Communion Conundrum: 3 Things To Watch For At the Fall USCCB Meetings
(ANALYSIS) What is news? It’s the key question editors and reporters continuously ask themselves when approaching and covering a major event.
Days before a prescheduled event or meeting like a political convention or the Super Bowl, these same people working in newsrooms prepare for what they can expect — although much of journalism deals with the unexpected, such as scandal, crime or natural disaster. Reporters are not in the seeing-the-future business — but there are story lines that they look for ahead of a prearranged event.
One such event will be the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops annual fall meeting in Baltimore, the first in-person assembly since the pandemic struck in March 2020, that started Monday and runs through Thursday. What used to be a largely overlooked week by mainstream news organizations has been catapulted into the spotlight in recent years for several reasons.
Many prominent Roman Catholic bishops have become increasingly vocal in the ongoing culture wars, and that’s drawn more media attention. At the same time, American Catholics have increasingly become split along political and doctrinal lines on issues such as abortion during the Trump years and with last year’s election of Joe Biden — the first Catholic president since John F. Kennedy in 1960 — and his open advocacy of pro-abortion rights policies.
Thus, the USCCB meeting has become a news event that now lives outside the Catholic media ecosystem. Alas, there may even be political desk reporters covering this event. The main story line since the 2020 election season has been the ongoing argument over whether Catholic politicians who openly advocate for abortion are in direct conflict with church teachings and therefore should not receive Holy Communion.
Biden’s recent meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican was big news — not so much for the meeting itself, which appeared mundane and cordial from what we saw via the video feed provided by the Vatican, but for the president’s remarks to the press afterward about the meeting. It was then that Biden said the pope had called him “a good Catholic” who should continue receiving Communion.
That sets up this week’s media coverage of the meetings and the bishops’ plan to hammer out a public document that would address this thorny issue of whether a public official — who also happens to be a Catholic — backs political causes contrary to doctrine, such as abortion.
What should reporters be looking for this week? What can they prepare for? What issues, other than Communion, that the bishops discuss be news?
What is the news here? That depends on the newsroom one works for. Mainstream news outlets care little about doctrine — period. However, in this case, doctrine cannot — or should not — be avoided. While doctrinal debates are important, expect little in the way of detailed reporting on theology or even church law from national dailies like The New York Times, Washington Post or USA Today. Instead, look for the Catholic press — on both the doctrinal right and left — to be all over those ancient and modern issues.
Instead, the USCCB will be seen by most mainstream newsrooms through a political prism. They care about what this means for Biden or Catholic lawmakers, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as a whole. They don’t care what it means for actual Catholics in pews. In fact, how it impacts the country’s millions and millions of Catholics isn’t a priority unless you are talking about their politics. Again, that’s what the Catholic media — on the left and right — will delve into as this week wears on.
Here is a test of the coverage: Look for references to the sacrament of confession. That’s an example of a crucial topic in these debates that reporters just don’t, well, “get.” Meanwhile, here are three story lines journalists need to watch for this week:
Communion and Catholic Politicians
As mentioned, this is the sole issue anyone in the mainstream press cares about. It should be noted that just a few weeks back, The Pillar reported that it had gotten its hands on a draft of the document that addresses the “Eucharistic worthiness.”
Here’s what they reported:
A draft text of the document, which was finalized in September and circulated to the bishops last month, addresses the subject of “Eucharistic worthiness,” — the states of grace and sin which the Church teaches affect a Catholic’s suitability to receive the sacrament. But as drafters predicted in June, the draft includes no specific mention of high-profile Catholic politicians in favor of abortion.
It does not include any recommendations for the denial of Communion, despite some media predictions it would do so.
The 26 pages of a draft text obtained by The Pillar focus mostly on the Eucharist as a gift, as the real presence of Christ, and as a sign and cause of communion with Christ and his Church.
The draft document calls Catholics to worship, to transformation in holiness, and to prophetic proclamation of the Gospel, characterized by a commitment to love for neighbor, solidarity with the poor, and a commitment to justice and the common good.
“The Lord is with us in the Eucharistic Mystery celebrated in our parishes and missions, in our beautiful cathedrals and in our poorest chapels,” the draft document says.
“He is present and he draws near to us, so that we can draw nearer to him. The Lord will be generous to us with his grace if we, by his grace, humbly ask him to give us what we need.”
As stated, the USCCB is scheduled to vote on the guidelines, and this very document could very well be what they settle on after it was publicly floated in The Pillar. It is less sexy for the mainstream press if the document doesn’t address Biden and Pelosi by name — it’s very likely that it will not.
Instead, the document will largely serve to remind all Catholics of the importance of the sacrament. Last June, the USCCB said a draft document on the Communion issue would include “a special call for those Catholics who are cultural, political or parochial leaders to witness to the faith.”
