Two weeks after Election Day, as the U.S. bishops were wrapping up their fall assembly, Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced that the organization was forming a working committee to address issues that would arise from the election of a Catholic president, Joe Biden, who publicly dissents from Church teaching.
Yesterday, Catholic News Service reports, Archbishop Gomez sent a memo to his fellow bishops announcing that the committee had completed its work by making two recommendations in its final report. The first task was to write a letter to Biden “conveying the USCCB’s eagerness to work with him on issues where we will undoubtedly express strong support, while acknowledging a lack of support on other issues where we cannot agree with anticipated policies,” according to a copy of the memo. Archbishop Gomez sent Biden that letter on the morning of the president’s inauguration, Jan. 20. When Gomez’s statement was released, some in the hierarchy voiced rare public opposition to it, highlighting deep divisions among the bishops on how to proceed when it came to working with the Biden administration.
The second recommendation is to prepare “a document addressed to all of the Catholic faithful on Eucharistic coherence,” which, Gomez said in his memo, has been “forwarded to the Committee on Doctrine in the hope that it will strengthen an understanding and deepen a common faith in the gift that has been given to us in the Sacrament of the Altar.”
Biden’s election has renewed the debate over whether Catholic politicians who act against the teaching of the Church on grave matters are worthy to receive Communion. At the same time, a 2019 Pew Research Poll shows that only one-third of Catholics believe that Christ is truly present — body, blood, soul and divinity — in the Eucharist. Both issues make clear that further teaching on the Eucharist is necessary. | 
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