Biden's executive orders will widen rift among Catholic bishops

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(OPINION) Can you feel the unity yet? That’s the joke among political conservatives as the Joe Biden administration closes out its first week.

Within hours of taking the oath of office on his family’s massive Bible, President Biden signed a raft of executive orders — something that went on in the ensuing days — to undo strategic executive moves during Donald Trump’s presidency. During that process, Biden fan afoul of traditional Catholic teachings and, once again, placed the spotlight on his Catholic faith.

Political and religious conservatives (not always the same thing) can agree that Biden’s actions over the past week didn’t foster unity. If anything, this blitz of activity highlighted the differences between two ever-divergent Catholic camps in this country, something that revealed itself on Day 1 among the U.S. bishops and across the Atlantic Ocean in Rome as a result of dueling statements and the polemics it unleashed, all of which pointed to old fights and old wounds. Can you say “Theodore McCarrick”?

Biden, the first Roman Catholic president since John F. Kennedy in 1960, is often identified as “devout” (click here for background), when journalists describe his faith. Biden even has a framed photograph in the Oval Office of a meeting with Pope Francis. Of course, the doctrinal side of Biden’s piety isn’t something journalists dig into. We don’t know what is in Biden’s heart or even his head.

But here is the key point for journalists and news readers: What we do know — as is the case with every politician — is what he does and says. Options about church teachings on marriage and sexuality are one thing. Biden’s decision to perform an actual gay union rite represented open conflict with the teachings of his church.

Journalists can (and should) report and show where there is overlap regarding church teachings and where there is clear contradiction. The Religious Left will soon learn that it shouldn’t hitch their wagon to any political ideology. The Religious Right learned that the hard way with Trump — something that could take years to unspool when it comes to credibility.

With Biden being a Democrat, however, I don’t expect the mainstream press to do any of this. Instead, we see puff pieces from The New York Times calling Biden “perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief in half a century.” Guess they forgot that George W. Bush was a born-again Christian who regularly attended services. What about Jimmy Carter’s decades teaching Sunday school?

Here’s the key excerpt from that very feature that ran this past Saturday:

There are myriad changes with the incoming Biden administration. One of the most significant: a president who has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices.

Mr. Biden, perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief in half a century, regularly attends Mass and speaks of how his Catholic faith grounds his life and his policies. And with Mr. Biden, a different, more liberal Christianity is ascendant: less focused on sexual politics and more on combating poverty, climate change and racial inequality.

His arrival comes after four years in which conservative Christianity has reigned in America’s highest halls of power, embodied in white evangelicals laser-focused on ending abortion and guarding against what they saw as encroachments on their freedoms. Their devotion to former President Donald J. Trump was so fervent that many showed up in Washington on Jan. 6 to protest the election results.

Mr. Biden’s leadership is a repudiation of the claim by many conservative leaders that Democrats are inherently anti-Christian.

The article, which read more like an opinion piece than a news story, isn’t shy about casting Biden’s Catholicism as good, while those who voted or supported Trump as bad.

The big idea in this Times’ story is that Biden is on the same page as Pope Francis on many issues. Yet, the story neglects to point out that on abortion, gender and trans rights, Biden and the pope are not on the same page.

While conservative Catholics have doubled down on abortion policy and religious freedom for the past four years, Mr. Biden’s policy priorities reflect those of Pope Francis, who has sought to turn the church’s attention from sexual politics to issues like environmental protection, poverty and migration.

On his first day in office, Mr. Biden recommitted the United States to the Paris climate agreement, the international accord designed to avert global warming; ended the ban on travel from predominantly Muslim and African countries; and stopped construction on the border wall.

Mr. Biden’s support for abortion rights is already causing tension in the Catholic church. Even before the inaugural ceremony had finished, Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued an extensive statement criticizing Mr. Biden for policies “that would advance moral evils,” especially “in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender.” Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago, who is known for his alignment with Pope Francis’ social and economic priorities, pushed back on Twitter, calling the statement unprecedented and “ill-considered.”

It should also be noted that the piece had a glaring error in it — something not missed by those on Catholic Twitter.

The Times eventually made the correction on its website. Biden, in fact, doesn’t celebrate Mass. He attends Mass. A priest celebrates Mass. Details, details.

Some used the story’s publication as a means to gauge how the mainstream press would handle this conflict in Biden’s faith, since the Times often serves as a guide for coverage in many other newsrooms (which is why the Gray Lady receives so much attention from us).

Others wondered why Biden’s Catholicism has been praised, while Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who is anti-abortion, did not get the same treatment in 2017 when she was first nominated for a federal judgeship by Trump.

Let us not forget that Barrett’s faith was put under the microscope during those hearings when Sen. Dianne Feinstein said the “dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern.” Apparently, some dogmas are more acceptable than others.

This takes us to the president’s executive orders, the only real way to see the differences in what Biden says and what he does. It is a tangible way to see the policies he endorses and how that will play with the bishops and, possibly, Catholic voters. Biden ran as someone who wanted to heal the nation’s soul. Instead, there’s been very little healing — whatever that’s supposed to look like — and plenty of partisanship. That’s exactly what I’d expect from any incoming administration at any level of government.

Abortion remains a central issue for Catholics because it comes from the very same teaching — the concept that surrounds the sanctity of human life — which governs the church in terms of a other issues such as economic justice, immigration, environment and the death penalty. On a great host of these issues, for example, the church was at odds with the Trump administration.

