A Few Bold Bishops in Defense of Religious Liberty

There are hopeful signs that some Catholic bishops are speaking boldly about the erosion of religious rights even while facing criticism for it from other bishops.

The Catho1ic World Report is a venerable old publication of Ignatius Press that is now only available as an online magazine. The publication recently posted through its Twitter account that Dr. Rachel Levine, President Biden’s nominee for the post of Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services, is (or was) “a biological man who [now] identifies as a transgender woman.”

That mere statement of verifiable fact by a Catholic publication resulted in a charge of “hateful conduct” by Twitter and the suspension of its account. After the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights posted this story, I was one of many thousands who emailed Twitter in protest. My protest message charged that Twitter’s response poses a significant threat not only to religious liberty but to freedom of speech and freedom of the press as well, three of the fundamental rights defined in the First Amendment.

I have no delusion that my message to Twitter made a difference, but Twitter rescinded its suspension of CWR ’s account the next day. It nonetheless struck me after this affair that the tyranny of such suppression of rights and civil liberties is the result of two forces working in tandem with each other:

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the noise of a few

and the silence of many.

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The suspension of the Catholic World Report ’s Twitter account was the result of a single complaint by an LGBTQ activist. The reconsideration came as a result of a multitude of protests on the side of right. I am proud to have been one of them.

We live in a time in which the measure of our self-worth is not determined by our system of values or our moral fiber in living up to them for the greater good. As a culture, we have been lulled into a quest for social media “likes” and approval from those whose mission it is to discard and replace the truths we have long lived by. Any media source that does not uphold the sensitivities of identity politics and the progressive social agenda will find itself parked far outside the public square.

The Catholic World Report simply did what the news media is supposed to do. The news media has traditionally been dubbed, “The Fourth Estate,” its public role being a much needed checks and balance on government. CWR reported no falsehood, nor did it cast any aspersion on President Biden’s appointee to Health and Human Services. The Catholic publication simply pointed out that the nominee has a lifestyle that by implication may lend itself to bias against traditional moral beliefs and practices.

Then Twitter was allowed to do what the Chinese Communist Party does on a daily basis. It eliminated from public view information, regardless of its truth, that the progressive agenda does not want us lesser folks to see or hear. I hope I am not the only one who resents this. As a Catholic, as a writer — even as a condemned prisoner — I resent it with every fiber of my being.

Les Miserables

One of the most visited posts at Beyond These Stone Walls has had an effect that I never intended. It is “Les Miserables: The Bishop and the Redemption of Jean Valjean.” My post has been visited by countless high school students around the world who have used it as a source of “CliffNotes” when assigned a book report on the novel. I am glad to have been some service, but the novel itself is soaring. So is its musical rendition that has appeared on Broadway and in theaters across the globe. Bear with me. There is a point here and I am getting to it.

My post about Les Miserables above tells the story of Bishop Bienvenue (which means “Welcome” in the novel’s original French). Bishop Bienvenue is one of literature’s most noble characters. He seeks out the poor and downtrodden, sees himself primarily as a servant, and has no interest in amassing political clout or Earthly power in any other form. His encounter with ex-convict Jean Valjean sets the latter on a course toward his own noble future. The two are unforgettable literary characters.

Victor Hugo wrote and published Les Miserables in 1862. In the decades after the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon, France entered a period of anti-clericalism. Bishops and priests were widely regarded with disdain. When Victor Hugo’s son read the manuscript for Les Miserables, he pleaded with his father to change the character of Bishop Bienvenue to someone the French might more easily see as noble. It is one of the ironies of French literature that Victor Hugo’s son wanted Bishop Bienvenue recast as a lawyer.

But Hugo defended his choice. He argued that Bishop Bienvenue may not represent a Catholic bishop that France has in real life, but rather he represents the bishop that France wants to have. I find a sort of parallel in this time of our own cultural revolution. Many Catholics struggle to maintain and nurture an identity as Catholics on a moral course against a more vocal majority speeding toward identity politics and a culture of open disregard for the value of human life.

The United States has now elected the second Catholic president in its history. He has described himself as a devout Catholic who carries a rosary in his pocket everyplace he goes. He has also also openly promoted unlimited and unrestricted access to abortion at any point in a pregnancy and has pledged to repeal the Hyde Amendment which for decades has spared taxpayers from being forced to violate their consciences by providing taxpayer funded abortions.

If such a situation existed in 1862, Victor Hugo’s Bishop Bienvenue would have as the least of his concerns the erosion of his social standing or political clout if he presented an apostate nominally Catholic leader with merciful but truthful fraternal correction. I described the problem that the current President brings to Catholics of conscience in a previous post, “Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life."

