Church & State

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What to read, and why, as Catholic bishops mull plan to deny Biden Holy Communion

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What to read, and why, as Catholic bishops mull plan to deny Biden Holy Communion

This is a week that could change Catholic life in this country. That is not an exaggeration when you consider what the bishops will be debating.

Barring an intervention from Pope Francis himself, the U.S. bishops will consider, and vote on Thursday, a plan for a document about Holy Communion that includes denying the sacrament to politicians who repeatedly support policies advocating abortion rights. That includes President Joe Biden, only the country’s second Catholic commander in chief ever.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops will gather virtually for their three-day Spring General Assembly starting tomorrow. The public sessions are available on the USCCB website for all to watch. While the bishops will have a busy agenda ahead of them, the biggest issue — in terms of news coverage — is this question of whether the sacrament of Communion can be denied to Catholic politicians with a history of backing abortion rights.

What can we expect from the news coverage?

This has been an issue that was pushed to the forefront by many bishops following Biden’s election last November. This is an issue that has been covered by both the mainstream press as well as Catholic media. The arguments and decisions made this week will have a lasting impact on Catholicism and those who practice it. The opinions many will form this week will come directly from the coverage they read.

Here is the debate in a nutshell: Some bishops want politicians who identify as Catholic to hold public policy positions that are not at odds with church teaching on abortion, marriage, LGBTQ rights and other issues in moral theology. Others argue that these politicians can hold political positions that clash with the church — while expressing private support for church teachings — and continue to attend Mass and receive Holy Communion.

That this division also happen to match with how these Catholics vote will dominate the coverage. it also comes at a time when the Supreme Court will take up a major abortion rights challenge.


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#SBC2021, CRT and sexual abuse: Are compromises possible in this complex showdown?

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#SBC2021, CRT and sexual abuse: Are compromises possible in this complex showdown?

When most journalists, and thus most news consumers, think of Southern Baptists it’s highly likely that “compromise” is not one of the first words that leaps to mind.

But think about this for a moment. The current firestorm surrounding the Southern Baptist Convention’s national meetings in Nashville (tomorrow and Wednesday) centers on recent efforts by the convention’s leaders to find working compromises on two explosive issues in church life — racism and sexual abuse. In both cases, forces have pulled at convention leaders to move further to the right or to pursue more “progressive” options that would clash with realities in SBC life and polity.

Consider the hellish realities of racism and, in particular, the complex secular doctrines of “Critical Race Theory.” The SBC could praise CRT and embrace it or totally reject this school of thought. A compromise? That would stress listening to conservative Black church leaders and saying that CRT makes some points about racism in America that are valid, but that it also contains secular views of evil and race that do not mesh with traditional Christian beliefs. Hold that thought.

On sexual abuse, there are progressives who want the SBC to start some kind of national agency that would be granted powers to yank abusive clergy and congregations into line. This would clash with Baptist teachings on the autonomy of local churches. At the same time, others say SBC leaders have already gone to far while trying to create a centrist, compromise, stance — providing some guidelines for churches facing accusations of sexual abuse, as well as best-practices materials on how to help victims.

So, here is the journalism question to ponder in the next few days: Can national-level religion reporters find a way to avoid the classic two-army, left vs. right, template that dominates most news coverage of clashes of this kind? This would allow readers to see the larger picture — the attempt to find compromises between two extremes that please enough conservatives to prevent a damaging explosion in SBC life.


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The New York Times (#WHOA) probes ACLU's move away from First Amendment liberalism

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The New York Times (#WHOA) probes ACLU's move away from First Amendment liberalism

I don’t know about you, but The New York Times was the last place that I expected to see a long news feature about disturbing trends at the American Civil Liberties Union away from its proud history of First Amendment liberalism.

I am sure that some ACLU insiders must have felt the same way, especially in light of recent headlines about the rising power of a generation of woke journalists at the Times. The pot calling the kettle black?

