President Biden, Pope Francis and Canon Law
National Catholic Register, 3 November 2021
If what Biden says the Holy Father said is true, what they were discussing comes under Canon 916, not 915.
What President Joe Biden said that Pope Francis said to him about receiving Holy Communion is both plausible and implausible at the same time.
After his meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Oct. 29, President Biden said that Pope Francis had told him that “he was happy that I am a good Catholic and that I should keep receiving Communion.”
Given the controversy about whether Biden should be denied Holy Communion due to his support for an expanded and radical abortion license, it was a major news story.
It’s possible that Biden did not understand what Pope Francis said, or that he was confused about it, or that he lied about it, but it seems fair to take the statement at face value. While the Vatican never comments on what is specifically said in such meetings, Pope Francis is more than capable of leaking a correction to friendly Jesuit media if he so desires. There was no such leak in this case.
That said, it is implausible that the Holy Father actually told Biden that he was a good Catholic. It is out of character for Pope Francis to praise anyone for being a good Catholic. Occasionally he will praise the ordinary faith of anonymous simple people, but when it comes to clergy, professors, business leaders, politicians — let alone the president of the United States — criticism, sometimes, harsh, is the norm. If Pope Francis told Biden that he is a good Catholic, it would be unusual.
It’s more likely that Pope Francis praised Biden for going to Mass every Sunday, even when traveling, something only a small minority of American Catholics bother to do. Or he may have praised Biden for being more religiously observant than most of his recent predecessors. That remains speculation.
If the question of receiving Holy Communion came up — and it is possible that Biden asked the Holy Father about it, given the prominence of the controversy — it is plausible that the Holy Father would have told Biden to keep receiving Holy Communion.
Recall that in 2014, Pope Francis called an Argentinian woman who had been told by her pastor that she should not receive Holy Communion because she was living with a civilly-divorced man who was still sacramentally married to another woman. The couple reported that Pope Francis told her that she should receive Holy Communion, going to a different parish if the local pastor insisted on upholding the sacramental discipline of the Church.
More recently, Pope Francis received President Alberto Fernández from his native Argentina. He is a Catholic who has explicitly said that he disagrees with the Catholic teaching that abortion is a grave evil, a position of theological dissent, not just public policy. He is also in an irregular marital situation, separated from his wife and living with another woman.
Nevertheless, both were given Holy Communion by Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, head of the pontifical academies, during their 2020 visit. The occasion was a special Mass celebrated by the fellow Argentinian at the tomb of St. Peter, the holiest place in Rome.
In both Argentinian cases, the prohibition against receiving Holy Communion is clear, clearer than Biden’s case. Nevertheless, the Holy Father apparently approved of Holy Communion being administered.
Biden’s reporting of the papal comments actually shifted the issue, which is the bigger news.
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