The mainstream media has played down this conflict while playing up the President’s Catholic identity. So the media never revealed a statement published by Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez at the time of the President’s inauguration. With inherent charity and true moral leadership, Archbishop Gomez commended this President for his thoughtful concern for the plight of immigrants (a concern that I share after some experience with Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

Archbishop Gomez also spoke, and wrote, of this President’s unapologetic promotion of abortion, his threat against the Hyde Amendment — which he publicly supported until he ran for President — and his stated intent to codify into federal law the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade so that it cannot be readdressed by the current or any other future Court. These, according to Archbishop Gomez, are the preeminent Catholic issues of our time.

Accommodations in the Garden of Good and Evil

The Washington Post accused the Archbishop of “assailing” the President over abortion rights. Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter described the statement as “churlish.” I had to look up “churlish” since I hardly ever use the word. It means “surly” or “mean spirited,” the absolute opposite of the Archbishop’s demeanor or intent. NCR ’s Winters also wrote that Archbishop Gomez “threw cold water on the most Catholic Inauguration in history.”

Archbishop Gomez went on to add in his statement his “deep concern for the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.” This latter concern is heightened by some of the nominees our devout Catholic President has put forth. Foremost among these is Xavier Becerra, current Attorney General of California. He is passionate about expanded access to abortion and embyonic stem cell research. Beccera has been awarded One-Hundred percent ratings on reproductive rights by Planned Parenthood and NARAL.

In “Becerra Is a Threat to Life and Liberty” Bill Donohue wrote in the February 2021 issue of Catalyst that “Becerra is one of the cultural warriors” threatening to haul the Little Sisters of the Poor back into court again if they do not comply with a mandate to provide insurance coverage for contraception. In a previous issue of Catalyst, Bill Donohue wrote of the current President, “It is okay for Catholics to bludgeon the Little Sisters of the Poor so long as they carry a rosary.”

Of all the responses to the courageous statement of Archbishop Jose Gomez, however, the one from Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich is the most troubling. As the elected President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Gomez carefully framed his statement in accord with Catholic teaching, inc1uding Catholic social teaching. Using his Twitter account, Cardinal Blase Cupich publicly rebuked the Archbishop describing his statement as “ill considered.” He suggested that the statement should have been vetted before the entire body of bishops for discussion and a vote. I know of no other Catholic bishop who spoke against the statement. I applaud Archbishop Gomez for his fidelity.

And he is not alone. In an equally courageous statement, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wrote forcefully against state and local government declarations that Catholic Mass is not an essential activity worthy of consideration.

Writing boldly for The Wall Street Journal, Archbishop Cordileone spoke truth to power in “California’s Unscientific Worship Ban.” The Governors of California and New York have been in lockstep with one another on this, a point I made recently in “A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers.” Archbishop Cordileone described his long ordeal against civil authority at both the state and local level. He did not mince his words:

"Whether religious services are ‘essential’ isn’t a matter for government to decide ... In lifting California’s blanket ban on indoor worship (in a 6-3 decision), the high court rightly acknowledged the blatant unfairness of treating religious worship differently from secular activities such as shopping ... Such blatant disregard for the Constitution bodes ill for everyone. These next four years will be a time to coalesce around core ideals or continue to divide along ideological lines.”

Even as the pandemic lessened during the summer and many other activities opened up, the City of San Francisco doubled down on its bans for religious gatherings. All indoor worship was banned while even outdoor services were limited to no more than 12 participans. At the same time, the city government had nothing to say about street protests that were openly allowed to continue, and with some in the city’s government participating.

We who have faced this pandemic with a dismal sense of Les Miserables are empowered by the witness of Archbishops Gomez and Cordileone.

Bishop Bienvenue lives on.

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Les Miserables: The Bishop and the Redemption of Jean Valjean

Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life

A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers

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Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life

Joe Biden is only the fourth Catholic presidential nominee in U.S. history but his pro-abortion stance leaves him in broken communion with his profession of faith.

Millions of American Catholics who uphold the Right to Life as a foundational human right in accord with Catholic teaching and the Bill of Rights were disappointed in recent weeks. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the four liberal justices in a matter of life and death. The question before the Court was whether a Louisiana law requiring abortion practitioners to have admitting privileges at a local hospital was unconstitutional.

In the split (5-4) decision in favor of abortion providers, Chief Justice Roberts voted with the majority in a matter from which he had earlier dissented. This may not be the setback some in the pro-life movement have feared. The Court’s ruling in support of the precedent set in Planned Parenthood v. Casey did not address the precedent itself which inserted into the Constitution a right to abortion. This is a distinction that I wrote about early this year in “March for Life: A New Great Awakening.”

