On January 20, 2021, Joseph R. Biden Jr. was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, only the second Catholic President in U.S. history. President Biden often speaks of the importance of the Catholic faith in his life, a life that has been marked by public tragedy and grief. The President’s faith has undoubtedly shepherded him through difficult times and has positively impacted many across the country.
Biden’s long career in public service demonstrates his public support of policies consistent with Catholic social teaching, including his opposition to the death penalty and support for access to healthcare for all. Unfortunately, his record also demonstrates support for positions dogmatically opposed to Catholic tenets such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and gender identity theory.
Responsibility of Catholics in Authority
Any Catholic in a position of authority, whether bishop, priest, or President, must be held to the highest moral standards given their ability to influence others’ beliefs and actions. The first responsibility of Catholics living public lives is to live so as not to cause scandal in the Church. Causing scandal involves the public opposition or questioning of the Magisterium on dogmatic issues involving faith and morals.
Aside from not causing scandal, public figures who profess Catholicism must not be living in a state of chronic mortal sin. Examples would include living with a romantic partner to whom one is not married or being an abortion provider. Public Catholic figures have a dais from which to instruct or mislead their fellow Catholics. No figure looms as large or wields as much influence in the United States as the President.
President Biden’s Brand of Catholicism
Before the President began his term, the USCCB formed a working group to deal with the problematic nature of Joe Biden’s Catholicism. This group’s formation is the acknowledgment by the bishops that the President will be a source of error and confusion to Catholics in the United States. However, the American President has a larger platform than the bishops, a sad but true fact. This is causing many bishops to worry that the lay faithful in the United States will continue to abandon the true teachings of the Church in favor of a more populist version of Catholicism.
Biden’s support for repealing the Hyde amendment and the Mexico City policy, which respectively prohibit public funding for abortion and American funding for abortions in foreign countries, is an early indication that the President plans to pursue an aggressive pro-abortion policy. Additionally, his support of transgender rights at the expense of the broader public’s rights lends credence to the argument that gender is fluid and not bound by binary classification. These are dangerous principles against both Catholic teaching and natural law.
American Bishops Weigh In
On the occasion of the Presidential Inauguration, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, President of the USCCB, issued a statement that is being widely discussed among American bishops and lay Catholics. In his statement, Gomez is clear about the responsibility of Catholic bishops, stating that they are not to be “partisan players in our nation’s politics,” but rather “pastors responsible for the souls of millions of Americans.” He acknowledges that Catholic social teaching is sometimes on the side of the Democrats and sometimes on the side of the Republicans, depending on the issue.
Gomez cites the President’s long-standing commitment to the poor’s needs as particularly inspiring and expresses a sincere desire to work with the new administration and Congress in promoting family-friendly policies. Archbishop Gomez is an ardent defender of the Catholic faith and has a history of firmly yet compassionately calling out our times’ errors. In his statement, he correctly notes:
… [Our] new President has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender. Of deep concern is the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.
Gomez’s caution seeks to clarify moral errors in the President’s agenda and is an act of charity to the Catholic lay faithful that may otherwise be led to sin under the leadership of what they may believe to be an authentically Catholic president.
But the Archbishop’s statement did not receive universal support among American bishops. While many found Archbishop Gomez courageous, others such as Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago and Archbishop Joseph Tobin of Newark had urged Gomez not to make any statement at all. This episcopal division is not unique to the Biden presidency and is certainly not new. The Church in America is besieged by a division that parallels that of our democracy and global Catholicism.
The Gomez statement is an echo of the letter from Pope Francis to President Biden. Francis prays that Biden’s decisions show an “unfailing respect for the rights and dignity of every person, especially the poor, the vulnerable, and those who have no voice.”
There is a background debate on whether President Biden or other Catholic public figures should receive Holy Communion. Cardinal Wilton Gregory has stated that he will not prevent the President from receiving the Eucharist, a decision his predecessor also made. Other bishops would deny Catholic politicians Communion if they are supporters of abortion rights. Admitting pro-abortion politicians to the Eucharistic meal threatens to undermine faith in the doctrine of the Real Presence.
Conclusion
American Catholics have reason to celebrate and bemoan the election of Biden to the Presidency. His opposition to the death penalty and his commitment to the poor and sick are strong examples of Catholic social teaching. However, the aggressive assault on the unborn and the sanctity of marriage, family life, and gender are insidious and dangerous. His platform as the President of the United States allows him to spread these errors far and wide, and he would be culpable for the loss of souls that will proceed from these errors.
14 thoughts on “Joe Biden as a Catholic President”
This type of apologetic article makes me sad. Yes, we do know how Joe Biden stands on every deranged sexual orientation on the spectrum, after all he officiated the “marriage“ of two men. Likewise, there has not been one peep of opposition to the alphabet soup of deviant sexuality.
In addition, the bloodthirsty pro-abortion bills that have been championed, passed, and celebrated, are much more egregious than, and cannot be overcome by, “feeding the poor”.
Biden can go to Mass and observe the structure of Catholicism every day, and still not be a “practicing” Catholic in the true, spiritual sense.
