The Catholic bishops voted to move ahead with a document that could lead to excommunicating pro choice Catholic politicians, including President Biden.
As a matter of principle, I have no objection to withholding communion from pro abortion politicians, assuming that it is done based on incontrovertible evidence that this is in fact where they stand, and that it is prefaced with a long period of private and compassionate discussion and attempts to deal with their viewpoint in better ways.
This doesn’t look like they’re attempting any sort of pastoral intervention with the president. Instead it has the appearance of an heavy-handed attempt to use the Eucharist as a weapon to coerce public officials to make the policy decisions that the bishops want them to make.
One danger the bishops are ignoring is that they are in fact validating anti-Catholic rhetoric which has been leveled against Catholic politicians since heck was a pup. It’s as if the bishops have decided at long last to fess up and prove that Jack Chick was right all along; the Church really does control Catholic politicians, and if you vote for a Catholic, he or she won’t represent you, they’ll represent the Church.
The bishops can’t very well claim that they just discovered that Joe Biden is pro choice. He’s been publicly pro choice for 40 years, including 8 years as Vice President of the United States. That takes the possibility that they are doing this out of spiritual concern for Biden’s soul completely off the table.
This is political. It’s obviously political.
As I said, I have no objections to withholding communion from pro choice Catholic politicians if it is done properly and for genuine spiritual reasons. But the way this is being done just doesn’t pass that test.
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