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    The Issue of Abortion Is a Litmus Test for the American Catholic Church

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    Ignoring warnings from Pope Francis and the Vatican, US Catholic bishops earlier this month overwhelmingly approved drafting guidance that would deny the rite of communion to public officials who do not support the church’s opposition to abortion. The decision was seen as the church’s most public rebuke yet of US President Joe Biden, only the second Catholic to occupy the White House. A drafting committee will convene to write the guidance and present a draft to the bishops for a formal vote in November.

    The sacrament of communion, or Holy Eucharist, lies at the core of the Catholic faith. The communion host, bread, is viewed as the actual body of Jesus upon consecration by the priest during Mass. Receiving it is considered a sign of a believer’s state of grace. Receipt of communion is de rigueur and almost automatic for any Catholic attending Mass. Typically, only non-Catholics and excommunicated Catholics would be formally denied communion, though those who consider themselves not in a state of grace, i.e., guilty of a serious sin, are not supposed to receive it. Abortion, among others, is considered a grievous sin.

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    Joe Biden is an observant Roman Catholic, having grown up and been educated in the church. He regularly attends Sunday Mass and even periodic daily services, and receives communion, which has never been denied him previously. He often quotes from the Bible and church hymns in his political remarks and is known to frequently recite the rosary, which he carries with him in his pocket.

    Biden has been clear on his position on abortion. While accepting the teachings of the church, he has said that he will not impose his personal view on others and, therefore, supports a woman’s right to choose. It is precisely that position that has riled American bishops, all of whom have begun to view the issue as a litmus test for Catholicism.

    Losing Their Hold

    In America, the Catholic Church has seen a steady erosion of adherents to its teachings on a host of moral issues, most involving the treatment and role of sex and gender in everyday life, and abortion. American Catholics, like their non-Catholic counterparts, are all over the moral map. While practicing or observant Catholics are more likely to follow church teachings on these matters, even they have shown an independent streak by making decisions in their lives at odds with traditional Catholic dogma.

    For example, the church officially opposes the use of artificial contraception, yet 99% of US Catholic women use some form of artificial birth control, according to a recent Guttmacher Institute poll. This compares with 99.6% of women with no religious affiliation, 99.4% of mainline Protestant women, 99.3% of evangelical Protestants and 95.7% with other religious connections. While this is universally known among Catholics, the church leadership nowadays usually — and wisely — avoids the subject. Moreover, there is no movement to deny communion to either these women or those who support their right to choose contraception.

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    The church sees its authority eroding elsewhere as well. Surveys suggest that Catholics favor allowing to divorce and remarry, and divorced Catholics who remarry to receive communion. Since 2011, a majority of Catholics have supported gay marriage, up to 69% today. Sixty percent support the ordination of women, and 62% think that priests should be able to marry.

    On the controversial subject of abortion, a clear majority (56%) of Catholics support its legalization. The figure may be deceptive, however. Among Catholics who attend Mass regularly, opposition to abortion is significantly higher. Nevertheless, two-thirds of Catholics oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case in which the US Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

    On the specific issue before the American bishops, 67% of Catholics oppose denying communion to Biden for his views on abortion. Worth noting, however, is that among Catholics who identify as Democrat or Democrat-leaning, 87% oppose such a ruling, while only 44% who identify as Republican or Republican-leaning do so.

    Immutable Catholicism

    All of this lends weight to the call among a growing majority of American Catholics for changes in their church’s policies and teachings. Yet the Catholic Church is anything but a democracy. So, Catholics are voting not only with their feet but also their dollars, either leaving the church or simply refusing to support it with their contributions. Those who strongly identify as Catholic have declined from 46% in 1974 to just 27% in 2017. Regular Sunday Mass attendance among Catholics has also fallen, from nearly 50% in 1974 to about 25% in 2012.

    These numbers tell some but not all of the story behind the church’s decline in the US. From 1970 to 2020, the number of priests in the US fell by 40%, not surprising given that vocations draw heavily from the church’s school system, which has also suffered declining numbers. Catholic schools are closing across the country, with almost 50% fewer elementary schools and 40% fewer secondary schools in 2020 than in 1970. Catholic parishes, which typically support Catholic schools, have fallen by 15% since 1990.

    With declining membership and Mass attendance have come decreasing church collections. Also, Catholics see withholding contributions as the only way to voice their opposition to church policies. The child sex abuse scandal that has wracked the church for the last 20 years has also provoked considerable outrage among Catholics of all political persuasions, especially as diocese after diocese pays tens of millions in legal settlements of child abuse cases nationwide, dating back to the 1950s. Many believe the church has yet to provide a full accounting of the priests’ behavior and of the senior clerics who tolerated it.

