During an interview on Easter Sunday, Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington delivered a harsh assessment of President Joe Biden’s dedication to Catholicism.
Gregory, the first black American cardinal, appeared on the CBS News morning show “Face the Nation” and spoke to actions by Biden that seem to cast doubt on how serious the president is about his religious duties.
The cardinal did not go so far as to doubt Biden’s sincerity, but he did place the president in the same category as too many Catholics in today’s world.
Biden often has been called a “devout Catholic” but also has been widely criticized for actions that seem to go very much against Catholic teachings.
The president has been a longtime member of the church in D.C., and during his CBS appearance, the cardinal was asked if Biden’s expression of his faith sets a good example for other Catholics.
But Gregory was not sanguine that the president was holding very true to the faith.
He added that it is a problem among many Catholics.
“I would say that he’s very sincere about his faith. But like a number of Catholics, he picks and chooses dimensions of the faith to highlight while ignoring or even contradicting other parts,” the cardinal said.
“There is a phrase that we have used in the past, a ‘cafeteria Catholic’ — you choose that which is attractive and dismiss that which is challenging,” he said.
Wilton Cardinal Gregory (@WashArchbishop) on President Biden:
“I would say that he’s very sincere about his faith. 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… pic.twitter.com/rVEpwLmiyp
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 31, 2024
Host Ed O’Keefe then asked Gregory, “Is there something on the menu he is not ordering?”
The cardinal was quick to cite Biden’s support of abortion as a prime example.
“I would say that there are things — 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, rather than saying, ‘Look, my church believes this,’” he said, apparently alluding to the president’s stance on the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn the ruling that nationalized abortion, Roe v Wade.
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Biden took particular criticism over the weekend for declaring Easter Sunday, one of Christianity’s holiest days, as a “Day of Transgender Visibility.”
He suffered a major backlash for seeming to be pushing his radical political agenda at the expense of his supposed Catholic beliefs.
But the president’s dedication to his religion has suffered other criticism as well. In 2021, for instance, Joseph F. Naumann, the archbishop of Kansas City, Kansas, blasted Biden for his views on abortion.
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“The president should stop defining himself as a devout Catholic, and acknowledge that his view on abortion is contrary to Catholic moral teaching,” the archbishop said in an interview. “It would be a more honest approach from him to say he disagreed with his church on this important issue and that he was acting contrary to church teaching.”
“He’s declaring that he’s Catholic, and is going to force people to support abortion through their tax dollars. The bishops need to correct him, as the president is acting contrary to the Catholic faith,” Naumann added.
