It marks the end of a generation of Catholics in politics, those who arrived on the national political scene in the wake of World War II and the GI Bill of the Kennedys and Vatican II.

They were finally able to leave behind the marginalisation of the "papists" from the mainstream, where American Protestantism and the liberal establishment dominated, making the idea of a Catholic in the White House uncomfortable, to say the least.

Thanks to the presidency of John F. Kennedy and Biden, there are no longer suspicions about Catholics' loyalties.

But questions about the real content of liberal democracy today have ecumenically spread beyond the confines of Catholicism.

The end of an era

It's the end of an era that had begun some time ago and is now coming to pass.

The most evident change is that America is no longer, such as during the time of Kennedy, a "three-religion country" of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

Catholics hold 29 percent of the seats in the 117th Congress, but it's not necessarily a growing influence. It's more than the disappearance, in the last two decades, of pro-life Catholic politicians among the Democrats.

The focus on "social justice" has often swallowed up the rest of the Catholic imagination on the political and ecclesial left, and this has given space to a deep-seated revanchism from fellow Catholics on the right.

The fact that there is a majority of Catholic justices on the US Supreme Court today has not exactly benefited the credentials for the democratic culture of Catholicism in America.

Parallels have been drawn, both in America and at the Vatican, between Biden's decision and the late Pope Benedict XVI's resignation in 2013.

Besides the differences, especially in the freedom with which that decision was taken, there is the fact that, unlike Benedict XVI, Biden leaves no epigones, much less a Catholic movement behind him.

There are Catholics among the younger generations of Democrats in politics, but their Catholicism plays a more marginal role in their personal identity and political values.

The rift and the void

The void that Biden leaves behind is bigger than the rift with the majority of Catholic bishops on the issue of abortion as well as gender, and that made many of them quietly or openly favor Trump in the previous election.

Some bishops became even quieter - actually silent - when the former president and his cabal tried to overturn the results of the elections between November 2020 and January 2021.

That rift between Biden and the bishops on the admission to Communion for Catholics in public office who support legislation permitting abortion, euthanasia, or other moral evils did not become formal-sacramental.

That was thanks in part to the extraordinary intervention of the Vatican in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in May 2021.

However, it has never truly healed.

New era

Biden's exit marks a change in internal relations within US. Catholicism.

It is not simply the disappearance of conciliar Catholicism in favor of anti-conciliar Catholicism in a neo-conservative or traditionalist fashion.

The National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis (July 17-21 quite different from the previous one, in Minneapolis in 1941) has shown how the triad doctrine-life-worship of US Catholicism is a complex mixture.

It involves: forgetfulness (sometimes outright rejection) of Vatican II but also an anonymous reception of it; Catholic pride but also embrace of styles of worship that have a lot in common with American Protestant revivalism; quest for interior peace but also drive for emotional entertainment shareable on social media.

The push to include ecclesial identities other than the Irish and continental European ones, which have dominated for a century and a half, now finds support.

That support is not only in theological progressivism descending from the Enlightenment but also in the globalised traditionalism of the ethno-culturalist brand.

Certainly, an illiberal traditionalism is very active and well-funded in the United States, both at the theological and political level.

But the situation is more complicated and must be seen honestly in the context of the crisis of progressive Catholicism, the "spirit of Vatican II" Catholics, even in Europe.

This recent phase of identity-driven secularisation has created a void that was filled by intellectual, ecclesial, and ecclesiastical forces that cater to the post-modern self with ready-made answers (simplified as much as you want).

They appeal to the younger generations more directly than the ones projected by academic and collegiate Catholicism (to which I belong as a member of the professoriate).

A Catholic like J.D. Vance, Trump's choice for vice president, exemplifies a generation of post-liberal, anti-"woke" political-intellectual operatives who constantly shift ideologies in an attempt to define family, community, and polity — without paying much attention to Catholic social thought.

Biden's departure is certainly the end of an era but for reasons beyond the lack of a generation of Catholic politicians on the left.

It's a discontinuity that has to do with the interruption in the transmission of Vatican II Catholicism, in its comprehensive "catholicity," in many quarters of the Church in the United States, especially in the seminaries for the formation of the clergy.

Indeed, US militant and conservative Catholicism has largely cut its ties with the theology of Vatican II, but this is not just an American problem.

What is happening in the United States could be a good opportunity to look also into the Catholic Church in Europe, which is largely in denial.

What is happening in American politics with the retirement of a "Vatican II Catholic" like Joe Biden and the emergence of a politically expedient "cultural Catholicism" is also happening in Italian politics, for example.

As seen from the Vatican

The new configuration of the American electoral campaign opens two fronts of uncertainty for the Vatican.

With Biden's exit, Pope Francis loses a predictable interlocutor on internal issues and a reliable one on international issues (despite the differences in opinions and policies about Ukraine and Israel).

The post-Biden Democratic Party will be more distant from Rome and Europe: today's America is no longer an extension of the old continent, the last province of the Roman Empire of the neo-conservative dreams.

The relationship between a Trump-Vance administration and the Vatican (migration and environmental policies, Ukraine, Israel, China) is anyone's guess.

But it also opens an internal front within the Church, with the Vatican grappling with two different and opposing radicalisms (in different ways) on the abortion issue and on gender.

Culture war

If Kamala Harris were to be dragged into culture war fights, this might influence her relations with the Catholic Church both domestically and internationally and deteriorate the alignment with the Vatican that Biden was able to create and keep.

Some US bishops probably felt orphaned by the new GOP that, in its platform for the 2024 elections, demoted the abortion issue: the 2022 "Dobbs" ruling of the Supreme Court transformed the pro-life cause into an electoral liability in many districts.

But if Harris campaigns as a culture warrior, it is predictable that even more bishops will return to placing their hopes in the Republican Party, which has become a risk to the survival of constitutional democracy in America.

If Trump is elected, J.D. Vance could become the highest-ranking Catholic in a post-democratic or authoritarian United States.

One of the paradoxes of this American moment is that it was a Catholic president, Joe Biden, who in 2020-2021 helped save American democracy, which, at least until Kennedy and Vatican II, Catholics were accused of not believing in.

Now, the relationship between the political cultures of US Catholicism and American democracy enters a new territory.

• First published in La Croix
• Massimo Faggioli is an Italian academic, Church historian, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, columnist for La Croix International, and contributing writer to Commonweal.

Making history

Today, she is one step closer to making history again.

On Sunday, July 21, President Joe Biden ended his bid for a second term amid concerns from within their party that he would be unable to defeat Republican Donald Trump.

Mr. Biden's departure frees his delegates to vote for whomever they choose.

Ms. Harris, whom Mr. Biden backed after ending his candidacy, is thus far the only declared candidate. Should she secure the Democratic nomination, she would be the first Black woman to lead a major party ticket.

Few, if any, presidential candidates have had as much exposure to the world's religions as Kamala Harris, the 59-year-old vice president from California.

Harris' ethnic, racial and cultural biography represents a slice of the U.S. population that is becoming ascendant but that has never been represented in the nation's highest office.

Harris and her faith

Here are five faith facts about Harris:

She was raised on Hinduism and Christianity.

Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was from Chennai, India; her father, Donald Harris, from Jamaica. The two met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her name, Kamala, means "lotus" in Sanskrit, and is another name for the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. She visited India multiple times as a girl and got to know her relatives there.

But because her parents divorced when she was 7, she also grew up in Oakland and Berkeley attending predominantly Black churches.

Her downstairs neighbor, Regina Shelton, often took Kamala and her sister Maya to Oakland's 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland. Harris now considers herself a Black Baptist.

