“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
The Unspoken Racist Arena of Roe v. Wade
Catholic priests and politicians who are silent about abortion often cite racism as a higher moral priority. Are they blind to the racist oppression of Roe v. Wade?
Catholic priests and politicians who are silent about abortion often cite racism as a higher moral priority. Are they blind to the racist oppression of Roe v. Wade?
July 6, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
Shortly after a U.S. Supreme Court draft was mysteriously leaked with an impression that the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade was about to be overturned, this reactionary nation descended once again into chaos. At the time, I wrote a post making a case for why overturning a precedent like Roe v. Wade was not the legal earthquake some in the partisan news media described it to be. Catholic League President Bill Donohue sent an email to the civil rights group’s thousands of members asking them to read my post entitled, “After Roe v. Wade, Hope for Life and a Nation’s Soul.”
It became our most-read post for the month of May, 2022, but I had long before been marked as a “prolife priest.” I had never even imagined that there are Catholic priests out there who might not champion the cause for life. I have since learned from lots of readers that they rarely if ever hear support for prolife causes in their parishes. So I set out in this post to make an argument for why Catholics — including priests — can and should be challenged to take up a well-informed defense of life.
I was a late arrival on the side of life. When I was a newly ordained priest forty0-two years ago in 1982, I learned that my one and only niece (two others arrived later) longed for a Cabbage Patch doll for Christmas. They were all the rage then, but my sister in the Boston area told me that the demand was so great it was simply impossible to find one. So I went on a mission and implored the help of a friend who managed a large department store just over the border in New Hampshire. She laughed saying that I should have listened to my sister, but I was an uncle determined not to disappoint my only niece.
A few days later, the friend called me and said that one of the chain’s stores had one that remained unclaimed so I quickly asked her to hold it for me. She wanted me to come late at night when the store was closing because she feared I might be mugged by desperate parents while carrying the semi-precious doll from the store. I felt like a thief in the night as I arrived to discover that the remaining doll was modeled after an African American infant. A flood of implications raced through my mind, but I dismissed them all and purchased the doll.
It was two weeks before Christmas, 1982. Back at my parish, I carefully opened the box, intrigued by the enormous social pressure on parents to find and buy this pseudo-human infant for their young daughters that Christmas. Inside the box, I was surprised to see what looked like an official birth certificate with the doll’s name and date of “birth” printed in nice calligraphy.
So the following Sunday at Mass, I brought the doll with me, box and all. It was the Fourth Sunday of Advent. During my homily, I opened the box and produced both the doll and the birth certificate. The parish was instantly riveted, not by the point I was making but by the fact that I had somehow actually obtained a Cabbage Patch doll. My homily called out the irony that the creators of this doll went to such great lengths to fabricate authenticity — including a birth certificate — and promote such enormous demand that mothers and fathers could not find one. Meanwhile, real human babies are quietly aborted by the millions every year across the land. The reaction to my homily was both strained and strange.
Project Rachel
As I held up the birth certificate, there were audible gasps. Some looked alarmed and uncomfortable, others mesmerized, some quite pleased, and others downright hostile. No priest likes hostility, and I was no exception. At the door after Mass, some people thanked me for bringing up a subject never before heard in their parish. Others whisked by me without eye contact. A few looked really ticked and muttered something about “politics from the pulpit.” One man who clearly did not get the point said, “a hundred bucks for the doll, Father.”
One week later at Christmas, my niece was overjoyed at her new “little sister.” Within a few years she would have two real ones, and would learn that little sisters are a mixed blessing when you are accustomed to being the only one at center stage. Today, they remain very close and each is now also a mother.
It was because of this experience — the simple act of buying a doll for my niece at Christmas — that I thought Roe v. Wade all the way through and knew that I could not be silent about what I had learned. My first lesson was how easy it was to dupe myself into comfortable moral complicity by not thinking it through. I know this is an uncomfortable subject for some, but it is not possible to fully profess the Gospel without discomfort.
