Biden Caught in Catholic Church Power Struggle Over Taking Communion

In February 2013, The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops rejected the Obama adminisgration’s revised mandates on contraception. Now, a group of Catholic bishops wants to deny President Joe Biden communion during worship, over his support of women’s rights to birth conrol and abortion.

By Steven P. Millies, Associate Professor of Public Theology and Director of The Bernardin Center, Catholic Theological Union, First published on The Conversation.

President Joe Biden is the highest-profile and most powerful lay Catholic in American life today – but he also holds policy views that diverge from many Catholic bishops. And that is causing some problems.

The dilemma looks like this. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that abortion is the taking of a human life, no different from murder, and so grave a sin that it incurs an automatic excommunication. Yet prominent Roman Catholics in public life – including Democrats such as Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – support abortion rights. It has led to concern from some Catholic bishops that a contradictory picture of Catholic faith is being presented to the public.

In response, U.S. bishops reportedly are preparing a pastoral statement expected to be released in June that would instruct Catholics about when they should and should not receive Communion. The effect of that document would be to exclude Catholics like Biden and Pelosi from full participation in the church.

Communion, also known as the Eucharist, is the central act of Roman Catholic worship in which Catholics receive bread and wine that they believe becomes the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Church law particularly excludes from taking Communion those who are guilty of what is known as “manifest grave sin.” This means no one who has committed a serious sin in a way that is publicly visible should receive Communion.

The bishops argue that being pro-choice, Democrats like Joe Biden have made themselves unsuitable to take Communion.

As a scholar who studies Catholicism in political life, I argue that the proposed pastoral statement reflects existing divisions inside the Catholic Church that have been heightened by the election of Biden as president. Moreover, it will serve only to deepen the divide.

Greater authority?

Joe Biden is a devoted Catholic, attending Mass weekly and carrying a rosary everywhere he goes. He has talked many times about how important his faith is to him.

But his policy position on abortion jars with more conservative elements in the Catholic Church. In October 2019, a priest declined to give Communion to the then-presidential candidate when he presented himself at St. Anthony Church in Florence, South Carolina. The priest, who had never met Biden before, told reporters, “Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of church teaching.”

Both laity and Catholic clergy opposed to action against President Biden say that “communion is not a prize” that is awarded to deserving laity by discerning priests and bishops.

The picture is not as clear as that priest suggests, and the Catholic Church’s history of dealing with Catholic public officials is more inconsistent. Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, for example, presided over a brutal regime of atrocities and torture known throughout the world, yet he received a Catholic burial in 1975 over which the archbishop of Toledo presided.

More pertinent to the Biden case, Pope John Paul II gave Communion in 2001 to Rome’s mayor, Franceso Rutelli, who had campaigned to liberalize abortion laws. Likewise, Pope Benedict XVI gave Communion to Rudolph Giuliani, Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry – all of whom support abortion rights.

The reason the issue has come up now in the U.S. appears to be more about concerns among bishops over their waning influence.

Kansas City Archbishop Joseph Naumann, chair of the U.S. bishops’ committee on pro-life activities and one of the main figures supporting a pastoral statement about Communion, told The Associated Press, “Whether intentional or not, [Biden is] trying to usurp our authority.”

“He doesn’t have the authority to teach what it means to be Catholic,” Naumann continued; “that’s our responsibility as bishops.”

Naumann may have reasons to be concerned. A 2019 poll found that 63% of American Catholics have lost trust in Catholic bishops because of their handling of the still-ongoing crisis of sexual abuse.

To many Catholics, Biden’s presentation of Catholic faith as aligning with racial justice, economic justice, climate justice and health care justice offers a pointed contrast with bishops mired in scandal and unhappy about trends such as same-sex marriage in American culture.

Denver Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila wrote in mid-April about the need to establish “Eucharistic coherence” through a pastoral statement that would state when someone like Biden should not present himself for Communion. It seems as though, to many bishops like Aquila, that is the solution to their dilemma over Biden.

A 2019 poll found that 63% of American Catholics have lost trust in Catholic bishops because of their handling of the still-ongoing crisis of sexual abuse.

But not all bishops agree. Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich wrote a private letter to Aquila expressing his reservations. The letter was leaked after it was received, making divisions among the bishops more visible.

Communion ‘not a prize’

The proposed document about “Eucharistic coherence” is expected to come before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in June – a move that likely will highlight even more the split within the church. But even if the pastoral statement is approved, the conference has no authority to enforce it on any particular bishop. The result would be an incoherent patchwork allowing each individual bishop to decide. Washington’s Cardinal Wilton Gregory already has indicated he will not prevent Biden from receiving Communion.

Only the Vatican has the right to enforce the pastoral statement on every bishop – but that almost certainly will not happen. Pope Francis previously has made his view clear that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”

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As such, the pastoral statement could serve only to highlight differences among many American bishops and the pope.

It also could backfire as an attempt to wrestle back authority for U.S. bishops. A preelection debate over the sincerity of Biden’s Catholicism proved divisive among the faithful. Biden, through baptism and participation in the other sacraments, is a Catholic. There is no question about that.

Because they reflect intense divisions in the church, these efforts to disqualify the president from the sacraments and the church are, I believe, a threat to church authority today. Nothing that furthers or deepens those divisions will help the bishops or the Catholics that they lead.

