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Is Biden Catholic? Is the Pope Catholic?

Biden and Pope Francis

President Joe Biden, a Catholic, met today in Rome with Pope Francis, also a Catholic.

To put the matter as mildly as possible, it is obvious to all – and not merely Catholics – that the Pope and the President are not sitting in the same pew on the matter of abortion. The Pope believes, along with Popes stretching back to Peter, the rock upon which the Catholic Church was founded, that abortion is a serious sin. The modern church calls sin a “disorder.” Of course, in sin, as in the law, there are degrees of culpability. First degree murder is not manslaughter. Punishments are affixed according to the severity of the sin.

The Christian Church condemned abortion very early in the 2nd century BC in a document called the Didache (literal translation: “Teaching”) written sometime after 100 AD: “You shall not kill the embryo by abortion, and shall not cause the newborn to perish.” Since the sixteenth century, Canon Law (1398) has stipulated, “A person who actually procures an abortion incurs automatic excommunication"

Before his audience with Francis, Biden had received an absolution of sorts from the Washington Post. In an October 4th story, the Post noted, “A top Vatican cardinal says President Biden should not be denied Communion amid a push by U.S. Catholic bishops to withhold the sacrament from the president because of his support for abortion rights… Cardinal Peter Turkson, [the head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development], who works closely with Pope Francis, said the sacrament, also known as the Eucharist, should ‘not in any way become a weapon,’ and denying it [the Eucharist] should only occur in ‘extreme cases.’”

In an interview with Axios, Turkson remarked, “If you say somebody cannot receive Communion, you are basically doing a judgment that you are in a state of sin.” Asked specifically during his interview whether “state of sin” applied to Biden, Turkson replied, “No,” according to Axios.

Axios noted in its story, “U.S. bishops are scheduled to meet next month and discuss whether to deny Communion to Biden and other Catholic politicians, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), over their support for abortion rights.

“In June, the bishops voted 168 to 55 to draft a ‘teaching document’ [Didache] on the Eucharist, and conservatives hope that the final document can provide the justification for withholding Communion from Biden.”

A reliable textual account of the Axios interview with Turkson may be found in America Magazine: A Jesuit Review.

The meeting between the Pope and Biden, according to the most recent Associated Press story, was somewhat awkward.

“The Vatican on Thursday,” the AP reported, “abruptly canceled the planned live broadcast of U.S. President Joe Biden meeting Pope Francis, the latest restriction to media coverage of the Holy See that sparked complaints from White House- and Vatican-accredited journalists.

“The live broadcast of Biden’s Friday visit was trimmed to cover just the arrival of the president's motorcade in the courtyard of the Apostolic Palace. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the revised plan reflected the “normal procedure” established during the coronavirus pandemic for all visiting heads of state or government.”

Missing in the story were other more theologically precise quotes from other Catholic Church leaders.

The following italicized material, data compiled by the British Broadcasting Company, not a Vatican source, is, or should be, widely available to reporters both Catholic and non-Catholic:

BBC

Abortion

Last updated 2009-08-03

Catholic - current position

Pope John Paul II's view

Pope John Paul II took a very strong line on abortion, describing it as murder.

During a trip to Poland in August 2002 he reiterated his opposition to abortion:

Frequently man lives as if God did not exist, and even puts himself in God's place... He claims for himself the Creator's right to interfere in the mystery of human life. Rejecting divine law and moral principles, he openly attacks the family.

Pope John Paul II, 2002

In 1995, Pope John Paul II wrote an encyclical (a teaching letter to the whole Catholic Church) called Evangelium Vitae ('The Gospel of Life').

He stated the fundamental position of the Church:

I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral.

Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 1995

In this he was directly referring to abortion, euthanasia and the destruction of human embryos in medical research.

On abortion specifically the Pope wrote:

I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.

Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 1995

In October 1996 the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales published a document called The Common Good in which they said that all human rights flow from one fundamental right: the right to life.

This followed a 1980 document in which the seven Catholic Archbishops of Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland) issued a document called 'Abortion and the Right to Live'.

This emphasized that the Church's opposition to abortion stemmed from recognition of the basic rights of all individuals, including the unborn (who have their own intrinsic value.)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reiterates this too. The 1992 version quotes from the document Donum Vitae ('the gift of life') from the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the department that deals with matters of faith and morals). It says:

The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority.

These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by the society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the persons by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin.

Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being's right to life ... from the moment of conception until death.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

Implications

For many modern Catholic theologians the Church's position on abortion has very clear social and political implications. Cardinal Bernardin wrote:

If one contends, as we do, that the right of every fetus to be born should be protected by civil law and supported by civil consensus, then our moral, political, and economic responsibilities do not stop at the moment of birth.

Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker.

Such a quality of life posture translates into specific political and economic positions on tax policy, employment generation, welfare policy, nutrition and feeding programs, and health care.

Consistency means we cannot have it both ways. We cannot urge a compassionate society and vigorous public policy to protect the rights of the unborn and then argue that compassion and significant public programs on behalf of the needy undermine the moral fiber of the society or are beyond the proper scope of governmental responsibility.

Cardinal Bernardin

The  BBC’s account of the traditional Catholic view of abortion, even critics of Catholic theology inside and outside the Church may be forced to admit, is fair, faithful and accurate. Of course, news accounts written by reporters whose views on abortion run in the rut of far left abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood need not be fair or comprehensive. Rarely do such political partisans admit to bias. Still less are they willing to point to “scientific” inconsistencies in views that wink at partial birth abortion.

The Hartford Courant, the day after Biden’s meeting with Pope Francis, closed in large part to the media, did not mention that the President’s visit was extraordinary in this respect, as recounted in the above AP report.

But the Hartford paper, the longest continually published paper in the United States, more slender every day and more costly – the Saturday Hartford Courant charges $5 at newsstands – did feature a story on Connecticut Republican’s annual Prescott Bush Dinner, featuring U.S. Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, that was closed to the press. Apparently the closure was at the request of Kennedy.

State Democrat Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo chided Republicans in the storyNo Press at GOP keynote Address: “When Nancy Pelosi was the keynote at the last Bailey Dinner, we welcomed the press. But the party of free speech banned reporters from its fundraising dinner and keynote address. It does make you wonder, what is it the Republicans don’t want you to know.”

Indeed, and government by caucus has always been closed to Connecticut’s media, without so much a whimper issuing from the state’s media, now indignant that an annual dinner has been closed to them.

Republican Party Chairman Ben Pronto responded that DiNardo had best concern herself with more important questions: “God Bless Nancy DiNardo if that’s all she’s got to worry about, while she has legislators who are being arrested by the federal government for stealing from taxpayers…”

The Courant reporter explained the reference: “Pronto was referring to the recent arrest of State Rep. Michael DiMassa, a West Haven Democrat who is accused by the FBI of stealing more than $600,000 in federal COVID relief money that had been earmarked  for West Haven…”

Then too, during the administration of current Governor Ned Lamont and his Democrat predecessor, Dannel Malloy, Republicans in the General Assembly had been all but shut out of state budget negotiations, most of which occurred in Democrat General Assembly caucuses closed to the press.

So it goes in Connecticut. No one mentioned that the Bailey Dinner was once called the Jefferson, Jackson, Bailey Dinner, both Jackson and Jefferson’s names having been excised from the Democrat’s annual money grab because both owned slaves, and Jackson was primarily responsible for moving the Plains Indians from their homelands onto reservations.

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