You really need to get out of the space between your ears. Biden is both Catholic and Irish….only second next to JFK. Liberty’s definition is derived from the word liberal. You are can chose to lead in your own actions but don’t dictate. Most of us would prefer to make our own minds up.
The epitome of religious arrogance is the denial of science in chromosomes, the essence of who we are as human beings rather than the emotional or psychological trends that we go through as humans. A person may feel like a wolf, put on the costume of a wolf, walk on feet and hands and attach even a permanent tail, have their teeth replaced and learn to make noises similar to a wolf. These are all the accidents of appearance, not the essence of being. A man can put on the clothing of a Priest, learn to talk like a Priest, learn the prayers and get the vestments and carry a chalice and say prayers over bread and wine, but unless he is a validly ordained Priest it’s just an act. Man and woman can move in together, have sexual relations, vow to be true to each other, raise children and stay together, but never enter into Holy Matrimony. These are all simply outward signs and actions that do not change the essence of the “being” of the person.
So, while someone with XY Chromosomes may put on the appearance of transitioning by physical and material actions and even surgery the essence of who that person is does not change that person into a human with XX Chromosomes.
Alchemists in history tried to change many different metals into gold. It may have looked like gold to the naked eye and some even sold it as gold. It wasn’t gold.
Today people are trying to change human beings in the essence of who they are. While it is similar to the alchemist’s folly, it’s worse because of the social, emotional and psychological damage it does not only to the individual but to the other human beings involved, including us who are far removed from the folly in most cases.
It would be far less damaging and dangerous for me to call myself a Latino or a Canadian while being of German/Irish descent and living my entire life in the United States.
I am who I am. I am not “I am”.
Fr. John
Imagine a university biology professor has a photographer acquaintance. Together they hatch a plan and a yellow cardinal bird (which is normally red) is created by inserting and/or deleting genes. They release the bird into the wild. Photographs are captured in great detail. They sell the story to the local media including interviews with the “expert biology professor” who estimates the odds at 1 in a Zillion! Both the professor and the photographer enjoy new found fame and hope to be showered with future awards, accolades, grants, and department chairs. Possibly even their own Wikipedia page. Meanwhile the yellow bird mates with its wild suitors.
Eventually loose lips spill the beans.
In the wake, a news story appears in the national media claiming that the Roman Catholic Church has condemned the yellow bird…
Thank you Father, for a tidbit of common sense amidst the gluttony, eagerly consumed, of double speak and delusions foisted upon us every day. You sir, are a priest.
Dear Fr John, if someone dressed up a man in a bikini and they felt much better with swim trunks on, I’d say that’s a win-win. These trans will form their own community and begin
a society that evolves over time. No one can know the outcome. If, they all ‘woke’ as the
term goes and realize it was a colossal mistake, which you allude to, then it is they who will have to live with the results. In a short time the word will spread and so it will end as fast as it began. On the other hand, if the couple playing marriage make it until death do them part, while those in HM fail and end up divorced … well, as William Bendix was wont to say ‘ What a revolting development that was.”
You’re right. The trans form their own community. Why is that? Who would accept them? The fact is, the Catholic Church accepts everyone. That is why Satan has lied about us.
Trump was denying science and took science out of government decisions. A dangerous situation indeed.
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The arrogance is in having normal gender cognition and assuming that everyone’s neural brain function is the same; that it is impossible to have that circuitry switched to having
the body of one gender and the cognitive awareness that one is truly the other gender.
For the better part of a 100 years (since the first operations) this has been an a priori
understanding and only with the rash onset of allowing children to make that decision
with the consent of the parents has this become an issue, which it should be. Now if science allowed someone to request two heads, and it was possible, only then would it become abhorrent. And believe me, these candidates are counseled long before and throughout the therapies are applied. Just because you can’t imagine the condition doesn’t make it a dysfunction claim.
Christopher, the Hensel twins share one body that has two heads with distinct personalities.
I’m not sure I understand. I was only pointing out that the Vatican City hospital had separated conjoined twins without the world “righteously cry[ing] fowl”.
…Furthermore, when Jesus said, “what God has joined together, no human being must separate”, he was referring to the divorce of husband and wife.
Are you saying it is “religious arrogance” to council a man to not believe he is a women? If so, should we not council a man to not believe he is a bird as he stands on the roof of a 35 story building? Would that be religious arrogance?
In our family bible is photo of Abigail and Brittany Hensel, two conjoined twins, their “singular doubleness raising fundamental questions about human nature. ” Now, if something this challenging could be accomplished by the likes of technology the world would righteously cry fowl. Though if God allows, it is somehow understood, even though these, women now, haven’t a prayer of being separated. Yet, since Christine Jorgensen became the first male to have transgender surgery in 1952, there have been 10’s of thousands who claim that their cognitive gender makeup was somehow reversed, so
much so that they are willing to undergo radically invasive therapy to correct what God
ordained or nature deconstructed. To stand there and claim that this should not be possible or in any case left to its own devices is the epitome of religious arrogance.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/08/health/conjoined-twins-separated-vatican-scli-intl/index.html