While on a political junket in South Carolina over the weekend, Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden stopped by the St. Anthony Catholic Church in Florence on Sunday morning for Mass. The Reverend Robert E. Morey refused to serve communion to the former vice president, explaining:
Sadly, this past Sunday, I had to refuse Holy Communion to former Vice President Joe Biden. Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other and the church. Our actions should reflect that. Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself … outside of Church teaching.
But Biden claims he agrees with the church’s teaching. He just doesn’t want to impose his views on anyone else. Said Biden in an interview in 2015: “I’m prepared to accept that at the moment of conception there’s human life and being, but I’m not prepared to say that to other God-fearing [and] non-God-fearing people [who] have a different view.”
He also believes that not only is Roe v. Wade the law of the land despite the faux “right to privacy” conjured in that Supreme Court decision, he also wants to codify it into federal law just in case the Court decides it made a mistake, and reverses its 1973 decision.
In fact, in 1981 Biden voted for an amendment allowing states to overturn Roe v. Wade but the next year voted against the same amendment. He also has pledged, if elected president, to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who support that flawed decision.
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In addition, Biden has supported the Hyde Amendment — which prohibits using taxpayer monies to pay for abortions — right up until he changed his mind last June. He had the temerity to suggest, in public, that the Hyde Amendment was a good thing, and the roof fell in. Spokespersons for Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America railed against his position, with the president of NARAL, Ilyse Hogue, claiming that his support for the Hyde Amendment was “discrimination against poor women and women of color.” Planned Parenthood stated that Biden’s support for the rule was “harmful” to women, and he caved, declaring that “times had changed.”
Biden now is promising to “eliminate all of the changes that this President [Trump] made” to family planning programs, and that he would, as president, increase funding for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s primary killer of the unborn.
On the issue, the Catholic Church is unbending. As SC News columnist Matthew Christian explained:
Communion is one of seven sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church….
In communion, parishioners receive the Holy Eucharist, a wafer and wine that when consecrated becomes the body and blood of Jesus, according to Catholic doctrine. In order to receive it, a Catholic must be in the state of grace, have gone to confession since his or her most recent mortal sin, have a belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation (a belief that the wafer and wine become the body and blood of Jesus), observe the Eucharist fast and not be under censure.
The Vatican declares that “Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which are the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.”
The Vatican added:
Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion.
This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.
Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:
You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.
God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves.
Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes
The Vatican goes further, stating that anyone who “cooperates” in the performance of an abortion can be excommunicated: “Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life.”
Biden’s position on abortion clearly promotes the death culture of abortion and Father Morey was certainly within his prerogative to deny Biden the sacrament of communion. The church is also within its prerogative to excommunicate the former vice president for “cooperating” in the crime of taking a life while calling it excusable under the cloak of political correctness.
Photo: AP Images
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, writing primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
