Two words come to my mind when I consider what the Catholic bishops are trying to do to Joe Biden: Ambush and extortion.
Ambush, because they didn't bother to let him know that his status of receiving Catholic communion would be in jeopardy if he was elected president, seeing as how he is a supporter of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling which established the conditions under which women could terminate a pregnancy. Oh, no: They waited until he actually was president so they could give him the opportunity to be as embarrassed and trapped as he possibly could be.
And extortion: When you make someone change his mind about something under duress, under threat of losing something of real value, there's no other word to call it.
One thing I can't call it is courageous. This pack of weasels are using religion to interfere in politics, despite their non-taxed status arranged for by Congress. They want their cake and eat it, too.
They are not acting purely unto God, that's for sure. Like the rest of us, they cannot know how Jesus of Nazareth would have dealt with this maddening dilemma of ours, since there's no reporting of it in the Christian bible. They can say so, but they know they can't establish that. Saying so doesn't make it so.
Speaking of Congress: Ten Republican U.S. Senators, fourteen Democrats, 56 Republican House members and 76 Democrats are listed as Catholic in The Original U.S. Congress Handbook, delivered to my door just the other day (This is by my count. A handful of members of both the House and Senate chose not to have their religions listed, so this list may not be complete. It's close, though.). Will the Catholic bishops grill them as to their attitudes toward Roe as well?
"We've never had this situation before," said a Catholic spokesperson, because the only other Catholic to become president, Kennedy, rose to that position before Roe v. Wade (And, hypocritically, it also ignores Kennedy's, and ex-s' for that matter, inclination to regard marriage as optional.). Okay, granted. The solution? Stay the hell out of it.
That wouldn't leave the bishops in a tough spot at all: respecting the separation of church and state. What a concept!
I've brought this up several times before, and it's worth repeating: The original Constitution says that no religious test for public office is required, and it has not been amended otherwise. It may be highly advisable by tradition and wise political practice, but the Founding Fathers must have concluded that since politics are always strange bedfellows with whatever aspect of culture you like, it's nobody's damn business what religion some member of Congress belongs to.
In fact, a significant number of present MOCs listed their religions as "Christian, non-specified." To me, that means exactly that they're pretty much like most others in the country, but beyond that, who really cares?
So for a bunch of Catholic bishops to hold up their Holy Grail and demand adherence to a political position or else they'll withhold it, is incredibly inappropriate and a rabbit hole out of which they may not crawl so easily. Because now that they've established anti-abortion as the gateway to satisfying one's essence of religious worship, will they now make other demands?
In which case, where will it end? Marrying a Catholic, too? Seeing that one's kids are Catholic? Requiring weekly church attendance, regardless of what other duties are required of one's Congressional membership, getting special dispensations to avoid, uh, punishment? You can take this and run with it a long way.
By all accounts, Joe Biden is a Catholic of unusual devotion. He relied on it heavily upon the deaths of his first wife and a daughter in a traffic accident. He attends weekly Mass. He carries a rosary with him, which harkens back to the '50s. Taking Holy Communion away from him is cruel and obnoxious. And it won't change his position on abortion, you can bet on that.
Catholics tend to get condescending when considering their religion next to others of Christian origin, since they claim to be the one from which all are derived. What they keep forgetting is the basis upon which the Reformation took place--its utter corruption which twisted the very meaning of it to others seeing it plainly. The bishops had better walk their untenable position back, lest they end up in a similar spot.
I'm guessing that Joe Biden won't put his rosary away because of all this hypocrisy. It may change who he prays for.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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