Should President Biden Receive Communion?
U.S. Catholic bishops would appear to be committing three sins, one religious and two political (Bishops Advance Restriction on Communion, U.S. News, June 19). The religious sin is the unwitting embrace of 17th-18th century Jansenism, condemned as heresy by Pope Clement XIs 1713 papal bull Unigenitus Dei Filius. Chief among the 101 heretical errors so condemned was the belief that those receiving Communion must be morally pure. As Pope Francis has stated, The Eucharist is not the reward of saints, but the bread of sinners. Jansenism also was bound up with efforts to restrict papal authority more broadly, which might be counted as more of a political rather than a religious sin. The more egregious political sin the bishops effort recalls, however, is the unintended affirmation of the charge leveled against John F. Kennedy by Protestant ministers, namely that the Roman Catholic Church would control Kennedys actions as president, though they had in mind the pope, not the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Em. Prof. Albion M. Urdank  University of California, Los Angeles  Nuevo, Calif.