Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia speaks at the Vatican Press Office, March 25, 2014. / Daniel Ibanez / CNA.

CNA Newsroom, Oct 23, 2022 / 05:32 am (CNA).

Archbishop Charles Chaput said on Saturday that Joe Biden “is not in communion with the Catholic faith” and that “any priest who now provides Communion to the president participates in his hypocrisy.” 

Speaking at a Eucharistic Symposium at the Diocese of Arlington on Oct. 22, the 78-year-old prelate also accused the second Catholic president in the history of the United States of “apostasy on the abortion issue.” 

In his address, titled “Do this in Remembrance of Me: Memory, Culture, Sacrament,” the archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia spoke about “American Catholics and our 200-year struggle to fit into mainstream American culture.”  

“We succeeded. But in the process, we’ve been digested and bleached out by the culture, rather than leavening it in a fertile way with a distinctive Catholic witness,” Chaput said.

The archbishop continued: “Mr. Biden’s apostasy on the abortion issue is only the most repugnant example. He’s not alone. But in a sane world, his unique public leadership would make — or should make — public consequences unavoidable.” 

“When you freely break communion with the Church of Jesus Christ and her teachings, you can’t pretend to be in communion when it’s convenient,” Chaput said. 

“That’s a form of lying. Mr. Biden is not in communion with the Catholic faith. And any priest who now provides Communion to the president participates in his hypocrisy.”

Biden supports abortion, despite the Catholic Church’s teaching that abortion is a grave evil and that human life is sacred from the moment of conception.

Last week, the president vowed again that he would codify Roe v. Wade into law should Democrats win the midterm elections in November.

As previously reported by CNA, he made it clear he would sign the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), a radical piece of abortion legislation that would forbid any abortion restrictions before and after fetal viability.

In his address, Chaput said many Catholics, “even many who regularly attend Sunday Mass, no longer believe in the Real Sacrifice or the Real Presence.”  

“We’ve forgotten who we are as a believing people. This is both a cause and a symptom of today’s lukewarm Catholic spirit, in our nation’s culture and within the Church herself,” he said. “But that can change, and it needs to change, starting with each of us here.”