ROME — The formidable former archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, said Saturday that President Joe Biden is not in communion with the Catholic Church, warning that any priest who gives him Holy Communion “participates in his hypocrisy.”
Speaking at a Eucharistic symposium in the diocese of Arlington on October 22, Archbishop Chaput said that “Biden’s apostasy on the abortion issue” is the most “repugnant example” of cultural assimilation of Catholics into secular America, while insisting that this sort of apostasy should prompt significant public consequences.
“When you freely break communion with the Church of Jesus Christ and her teachings, you can’t pretend to be in communion when it’s convenient,” Chaput stated.
“That’s a form of lying,” he said. “Mr. Biden is not in communion with the Catholic faith. And any priest who now provides Communion to the president participates in his hypocrisy.”
In the past, Mr. Biden said he was personally opposed to abortion and opposed using taxpayer dollars to fund it, but he now fully supports abortion-on-demand and has made abortion rights a hallmark of his presidency.
Biden has urged Congress to pass legislation codifying a right to abortion, promising to sign it next January, the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, which was struck down by the Supreme Court last June.
In his address Saturday, Archbishop Chaput said that American Catholics have struggled for 200 years to fit into mainstream American culture.
“We succeeded,” he said, “but in the process, we’ve been digested and bleached out by the culture, rather than leavening it in a fertile way with a distinctive Catholic witness.”
Joe Biden’s vocal support for abortion is the most egregious example, the archbishop said, but he’s “not alone.”
“We’ve forgotten who we are as a believing people,” Chaput said. “This is both a cause and a symptom of today’s lukewarm Catholic spirit, in our nation’s culture and within the Church herself. But that can change, and it needs to change, starting with each of us here.”
U.S. President Joe Biden, left, talks to Pope Francis as they meet at the Vatican, Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. (Vatican Media via AP)
In 2020, Chaput said Biden’s support for abortion rights meant that he “should stop defining himself as a devout Catholic” and “should not receive Holy Communion.”
“Public figures who identify as ‘Catholic’ give scandal to the faithful when receiving Communion by creating the impression that the moral laws of the Church are optional,” Chaput wrote at the time. “And bishops give similar scandal by not speaking up publicly about the issue and danger of sacrilege.”