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Other Catholic leaders, such as Bishop Liam Cary, have been even more explicit about their focus on Biden: “It seems to me this is an unprecedented situation in the country,” Cary said, according to America Magazine. “We’ve never had a situation like this where the executive is a Catholic president who is opposed to the teaching of the church.”

The results of the vote were released on Friday, and the measure was approved by a wide margin, with 168 US bishops voting in favor and just 55 opposing. Six members of the conference abstained from the vote.

However, many steps remain before the church takes any action that could affect Biden’s ability to receive the sacrament, and the result may ultimately be more symbolic than anything. For one, the statement has yet to be drafted, much less approved (that requires a two-thirds majority from the same conference), and the Vatican will likely also have to approve the statement first. (Francis has remained silent about this week’s vote.)

Consequently, there’s no guarantee that the statement will go as far as some conservative bishops hope in emphasizing that pro-choice politicians should be banned from receiving communion, even if one is approved — and as America Magazine writer Michael J. O’Loughlin pointed out on Twitter Friday, the conference doesn’t have the ability to ban Biden from receiving communion outright in any case.

But ultimately, the decision on who can receive Communion rests with an individual bishop, not a bishops conference. There will not and cannot be a vote by the bishops conference on whether an individual believer is able to receive Communion. 6/

— Michael J. O’Loughlin (@MikeOLoughlin) June 16, 2021

According to O’Loughlin:

Some Catholic conservatives, including some bishops, want to include a section in the proposed future statement about public figures who disagree on church teaching, especially on abortion, and reiterate that their position bars them from Communion. … But ultimately, the decision on who can receive Communion rests with an individual bishop, not a bishops conference. There will not and cannot be a vote by the bishops conference on whether an individual believer is able to receive Communion.

Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop for Washington, DC, has said categorically that he will not block Biden from receiving communion.

It’s not unprecedented for an individual bishop to weigh in on whether a political figure should receive communion. In 2008, according to the AP, New York Cardinal Edward Egan condemned former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s decision to receive communion during a papal visit to the city because of Giuliani’s support for abortion rights. However, this week’s vote could lead to a much broader rebuke of Catholics who go against church doctrine on abortion.

Catholic Democrats are already pushing back on the vote — and public opinion is against it as well

Although it is not yet certain what the final statement could end up looking like, nearly 60 Catholic Democrats have pushed back on the conference’s decision. In a “Statement of Principles,” the lawmakers wrote that “the Sacrament of Holy Communion is central to the life of practicing Catholics, and the weaponization of the Eucharist to Democratic lawmakers for their support of a woman’s safe and legal access to abortion is contradictory.”

“We solemnly urge you to not move forward and deny this most holy of all sacraments, the source and the summit of the whole work of the gospel over one issue,” reads the statement, signed by prominent progressive Catholic lawmakers, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and released Friday.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), who joined the formal statement, also condemned the conference’s decision in harsher language on Twitter. On Friday, he called the bishops’ conference “hypocrites,” and in a series of posts has pointed out that other Catholics have not been denied sacraments for going against church teachings on other matters, such as divorce, contraception use, and supporting the death penalty.

Dear @USCCB: I’m Catholic and you are hypocrites. You did not tell Bill Barr, a Catholic, not to take communion when he expanded killing human beings with the death penalty. You are being nakedly partisan and you should be ashamed. Another reason you are losing membership. https://t.co/kpIYRolnHD

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) June 18, 2021

All told, there are more than 150 Catholic members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who did not join Friday’s statement. Catholics hold 29 percent of seats in Congress — making it the most-represented religious denomination in the body. Of those members, according to the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel, 91 are Democrats and 67 are Republicans.

Obviously Biden should be the focus of these stories, but the Speaker of the House and most Catholic members of Congress would be denied communion if this advances. (91 Catholic Dems in Congress, 67 Republicans.) https://t.co/ARKn3dA2Py

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) June 18, 2021

And while the motion to draft a statement was approved easily by the conference of bishops this week, polling suggests that Friday’s statement by Catholic lawmakers is more in line with the views of American Catholics writ large.

