It looks like Uncle Joe Biden has pulled up with Bernie as one of the Democratic front runners. This should be of interest to all Catholics because of course Uncle Joe claims to be a devout Catholic.
The problem with the Biden-Pelosi type Catholics is one I am still trying to figure out. Yes, I know. I’m a convert. What do I now about it? I know. I know. I’m a former fundamentalist and deep down I’m still a gun-totin’ hootin’ and hollerin’ red neck red hat MAGA man.
Not.
Still. I don’t get it. What kind of creepy double think are Catholics like Biden involved with? The Catholic church clearly teaches against abortion and same sex marriage, but this guy openly supports both and does so proudly. Now I can understand if, for political purposes, a candidate might make weasel words and grumble along saying, “I personally oppose abortion and I will do everything in my power to change the policies of my party on this matter…blah blah blah” but Biden just goes along flip flopping on the issue.
When it comes to same sex marriage I could understand if a Catholic politician says, “I believe marriage is ordained by God and is between one man and one woman for life, but our country has decided that same sex marriage can be legal and I don’t have the power to overturn that decision so we must all abide by the law of the land.” I can understand that, but this guy with his big fake grin gets up in public and actually officiates at same sex weddings. What is that all about?
What really kills me is that nobody calls out Catholics like Pelosi and Biden for being the most outrageous, public hypocrites. Why is it that it is only conservative, uptight Christians who, when they get caught with their pants down, are blamed for being hypocrites? Why is it that only the conservative Christian leaders who get caught with their hand in the cookie jar are blamed for being hypocrites? If a hypocrite is a person who says they believe in one thing but do another they’re a hypocrite. Pelosi and Biden claim to be not just Catholics, but good practising Catholics and yet their hypocrisy is open, public and proud.
Is that the difference? If your hypocrisy is open, public and proud its okay but if your hypocrisy is secret it’s somehow worse?
I’m not commenting here on Biden’s policies or him as a person. His policies must be those of the Democratic pro abortion party. Nuff said. His personal life? It seems to me he’s just another career politician from the swamp of Washington who has enriched himself and his family over the years like most of the others. All that is “business as usual”
What I’m commenting on, as a Catholic priest, is the nature of his Catholicism. There seems to be a Catholic religion in the USA that defines itself by openly defying and denying certain core doctrines and morals of the Catholic faith. If a man is unfaithful in his religion how reliable and trustworthy will he be in public office? If he changes course according to political expediency how reliable will he be in a crisis? If he dithers and does whatever he wants as a Catholic can he have integrity as a person? And if he does not have integrity as a person is he fit for high office?
Now I realize that as soon as I write this folks will start chortling about how I must be a Trump supporter and how Trump is also unfit for office blah blah blah. I don’t dispute that and anybody who had read my political opinions over the years know I am not a fan of Donald Trump.
But this post is not about Trump.
It’s about Uncle Joe Biden. The Catholic who won’t stand up to the abortion lovers and who officiated at the marriage of two fellas.
Lately I’ve been pondering the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII “Testem benevolentiae nostrae” (On Americanism). It seems directed at the American tendency to think in a very individualistic way and to place private opinion above authority.
It seems to me that many Catholics in America also have this same mentality; as if Christ established the “democracy of heaven” and not the “kingdom of heaven”. Pope Leo seems to be trying to warn against this mentality in the Church in America and the solution is to accept the teaching office of the Church.
He said they believe “such liberty should be allowed in the Church” and that each individual should “follow out more freely the leading of his own mind and the trend of his own proper activity. They are of opinion that such liberty has its counterpart in the newly given civil freedom which is now the right and the foundation of almost every secular state.”
Because of the danger of “the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject…that there is now a greater need of the Church’s teaching office than ever before, lest people become unmindful both of conscience and of duty.”
And at the end says, “Wherefore, if anybody wishes to be considered a real Catholic, he ought to be able to say from his heart the selfsame words which Jerome addressed to Pope Damasus: ‘I, acknowledging no other leader than Christ, am bound in fellowship with Your Holiness; that is, with the chair of Peter. I know that the church was built upon him as its rock, and that whosoever gathereth not with you, scattereth.’”
Joe Biden, and many other American Catholics, seem to represent what Pope Leo was warning us about in 1899. They do not believe the pope and magisterium has the authority to bind our conscience.
It can be summed up in two words: Cafeteria Catholic. For Catholics like Biden and Pelosi, they are either too lazy to look up all the good and practical reasons why the church teachings are correct or they think they are smarter than the Catholic Church and just go ahead and do “what they know is right”. This is a dying breed of Catholics. The next generation after them won’t see the need for church at all. Why bother? Everything is Ok and everyone is going to heaven as long as you’re not as bad as Hitler. That’s how they think. Of course it doesn’t do much good when we have a Pope who gets up inf front of our congress and talks about global climate change. He should have been educating Pelosi and Biden on why all these Catholic teachings are correct and that they are in danger of spending an eternity in hell.
Father, it would be good if you could do an article on the levels of sin this Lent. By that I mean it’s one thing to sin and be sorry and it’s another to sin and not be sorry. Then it gets worse if you’re defiant in your sin. And, it’s really bad if you are not only defiant but now are encouraging others to do the same sin – basically advocating for sin. Could you expand on this topic? I mention this because we are now seeing people not only sinning, but advocating for it. That’s what the Biden’s and Pelosi’s of this world are doing.
I always wonder how Catholics can support people who are so antithetical to the faith and the mental gymnastics involved. But, I think now they don’t even try to reconcile the contradictory beliefs. They hold their liberal beliefs primarily, and the Church is secondary, and ignored when conflicting with the first. The frustrating thing for me is seeing these notions accepted in Catholic schools and parishes. Either poor Catechesis, or they want ultimately to change the church.