Becoming president has brought Biden into direct conflict with conservative Catholics on the most polarizing issue of the moment: abortion.
As a rule dating back to the election, the reporters who follow the president go everywhere with him but two places: inside his home and inside his church.
But if you had been standing outside the church when Biden’s car door swung open on this particular Saturday afternoon, you would have heard the shouting. You would have seen Moira Sheridan and David Williams outside the church gates, carrying faded posterboard signs. Both from Wilmington, both in their late 60s, both Catholics, they are a familiar presence at St. Joseph — they have come at least 20 times since the general election — though they rarely make the pool reports.
David Williams, 69, holds a sign that reads"Joe Biden equals Abortion euthanasia and infanticide" outside Saint Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church, in Greenville, Delaware, on July 10, 2021. President Biden was attending the Saturday Mass. | Caroline Gutman “I know you’ve never faced those choices,” Psaki shot back, “nor have you ever been pregnant, but for women out there who have faced those choices, this is an incredibly difficult thing … The president believes that right should be respected.”
When the campaign dedicated a prime-time speech to Biden’s faith at the Democratic convention last summer, Senator Chris Coons got the assignment. Coons grew up in Hockessin, Delaware, and now holds Biden’s old Senate seat, an office he once served as an intern. Even for a close friend, it was a difficult task. “I will confess I was initially a little hesitant,” Coons told me.
Now that Biden is in the White House, his role as a Catholic president, to the extent that his aides and supporters are willing to admit that such a role exists, is a subject that confounds people when asked to define it. On what was perhaps the most difficult day in his young presidency, Biden traveled on Sunday, Aug. 29, to Dover, Del., to receive the bodies of fallen U.S. soldiers from Afghanistan, then to FEMA headquarters to monitor the Category 4 hurricane that tore through New Orleans, then to mass at Holy Trinity in Washington.
Once, in a ninth-grade theology class, the teacher asked the class, “How many of you questioned the doctrine of transubstantiation,” the process in which Catholics believe the bread and wine of the Eucharist become Christ’s body and blood. The class sat in silence until Biden raised his hand. “Well,” the teacher said, “we have one bright man, at least.” Biden has described it as a lesson that in the church, “questioning was not criticized,” he said. “It was encouraged.
Top: Archmere Academy, the private Catholic high school Biden attended, in Claymont, Del. Bottom: Saint Joseph on the Brandywine Family Center in Greenville, Del., and Walker's Mill on Brandywine Creek in Wilmington. | Caroline Gutman But many Catholic leaders and bishops who are sympathetic to Biden believe that he was forced into a position he didn’t want to take. Some openly speculated that the president would never let a member of his family be party to an abortion. “I’d put my life on that,” said Thomas Groome, a laicized Irish priest and a professor of theology at Boston College. “Joe Biden and Jill would never choose abortion, personally. That’s his Catholic moral perspective.
Campaign staffers who were in South Carolina at the time now work for in the administration and were afraid to talk about Biden’s reaction to what had surely been an avoidable confrontation. The story leaked quickly in, with confirmation from the priest himself. “Sadly,” his statement began, “I had to refuse Holy Communion to former Vice President Joe Biden,” Morey, who is now retired, told thevia email. “Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other and the Church.
In Biden headquarters, former campaign staffers said, the South Carolina incident was like any upset during a campaign: “We got a lot of feedback from people about what we should be doing,” said Dickson, the former national faith engagement director. But “it didn't really change anything,” he said. “It was just something where we kind of moved on and the president continued to do what he did his whole career and be who he is.
“So much of his agenda, when it comes to helping the downtrodden, when it comes to supporting workers rights to organize, when it comes to more humane approach to immigration, all those things are an expression of his Catholic identity and should be a source of pride for us,” said Stowe, the bishop from Kentucky. “He could have helped himself with Catholic leaders by staying on with Hyde.
Left: A pro-life t-shirt in Washington, D.C. Right: Archbishop Jose H. Gomez. | William Bryan/Getty Images and AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes Biden’s response to the possibility of the USCCB barring him from communion — “I don't think that’s going to happen,” he told reporters in June — was again technically true, but it ignored the ramifications of the debate. “It has already had tremendously damaging impact in the Catholic community,” said McElroy. “I was afraid that this step would be another moment in which this toxic political culture would come into the life of the church and the Catholic community.
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