Two years later, I became one of four priests in my diocese to join Project Rachel, a Catholic ministry approved by the U.S. bishops to assist women who have had an abortion with the process of repentance and reconciled Communion with their faith. It is one of the most important ministries in the Catholic community, second only to the cause of life itself.
Our culture has romanticized the Christmas story, but in the Gospel of St. Matthew it concludes with terrible tragedy. Enraged at being tricked by the Magi, Herod ordered the slaughter of the infants of Bethlehem. The story ends with a prophecy of Jeremiah which is the source for Project Rachel’s name:
“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled because they are no more.”
— Jeremiah 31:15 and Matthew 2:16-18
A reader of Beyond These Stone Walls recently told me of a discussion with her parish priest about abortion and Roe v. Wade, and the fact that the priest had never addressed either in a homily. She is a retired obstetrics nurse who obviously had a lifetime of thinking this through. I have heard the same critique of many priests in many states. Some respond that other social justice issues such as racism and inequality are higher moral priorities for them. They miss the crux of the matter.
There have been bold exceptions, priests who have inspired me and others in the cause of life. Among them are Father Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life, and Father Stephen Imbarrato, also known as the “Protest Priest.” He is the moderator of Catholic Prolife and a leader in Red Rose Rescue.
When San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone recently imposed a canonical discipline barring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving Communion, Mrs. Pelosi accused him of hypocrisy. She stated that she is in fact prolife, but her prolife activism centers on limiting the death penalty. It is spiritual blindness, and a common progressive position. But it is also one that I have shared. I was dubbed “the priest who kicked the hornets nest” when I wrote of this a decade ago. To protest the death penalty while promoting abortion is to become comfortable with spiritual blindness.
Catholic politicians like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden have compartmentalized and dulled their Catholic consciences. Like many progressive politicians, they have not thought this all the way through. The arenas of both the death penalty and abortion rights are mired in racism.
The Real Social Injustice of Racial Inequality
The list of racial disparities in America is extensive. African Americans represent only 12.5 percent of the U.S. population but 40 percent of the U.S. prison population. Many studies have shown that African American defendants often received longer prison sentences than White defendants for the same offense. They have been more likely than White defendants to be sentenced to death for capital crimes, and have been many times more likely to actually be executed in states that retain a death penalty.
This is of grave concern, but all of our concern is moot if we cannot even get the subjects of our concern born in the first place. At his shocking and eye-opening site, Blackgenocide.org, Rev. Clenard H. Childress, Jr. reveals that “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.” When it comes to racial disparities in abortion the political left and too many of our priests and bishops remain silent in a state of ignorant bliss. There is no more racist agenda than the one behind the abortion industry in America.
In 1992, President Bill Clinton presented what was then the accepted liberal Democratic view: that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Since then, the overall abortion rate has declined to about half of what it was in the 1980s — except among African Americans. According to Justice Clarence Thomas, Black women are today eight times more likely than White women to seek an abortion. Abortion’s impact on the size of the African American population is critical, but conveniently overlooked by the news media and the progressive political left.
I had no idea when I gave my three-year-old niece that African American-looking Cabbage Patch doll in 1982 that infants who look like that particular doll are especially in peril. In a 2019 abortion case, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas observed that in New York City that year, for the first time in history, more African American infants were aborted than born.
It is also true that Planned Parenthood of America places its origin in the work of Margaret Sanger, an activist American nurse who worked tirelessly to provide access to abortion. From her own writings, one of her motivations was an interest in eugenics, the science of selective breeding. By controlling the growth of the African American population, Margaret Sanger and others believed that the purity of American genetic heritage could be maintained.
Jason L. Riley, an African American writer and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal authored a recent op-ed entitled “Why Won’t the Left Talk About Racial Disparities in Abortion?” (WSJ, May 11, 2022). He wrote that the political left in America is quick to set off alarms anywhere racial disparities are known to exist — except for this one.
Race-based differences in SAT test scores, for example, brought calls to eliminate the SAT as a college admission test. A racial gap in arrest and incarceration rates has long vexed this nation, resulting on the left with socially destructive reactions like the “defund police” movement. In terms of sheer numbers and their impact on the African American population, abortion far exceeds other social justice concerns. The number of babies aborted by Black women each year in America far exceeds the combined numbers of Black youths who drop out of school, are sent to prison, and who are murdered on the streets of our cities.
