Washington, D.C., Cardinal Wilton Gregory slammed President Joe Biden on Sunday for being a “cafeteria Catholic,’’ picking and choosing what doctrines he wants to believe in; he cited the president’s support for “abortion rights” and transgender “visibility” as examples.
Biden, only the second Catholic president, following John F. Kennedy, has actively campaigned for expanded abortion rights, gay marriage, and “gender-affirming care,” all of which his Church opposes.
Cardinal Gregory suggested on Face the Nation on Sunday that Biden is selectively picking and choosing which parts of Catholicism he will embrace based on the Democrat platform.
Archbishop of Washington, Wilton D. Gregory, participates in his Installation mass at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, on May 21, 2019, in Washington, DC. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
“I would say that he’s very sincere about his faith,” the cardinal stated. “But like a number of Catholics, he picks and chooses dimensions of the faith to highlight while ignoring or even contradicting other parts.”
“There is a phrase that we have used in the past, a ‘cafeteria Catholic,’” the U.S. prelate said, adding, “You choose that which is attractive, and dismiss that which is challenging.”
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a Pride Month celebration event at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Saturday, June 10, 2023 (Nathan Howard/Bloomberg).
“Especially in terms of the life issues, there are things that he chooses to ignore, or he uses the current situation as a political pawn,” Gregory said of the president.
During his State of the Union address, Biden repeatedly referenced abortion by emphasizing the need to “Restore Roe,” among other talking points, while never actually using the word “abortion.”
US President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally to Restore Roe at Hylton Performing Arts Center in Manassas, Virginia, on January 23, 2024 (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images).
In 2022, the U.S. Bishops’ Conference (USCCB) censured Biden for his executive order aimed at streamlining abortion access.
The president’s “executive order facilitating abortion” was “the second such action from President Biden in response to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey,” the USCCB website noted.
It remains “the policy of my Administration to support women’s access to reproductive healthcare services, including their ability to travel to seek abortion care in States where it is legal,” Biden wrote in his executive order. “I am directing my Administration to take further action to protect access to reproductive healthcare services and to address the crisis facing women’s health and public health more broadly.”
The president said he would harness Health and Human Services (HHS) as well as “the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other relevant HHS components” to evaluate the effect of access to reproductive health care on maternal health outcomes and other health outcomes.
In response, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, chairman of the Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, issued a statement calling on the president and all elected officials “to increase support and care to mothers and babies, rather than facilitate the destruction of defenseless, voiceless human beings.”
“Continued promotion of abortion takes lives and irreparably harms vulnerable pregnant mothers, their families, and society,” the archbishop asserts. “It is the wrong direction to take at a moment when we should be working to support women and to build up a culture of life.”
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