Washington D.C., Jul 28, 2020 / 03:00 am (CNA).- As Election Day nears, one big question remains outstanding: Who will be joining Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket?
Former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party’s nominee for president, committed to selecting a woman for his running mate back in March. That is about all that can be certain about who Biden plans on selecting.
Normally, the selection of a running mate is intended to court a certain segment of the electorate–see: Lyndon Baines Johnson and southern voters; Mike Pence and conservative Christians; and even Biden himself, who was selected to appeal to blue collar workers. With the 2020 election, however, the stakes for selecting a running mate are likely higher.
If Biden were to be elected president, he would be sworn in at 78 years old–the oldest first-term president in American history. During a December 2019 debate, Biden refused to comment on whether or not he would run for a second term, saying, “I’m not even elected to one term yet, and let’s see where we are. Let’s see what happens.”
Because of his age, Biden’s choice of a running mate has been framed as a near lock to run for the presidency in four years if Biden wins in 2020. And his running mate is likely to play a major role in shaping policy during a Biden presidency, especially because Biden himself played an active role in the Obama administration.
If Biden wins the presidency, his administration is expected to roll back Republican administrative efforts to limit federal funding for domestic and international abortion, as well as changes to Title X policy, and to make other changes to abortion policy at the federal level.
On the issue of abortion, CNA examined the voting histories and public policy stances of some names expected to be on Biden’s shortlist.
Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA)
Rep. Karen Bass, a five-term member of the House of Representatives, has been one of the lesser-known names to surface as a contender during veepstakes. She is on the House Judiciary Committee and is the chair of the Congressional Black Congress.
Bass has a 100% rating from NARAL, a national organization that supports expanded abortion access. She also has a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
In 2013, Bass received the International Family Planning Hero award from Planned Parenthood and the United Nations. She was praised as a “true hero for women’s health and rights” by former Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards.
“Her leadership has been crucial to ensuring that women in the United States and all over the world can decide whether and when to have children, and that they have access to a wide range of reproductive health services. Thanks to her support for international family planning, and others like her, the United States is able to improve the lives of millions of women and girls, and put women’s health and rights at the top of its global development agenda,” Richards said.
Rep. Val Demings (D-FL)
Rep. Val Demings was elected to Congress in 2016. Before she was elected, she served as the first-ever female chief of police of the Orlando Police Department. She serves on the House Judiciary, Intelligence, and Homeland Security Committees.
Since arriving in Congress, Demings has had 100% ratings from Planned Parenthood Federation of America and NARAL. On the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision in 2020, Demings tweeted a call to “redouble our resistance against attempts” to pass pro-life legislation.
“Women’s health is not negotiable. Women’s bodies belong to no one but themselves,” said Demings.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)
Sen. Kamala Harris is arguably Biden’s frontrunner, and has been in the vice presidential conversation since she suspended her own presidential campaign in December.
Harris is a staunch supporter of legal protection for abortion. As California attorney general, she drew the ire of the state Catholic conference by sponsoring a bill compelling pro-life pregnancy centers advertise for “free or low-cost” abortion services. That law was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2018.
More recently, Harris has confronted Biden over his own record on abortion – challenging the former vice president for not being “pro-choice” enough for the modern Democratic party. And her confrontation has been effective: Harris has been among a group of politicians widely seen to have pushed Biden to the left on abortion.
During the July 31 debate last year, Harris lambasted Biden’s long support for the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for abortion services. She accused Biden of “withhold(ing) resources to poor women to have access to reproductive health care, including women who were the victims of rape and incest.”
In response, Biden, who opposed Roe vs. Wade early in his career, told Harris that he believes abortion to be a constitutional right. Biden promised that, as president, “I in fact will move as president to see to that the Congress legislates [a right to abortion into] the law.”
Amb. Susan Rice
Ambassador Susan Rice served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 until June 2013, and then served as President Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor for the remainder of his term. She has never actually run for office, although she did briefly ponder the idea of challenging Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) for her Senate seat.