What Catholic Church Records Tell Us About America’s Earliest Black History

By Jane Landers, Professor of History, Vanderbilt University. First published on The Conversation.

For most Americans, black history begins in 1619, when a Dutch ship brought some “20 and odd Negroes” as slaves to the English colony of Jamestown, in Virginia.

Many are not aware that black history in the United States goes back at least a century before this date.

In 1513, a free and literate African named Juan Garrido explored Florida with a Spanish conquistador, Juan Ponce de León. In the following decades, Africans, free and enslaved, were part of all the Spanish expeditions exploring the southern region of the United States. In 1565, Africans helped establish the first permanent European settlement in what is St. Augustine, Florida today.

The Slave Societies Digital Archive which I direct as a historian at Vanderbilt University includes Catholic Church records from St. Augustine.

These records date back to the 1590s and document some of the earliest black history of the U.S.

Catholicism and runaway slaves

St Augustine Catholic Church Archive. David LaFevor, CC BY

These Catholic Church records show that everyone was treated in theory as “brothers in Christ” and that the Church helped incorporate Africans into Spanish communities. It also helped free some slaves.

St. Augustine’s Catholic records show that after English Protestants established a settlement in what became South Carolina in 1670, their African slaves began to flee southward seeking admission into the “True Faith” – which to the Spaniards meant Catholicism.

Florida’s Spanish governors sheltered them and saw to their religious conversion, seeking royal approval of their actions. After some deliberation, in 1693, Spain’s monarch ruled that all slaves fleeing Protestant lands to seek conversion in Catholic colonies should be freed. Word of the fugitives’ reception in St. Augustine spread quickly through South Carolina, generating bitter complaints among planters and encouraging additional southward escapes by their slaves.

By 1738, the number of slave runaways reaching Florida had grown to approximately 100. Based on Spain’s religious sanctuary policy, Florida’s Spanish governor freed the runaways and established them in a town of their own called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, two miles north of the Spanish city of St. Augustine. Mose was modeled after the nearby Indian towns where Catholic priests were also assigned to teach the “new Christians” the principles of the Catholic faith.

The site is now a National Historic Landmark, listed on the National Park Service Underground Railroad Route, and has been nominated for a UNESCO Slave Route designation. A museum based on both archaeological and historical studies presents the stories of the Mose townspeople.

FROM FORT MOSE TO CUBA: FIRST FREE BLACK COMMUNITY IN THE UNITED STATES. via

African heritage in church records

The records in St. Augustine’s church reveal the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual nature of Mose.

Its leader and captain of the town’s militia, Francisco Menéndez, was of Mandinga ethnicity and came from the Senegambian region of West Africa in modern-day Senegal. He probably spoke a variety of languages but learned Spanish as well and wrote petitions to the Spanish King. Others at Mose came from the Congo nation, that is today in West Central Africa.

Pedro Graxales, the Congo man who was sergeant of the Mose militia was married to a slave woman of the Carabalí nation, from what is today southeastern Nigeria. The couple chose godparents from Congo for their children.

Florida’s priests noted that some people from Congo had undergone previous Catholic baptisms in Africa and that even as they learned Spanish, some of them still prayed and blessed themselves in their native language of Kikongo, a Bantu language spoken throughout large areas of West Central Africa.

Creating a black Catholic family

Baptism into the Catholic faith was important because it cleansed black converts of the “stigma of original sin.” It also brought them into the “Christian brotherhood” of the church. Baptism also served an important social function. Families were linked in a system of reciprocal obligations between the baptized and his or her godparents, as also between the parents and godparents.

For example, Francisco Felipe Edimboro and his wife, Filis, were African-born slaves of Florida’s wealthiest planter, Don Francisco Sánchez. The couple had their three-year-old son baptized on the same day that their master and his mulatto consort baptized their natural son. Edimboro and Filis eventually had 10 more children baptized in St. Augustine’s church. On July 15, 1794, they were themselves baptized and married.

Their Catholic baptism and marriage coincided with their suit to buy their freedom and likely contributed to the successful outcome of that litigation.

As a free man, Felipe Edimboro became a landowner and sergeant of St. Augustine’s free black militia. He also served as godfather to 21 black children born in St. Augustine whose baptisms were recorded in its Catholic Church.

What these records say about families

These and other records allow scholars to track the history of several generations of the large Edimboro family to the present day.

One of Edimboro and Filis’s free daughters, Eusebia, had a child with an enslaved man named Antonio Proctor, described in the records as “the best translator of the Indian languages in the province.”

Edimboro and Proctor served on the Spanish frontier together and Proctor’s valuable military service earned him his freedom.

Maggie Beth Mcgrotha, left, and Jacqueline Proctor Erving at new historical marker honoring the Proctor family at the Tallahassee Garden Club. via

Eusebia and Antonio’s freeborn son, George Proctor, became a master carpenter and builder in territorial Florida and George’s son, John Proctor, served in the Florida House of Representatives in the 1870s and in the Florida Senate from 1883 to 1886.

More than 100 descendants recently commemorated their family’s rich heritage in a public ceremony in Tallahassee, Florida where they mounted a memorial plaque in the Old City Cemetery.

These records show that black history in United States begins much earlier than previously thought. They also show that men, women, and children once thought forgotten left rich histories in these little explored sources.