Should Catholic politicians like President Joe Biden who support abortion rights be denied Holy Communion? Should Catholic judges recuse themselves from cases where church teaching would require their rulings adhere to those teachings? Can a Catholic make a moral decision in good conscience that opposes church teachings?
These are not new issues within the Catholic Church, but have emerged for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops with the election of Biden, who supports abortion rights as a legalized right under Roe v. Wade nearly 50 years ago. Some bishops have been outspoken that Biden be denied communion, a decision ultimately left to each diocesan bishop, while others disagree, referring to it as the “weaponization” of the Eucharist.
“There are such deep divisions not only among the bishops but among the community at large,” said David J. O’Brien, who at 83 is a life-long Catholic and the most senior, as well as esteemed, historian of American Catholicism.
“We are suffering within the church from the kind of polarization and politicization that is now so hard in the country. It is not just partisan differences but things have become very personal and passionate and to some extent religious. It has gone much further than I thought it would go.”
Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, president of the USCCB, issued a statement to Biden, who attends Mass regularly, on Inauguration Day. It said Biden’s support for abortion rights would “advance moral evils and threaten human life” and called addressing the “continued injustice of abortion” the bishops’ “pre-eminent priority” though not all bishops agree on such a single-issue approach.
The Vatican warned the USCCB on May 7 that the drafting of any new document by them on this issue could prove a “source of discord rather than unity within the episcopate and the larger church in the United States.”
“The bishops in earlier decades did value very much their own unity and the unity of the church, Now, they are very divided,” O’Brien said. “I think that the most recent letter from the Vatican to the American bishops was an effort to remind them of their obligation to stay united and together. They are being advised by Rome to take a deep breath, talk to each other and remember you are there for unity in the church and not division.”
He added, “They are being encouraged to think before they speak and to try to not contribute any further to the deep divisions within our country.”
“It is a little scary studying the politics of the American church and the universal church and where we are headed,” said O’Brien who sees a decades-long evolution in the Church away from dialogue both within and outside its walls on issues impacting all of society.
He noted how bishops respond to such issues as abortion, which the USCCB refers to as a “grave moral evil at all stages,” has repercussions in a secular society where many Catholics hold influential legislative, executive and judicial positions today.
“If we think about trying to move beyond politicization to recover a sense of culture of encounter and a culture of common good, we are going to have to find a way to give more value to the kind of dialogue, negotiation, compromise that politics requires,” O’Brien said.
“If you study peacemaking these days you will study conflict resolution as a set of skills to take a potentially violent situation and find ways for people to turn it into a situation where they can negotiate and dialogue about.”
He added, “There was a phrase we used to use in the days of the pastoral letters in the 1980s and that was a ‘community of conscience.”
“Our church was a community of conscience where we helped each other to form our conscience,” said O’Brien who feels that the language and approach used by the American Catholic Church in opposing such issues as same sex marriage has alienated many young people raised Catholic.
A University of Notre Dame graduate with a doctorate in history from the University of Rochester, O’Brien is faculty emeritus and Loyola professor of Catholic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, as well as trustee emeritus at Elms College in Chicopee, where he spoke recently.
His correspondence, book manuscripts and other papers are archived at Notre Dame where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1960 after graduating from the now-closed St. Joseph High School in Pittsfield. The Berkshire Eagle there continues to publish opinion pieces by O’Brien who lives outside Worcester.
O’Brien, who worked with the U.S. bishops in their 1976 Call to Action in response to Vatican II reforms calling for more lay involvement in the Church, says he supports Pope Francis’s efforts “to create a culture of care where we find ways to talk to each other on how our common values translate into the difficult choices of politics.”
“I have written on a number of things on abortion and that issue has been so hard for us to deal with as it has become politicized and bound up with these terribly deep divisions within our own community and with an erosion of faith among young people,” O’Brien said.
“Generally, abortion is not a good thing and should be opposed. Babies have become much more viable earlier than they were before and yet we are dealing with the dignity and autonomy of the mother. We need to find a way back to some common ground where we are loving both mothers and babies. We need to find some way of working together to reduce the number of abortions and the conditions that encourage people to have abortions.”
O’Brien said the weaponization of the Eucharist happened in the 2004 election when then Massachusetts Senator John Kerry was the Democratic presidential candidate and a supporter of abortion rights. Several bishops said they would deny him communion because of his stance. The bishops ultimately reaffirmed in an 183 to 6 vote to leave such a decision to each diocesan bishop.
Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley in whose diocese Kerry lived said at the time that Catholic politicians who support legislation allowing abortion should voluntarily not receive Holy Communion.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced May 17 that it would review a case involving a state law that bans abortions after 15 weeks. How the court decides that case could erode the court’s 1973 landmark decision in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion during the first 24 months of pregnancy. Taking on this case raises a question that has been theoretically debated in Catholic law circles – should the six Catholic judges on the court recuse themselves?
O’Brien said the U.S. bishops have never specifically addressed this issue, but it is one that the newest U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett did address when she was on the faculty of Notre Dame, her alma mater, in terms of Catholic judges enforcing the death penalty, something the Catholic Church opposes.
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