CNA Newsroom, Oct 23, 2022 / 05:32 am (CNA).
Archbishop Charles Chaput said on Saturday that Joe Biden “is not in communion with the Catholic faith” and that “any priest who now provides Communion to the president participates in his hypocrisy.”
Speaking at a Eucharistic Symposium at the Diocese of Arlington on Oct. 22, the 78-year-old prelate also accused the second Catholic president in the history of the United States of “apostasy on the abortion issue.”
In his address, titled “Do this in Remembrance of Me: Memory, Culture, Sacrament,” the archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia spoke about “American Catholics and our 200-year struggle to fit into mainstream American culture.”
“We succeeded. But in the process, we’ve been digested and bleached out by the culture, rather than leavening it in a fertile way with a distinctive Catholic witness,” Chaput said.
The archbishop continued: “Mr. Biden’s apostasy on the abortion issue is only the most repugnant example. He’s not alone. But in a sane world, his unique public leadership would make — or should make — public consequences unavoidable.”
“When you freely break communion with the Church of Jesus Christ and her teachings, you can’t pretend to be in communion when it’s convenient,” Chaput said.
“That’s a form of lying. Mr. Biden is not in communion with the Catholic faith. And any priest who now provides Communion to the president participates in his hypocrisy.”
Biden supports abortion, despite the Catholic Church’s teaching that abortion is a grave evil and that human life is sacred from the moment of conception.
Last week, the president vowed again that he would codify Roe v. Wade into law should Democrats win the midterm elections in November.
As previously reported by CNA, he made it clear he would sign the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), a radical piece of abortion legislation that would forbid any abortion restrictions before and after fetal viability.
In his address, Chaput said many Catholics, “even many who regularly attend Sunday Mass, no longer believe in the Real Sacrifice or the Real Presence.”
“We’ve forgotten who we are as a believing people. This is both a cause and a symptom of today’s lukewarm Catholic spirit, in our nation’s culture and within the Church herself,” he said. “But that can change, and it needs to change, starting with each of us here.”
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What The Archbishop said is obviously true and has been so for years, still it is reassuring to have someone of his stature say it.
Chaput has always spoken the truth. His voice makes the silence of most of his colleagues all the more deafening.
Who is Chaput to pass that judgment? That is beyond his pay grade!
Alexa, Chaput is merely reiterating what every Catholic who read the catechism knows.
Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise, madame.
“And why even of yourselves, do you not judge that which is just?” Jesus Christ, Luke 12:57
This used to be called “speaking truth to power”.
Any priest who provides Biden Holy Communion participates in his hypocrisy and, more importantly, his sacrilege. This is very true, but Archbishop Chaput is still ignoring the elephant in the living room. The two most prominent priests who are permitting this scandal are Pope Francis and Cardinal Gregory. In fact, they are basically mandating it. Until bishops like Chaput and Cordileone begin confronting them, statements like this will have no effect.