Biden, Francis will meet amid president’s rift with US bishops
US leader’s stance on abortion has attracted strong opposition
There’s an intriguing subplot to President Joe Biden’s coming meeting with Pope Francis. The world’s two most prominent Roman Catholics will celebrate a shared outlook on church teaching and vital social issues even as Biden faces unwavering opposition from many U.S. Catholic bishops over his stances on abortion and LGBTQ rights.
Less than three weeks after Biden’s visit to the Vatican on Friday, the American bishops will convene in Baltimore, with one of the agenda items inspired in part by conservatives who contend that Biden’s support for abortion rights should disqualify him from receiving Communion.
Although any document that emerges is not expected to mention Biden by name, it’s possible there will be a clear message of rebuke.
“This is way beyond embarrassing,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of historical theology at Villanova University who recently wrote a book about Biden and Catholicism.
“For some of the bishops, it’s an act of intimidation” toward Biden, Faggioli said. “And they have a pope who is protecting a Catholic president’s access to the sacraments — he’s had to send a signal from the Vatican saying, ‘We don’t think this is wise.’”
The pope upholds Catholic doctrine opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, but he has irked some conservative Catholics in the U.S. and elsewhere by emphasizing other issues that mesh with Biden’s priorities — protecting the environment, combating racial injustice and poverty, for example.
The pope and Biden “see eye to eye on many issues,” Faggioli said. “But they both are really embattled, facing very strong headwinds … fighting against different kinds of ideologues.”
Biden is only the second Catholic president of the United States, after John F. Kennedy, and displays his faith openly, often wearing a rosary and attending Mass routinely. The devotion dates to childhood; he has expressed gratitude to the nuns who helped bolster his confidence while he struggled with stuttering as a schoolboy.
“Wherever there were nuns, there was home,” he wrote in his 2007 memoir “Promises to Keep.” “My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion.” His faith was tested, but not weakened, after his wife and baby daughter were killed in a traffic accident in 1972.
“I never doubted that there was a God, but I was angry with God,” he told The Christian Science Monitor in 2007.
In that same interview, Biden conveyed why he considers himself a faithful Catholic despite his views on abortion.
“My views are totally consistent with Catholic social doctrine,” Biden said. “There are elements within the church who say that if you are at odds with any of the teachings of the church, you are at odds with the church. I think the church is bigger than that.”
Francis already has made clear he won’t shun U.S. political leaders who support abortion rights. On Oct. 9, he met at the Vatican with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose abortion stance has drawn the wrath of the top Catholic in her hometown of San Francisco, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. Cordileone has been urging the U.S. bishops conference to send a message to Biden, Pelosi and others “that would move them in their conscience.”
“They need to understand the scandal that is caused when they say they are faithfully Catholic and yet oppose the church on such a basic concept,” he told The Associated Press in April.
Under Catholic policy, decisions regarding exclusion from Communion are left to individual bishops. While Cordileone has discouraged Pelosi from receiving Communion in his archdiocese, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, has made clear that Biden is welcome to receive Communion when he attends services there.