The timing of publishing this decision — in the final months of a highly charged presidential battle for the soul of America — reminded me of something that unfolded in these pages during the 2016 election. At that time, I wrote a post entitled “Wikileaks Found Catholics in the Basket of Deplorables.”

Among a vast media leak from the Hillary Clinton campaign back then was a set of email exchanges between Clinton campaign manager John Podesta and some progressive U.S. Catholics. The leaks exposed a plan to recreate U.S. Catholicism into an entity more appealing to the Democratic Party and its ever descending slide toward the left.

The central tenet of that plan was to move American Catholics away from any identification as a “Roman” Catholic Church into a state of mere symbolic authority from Rome. The result would be something more akin to the U.S. Episcopal church and its open embrace of identity politics, reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, transgender ideology, and a much-weakened moral voice in the public square.

Climate change, open borders, and a global identity were to be the new moral imperatives. Abortion without limits would quietly fall without challenge into the politically correct category of “settled law.” It is easy for the living, while descending toward the left, to compartmentalize their consciences and deny a right to life to the most vulnerable among us.

Back in 2016, Pope Francis raised an alarm among conservative Catholics and the pro-life mission when he was quoted in the media as suggesting that the Church cannot speak only about abortion. The left arm in Catholicism seized upon that, but since then Pope Francis has offered some clarity. You may not know about it because the mainstream media only hypes his more trite sayings such as “Who am I to judge?”

On the matter of life, however, Francis has been as unequivocal as his predecessors, articulating clearly his support for and continuance of the pro-life emphasis of Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Francis affirms that the foundational human right is the right to life. He has stated that the right to life and transgender ideology are the most pressing moral issues of our time. To say that the Church should not speak only of these issues does not at all suggest what the 2016 Clinton and Podesta agenda suggested: that we just set them aside and not speak of them at all.

Joe Biden’s Catholic Communion

Among the moral issues of our time, Pope Francis agrees with the U.S. Bishops that the right to life is the most fundamental human right in Catholic moral teaching. This places Democratic nominee Joe Biden far outside the moral life and teaching of his professed faith. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, Joe Biden said from his basement campaign forum:

“We need to ensure that women have access to all health services during this crisis. Abortion is an essential health care service.”

Joe Biden is only the fourth Catholic in U.S. history to become the presidential nominee of a major political party. All four have been Democrats. The first was New York Governor Alfred Smith who was easily defeated by Republican Herbert Hoover in 1928. Smith’s Catholic faith was widely seen as a cause of his defeat. The anti-Catholic political ice was not broken again until 1960 when John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic U.S. President.

Neither Al Smith nor President Kennedy faced a pro-life question because Planned Parenthood v. Casey had not yet happened. The matter of Catholic identity and abortion first arose in 2004 when Massachusetts Senator John Kerry became the nation’s third Catholic nominee for president exposing a wide contradiction between his professed Catholic faith and his public promotion of abortion rights.

Senator Kerry lost the election when President George W. Bush won a second term. Throughout his campaign, Kerry openly defied Church teaching on abortion. For that he was endorsed by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. His open defiance launched a debate among bishops about responding to pro-abortion Catholic politicians who receive the Eucharist, the ultimate sign of communion with their faith.

The argument was based on Canon 915 in the Code of Canon Law which holds that those who “obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” For an analysis of how this has applied to Catholic political candidates, I rely on an excellent account in the National Catholic Register by Lauretta Brown: “Biden and the U.S. Bishops” (May 24, 2020).

The matter of promoting abortion while pretending to be Catholic has been raised anew in the candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden. As a Delaware Senator and vice-presidential nominee on the ticket with Barack Obama in 2008, Joe Biden declared on Meet the Press that he “was prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception.” He qualified his belief, however, by stating that he would not impose that belief by promoting laws that reflect it.

Archbishop Charles Chaput and Bishop James Conley published a rebuttal, stating that the beginning of life is a matter not only of faith but of scientific truth. Embracing objective truth has nothing to do with imposing it on anyone. The two bishops wrote:

“If, as Senator Biden said, ‘I am prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception,’ then he is not merely wrong about the science of new life; he also fails to defend the innocent life he already knows is there.”

Mr. Biden was also criticized by Bishop Francis Malooly during the 2008 presidential campaign for his public misrepresentation of Church teaching on abortion. And he was criticized by Bishop John Ricard for receiving Communion during a campaign trip to Florida. This raised anew the debate among bishops about Communion for Catholic politicians who promote abortion.

Now Comes Cardinal Theodore McCarrick — Again!