She is married to a Jewish man.

Harris met her husband, Los Angeles lawyer Douglas Emhoff, on a blind date in San Francisco. They married in 2014. At their wedding, the couple smashed a glass to honor Emhoff's upbringing (a traditional Jewish wedding custom).

It was Harris' first marriage and his second.

An article in the Jewish press described her imitation of her Jewish mother-in-law, Barbara Emhoff, as "worthy of an Oscar."

She was criticised for not proactively assisting in civil cases against Catholic clergy sex abuse during the years she served as a prosecutor.

After graduating from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, Harris specialized in prosecuting sex crimes and child exploitation as a young prosecutor.

But two investigations by The Intercept and The Associated Press found that Harris was consistently silent on the Catholic Church's abuse scandal — first as San Francisco district attorney and later as California's attorney general. Read more

• Yonat Shimron is an RNS National Reporter and Senior Editor.

He is raising questions about the ethical implications of the Catholic President's move.

Malloy, in a statement issued by the Peace Committee, highlighted the fact that numerous countries, including the Holy See, have ratified the International Convention on Cluster Munitions.

This convention explicitly prohibits using, producing, transferring and stockpiling these armaments.

"More than 100 countries, including the Holy See, have signed the 2010 Convention on Cluster Munitions which bans their use due to their indiscriminate nature and the risks they pose to civilian populations long after the cessation of hostilities," writes Malloy.

He also noted that the United States and Russia have not signed the agreement, highlighting the urgent need for participation.

Malloy and his predecessors have consistently called on the US government to endorse both the Convention on Cluster Munitions and the Mine Ban Treaty.

Last week, the Defense Department made an announcement regarding the provision of "additional security assistance" to address Ukraine's critical security and defence requirements.

The assistance includes the shipment of cluster bombs which are designed to explode above a target and release smaller submunitions that can cause substantial damage to personnel and military equipment.

Critics argue that these bombs pose significant risks to civilian populations due to their wide coverage area.

Additionally, there is concern about the potential for unexploded ordnance remaining on battlefields, posing ongoing threats to civilians long after conflicts have ended.

President Biden's decision to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions faced bipartisan opposition in Congress this week.

Several dozen Democrats joined Republicans in voting to amend the National Defense Authorisation Act to block these munitions' shipment.

However, the amendment ultimately failed to pass.

Bishop Malloy highlighted that Pope Francis has addressed the issue of antipersonnel mines and cluster munitions, urging all countries to commit to these conventions in order to prevent further harm to individuals.

While recognising Ukraine's right to self-defence, Malloy highlighted the importance of continued prayers for dialogue and peace.

Malloy expressed his support for and shared Pope Francis' moral concerns and aspirations regarding this matter.

Sources

• US Catholic Bishops
• CNA

While the decision - that there is no longer a federal constitutional right to an abortion - is in tune with the Catholic view, the Catholic president lamented the ruling soon after in his address to the nation.

Biden slammed the conservative-majority Court. He then declared his desire that Democrats in Congress codify protections for abortion into federal law.

Calling the Court's determination "a tragic error, "and "a sad day for the country," the President - who says he is personally pro-life and a devout Catholic - has promised to ensure abortion pills can be widely received and posted in the mail.

The Court ended what "was a correct decision," Biden said and he promised the Supreme Court's decision will not be the final word.

"Let me be very clear and unambiguous: the only way we can secure a woman's right to choose—the balance that existed—is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe v Wade as federal law," he said.

"We need to restore the protections of Roe as law of the land. We need to elect officials who will do that," he said urging Americans to vote for more pro-abortion leaders.

Pro-lifers who use Twitter were quick to rebuke him for his speech.

Pro-life commentator Allie Beth Stuckey slammed Biden, tweeting, "The court took away a right that was already recognised. Yeah, slavery was once seen as a right, too. Then it wasn't".

Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer tweeted some historical context, saying "as a friendly reminder that in a bygone (and saner) era ... Biden supported a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v Wade."

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell slammed Biden's call for calm in the wake of the controversial decision. "Where were Biden's calls for peace when someone attempted to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh?"

A similar comment about Kavanaugh was tweeted by a conservative radio host.

Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis wrote, "Biden accidentally acknowledges (attempting insult) that Donald Trump is responsible for overturning Roe v Wade. We know. We love it."

"Excited to hear ‘devout Catholic' Biden condemn today's Supreme Court decision that any devout Catholic would agree with," a Washington Times columnist remarked. He also pointed out the irony in Biden's position.

"I think it is hilarious that President Joe Biden and the Democrats think abortion is going to help them in November," conservative author Carmine Sabia tweeted.

Source

• Fox News
• Reuters
• CNN

Anthony Albanese, centre-left leader of the Labor Party, claimed election victory on 21 May defeating the conservative Liberal-National coalition that has governed for nine years.

Mr Albanese always described himself as the only candidate with a "non-Anglo Celtic name" to run for prime minister since federation 121 years ago.

He is a 26-year veteran of the federal parliament, yet a gruelling six-week election campaign was the first chance for many Australians to witness his leadership style.

In the final days of campaigning, he took media crews to visit the humble inner Sydney housing estate where he was raised by his single mother, and with an Italian name - Albanese - he appeared in front of ethnic audiences to pledge his support for multicultural Australia.

In recent times, 59-year-old Albanese has described himself as "half-Italian and half-Irish" and a "non-practising Catholic". His late Italian father returned to Italy before he was born, while his late mother was of Irish descent.

Mr Albanese did signal his Catholic credentials by visiting his Catholic primary school and being photographed alongside Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher, after the two men met privately.

Delivering his victory acceptance speech he said: "It says a lot about our great country that a son of a single mum who was a disability pensioner, who grew up in public housing … can stand before you tonight as Australia's prime minister.

"I want Australia to continue to be a country that no matter where you live, who you worship, who you love or what your last name is, that places no restrictions on your journey in life."

As a Catholic schoolboy at St Mary's Cathedral College in Sydney, Mr Albanese attended local Labor Party meetings with his mother and grandparents.

He joined the party as a teen, was active in college and then went to work for the party.

He was elected to federal parliament on his 33rd birthday.

While he is no longer a churchgoer, his past association and schooling appear to have been crucial in shaping his values in support of social justice and equal opportunity.

Quoting Pope Francis during a speech delivered in February, Mr Albanese said there was a "powerful overlap between those values and Labor values as we work on how to get through this pandemic".

Catholic organisations have welcomed Labor's election victory, calling on the new government to tackle poverty and fix the aged care crisis. Continue reading

Last week, President Biden travelled to Europe for a meeting with Pope Francis, the G20 summit, and the COP26 climate talks.

In a statement, Psaki said she remained in the United States because members of her household tested positive for COVID-19, and after testing negative herself four days in a row, she had a positive result on Sunday.

"While I have not had close contact in person with the president or senior members of the White House staff since Wednesday and tested negative four days after that last contact, I am disclosing today's positive test out of an abundance of transparency," Psaki said.

She last saw Biden on Tuesday, Psaki added, and they both were wearing masks and standing more than six feet apart. Continue reading

Biden lost Beau, an Iraq war veteran who had served as Delaware's attorney general, in 2015 to a brain tumour at the age of 46. Read more

Biden, of Irish heritage, will be the second Catholic president of the United States. John F. Kennedy, who was elected in 1960 and also of Irish descent, was the country's first Catholic president.

Matteo Bruni, the director of the Holy See Press Office has confirmed that the phone conversation took place.

A press release from the President-elect transition team read:

President-elect Joe Biden spoke this morning with His Holiness Pope Francis. The President-elect thanked His Holiness for extending blessings and congratulations and noted his appreciation for His Holiness' leadership in promoting peace, reconciliation, and the common bonds of humanity around the world.

