Joe Biden is the first Catholic to become president of the United States in recent years 60 years and the second in the entire history of the country, after John F. Kennedy.
Weigh Therefore, his presence in the White House instead of being a reason for satisfaction seems to be exposing deep differences between the Catholic hierarchy in that country.
The most recent proof of this came last Friday when the United States Episcopal Conference approved a proposal to draft a set of guidelines on the Eucharist that could materialize an initiative of the most conservative wing of American Catholicism: Denying Biden communion because of his support for abortion .
Communion, the act of receiving the host consecrated by the priest, is one of the rituals holiest of Catholicism and constitutes the central part of each Mass. According to these beliefs, the bread and wine consecrated during that ceremony become the body and blood of Christ.
The measure could mean a severe personal blow for Biden, who attends mass regularly since he was a child and who constantly includes in his speeches references to the Bible and the teachings he received as a child from priests and nuns.
Consulted by the press last Friday, the president tried to subtract importance to this matter. “This is a private matter and I do not think it will happen,” he said.
The initiative, however, has generated a discussion that goes far beyond the personal beliefs of the US president, as a point that has merited the intervention of the Vatican itself, which last May warned in a letter to the US bishops that this proposal could “become a source of discord instead of unity “.
But, what does this initiative consist of?
From theology to politics
Formally, what the United States Episcopal Conference approved was to initiate the drafting of a kind of theological declaration on the Eucharist, motivated in part by the bishops’ concern about the gradual decline in the attendance of faithful to mass , as well as the way they understand communion.
A Pew Center study conducted in 2019, revealed that only a third of Catholics in the United States believe that during Mass the host and the consecrated wine become literally in “the body and blood of Christ.”
The document that the bishops plan to produce, however, could serve as theological justification for denying communion to Biden and other Catholic politicians who support the right to abortion.
The decision was approved with 168 votes in favor, 55 against and six abstentions. This reveals that it enjoys a clear majority in favor, but also that it is far from reflecting a unanimous position among the bishops.
That would be precisely one of the concerns that this initiative would cause in the Vatican.
“For Francis, a majority vote among a conference of deeply divided bishops is not a sign that one should move forward, but rather the opposite” Austen Ivereigh, a biographer of the Pope, told The New York Times .
“Francis has been consistent in his message to the American bishops: ‘ N or get caught up in the culture wars and bear witness to unity. I don’t think this vote will do that, ”he added.
For years, the Pope has made numerous appeals within the Catholic Church to give priority to the issues of poverty and social justice, rather than to the polarizing issues such as equal marriage, multiculturalism or abortion.
John Carr, who was an advisor to the American Episcopal Conference during 25 years, noted that the vote reflected “serious divisions between bishops. ”
“ In my experience it is unprecedented for the conference to go ahead when there are so many bishops who are opposed, ”Carr told the National Catholic Review.
Pointing towards Biden
Although during the debates prior to the vote there were several bishops who denied in their interventions that the initiative on the Eucharist was directed against anyone in particular, Others expressly mentioned Biden and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. representatives, Nancy Pelosi, as personalities for whom it was necessary to prepare the document.
“ There is a special obligation on those in leadership positions due to their public visibility “, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades argued after the vote on the advisability of preparing the document.
However, other bishops in the United States have criticized the possible “ use of the Eucharist as a political weapon “.
But the positions of the US president were under scrutiny long before.
In November, shortly after Biden won the presidential election, the Archbishop of Los Angeles and president of the Episcopal Conference, José H. Gómez, wrote a letter warning that Biden’s position on abortion created a “difficult and complex situation” .
He ensured that the support to abortion among politicians of the Catholic faith “creates confusion among the faithful about what the Catholic Church really teaches on these issues.”
Shortly after, Gómez formed a working group to study the issue and on the day of Biden’s inauguration issued a statement of 1, 168 words in which he questioned the new president for defending policies that “would advance moral evils” on issues such as “abortion , contraception, equal marriage and gender. ”
Polarization in the churches
Despite the questions that submit, Biden has been clear in saying that his personal position is against abortion, but that he does not contemplate the possibility of imposing his beliefs on other people.
“ I accept my Church’s position on abortion as a De Fide doctrine. Life begins at conception. That is the judgment of the Church. I accept it in my personal life. But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians, Muslims and Jews, ”he said during a debate in the election campaign of 2012, when he was running for reelection as Obama’s vice president.
“I don’t think we have the right to tell other people, to women, that they cannot control their bodies. That is a decision between them and their doctor, in my view, and the Supreme Court. I’m not going to interfere with that, ”he added.
In spite of everything, it is likely that the president is right and that the initiative does not materialize or, at least, that it does not reach the point of that Catholic politicians like him be denied communion.
Ultimately, for the document to be approved it must have the unanimous vote of the US bishops or, otherwise, the favorable vote of two thirds of them and the approval of the Vatican, which according to the experts is highly unlikely.
At the same time, priests usually have autonomy when deciding to whom they will give the Communion and, until now, those responsible for the churches that the president usually attends – Cardinal Wilton Gregory, in Washington DC, and Bishop Francis Malooly, of Wilmington (Delaware) – have ruled out the possibility of denying him communion.
Malooly, in particular, has said that has no intention of “getting drawn into partisan politics s “ nor to” politicize the Eucharist as a way to communicate the teachings of the Catholic Church. “
And it is that many analysts attribute this controversial initiative to the rise that the The Christian right has experienced in recent years in the United States, not only among Protestants, but also among Catholics.
According to a study by the Pew Center, 4 out of every 10 White Catholic voters in the United States voted for the Republican Party in 2008, while currently there are 6 of each 10.
It is an ideological turn that could have transferred the political division of the country to the interior of the cult temples.
Alberto Melloni, an expert in the history of the Catholic Church residing in Rome, told The New York Times that the initiative of the bishops Americans was “very dangerous” and recalled that the Vatican abandoned long ago the idea that it was the job of the church to direct politics .
And it is that, paradoxically, one of the fears that he had to combat during the electoral campaign of 1960 the late President John F. Kennedy was the idea that because he was a Catholic he would be subject to the designs of his Church.
Now Biden, installed in the White House, faces objections that do not come from the voters but from an important part of his own Church.
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