Washington D.C., Oct 30, 2019 / 11:30 am (CNA).- Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s denial of reception of Holy Communion in South Carolina on Sunday has renewed scrutiny of his evolving views on abortion.
Over the course of his decades-long career, the Catholic former Vice President has said that the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade went too far, but has now pledged to enshrine its full effects in federal law. He has been for, then against, bans of taxpayer funding for abortion and against, then for extreme practices like partial birth abortion.
Biden was denied Communion on Sunday, at St. Anthony Catholic Church in Florence, South Carolina, pastor Fr. Robert Morey denied Biden Holy Communion as the Catholic presidential candidate was campaigning nearby that weekend and had attended Sunday Mass.
“Sadly, this past Sunday, I had to refuse Holy Communion to former Vice President Joe Biden,” Fr. Morey explained in a statement sent to CNA. “Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other and the Church. Our actions should reflect that,” he stated.
“Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching,” he said.
The Catholic Church teaches that life begins at the moment of conception, and that every act of abortion is the wilful taking of innocent human life. In the 2008 “Meet the Press” interview, Biden was asked “as a Roman Catholic” when he thought life began.
He said that he was “prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception,” but added that to impose that belief upon others through the application of law would be “inappropriate in a pluralistic society.”
“There is a debate in our church, as Cardinal Egan would acknowledge, that’s existed. Back in ‘Summa Theologia,’ when Thomas Aquinas wrote ‘Summa Theologia,’ he said there was no–it didn’t occur until quickening, 40 days after conception. How am I going out and tell you, if you or anyone else that you must insist upon my view that is based on a matter of faith? And that’s the reason I haven’t,” Biden said.
In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Pope St. John Paul II warned of a political mentality where “the original and inalienable right to life is questioned or denied on the basis of a parliamentary vote or the will of one part of the people-even if it is the majority.”
“This is the sinister result of a relativism which reigns unopposed: the ‘right’ ceases to be such, because it is no longer firmly founded on the inviolable dignity of the person, but is made subject to the will of the stronger part,” he wrote. “To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others.”
Biden, a Democrat, originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972 representing the state of Delaware. He served in that role until 2009, when he was elected Vice President as the running mate of President Barack Obama.
In Biden’s 36 years in the Senate and eight years as Vice President to President Barack Obama, he has reversed himself a number of times on the issue of abortion.
While largely supported the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision that found a legal right to abortion, Roe v. Wade, Biden previously said he believed the decision “went too far.” In 1981, he voted for a constitutional amendment allowing states to overturn Roe v. Wade; the next year he voted against such an amendment.
In a 2012 vice presidential debate, Biden warned that the opposing ticket would appoint judges who would outlaw abortion, and that the administration he was in would not do that. In the 2008 vice presidential debate, he bragged about spearheading “the fight against Judge Bork,” a Supreme Court judicial nominee in 1987, warning that Bork would have changed Roe v. Wade if he were confirmed to the Court.
In a 2008 interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Biden said Roe is “as close to a consensus that can exist in a society as heterogeneous as ours” in that it left decisions on life to the mother in the first trimester of pregnancy, allowed the states some intervention in the second trimester, and that “the weight of the government’s input” in the third trimester is that the pregnancy is carried to term.
Biden’s 2020 campaign platform calls for the codification of Roe v. Wade as federal law. It also would ensure, as part of a health care “public option,” coverage of “a woman’s constitutional right to choose.”
In 1984 then-Senator Biden supported the Mexico City Policy, which bars taxpayer funding of foreign NGOs that promote or perform abortion as a method of family planning. He was also for years a supporter of the Hyde Amendment, which bars taxpayer funding of elective abortions in the U.S.
Shortly after announcing his candidacy for president in April this year, Biden reversed his support for Hyde when Democrats highlighted his long-time stance, prompting a backlash from other candidates and the progressive wing of the party. He also abandoned his support for the Mexico City Policy, promising to overturn the rule if elected.
Biden also currently favors reinstating taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.
In 1995 and again in 1997, Biden voted to ban partial-birth abortion, but was vocally critical of the Supreme Court’s decision that upheld a partial-birth abortion ban, saying that it could open the door for the repeal of Roe v. Wade.
