By DEXTER DUGGAN
If prominent U.S. politicians made outlandishly untrue statements about Catholic practices and beliefs, leading prelates presumably would be quick to correct the record.
No, the Church in the United States doesn’t, for instance, preach kidnapping non-Catholic children for forced Baptisms, or fund armed bandits to rob banks and enrich Church treasuries.
However, when national politicians make demonstrably false statements about their own religious fidelity, it appears that prelates who should set the record straight retreat into mute acquiescence.
Why shouldn’t such politicians think they can get away with shoving the Church around on basic faith and morals matters when they encounter no pushback?
At the March 30 White House Easter prayer breakfast, Vice President Joe Biden once again made the claim to be “a practicing Catholic.”
This would mean he follows foundational Church moral teaching, at a minimum.
However, Biden actually is a strong backer of massive permissive abortion of defenseless infants, “same-sex marriage,” compulsion of religious believers to act against their consciences, embryonic stem-cell research, and other instances of opposition to basic beliefs for practicing Catholics.
By proclaiming his Catholic fidelity, Biden — and other politicians like him — gravely misleads the nation.
Biden came out in favor of fundamentally disordered “gay marriage” in 2012 even before Barack Obama did. Administration officials credited Biden with forcing Obama’s hand.
If, for instance, some leading politician claimed to be a strong supporter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but his major public positions ran counter to AIPAC, that organization would, and has, set the record straight. AIPAC justifiably wouldn’t accept an excuse that the politician, in private, was very much in favor of its stands.
The White House transcript of Biden’s prayer breakfast remarks included this:
“We all practice the same basic faith but different faiths. I happen to be a practicing Catholic, and I grew up learning from the nuns and the priests who taught me what we used to call Catholic social doctrine. But it’s not fundamentally different than a doctrine of any of the great confessional faiths.
“It’s what you do to the least among us that you do unto me. It’s we have an obligation to one another. It’s we cannot serve ourselves at the expense of others, and that we have a responsibility to future generations,” Biden said.
Even apart from religious doctrine, one might think that such words as “the least among us” and “a responsibility to future generations” could directly pertain to protecting unborn babies. But not for Biden, who avoided those implications.
The Wanderer asked the media-relations office of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., the following: “Does the archdiocese plan to make any statement on Vice President Biden’s claim at the March 30 Easter prayer breakfast that he is a practicing Catholic? His public opposition to foundational Catholic moral teaching belies this.”
Chieko Noguchi, the archdiocese’s director of media relations, promptly replied briefly on April 4: “Thank you for reaching out to us. The Archdiocese of Washington declines comment.”
That archdiocese is headed by Donald Cardinal Wuerl, an adviser to Pope Francis.
If the official Catholic voice of the nation’s capital — a center of world power — wouldn’t comment, four practicing Catholics whom The Wanderer contacted commented by email, including Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of the New York-based Priests for Life (priestsforlife.org). Pavone criticized politicians who “make fools of themselves.”
Referring to permissive abortion, Pavone told The Wanderer that “the refusal to see the victim of the biggest holocaust in human history leads to a refusal to respect the most basic norms of logic and reason. Embracing Catholicism means accepting what it teaches, and public officials who claim to do one without doing the other — like Biden and (House Minority Leader Nancy) Pelosi — continue to make fools of themselves.
“It is not so much that they want the Church to embrace their view of Catholicism as it is that they have no place to hide their pain and shame than under a cover of distorted spirituality. The pain is that of knowing, on one level, that they are accomplices to murder, and yet being totally unable either to repent of it or to openly embrace it,” Pavone said. “So they construct a pretend world in which you can just create moral truth according to your own image.
“That, ultimately, is the meaning of ‘pro-choice’ — I choose to create reality rather than respect its demands,” he said. “This led me a couple of years ago to send an open letter to Nancy Pelosi . . . challenging her to be honest. She has not accepted the challenge.”
Earlier in his statement, Pavone said: “As I point out in my new book Abolishing Abortion (Thomas Nelson, 2015), there is a ‘great disconnect’ when it comes to abortion. Otherwise educated, powerful, and successful people refuse to see the victim of abortion — a victim no less real than the victim of terrorism, of child abuse, of drug abuse, or of violent crime.
“This disconnect was put into full display by a public letter presented by pro-abortion members of Congress prior to the visit of Pope Francis to the United States last fall. They tried to present themselves as defenders of the vulnerable and advocates of human rights, while trampling the most basic of all rights, life itself. They cheered the Pope for his advocacy of the poor, but failed to join him in his advocacy of the poorest of the poor, the unborn,” Pavone said.
Texan Stephanie Block, a convert to Catholicism, told The Wanderer she had no doubt what was required of her to belong to the faith; it wasn’t a matter of Block’s choosing what she wanted to. “It was pretty clear what the Church believed and what I was embracing.
“It seems your question has to do with the position of someone who self-identifies as a Catholic but doesn’t believe in Catholic teaching. Such a person is a cold, misshapen creature, like a gargoyle in cathedral rafters, hanging about the Church but never quite coming into its light,” said Block, a writer and occasional contributor to The Wanderer.
