By Michael F. Pettinger
June 29, 2021
photo above: Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden attend a church service before his presidential inauguration, at St. Matthews Catholic Church in Washington on Jan. 20, 2021.Tom Brenner / Reuters
WN: This by a thoughtful reclaimed Catholic is very wise, irenic, challenging, compassionate, understanding.
excerpts:
When it comes to talking about the Catholic Church, it’s always advisable to take the long, broad view. The recent vagaries of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have been well-publicized: Following conspicuously Catholic President Biden’s reversal of a decades-long ban on federal abortion funding, the USCCB voted to draft a document that would redefine the Eucharistic discipline (that is, encourage or possibly even mandate priests not to grant communion to openly pro-choice Catholic politicians). A subsequent document apparently backtracked on the decision, claiming, “There will be no national policy on withholding Communion from politicians.” All of a sudden, everyone had an opinion.Before diving in here, there are two things I think I should tell you. The first is that denying communion to a Catholic because they oppose outlawing abortion strikes me as a very, very, very bad idea, for reasons I will try to explain below. The second is that when I say this, I am speaking as a Catholic, someone who returned to active practice after more than a decade away from the church.If the bishops do not want to be coerced by the state, they should be wary of pushing the state to coerce those who get abortions and those who provide them.
I don’t expect readers of The Nation to be much interested in my own beliefs and the circuitous route by which I arrived at them. I bring up the issue of my own Catholicism only because the question at the heart of the controversy is one of belonging: Are you part of this community that calls itself the Catholic Church? If you are, what difference does being Catholic make in the way you live your life in the world? If you aren’t, why are you invested in an issue that doesn’t directly pertain to you? You might have very good reasons to be interested, but you should be clear and explicit about what motivates your interest. As a member of the communion, I have a stake in the controversy. What’s yours?
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It’s perfectly plausible for Catholics to maintain that the church should not be swayed by the claims of civil society while still arguing that bishops should back away from their war against abortion rights precisely because it’s contrary to the principles of the Gospel. If the bishops do not want to be coerced by the state, they should be wary of pushing the state to coerce those who get abortions and those who provide them. They should recognize that the rights of persons to control and protect their bodies, even if it means taking the life of an unborn human being, is analogous to the right of people to injure or kill others in self-defense—a right that the bishops recognize, however regretfully. And if they really want to reduce the number of abortions, they’re going to have to embrace programs of health care, child care, and contraception that might be hard for their libertarian allies to swallow.
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