Duty

I’ve got a lot of Catholic friends who are also conservatives.

I keep asking them – “when is your bureaucracy going to start enforcing the church’s supposed beliefs, like publicly supporting the right to life, or at least not being pro-infanticide, on “Catholic” politicians?

“We will. We will”.

But they don’t. Never.

But is the specter of Joe Biden, a publicly practicing Catholic, being called “the most faithful President in recent history” (by a chattering class that generally regards Christianity as a den of know-nothjing ignorance) and a representative face for Christianity and Catholicism in public, finally goading the Bishops into action?

Maybe, but don’t bet your mortgage payment on it:

But we now hear from a few murmuring bishops that the Church must address Biden’s unworthy reception of Communion. “US Catholic bishops may press Biden to stop taking Communion,” reads a recent AP headline. Nothing concrete, however, is likely to come from these complaints. The U.S. bishops, as a whole, lack the will to withhold Communion from Biden, even though canon law says that they not only have the right but the duty to do so. Canon 915 “obliges the minister of Holy Communion to refuse the Sacrament” to those in “manifest grave sin.” If Biden’s direct facilitation of the killing of unborn children doesn’t fall into that category, what does?

Not being Catholic, I’m not hip to the vagaries of intra-curial politics, but the American bishops strike this Orthodox Presbyterian as not a whole lot more concerned about such things than the ELCA.

12 thoughts on “Duty

  1. I am Catholic, and I’m not hip to the vagaries of intra-curial politics!

    I’m pro life too.  The tension is there between the Catholics and the Dems / Biden.  As a matter of practical politics I don’t know if more can be expected than that.

  2. I was raised Catholic, but left the church when they began to embrace the left’s mantra, so, some may argue that I shouldn’t weigh in. The fact that Biden committed adultery by beginning his relationship with Jill while she was still married to her ex, is also grounds to not only refuse him communion, but also to excommunicate him from the church.

  3. Mitch, you must have missed the headlines or this post was written last week or earlier. At the prayer breakfast, Bidon did not mention G*d once. Who does he pray to? Catholics… (crickets)

  4. The bishops are afraid that Biden will stack the College of Cardinals in response.

    IIRC, the last time the Church told a king he couldn’t do something, it didn’t end well.

  5. You do know, Mitch, when the Pope himself is a far left-wing Latino that those holding traditional positions in the Catholic Church will be marginalized.

  6. I’m Catholic. This is a long-standing tension. Having a Jesuit pope makes it even more obvious — the Jebbies like to get out in the world and the social justice message has particular resonance in Francis’s papacy.

    It’s worth remembering that Benedict, a theologian to the core, left the papacy 8 years ago, ostensibly because he was too frail to continue, but he’s still with us. There’s a backstory involved that I suspect we’ll learn down the line. For most practicing Catholics, the Curia is a bit of a black box.

  7. JDM: My wife is Catholic. She thinks that the current pope has caused so much strife, that the next one will be a true Catholic conservative, probably from Africa. There is practically no support for homosexuality nor female clerics on that entire continent, and an equal level of opposition to abortion. (cue the racist left: of course, the African continent is majority populated with tribal savages)

    Mr D: I noticed that as well. Benedict was the first pope in how many years (centuries?) that didn’t die while pope, but retired while still alive. We don’t know the whole story. The conspiracist in me wonders “Has the left/NWO infiltrated the Holy See and/or the College of Cardinals, and was Francis a deliberate plant to try and weaken the Catholic church by undoing/undermining its core beliefs?”

  8. The conspiracist in me wonders “Has the left/NWO infiltrated the Holy See and/or the College of Cardinals, and was Francis a deliberate plant to try and weaken the Catholic church by undoing/undermining its core beliefs?”

    Bill C, I don’t think that’s right. Francis is a man of the Left (you can take the cardinal out of Buenos Aires and make him Pope, but you can’t take the Buenos Aires out of the cardinal), but his theology is well inside the Catholic mainstream. This is a longstanding divide within the Church and it’s why you can have St. Joan of Arc and St. Agnes in the same archdiocese.

    Having said that, your wife is 100% about the conservatism of the Church in Africa. The energy of the Church is in lands that were once considered missionary territory; given the weakness of the Church (and Christianity generally) in the West, I would not be surprised to see the next Pope be from Africa, Asia, or another Latin American country, and for that next Pope to treat the West as missionary territory.

  9. Dang. Interesting comments. Thanks. If this is what is meant by an echo chamber, give me more.

  10. Mr D,

    Interesting.

    You didn’t happen to get my email, did you? I sent it to the only two addresses I had.

  11. Didn’t get it, Mitch. I will send it to you at your feedback addy for the blog.

  12. Oh, that doesn’t work.

    you can send it to the yahoo email address “mitchpberg”.

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