Playing God
The American Council of Bishops is strongly considering denying the Eucharist to Joe Biden. To understand the gravity of this, one needs to understand exactly what the Eucharist is. For centuries, the Catholic church have been the only group to believe in something called transubstantiation. Put simply, this is the belief that the host one receives actually becomes Jesus Christ.
Again, that’s pretty heavy stuff. However, it is also the thing which separates us from all of the other Christian churches. Sure, we have rules and regulations. All of them do. Sure, we have traditions. All of them do. We have idiosyncrasies that people believe about us that aren’t true. As a Catholic I get these questions all the time. They can become tiresome, but most people are asking innocently enough.
The Eucharist is the very center of our faith. It is the very reason why we go to mass. It is the thing I miss the most when I don’t go and it is the thing that has been a hole during the pandemic. The church offers a spiritual alternative for those that are unable to go, but that hardly measures up. So in short, it’s the whole ballgame.
Catholics are taught from a very early age that they are not supposed to receive the host if they have a mortal sin on their conscience. I’m certain this is where the bishops are getting their mojo to deny Biden. However, I have never witnessed any priest deny anyone the host that comes up to receive it. It is supposed to be a personal decision that is governed by the individual and their conscience.
While this rule has been in place as long as I’ve been a Catholic, the mechanics of it really have never made much sense. We are receiving God. We are receiving God’s grace. God’s grace is given freely to anyone that chooses to accept it. How are we as mere mortals supposed to decide who is worthy of that grace?
How do we decide that Joe is not worthy, but Sally over here is? We are all sinners. We all need God’s grace. Forget heaven for now. Sometimes, that grace is something I have needed to get through the week or even through the day when I attended daily mass. The president of the United States certainly can use God’s grace. He attends mass regularly. By most accounts he is a good and decent person. I’m still not sure what the problem is here.
Except we all know what the problem is here. Biden is politically Pro-Choice. Privately I’m not sure what he is exactly. That describes millions of Catholics across the country. It describes me. I believe in the sanctity of life. The funny thing is that this extends to the death penalty and wars of choice as well. Yet, those same bishops have no problem supporting politicians that support the death penalty and tend to be hawkish. Yet, they are somehow free to receive God.
I don’t know if being Pro-choice is a sin. It’s a complex situation that has any number of perspectives and theologians will certainly disagree. I do know that we can support people’s rights to choose what is right for them without necessarily agreeing with the choices they make. That extends to a whole lot more than just abortion. We can accept them. We can love them. I certainly believe my God does and I don’t think any human should say otherwise.
The Conference of Bishops can do whatever the hell they like; however, the Archbishop of Washington is (new) Cardinal Wilton Gregory (Google him). He has already stated that he won’t go along with such a prohibition and, if push comes to shove, Pope Francis won’t either. Cardinal Gregory presides over St. Matthews Cathedral, which is not very far from the White House. It is the church where JFK’s funeral was held.
Biden is a weekly mass goer and he usually goes to a church in Georgetown, when he is in town on the weekends. It is the church he started going to when he was the Veep. Any priest that denies communion to only the second Catholic President is making a huge mistake. This is just PR to hype up the rubes. They learned their lessons from the Rethugs.
1Interesting topic. Common usuage of the term “pro-choice” seems quite misleading. The actual “pro-choice” issue is, in fact, more about one’s view of government authority rather than one’s view of personal morality. At least according to Roe and other Supreme Court decisions, the correct translation of a “pro-choice” belief is in no way “pro-abortion” or even condoning abortion.
Rather “pro-choice” simply means that one believes that his or her decision about family planning is a private matter that our government should not control. That is what the “right of privacy” is all about. It has nothing to do with whether an individual thinks his or her church (rather than the State) should guide or direct his or her family planning decisions.