Read More

Vatican-U.S. relations have grown increasingly strained in recent years, mainly as a result of the opposing views of Pope Francis and the Trump administration on a wide range of issues, from immigration to the environment.

Francis, who has sought to build bridges with other religions, cultures and the scientific community, has often presented an opposing force to Trump's wall-building politics.

The second Catholic president of the United States after John Kennedy will likely align with many of the priorities of this pontificate.

The transition plan proposed by his campaign, published on Nov. 9, focuses on addressing the global pandemic, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change.

In a speech on Oct. 27, Biden quoted from Fratelli tutti, asking the questions that Francis says leaders must ask themselves if they wish to engage in politics.

"Why am I doing this? What is my real aim?" Biden said, quoting the pontiff, before answering: "To unite this nation. To heal this nation."

Biden's recent promise to recommit to the Paris Agreement and "to go much further than that," will earn a hearty thumbs up from the Vatican.

The theme of unity is a welcome one for a pontificate that has been battling polarization just as extreme as the divide in U.S. presidential politics.

Biden's intention "of not dividing, but uniting a very polarized society" is a positive answer to "the pope's appeal to build bridges and not walls," said the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a key adviser to Pope Francis and director of the Jesuit publication Civiltà Cattolica, in a Nov. 8 interview with AdnKronos.

On foreign affairs, the Trump administration often found common ground.

The U.S. Embassy to the Holy See has collaborated effectively with the Vatican over the past four years, especially on freedom of religion and human trafficking, working in close partnership with Catholic religious orders and organizing events.

But the two states have clashed over China.

In late September, American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke at an event held at the embassy on the topic of advancing international religious freedom, apparently objecting to an experimental agreement the Church has been negotiating to share responsibility for selecting Chinese bishops with Beijing. Pompeo asked that Catholic leaders not renounce their "moral witness."

Pope Francis' number two, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, expressed "surprise" at what many in the Vatican saw as interference with its relations with China.

The Vatican has been working toward restoring diplomatic ties with the superpower in hopes of making life easier for its roughly 6 million Catholics.

The prospect of a Biden White House rekindles Vatican hopes for a renewed U.S. commitment to multilateralism, including more cooperative engagement with China.

The election of Kamala Harris as Biden's vice president will buttress the themes Francis has pushed over his seven years as pope.

"With Biden's vice president, Kamala Harris, a woman with Indian origins, we have a powerful immigrant representative who found in the American society an opportunity to realize a dream," Spadaro said.

"This is one of the radical elements of the American myth that will be recovered," he added.

Not everyone in Rome is celebrating the election. Biden and Harris' support for abortion and progressive family policies have already garnered pushback from Catholics, especially conservatives.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, a vocal papal opponent, said in late August that, due to his views on abortion, Biden "is not a Catholic in good standing and he should not approach to receive Holy Communion."

But even on this Biden and Francis may find ways to express solidarity.

While comparing abortion to "hiring a hitman," Francis has been dovish in condemning abortion legislation globally, preferring to address life issues in a broader framework that encompasses the multitude of human experiences, from poverty to artificial intelligence.

• Claire Giangravé - Vatican Correspondent RNS. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

The President and President-elect both followed their usual Sunday routines after the 2020 US election.

Mr Biden attended the 10.30 am Mass at St Joseph On the Brandywine Catholic Church in Wilmington with his wife and grandchildren.

After Mass, Biden visited the cemetery across the street where his parents, first wife, young daughter and son Beau are buried.

Meanwhile Trump, confirmed a Presbyterian who now identifies as ‘non-denominational Christian', visited his golf club in Sterling, Virginia. He was greeted by supporters as well as by demonstrators lining the sidewalks near the club's entrance chanting and waving signs.

The sitting president sent six tweets, all flagged as misinformation by Twitter. They maintained he won the election, before getting in his second round of golf for the weekend.

Mr Trump has not made an official in-person speech since the election was called. But, there has been no shortage of tweets from him claiming the election was stolen and that he won by "A LOT".

Trump quoted conservative surrogates like Newt Gingrich who have falsely claimed that there was rampant voter fraud in the election.

Twitter flagged his remarks, affixing to each of his tweets a label reading: "This claim about election fraud is disputed."

The President-elect progressed with planning for taking office in January. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have launched an updated website as they prepare for the transition process.

The site includes four priorities of their upcoming administration: COVID-19, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change.

Sources

• Independent
• NPR

House Representative Grace Meng made the request in a letter to the Biden campaign last week, asking the former vice president and his running mate Kamala Harris to publicly make the commitment.

"The judiciary today does not reflect the America it presides over," the letter states. "As of 2020, there is to our knowledge no appointed member of the federal judiciary who identifies as Muslim, nor has there ever been."

Read More

The one exception might have been Joe Biden, who has swum outside the party's pro-choice mainstream, but last year he abandoned his longstanding support of the Hyde Amendment, which bars Medicaid funding for abortion, and so there was nothing to talk about.

Now that the general election is here, there's something to talk about. The question is, how will Biden, a practicing Catholic, talk about it?

Biden became a U.S. senator in 1973, the very year Roe v. Wade made abortion a constitutional right.

"I don't like the Supreme Court decision on abortion," he said the following year.

"I think it went too far. I don't think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body."

As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1982, he voted for a constitutional amendment that would have allowed individual states to overturn Roe — and then, in 1983, he voted against it.

Thus began his pro-choice journey.

Biden has justified his abandonment of the Hyde Amendment on several grounds.

He first cited near bans on abortion in several states, when denying Medicaid funding would presumably affect the right to choose by making it too expensive for a poor woman to travel to another state.

"I can't justify leaving millions of women without the health care they need," he declared at a Democratic gala in Atlanta in June 2019.

"If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone's ZIP code."

A couple of weeks later, Biden tied his opposition to his proposal for expanding Medicaid coverage. The idea seemed to be that if more women had their health care covered by the federal government, under the Hyde Amendment more women would lack abortion coverage.

Whatever one makes of those arguments, neither represents that kind of statement of principle that the last Catholic nominee for president gave when asked about his position on abortion.

Responding to an audience member at a town hall forum in 2004, John Kerry began by declaring his Catholic bona fides and then went on to say:

But I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who does not share that article of faith, whether they be atheist, agnostic, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can't do that. But I can counsel people... I believe that you can take that position and not be pro-abortion ... But as a, as a president, I have to represent all the people in the nation ... And that means being smart about allowing people to be fully educated, to know what their options are in life, and making certain that you don't deny a poor person the right to be able to have whatever the Constitution affords them if they can't afford it otherwise.

Kerry's arguments about not imposing his faith on others and not denying poor women a constitutional right were made at Notre Dame 20 years earlier by then New York Gov.

Mario Cuomo in the most important pro-choice speech ever delivered by a Catholic politician.

Cuomo also drew a careful distinction between religious principle and prudential political judgment, pointedly noting that while his church opposed slavery, virtually no Catholic bishops felt it in their church's interest to do so in antebellum America.

Cuomo's speech did not lack for Catholic critics, including members of the hierarchy. Kerry had, even more, to deal with, including statements from some clergy that they would deny him Communion if he showed up at their altar rail.

Simply by taking the positions he has, Biden, too, has received even harder brickbats than Cuomo did. Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin tweeted, "Biden-Harris. First time in a while that the Democratic ticket hasn't had a Catholic on it. Sad." (That was pretty peculiar, given that Hillary Clinton's Catholic running mate Tim Kaine made the identical démarche on the Hyde Amendment that Biden did.)

