‘No Catholic can vote for Joe Biden’: Pro-life priests explain
August 18, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Top pro-life priests in the United States have said that no Catholic can vote for Joe Biden. Yet, in campaign videos, Joe Biden is touting his Catholicism over and over again. Last week, a U.S. bishop tweeted that Biden is not a Catholic, but homosexuality-promoting priest Fr. James Martin defended him, insisting that he is a Catholic. No surprise there.
But seriously, with all the gaffes, sex abuse scandal, and lies surrounding Joe Biden, how can it be that he was selected to be the Democratic candidate for this all-important election?
Joe Biden? Really? Is that the best candidate the Democrats could come up with for this election, which from both sides is being regarded as the most important election perhaps in U.S. history?
It is so strange that it seems almost like a joke.
But it’s no joke.
His gaffes are remarkable — for someone running for president, surely, but not for someone of his advanced age.
Even the liberal newspapers and commentators are calling him out for his lies.
His creepy touching and kissing videos are so cringeworthy that I feel like running out of the room when they are played.
Even hardcore leftists are saying they believe the horrific sexual abuse testimony of his former aide, Tara Reade, but still are going to vote for Biden — in their minds a sexual abuser — nonetheless.
“I don’t want an investigation. I want a coronation of Joe Biden,” declared Martin Tolchin, a former New York Times journalist who helped found The Hill and Politico. “I don’t want justice, whatever that may be. I want a win, the removal of Donald Trump from office.”
Tolchin also expressed fear at the possibility of an investigation revealing “damaging information concerning [Biden’s] relationship with Tara Reade or something else,” such that he was forced to drop out in favor of a weaker Democrat. “Should we really risk the possibility?”
Lisa Bloom, a trial lawyer who previously represented women who claimed that President Donald Trump had sexually harassed them, wrote on Twitter that she believes that Biden assaulted Reade but will support him anyway in order to “fight Trump.”
Her tweet reads: “I believe you, Tara Reade. You have people who remember you told them about this decades ago. We know he is ‘handsy.’ You're not asking for $. You've obviously struggled mightily with this. I still have to fight Trump, so I will still support Joe. But I believe you. And I’m sorry.”
Given all that, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s shocking that earlier this month, Biden released a second campaign video touting his supposed Catholic faith and friendship with Pope Francis.
LifeSite reporter Paul Smeaton reports that the short video shows Biden and Pope Francis smiling and greeting each other, while a voiceover of Biden speaks about an occasion when the two men met at the Vatican.
Back in February, Biden released a similar campaign video featuring Pope Francis in which Biden says he goes to Mass and says the rosary and that faith is what has helped him through the most difficult moments in his life.
Given Biden’s extreme position on abortion — which, according to the faith he claims to profess, is the murder of innocent babies in the womb — his assertion that he is a Catholic is about as authentic as someone with a penchant for killing puppies claiming to be an animal rights activist.
One U.S. bishop took to Twitter to call out Biden for his fake Catholicism. Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island tweeted last week, “Biden-Harris. First time in awhile that the Democratic ticket hasn’t had a Catholic on it. Sad.”
Bishop Tobin’s tweet garnered many anti-Catholic responses, some even accusing the bishop of pedophilia.
It was also not very surprising that homosexuality-promoting Fr. James Martin, who has agreed to speak at the Democrat convention, responded to Bishop Tobin with a false “correction” of the bishop.
“Mr. Biden is a baptized Catholic. Thus, he is a Catholic,” Fr. Martin tweeted.
Well, by definition, Bishop Tobin is correct, and surprise, surprise: Fr. Martin is not.
The 1943 encyclical of Pope Pius XII on the Catholic Church called “The Mystical Body of Christ” defines a member of the Catholic Church specifically to exclude those like Biden who claim to be Catholic but separate themselves from the unity of the true faith.
The encyclical reads at paragraph 22, “Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed.”
That is also the sentiment of the top pro-life priests in the country.
Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, told LifeSiteNews that Biden’s “failure to protect the unborn puts him not only in conflict with the Catholic faith but with the Founding principles of America, the very meaning of public service, and basic human decency. You can’t kill babies, and you can’t authorize anyone else to do so.”
Fr. Pavone told LifeSiteNews that “Biden is not living as a Catholic[.] … [A]s for voting, not only can Catholics not vote for Biden in good conscience, but they can’t vote for Democrats, period. And neither can anyone else.”
“It’s time to stop pretending we can be neutral,” he continued. “The Democrat Party has set itself up against the Church, against the unborn, and against America. They do not deserve one ounce of power in this country, and anyone who gives it to them shares the guilt of all the evil they do. And that starts with our religious leaders.”