I am not Catholic so I can’t say whether Catholic doctrine believes that the State should be the entity that has control over parishioners’ decisions about individual family planning. If this isn’t Catholic doctine, however, then sanctioning a parishioner for the “pro-choice” view that opposes State, rather than Church, control over family planning decisions seems not only unjustified, but altogether counterproductive to the Church’s role in the decision making.
2Time to listen to Tom Leher’s the Vatican Rag.
3There is such an economic/cultural/spiritual divide between the clergy and laity. Always was and always will be as long as this particular religion is managed. And all the rest of them had better wake up as well.
4as a Catholic School survivor of the 60’s, I can tell you that the issue of abortion never once came up, either in class, or at Mass, ever. it only became an “issue” during the Reagan-Falwell administration. it was used to rile up/grift the rubes, not because any of the Republican/Evangelical elites actually gave two nanny-goat shits about it. that’s still what it’s used for.
5Fascism in elements of the Catholic hierarchy is not a surprise.
6Its like a Miracle ~
Placebo Hosts – Now available for agnostic parishioners who wish to fully partake of Sunday services and embrace your faith.
New: Mildly flavored with a hint of peyote for that holy and beatific experience.
7Is being pro-choice a sin?
8How about for those who take on the authority of anti-abortion without taking on the attendant responsibility? Is this a sin?
The anti-abortion point seems to apply to those who can not afford a private abortion doctor here or one out of country. What are the stats for this occurrence? Is this a sin?
But why is there a need for abortion in the first place? Not that they can be eliminated but can they be reduced? Along with the attendant societal costs? What are these costs?
Perhaps by providing adequate medical, emotional, educational and financial support geared for the innocent child going to adulthood. Are any of these a sin?
If any one or all of the above are sins, which one(s) are comparable to to the abortion sin? Is there equality of these sins? If so, how?
How many generations has this conflict been going on? Why? Have any approaches separated out predicate causation from symptoms? Who benefits from the present stalemate?
Update on christian values: My mother used to complain about a neighbor who was a 7th day adventist, that the first snow in december was a sign that hers was the one true religion. ‘In your face.’
I and my buddies would skip mass to go down to the train station to sit a greasy spoon diner where a guy wearing a dirty apron would reach under the glass counter to grab (with a hairy hand) and put a doughnut on a saucer to go with our coffee.
Confession was a repetition of fake sins… mostly of impure thoughts.
9I have no support for these bishops who uttered not one word during the Trump years against the ultraright Catolicos like Barr who is more immoral than your average sinner-or against the Orange Buffoon himself.
10I found this after I posted above:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/27/bishops-pressuring-biden-over-abortion-are-compromising-catholic-church/
11The hypocrisy and corruption of the clergy, especially the bishops, is one of the main reasons I abandoned the Catholic Church decades ago. And as John says @10, for the bishops to go after Biden over abortion after being stone silent for 4 years of Trump/Barr corruption is the worst kind of hypocrisy. I now regularly attend Our Lady of Perpetual Bloody Marys & New York Times and feel sanctified each time I do so. So, to US bishops who’ve signed on to this travesty, Fuck You, Too!
12One correction –
Catholics are not the only Christian faith that believe in transfiguration of the Eucharist. Here’s a little more about the Greek Orthodox perspective.
https://www.goarch.org/-/the-holy-eucharist
And, I agree that the pandemic has taken this joy from us. The sad part is I can watch on zoom how our local Houston Orthodox priests ignore protocols of the Archbishop meant to protect us from COVID.
13Since we’re talking about religion now, I have to ask
Nick, or any others: Are you just going on faith, or do you merely compartmentalize?
Are we welcoming discussions of the relative reality of Buddhism and Confucianism, which don’t require quite the intellectual arrogance of Christianity authoritarianism?
Do people become more Fascist after they’re raised Catholic?
Does Trump become the Pope by simple displacement?
14The biblical god is certainly as weird as Trump, vengeance and violence and misogyny and xenophobia and jealousy aplenty.
Not sure how old you are Nick, but I remember people being refused communion because they were divorced in the 60’s.
