is that it's a matter best kept between a politician and his priest. If a higher authority within the church finds it necessary to hold forth on the subject, so be it, but that's not anyone else's concern. It's disgusting that this is covered as a matter to which public opinion has any relevance.

This certainly should be a private matter. I agree with you on that.