“How that applies, however, to any of the particular, high-profile politicians you mention is hard to say.
“Who knows how anyone else arrives where they do. Some may be using religion for political advantage (somewhere I read the story that Obama was told, in his early organizing days, that he should join a church congregation for that reason); some may understand Catholicism as a cultural identity; some may feel it’s required of them for family unity — and there are undoubtedly some who want to re-create the Church into a more comfortable entity,” she said.
“Is that a challenge to the Church? I suppose it is, in the sense that an ant might challenge a foot poised above it: ‘You will not tread on ME!’ Such a ‘challenge,’ hurled into the air, gives the ant a sense of control without making a bit of difference to the foot. The ant is challenging without the foot being challenged,” Block said.
“But what any given individual hopes to accomplish by such challenges — who knows,” Block said. “I would suspect that, at a fundamental psychological and/or spiritual level, one is trying to reassure oneself of being a ‘good’ person despite defying fundamental moral principles. ‘Sure, I’ve committed adultery, but look at how hard I’m working for The People! I’m one of the Good Guys! Obviously, adultery (abortion, homosexuality, pornography, masturbation) isn’t really anything God cares about; everybody has a messed-up sexual life. Right?’
“It’s an effort to assuage guilt. Futile but understandable,” Block concluded.
In his prayer breakfast comments, Biden showed himself to be an awful judge of character. Obama generally is recognized as a lawless president who promotes immorality and callously, repeatedly lies and stirs strife. However, Biden saluted Obama as someone who appeals to Americans’ “better angels.”
“And I’m grateful to have stood by someone these last seven years who understands this — and I mean this — understands it to his core,” Biden said. “It’s stamped in his DNA. It’s who he is. I’ve served with eight presidents; I’ve never been with anyone who has more character than this man, and has faith.”
Mary Ann Kreitzer, a Virginia Catholic who blogs at Les Femmes — The Truth, was struck by Biden’s characterization of Obama.
“His statement about Obama was laughable,” Kreitzer told The Wanderer. “To say he’s ‘never been with anyone who has more character than this man, and has faith’ is just a head-shaker. What kind of character is shown by a man who goes to bed during a national crisis that resulted in the bloody deaths of four Americans, including an ambassador, so he can get his beauty sleep because he’s headed to Vegas for a fund-raiser?
“Biden’s statements were outrageous! A number of bishops have criticized Biden in the past. I’m not aware of anyone saying anything after this latest outrage,” Kreitzer said. “The bishop of South Bend has criticized Notre Dame giving Biden the Laetare Medal,” a prestigious award for an exemplary Catholic, to be given at the Indiana school’s commencement in May.
Kreitzer began her statement about Biden to The Wanderer by saying: “If he’s a practicing Catholic, he’s not practicing very hard. I think he needs to go back to Catechism 101. He made a heretical statement when he said we all practice ‘the same basic faith.’ No, we don’t. He clearly doesn’t know his faith or he couldn’t have said that Catholicism is ‘not fundamentally different than a doctrine of any of the great confessional faiths.’
“Does he believe in the Real Presence? Apparently not, which may explain why he can endanger his soul by receiving Communion while he promotes the murder of the innocent, a sin that ‘cries to Heaven for vengeance’,” Kreitzer said.
She concluded: “Frankly, in my opinion, Joe Biden should be excommunicated. (Philosopher) Dietrich von Hildebrand called it the ‘charitable anathema.’ Maybe it would wake him up. You cannot commit the kind of scandal Joe Biden commits on a regular basis without serious consequences.
“Of course, he has plenty of company who will have to answer for scandal, including those at Notre Dame” for planning to give him the Laetare Medal, she said. “It’s no wonder we are seeing such a collapse of faith among Catholics!”
Movers And Shakers
Rob Haney, a conservative Catholic and retired chairman of the Republican Party in Phoenix’s Maricopa County, told The Wanderer on April 4: “I believe that the heretical positions of prominent ‘practicing Catholic’ politicians such as Biden, Pelosi, (Sen. Patrick) Leahy, and the deceased Ted Kennedy stem from the massive infiltration of seminaries with sodomites and socialists during the mid- to late 20th century.
“These heretics eventually became priests, bishops, and cardinals,” Haney said. “They became the ‘movers and shakers’ of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who subverted Church teaching priorities from the fundamentals of life and family to the prudential issues of ‘peace and justice.’ The ‘peace and justice’ prelates far outnumber the life-and-family prelates, and Pope Francis is not changing the balance. For example, we see the…appointment of liberal Archbishop (Blase) Cupich of Chicago. . . .
“‘Practicing Catholic’ politicians will not be changing their heretical rhetoric until the Catholic prelates change dramatically, and I do not see that happening soon,” Haney said. “I do not see Catholic politicians challenging the Church. I see them as participants in the overthrow of the Church by the priests of the ‘peace and justice’ cabal.
“The pew-sitting laity rising up to support the few remaining fundamentalist prelates is the only course I see remaining to redirect the Church back to Christ,” he concluded.
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