Knoxville Bishop Rick Stika opined, "Don't understand how Mr. Biden can claim to be a good and faithful Catholic as he denies so much of Church teaching especially on the absolute child abuse and human rights violations of the most innocent, the not yet born."

Like John Kerry, over the next two months Joe Biden is going to be asked to explain his position on abortion as a professing Catholic.

He may not be the kind of intellectual Mario Cuomo was, but it is surely not beyond his resources to explain the relationship between his personal views on abortion and the public policies he would advance.

For a public subjected to increasingly hard-line positions on both sides of this most neuralgic of issues, it would be the kind of balm that Biden says he wants to bring to the country.

• Mark Silk
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.
• The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of CathNews.

The Catholic outreach campaigners (called Catholics for Biden) insistence of the Biden-papal alignment overlooks Biden's support for federal funding of abortions.

Biden has pledged to support taxpayer-funded abortion and codify legal abortion in law. His "public option" health care plan would also cover elective abortions.

Pope Francis has made forceful denunciations of abortion, likening it to "hiring a hitman." He has also condemned selective abortion of the disabled as "the same as the Nazis to maintain the purity of the race, but with white gloves."

The U.S. bishops' document "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship" also denounces abortion, describing it as a "preeminent" threat to human life.

Speakers at Catholics for Biden's online campaign launch urged Catholics not to be single-issue voters on abortion and challenged President Trump's pro-life record while in office.

After the launch, Catholics for Biden promoted an online quiz, "Are you a Pope Francis Voter?"

The quiz told participants "Donald Trump rejects the vast majority of Catholic Social Teaching," while comparing Biden's views favourably with those of Francis.

It went on to describe a "Pope Francis Voter" as someone who considers racism, poverty, migration and healthcare as "sacred issues" to be prioritized in the voting booth.

Biden's policies will protect people in poverty, the elderly, and migrants and reject racism, the quiz continued.

Catholics for Biden co-opted the phrased "sacred issues" from the pope's 2018 apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate - although they overlooked the primary context of his statement.

What Francis actually said was that "all human life, born and unborn is sacred".

He also said "this defence of unborn life is closely linked to the defence of each and every other human right ...

"... the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection" are equally sacred.

A 2020 election scorecard promoted by Catholics for Biden outlines "Equally Sacred Priorities" that equate abortion with a number of other issues in importance.

"In his writing and speaking, Pope Francis makes it clear: abortion is not the only issue that matters," the scorecard states.

The scorecard was produced by Network, the social justice lobby led by Sister Simone Campbell, who led a prayer at the 2020 Democratic National Convention and endorsed Biden at Thursday night's event.

Asked if her organization opposes legal abortion, Campbell replied: "That is not our issue. That is not it. It is above my pay grade."

The scorecard notes that Trump, and not Biden, is seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade, but adds that Biden, and not Trump, would increase support for pregnant women and fight maternal mortality.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: CNN.com

"I am pro-life and I believe that every woman who becomes pregnant deserves to have the freedom to choose life," Msgr. Paul Garrity from the Boston Archdiocese wrote.

"This is what I believe Joe Biden believes and is one of the many reasons that I will vote for him in November."

"The beauty of newborn babies are a reflection of the beauty and goodness of God and should propel us to do all that we can to help expectant mothers to choose life," he said.

The Boston priest also wrote "that he intends continuing to advocate for Joe Biden's presidential campaign because he believes "Joe Biden is pro-life like me."

He urged "Catholics and others" of similar viewpoints to vote for Biden as well.

Biden is running for president on a platform that would codify the full extent of Roe vs. Wade into federal law; protecting a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction.

If such a law were passed, it would effectively prevent any state limitations on abortion.

Biden also supports the expanded use of taxpayer funds for abortion.

Garrity's 23 August statement is contrary to Catholic teaching on abortion and a Church prohibition on clerical advocacy for political candidates.

Cardinal Seán O'Malley of the Boston Archdiocese rebuked Garrity.

"Our advocacy addresses the protection of human life at all stages and in all circumstances, including issues of social and economic equality, the pervasive influence of systemic racism and welcoming immigrants and refugees," O'Malley said.

He also reminded Catholic clergy this week that they should be politically neutral.

They "may not endorse or oppose candidates for election or political parties," O'Malley continued.

"The Catholic community has the right to expect the priests of the archdiocese and those entrusted with handing on the faith to be clear and unequivocal on the church's teaching concerning respect and protection for life from the first moment of conception to natural death."

In a Facebook post on 27 August, Garrity apologized for his post and reiterated his opposition to abortion.

"I am committed to upholding church teaching regarding the sanctity of life from the moment of conception until natural death," he wrote.

Garrity says he has considered himself "Pro-Life" since he was ordained a priest in 1973!

"I believe that it is a tragedy when a woman of any age decides to end her pregnancy prematurely," he said.

In his view, Catholics "are also told that we should not be ‘single-issue' voters" and that the Church is "neutral" on the issue of voting.

The Catholic Church teaches it is only possible to vote for a candidate who supports an intrinsic evil if the voter thinks there are proportionate reasons which might outweigh the harm done by the candidate's election.

Source

• Washington Times
• CNA
• Image:YouTube

His friend, Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, spoke about Mr Biden's faith, saying it "is strong and it's personal and private. For Joe, faith isn't a prop or political tool."

If Mr Biden wins in November, he will be just the second Catholic elected president.

During his acceptance speech, Mr Biden reiterated his idea that this election is a "battle for the soul of America." He repeatedly drew upon the themes of darkness and light.

"In this dark moment, I believe we are poised to make great progress again, to find the light once more," Mr Biden said.

He offered words of consolation to the families and friends of the roughly 170,000 Americans who have died from Covid-19 and urged Americans to fight racism and division.

"Love is more powerful than hate. Hope is more powerful than fear. Light is more powerful than dark," Mr Biden said."

This is our moment. This is our mission."

Ahead of Mr Biden's speech, Mr Coons highlighted Mr Biden's faith background.

"People, Joe believes, were made in the image of God. Joe learned that from his parents and the nuns and priests right here in Delaware, who taught him and inspired in him a passion for justice," said Mr Coons, a Yale Divinity School graduate.

He said he has seen firsthand Mr Biden's deep faith and compassion, noting how the former vice president consoled him while his father was in hospice care.

"Joe's faith is really about our future, about a world with less suffering and more justice, where we're better stewards of creation, where we have a more just immigration policy, and where we call out and confront the original sins of this nation, the sins of slavery and racism."

— Chris Coons (@ChrisCoonsforDE) August 21, 2020

Mr Coons, in a nod perhaps to the decreasing religiosity of Democratic voters, said Mr Biden would be "a president for Americans of all faiths, as well as people of conscience who practice no particular faith."

"Joe's faith is really about our future, about a world with less suffering and more justice, where we're better stewards of creation, where we have a more just immigration policy and where we call out and confront the original sins of this nation, the sins of slavery and racism.

"Joe knows these are central issues in this election. And for him, they're rooted in faith," Coons said.

"Joe knows that it's faith that sustained so many ordinary Americans who do extraordinary things," he said.

Americans, Mr Coons said, "deserve a servant leader who knows the dignity of work; who sees them, respects them, fights for them.

"We need a president who brings people of all faiths together to tackle our challenges, rebuild our country and restore our humanity.

"Someone who knows we're called to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. Joe Biden will be that president." Continue reading

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of CathNews.

According to a Catholic News Service account of the encounter, the pope shooed away Vatican aides several times when they attempted to interrupt the 45-minute conversation.

