Ever since President Joe Biden took office, fellow GetReligionistas Clemente Lisi and tmatt have been writing articles about the new president’s inevitable clash with Catholic bishops over Holy Communion, and how Biden is regularly framed as a “devout” Catholic despite his major departure from said doctrine on life issues, not to mention religious liberty and issues of marriage and sexuality.
Conservatives among the divided U.S. bishops, on the other hand, are consistently framed as “right wing.”
The Communion conundrum has spread to a state where I used to live: New Mexico, home of the country’s largest annual pilgrimage of penitents who walk 30 miles every Good Friday from Santa Fe to the Chimayo sanctuary in the northern hills. New Mexico is drenched in Catholicism, starting around April 30, 1598, when Spanish explorers coming north from Mexico held a Thanksgiving Mass and dinner near the Rio Grande.
There are evangelical Protestants, Jews, Buddhists and other groups around the state, but the bulk of the populace is Catholic, so the Communion issue is going to matter there, which is why one bishop’s decision to bar a local Catholic politician from the altar makes waves. Here is how Axios framed it:
A New Mexico lawmaker denied Communion by a bishop over his vote to advance abortion protections told Axios exclusively he won't be bullied and looks forward to receiving Communion with President Biden one day.
Just for fun, I’ll also run the lede from the National Catholic Register just for comparison:
After a New Mexico state senator said he was denied Communion this weekend because of a political matter, his diocese responded that it had privately warned him he should not present himself for Communion, due to his obstinate support for a pro-abortion bill.
Two different takes, no? Back to Axios:
Why it matters: The example set by Sen. Joseph Cervantes, a Democrat, is drawing the attention of lawmakers around the country. Blue states are moving to protect abortion rights should the Supreme Court overturn or erode Roe v. Wade.
• "I won't have any problem finding to place to receive Communion," Cervantes said during an interview. "In fact, I look forward one day to receiving Communion at the same parish where President Biden does."
• He said other parishes and another diocese in New Mexico have offered to give him Communion, highlighting the split among U.S. Catholic bishops over elected officials and abortion.
The slant of this piece is a textbook example of why conservatives of all religious persuasions tend to loathe the media. The lede basically states takes Cervantes’ word for it that he is being “bullied,” without mentioning that Cervantes went out of his way to defy private exhortations from his spiritual overseers.
Axios continues:
Driving the news: Cervantes, a chair of a key state legislative committee, tweeted this week that he was denied Communion by Las Cruces, N.M., Bishop Peter Baldacchino while attending service at a monastery.
• "My new parish priest has indicated he will do the same. ... Please pray for church authorities as Catholicism transitions under Pope Francis," the devout Roman Catholic wrote.
“Devout”? Really? Isn’t a devout person someone who follows the strictures of the faith no matter how inconvenient they may be?
The Las Cruces Diocese confirmed Cervantes was denied Communion after the lawmaker didn't respond to pleas from Baldacchino and St. Albert the Great Newman Center pastor Kevin Waymel to stall an abortion bill earlier this year.
• "In a personal letter to Senator Cervantes, his pastor advised him that a vote in favor of this particular Senate bill would constitute a grave moral evil and that he should not present himself for Communion," the diocese said in a statement.
A number of paragraphs down, we learn of the private exhortations that only became public once Cervantes persisted in his defiance.
Doesn’t sound like he is being “bullied,” here. Cervantes was so flippant, he posted again to Twitter on July 25 a photo of the interior of St. Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe along with the fact he attended Mass there.
Next comes some confusion as to what the bill was about. Axios says:
Cervantes voted in February to move a bill out of his committee that would protect abortion rights in New Mexico should Roe be overturned.
• The conservative Democrat then voted for the proposal when it went before the full New Mexico Senate. It was later signed into law by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, another Democrat.
“Conservative” Democrat? By what measure?
Earth to Axios: Please hire a knowledgeable religion reporter who understands what conservative religion really entails.
Axios’ reporting is confusing, in that the Santa Fe New Mexican said the issue was actually an old law that criminalized abortion. More on this:
An effort in 2019 to repeal the law died on the Senate floor when eight moderate and conservative-leaning Democrats joined all 16 Republican senators in voting to keep the law on the books. Five of those Democrats lost their primary races to more progressive candidates who made the anti-abortion law a major campaign issue, and the repeal was among the first orders of business when the Legislature reconvened this year.
The bill was signed into law by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who also is Catholic.
Now this sounds like a different issue than what Axios mentioned. Were there two separate votes on two separate issues or is one of these outlets off the mark? Would be nice to get some clarification because to “protect abortion rights” is different than cleaning up an outdated bill.
Do read further in the Santa Fe article, as it continues a lengthy quote from a diocesan statement on the matter. The diocese noted that its officials would have never publicized their private outreaches to Cervantes who (never responded by the way) until he blasted the diocese on Twitter. That puts this fight in a different light.
The bottom line here: It was the hierarchy that tried to keep this a private admonition and it was Cervantes who ignored them.
The Santa Fe paper even ran some quotes from a politician who agreed with the church.
State Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, who is Catholic, said he voted against repealing New Mexico’s abortion ban because he was representing the views of a majority of his constituents.
“My constituents are made up of Navajos and Zunis,” he said. “In their religious beliefs, they do not believe in that. They believe in what God gives you, God gives you, and that’s what you deal with.”
This is called running both sides of the story. That should be the normal way of doing things but in this more woke era of activist journalism, it’s pretty rare.
To illustrate, Axios did not press Cervantes on why he was the one to politicize the matter on Twitter rather than responding privately to his priest and bishop. Why is it that the diocese gets the hard questions but the dissident Catholics (ranging from Cervantes to Biden) never do?
In this age, people who buck religious tradition are cast as heroes whereas the institution takes a hit for being corrupt and more. Sometimes the former are heroes but sometimes they are publicity hounds and it’s the reporter’s duty to tell us who is what. I don’t see that happening among the nation’s storytellers. Instead, one side is always right (“pro-abortion-rights”) and one is always wrong (“anti-abortion.”) You can see this same pattern in tmatt’s post yesterday about a very similar case in Michigan: “Washington Post still thinks sin and repentance have nothing to do with Holy Communion.”
The standards are different elsewhere. When Politico runs a story on internal dissent in the Black Lives Matter movement, each side is given its say and there are no villains. When there’s internal dissent among Catholics, the framing is always that defenders of Catholic doctrine are the villains.
After Cervantes posted the above tweet, a majority of the responses (that I read) were Catholics telling Cervantes to get a life and either shape up or ship out. A good story would have been to have printed some of those answers to show what the public is thinking. Hint: It’s 180 degrees from what Axios is writing.
An even better story would have to tell why a bishop in a Mexican border diocese decided to take on a state-level politician when his national bishops’ conference is split on the matter and the Vatican is sounding confused about it all. There’s way more going on here than meets the eye with some good human interest material to boot.
So, get out there, Axios, and do some (what we used to call) shoe-leather reporting on the issue. There are ways to fit that kind of information into your format with tight writing and bullet points. These aren’t fat-cat Catholics you’re talking about here; the three dioceses that make up the Santa Fe archdiocese include the poorest diocese (Gallup) in the country. They have a lot to lose by taking an unpopular stand on this issue.
So tell us why they drew the line with Cervantes. That’s the real story.
FIRST IMAGE: A photo of New Mexico State Sen. Joe Cervantes from his official Facebook page.