The Patriot Post® · Joe Biden Is a Bad Catholic

By Brian Mark Weber ·
https://patriotpost.us/articles/78181-joe-biden-is-a-bad-catholic-2021-03-05

President Joe Biden is the first Roman Catholic president since John F. Kennedy. But while some Catholics celebrate the ascendancy of one of their own, Biden’s brand of Catholicism is troubling to others in the church.

“Biden … has frustrated traditional Catholics with his staunch pro-choice policy positions and push to end gender-identity discrimination despite concerns about religious freedom,” reports The Washington Times. “In his first month in office, Mr. Biden revoked the Mexico City policy banning foreign aid for abortions abroad; cheered the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, and named pro-choice crusader California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to head the Health and Human Services Department.” (Yes, Becerra sued those nuns, despite his lie denying it.)

The Times adds, “Mr. Biden has also thrown his support behind the Equality Act, which would ban discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation — and exempt itself from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — with implications for faith-based employers, medical providers and women’s sports.”

On the surface, the deceptively named Equality Act has a noble goal of “protecting LGBTQ+ people from discrimination,” but in the process of protecting one group of people the Equality Act discriminates against people of faith. For example, the act would force Christian churches to hold events in their halls that violate their beliefs.

Taking issue with the legislation, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops writes, “Instead of respecting differences in beliefs about marriage and sexuality, the Equality Act discriminates against people of faith precisely because of those beliefs. In the process, the Equality Act codifies the new ideology of ‘gender’ in federal law, dismissing sexual difference and falsely presenting ‘gender’ as only a social construct.”

No wonder the Left celebrates Biden’s version of Catholicism. In its eyes, the only good Catholic is a Catholic-in-name-only who fights against the very principles and values of the church.

One Roman Catholic priest in Virginia recently penned an essay in which he called Biden the “most aggressively anti-Catholic president in American history” and expressed frustration that some church leaders have overlooked Biden’s break with church beliefs.

Yet Biden maintains a key supporter within the church. Pope Francis, who regularly embraces progressive ideas, took issue with the Conference of Catholic Bishops’ criticism of the president. Clearly, there’s a divide within the church, and Biden represents the progressive wing that wants all the benefits of being Catholic without any of the commitment to the church’s tenets.

“No doubt Biden can count on partnership with the progressive pope,” writes Tracy Wilkinson in the Los Angeles Times, “as he reverses many Trump-era policies to battle climate change and reform immigration. But support within his own country’s Catholic Church looks more tenuous,” and “nowhere does the division between conservatives and progressives in the Catholic Church cleave more deeply than in the United States, as Biden’s election reveals.”

The division within the church was reiterated in a recent interview of Pope Benedict XVI, who stepped down from the papacy in 2013. Now 93, he claimed that while Biden regularly attends mass, he has more in common with the Democrat Party than the Catholic Church.

Even Democrats for Life criticized Biden on the campaign trail last fall for his staunch pro-abortion position — which includes support for late-term abortion.

Joe Biden may clutch his rosary and attend mass every Sunday, but that doesn’t make him a Catholic.

Of course, plenty of people live a life far different in public from the faith they claim to embrace as private individuals. The difference is that Biden is the president of the United States, and he has actively undermined the core values of the Catholic Church throughout his political career while being celebrated as a model Catholic by the Leftmedia.