After waving them out of the room, John Paul pulled his chair out from behind his desk to sit closer to Biden.

The pontiff ribbed the senator about his age as the two discussed everything from the politics of Eastern Europe to the spread of communism in Latin America. Biden, a Roman Catholic from Pennsylvania coal country with an interest in foreign policy, listened intently.

But despite the thrill of meeting John Paul, there was one thing Biden refused to do: kiss the pope's ring, a customary greeting when meeting an esteemed cleric.

It was later revealed that it was Biden's mother who insisted he refrain, telling her son, "Don't you kiss his ring."

His refusal has become a hallmark of how Biden manages his faith, a throwback to a brand of mid-20th-century political Catholicism that eschews obsessive obedience to the Holy See on matters of policy.

An Irish Catholic educated by nuns in parochial schools, Biden is quick to invoke the church's social teaching on the stump.

But where Catholic morality rubs up against welfare or justice issues such as abortion and gay rights, Biden's understanding of his duty as a politician and a Catholic is clear: Decisions are to be informed by the faith he learned from nuns of his youth, not dictated by it.

"I'm as much a cultural Catholic as I am a theological Catholic," Biden wrote in his book "Promises to Keep: On Life in Politics."

"My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion. It's not so much the Bible, the beatitudes, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, or the prayers I learned. It's the culture."

It's a form of faith that experts describe as profoundly Catholic in ways that resonate with millions of American believers: It offers solace in moments of anxiety or grief, can be rocked by long periods of spiritual wrestling and is more likely to be influenced by the quiet counsel of women in habits or one's own conscience than the edicts of men in mitres.

Biden's complicated relationship with the Catholic hierarchy is a slight reimagining of the Catholicism modelled by John F. Kennedy, the United States' first and only Catholic president who, like Biden, declined to kiss a pontiff's ring when he met Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in 1963.

Kennedy's faith became a point of contention when, as a presidential candidate in 1960, he faced resistance and outright anti-Catholic bigotry from Protestant pastors concerned that a Kennedy administration could be manipulated from Rome.

During the campaign, the Rev. Billy Graham and the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale met with others in Switzerland to discuss how "Protestants in America must be aroused in some way, or the solid block Catholic voting, plus money, will take this election."

A month after their meeting, Kennedy travelled to Houston to deliver a speech to a group of pastors in which he declared: "I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope."

Biden, like many Catholic politicians, was inspired by Kennedy's religious rules of engagement.

"When John Kennedy ran for president, I remember being so proud that he was Catholic," Biden told The News Journal of Wilmington, Delaware in 2005. "But he had to prove that he wasn't ruled by his beliefs. I'm with John Kennedy on the role religion ought to play in politics."

While serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1982, he faced a decision on whether to forward to the full Senate a constitutional amendment that would allow states to pass new abortion restrictions and effectively overturn Roe v. Wade, a landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion.

Biden voted for the resolution, but insisted in an impassioned speech that while he personally opposed abortion on religious grounds — "I'm probably a victim, or a product, however you want to phrase it, of my background," he explained — he remained unsure if he had "a right to impose" his religious beliefs on others.

"His separating of the secular sphere and the sacred sphere, not in his personal life but in his approach to governing, is straight out of that Kennedy lineage," Natalia Imperatori, a professor at Manhattan College who studies Catholic ecclesiology, said of Biden.

But in the years that followed, the line between public policy and private beliefs seemed to fluctuate.

Biden voted against the anti-abortion amendment when it once again appeared before the Judiciary Committee in 1983, but in 1984, he backed an amendment praising the so-called Mexico City policy, which banned the use of federal money for foreign groups that provide abortion counselling or referrals.

By 1987, advocates for abortion rights were already describing his voting record on the issue as "erratic."

Biden's compartmentalization of faith and policy has become harder to maintain in recent years, especially after conservative church leaders and lay Catholics became more vocal under John Paul and Pope Benedict XVI.

In January, Biden was reportedly denied Communion at a South Carolina Catholic church due to his abortion stance.

Shortly after Biden announced Kamala Harris, a Baptist, as his running mate, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Rhode Island tweeted: "First time in a while that the Democratic ticket hasn't had a Catholic on it. Sad."

"In 1960, Americans needed reassurance that Rome wouldn't control the Catholic candidate's conscience, and would allow Kennedy to govern in the nation's interest," Imperatori said. "This year, it seems that some bishops will accept nothing less than full control of Catholic consciences, be they the candidate's, or the voters'."

The criticism has weighed on Biden.

Sister Simone Campbell, head of the Catholic social justice lobby Network, recounted a solemn moment at the signing ceremony for the Affordable Care Act in 2010 when she encountered the vice president along a rope line of dignitaries.

Biden was initially elated, enthusiastically shouting, "Barack! Here's my nun!" before his tone turned somber.

"He puts his forehead against my forehead and begins to talk about how faith matters to him and how painful it's been for him to be excluded by some within the church," Campbell recalled, noting that Biden and the Obama administration had faced fierce pushback from some Catholics over the ACA — including from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "There were hundreds of people there and we had this intimate pastoral visit."

Biden, for his part, has occasionally shown a willingness to return the clerics' barbs.

When he met with Benedict in 2011, Biden reportedly chastised the pontiff for cracking down on nuns like Campbell who had backed the ACA in defiance of the bishops.

"You are being entirely too hard on the American nuns," Biden told the pope, according to The New York Times. "Lighten up."

Meanwhile, Biden's personal connection to the faith remains a highly visible part of his political persona.

He carries a rosary at all times, fingering it during moments of anxiety or crisis. When facing brain surgery after his short-lived presidential campaign in 1988, he reportedly asked his doctors if he could keep the beads under his pillow. Earlier this year, rival Pete Buttigieg noticed Biden holding a rosary backstage before a primary debate.

And in a now-famous photo taken in the White House Situation Room as U.S. Navy Seals raided the compound of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, Biden's hands can be seen tucked beneath the table, reportedly thumbing his prayer beads.

"In order to pray your rosary in the Situation Room," said John Carr, director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, "you have to have a rosary in your pocket. That's every day — not just when you're going after bin Laden."

These days, Biden's rosary is also a symbol of the role faith plays in grief: He carries one that once belonged to his son Beau, who died of a brain tumour in 2015.

Biden suggested to a group of Catholics he invited to his home in 2015 that the emotional toll of Beau's death made it unlikely he would run for president in 2016. He explained that his wife had noticed a change in his posture because his "body was in mourning."

"At that point, he pulls out his rosary beads as he often does," said Campbell, who was at the meeting. "(There was) comfort for him in knowing the promise of Jesus, in the gospel, and in what we believe."

Biden, who also lost his first wife and a child in an automobile accident shortly after being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, talked about Beau's death with Francis when the pontiff met with Biden's extended family at the end of his 2015 U.S. visit.

Biden later said the meeting with the pope "provided us with more comfort that even he, I think, will understand."

When the two met again privately in St. Peter's Basilica a year later during a Vatican conference on cancer, Ken Hackett, then ambassador to the Vatican, caught snippets of Francis offering "moving prayers and concerns about the vice president's loss of a child."

"Your religion is complicated, but your faith is something that really motivates and moves you every day — and gives you the strength to carry on," Hackett said.

But it's the nuns and rank-and-file Catholics, not popes, whom Biden most often relies on for religious counsel, once telling Campbell that it is "nuns and Jesuits who keep me Catholic."

It's a preference shared by many of his fellow faithful: In opinion polls, U.S. Catholics show significantly higher support for nuns than for bishops.

Catholics are also more likely to side with Biden on issues of abortion and sexuality than with the church hierarchy.