Fr. Stephen Imbarrato, an activist pro-life Catholic priest, who is also a regular on EWTN and has particpated in a number of Red Rose Rescues, said, “Joe Biden has already, rightfully so, been refused communion.” “He is a walking and talking scandal to his Catholic faith and has rightly been refused the Eucharist because he persists in ongoing mortal sin thus separating himself from communion with the Church. He scandalizes the Catholic faith in so many ways that objectively he actually seems ‘anti Catholic’ in his beliefs.”
Fr. Imbarrato declared simply, unequivocally, “No Catholic can vote for Joe Biden.”
“I am also begging Catholics to not risk the grave sin of scandal by supporting this man with their vote. Thus we would be heaping more scandal upon more scandal upon scandal.”
“Many people respond to my comments with, ‘what about Trump?’ This is not about Trump. Trump isn’t even Catholic. This is a Catholic issue. A Catholic can’t vote for Biden whether they feel in good conscience they can or can’t vote for Trump,” he added.
“Between 45 percent and 48 percent of Catholics voted for Hillary Clinton,” Fr. Imbarrato said. “Four years later, the situation with Biden as a Catholic is much worse and the choice is much clearer insofar as not who any Catholic can vote for, but who every Catholic can’t vote for. No Catholic can vote for Joe Biden.”
Joe Biden’s pro-abortion record
Let’s take a look at Biden’s record on life and family — the two top issues for Catholics in political life, as was explained by Pope Benedict XVI while he was still Cardinal Ratzinger under Pope St. John Paul II.
Biden has been upfront about his agenda to ensure the so-called “right” to what he calls women’s reproductive health, by which he means permission to kill babies in the womb. In his Agenda for Women, released in July, Biden promised to restore domestic and overseas funding to the abortion industry cut by Trump.
Biden said he “will work to codify Roe v. Wade, and his Justice Department will do everything in its power to stop the rash of state laws that so blatantly violate Roe v. Wade.”
The largest abortion operation in the USA, Planned Parenthood, has naturally endorsed Biden. In its statement, PP touted the former vice president’s support for expanding access to contraception, increasing legal protections for access to abortion, promoting “comprehensive sex education,” and reversing the Trump administration’s rule prohibiting Title X taxpayer funds from being given to organizations that refer for abortions. Prior to the announcement being made, Alexis McGill Johnson, acting president of Planned Parenthood, told NPR that November’s presidential contest “is literally a life and death election.”
During the coronavirus crisis — where all sorts of medical procedures were suspended due to the pandemic — Biden wanted to ensure the continuation of abortion. “We need to ensure that women have access to all health services during this crisis,” the Democratic presidential candidate said, adding that “abortion is an essential health care service.”
Historically, Biden had a slight qualm with forcing Americans to pay for aborting children abroad, but during the campaign, he flip-flopped on the Hyde Amendment. “If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s ZIP code,” Biden declared. “I can’t justify leaving millions of women without the access to care they need, and the ability to exercise their constitutionally protected right.”
But Biden’s abortion-pushing is even more extreme. When he traveled to Kenya as vice president in 2010, he urged the then-pro-life government to pass a new constitution that would legalize abortion, bribing them with the promise of funding. “We are hopeful, Barack Obama is hopeful, I am hopeful that you will carry out these reforms to allow money to flow,” Biden told a crowd of Kenyans.
And if that’s not bad enough, Biden was even positive on China’s brutal one-child policy, which, as we all know, included forced abortion and sterilization. In an August address in China in 2011, he said he would not “second-guess” China’s coercive population control policy.
Biden noted that Chinese officials “share a similar concern” with American leaders in terms of a shaky economic outlook. “You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family,” said Biden.
As LifeSite reported at the time, the implementation of China’s one-child policy was notoriously brutal — with women routinely forced to undergo abortions and sterilizations or handed crippling fines and other punishments for “illegal pregnancies.” Human rights activists say as many as 35,000 abortions are performed in China each day, nearly ten times the rate of the United States.
And in case you might think Biden didn’t know of the Chinese one-child policy brutality, Biden was informed by the foremost expert on the program, Steven Mosher, who has personally witnessed forced abortions in China and has spoken with Biden himself on the issue.
“I know that Joe Biden ‘fully understands’ how women are arrested for the ‘crime’ of being pregnant, how they are incarcerated and browbeaten for this ‘crime,’ and how they are forced to undergo abortions and sterilizations. I know because I told him so,” Mosher said at the time.
“While serving as a Commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Broadcasting to China, I briefed then-Senator Biden on population control, Chinese style.” Mosher also accused Biden of “clearly pandering to his Chinese hosts” in brushing off the policy’s moral significance. “This wasn’t ignorance and it wasn’t a gaffe. Biden wanted China’s communist leaders to know that he and the President he serves are more than willing to turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed in the name of the one-child policy,” he said.
On the family issue, Biden has been just as extreme.
