By DEXTER DUGGAN
A parishioner at the Delaware church that Joe Biden attends told The Wanderer that no one forces the president to be Catholic, and if he doesn’t believe what the Church requires, then he shouldn’t claim to be one.
David O’Flynn, who was one of the signatories of a half-page advertisement in Delaware’s largest newspaper calling on Biden to change his pro-abortion ways, told The Wanderer in a June 21 telephone interview, “I am happy to see him go to Mass. Maybe some of it will sink in.”
O’Flynn, who said he moved back to Delaware last October, said he hasn’t often seen Biden at Mass at St. Joseph on the Brandywine church, and when he has seen the president there, “I have yet to see him go up and get Communion.”
Biden’s defiant reception of the Eucharist despite his energetic promotion of the mortal sin of massive permissive abortion was the flashpoint that led U.S. Catholic bishops to vote in mid-June to draft a document on Communion and public life that they plan to debate in November.
Although Biden has said he doesn’t want to impose views against abortion on other people, O’Flynn said that “politicians impose their beliefs on you.”
Indeed, Biden has a host of extreme beliefs he wants to force on all Americans, including making permissive abortion a non-negotiable part of the law, and compelling taxpayers to fund it both in the U.S. and other countries.
“I hope Biden changes his mind, and we’ll pray for him,” O’Flynn told The Wanderer.
For three days in a row in mid-May, a group that O’Flynn belongs to, St. Joseph on the Brandywine Parishioners for Life (sjobparishioners4life.com), ran a half-page broadsheet advertisement that was an open letter in Wilmington’s News Journal, calling on Biden to “open a dialogue with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.”
In the upper right of the ad was a prayer to God asking for Biden’s transformation.
The prominent advertisement was headlined, “Pray for the President to Advocate for Life.” (See the top story on page one of the hardcopy Wanderer dated for June 17, “Biden Parishioners Ask His Reform.”)
Noting that Biden isn’t just someone they see on television but is “a member of our community of faith,” these parishioners said: “We write this letter with the utmost concern for the direction this president is leading our country in regard to the unborn. The president’s policies on abortion wholly contradict the Catholic Church’s core belief and scientific consensus that life begins at conception.
“President Biden explicitly endorses the tragic Roe v. Wade decision, which has resulted in the deaths of over 62 million babies,” the letter continued. It added later, “The prevalence of abortion is a fatal symptom of a larger moral malaise and lack of respect for life. As someone who publicly professes his Catholic faith, Mr. Biden should surely confront this malady.”
O’Flynn told The Wanderer that Joseph Owens, the editor and general manager of The Dialog, the newspaper of the Diocese of Wilmington, used an “abrupt and condescending” attitude, refusing to run the ad in that Catholic paper.
However, O’Flynn said, the secular News Journal’s attitude was, “Great, we’ll take your ad” as long as there was nothing slanderous in it.
It cost $2,700 to run the large ad for three days, he said, adding later in the interview that the pro-life group has to come up with “stage two” to follow up on the ad.
An article posted May 5 at the site of The American Conservative, titled “Joe at St. Joseph’s,” noted Biden not presenting himself to receive Communion there.
The article, by Nic Rowan, said “the president’s custom” at this church is, “Always in a little late and always out a little early. And, by leaving a few minutes before the rest of the congregation, Biden skips the Communion line, and, perhaps, an occasion for mortal sin.”
About five positive emails, and no negative ones, responded to the pro-lifers’ newspaper ad, O’Flynn said, but there was no reaction to it from people at the church.
“A lot of parishioners are Joe Biden fans,” O’Flynn said. “They voted for him. . . . Some of the parishioners are very friendly with him. They know him well.”
Earlier in the interview, commenting on the importance of the pro-life issue, O’Flynn said, “The right to life is right up there….You can’t be murdering people just because you don’t want them.”
It remains to be seen how Msgr. William Koenig, the bishop-elect for the Wilmington Diocese, who comes from the Diocese of Rockville Centre, N.Y., will deal with Biden and reception of the Eucharist, O’Flynn said.
Koenig succeeds Bishop W. Francis Malooly, who passed retirement age.
Malooly was viewed by pro-lifers as a weak bishop for avoiding calling Biden to account.
The left-wing politician who serves as archbishop of Washington, D.C., Wilton Cardinal Gregory, expresses no opposition to Biden receiving Communion there.
On June 21 an opinion editor at the Washington Examiner noted the damage pro-abortion Biden does, and not only to himself.
David Freddoso wrote, in part: “If an average Catholic advocates for abortion on demand and then goes to Communion, probably nobody is even going to know. That doesn’t make it any better for his or her soul, but it also doesn’t cause a public scandal the way it does when Biden expresses his advocacy for abortion and then ostentatiously presents himself for Communion.
