By DEXTER DUGGAN
After bad Catholic Vice President Joe Biden claimed to be a practicing Catholic at the March 30, 2016, White House Easter prayer breakfast, I promptly contacted the media-relations office of the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., to obtain a comment.
Biden, after all, was a firm opponent of foundational Catholic and Christian beliefs. He favored massive permissive abortion, took credit for persuading President Barack Obama to favor “same-sex marriage,” supported compulsion of religious believers to act against their consciences, as well as backing embryonic stem-cell research.
I asked, “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.”
The media-relations office promptly responded on April 4: “Thank you for reaching out to us. The Archdiocese of Washington declines comment.”
I wrote this up as the top story on Page One for The Wanderer dated for April 14, 2016, under the headline, “Biden’s ‘Catholic’ Claim — D.C. Archdiocese Declines Comment; Practicing Catholics Tackle Veep.”
Later in 2016 Biden “committed scandal,” as I wrote in a front-page story for The Wanderer dated for August 18, 2018, “by officiating at a ‘same-sex marriage’ at his residence for two male White House staffers as August began. Pretending to join two people of the same sex in matrimony is an absolutely forbidden role for a practicing Catholic.”
I asked the Washington Archdiocese’s media-relations office to comment on this fresh Biden scandal and said: “He conducted the ceremony himself, which is directly contrary to Catholic teaching, yet he says he is a practicing Catholic. What are the plans of the archdiocese to correct this action by Vice President Biden?”
The archdiocese promptly replied: “The archdiocese does not comment on individuals and their pastoral relationship to the Church,” but referred The Wanderer to a toothless August 5, 2016, statement by three officials of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that didn’t name any politician — a statement that the lay-run California Catholic Daily site headlined as “tepid.”
This Wanderer story ran on page one under the headline, “Soft Treatment for Clinton, Biden — But Media Boast over Hostile Coverage of Trump.”
Politically correct Donald Cardinal Wuerl headed the archdiocese at that period.
I reflected further on this in The Wanderer dated for August 25, 2016, on page 3A, under the headline, “As Biden Widens the Whirlpool — Consider How Hierarchy Has Made Catholics Head for Lifeboats.” I wrote, in part:
“This week we follow up with observations from three laypeople about the failure of bishops over the years to prevent the U.S. Church’s foundational moral authority from slipping away, until one day it may vanish. It seemed to suffice that all would be well with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as long as politicians followed liberal political checklists.”
Move forward a few years. When bad Catholic Cokie Roberts’ funeral was at the Washington Archdiocese’s St. Matthew’s Cathedral in 2019, no less than the Democratic Party’s Queen of Death and Depravity, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, eulogized near the altar. Sitting passively behind her was the politically liberal archbishop from Atlanta who had succeeded Wuerl, Wilton Gregory.
Far be it from Gregory in the nation’s capital to discomfit the parade of national bad Catholic Democrats prancing all around him, further destroying the faith and morality.
Just a few days after the funeral, Pelosi was a big speaker at the fiftieth anniversary dinner of the radical pro-abortion NARAL organization.
These events ran as the top story on page one of The Wanderer dated for October 10, 2019, under the headline, “Pelosi on Pro-Abort Parade — Has Catholic Hierarchy Cower Behind Her Seamy Shadow.”
Well, now, maybe these prelates are, you know, just staying out of politics. Fat chance. Their tongues get tied just when the Party of Death deserves a resounding rebuke.
But how about regarding the first president ever to speak in-person in nearly half a century at the national March for Life last January, Donald J. Trump — and he’s not even Catholic? Not to mention the numerous pro-life initiatives under the Trump administration.
Gregory quickly blared out a personally ferocious statement against Trump at the top of a two-page news release on June 2 officially from the archdiocese.
Trump was visiting the St. John Paul II National Shrine, which isn’t even under the control of the archdiocese. Still, Gregory fumed, “I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree.”
Although Trump also stood in solidarity with St. John’s Episcopal Church, near the White House, which terrorists just tried to burn down, Gregory’s smoking rhetoric said that St. John Paul II “certainly would not condone the use of tear gas and other deterrents to silence, scatter, or intimidate them for a photo opportunity in front of a place of worship and peace.”
Let’s demur and observe that St. John Paul II, who suffered under both dominating Nazis and Communists, knew a bit more about how to attain worship and peace.
Trump’s Solidarity
Washington’s WTOP News headlined its story, “Washington archbishop: Trump visit violates ‘religious principles’.” But WTOP also noted that evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress, who preached at St. John’s for Trump’s inauguration, praised the president. It quoted Jeffress telling Fox & Friends:
“I believe President Trump was absolutely correct in walking over last evening and standing in front of that church to show his solidarity not only with that congregation but with houses of worship across America.”
You wonder why Catholics around the nation regard their Church as hopelessly lost on morals and politics? Look to D.C. hierarchy for some embarrassing answers.
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