But there was no way around the contents of that dramatic double-decker headline the other day:

Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis

An organization that has defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan is split by an internal debate over whether supporting progressive causes is more important.

As the headline states, the emphasis in this report is about free speech. Maybe it was too much to ask Times editors to see the same illiberal trend developing in ACLU work defending the First Amendment clause protecting religious freedom, without “scare quotes.”

But we will take what we get because of the influence that the Times has in other newsrooms and even in some influential corners of elite academia.

The story opens with an event celebrating the career of lawyer David Goldberger, who played a key role in the famous 1978 case when the ACLU defended the free speech rights of Nazis to march in Skokie, Ill., the home of many Holocaust survivors. Read this long passage carefully:


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Did Winston Churchill believe in God? Why did Churchill urge his nation to pray?

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Did Winston Churchill believe in God? Why did Churchill urge his nation to pray?

THE QUESTION:

Did Winston Churchill believe in God?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

Sorta. Maybe. Depends what you mean.

The question and that answer are raised in the new book "Duty & Destiny: The Life and Faith of Winston Churchill" (Eerdmans) by Grove City College historian Gary Scott Smith, whose prior works include "Faith and the Presidency from George Washington to George W. Bush."

It's fair to say that during World War Two Churchill saved the United Kingdom and with that the broader prospects for democracy and the defeat of tyranny. In the prior century, the Civil War President Abraham Lincoln had saved the United States and the very possibility of democracy. These two great statesmen, the subjects of an immense number of books, are rather similar -- and similarly mysterious -- when it comes to religious faith.

Lincoln's story is well told in "Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President" (also from Eerdmans) by Princeton Professor Allen Guelzo. Never a baptized church member and a youthful skeptic, Guelzo wrote, Lincoln when leading the nation through unprecedented crisis experienced a spiritual turn. This convinced him that only a moral revolution to end slavery could bring meaning to the war's horrid slaughter.

Thus he wrought the Emancipation Proclamation, announced in 1862 and proclaimed in 1863 and then, definitively, the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery as of December 6, 1865, after he had been assassinated.

Churchill (1874-1965) underwent conventional baptism and confirmation in the Church of England. In the upper-crust mode, his neglectful and non-religious parents left his upbringing to boarding schools (with their mandatory chapels) and especially to his beloved nanny. Elizabeth Everest, a devout Christian, immersed the lad in prayer and study of the Bible, which through life he would quote at length by memory.


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Where will American religious groups fit into the newly electrified abortion debate?

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Where will American religious groups fit into the newly electrified abortion debate?

The U.S. Supreme Court's agreement to review Mississippi's strict abortion law means that the public argument on this unending dispute will be the most intense in many years -- with a ruling due right in the midst of the 2022 election campaign.

Despite the Court's increased conservative majority, there's no certainty it will clamp new restrictions on abortion. Yet it's also possible that the Court might overthrow its own 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized most abortions nationwide in 1973.

If so, the impact will be momentous but not quite as apocalyptic as "pro-choice" advocates suggest. Abortion would remain widely available because decision-making would simply be returned to democratically elected state legislatures and many would maintain liberal policies. Charities might aid women in the "pro-life" states needing travel for out-of-state abortions.

For those covering the religion beat, the coming year is a major defining moment as America's variegated denominations state what they now believe about the morality of abortion and why.

After the Roe ruling, the 1976 conventions of the two major political parties began setting opposite stances. The Democrats' platform acknowledged that many Americans had "religious and ethical" concerns but opposed a Constitutional amendment to bar abortions. Similarly, the Republicans' platform stated that some in the party favored the Supreme Court's edict, but advocated such an amendment "to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children."

Religion writers well know how that basic split hardened and reshaped religious voters' political alignments. There's been less attention to the way the advent of open abortion turned around the Social Gospel thinking of Protestant liberals.


