According to a report by Reuters, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops will decide the fate of US President Joe Biden and other politicians who support abortion, same-sex marriages and LQBTQ rights that are antithetical to Church teachings and tenets should be given communion which is a sacred ritual for Catholics.
The powerful US Conference of Catholic Bishops will meet from 16 June to Friday 18 June to decide if Catholics who do not support the Church’s doctrine should be given communion.
The ritual of the communion is a sacrament central to the Roman Catholic faith. It is important that the faithful receive the communion which is administered by a priest which is an act of god-eating wherein a piece of bread that symbolizes the body of Jesus and a sip of wine that represents His blood–is conducted at every mass.
The Bishops will take a call on a proposal to ask the ‘Committee on Doctrine’ to draft a teaching document on the topic of Communion.
And if the draft is adopted that would translate into a call to all Catholic Bishops in the US to deny communion to Catholics who support LGBTQ rights, including same-sex marriage, and abortion rights.
When Biden to the oath of office in 2021, he became only the second Catholic to serve as US President– the first was John F Kennedy (1961-1963).
In 2004, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops allowed individual Bishops the liberty to administer or withhold communion to politicians who support abortion rights.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a woman’s willful termination of her pregnancy is “gravely contrary to the moral law”. It also lays down that ‘marital love’ should be shared between men and women, not people of the same sex.
However, Biden has been a staunch advocate of LGBTQ and abortion rights over the past decade and when he took the office, he rolled back federal restrictions on abortion pills to make them more accessible. He also has plans to junk a long-standing ban on federal funding for abortion in his 2022 budget.
This has created a rift in Catholics and the Catholic Church is now alarmed that the US President’s views could cause serious damage to them.A Pew Research poll conducted in March revealed that 67 per cent of Catholics in the US believe Biden’s views should not disqualify him from communion.
Also, many Catholics feel that the Church should not rake up these issues which leads to a divide and further decline in the numbers. Already the Catholic Church membership in the states has dropped nearly 20 per cent in the past two decades compounded by sexual abuse scandals involving predatory priests and increasing division on social issues.
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