Should Biden win the presidency, he will be the “second practicing Catholic” to hold that office, the media informs us without irony. Neither John F. Kennedy, with his prodigious womanizing, nor Biden, with his open hostility to Church teaching, justify that label. If anything, Biden has promised not to practice his faith. Like JFK, Biden believes in the strict separation of church and state, though not in the separation of religion from campaigning. Needing to win the Catholic vote, Biden has been playing up his Catholic roots, tattered as they are. As the media puts it, he is seeking the support of “Catholics like himself.”
Any bishop who minimizes the slaughter of the unborn as a “single question of public policy” should hang up his mitre.
They mirror Biden both in his politics and in his dissenting Catholicism. Last month, Joseph Tobin of Newark, who is one of the most powerful cardinals in the world, revealed that he supported Biden over Trump. Tobin said Catholics could vote for Biden in “good conscience,” adding that “I, frankly, in my own way of thinking have a more difficult time with the other option.”
Biden has long maintained friendly ties with left-wing bishops — the defrocked rapist Theodore McCarrick served as a concelebrant at Beau Biden’s funeral — and now those prelates are running interference for him. The latest bishop to throw dust into Catholics’ eyes about Biden is Robert McElroy, the bishop of San Diego.
Feverishly political and theologically blasé, McElroy is the quintessential Francis-style bishop. Before his posting to San Diego, he served as an aide to the uber-liberal archbishop John Quinn in San Francisco. In that role, McElroy got entangled in various revealing controversies, such as the time he offered his support to a gay adoption agency in Oakland.
So shilling for Biden comes naturally to McElroy. Like other Biden-besotted bishops, McElroy takes offense at the suggestion that Joe’s support for the killing of unborn children should detract from his Catholicism. Working himself up into a lather — notice his use of the word “repugnant” not in reference to abortion but in reference to an argument made by pro-lifers — McElroy recently bleated on Biden’s behalf:
Being Catholic means having a grace-filled relationship with God. Being Catholic means loving the Church. Being Catholic means participating in the sacramental life of the church. Being a Catholic means trying to transform the world by the light of the Gospel. To reduce that magnificent, multidimensional gift of God’s love to a single question of public policy is repugnant and should have no place in public discourse.
What a shameless statement. Any bishop who minimizes the slaughter of the unborn as a “single question of public policy” should hang up his mitre. Secondly, hasn’t McElroy noticed that Biden opposes Church teaching not just on a “single issue” but on a legion of them? Biden opposes Church teaching on everything from embryonic stem-cell research to gay marriage to sex education. He is running with an open anti-Catholic bigot in Kamala Harris, who considers mere membership in the Knights of Columbus to be a disqualification for service on the court. At last week’s town hall, he encouraged a child to come out as transgender. He has officiated at a gay wedding.
Biden opposes Catholic moral teaching at every turn. Recall his hectoring of Clarence Thomas on the “natural law,” which Thomas rightly considered a thinly disguised attempt by Biden to Bork him for his pro-life views.
Why does McElroy ignore all of this? Because he doesn’t agree with the Church’s teachings either. He is a Democratic activist in a collar. In the course of defending Biden, McElroy lectured his flock on the importance of prioritizing “climate change” and “racial justice” in their voting, while pushing the fiction that “there is no single issue which in Catholic teaching constitutes a magic bullet that determines a unitary option for faith-filled voting in 2020.”
This blather is music to Biden’s ears. The most anti-Catholic ticket ever, Biden and Harris, if they win, will have done so on the backs of the bishops. The McElroys and Tobins are carrying them to victory, making it possible for Biden to persecute the Little Sisters of the Poor and other Catholics.
Should Biden’s boots fall on their necks, they will feel the additional pain of knowing that they were polished by their own bishops.
George Neumayr is author of The Biden Deception.
