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 story, No 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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