Biden himself boasts of having endorsed homosexual “marriage” in 2012, before Barack Obama did.
On August 1, 2016, Biden actually officiated at a homosexual “marriage” ceremony, holding it in the vice president’s residence. He then tweeted out a picture of the two men holding hands as he looked on approvingly. Commenting in the tweet, he said: “Proud to marry [sic] Brian and Joe at my house. Couldn’t be happier, two longtime White House staffers, two great guys.”
Biden announced in June that his top priority if elected will be imposing his so-called “Equality Act.” The actual title of the document is “The Plan to Address LGBTQ Equality in America and Around the World.”
In an incisive analysis of the plan at LIfeSIteNews, Paula Rinehart notes, “The real rub is that sexual orientation and gender identity are granted special legal status with the power to trump religious convictions. Faith-based adoption and foster care agencies would not receive federal grants unless they agreed to place children in same-sex homes.” She explains in Biden’s plan, students would be guaranteed access to bathrooms and locker rooms of their choosing. Conversion therapy becomes a punishable offense. Government forms would be required to have a “third option” for non-binary individuals. It would be legal nightmare to terminate a pastor or Christian schoolteacher who decides to present himself as the opposite sex or live a gay lifestyle. Women’s sports would be dominated by men on hormones.
Biden said in January, one day after the March for Life, which he knows pro-lifers call the civil rights issue of our time, “Let’s be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time.” In that tweet, Biden added: “There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights.”
James Shupe, a man who underwent radical surgery to change his sex organs and then regretted his actions and attempted to return to normalcy, warned Americans what Biden’s vision for America means.
At LifeSite, you can read that Shupe, who was America’s first legally “non-binary” person and has since reclaimed his male birth sex, offered a short litany about the disastrous impact transgenderism has had on society and, in particular, on women and girls.
“Men in women’s bathrooms with little girls. Males winning 1st place in female sports. Males in women’s homeless shelters. Male predators being placed in female prisons based on ‘feelings’ of being a woman,” tweeted Shupe. “And Biden calls it the civil rights issue of our time. Women do you agree?”
There is much more to say, but let me close by appealing to those Catholics who may disagree with me about the election and feel the need to vote for Biden despite all of that.
At 77, Biden will soon be meeting his Maker. Now is the time to be praying for him to convert, not goading him on to a position where he will do untold harm to the nation and his own soul.
And the perspective of those top pro-life priests in the United States shows true Catholic concern for Biden’s soul — and the souls of the bishops who are failing in their duty to discipline Biden.
Fr. Imbarrato told LifeSiteNews, “A more concerning potential scandal may be that the U.S. bishops have not forthrightly proclaimed [Biden’s defiance of his Catholic faith] — what every Catholic knows yet half choose to ignore because the bishops have ignored it and remain silent about it.”
“The silence of the U.S. bishops about Joe Biden may even a greater scandal than Biden’s idolatry (by which he places his intrinsically evil political agenda before his Catholicism) because a case can be made that he indulges in such scandal and idolatry because of the tacit approval from our shepherds.”
A few bishops have indeed warned Biden, called him out, even, saying he should be denied Holy Communion. But most have remained silent. That silence shows a real negligence and lack of concern about Biden’s eternal salvation.
St. Paul warns in the Bible about receiving Communion: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:27). Such a person, says St. Paul, “drinks judgment to himself.”
The head of Human Life International explained in an article posted at LifeSite:
For this reason, the Church urges all Catholics to examine their consciences before receiving the Eucharist, to see if they are guilty of mortal sin. If they are, then the Church teaches they must first go to Confession, and that if they knowingly receive the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin, they commit the further grave sin of sacrilege. In most cases this process of discernment is personal and private. However, the Church also recognizes that there are circumstances in which a minister of the Eucharist must refuse a person Holy Communion, for his own good, and for the good of the whole Church. The circumstances when this is necessary are clearly spelled out in Canon Law. Indeed, Canon 915 could not be any clearer: “Those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”
There is a petition at LifeSite where over 20,000 people have urged the U.S. bishops to refuse Holy Communion to Biden.
We acknowledge that making a decision to exclude public figures from Holy Communion is not easy. But sometimes, says the petition, this is the only way to make them understand the error of their ways and to preserve the Church from serious scandal.
As one of the petition’s signers myself, I say with all the rest, “We do not hold ourselves up as judges over Joe Biden's eternal soul, but we encourage you to make known one of the consequences of public and obstinate support of abortion by our ‘Catholic’ politicians...pro-abortion politicians, who also proclaim themselves to be ‘Catholic,’ should not think that they can demean the Body of Christ — by promoting killing other human beings — with no consequence.”
In the end, we thank the bishops for taking leadership in this matter, and we pledge to pray for the bishops and for Catholic politicians.
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