The USCCB, Abortion, and the Eucharist

 The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been in the news lately because of a document they voted to draft on the Eucharist — specifically because it will call a lot of attention to President Biden. He's got a determinedly pro-abortion stance while still regularly attending Mass and taking Communion. 

A couple of pieces on this caught my eye and I thought you might be interested too.

GetReligion, which is excellent for observing how the media covers religion, pointed out that although Joe Biden and Pope Francis are routinely lumped together as being "liberal" (per the NY Times, etc.) so that it sounds as if they are in complete agreement, the Pope is consistent about abortion being gravely wrong. Here's a bit but read it all here.

Any short list of classic Pope Francis remarks about abortion would have to include the 2018 speech in which he asked, using a Mafia image: “Is it just to resort to a contract killer to solve a problem?”

There was more: “Interrupting a pregnancy is like eliminating someone. Getting rid of a human being is like resorting to a contract killer to solve a problem.” While some people support abortion rights, Francis added: “How can an act that suppresses innocent and defenseless life as it blossoms be therapeutic, civil or simply human?”

Or how about this quote, drawn from a 2020 address to the United Nations?

“Unfortunately, some countries and international institutions are also promoting abortion as one of the so-called ‘essential services’ provided in the humanitarian response to the pandemic. … It is troubling to see how simple and convenient it has become for some to deny the existence of a human life as a solution to problems that can and must be solved for both the mother and her unborn child.”

While there is no question that Pope Francis is a progressive on many issues linked to economics, immigration and other political topics, he has continued — sometimes in blunt language involving evil and the demonic — to defend the basics of Catholic moral theology.

Ed Condon over at Pillar Catholic News, which I've begun reading and like a lot, has a good point about what might be needed before a Eucharistic document can really be taken in properly. How about reminding us Catholics that sin is real and has consequences for our souls? Which made me begin praying harder for Joe Biden because with great power comes great responsibility for moral choices in our nation. Here's a bit but read it all here.

During this past week’s debate, many bishops spoke about the context of sin and reception of Communion. Several of them were at pains to emphasize that “we are all sinners” and “no one is worthy” to receive the sacrament. This is true, to a point, and the reason why penitential rites are a central part of the Eucharistic liturgy.

But the Church, like any reasonable parent, makes clear distinctions between kinds of wrongdoing. A child sneaking chocolate is in need of correction, yes, but a child playing with fire needs a dramatic intervention to prevent graver harm.

...

Within the context of the conference’s discussion on Eucharistic coherence, the real problem, it seems, is not the number of pro-abortion politicians receiving Communion. It is the number of Catholics who don’t seem to acknowledge there’s actually such a thing as the state of grave sin, still less a terrible spiritual harm attached to it.

How to address this crisis may now become the elephant in the conference room at future USCCB meetings. One possible way forward, though, seems to suggest itself.

…

The bishops may find their efforts to revive belief in, and devotion to, the Eucharist prove a non-starter, unless Catholics can first be convinced why they need its salvific power. While a teaching document on the Eucharist is now being drafted, the bishops may find they need to first issue a similar document on sin and the sacrament of penance.

Catholic Church's "social magisterium" informed House GOP budget

About time.

Although never in a thousand years did I think I'd be glancing through Daniel Henninger's piece about  President Obama's war of "rhetorical destruction" (what the heck did he say now? something worse than that comment to the Supreme Court?) and then suddenly see:

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, he [Paul Ryan] said that in fact the Catholic Church's "social magisterium" had informed his House budget. One goal of that teaching, he said, is to prevent the poor from staying poor. Nor, he added, should individuals become lifelong dependents of their government.

Now that's a little bit of info that made me sit up straight and cough on my coffee this morning. I suddenly started reading every word.

What Mr. Ryan actually said is worth quoting, because it should revive the debate over the proper relationship between individual citizens, including the poor, and the national government:

"A person's faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private. So to me, using my Catholic faith, we call it the social magisterium, which is how do you apply the doctrine of your teaching into your everyday life as a lay person?

"To me, the principle of subsidiarity . . . meaning government closest to the people governs best . . . where we, through our civic organizations, through our churches, through our charities, through all of our different groups where we interact with people as a community, that's how we advance the common good. By not having big government crowd out civic society, but by having enough space in our communities so that we can interact with each other, and take care of people who are down and out in our communities.

"Those principles are very, very important, and the preferential option for the poor, which is one of the primary tenets of Catholic social teaching, means don't keep people poor, don't make people dependent on government so that they stay stuck at their station in life. Help people get out of poverty out onto a life of independence."

Subsidiarity—an awful but important word—attempts to discover where the limits lie in the demands a state can make on its people. Identifying that limit was at the center of the Supreme Court's mandate arguments.

The first major use of subsidiarity as a basis for public policy was in Pope Leo XIII's famous 1891 encyclical "Rerum Novarum" (though the word itself doesn't appear). Leo was seeking a way to protect the dignity of human beings caught during those years in the tension between unfettered capitalism and unfettered government. "The State," he wrote, "must not absorb the individual or the family." Arguments over where the balance sits have raged since.

What kind of a crazy, mixed-up world is it when "Pope Leo XIII" and "Rerum Novarum" pops up in the editorial columns of the Wall Street Journal?

A really glorious world, I'd say.

Read it all.