The WSJ’s Jason Reilly cited a Pennsylvania case study about death rates. Examining premature deaths from all causes in 2018, it was discovered that abortions constituted 23.9 percent of premature deaths among the White population and 62.7 percent among the Black population. Abortion rights activists often cite these facts as a function of poverty, but even among other groups with higher poverty levels, Black women still have abortions at much higher rates than any other demographic.
The notion that not growing up at all is better than growing up in poverty is a notion only of the elite. Think of the arrogance behind such statements. If activists believe that lower incomes impact Black abortions, then the social justice issue and goal should be equality in income not controlling the population Planned-Parenthood-style through abortion.
Black lives matter. Indeed they do. Black infant lives matter too. There is no more racist agenda in America than the one keeping an entire people down through abortion.
+ + +
Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post.
You may also like these related posts:
After Roe v. Wade: Hope for Life and a Nation’s Soul
Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul
Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life
Last Full Measure of Devotion: Civil Rights and the Right to Life
Forty Years of Priesthood in the Mighty Wind of Pentecost
On the Solemnity of Pentecost Father Gordon MacRae marks forty years of priesthood. Had a map of his life been before him on June 5, 1982, what would he have done?
On the Solemnity of Pentecost Father Gordon MacRae marked forty years of priesthood. Had a map of his life been before him on June 5, 1982, what would he have done?
June 1, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
+ + +
“When you were young, you fastened your belt and walked where you would; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will fasten them and take you where you do not wish to go.”
The Resurrected Christ to Peter (John 21:18)
+ + +
The few lines just below the top image on many blog posts are sometimes called a “meta-description.” Its purpose is to provide search engines like Google a summary of a post’s content in 164 characters or less (including spaces). Our meta-descriptions are not very useful in that regard because they are written with actual readers in mind and not search engines.
Our Editor’s meta-description atop this post ends with a question: What would I have done forty years ago on June 5, 1982 if I had before me then a vision of my future life as a priest? When I was unjustly sent to prison in 1994, I was asked that question often. I never had an easy answer.
After I began writing from prison at the invitation of Cardinal Avery Dulles fourteen years later in 2008, most people had stopped asking me that question. I think most just assumed that my life as a priest was over, or that whatever was left would just collapse and vanish under the weight of prison. Some thought the Vatican would throw me overboard without evidence simply because I am in prison. After 40 years as a priest, and 28 of them as a prisoner, none of those things has happened. I am now asked a different question: What sustains an identity of priesthood in such a place?
Also atop this post is a haunting quote from the Gospel of John (21:18). It’s from an appearance of the Risen Christ to Simon Peter and the disciples at the Sea of Tiberius. Jesus sought restitution from Peter whose courage gave way to a lie days earlier at Calvary. Peter had an opportunity to live up to his own words declared on the day before the Crucifixion, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” (Luke 22:23). At Calvary, as the accusing mob pressed in, Peter’s courage failed. To appease the mob, he three times denied knowing Jesus.
I wrote in a post just weeks ago, “Shaming Benedict XVI, Catholic Schism, Cardinal Zen Arrested,” that we saw faith falter when only 92 of the world’s Catholic bishops signed a letter confronting a threat of Catholic schism in Germany while most others remained silent. We saw this again as prelates in the largest Christian denomination on Earth remained strangely silent after the Chinese Communist government’s unjust arrest of Hong Kong’s 90-year-old Joseph Cardinal Zen.
And we saw it yet again when only 15 U.S. bishops spoke out in support of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone who courageously barred U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from Communion until she repents for decades of abject promotion of abortion. He acted as he must in pastoral care for her soul.