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When covering Moore's exit from SBC power, scribes should ponder what made him 'liberal'

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When covering Moore's exit from SBC power, scribes should ponder what made him 'liberal'

This may be a strange place to start when discussing early news coverage of the Rev. Russell Moore moving from the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission — the crucial Southern Baptist camp in Beltway land — to what looks like a Christianity Today think tank on theology and public life.

So be it. This is where we will start — with the whole Moore is “too liberal” thing.

What does “liberal” mean in that curse that has been tossed about in Baptist social media?

Remember that one of Moore’s primary duties in Washington, D.C., has been to help Southern Baptists defend against attacks on religious liberty and the First Amendment in general. With that in mind, let me return to a question that I have been asking here at GetReligion — while focusing on the role that labels play in American journalism — for a decade or so. This is from a 2015 post:

What do you call people who are weak in their defense of free speech, weak in their defense of freedom of association and weak in their defense of religious liberty (in other words, basic First Amendment rights)?

The answer: I don't know, but it would be totally inaccurate — considering the history of American political thought — to call these people "liberals."

So what do you call someone, like Moore, who has been defending free speech, defending the freedom of association and defending religious liberty?

Wait. For. It. You can accurately call him a “liberal” in that context. In this framework, the New York Times editorial pages and, in many cases, the American Civil Liberties Union, are now — what? What is the accurate term, these days?

Note that this struggle to define “liberal” was at the heart of the celebrated clash between Bari Weiss and the Times. I would argue that it was part of the newsroom warfare that led to the ousting of Liz Spayd as the Times public editor (when she dared to ask if the newspaper was committed to fair, accurate coverage of half of America). It’s at the heart of the growing tensions between gay-rights icon Andrew Sullivan and the LGBTQ establishment. I could go on and on.

But back to another cluster of issues linked to Moore.


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Bishops debate 'Eucharistic coherence,' a matter of doctrine, politics and eternal judgement

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Bishops debate 'Eucharistic coherence,' a matter of doctrine, politics and eternal judgement

Archbishop Joseph Cordileone leads the Archdiocese of San Francisco, a symbolic city in debates about modern American culture.

But what matters the most, as tensions rise among Catholic leaders, is that Cordileone is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's hometown bishop. Thus, it's hard for politicos to avoid blunt passages in his new pastoral letter, "Before I Formed You in the Womb I Knew You."

Citing centuries of church doctrine, the archbishop argued that Catholics who "reject the teaching of the Church on the sanctity of human life and those who do not seek to live in accordance with that teaching should not receive the Eucharist. It is fundamentally a question of integrity: to receive the Blessed Sacrament in the Catholic liturgy is to espouse publicly the faith and moral teachings of the Catholic Church, and to desire to live accordingly."

There is, he added, "a great difference between struggling to live according to the teachings of the Church and rejecting those teachings. … In the case of public figures who profess to be Catholic and promote abortion, we are not dealing with a sin committed in human weakness or a moral lapse: this is a matter of persistent, obdurate and public rejection of Catholic teaching. This adds an even greater responsibility to the role of the Church's pastors in caring for the salvation of souls."

Citing a famous example, Cordileone recalled when former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani received Holy Communion during a 2008 Mass led by Pope Benedict XVI. This caused scandal and, according to the late Cardinal Edward Egan, violated an agreement that Giuliani would not receive the Sacrament because of his public support for abortion rights and other clashes with doctrine.

The big issue, as U.S. bishops prepare for June discussions of "Eucharistic coherence," is not how to handle a former New York City mayor. The question is whether bishops can address their own divisions about the status of pro-abortion-rights Catholics such as Pelosi and President Joe Biden. While vice president, Biden also performed two same-sex marriage rites.

San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy, firing back at Cordileone in America magazine, stressed that the "Eucharist must never be instrumentalized for a political end. … But that is precisely what is being done in the effort to exclude Catholic political leaders who oppose the church's teaching on abortion and civil law. The Eucharist is being weaponized and deployed as a tool in political warfare. This must not happen."