Several executive orders already signed by Biden — and a few that have been reported to be on the horizon — will put the current administration at odds with many U.S. bishops. At the same time, it will further drive a wedge among the very same bishops who have different priorities and approaches as to how they should work with the White House.

Biden’s executive order on trans rights, for example, is something lauded in many corners of the press. Vox called opponents to such a move as “fringe conservatives and anti-trans “radical” feminists.” The order would, for example, allow boys (who identify as female) to participate in girls’ sports.

If so, then add Pope Francis to that list of “fringe” folks.

In 2019, the Vatican office responsible for overseeing Catholic educational institutions blasted gender theory, claiming that it seeks to “annihilate the concept of nature.’” The Holy See said the notion of people’s gender identities existing along a spectrum “nothing more than a confused concept of freedom in the realm of feelings and wants.”

But abortion is where the biggest conflicts will arise. If anything unites most practicing Catholics it is the issue of abortion. Biden has, throughout the course of his decades-old political career, had to balance his church’s beliefs and the political policies he actively supported. That’s where Biden has had to shift politically to the left in order to compete in his party’s recent primaries.

Aside from Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, other pieces of legislation over the years — primarily the Hyde Amendment and Mexico City Policy — have divided lawmakers. The Hyde Amendment, passed in 1976, is a provision that forbids the use of federal funds to pay for abortion (except to save the life of the woman or if the pregnancy arises from incest or rape). The Mexico City Policy, finalized in 1984, blocks federal funding for non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling or referrals and advocate to decriminalize such services.

What Biden does with these two provisions sometime over the next few weeks will further serve as a litmus test for the bishops who want this administration to succeed on a host of issues, without colliding with expanding abortion rights. America magazine, a Jesuit publication on the doctrinal left, ran a column imploring Biden to support the Hyde Amendment in an effort to unify the country. Here’s the key part:

The wounds of this not-quite-past election are still sharp, and our divisions are not merely the results of the passions of ego and ambition. So how might Joe Biden act to foster healing in the land? An obvious answer would be to return to his previous, lifelong stance against compelling the American people to finance abortions.

The Hyde Amendment is not a remnant of bitter partisanship. Quite the opposite. The policy that prevents federal funds under most circumstances from being used for abortions was born in bipartisan consensus in 1976, earning practically equal numbers of votes from Democrats and Republicans. Since then, the Hyde Amendment has been attached to federal spending bills almost every year. The presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama came and went without major attempts by any of them to “repeal Hyde.”

Mr. Carter, in fact, appointed a pro-life Catholic, Joseph A. Califano Jr., to head the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Mr. Carter rebuffed a rebellion by his own female appointees who wanted him to reverse course and impose tax-paid abortions. He wrote “no” in response to their memorandum seeking the Hyde Amendment’s demise and told them that his public stance (supportive of the Roe v. Wade decision) was “actually more liberal than I feel personally.”

President Biden apparently holds, or held, a similar stance. Until the summer of 2019, he embraced the Hyde Amendment (as had a variety of his Democratic contemporaries — Al Gore, Tim Kaine and Dick Durbin among them) as a way to protect taxpayers’ consciences. That included his own, as Mr. Biden deplored the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, saying the Supreme Court went “too far.”

The National Catholic Register, on the doctrinal right, also questioned whether the church “could pass the Joe Biden test.” Here’s what the piece argued:

Holy Communion is the core of Catholic life. The part of the Mass in which the faithful receive bread and wine that have been transformed into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, it is the “source and summit of the Christian life,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It is a sacred experience that draws the recipient into the life of Christ and makes it possible for them to lead a life of holiness. It is only open to those Catholics who are not persisting in a state of mortal sin — the most serious kind in Catholic teaching.

Which brings us to Biden. The Church teaches that public officials who publicly support morally offensive policies, including abortion, should not present themselves for Holy Communion. In 2004, under the leadership of the cardinal who would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican congregation charged with upholding doctrine released a document entitled, “Worthy to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles.” It states that when a person’s “formal cooperation” with abortion “becomes manifest” — which includes “consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion” — Catholic politicians should be denied Holy Communion. The Church’s moral teaching does not get clearer than that.

U.S. bishops have been fighting about the specifics of that letter ever since, in part because of strategic moves by former cardinal McCarrick, at that time the archbishop of Washington, D.C., to hide or even twist its contents.

Back to the NCR piece:

Bishops are required to take this issue seriously. It has led Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, to deny Holy Communion to numerous pro-abortion Catholic politicians. The list includes Sen. Dick Durbin, who voted against a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks, as well as several prominent members of the Illinois Legislature who supported legislation making abortion a “fundamental right” in Illinois.

The Vatican’s guidance is still in force. When the clergy — whether a bishop, archbishop or cardinal — treats it as non-binding, they give the false perception that Catholic teaching on abortion is also optional. Such actions say to all who see them that the Catholic Church does not truly believe or practice what it preaches.

The next few weeks, months and four years will have no shortage of such disagreements.

As usual, abortion will remain the third rail of American politics. It will also highlight the church’s internal squabbles regarding how to prioritize abortion. Many bishops are ready to take the fight to Biden, while others — a few wearing red hats — are more than happy to overlook the differences and attempt to work with the administration.

This post was originally published at GetReligion.