The pontiff had me at stop being incoherent, but I digress. Bishops and laity alike have debated for the last couple of years and beyond whether Catholic politicians who support abortion should be eligible to receive the Eucharist, but the policies on that remain a muddle. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone took the extraordinary step of instructing Nancy Pelosi to refrain from communion after she went so far as to claim that Catholic teaching led her to support abortion, but the Vatican itself either declined to enforce that edict or simply didn’t know about it last month.
That doesn’t mean Pope Francis has dropped the matter of pro-abortion Catholics in political office. Catholic News Agency reported that Pope Francis criticized Joe Biden’s stance as “incoherence,” and that Biden needs to speak to his pastor to better inform his conscience:
During an interview with Univisión and Televisa broadcast July 12, Pope Francis spoke about abortion and Biden’s position, after being asked about whether to admit politicians who promote legal abortion to Holy Communion.
The Holy Father affirmed that there is scientific data that show that “a month after conception, the DNA of the fetus is already there and the organs are aligned. There is human life.”
“Is it just to eliminate a human life?” he then asked.
As for the defense of abortion by the U.S. president, Pope Francis stated that he leaves it to Biden’s “conscience.”
“Let (Biden) talk to his pastor about that incoherence,” the pope said.
The unique and human DNA is present at conception, when the sperm fertilizes the egg and the new human zygote begins to multiply, the basic biological sign of life. The tissues begin to differentiate into organ structures (organogenesis) at three weeks, and all major organs are present and functioning by the eighth week. Human life, however, begins immediately at conception, a scientific certainty whose moral implications are addressed in Catholic doctrine. Those moral implications are so profound that the official Catholic catechism instructs that anyone who acquires, performs, or facilitates an abortion is automatically excommunicated by the very act itself, or latae sententiae as it is worded in Paragraph 2272.
The question has been, and continues to be, what constitutes “formal cooperation” in an abortion, the language used in 2271. Getting an abortion and performing an abortion obviously are included, as is providing funding for a specific abortion, providing direct assistance during an abortion (nurses, clinicians, etc), and potentially secondary actions such as transport. The Catholic Church and its bishops have overall been loathe to apply that to public policy choices, however, and to politicians who make them — even when holding themselves out to be faithful Catholics. The justification for the distinction is that laws don’t commit abortions, even if laws allow them to be committed, and that the harsh penalty relates to personal actions in regard to specific abortions.
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Needless to say, that looks very much like a distinction without much of a difference to a lot of the laity and no small number of the ordained. It looks more like an excuse to avoid electoral entanglement.
That, however, does not let Catholics off the hook for supporting abortion politically. It may not mean an excommunication latae sententiae, but it does mean not properly being in communion with the Church, as Pope Francis makes clear here by calling that position “incoherence” in Catholic politicians. This is the point that Archbishop Cordileone has tried to get across to Nancy Pelosi for years. Even his edict in May, issued after many attempts to address the issue with Pelosi directly, doesn’t excommunicate Pelosi. She is still eligible for all of the other sacraments, and only needs to confess and truly repent of that which separates her from the Church to receive communion. Legitimately, anyway, as determined by her bishop.
That brings us to Pope Francis and Joe Biden, who has used his Catholic identity for decades as part of his political career while conflicting with this core Catholic doctrine on life. Like many other pro-abortion Catholics, Biden has traveled quite a far piece from “I don’t want to impose my religion on others through secular law” to positions that are outright advocacy of abortion as “health care” and beneficial to society. Biden hasn’t gone quite so far as to claim that Catholic teaching leads him to support abortion, the trigger that apparently prompted Archbishop Cordileone to act, but Biden has become more of an advocate over the last couple of decades. Even his executive order after the Dobbs decision was entitled “Protecting Access to Reproductive Health Care Services,” when literally no reproductive service was at all impacted in Dobbs other than abortion.
In other words, Catholic Joe Biden is using his executive authority as president to “protect” abortion and abortion providers. Is that “formal cooperation”? Probably not as the Church defines, but it ain’t far off from that. “Incoherence” is a gentle term for that position as a professed Catholic, and Pope Francis wants Biden to know it.
Addendum: The pontiff refers Biden to his pastor to get his conscience correct, but Biden’s bishop has made that point publicly as well. Wilton Cardinal Gregory gently rebuked Biden last September over abortion:
Cardinal Wilton Gregory says President Joe Biden “is not demonstrating Catholic teaching” with his abortion stance.
The remark was an answer to a reporter’s question at a National Press Club luncheon on Sept. 8 about Biden’s recent comments that he doesn’t believe life begins at conception. In response, Gregory clarified the church’s teaching.
“The Catholic Church teaches, and has taught, that human life begins at conception, so the president is not demonstrating Catholic teaching,” said Gregory, the archbishop of Washington.
Will Cardinal Gregory speak up again after Pope Francis’ public rebuke?
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