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Joe Biden and his wife in churchChip Somodevilla / Getty Images

June 17, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) debates from June 16–19 whether or not President Joe Biden and other self-professed Catholic politicians in support of abortion should be able to receive Holy Communion, a recent poll shows that almost three quarters of church-going Catholics are opposed.

The poll was conducted by the national faith-based advocacy organization CatholicVote, and had 600 Catholic respondents. 70% of the respondents agreed with the statement: “Catholic public officials who disagree with their Church on serious or grave matters, should avoid creating confusion and disunity by presenting themselves for communion.” 86% of the respondents agreed that “[p]ublic officials who identify as Catholic but openly advocate for policies hostile to Church teaching are hypocritical.” 83% of the respondents said that “Catholic teaching holds that anyone conscious of ‘grave sin,’ who has not received the sacrament of reconciliation, should not present themselves for Holy Communion.”

Curiously, these statements received strong positive responses, even though only 38% of the respondents identified themselves as “conservative.”

The respondents agree with the Church’s teaching that Catholics who are obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.

The Church’s official stand against abortion and the other positions held by the Biden administration is very clear. As Pope Francis’ predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, stated in 2004, Catholic politicians who consistently campaign and vote for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws manifest “formal cooperation” with grave sin and must be “denied” the Eucharist.

Biden actively pushes for abortion, denies biological reality by advocating for transgender ideology, including supporting hormone therapy and hormone blockers for minors, encourages same-sex “marriages” (he even presided over such “weddings” as a public official), and suppresses faith-based religious organizations. According to the Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights, Biden has actively disobeyed Church teaching at least 32 times.

Bishops are strongly divided on the issue of Holy Communion for those who publicly support abortion.

Some bishops call for “Eucharist coherence,” as they call it, which is theological shorthand for what is lost when famous people who identify as Catholics but persist in open scandal, for example, by promoting abortion, receive Holy Communion. On the other side of the issue, Cardinals Blase Cupich, Wilton Gregory, Sean O’Malley and Joseph Tobin were among the over 60 bishops who didn’t want the USCCB to discuss prohibiting pro-abortion self-identified Catholics in public life from receiving Holy Communion.

Pope Francis, meanwhile, hinted at favoring no restriction on distributing the Eucharist in his Corpus Christi homily on Sunday. The Church must be “a community with open arms, welcoming towards all,” Pope Francis exhorted during his June 6, Corpus Christi homily in a possible allusion towards the USCCB’s proposed denial of Holy Communion to anti-life politicians. “The Eucharist wants to nourish those who are tired and hungry along the way, let's not forget that!”