Rice’s name has been put forward as a potential Biden VP. As she has never run for office, she has made few public statements on domestic social issues. Rice was motivated to challenge Collins after her vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been a vocal proponent of abortion, and has 100% ratings from both Planned Parenthood Federation of America and NARAL. She wore a Planned Parenthood scarf to President Donald Trump’s inauguration as a show of protest and as a show of support for the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Warren published the “Congressional Plan to Protect Choice,” a slew of proposals of pro-abortion legislation. These proposed legislation included “federal laws to preempt state efforts that functionally limit access to reproductive health care,” which would effectively prevent states from passing pro-life policies; and legislation that would mandate abortion coverage in health plans.
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It is uncertain just when exactly Biden intends on announcing his selection of a running mate. The Democratic National Convention kicks off on August 17, so the announcement will happen sometime before then, likely after August 1.
[…]
We read: “It was in Nicaea that the Church’s unity and mission were first expressed emblematically at a universal level (and from here, it draws its designation as an ecumenical council) through the synodal form of that ‘walking together’ which is proper to the Church…”
“Walking together” as successors of the Apostles, so also and therefore excluding (!) Arianism.
The faith expressed at Nicaea is the opening revelation to the world depicting Christ as God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God. A truth that remains indelible and resistible to modification.
“The faith expressed at Nicaea is the opening revelation to the world depicting Christ as God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God. A truth that remains indelible and resistible to modification.”
As does the Filioque, which in affirming The Unity of The Holy Ghost, In The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Complementary Eternal Love, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, affirms the fact that there is only One Divine Son Of God, thus The Spirit Of Perfect Love Between The Father And His Only Son, Must Proceed From Both The Father And The Son, for both The Father And The Son, Exist, In Essence,
As A Communion Of Eternal Divine Love.
Well done for this magnificent and well-worded reminder!
But did you notice that the document from the International Theological Commission only mentioned the Filioque once, in order to repudiate it very bluntly?
Everything suggests that it should be sacrificed on the altar of ecumenism, and this seems to me to be an offense to the good Catholic people, an incredible regression, and I fear even worse, since it is written in paragraph 12 “The Father also gives everything to the Spirit,” which is a radical novelty in Catholic tradition, and I wonder if this might not be heresy because of the confusion it creates between the two persons, the Son and the Spirit, since they are supposed to be distinguished by their mode of procession from the Father.
What do you think?
“…repudiate it bluntly”?
As you report, the term filioque does appear only once (n.4, in connection with accurately noted “misunderstandings”), but it is hardly repudiated. For the meaning but not the term, see n. 13 “[….] he is the Spirit of the Father and Spirit of the Son (Gal 4:6; Rom 8:9) [….]”. Here’s the link: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_doc_20250403_1700-nicea_en.html
Possibly more troublesome might be the initial wording about “synods” [of bishops!], but this term (appearing 51 times), too, as it is used, and as it is explicitly clarified especially in n. 113 which recalls “Apostolic Tradition” (in contrast with today’s unmentioned and mixed town hall meetings).
Also, about the filioque inserted into the Creed, here’s a history:
The filioque (the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and from the Son”) was present in the ancient texts and put forth by the Synod of Aachen in 809 (I think I’ve read, by Charlemagne in response to rekindled Arianism in Iberia), and introduced universally in Rome only in 1014. It was adopted by the Greeks and the Latins at the Councils of Lyon (II, 1274), and Florence (1438-1445) where it was initially agreed that the Greek “through the Son” did not differ essentially from “from the Son.” But the Greeks back home quickly disagreed—likely inflamed in part by the long memory of the earlier destruction of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders in 1204? (Following the loss of a weakened Constantinople to Islam in 1453, the Eastern Church has disintegrated into local national Churches.)
SUMMARY: Councils [and real synods] are what the Church DOES, not what the Church IS (Benedict XVI). How always to better do communio/ecclesial assemblies remains a distinctly different work in progress.
I note that your casual rebuttal of my assertion sidesteps three major problems:
1) The Filioque is indeed set aside by the ITC text through the quotation of a very explicit ecumenical text (in note 8), whereas this document was supposed to contribute to putting Christ, and therefore the Son of God, back at the center.
2) Even though the Filioque is set aside, the statement “The Father also gives everything to the Spirit” (in n.12) is an assertion that implicitly refutes it, which is why it makes absolutely no sense in the Catholic tradition. You will find no trace of it anywhere except in Orthodox “literature.”