According to a recent RealClear Opinion Research poll, 53% of Catholics don't agree with the church that abortion is "intrinsically evil," and 51% say it should be legal in all or most cases. A 2019 Pew Research poll found that a sizable majority of Catholics — 61% — approve of same-sex marriage.

There is also broad agreement where Biden's beliefs and church teachings overlap.

Recent surveys show that most Catholics oppose President Donald Trump's border wall and believe climate change is not only caused by humans but is one of the major issues facing the world.

The real question come November may be whether Biden can win over white Catholics like himself, who skew more conservative than Latino Catholics.

Abortion remains a thorny issue for the group (Carr, for instance, made clear that he was "disappointed" with Biden's current abortion stance), and a Pew Research survey conducted in late July found that 59% of white Catholics currently either support or lean toward Trump — 1 percentage point lower than the president's 2016 share.

By contrast, only 40% of white Catholics said they support or are leaning toward voting for Biden — far from a majority, but roughly the same percentage Obama secured when he won reelection in 2012.

It's a divided Catholic vote that has changed quite a bit since 1960, when Kennedy claimed somewhere between 70% and 83% of the group.

Things have changed a bit in the church, too.

For one thing, ring-kissing has largely gone out of style, with Francis sometimes recoiling from parishioners who attempt the ritual.

Yet Biden and his campaign appear to be betting that his emotive, localized faith will prove more durable among American churchgoers.

In a recent video released by the Democratic National Committee showcasing Biden's 2016 meeting with Francis, the editors didn't focus on the grandeur of mingling with the bishop of Rome. Instead, they focused on a group of habited nuns that Biden bumped into when exiting St. Peter's Basilica.

Speaking over images of the smiling nuns, Biden comments that Catholicism calls on believers to be "our brother's keeper."

"Being raised Catholic and being educated by the nuns — that's what those lovely women I'm talking to symbolize to me," he said.

• Jack Jenkins
• First published in RNS. Reproduced with permission.
• The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of CathNews.

The campaigns and their surrogates say the choice is stark, each highlighting issues they believe will appeal to their kinds of Catholic voters: those motivated primarily by abortion and those who see in the last four years a turn away from caring for society's most marginalized.

Mr Biden has spoken frequently about his own faith while talking to voters, especially in the early primary states.

His campaign has so far courted voters motivated by their faith by inserting "values" language into outreach aimed at traditional Democratic cohorts, such as women, Hispanics and L.G.B.T. people.

The Biden campaign also plans to announce a group of high-profile Catholics endorsing the former vice president later this summer.

In the meantime, the campaign launched a "Believers for Biden" online campaign, which includes virtual conversations with campaign staff and weekly prayer reflections.

The Biden campaign recently hired a faith outreach director, and it has specifically targeted Jewish, Muslim and even Republican-leaning evangelical Christian voters, but it is seeking to imbue Mr Biden's entire message with language informed by faith and values.

A recent campaign ad from the Biden campaign, for example, includes an image of a priest standing in a hospital room.

As for Catholic voters specifically, John McCarthy, a staffer on the Biden campaign, said Mr Biden's personal story, as well the campaign's theme will speak directly to faith voters.

"At the core of Catholicism is the message that we look out for our neighbour. As we look toward the general election, America has to answer the question of who we are."

"At the core of Catholicism is the message that we look out for our neighbour. As we look toward the general election, America has to answer the question of who we are," Mr. McCarthy said in a phone interview with America. "For Catholics, and for faith voters, the question is, are we going to look out for one another, see the other as ourselves? If they ask that, these voters will ultimately stand with Vice President Biden, who has a lifelong commitment to issues at the core of Catholic Social Teaching."

Michael Wear, who worked in faith outreach for former President Barack Obama, has been critical of Democratic efforts to reach faith voters, especially in the 2016 election.

In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama announced a National Catholic Advisory Council in April but in 2016, Hillary Clinton's campaign did not organize a Catholic leadership team.

Mr Wear said he sees signs that the Biden campaign is taking faith outreach more seriously.

"The most important thing there needs to be is an explicit invitation to religious voters that Joe Biden wants their vote. That needs to be clear," Mr Wear said. "The vice president doesn't need to be doing faith events every other day, but what we're looking for is one or two key moments where faith takes centre stage."

(One small example: In a 2016 interview with The Atlantic, Mr Wear recalled that he had once drafted a strategy memo about the Democratic Party's concern for "the least of these," a nod to a story in the Gospels about Jesus' concern for the poor and marginalized, a phrase met with confusion by another staffer. Four years later, on the Biden campaign's web page highlighting his outreach to Catholic voters, is a section about the former vice president's commitment to build an economy that protects "the least of these.")

The Trump campaign, meanwhile, has resurrected its Catholics for Trump group, which got off to a rocky start earlier this year.

The campaign published a video in May—conversations with some of the group's members, including the political pundit Mary Matalin and the conservative activists Matt and Mercedes Schlapp—after an in-person launch was scrapped in March because of the pandemic.

The event, which was supposed to be held in Wisconsin, drew criticism from at least one Catholic bishop, who wanted to distance the institutional church from the rally.

"Like all voters, Catholics have concerns on a number of issues and especially those that impact the most vulnerable."

"Another member of Catholics for Trump who was part of the YouTube event says she is supporting the president's re-election because of his views on abortion, an issue she said "reveals the heart and soul of a candidate and is a roadmap to their other positions." Continue reading

The ongoing coronavirus epidemic is in part responsible, having reshaped voters' worries and expectations, but the role played by religion in Biden's resurrection should not be overlooked.

Indeed, Biden's comeback began in South Carolina, where his win gave much-needed momentum for Super Tuesday.

In that state, black voters make up a majority of the Democratic electorate.

So it is no surprise that all the Democratic presidential candidates, including Bernie Sanders, flocked to African-American churches before the primary.

Black Americans, who are largely Democrats and older and less liberal, are the most religious group: 83% say they believe in God (compared with 61% of whites).

They are also more likely to attend church and pray.

Greater presence of religion in American life

Even outside the African American community, the American people as a whole continue to stand out for their religiosity: In other words, Americans are still far more religious than people in any other wealthy nation.

A match between a secular socialist and a centrist Catholic.

Of all of the presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders is probably the least religious. He identifies himself as both Jewish and secular, does not participate in any organized religion and defends the separation of church and state.

Sanders has a political vision of religion. He connects religious beliefs in general, and his Jewish heritage in particular, to social and economic justice. He often praises Pope Francis, and calls him a socialist.

But the rise and success of identity politics suggests that race or religion may matter more than economic justice.

Sharing faith, making connections

Joe Biden's record on race may be great, but he was vice president to the first black president, Barack Obama. Contrary to Sanders, he has not been talking about religion but rather about his faith.

And he has done so not in political terms but in emotional and personal terms.

For instance, in a town hall meeting in South Carolina, he was able to connect with an African American pastor whose wife was killed by a white supremacist by sharing personal tragedy: the loss of his own wife and daughter in 1972 and his son in 2015.

By building an empathetic bond with voters, he also avoids taking pointed positions on controversial issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

This seems to be working: he is the only Democratic candidate considered "rather religious" by more than half of American adults (55 percent).

While expressing genuine grief, he has turned his sorrow and pain into political assets, having no qualms about using them in this campaign ad, for example, where he says almost word for word what he expressed in the CNN town hall interview with the pastor.

He won 65% of the most religious black voters in South Carolina as well as a good size of the religious white voters (43% compared to 16% for Buttigieg and 14% for Sanders).

