“It is important to remember that the ultimate goal is conversion and readmission to communion, not exclusion and permanent expulsion from the community of faith. Even when a difficult decision must be made not to admit someone to Holy Communion until there has been repentance and reconciliation, such discipline does not contradict the love by which it is motivated,” Paprocki said.
Biden has publicly advocated for protection for abortion in law, including the codification of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision which mandated permissive abortion laws nationwide.
On the 2021 anniversary of Roe, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris stressed their commitment to legal abortion, saying, “The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to codifying Roe v. Wade and appointing judges that respect foundational precedents like Roe.”
While in the past, as a U.S. Senator from Delaware, Biden had supported some restrictions on abortion and abortion funding, he has since backed the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which bars most federal funding of abortions.
In the early days of his presidency, Biden repealed the Mexico City Policy, which bars federal funding of foreign NGOs that promote or perform abortions as a method of family planning.
While it may be difficult for a communion minister to adequately judge whether most people approaching for communion are in a state of grave sin, it’s different for a figure as public as Joe Biden, Paprocki said.
“[T]he attendance of the President of the United States is normally preceded by Secret Service security checks and safety precautions. It is highly unlikely that a pastor would be ‘looking down the aisle to see who is coming up to Communion’ and unexpectedly discover Joe Biden in the line.”
Paprocki said putting Canon 915 into action does not constitute an attack on a person’s faith.
“Christianity is a religion that calls for very public witness by putting one’s faith into action. Debating Biden’s policies in light of Catholic teaching has nothing to do with judging the condition of his soul,” Paprocki said.
“By contrast, it is certainly permitted and absolutely germane to engage a public discussion of whether or not a politician’s positions on political matters reflect his or her publicly professed faith, which Biden himself has repeatedly brought to the attention of the public.”
As bishop of the state capital city in Illinois, Paprocki has often had to make a determination of whether to allow some Catholic politicians, including Sen. Dick Durbin and several state legislators, to take Holy Communion because of their voting records on abortion.
In 2018, Paprocki said Durbin would not be admitted to Holy Communion because of his advocacy for the legal protection of abortion.
Other bishops have also spoken out on the issue.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, in an interview with EWTN Pro-Life Weekly in February, said that Communion can be withheld from someone “for the sake of their soul” but only after “private conversations to try to move the person in their conscience” have taken place.
Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City has said that “integrity requires that a Catholic not receive the Eucharist while acting in a manner incoherent with fundamental Catholic teaching.” He made that statement after explaining the Church’s teaching on reception of Communion as something neither “inhospitable” nor “exclusive.”
In November 2020, however, Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C. told a reporter that he would not deny President Joe Biden the reception of Holy Communion, if Biden were to present himself for Communion at Mass.
During the 2004 U.S. election year, the U.S. bishops issued a statement “Catholics in Political Life” that left to individual bishops the decision to withhold Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians.
That same year, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had sent a letter to Theodore McCarrick, then-Archbishop of Washington, with the expectation that it be read to fellow bishops.
The letter said that pro-abortion politicians, after first being admonished by their pastor on Church teaching and warned against presenting themselves for Communion, “are not to be admitted to holy communion.”
Church law’s definition of “manifest” participation in “grave sin” applies “in the case of a Catholic politician...consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws,” said Ratzinger, who would be elected Pope Benedict XVI at the 2005 conclave.
McCarrick read some but not all of the letter to his fellow bishops at their summer 2014 meeting, omitting key parts. He said that Ratzinger had agreed with the bishops’ decision to leave the judgement about withholding Holy Communion up to each individual bishop. Ratzinger’s entire letter was reported to the public afterward.