According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, a sizable majority of US Catholics — about 67 percent — believe that Biden should still be allowed to receive communion regardless of his views on abortion, while just 29 percent say he should be denied.

The question breaks along sharply partisan lines, with 87 percent of Catholic Democrats supporting Biden’s ability to receive communion and a smaller majority of Catholic Republicans opposing.

I see a lot of conservatives gloating about this but I think telling observant Catholic liberals and Democrats they’re not wanted or welcome in the Church is not going to work out the way they seem to think it will. https://t.co/lcZtivvraq

— Adam Serwer (@AdamSerwer) June 18, 2021

Additionally, an outright majority of all US Catholics support the right to an abortion, according to a 2019 Pew survey. About 56 percent say it should be legal in all or most cases, while 42 percent say it should be illegal in all or most cases.

For his part, Biden seems unworried by the conference’s move.

“That’s a private matter, and I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Biden said on Friday when asked by a reporter about potentially being denied communion.

President Biden responds to Catholic bishops potentially denying him communion for his support of abortion rights: “That’s a private matter, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.” https://t.co/R5ckSKMbkV pic.twitter.com/7gSpwhbYWs

— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 18, 2021

Opponents of the statement are worried about politicizing the church

Though this week’s vote by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is only an agreement to move forward with a draft — a long way from anything final or substantive — it’s still noteworthy for what it says about the church’s willingness to involve itself in partisan politics.

Were conservative bishops to succeed in blocking pro-choice politicians from receiving the Eucharist, the impact would break down along largely partisan lines and could put pressure on devout Catholics who are also pro-choice.

In debating the resolution to draft a statement this week, bishops also expressed concern that backers of the proposal had their eyes on the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election and warned against “get[ting] embroiled in the political situation.”

“I can’t help but wonder if the years 2022 and 2024 might be part of the rush and I think we need to be careful not to get embroiled in the political situation.” ~Bishop Coerver of Lubbock, TX, worrying that bishops are rushing discussions about denying communion. #USCCB21

— Sarah McCammon (@sarahmccammon) June 17, 2021

And Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego warned that taking steps to prevent politicians from receiving the Eucharist could damage the sanctity of the rite.

“Once we legitimate public policy-based Eucharistic exclusion as a regular part of our teaching office — and that is the road to which we are headed — we will invite all of the political animosities that so tragically divide our nation into the very heart of the Eucharistic celebration,” McElroy said, according to the New York Times. “That sacrament which seeks to make us one will become for millions of Catholics a sign of division.”

Many US bishops aren’t on the same page as the Vatican

Thursday’s vote by the bishops’ conference is also notable for at least one other reason: It marks a split from the Vatican, which has previously warned American bishops against taking such a step — and it reflects a peculiarly American focus on abortion rights above other matters of church doctrine. It also diverges from statements from Pope Francis, the organization’s head, who has advised against overemphasizing social issues at the expense of other matters of morality and justice.

“It is not necessary to talk about these [social] issues all the time,” Francis said in a 2013 interview with America, referring to same-sex marriage, abortion, and contraception.

In May, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, who heads the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — an international body, seated in Rome — specifically cautioned Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, the current president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, against attempting to implement national policy without widespread support.

Without universal agreement by US bishops, Ladaria said, the proposed statement on the Eucharist could “become a source of discord rather than unity” within the church.

According to Catholic News Service, which obtained the letter, Ladaria also argued to Gomez that “it would be ‘misleading’ to present abortion and euthanasia as ‘the only grave matters of Catholic moral and social teaching that demand the fullest level of accountability on the part of Catholics.”

Indeed, Gomez did just that in a statement marking Biden’s January inauguration. “For the nation’s bishops, the continued injustice of abortion remains the ‘preeminent priority,’” he wrote at the time, though he also stressed that “preeminent does not mean ‘only.’”

As other writers have noted, that emphasis by American Catholicism isn’t new. “Especially since the 1990s, the American Catholic Church has become increasingly identified with the religious right, emphasizing the perils of abortion and gay rights,” writes UCLA Prof. Jeffrey Guhin in an article for Slate.