But I have no legitimate judgment of Peter at Calvary. It is not easy to stand up to a mob. In the verse that immediately follows the one I quote from Saint John atop this post, the Lord told Peter what would happen when he finds his faith and it informs his strength. He did find it, and Tradition tells us that he was crucified for it in A.D. 67. The flaws of bishops, which only the spiritually blind deny sharing with them in abundance, need not preclude the courage that Christ summons forth.
An Anniversary of Priesthood
A good friend, Fr. Stuart MacDonald, just celebrated his 25th anniversary of priesthood ordination. This is usually a joyful event for a priest, for his family, and for his parish. Father Stuart sent me a wonderful photograph of the Mass of Thanksgiving at his diocesan cathedral. The recently renovated church is beautiful, and the hundreds of Father Stuart’s family, friends and parishioners could not have been prouder, or happier.
Behind the main altar in the photo above is a glorious stained glass window depicting the Crucifixion of Jesus. It is difficult to look at that sanctuary and see anything else. And yet Father Stuart stands out incensing the altar for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, his appearance one of faithful witness inspired by the salvific scene of divine restitution enacted in glory just behind him.
I pondered the scene for a long time, taking in the beauty of the restored sanctuary’s art and architecture. It is all focused on that one place where priestly hands would soon raise in sacrifice the very Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world — even the sins of a three times denial of Him by Peter who would then become the First Bishop of Rome.
I tend not to look at such scenes and think about myself. I was so proud of Father Stuart because he, too, has endured the suffering of the Cross in his years as a priest. Like so many, he suffered bouts of depression and anxiety during the long bludgeoning of the priesthood over the last twenty-five years. It has come from all sides, even lately from some of our bishops. Father Stuart is fortunate to have one who supports him. In an age of cancelled priests, it is not always so.
It was some time before I contrasted the photograph sent by Father Stuart with the scene in my prison cell late at night on June 5, 2022, the Solemnity of Pentecost, as I offer my own Mass of Thanksgiving for 40 years of priesthood. Able to obtain elements for Mass only once per week, I join in that sacrificial offering in a 60-square-foot prison cell in the dark. The chair upon which I offer Mass is a 5-gallon plastic trash bucket emptied and turned upside down for the occasion.
There is something vaguely prophetic in that. Like the bucket, I, too, have to be emptied before Mass of all the harmful refuse of prison. At 11:00 PM, after the last prisoner count of the day, after the last of the chaos and noise that fills this place subsides, I remove my hard-earned Mass kit from a hidden shelf in a corner. The plastic storage box relinquishes a small stole, a corporal and purificator, a sturdy plastic coffee cup. It is all I have for this purpose, but never used for any other.
Lastly comes a host and a quarter-ounce vial of sacramental wine. From a shelf at the foot of my concrete bunk comes a Sacramentary and a small battery powered book light. A concrete slab protrudes from the cinder block wall at the base of the sole, heavily barred cell window. The otherwise torturous prison lights beyond provide just enough light for Mass.
The Mass is always Ad Orientam, facing East, because that is the direction toward which my window faces. I am grateful for this despite it being of no design of my own. My little booklight illuminates the Roman Canon, the Eucharistic Prayer which affords an opportunity to name the living and the dead who accompany me in this Mass. You are always remembered there.
There is no one else physically in attendance except my non-Catholic roommate who begins snoring up a storm in his upper bunk about an hour before my Mass begins. It is not exactly the hymn of a Heavenly choir, but, like most of the harsh sounds of prison, I have learned to tune it out.
So there, sitting on my bucket — ummm, I mean the big upside-down plastic one — Heaven reaches into a place where God often seems absent, but it only seems that way. When I elevate the host for the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God, it is in equal measure just as glorious as the Cathedral altar scene where Father Stuart made that same offering. After 40 years, this may seem to some to be all that remains of the visible manifestation of my priesthood. It is a miracle in its own right, one that I described on an earlier anniversary of ordination in “Priesthood in the Real Presence, and the Present Absence.”