15for crone @3 “Two, four, six, eight; time to transubstantiate” Was humming that as I read Nick’s post. Good to know others were also.
van heldorf @8 Excellent questions. Doubt the religious authoritarians will deign to answer.
16Most of you have already seen this one.
For the rest and restless: A fun mindbender.
Jerome Bixby’s The Man From Earth 1:27:54
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZC-o6FmkNE
An impromptu goodbye party for Professor John Oldman becomes a mysterious interrogation after the retiring scholar reveals to his colleagues he has a longer and stranger past than they can imagine.
17@cpinva #5 – Nope. Sorry. When I was in Catholic grade school in 1972, we were told by women who came to talk to our middle school class that we had to tell our parents to vote for Nixon because McGovern was pro-abortion. If we didn’t, we’d have to confess our sin.
Catholics were WAY ahead of Falwell, et. al. on the “pro-life” issue. My mom belonged to “Pennsylvanians for Human Life” and dragged me to protest at clinics when I was in middle school.
Thank heavens she caught a clue when the “pro-life” loonies started killing health care providers and clinic workers and volunteers. She quit PHL though she continued to oppose abortion.
I became a clinic escort. I’m sure she didn’t approve from her cloud in heaven though I’m also sure I gave her pause for thought.
@Dianne #15 – Yup. One of those folks was my Uncle Marty. The BEST listener I’ve ever met.
18baby boomer @16: answering – power players most likely giving self-serving pablum; rest of the pedestrians, a few will give some thought depending upon how deep into history and creation one wants to go. The rest? Look at the trump supporter numbers for the opposite extreme. Repeating the question, Why?
19Except from the New York Times:
By Jason Horowitz
Published June 14, 2021Updated June 22, 2021
ROME — The Vatican has warned conservative American bishops to hit the brakes on their push to deny communion to politicians supportive of abortion rights — including President Biden, a faithful churchgoer and the first Roman Catholic to occupy the Oval Office in 60 years.
But despite the remarkably public stop sign from Rome, the American bishops are pressing ahead anyway and are expected to force a debate on the communion issue at a remote meeting that starts on Wednesday.
Some leading bishops, whose priorities clearly aligned with former President Donald J. Trump, now want to reassert the centrality of opposition to abortion in the Catholic faith and lay down a hard line — especially with a liberal Catholic in the Oval Office.
The vote threatens to shatter the facade of unity with Rome, highlight the political polarization within the American church and set what church historians consider a dangerous precedent for bishops’ conferences across the globe.
“The concern in the Vatican,” said Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit priest and close ally of Francis “is not to use access to the Eucharist as a political weapon.”
Pope Francis, who has explicitly identified the United States as the source of opposition to his pontificate, preached this month that communion “is not the reward of saints, but the bread of sinners.” His top doctrinal official, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, wrote a letter to the American bishops, warning them that the vote could “become a source of discord rather than unity within the episcopate and the larger church in the United States.”
I was raised Mormon (not now its official name) and the Sacrament (aka Eucharist aka Communion) was for baptized Mormons in good standing. Only. I later joined a denomination that welcomes all believers in Christ to the Communion Table, which seems more in keeping with Jesus’s intent (IMHO). Communion is offered every worship service.
These bishops are (again IMHO) hypocrites of the first order. This kind of stuff is why so many young people are leaving churches in droves. And not-so-young people, too.
20Good questions Ormond.
I’d divide Catholics into two categories. I think there are social justice Catholics that follow the example of Francis and the legalistic kind that I lovingly call Baptist Catholics. There tend to be a lot of those here in Texas.
I took a religious counseling class when I got my masters in counseling. The idea was to be able to speak the language no matter what faith the person came from, so we studied the major religions. I’ve always been fond of the four noble truths in Buddhism. I also enjoyed teaching the world religions in World History. I’m guessing I would be unpopular now.
