My impression as a lay Catholic is that the priests and bishops, even the popes, who develop a record of criticism from various ideological factions may just be doing something right. So, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is doing something right.
A number of onlookers were aghast at the USCCB and especially its president, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, because of what he said about Catholic President-elect Joe Biden at the bishops’ recent annual meeting. A columnist for the National Catholic Register stands among them, having written that Gomez’s “lack of leadership is on full display” following the bishop’s announcement of a working group formed to examine the “difficult and complex situation” presented by Biden’s support for abortion protections. The repeal of the Hyde Amendment and the preservation of Roe v. Wade are “against some fundamental values we hold dear as Catholics,” Gomez said. It’s not exactly news.
Commentators interpreted the announcement as circumventing Pope Francis’s goodwill toward Biden. Michael Sean Winters, the aforementioned National Catholic Register columnist, wrote, “The bishops’ conference needs about 40 new bishops who will follow Francis’ lead.” David Gibson, director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture, told the Associated Press, “That the pope called to congratulate Biden and discussed working together while the American bishops capped their meeting with plans to do battle with the incoming president says it all.”
It really doesn’t say it all. Gomez congratulated Biden even before the Holy Father did, for what it’s worth. Gomez also said that Biden’s presidency offers certain opportunities where his faith commitments compel him to support good policies “in favor of immigration reform, refugees, and the poor, and against racism, the death penalty, and climate change.” The bishop battles Biden by appreciating that his posture on some social policies is in congruence with Catholic teaching. No, there is some texture here that critics would have us ignore.
It’s true: Gomez was clear and unequivocal about abortion, saying that Biden also presents a challenge: “When politicians who profess the Catholic faith support [abortion rights], there are additional problems.” He said, “Among other things, it creates confusion among the faithful about what the church actually teaches on these questions.”
The bishops have a real task in fighting the notion that it’s morally acceptable for a Catholic to believe privately that abortion is wrong and yet to support abortion policies actively or simply to reject the church’s teaching altogether, as so many Catholic politicians all but do.
Winters discounts that: “Could Gomez produce a single Catholic who does not know what the church teaches on these issues? Has Biden ever claimed he was speaking on behalf of the church when addressing these issues? It is nonsense.” In spitting on Gomez’s concern, he proves unwilling to take seriously some very serious passages of the catechism that, actually, don’t at all discuss the immorality of abortion in terms of “producing Catholic votes” or “speaking on behalf of the Church.”
Another critic of Gomez’s statement, this one an Episcopal priest, asked in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, “In what moral universe does Biden require a Catholic task force when Trump got a free pass?” The bishops did not exactly give Trump a free pass. He, too, got task-forced.
Beyond that, writing for Religion News Service in August, Thomas Reese characterized his analysis of over 160 USCCB press releases related to public policy issues published from January 2019 through July 2020.
“In 22 press releases on immigrants and another 13 on refugees, the bishops attacked the administration’s policies as ‘misguided and untenable,’ ‘unacceptable,’ appalling, ‘devastating,’ ‘very concerning,’ ‘heartbreaking,’ ‘unlawful and inhumane,’ ‘terrible,’ ‘callous,’ ‘disturbing’ and ‘contrary to American and Christian values.’” Reese continued, “These are not words used by starry-eyed supporters.” They sure aren’t.
Reese also wrote, “In all the bishops made more than 40 statements defending immigrants and refugees and opposing travel bans and family separation.” He continued elsewhere, “The bishops, along with their Mexican counterparts, also opposed Trump’s wall, saying it ‘first and foremost is a symbol of division and animosity between two friendly countries.’” These aren’t sycophants, and there have been plenty of conservative Catholics and non-Catholics who pushed back against the bishops for their posture toward Trump.
Reese observes, “There’s no doubt that the bishops make a priority of abortion and other pro-life issues: More than 30 press releases addressed life topics in the past 19 months.” So, the bishops supported what Trump did on some issues but criticized him in other areas. That’s what they have done with Biden.
If there has been something of a change in tone, perhaps it has something to do with jurisdiction. Biden rests properly under the bishops’ moral authority as a Catholic, and they clearly hold him to a higher moral standard than Trump for that reason. The language of the catechism discusses being bound to believe Church doctrine, and that would include its doctrine on the value of human life. Biden is bound in a way that Trump is not. It is in that universe where Biden requires a task force.
Reese concluded his analysis by writing, “Clearly the bishops take social justice issues much more seriously than does [Trump], but this may be overshadowed in the media when bishops attack Catholic Biden for his positions on abortion. The media tends to give much more attention to the bishops’ disagreements with Biden than to their differences with Trump.” Yes, yes they do, and that includes some Catholic media.