Religion in Congress

If you have doubts about the relevance of religion in politics in the United States, just look at the US governing bodies. The 116th American Congress is more diversified on the religious level, but remains overwhelmingly Christian (88% against 71% of the adult American population).

Only one elected representative, Senator Kyrsten Sinema (Democrat of Arizona), claims to be nonreligious and no member describes themselves as an atheist. Even someone as far to the left as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mentions her Catholic faith in Congress and even quotes the Bible on social networks.

Religion in the White House

Religiosity is even more visible in the White House. US presidents have been invoking faith and God ever since George Washington expressed his "fervent pleas to this Almighty Being who rules the universe" in his 1789 inaugural address.

Moreover, scholars observe that the use of religious language and even explicit references to God have increased in presidential rhetoric since the 1980s.

For example, David Domke and Kevin Coe write that iterations of the phrase "God bless America," the most explicit statement linking God and country, are now expected in all major speeches, although they were almost entirely absent prior to Ronald Reagan.

According to a recent study by semantic scholar Ceri Hughes, this trend seems to be even more pronounced with Donald Trump.

Although he claims to be a Presbyterian Protestant, there is ample evidence, as historian John Fea has shown, to suggest that the current tenant of the White House is the least religious president of the modern era. Yet he invokes religion the most, and the political strategy is obvious: after all, in 2016, 81% of white Evangelicals voted for Trump. His promise: to defend them in the culture wars, especially on the subjects of abortion, LGBTQ rights and school prayer.

Beyond the particular case of Donald Trump, all presidents of the modern era have identified as Protestant Christians, with the notable exception of John Kennedy whose Catholicism proved to be a campaign issue for him. No person of the Jewish faith has received a presidential nomination from a major party (Joseph Lieberman received only the Democratic vice-presidential nomination in 2000), and the Mormon affiliation of Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate in 2008, was not without controversy.

A changing religious landscape

The ever-increasing presence of religious rhetoric in political discourse is both the reason for and the consequence of the politicization of religion, particularly of white Evangelicals, since the 1970s.

This politicization has highlighted the racial divide that exists in the United States. According to the PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute), a non-profit, non-partisan organization, "no religious group is more closely linked to the Republican Party than white Evangelical Protestants."

The label "evangelical," however, is a complex one. It is a trans-denominational movement mostly within Protestant Christianity based on a set of personal core beliefs:

• The Bible at the centre of faith
  The atonement for sins through Jesus' death on the cross.
  Personal conversion and salvation.
  The sharing of the gospel, from which this movement takes its name.

But not all evangelicals are white and conservative. There is a small proportion of non-white Evangelicals (about 25%) as well as some white Evangelicals who are progressive (about 15 percent) and tend to vote for Democrats.

Nevertheless, statistics show a slow erosion in the number of Americans who identify as Evangelical Protestants__ since the 1990s, particularly in the younger generations. Similarly, the number of Catholics has slowly declined, while the number of historic Mainline Protestants has virtually collapsed.

The trend most discussed by academics (here, here, or here) is the increase in the number of Americans who do not identify with any religion, namely the nones (not affiliated with a religion). They are now at least as numerous as evangelicals, if not more. But as researcher Lauric Henneton notes, nones have in common only that they do not want to be counted as belonging to a religious group or established traditions. It says nothing about their actual beliefs.

A 2014 Pew Research Center survey shows that atheists and agnostics are on the rise, but still account for less than a third of nones, with the rest identifying themselves as "nothing special." Unsurprisingly, Bernie Sanders is a favourite among the nones.

Religion and younger voters

Younger generations are increasingly unaffiliated with a religion or a church, but they are also the generations least likely to vote which reduces their impact on the elections.

Even if they voted more, as they did in 2018, America's institutional political structure amplifies the power of whiter, more rural, more Christian voters.

Religion is thus likely to continue to play a major role in US elections for years to come.

And with the help of what Katherine Stewart calls the "Christian nationalist machine," Donald Trump will certainly make religious identity a central element of his campaign.

• Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy Assistant lecturer, Université Paris Nanterre - Université Paris Lumières
• The Conversation. Republished with permission.

But this year, when Vice President Joe Biden was denied Communion at a Catholic church in South Carolina for roughly the same reasons, coverage barely lasted a week.

According to experts, the practice — at least as a political statement if not a theological one — may be played out.

"The challenge of Catholics who campaign for policies that violate fundamental Catholic teaching is real, but not new, nor confined to abortion," John Carr, director of Georgetown University's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, said in an email.

"Refusing communion for public positions was widely discussed and rejected by almost all bishops and pastors years ago."

Indeed, denying Communion may have lost some of its shock value in today's political climate, where avoiding Eucharistic rejection has become a normalized part of campaigns for many Catholic politicians.

In a world where U.S. Catholics have long accepted ideological divides on abortion — and where many Catholic officials decline to discuss the topic of Communion refusal — the once deeply controversial practice appears to be more theological curiosity than campaign killer.

The latest chapter in a long-simmering Catholic Communion controversy began last month when the Rev. Robert Morey at St. Anthony Catholic Church in Florence, South Carolina, rebuked Biden, a Catholic.

"Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching," Morey said in a statement sent to Religion News Service.

"As a priest, it is my responsibility to minister to those souls entrusted to my care, and I must do so even in the most difficult situations."

When Biden was asked about the incident by MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell on Oct. 29, he declined to discuss it.

"That's just my personal life and I am not going to get into that at all," Biden said. His campaign also did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Morey's actions were the latest iteration of a debate that dates back to at least Kerry's 2004 White House bid, when then-Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis and others threatened to deny Communion to the then-Massachusetts senator because of his support for abortion rights.

The mere possibility caused a media stir: Reporters packed the back pews of churches Kerry visited to take Communion, a trend some referred to as "Wafer Watch" — a reference to wafers used in many Catholic Communion services.

A former advance staffer from the Kerry campaign who asked to remain anonymous told RNS that vetting churches ahead of Kerry's visits became standard practice at the time.

The person said it was often a "delicate process" that involved in-person conversations with local priests.

It's an open question whether denying Communion was ever popular among American prelates.

According to The New York Times, a 2004 survey of Catholic bishops found that of the 154 who responded to the poll, 135 said they did not agree with denying anyone the Eucharist.

Even so, the threat of denying the holy host to politicians persisted. In 2013, Burke — then a cardinal and head of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court at the Vatican — declared that Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-California, should be denied Communion because of her abortion stance.

And in June of this year, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois called on local churches to deny Communion to lawmakers who had voted for statutory protection for abortion rights in the state.

Asked if Paprocki would also call on churches to deny Communion to Biden, diocesan spokesman Andrew Hansen said that "if we do learn that (Biden) plans on visiting, we will address the question of Holy Communion at that time."

Recent years have seen the spectre of denying Communion extended to conservatives as well, this time over the issue of immigration, not abortion.

In 2018, Bishop Edward Weisenburger of Tucson, Arizona, suggested "canonical penalties" — which would include denying Communion — for Catholics who participated in the Trump administration's policy of separating immigrant families along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Tricia Bruce, a sociologist of religion at University of Notre Dame's Center for the Study of Religion and Society, said the back-and-forth over the Eucharist highlights latent political and theological polarization among U.S. Catholics.

"It's an issue that's been under the surface for decades," she said.

"Catholics grappling with what does it mean to be Catholic, what does it mean to be a good Catholic, and what does it mean to be a Catholic operating within a public sphere that is not Catholic?"

Bruce pointed to the slate of opinions that emerged in the days after Biden's Communion refusal, with Catholics from all corners of the political and theological perspective offering different and often contradictory takes on the issue.