3) This serious doctrinal difficulty has not been noted anywhere in the Catholic media. ND’s commentary is almost unique in linking both the ITC text and the Filioque.
I think we are faced with a serious difficulty here, and I look forward to reading your response, as I have no doubt that you will recognize the surprising nature of this observation, whatever conclusions may be drawn from it.
PS: Charlemagne was indeed responsible for the spread of the Filioque in the Christian West, but precisely because he categorically rejected the “per Filium.”
Fn. 8: “Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, ‘The Greek and the Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit’: «The Catholic Church acknowledges the conciliar, ecumenical, normative and irrevocable value, as expression of the one common faith of the Church and of all Christians, of the Symbol professed in Greek at Constantinople in 381 by the Second Ecumenical Council. No profession of faith peculiar to a particular liturgical tradition can contradict this expression of the faith taught and professed by the undivided Church» (Eng. trans. from: L’Osservatore Romano, 13 September 1995).”
I do see your point, but it is still not clear why the ITC language about the added Filioque risks contradiction—rather than remaining a non-contradictory clarification or development.
At a general audience on Nov. 7,1990, Pope John Paul II was still able to conclude with the optimism that “the formula ‘Filioque’ does not constitute an essential obstacle to the dialogue itself and to its development, which all hope for and pray for in the Holy Spirit” (“The Filioque Debate,” in The Pope Speaks, Our Sunday Visitor, 36:2, March/April 1971). In the article—about development—he cites Gospel passages (prior to ‘Orthodox literature’) and the long history of the debate, and refers to both sides (the East: Ephraim, Athanasius, Basil, Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus, John Damascene; The West: Tertullian, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, Aquinas).
Recalling the high point, short-lived, when a common definition was adopted by both the Greeks and the Latins in 1439: “In the name of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with the approval of this sacred and universal Council of Florence, we establish that this truth of faith must be believed and accepted by all Christians: and thus all must profess that the Holy Spirit IS ETERNALLY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON [caps added], that He has His existence and His subsistent being FROM THE FATHER AND THE SON together, and that He proceeds from the one and from a single principle and from a single spiration [….] We establish…that the explanation given of the expression ‘Filioque’ has been added to the Creed licitly and with reason, in order to render the through clearer and because of the incumbent needs of those times.”
My non-professional (evasive?) and overarching thought is, that within earthbound history, the culture of the West seems to need more precise and explicit clarifications, while the culture of the East remains more levitated and atmospheric. About the challenges of history in the West, the (schismatic) East remains apart from not only Florence but all of the other twenty-one ecumenical councils after the first seven.
After a thousand years, maybe there’s a place for partly cross-cultural (?) dialogue on the Filioque.
Let’s be clear: the Filioque is not “added,” it is set aside by the ITC document.
What is added is the idea, which is absolutely contradictory to the Filioque, that “the Father also gives everything to the Spirit.”
This is unprecedented in Catholic doctrine because it is incompatible with the way the Filioque has always been understood since Augustine.
Do you see the problem now?
‘ INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL COMMISSION
Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour
1700th anniversary of the Ecumenical Council of
325-2025
Preliminary note
In the course of its tenth quinquennium, the International Theological Commission chose to carry out an in-depth study of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea and its dogmatic relevance today. The work was carried out by a special Sub-Commission, chaired by Fr. Philippe Vallin and composed of the following members: Mgr Antonio Luiz Catelan Ferreira, Mgr Etienne Vetö, I.C.N., Fr. Mario Ángel Flores Ramos, Fr Gaby Alfred Hachem, Fr. Karl-Heinz Menke, Prof. Marianne Schlosser, and Prof. Robin Darling Young.
General discussions on this subject took place both at the various meetings of the Sub-Commission and at the plenary sessions of the Commission itself, held in the years 2022-2024. This text was put to the vote and unanimously approved in forma specifica by the members of the International Theological Commission at the plenary session of 2024. The document was then submitted for approval to its President, His Eminence Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, who, after receiving the favourable opinion of the Holy Father, Pope Francis, authorised its publication on 16 December 2024. ‘
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_doc_20250403_1700-nicea_en.html