The purpose of all this is also to create a “teaching document” for priests and parishes to follow. I suspect, if news coverage stays true to form, that it will be seen as a veiled way for the bishops to send a message to Biden and his politics.
It will be overlooked by many reporters that the document isn’t to much to weaponize Communion — although there remains a concern by some bishops that this is what’s happening — as to address the issue that only one-third of American Catholics, a 2019 Pew Research poll found, know what transubstantiation is. And even fewer Catholics are going to confession. This is what Pew reported at the time:
But a new Pew Research Center survey finds that most self-described Catholics don’t believe this core teaching. In fact, nearly seven-in-ten Catholics (69%) say they personally believe that during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine used in Communion “are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.” Just one-third of U.S. Catholics (31%) say they believe that “during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.”
State of U.S. priests and American Catholics
Speaking of polls, two key surveys were released in recent weeks that add some context to what will happen this week and the issues the bishops will address.
America magazine reported that priests on “both sides of the U.S. political divide are largely pessimistic about the state of the U.S. church and its future, according to a study released on Nov. 2 and based on an email poll of 1,036 Catholic clergymen.”
This is what they reported:
They also view their brethren as increasingly “theologically conservative or orthodox,” thanks to younger members of the clergy. Younger U.S. priests were also notably more negative in their assessments of Pope Francis.
“Just over half [of respondents] indicate things in the Catholic Church in America are ‘not so good,’ and this holds true across the full range of the political spectrum,” wrote report co-author Brad Vermurlen, of the University of Texas at Austin, in the journal Public Discourse. “As it happens, if one segment of Catholic priests can be identified as relatively less pessimistic, it is those who call themselves politically moderate.”
The “2021 Survey of American Catholic Priests” was conducted late last year and early this year by the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture. Researchers emailed 50-question surveys to priests, whose names were found in the Official Catholic Directory and on the email list of an unnamed Catholic nonprofit group. Report co-authors compared the new results with a survey of U.S. priests conducted by The Los Angeles Times in 2002.
The survey also found that younger priests are “more theologically conservative or orthodox than their older counterparts,” according to Vermurlen. How conservative? The percentage who saw younger priests as “much more” theologically conservative rose from 29% to 44%. At the same time, the editors at The Pillar put out their own survey on the state of religion in the U.S., drilling down on Catholicism. Here’s what they reported:
More than three-quarters of weekly Massgoing U.S. Catholics trust Catholic bishops to deal honestly and transparently with sex abuse in the Catholic Church. On the whole, Catholics who practice the faith with regularity are far more likely to report trusting both local and national leaders in the Church. And trust in Pope Francis is high among both Catholics who regularly practice the faith and those who do not.
Those results are part of The Pillar’s Survey on Religious Attitudes and Practices, which aims to better understand the religious perspectives, identities, and perspectives of American adults. We’re reporting the results of that survey this week in a series of special reports.
The same survey also found that older weekly Massgoers are more likely to believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist than younger ones.
The Pillar broke the findings in four parts. All of it is worth reading, with plenty of story lines to latch on to within this eye-opening and comprehensive data:
In part one of this series, The Pillar looked at America’s changing religious landscape. In part two, we look at what factors influence lifelong Catholic religious practice, and why people say they leave the Church. In part three, we took a look at what can be learned about religiously disaffiliated Americans. In part four, we looked at how the pandemic has reshaped parish life.
Is the U.S. church getting more conservative? It depends how you define that word, but it does appear to be the case. The U.S. bishops will certainly respond to any issues affecting the church — like the importance of Communion and who should receive it — within this context.
The response from the Vatican
This is the tricky part. The pope and Vatican press office aren’t known for making news unless they really want to. They seldom respond to what happens around them or across the Atlantic — unless, as I said, they really want to.
We know there are some deep fissures between this pope and many U.S. bishops. It’s easy to note that key figures in these debates are conservative archbishops who have not been given red hats and progressives who are cardinals close to Pope Francis.
Whether what comes out of this week’s meeting makes those divisions even deeper is yet to be seen. It’s certainly a major story line in the mainstream press in the U.S. Far too many stories have been framed as loving, progressive pope versus rigid, Trump-loving bishops.
Watch for both The Associated Press and Reuters, who have bureaus there, to follow what happens here and report on the reaction from Rome. Various Catholic news sites and blogs, most notably Catholic News Agency, Crux and Whispers in the Loggia, are great at reporting what’s happening in the Vatican corridors in a way that provides context and analysis that the mainstream press very often misses.
There’s lots of news expected to come out of Baltimore this week. Stay tuned for what’s news. When it comes to Catholic news as it intersects with secular culture and politics, it largely depends on who’s doing the reporting, the loss of journalistic objectivity and the doctrinal divides of various media outlets out there that millions consume on a daily basis.
This post originally appeared at GetReligion.