“He is president — in today’s world, it is literally impossible to be more notorious than that,” Freddoso added.
“By allowing him to impersonate a member of our community, Church leaders risk giving the impression to everyone else that the gravest injustice of our time just really isn’t such a big deal after all,” he wrote. “The Church, one might reasonably say upon seeing such a thing, just isn’t really serious about its teaching on this matter.”
In a video Meghan McCain also rejected Biden’s stance. She said, “I never understand this argument. It’s like saying, ‘I’m personally opposed to murder, but if you want to murder a little bit, it’s fine; it’s not my problem’.”
McCain said Biden eventually will have to answer to his Creator, as everyone must. “I believe that he’s doing great spiritual harm to himself,” she said.
Both Biden and his press secretary, Jen Psaki, affirmed his radical abortion stand while being too ashamed to talk about it. This illustrated the monstrous doublethink of the ghoulish pro-abortion movement.
When Psaki at the White House was asked if Biden believes a 15-week-old unborn baby is a human being, she callously replied, “Are you asking me if the president supports a woman’s right to choose, he does,” then she quickly called for a different question.
In a separate incident, when a reporter at the White House asked Biden directly about the bishops’ action, he squinted and said, “Say again?” After she repeated her question, Biden got a pained look on his face and replied, “That’s a private matter, and I don’t think that’s going to happen,” then quickly walked away.
Prominent Catholic blogger Fr. John T. Zuhlsdorf (wdtprs.com) said it’s certainly not a private matter when the U.S. president with his swarms of Secret Service agents shows up at church.
“If you are obviously and obstinately and perennially in defiance of certain important teachings of the Church, and if you are a highly visible public figure, then canon 915 applies: those who administer the Eucharist are barred from giving that figure Communion. Communion is not to be given to those people. That doesn’t apply just to politicians,” Zuhlsdorf posted on June 18.
The Wanderer asked northern California Catholic commentator Barbara Simpson for her reaction to Biden’s problem.
“Poor old Joe Biden. Caught between a rock and a hard place — that place being Hell,” Simpson said. “He’s typical of too many Catholics today who buy into the pick-and-choose mentality — ‘cafeteria Catholic.’ He — and they — don’t want anyone telling them what to do.
“They make their own decisions on the rules and punishments and ignore the clergy and history which, unfortunately for them, hasn’t changed,” Simpson said. “There is the definition of sin and punishment. They, and he, think they can do as they please, but ultimately God has the last word.
“When a person openly flouts Church law, clergy have the right and the duty to refuse the sacraments,” she said. “If Biden — and (Nancy) Pelosi and all the others — continue to openly support and encourage abortion, they are committing a sin. One cannot rightly receive Communion when in a state of sin. That’s the way it is, like it or not.”
Doctrine And Law
Mary Ann Kreitzer, who runs the Virginia-based Les Femmes — The Truth Catholic blog, also responded to The Wanderer’s request for comment.
“I suppose it’s a good thing that the majority of bishops voted in favor of developing a doctrine on the Eucharist,” Kreitzer said. “At least it shows a concern for loss of faith in the Real Presence and a need to emphasize doctrine about worthiness to receive Communion. But seriously, what’s the point?
“In view of past USCCB documents, I have little expectation anything will come of it short of a mushy affirmation of Church teaching — if we’re lucky,” she said. “Remember the scandalous Always Our Children on homosexuality? Filled with error, it had to be corrected by the Vatican.
“We have the doctrine and the law,” Kreitzer said. “Canon 915 calls for denying Communion to those engaged in public grave sin. Every bishop should be refusing Communion to Catholics publicly championing grave sins like abortion, contraception, euthanasia, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, etc.
“I don’t think the document should name individuals; it doesn’t need to. It doesn’t take rocket science to recognize that Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, etc., openly defy the Church and scandalize the faithful,” she said. “Whether the person is a politician or celebrity with a big pulpit, or a parishioner publicly attacking the faith, they should all be refused Communion.
“Of course, the Pope doesn’t agree and, in this year of Amoris Laetitia, we are continuously scandalized by demands to normalize serious sins under the guise of ‘being pastoral’,” Kreitzer said. “Enabling people on the path to Hell is anything but pastoral. It’s long past time for true shepherds to defend the flock and try to rescue the lost sheep.
“The bishops have the means already,” she said. “They don’t need a USCCB document to empower them. Please, bishops, act like you believe Jesus is really present in the Eucharist and defend Him from sacrilege and the flock from scandal!”
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