    It is this independent thought and attendant behavior that has conservative Catholic bishops worried. They fear the steady decline of Catholicism in America into the same fate as Protestantism, a cafeteria-style buffet of moral and theological offerings and teachings from which members may pick and choose. For an organization accustomed to obedience and acceptance, it is tantamount to a revolution. They have chosen to confront that revolution on the abortion battlefront.

    Train Wreck or Track Change?

    Though he may not have sought the position, Joe Biden represents the growing numbers of American Catholics — and most definitely Americans in general — who wish to define a defensible middle ground on abortion, a chronically neuralgically contentious issue in the US. The conservative Catholic bishops will have none of it, rather drawing a clear line brooking no viable middle ground.

    In doing so, they’ve formally submitted the church to America’s culture wars that infect so many segments of polity and society. Even more importantly for the church, these bishops threaten to divide the US institution. On one track, there is the conservative movement, a compliant core that is faithful to all the church’s teachings and dogma, intolerant of any deviation, whether on abortion, married priests, contraception, gay marriage, etc. On another track, there is a more liberal version of the church, focusing on its historic mission of social justice, immigration, climate change and poverty elimination but also more tolerant of diverse views on sex and morality.

    Pope Francis unquestionably knows this and is trying to avoid what may be inevitable, especially as his American bishops appear so eager for the confrontation and consequent division. Following the bishops’ vote, he issued no comment. The Vatican asserted that he had already spoken on his opposition to the action. Clearly, however, their decision flouted his position and amounts to no less than a direct challenge to the pope and his authority, a rarity in recent church history.

    Francis and the Vatican appear to be relying on the ultimate failure of the bishops’ initiative. It would require unanimous approval by the Conference of Bishops or at least two-thirds approval followed by the pope’s consent. The likelihood of either is microscopically slim.

    The bishops’ action is more than one of merely trying to force dogmatic adherence to church teachings. It is a barely veiled challenge to this pope whom they’ve viewed as out of step with tradition and steering the church down a dangerous path of diluting the faith. Even if their measure fails, they will have established themselves as an alternative voice of the Catholic faith, thereby condemning Catholics across the country to a church divided between two versions of Jesus’ “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.”

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Catholic Bishops’ War Against Joe Biden

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      The political faction of the Catholic Church known as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is facing a major problem. Though it was never meant to play a political role, for historical reasons, it has allowed itself to do what all individual Americans find themselves compelled to do: choose a side. It has fallen into one of the two cultural-political grooves Americans are expected to follow and identify within a binary world of opposition between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans.

      Since the church’s traditions stretch back two millennia, a majority of US bishops feel that they logically belong on the conservative side. But having once been instructed to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, Christian prelates have a Biblical precedent for avoiding a partisan political stance. Moreover, for nearly two centuries, the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority effectively marginalized the Catholic Church as a potential political force. Even though it stands as the largest single Christian denomination, the Catholic hierarchy in the US has traditionally deferred to the dominant worldview of Protestant nationalism in an officially secular nation whose coins nevertheless proclaim that in God they trust and whose flag, when pledged to, represents “one nation, under God.”

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      In other words, a relatively stable historical pax religiosa commanded that Catholics let the Protestants rule, going about their business on the sidelines. Things, alas, become troublingly complex on those rare occasions when a Catholic is elected president. This happened once before, but ended after less than three years, on November 22, 1963, with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Now it has happened again with the election of Joe Biden. The bishops feel they must choose between their adherence to a pan-Christian right-wing agenda in the US culture wars and their support of a member of their flock who legally holds the reins of secular power in the most powerful nation on earth.

      Quoted by AP, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City expressed what he formulates as a paradox that Biden must account for: “It can create confusion. … How can he say he’s a devout Catholic and he’s doing these things that are contrary to the church’s teaching?”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Devout:

      Attached by conscience to a set of guiding principles often of religious inspiration that manifests itself through an intimate sense of personal devotion but taken by people with an presumptuous sense of their own authority to signify unthinking obedience of all individuals to their own personal set of values.

      Contextual Note

      There are two simple answers to the archbishop’s question, one secular and the other theological. On the secular side, Biden can claim to be “a devout Catholic” because the US Constitution protects freedom of speech. On the spiritual side, traditional Catholic theology actually holds conscience in higher regard than ecclesiastic law.

