President, pope caught in crossfire
Welcome to a one-time-only return of the iconic cable news current events confrontation clash: “Crossfire”!
Today we are honored to have two of history’s world famous authorities facing off on opposite sides of a question that was once raised and spread by bigots, but was put to rest — for all time (or so we thought!) — by a courageous, candid presidential candidate and the voters in the 1960 presidential election.
But now the question has been thrust before us once again in the form of breaking news. And this time, it has been resurrected not by godless bigots but by true believers — the conservative cardinals who now seem to overwhelmingly control America’s Roman Catholic Church:
“Bishops on Path to Refuse Biden Holy Communion,” a New York Times front-page headline proclaimed on June 19, 2021.
As The Times reported it: “The Roman Catholic bishops of the United States, flouting a warning from the Vatican, have overwhelmingly voted to draft guidance on the sacrament of the Eucharist, advancing a push by conservative bishops to deny President Biden communion because of his support of abortion rights.”
It was a lopsided vote of 168 to 55. The bishops decided to draft guidelines cardinals can use to deny Holy Communion to presidents (or any politicians) who, contrary to their religion’s instructions, enforce the Constitution’s guarantees they swore to God they’d protect.
Today, when America has its second Catholic president, we must again confront that question we thought was put to rest a half-century ago: Can Americans ever elect a Roman Catholic as president with assurance that its chief executive won’t feel compelled to govern according to the dictates of a pope?
Let’s meet our famous guests, who will debate tonight’s “Crossfire”:
From Boston, Massachusetts, here’s President John F. Kennedy.
He addressed this question head-on in a September 1960 presidential campaign speech to the Houston Ministerial Association’s Protestant clergy. His words today are from that speech.
From Bavaria, Germany, and then Vatican City, here’s Pope Benedict XVI. Just 10 months before becoming pope, when he was Germany’s Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he wrote a June 2004 letter to an American cardinal urging a hard-line denial of Communion to Catholic officials (such as Catholic Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry) who support a woman’s right to a legal abortion. His words today are taken from that letter. (After serving as pope from 2005 to 2013, Benedict XVI retired; now 93, he lives a very private life in Vatican City.)
Gentlemen, welcome to “Crossfire.” You’ve heard our question. What is your answer?
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote … ”
POPE BENEDICT XVI: “The Church teaches that abortion or euthanasia is a grave sin … (I)t is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law or vote for it.’” (He was quoting a church doctrine.)
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: “I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic,
Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source … ”
POPE BENEDICT XVI: “Christians have a ‘grave obligation of conscience not to cooperate formally in practices which, even if permitted by civil legislation, are contrary to God’s law.”
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: “Whatever issue may come before me as President — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject — I will make my decision … without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.”
JFK’s view is basically shared by America’s second Catholic president, Joe Biden. But the Catholic bishops just voted in effect that presidents must govern by a veritable double standard: In any conflict between the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees and the Church’s dictates, a Catholic president must accept the pope’s or a cardinal’s interpretation of God’s wishes. The bishops messaged that to Biden. It arrived as breaking news. But it was precisely the “outside religious pressures or dictates” that America’s first Catholic president warned us must always be unacceptable.
EPILOGUE: The U.S. cardinal who received that hard-line letter from the soon-to-be pope was Washington, D.C.’s Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who openly opposed abortions and same-sex marriages, and favored an all-male Catholic clergy. Much later, we also learned that McCarrick had, for decades, been engaging in sexual misconduct with adult males and sexually abusing minors — which is to say: rape. Back then, the Church was covering up its clergy’s rapes and abuses, hiding them from the police and quietly moving abusers to other parishes, where some did it all again.