In the Mighty Wind of Pentecost
But there is another manifestation of priesthood less visible than my weekly offer of Mass, but just as mysterious and powerful. It has to do with the day on which my 40th anniversary of priesthood falls. It has to do with Pentecost, a Greek term meaning “fiftieth.” In Jewish tradition, it is called “Shavuot,” the Feast of Weeks. It falls on the sixth day of the Hebrew month, Savon, the concluding day of the Omer, the 49 days (seven weeks) from the Passover commanded in Leviticus (23:15-16).
In the Book of Exodus (23:16), it became the Harvest Feast. In Rabbinic legend, it was also the day Yahweh gave the Law — the Torah — to Moses on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19. It is the second of three annual feasts requiring a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It was the reason that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Peter, and the disciples were in Jerusalem with so many others. A seminary professor once told me that “salvation comes from the Jews. They are our spiritual ancestors, and we must honor them.” I do.
It is because they were Jews that they were in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost. In the Christian tradition, it is celebrated on the Seventh Sunday of Easter and closes the Easter season. Technically, it is the day after 49 days (or seven weeks) following the final Passover meal of Jesus and the Apostles, the point through which the Jewish and Christian traditions are intimately connected. It was also the day that Jesus was betrayed, the point at which Salvation History begins its fulfillment. For a deeper understanding of this, see my post, “Satan at the Last Supper, Hours of Darkness and Light.”
In the Book of Acts of the Apostles (Ch. 2), the disciples of Jesus are gathered in Jerusalem in one house: then suddenly ...
“A sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, coming to rest upon each one of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit.”
— Acts 2: 1-4”
The scene recalls the fiery descent of the Spirit of God at Mount Sinai during the Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 19:16-19).
As that driving wind filled the room where the Apostles were gathered, “men of every race and tongue, of every people and nation” emptied into the street at the strange and powerful sound. Filled with the Holy Spirit, the Apostles began to address the bewildered crowd, each person hearing them speak in his own native tongue. In the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit filled not only the Apostles, but some of the crowd as well, “and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41).
That day in Catholic understanding is the birth of the Church, and by the time it was only an hour old, its first scandal broke out. Those in the crowd who did not inherit the wind immediately accused the Apostles of being drunk at 9:00 AM on a major holy day that required a fast. Their pharisaical claim caused Peter, now the leader of the Twelve, into the first papal defense of the Church:
“Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. These men are not drunk as you suppose. It is only the third hour of the day.”
Acts 2:14-15
Inspired by the Spirit, Peter went on to preach the Church’s first homily, relying on the Prophet Joel (2:28-32) to explain that God has poured out His Spirit because the Messianic Age had begun. The meaning of the Passion of the Christ was unveiled.
It is interesting that the word for both wind and breath in Hebrew is “ruah,” and the term in Hebrew for the Holy Spirit is “ruah ha-Qodesh.” It simultaneously means the Spirit of God, the Wind of God, and the Breath of God. The same term is used in the story of Creation (Genesis 1:1-2):
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God, ‘ruah ha-Qodesh,’ was moving over the waters.”
— Genesis 1:1-2
And the term was used again in Genesis 2:7 as God breathed the Spirit into the nostrils of Adam, and yet again in a Resurrection appearance of Jesus to the Apostles, “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22)
The Wind of God did just as Jesus predicted it would do to Peter in the Gospel quote that began this post. It bound my hands and took me to a place where I did not wish to go. What am I to make of this? What should I have done while laying face down on the floor before an altar as the Litany of Saints offered me up in priestly sacrifice forty years ago? What would I have done then had a vision of my future life as a priest been before me?
When I look back on forty years of priesthood, most of them in exile, imprisoned souls were reached through no merit of my own. In spite of myself, the Wind of God took me up in its vortex, and I am simply blown away by it.
+ + +
Editor’s Note: Please share this post and please also visit our updated Special Events page. You may also like these related posts.
The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner
Priesthood in the Real Presence, and the Present Absence
Priesthood, the Signs of the Times and the Sins of the Times
Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul
Some bishops fear political fallout if they draft a policy on the Eucharist and pro-abortion politicians but they overlook the most fundamental duty of the Church.
Some bishops fear political fallout if they draft a policy on the Eucharist and pro-abortion politicians but they overlook the most fundamental duty of the Church.