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With all due respect, reports about Biden, the 'McCarrick doctrine' and Mass are not stupid

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With all due respect, reports about Biden, the 'McCarrick doctrine' and Mass are not stupid

“The Biden Communion stories are stupid,” proclaims the headline atop a Religion News Service column by Father Thomas J. Reese.

The opinion by Reese, a Jesuit priest and RNS senior analyst, follows a flurry of news reports — which we first mentioned last week — about whether the nation’s second Catholic president might be denied Communion because of his support for abortion rights.

“This is a stupid story for canonical, theological and political reasons,” Reese writes. “First, and foremost, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops does not have the canonical authority to tell (President Joe) Biden that he cannot go to Communion.”

For insight on the canonical, theological and political issues, I’d highly recommend Reese’s column. As for his claim that the news stories are stupid, I’d respectfully disagree. From a journalistic perspective, they are, in fact, highly newsworthy.

Even if much of the coverage could be better, as Clemente Lisi explained here at GetReligion, with the essay then appearing at Religion Unplugged. A key topic being avoided? The role of fallen cardinal Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick in developing the awkward compromise currently in effect here in America.

Another helpful read at Religion Unplugged: Stephen P. Millies, an associate professor of public theology at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, dissects the power struggle behind the U.S. bishops’ move.

Among this week’s related headlines:

• Pelosi’s archbishop says prominent Catholics who support abortion rights should be denied Communion (by Reis Thebault, Washington Post)

• How faith groups feel after Biden’s first 100 days (by Kelsey Dallas, Deseret News)

• New bishop of Biden’s hometown mum on Communion question (by Nicole Winfield and Luis Andres Henao, Associated Press)

• Catholic bishops who want to deny Biden Communion may have to reckon with the pope (by Jack Jenkins and Claire Giangravé, RNS)


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The politics of Holy Communion and what it says about news coverage of Joe Biden

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The politics of Holy Communion and what it says about news coverage of Joe Biden

If you regularly read mainstream political news coverage, you can often come away with the notion that President Joe Biden is a man who governs as a moderate, seeks unity with Republicans and is consistently guided by his “devout” Catholic faith.

A lot of this reflexive media coverage is largely a fantasy. Biden went from being compared to JFK before Inauguration Day to FDR by the time he recently reached the 100-day mark. He has outlined a series of initiatives that his adversaries on the other side of the aisle have dismissed as socialism. Biden, it must be highlighted, is president at a time when the Senate is split 50-50 and Democrats have a slim majority in the House. The American people did not, in a tight election, give him a healthy mandate.

But this post isn’t aimed at breaking down Biden’s politics.

Instead, it’s to focus on the news coverage around Biden’s faith and how his beliefs relate to the church’s own teachings and the U.S. bishops tasked with enforcing doctrines. Is Biden a progressive revolutionary on matters of morality and doctrine? If so, can he also be “devout” in his faith? Should he — along with many other Catholic politicians — continue to receive Holy Communion? What can, and will, the bishops do next?

A lot of what we know regarding the answers lies in how the press cover such political issues and religion, of course. Combine political politicization in an age of misinformation with the culture wars and you have a very complicated set of factors for the news media to cover.

It should be noted that secular newsrooms don’t dislike organized religion like many may believe. Instead, they just don’t like religious leaders who attempt to defend traditional dogmas that govern said faith. Therefore, news coverage is often framed this way: Biden can be both “very Catholic” and pro-choice. He’s a good, modern Catholic, not a bad, ancient Catholic.

This very issue was thrust back into the forefront again when The Washington Post published an account on April 29 regarding the ongoing conflict between the president and U.S. bishops, a news story promoted on the newspaper’s Twitter that “a rising group of right-wing U.S. Catholic bishops” had come into conflict with a “very Catholic” Biden over his abortion stance.


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