Keeping the faith

THE HYMNS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HAVE BEEN THE SOUNDTRACK to Joe Biden’s life. He attends Mass on Sundays and holy days, and before major events. In Oval Office meetings, Biden sometimes pulls from his pocket a string of rosary beads that belonged to his late son Beau; in quieter moments, Biden will walk his fingers down the beads while saying the holy rosary, a series of meditative prayers. The day the 2020 election was called for Biden, just before he and his family greeted a cheering crowd in Wilmington, Del., a Catholic priest was asked to call in over Zoom to pray with the President-elect and his family. They bowed their heads to the prayer of St. Francis: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love.”

While Biden’s faith is deeply felt, his election has exposed divisions at the highest levels of the Catholic Church. Within days of his victory, 10 of the nation’s most powerful bishops took the extraordinary step of launching a “working group” on how to approach a Catholic President like Joe Biden. The panel met twice over Zoom, in December and January. Led by Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit, it included New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who offered prayers at President Trump’s 2017 Inauguration, the 2020 Republican National Convention and both parties’ conventions in 2012, as well as San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kans., both of whom have suggested Biden should be denied the sacred rite of Communion for his stance on abortion. On the table in the discussions, according to three Catholic officials familiar with the group’s work, were the questions of how to