Wednesday, July 7, 2021
There is a lot of misdirected anger toward the Church and its leaders in our culture. For some it is the anger of adolescents who think that shedding the moral authority of parents is in their best interest. Some parents forget that it is not. For others, it is the anger of those who have lived in fidelity to the moral authority of the Church only to see it weakened at every turn in this age of moral relativism and cancel culture. For others still, it is the anger born of seeing too many of the Church’s shepherds in the role sheep, diminishing the Church’s prophetic witness to accommodate the self-serving politics of our time.
In 2018, I wrote a controversial post for the fifth anniversary of the pontificate of Pope Francis entitled, “Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy.” Lots of conservative Catholics were drawn to it because of its title. Many assumed that I was accusing Pope Francis of heresy. Within weeks, that post was shared 25,000 times on Facebook. Then someone actually read it only to find nothing really scandalous. Interest in it just quietly evaporated.
I did not accuse the pope of heresy though the heresy implied therein was in fact his. It was political heresy, however, and not theological. In a series of challenges earlier in his pontificate, Pope Francis was confronted with wayward bishops and priests in various parts of the world. In one notorious case when a bishop was accused of sexual misconduct in Chile, Pope Francis spontaneously said, “Show me some evidence.”
I think the true heart of this pope was laid bare in that spontaneous remark, but he had to walk it back a few days later. It was political heresy. One of his immediate critics was Cardinal Sean O’Malley appointed to oversee the Vatican’s response to sexual abuse. The “woke” among us simply cannot abide any questions that might diminish a claim of victimhood.
The most prevalent heresy in my post cited above, however, was committed by conservative and traditional Catholics, the very people with whom I feel most aligned as a Catholic and as a priest. You may recall all the controversy surrounding the 2018 Synod on the Family and the document, “Amoris Laetitiae” by Pope Francis. They both explored, in part, a question about whether otherwise faithful Catholics in a state of divorce and civil remarriage should be allowed to receive the Eucharist.
The mere question, which never became reality, raised in the Church a loud alarm and protest about weakening the sacramental bond of marriage and the sacramental coherence of Communion. I agreed with these concerns, but I asked some challenging questions which to date no one has attempted to answer.
Where was this concern among the faithful over the last twenty years when “zero tolerance” became the operative agenda and the sacramental bond of Holy Orders was summarily discarded by bishops when priests were accused — merely accused — with little or no due process? Just asking this question is political heresy. Since then, an ongoing stream of concern for politics and political fallout has been allowed to creep into the life of the Church in our time.
President Joe Biden and Communion
Now comes the latest counter-cultural Catholic controversy. Our bishops are wrangling over the potential for political fallout if they move forward with the majority’s intent on drafting a pastoral document on the meaning of the Eucharist and the conditions under which a Catholic would be in communion with Jesus and the Church.
Cardinal Wilton Gregory, Archbishop of Washington, has gone on record to state that he would not deny Communion to President Joe Biden. Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, warned that this discussion could have the effect of aligning the Church to one political party over another. Both prelates signed an unsuccessful petition to remove this whole topic from the agenda of the Bishops’ Conference. In the end, 75 percent of the bishops voted to proceed.
Though this discussion is not about one person, everyone knows that its focal point is President Joe Biden and, to a lesser extent, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Both are Democrats who describe themselves as devout Catholics. Both have also been proponents of unconditional access to abortion, same-sex marriage, limits on religious liberty, and transgender ideology.
In the current controversy over receiving Communion, President Biden has said that he does not believe the bishops will address this because “it is a private matter.” On several levels, he is wrong about that. He is by no means a private person who would not cause scandal by living a duplicitous life of faith.
He is also wrong for the same reason that all the concern for Communion for Catholics living in an illicit marriage became a public controversy. Marriage is a public state in life and not just a private one. Joe Biden’s longstanding and ever-expanding promotion of abortion is a highly public aspect of his agenda. His living a contrary expression of faith is a very public matter.