Cardinal Raymond Burke, then Archbishop of St. Louis, was one of the first bishops to state in 2004 that he would deny Communion to Catholic candidate John Kerry due to his public stance on abortion. Many bishops joined him in support of that view. In June of 2004, the U.S. Bishops Conference released a document entitled “Catholics in Political Life.” It communicated the U.S. Bishops’ unqualified “commitment to the legal protection of life from the moment of conception until natural death.”

Previous to the publication of that document, however, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, then Archbishop of Washington DC, was appointed by the bishops to chair a USCCB Task Force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic Politicians. McCarrick quietly lobbied other bishops to oppose denying Communion to pro-abortion politicians. There was significant foul play in McCarrick’s lobbying effort.

In 2004, The USCCB Task Force received a letter from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This was a year before the death of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger’s election at the Conclave of 2005. As Task Force Chair, McCarrick received the letter from Cardinal Ratzinger on behalf of the other members. The future Pope Benedict’s letter was entitled, “Worthiness to Receive Communion: General Principles.” Here is one of its major points:

“[R]egarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood in the case of a Catholic politician as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws) his pastor should instruct the person about the Church’s teaching and tell him not to present himself for Communion.”

However, in his own report Cardinal McCarrick misrepresented the Ratzinger letter and manipulated the Task Force findings and recommendations to the U.S. Bishops in 2004. He instead reported to the bishops that it was the Task Force Commission’s conclusion that denial of Holy Communion to Catholic politicians could further divide our Church and could have serious unintended consequences.” The report concluded:

“In light of these and other concerns, the Task Force urges for the most part renewed efforts and persuasion, not penalties.”

An official who assisted Cardinal Ratzinger in the writing of that letter tells me today that it carefully referenced Canon 915, instructing that those who obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.

In revealing his Task Force Report to the U.S. bishops in 2004, Cardinal McCarrick attempted to hide the Cardinal-Prefect’s letter and his misrepresentation of it. The letter from Cardinal Ratzinger was later leaked by an unknown source exposing the manipulation, but only after the bishops accepted McCarrick’s more accommodating view — that pro-abortion politicians should be instructed but not penalized.

The Pro-Life Sensus Fidelium

What those “unintended consequences” cited by Cardinal McCarrick were can only be imagined. However, hindsight sheds some light on them. There are some who viewed McCarrick in the same way he apparently viewed himself — as a power-broker in the politics of both Church and state.

The full report on Theodore McCarrick’s rise and fall will likely soon be released by the Holy See. It will be interesting to see whether and how it reflects this, and reflects his manipulation of the U.S. Bishops’ collective approach to politicians who claim to be Catholic while dissenting with impunity from Catholic moral teaching on something as fundamental as the Right to Life.

In 2020, the U.S. Bishops formulated a new letter for Catholic voters that specifically cited the priority of life and abortion as “preeminent” priorities. It adopted the language of Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI with clarity about the central importance of life issues in the current political climate.

Meanwhile, Candidate Joe Biden continues to espouse his Catholic identity while moving even further left in his promotion of abortion rights up to and including late-term abortion. In recent months he has withdrawn his four decades of support for the Hyde Amendment, a 1974 bilateral agreement between parties that protected U.S. taxpayers from violating their consciences by government application of their tax dollars for abortions.

There are few steps left to take for a Catholic candidate who openly rejects the Right to Life and other tenets of Catholic moral teaching, but Candidate Joe Biden has discovered them. He has officiated at a same-sex “marriage” and promotes the full spectrum of LGBTQ+ ideology and identity politics. Most recently Mr. Biden has called for codifying the right to abortion in federal law. After a recent Supreme Court decision on religious liberty, he vowed to roll back rights extended to the Little Sisters of the Poor concerning forced contraception coverage.

Some courageous bishops would deny him Communion for the simple but grave fact that he is no longer in communion with his faith. Other pro-life Catholics have asked for his excommunication.

Canon Law limits such a step to those who actively perform or otherwise cause abortion.

Joe Biden’s unabashedly pro-abortion rhetoric and promotion may collectively rise to that standard. In such a case, the Sensus Fidelium may call for something as decisive as excommunication. It would not be a penalty, but a discipline, an invitation to tend to the state, not only of Mr. Biden’s politics, but of his soul.

And how utterly strange and unacceptable that the current Archbishop of Washington, DC, while remaining silent on the Democratic nominee’s pro-abortion politics, chose this moment for a public repudiation of the only major party candidate who has been unequivocal in his support for the Right to Life, his promotion of religious liberty, and his efforts to appoint pro-life judges to the federal judiciary.

I can only ask the same question that has been on the minds of many faithful Catholics in recent weeks:

What in Hell is going on here?

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U.S. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington and Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, look on during a news conference at the Vatican April 24, 2002. (CNS photo/Vincenzo Pinto, Reuters)