James Salt, a longtime liberal Catholic activist who said that in 2004 he helped organized Catholic theologians to denounce threats of denying Communion, called Morey's decision "misguided and tragic."

James Martin, a Jesuit priest and consultant for the Vatican's Dicastery for Communication, expressed frustration with the idea of denying Communion in general.

"Denying Communion to politicians, whether Democrat or Republican, is a bad idea and even worse pastoral practice," he told RNS.

Bishops also weighed in, with Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York telling Fox News that he wouldn't judge the decision to deny Communion to Biden but wouldn't do it himself. Similarly, Biden's home diocese in Wilmington, Delaware, issued a statement saying that area Bishop W. Francis Malooly "has consistently refrained from politicizing the Eucharist, and will continue to do so."

Bruce noted the range of opinions matched the divide among lay Catholics on abortion: According to a 2018 Public Religion Research Institute poll, 48% of U.S. Catholics support making abortion legal in most or all cases, compared to 46% who say the opposite.

Bruce said the Communion controversy faces a different abortion debate than it did in 2004.

She cited her own forthcoming survey-based research on abortion that included many Catholics, many of whom she said "have a different rank order" when it comes to their moral and political priorities for being a good Catholic.

"The terms of the (abortion) debate that we used before to talk about this issue are not the same terms of the debate that people use now," she said.

"I don't think it's this clear line that is faith-based driven by evangelicals and Catholics about whether or not what is inside a woman's womb is a baby or not."

She also pointed to generational change among younger Americans — especially millennials and members of Gen Z — who she said showcase "a real distaste" for the "close linkage between religion and politics."

Indeed, clerics and politicians alike now appear hesitant to wade into the Communion debate.

The presidential campaigns of former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and former U.S. Rep. John Delaney — both of whom are Catholic and support abortion rights — declined to remark on the matter.

So did the Diocese of Charleston, of which Morey's church is a part; the diocese declined to respond to questions such as whether priests would also deny Communion to someone for participating in the Trump administration's child separation policy.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was similarly mum, as were all Catholic dioceses in the early primary state of Nevada.

Representatives from the Diocese of Des Moines, Iowa, and the Diocese of Manchester — which encompasses the state of New Hampshire — noted that their regions do not have a policy on denying Communion.

And Cardinal Blase Cupich — a close ally of Pope Francis who heads up the Archdiocese of Chicago — said only that "the long-standing position of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is that it is the responsibility of the local bishop to exercise his own prudential judgment in deciding how and when to apply Catholic teachings in their dealings with public officials."

These days, Carr argued, denying Communion plays poorly in the pews, with the press and possibly at the ballot box.

"It is bad Eucharistic theology, bad pastoral practice and bad politics," he said.

• Jack Jenkins is a national reporter for RNS based in Washington, covering U.S. Catholics and the intersection of religion and politics.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

He carries a rosary to remember his late son Beau, and as recent headlines show, he attends Mass even during a grueling campaign.

But when the former vice president presented himself for Communion at St. Anthony Catholic Church in South Carolina on Sunday (Oct. 27), a priest denied him the sacrament.

The pastor then discussed the moment with a reporter.

"Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching," the pastor, the Rev. Robert E. Morey, explained in an email to the Florence News.

You don't have to be a Christian, a Democrat — or even agree with Biden's position that the government shouldn't criminalize abortion — to recognize that this crass politicization of a holy sacrament is deeply problematic.

Any priest who denies a person this radical encounter with unconditional love and mercy typically would do so only as an extreme last resort, likely after several private meetings where the pastor and his congregant spoke about formed consciences, grace and reconciliation.

There is no evidence any of that happened in this situation.

While the priest surely convinced himself he was acting in Biden's best spiritual interest, this form of pastoral malpractice does immeasurable damage to individuals, institutions and faith communities.

For Catholics, the Eucharist is not a symbol or a statement, but the literal body of Christ, what the catechism describes as "the source and summit" of Christian life.

In words that should give comfort to all of us who feel unworthy of presenting ourselves before God, Pope Francis reminds us that Communion is not a "prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak."

Making this situation worse, the priest wasn't going rogue, but, according to a report by Catholic News Agency, was following a diocesan decree from 2004 signed jointly by the bishops of Atlanta, Charleston and Charlotte that states Catholic public officials who support abortion rights should not be allowed to receive Communion.

In contrast, Biden's hometown diocese issued a statement noting that Bishop Francis Malooly of Wilmington, Delaware, has "consistently refrained from politicizing the Eucharist, and will continue to do so."

Malooly underscored that point in 2008 when he said he would "get a lot more mileage out of a conversation trying to change the mind and heart than I would out of a public confrontation."

If that sounds like special treatment, consider that St John Paul II, a hero for a generation of conservative Catholics and a revered figure in the anti-abortion movement, gave Communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians during his lengthy pontificate, including to Rome's mayor, Francesco Rutelli, a high-profile Catholic who fought for more liberal abortion laws.

When Sen. John Kerry ran for president in 2004, Cardinal Raymond Burke - then archbishop of St. Louis and now a leading critic of Francis at the Vatican - said Kerry would not be welcome to receive Communion because of his position on abortion.

Colorado Springs Bishop Michael Sheridan wrote in a pastoral letter less than a year before the election that abortion "trumps all other issues."

Catholic public officials who support abortion rights, he said, "jeopardize their salvation," and Catholics who vote for them will "suffer the same fatal consequences."

The press corps following Kerry around dubbed the ugly scenario "wafer watch."

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, who has announced that Catholics in a same-sex marriage should not come to Communion or even be given a Catholic funeral when they die, last year barred Sen. Dick Durbin from Communion.

That fiat was handed down a month after the Senate failed to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would have banned abortion after 20 weeks.

Durbin was among more than a dozen Catholics who voted against the legislation.

As a Catholic progressive who thinks the Democratic Party should demonstrate greater sensitivity on the question of abortion — at a minimum acknowledging as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has done that a "big tent" party shouldn't make a litmus test out of this complicated moral issue.

I also challenge those on the Catholic right who are zealously cheering the priest who denied Biden Communion.

Catholic social teaching can't be boiled down to a single issue.

Francis reminds us that "the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute," are "equally sacred" as the unborn in the womb.

Building a consistent culture of life, according to the Catholic faith, means defending the unborn, the undocumented immigrant and the inmate on death row because all life has inherent dignity.

It's curious and telling that the loudest advocates of denying Communion to Catholic Democrats have nothing to say when Catholic Republicans such as Texas Governor Greg Abbott flout church teaching that says the death penalty is in all cases "inadmissible" because it is an attack on the dignity of the person.

The grotesque machinery of state-sanctioned killing that Abbott presides over didn't stop the the GOP-aligned Catholics who run the annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast from inviting the governor to give a 2015 keynote address and praising him as a pro-life leader.

While I believe it would be wrong to deny the governor Communion, it's fair to point out the hypocrisy and selective doctrinal policing that some conservative Catholic pundits, priests and even bishops engage in when it comes to faith in politics.

In the most intimate way, Catholics encounter a God in the Eucharist who became human to understand our frailties and redeem us.

Jesus caused scandal by inviting those shunned as sinful and unworthy to his own table.

Pastors who think they are protecting the faith by creating the ecclesial equivalent of a gated community around the altar should remember that humble itinerant preacher from Nazareth.

Centuries later, he still has plenty of followers.

Righteous clergy who don't seem to understand his message might find themselves preaching to empty pews.

• John Gehring is Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life and author of The Francis Effect: A Radical Pope's Challenge to the American Catholic Church.
• First appeared in RNS. Republished with permission.