San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Bishops politicizing abortion face backlash
Jo Ann Evans is the kind of lifelong Catholic who doesn’t just show up for Mass on Sundays. She expresses her faith the other six days of the week by volunteering to feed the poor, help new immigrants and find shelter for the homeless.
“We’re the face of Christ to the people we serve,” said Evans, a member of St. Columba Catholic Church in Oakland. “We may be the only living, actionable sign (to them) that Christ is real.”
The rest of America saw a different face of the Catholic Church recently when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops approved draft
guidelines that could deny giving Holy Communion to politicians who publicly and politically disagree with the church’s stance against abortion — like President Biden, the nation’s second Catholic president, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Both attend Mass regularly.
Catholics like Evans haven’t stopped talking about the move. They’re incensed that the bishops are pushing the Church’s most sacred ritual into the political realm — or “weaponizing the Eucharist,” in the words of critics. Catholics believe that bread and wine literally transform into the body and blood of Jesus Christ during Mass, and taking Communion is an essential part of practicing faith.
“I could not believe that those bishops were politicizing Communion, which is the lifeblood, and I mean that literally, for Catholics,” Evans said. “I don’t want my faith to be politicized. I don’t want the body and blood of Christ to be on anyone’s list that they can politicize.”
Or, as John Whitney, a Seattle priest who is returning to his native Bay Area this fall, wrote in response to the bishops: “Stay in your lane.”
No chance. The Conference of Bishops — including one of its most vociferous members, San Francisco archbishop Salvatore Cordileone — is becoming increasingly political. Yet, as is the case with abortion, the bishops are often not just out of touch with most Americans, but also with what many Catholics believe. According to findings from Pew Research, 56% of Catholics think abortion should be legal. (Twothirds of Catholics who attend Mass weekly said abortion should be illegal.)
Being out of step hasn’t stopped the bishops before. They’ve weighed in on issues from abortion rights to samesex marriage to immigration to health care. Cordileone was “as instrumental as anybody” in helping to pass Proposition 8, the 2008 state ballot measure that banned samesex marriage in California, political consultant Frank Schubert told me. Cordileone, then bishop of San Diego, helped raise $1.5 million from wealthy donors, saying “the ultimate attack of the Evil One is the attack on marriage.”
Now that samesex marriage is legal, Cordileone has shifted focus. He is among the bishops who consider stopping abortion to be their “preeminent” moral and policy priority — ahead of poverty, homelessness, racism or climate change. In May, he wrote about “the special responsibility that Catholics prominent in public life” have when it comes to combating abortion.
“If you find that you are unwilling or unable to abandon your advocacy for abortion, you should not come forward to receive Holy Communion,” Cordileone wrote. “To publicly affirm the Catholic faith while at the same time publicly rejecting one of its most fundamental teachings is simply dishonest.”
That doesn’t match up with what his boss — Pope Francis — has said. The pope has discouraged the bishops and others from ranking priorities.
“Our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development,” the pope said in 2018.
“Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection.”
Some Catholic lawmakers are confused and angered. They’re wondering why the U.S. bishops are singling out abortion over so many other issues.
“No elected officials have been threatened with being denied the Eucharist as they support and have supported policies contrary to the Church teachings, including supporting the death penalty, separating migrant children from their parents, denying asylum to those seeking safety in the United States, limiting assistance for the hungry and food insecure, and denying rights and dignity to immigrants,” said a letter from 60 Catholic Democrats — including Reps. Jackie Speier, DSan Mateo; Anna Eshoo, DPalo Alto; Mike Thompson, DSt. Helena; and Jimmy Panetta, DCarmel Valley.
Part of the reason for the bishops’ estrangement from their flock might be due to their lack of diversity. According to a 2016 survey noted by the National Catholic Reporter, 88% of the bishops are nonHispanic white men and their average age is 65 years old. While most say they spend an hour a day consuming the news, many live in what Los Angeles pediatric specialist and Catholic bioethics expert Patrick Whelan calls “an information silo.” Half say they watch Fox News; only 4% tune into MSNBC.
Whelan, a practicing Catholic and an Obama campaign adviser on Catholics, cowrote a June 21 essay in the New Republic with Kathleen Kennedy, niece of the first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy. The two asked, “Has anybody pointed out that all these men have chosen as the most important sin the one sin that they are unable to commit?”
Realistically, without the pope’s support, this proposal isn’t going anywhere. Even the conference appeared to back down in subsequent days. Plus, only a politician’s own bishop can decide whether to deny someone Communion; clerics in Washington, D.C., have said they won’t ban Biden.
But that doesn’t make politicizing the Eucharist any less disheartening to people like Evans who are trying to be the face of the church in the community. Over the past week, many Catholics have shared online what Whitney, who grew up in San Mateo, wrote on Facebook:
“Bishops, priests, etc. are neither the hosts nor the bouncers nor the ones who wrote the guest list. The Eucharist is the resurrected body of Christ given for the life of the world. Jesus Christ is the one who invites the guests (“all you who labor”); he is the host of those who come; he is the setter of the table; and he is the feast which is shared (“Take this, all of you ... this is my body, this is my blood”).
“We are guests at the meal, and sometimes (by his calling) servers,” Whitney wrote. “So stay in your lane, please. The wait staff doesn’t get to exclude those who want to come. If you don’t like the company Christ calls (and, admittedly, it is a rag tag bunch of sinners, one and all), it’s you who need to leave the table, not them.”