2 Catholic bishops disagree over Biden receiving communion – NBC Boston

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They share Roman Catholicism as their faith and California as their original base. Yet there is a deep rift between Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco and Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego in the high-stakes debate over whether politicians who support the right to abortion should stand up. to see Communion refused.

Cordileone, who has long established himself as a forceful anti-abortion activist, recently made clear his view that such political figures – whose ranks include President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – should not not receive Communion because of their position on the matter. The Archbishop published a pastoral letter on the subject on May 1 and reinforced the message in an hour-long interview on Friday with Catholic TV channel EWTN.

“To those who advocate for abortion, I would say, ‘This is a massacre. Please stop the massacre. You are able to do something about it, ”he told the interviewer.

Neither in the letter nor in the interview, Cordileone mentioned Pelosi, who represents San Francisco, by name. But he has criticized her in the past for positions on abortion that directly contradict Catholic teaching.

McElroy, in a statement released Wednesday by Jesuit magazine America, attacked the campaign to exclude Biden and other like-minded Catholic officials from communion.

“It will have extremely destructive consequences,” McElroy wrote. “The Eucharist is militarized and deployed as a tool of political war. It must not happen.

The polarized views of the two prelates illustrate how divisive this issue could be if, as expected, it was brought before the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at its national assembly from June 16. It is expected that the bishops will vote on whether the USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine should draft a paper saying that Biden and other Catholic public figures with similar views on abortion should refrain from receiving Communion.

In accordance with existing USCCB policy, such a document is likely to leave decisions to deny Communion to individual bishops.

Biden, the second Catholic President of the United States, regularly attends mass, worshiping at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and Washington.

The Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, has made it clear that Biden is welcome to receive Communion in the churches he oversees. Bishop William Koenig, appointed head of the Diocese of Wilmington on April 30, said he would be happy to discuss his views on abortion with Biden, but did not say if he would allow him to continue to receive communion, as Koenig’s predecessor had done.

Biden is considered unlikely to heed a call to renounce Communion, but a USCCB document urging him to do so would be a remarkable rebuke nonetheless.

Cordileone, in his pastoral letter, wrote that it is the responsibility of the Catholic clergy “to correct Catholics who wrongly, and sometimes stubbornly, encourage abortion.”

Initially, this rebuke should come in private conversations between “the lost Catholic” and his priest or bishop, Cordileone wrote, who then noted that such conversations are often fruitless.

“Because we are dealing with public figures and public examples of cooperation in moral evil, this correction can also take the public form of exclusion from receiving Holy Communion,” he wrote. “It is a bitter medicine, but the severity of the abortion sickness can sometimes justify it.”

In the 2020 presidential election, Catholic voters split their votes almost equally between Biden and Republican Donald Trump. National polls have consistently shown that a majority of American Catholics believe abortion should be legal in at least some cases.

If Biden were excluded from communion, McElroy wrote, “half of the Catholics in the United States will view this action as partisan in nature, and it will bring about the terrible partisan divisions that have plagued our nation in the very act of worship that is. destined by God to bring about and signify our unity.

McElroy also asked why abortion was the primary focus of some bishops, when the sin of racism was not prominent in their comments.

“It will be impossible to convince a large number of Catholics in our nation that this omission does not stem from a desire to limit the impact of exclusion to Democratic public leaders,” McElroy wrote.

Towards the end of his statement, McElroy quoted Pope Francis as saying that communion is “not a price for the perfect but a powerful medicine and food for the weak”.

Cordileone, in an addendum to his pastoral letter, sought to explain his timing.

“I have been working on this pastoral letter for a long time, but I did not want to publish it during the election year, precisely to avoid further confusion among those who would mistakenly perceive that it ‘politicized’ the issue,” he wrote. . “No matter which political party is in power at any given time, we all need to review some basic truths and moral principles. ”

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The Associated Press’s religious coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment via The Conversation US. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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