I came of age in the 1980s but should qualify my remarks about not seeing anyone turned away. That is literally true. However, I know people were discouraged from partaking or made to feel unwelcome. I guess that’s a semantic argument. My thoughts on religion are fairly simple. They are my own and I’m willing to share them but that’s as far as it goes. I try really hard not to project that onto others as I don’t see faith or lack of faith as a character flaw. It’s a choice everyone has.
21Whatever the reason, even BACKERS of the motion to write a paper for presentation to the Bishops that could have had some bearing on Biden getting communion have made it plain that whatever is produced will not ban politicians.
Blowback on the announcement apparently included:
* [possibly] some disapproving message from Rome — speculation is it was a “source close to the Pope”
* bishops who were NOT at the conference meeting to vote expressing their opinions, making a 2/3rds vote at a future meeting less likely
* editorial writers in secular newspapers and magazines
* priests and church members expressing concern about the announcement.
Hypocrisy of sanctioning Biden, Pelosi, and perhaps other Catholics in a national office while ignoring Barr advocating for a re-start of capital punishment and 13 executions may well have featured in some of those statements.
22I’m with you, Nick, on your thoughts on religion. It’s one choice for connecting with the universe. There are others. Or none. It’s VERY personal.
Or as a former priest of ours (not Catholic – along with treehugger#20, it’s a church where everyone is invited to communion) put it, “There are many paths to God,”…however one defines that entity. That was the same priest who regularly went to the local Buddhist temple for meditation.
23Interesting topic, good comments.
My own Catholic education was, in retrospect [50s/60s], much more liberal and enlightened than most such I guess; it depends on the locale and diocesan outlook apparently.
Even so, for example, I think that this 1959 movie was forbidden/discouraged or censored locally :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Denim
[Fourteen years [12 years grade/HS, 2 at a rigorous Jesuit uni] of it, and I’ve been an agnostic since ~15y/o.]
Remembering that the intro of birth control pills really stirred things up, ca. 1960.
The most dogmatic of current Catholics [and other denoms] today consider any form of ‘birth control’ as equivalent to abortion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_control_in_the_United_States#The_sexual_revolution_and_'the_pill‘
This modern-day US bishops group are the pinnacle of hypocrisy.
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https://www.landoverbaptist.org/
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landover_Baptist_Church ]
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[yeah, if you’re still confused, Landover is high parody and snark]
24As Bill Maher said recently: “The American bishops are of the Mel Gibson’s Dad’s school of religion.” That of utter orthodoxy.
25They are making a political decision, time to tax the ever-loving crap out of them.
26van heldorf, that’s two questions.
27#1
Who benefits?
People who’ve been accustomed to defining morality on a daily basis, and have held positions of influence/power as a result of it.
#2
For the fight.
To try every fingernail tearing effort to claw their way back to….
28Relevance.
This is not and never has been a “Christian country,” and certain Christians need to stop trying to make it into one.
Many Americans eschew pork and alcohol, practice ritual circumcision and refuse blood transfusion for religious reasons. Imagine if they insisted we all share their beliefs. (Alcohol prohibition was tried, with disastrous results.) It’s simple: If you believe abortion is a sin, don’t have one.
I wonder how many Catholic bishops voted for the p***y-grabbing adulterer who doesn’t rape women who are “not my type.”
29The one experience I had with a priest denying communion was when he thought the women asking to receive it was inappropriately dressed. She came to church on Saturday evening in a manner suggesting she was heading directly to a night club, complete with low-cut top, bare midriff, and miniskirt.
30We spend a lot of time here agreeing amongst ourselves that other people are dumb and not in touch with reality.
It’s so 1950’s, ok to talk about politics, but not sex or religion, despite them being equally important in the human scheme of things. I guess it’s just self-segregation, a need for a bubble of our own…
I think I’ll drop out of this mutual admiration society and go listen to Glenn Loury and John McWhorter on Bloggingheads.
31More meat, less potatoes.