A point of consistency for Biden has been his opposition to parental notification laws and laws barring minors from seeking abortions out-of-state, both of which he has spoken against. His 2020 campaign platform calls for ending state “TRAP” laws on abortion, or laws restricting abortion access such as requiring parental notification or mandatory waiting periods.
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Pray for this woman to receive the gift of contrition.
Meanwhile – to her goes the coveted (?) award for oxymoron of the week/month/year/decade.
Nancy Pelosi has supported abortion rights for 40-50 years. At that rate, she’s prime matter for a committal reward ceremony (and judgment, God rest her soul).
Nancy Pelosi is out-of-date, on Ireland at least. Time to get with-it, Nancy. Ireland was a Catholic country. Was, past tense.
Hi Gilberta. Abortion is legal in only 8 of its 32 states in Mexico. The majority of the people don’t want abortion legalized, but, the government wants the American dollars to continue flowing into Mexico.
After a list of five influential persons, herself first, down to her significant other, finally god. Priorities matter, but God’s creation of man in his image was not given to brought into this world and subject to a variety of personal priorities to kill it or nurture it.
God we know judges the soul. We judge ourselves to condemnation when we kill the innocent, or endorse the killing of the innocent. Archbishop Cordileone went to great length to touch a hardened heart. What we do to others manifests what we are. If there’s any indication of the Apostle’s warning not to receive the Eucharist unworthily, it’s manifest in the shivering coldness of the Speaker’s disdain for those who love life, her unwillingness to protect them from harm. She prefers to praise drag queens for their creative expression of freedom. This administration, this culture is rapidly becoming [already is?] purveyors of sodomy and death. The two are intimately related.
Nancy Pelosi is everything that is wrong in this world. She is no true Catholic, and she will be judged by the one that matters – God. It will be a rude awakening for her on that day.
It doesn’t matter how Catholic you are, you are still killing a living human being which is a very evil thing to do and a mortal sin if you happen to be a Catholic. But then killing an innocent human being is a crime against nature itself and not simply a Catholic religious belief.. Killing a child, even if she/he is in the womb, is still killing a living human being. It is simply someone who happens to be alive inside of a mother’s womb. Is the logic of it that it is ok to kill a human being as long as he or she is in a mother’s womb? If you cannot actually see this person’s face then, it is ok to kill them? They won’t be missed. There wasn’t a space they filled. It is just easy to get away with doing it to someone who can’t resist you or fight back. It’s actually a sneaky thing to do. The absence of the murder victim will go unnoticed. It isn’t like you will see them one day and not the next because you never actually do see them. The mother and dad could see them through an X-ray but not actually be able to touch the person, hear their cry. It is a pretty impersonal killing of someone you never see, hear, smell or touch. It makes it easy when there is very little or no contact giving any pleasant sensual affirmation.
JimnEm above – not sure about the point of your comment but thanks for the information on Mexico. My comment was on Ireland specifically. Like many, Nancy Pelosi seems to operate under the illusion that Ireland is still a Catholic country.
I am throughly convinced that all the violence in our world is due to the lack of respect with life. Abortion is a disrespect. Those Catholics that disrespect life need our prayers as over the past 100 years our government has politicized morality and culture. Led by human law (lawyers) as politicians, creates victims and grievances that claim to have lost their pursuit of happiness. This trauma in society has created new progressive man made law that usurps God’s law. These schisms happened in the Jewish culture, the Catholic culture, and now the Christian Protestant culture. All of these cultures have been secularized, canceled, disregarded, and marginalized as people gradually have no God, no morales, and no faith. It’s all come down to money and convenience in our throw away culture that includes babies. Only 20% of US youth want children and this is why we have to human traffic 4-5 million migrants to fill the void for cheap labor, sex, and future Americans by policies that our second Catholic President in US history supports along with abortion, socialist collectivism and dividing Christians based on the color of their skin and sexual orientation. Freedom of religion, went to women’s rights, to civil rights, to sexual rights, to ???. Further division leads to further subgroups that have grievances. It will never end as lawyers and politicians need victims to perpetuate their existence. Just as monks, preachers, and priests can’t create God’s law into their box….men with power whether a dictator or elected, can’t create God’s law either unless they believe the Bible, Gospel, Torah, and Koran are living changing documents like the US constitution. They all have tried for hundreds of years and all that has been accomplished are more schisms, divisions, and war.