However, the church also takes stances that could be seen as liberal on other issues, such as social justice and environmentalism. As the New York Times pointed out on Friday, Biden’s Catholicism, which stems more from such liberal Christian doctrine and is “focused less on sexual politics and more on racial inequality, climate change and poverty,” aligns closely with that of Francis in many ways, despite their differing stances on abortion.

In that sense, the strong conservative bent of the American bishops’ organization diverges from the spirit of the Vatican since Francis ascended in 2013. Previously, according to the Times’s Jason Horowitz, Pope Francis “has explicitly identified the United States as the source of opposition to his pontificate,” and described it as “an honor” to be attacked by conservative American bishops. On Saturday, Francis did not comment on the week’s vote — because, as Horowitz writes in a separate article, “The divergence of the conservative American church from Francis’ agenda is now so apparent as to become unremarkable.”

This is hardly the first time people have used the time travel feature in Street View to go searching for the departed on Google Maps — or to share the experience on social media. Google released Street View in 2007, and these types of viral Twitter posts have been happening since at least 2013. The trend points to an enduring pattern of Google forging ahead in its endless quest to map the entire world (Street View currently includes 87 countries) and constantly update that data. Somewhere along the way, Google Maps users are realizing this process has unintended consequences.

This effect suggests that the creation of these 360-degree views of the world requires momentary surveillance. Google Maps uses lots and lots of cameras to create the immersive experience that Street View offers. Google says the digital recreation of the physical world is powered by millions of cameras that capture multiple angles, collected by people “driving, pedaling, sailing, and walking around and capturing imagery.” The company has also moved to allow users to submit their own images to supplement its own Street View. While helping people remember dead family members isn’t really the intended purpose of Google Maps, a spokesperson told Recode it was “heartwarming” people were using the platform in this way.

A person has a bicycle on a street in Brooklyn, which is recorded by Google’s Street View Google Maps
The time travel feature in Street View lets you compare present images to images that were captured as far back as 2007.

Turner, the writer, told Recode she discovered the time travel feature in Street View earlier this week, when she was trying to see what a house that belonged to her late mother, who passed away nearly four years ago, looked like now. She ended up finding that the last available image on Street View was from 2009. It showed the house with a light on, which told Turner that her mother was home when the image was captured. “That makes it a little bit more something that you feel like you’ve stumbled across rather than something you’ve made happen,” she told Recode.

Again, people have been discovering images of late loved ones on Street View for a while. It was even happening before Google introduced the time travel feature. The phenomenon also drove a whole news cycle last year, when one Twitter user said she’d found an image of her late grandfather on Street View. The tweet generated more than 400,000 “Likes.”

But there’s more to the story than viral content. The images are a reminder that many people who show up in Street View don’t know their pictures are being taken, and the deceased have no say in whether or not their image remains on the service.

More broadly, tech companies like Google hold much of the power over this sensitive and personal data, and citizens haven’t had a real role in setting norms for how data associated with decreased people ought to be handled. That’s especially important because Google’s approach to this data may not match up with the religious and cultural norms surrounding death practiced by many of its users across the world.

“Increasingly, the majority of our online users are going to come from global south countries,” Faheem Hussain, a professor at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society, told Recode. “What we are increasingly seeing is the absence of [the] participation of the people in that design.”

Late family members aren’t the only surprising finds on Google Maps. There are entire online communities devoted to exploring the mapping platform for unusual things, identifying everything from wild animals to sandstorms. There’s also a much darker side of the apparent omnipresence of Street View and Google Maps more broadly, one that raises myriad concerns about peoples’ privacy. Back in 2013, for example, a father in California had to ask Google to remove an aerial image of his son’s dead body. Google says it has systems in place for blurring out personally identifying information from passersby and license plates in the photos it takes. But clearly, some people can still be identified if a family member knows what they’re looking for.

The enduring trend of finding lost loved ones inevitably serves as a reminder that Google plays a major role in documenting our daily lives over time. There’s no sign that the digital artifacts being preserved in Street View are going to go away anytime soon. Instead, they might just become part of how history is recorded in a process that we don’t necessarily have control over.

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