Miami archbishop Thomas Wenski said this weekend that President Joe Biden’s habit of playing up his Catholicism “gives all us bishops heartburn” because of his abortion extremism.
Archbishop Wenski was quoted in an article by the Associated Press (AP) comparing the way Florida governor Ron DeSantis talks about his Catholic faith with the way Joe Biden talks about his own.
“Biden makes a bigger deal of his Catholicism than DeSantis does,” Wenski said, adding that “it gives all us bishops heartburn because of his radical abortion stance.”
The article notes that Mr. DeSantis aligns with Catholic Church teaching on traditional marriage, male-female complementarity, and school choice. He has fought against drag queen story hours for children, the administration of puberty blockers for gender-confused minors, and LGBT indoctrination in public schools.
DeSantis has also been a firm advocate of religious freedom and respect for conscience, a sore point for Catholics in Mr. Biden’s policies.
For his part, Biden is aggressively pro-abortion, favors allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports, and denies the right of Catholic foster care services to opt out of gay adoption.
Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski: “Biden makes a bigger deal of his Catholicism than DeSantis does.” (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The AP article noted that DeSantis has been at odds with the bishops over his stance on the death penalty and certain immigration policies.
Catholic teaching, however, is very circumspect on the issue of immigration, offering no policy prescriptions and leaving much leeway for healthy debate and disagreement.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church limits itself to saying that more prosperous nations “are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin.”
The United States clearly does this, taking in nearly one million legal immigrants each year, far more than any other country in the world.
The Catechism also notes, however, that government officials, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, “may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption.”
The Catholic League said it has a “healthy skepticism” about President Joe Biden’s claim Pope Francis told him to “keep receiving Communion.” https://t.co/aIBTF7U9u6
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) October 31, 2021
Immigrants, moreover, “are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”
As for capital punishment, the Catholic Church’s official position has evolved considerably over the past 25 years.
Capital punishment was not abolished in the Vatican City State itself until as recently as 1969 and for nearly all of the Church’s history it was accepted as a legitimate form of punishment for serious offenses. Over the centuries, hundreds of criminals were executed in the Papal States under the government of the popes.
Doctors of the Church, from Ambrose to Augustine to Thomas Aquinas to Robert Bellarmine to Alphonsus Liguori all taught the legitimacy of capital punishment.
In recent years, however, the Catholic magisterium has moved to a position where it no longer views the death penalty as a worthy form of punishment in today’s world. Pope John Paul II wrote in 1995 that governments should “not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity,” adding that, in the modern world, “such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”
U.S. President Joe Biden, left, talks to Pope Francis as they meet at the Vatican, Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. (Vatican Media via AP)
Pope Francis has gone further still, declaring capital punishment to be “inadmissible” and “contrary to the gospel.” The Vatican’s doctrinal congregation declared that the new teaching on capital punishment “expresses an authentic development of doctrine that is not in contradiction with the prior teachings of the Magisterium.”
Importantly, however, the Catholic Church has never declared capital punishment to be intrinsically evil, like abortion or euthanasia, which would indeed be a direct contradiction of past teachings.
In 2004, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was in charge of the doctrinal office at the time, made this very distinction, stating that there may be “a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”
In that same memorandum, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that “if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion,” which is not the case regarding abortion or euthanasia.
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