President Biden is now described by some media commentators as being singled out by conservatives for his support of “a woman’s right to choose.” The reality is far beyond that. He has also lobbied to expand abortion and to remove it from reconsideration by the Supreme Court by promising to encode in federal law an absolute right to abortion. He has vowed to repeal the Hyde Amendment which for decades has protected conscientious objectors among taxpayers from being forced to fund abortions. He has advocated “packing” the U.S. Supreme Court to diminish the influence of pro-life justices.
This is a dilemma for the Church and the U.S. Bishops Conference. A policy statement which truly reflects the Church’s discipline on worthiness to receive Holy Communion could directly preclude such a publicly known abortion advocate from the Sacrament without signs of repentance. Putting forth that policy statement may, and likely would, also be seen on the practical level as a repudiation of at least some of this president’s political agenda and that of some in his political party who also profess to be Catholic.
This is a painful and difficult position for the bishops to be in, and it is not going to go away. The first and foremost concern of the bishops, however, should not be a fear of political fallout, or of losing the Church’s tax exempt status (which is also highly doubtful). The foremost concern should be something that no one else seems to be raising. It is not concern for Joe Biden’s agenda that should impact our bishops, but concern for Joe Biden’s soul.
Politicians Are Not a Privileged Class of Catholics
The Church’s teaching in this matter is based in part on Sacred Scripture. Among several clear examples is this one from Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians:
“Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the Body and Blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses this with a clarity that needs no interpretation:
“Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.”
“Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. ‘A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae’ (Canon 1398). The Church does not, thereby, intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.”
An argument can be made that a politician who promotes legislation that provides the means for abortion may not incur the same penalty as someone who "procures a completed abortion," but this is also splitting hairs. Both the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith define the moral obligation to promote legislation that protects life:
“The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation.”
“The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority ... The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil authority ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen ... the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined. As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be assured for the unborn child ... the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child’s rights.”
For any Catholic, the reception of Communion is not just a private matter. It is both a private and public witness to being in communion with both Christ and His Church. Some of the most beautiful and clear commentary on this has come from Bishop Thomas Olmstead of the Diocese of Phoenix who developed an apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist and what it means to be “in Communion”:
“Holy Communion is reserved for those who, with God’s grace, make a sincere effort to live this union with Christ and His Church by adhering to all that the Catholic Church believes and proclaims to be revealed by God.
“For this reason, the Church requires Catholic leaders who have publicly supported gravely immoral laws such as abortion and euthanasia to refrain from receiving Holy Communion until they publicly repent and receive the Sacrament of Penance.”
Bishop Olmstead described the great harm to the soul of a Catholic who receives the Sacrament after allowing belief in the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist to diminish. A person who truly believes in this Sacrament for the Life of the World could not possibly also embrace and promote a culture of death. Such an unworthy reception of Holy Communion transforms the Sacrament into a sacrilege that continues the betrayal of Christ by Judas Iscariot at the first Institution of the Eucharist.
You may remember an important Holy Week post of mine entitled “Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light.” It recalls Saint John's account of the Institution of the Eucharist. Satan had entered into Judas who received the bread from Christ with betrayal in his heart. The final words of Saint John’s Gospel account of the scene speak volumes about the state of the soul of the betrayer:
“After receiving the piece of bread, Satan entered into him ... Judas immediately went out. And it was night.”
Avoiding a clear statement on Eucharistic coherence now can do far more damage to the faith and moral sanctity of Catholics than the appearance of taking a political side. It is cheap and easy for those who live to not take a long, hard look at how we may promote, by commission or omission, a denial of the right to life.
How could our bishops possibly expect otherwise faithful Catholics in unrecognized second marriages to accept in good faith the discipline of refraining from Communion while the most pro-abortion Catholic politician in history is given a pass. The path of rightousness in this will not be easy for our bishops. As Father Michael Orsi wrote in a recently published letter to the Wall Street Journal : “This will take courage, but it will separate the shepherds from the hired hands.”
+ + +
Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post to raise awareness about an important moment for the Church in the modern world. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
The Last Full Measure of Devotion: Civil Rights and the Right to Life
