Catholic bishops are right to deny communion to Joe Biden

Do the elect, especially those who claim to be devout Catholics, view sin, especially the mortal type, as a grave offense to God? If so, do these same politicians take seriously the need for sacramental confession before receiving the body and blood of Christ – source and summit of faith – in the Eucharist?

A recent editorial by Paul Prather questioned the validity of Catholic bishops disciplining pro-abortion politicians.

President Biden, along with many other “Catholic” politicians, including House of Commons Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have used politics to blur the Church’s authentic teaching on the respect and dignity of human life. .

They refuse to recognize abortion as a “sin,” a “grave and moral evil,” which has caused the deaths of over 63 million unborn children and harmed the lives of untold women – spiritually, emotionally, even. physically.

Biden and his absolutist Democratic colleagues are currently trying to dismantle the long-standing bipartisan Hyde Amendment, banning taxpayer-funded abortions – an unprecedented move violating unborn children’s right to life and, as polls show, the conscience of the vast majority of Americans (Hyde has saved more than 2.4 million babies since 1976).

Why then are Biden and Co. not held responsible for sacrilege against the faith and scandal among the Catholic faithful? After all, the sanctity of human life remains a fundamental tenet of the Church.

Pope John Paul II (“The Gospel of Life”) declared that “abortion and euthanasia are crimes that no human law can claim to legitimize”. The pontiff called the laws favoring the two “inherently unjust”, adding: “There is no obligation in conscience to obey them”.

Recently, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to create a document on Eucharistic Coherence – not, as many have pointed out, to rebuke President Biden, but to remind Catholics and others of nature. sacred of what – or, rather, who – the Eucharist is, namely, Jesus Christ himself.

Key to this controversy is the Church’s disciplinary guide, the Code of Canon Law, which specifically prohibits Holy Communion for those who “stubbornly persist in manifest grave sin.”

As a guiding principle for determining a worthy reception of the Eucharist, Saint Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 11, “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of desecrating the body and the blood of the Lord…, evoking a new judgment of Jesus.

Cooperating in the destructive act of abortion, without fully and correctly forming one’s conscience, is reason enough to refuse the Eucharist to a communicant.

As Catholic writer and editor Mike Stechschulte puts it: “Communion is a precious gift – not a right – and it is given so that we can examine our conscience before God, humbly repent of our sins, and return to Him before we can. ‘it’s not too late.

Many bishops, as shepherds leading their flocks, insisted that they were not trying to “weapon” communion by denying it to pro-abortion politicians; rather, they care about their soul.

Conclusion: Catholics and other Christians have a responsibility to advance the kingdom of God – to educate the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, even to admonish the sinner – “in season and out of season”, however difficult the difficulty. or discomfort.

So when Bishop Peter Baldacchino of Las Cruces refused Communion to New Mexico State Senator Joe Cervantes, D – Las Cruces, earlier this month based on Cervantes’ vote to maintain legal abortions until birth in the Southwestern state (in the event that Roe v. Wade is canceled), while repealing New Mexico conscience protections for pro-life medical workers, and even in voting to legalize physician-assisted suicide, it was Baldacchino who acted righteously: “I do not want the death of the sinner, but that he be converted and live.”

Schu Montgomery is a Catholic college professor in Louisville and a longtime pro-life activist.