      Like most hypercompetitive Americans, bishops clearly believe in the virtue of asserting one’s power, which in US culture means committing to pushing one’s influence always a bit further than seems natural. But in the more ancient Catholic tradition, bishops are meant to be guides of the flock, supporting the effort of the faithful to live up to the ideals of the Christian community. The community is neither a military organization dedicated to violence nor a profit-focused enterprise out to crush its rivals. One contemporary American theologian, Marcel Lejeune, calls the Catholic community “a difficult mess, wrapped up in grace. More like a family.”

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      Catholic Bishops are not expected to play the role of theologians. They neither make nor enforce the law of the church, known as canon law. They are specifically called upon to teach, but neither to legislate nor to judge. Pope Benedict XIV, in a 1740 encyclical on the duties of bishops, described them “as tender parents of the lambs,” the faithful who compose their flock. Bishops may teach and preach, but not overreach.Canon 383 states that “a bishop should act with humanity and charity toward the brothers and sisters who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church.”

      So why, in the name of charity, do a majority of US bishops want to publicly shame Joe Biden? USCCB President Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles complains that “our new President has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender.”

      The Washington Post reports that once Biden’s election was confirmed, the USCCB created “a special working group to address issues surrounding the election of a Catholic president who in some cases promotes policies in conflict with Catholic teaching and the bishops’ priorities.” Perhaps realizing that the reconciliation of a church’s pastoral teaching and the democratic practices of the surrounding secular society may require more complex reflection than the bishops are capable of processing or tolerating, “the working group was disbanded, and the topic moved to the USCCB’s doctrine committee.”

      Archbishop Naumann complained that Biden’s public position “can create confusion.” Michael Sean Winters, author of “God’s Right Hand: How Jerry Falwell Made God a Republican and Baptized the American Right,” commented on the bishops’ stance: “What it showed is that most of the speakers are confused in ways that are unique, and common, to ideologues.” Michelle Boorstein, writing for The Washington Post, adds this remark: “The USCCB is akin to an industry group of equals and has no authority over bishops themselves; only the Vatican does.” Moreover, as theology professor Steven Millies has observed, “What we’re seeing now is an effort to please donors who want a church which will wage a culture war.” In short, the American way.

      Historical Note

      Winters documents how the Protestant American right not only captured God but enlisted the Catholic hierarchy in support of their Republican God. For most of the 20th century, working-class American Catholics tended to be Democrats. At the same time, because of their low social status, second-generation Catholic immigrants were disproportionately attracted to the military and law enforcement. This eventually created an identification within the Catholic community with the militaristic values of US nationalism and the enforcement of laws dictated by an essentially white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant power structure.

      John Kennedy’s election in 1960 troubled many people in the traditional power pyramid who were relieved to see him die in Dallas. Still, Kennedy’s election demonstrated that Catholics could have a role to play among the ruling elite. That may have been a factor in the new strategy of the Protestant right — formerly indifferent to the question of abortion that appeared to obsess only the Catholic Church — as they began to court the Catholic electorate. Protestant fundamentalists strove to show their solidarity with Catholics by not only embracing the “pro-life” cause but even turning it into the principal casus belli of the new culture wars designed to permit the Republicans to dominate politics and orientate policy toward the neoconservative norm that became dominant in the 1980s, infecting the Democratic Party as well.

      The absurdity of the Catholic hierarchy’s commitment to the positions of the Protestant fundamentalists’ worldview is best demonstrated by that same hierarchy’s indifference to the Vatican’s consistent opposition to nationalistic militarism and the scandal of war. If the sacrifice of human life constitutes the basis of their moral stance, abortion cannot even begin to compete with the loss of life and utter destruction wrought by American wars. And yet the bishops have never demonstrated the slightest concern with imperial slaughter.

      Most recently Pope Francis asserted that “in recent decades every single war has been ostensibly ‘justified’” by its proponents. At the same, he asserts that “it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a ‘just war.’”

      The two most authoritative theologians and philosophers in the Catholic tradition — St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas — both insisted on the authority of the individual’s conscience and the difficulty of justifying war. As T. Hoffman points out, “Aquinas argued that the binding character of conscience, whether erring or not, means that acting against conscience is always evil.” Even if the bishops think Biden is wrong, it is presumptuous of them to judge his conscience. As for war, Biden could be held to account as the major Democratic promoter of George Bush’s clearly unjust and illegal invasion of Iraq. But that has never troubled the American bishops.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More