Joe Biden is at it again, attempting to represent the views of the Catholic Church and asserting someone else had violated them — all while he steadfastly supports abortion.
Biden spoke today at a rabbinical assembly and made the claim that Republican congressman Paul Ryan’s budget, which GOP lawmakers strongly support and around which Republican voters may rally in this year’s elections, violates Catholic social teaching.
Biden made the claim that the budget is “contrary to the social doctrine you teach and the social doctrine my church teaches.”
Ed Morrissey of Hot Air noticed Biden’s comment and said he found it hypocritical.
“Few parts of Catholic doctrine are as misunderstood as the Catholic teachings on social justice, which is Biden’s reference here. Tina Korbe wrote about this very topic in connection with the Ryan budget a month ago, when Ryan defended his budget approach in relation to his faith,” he said. “But even apart from Ryan’s defense — which as a fellow Catholic I find compelling — let’s take a look at Pastor Biden and his own adherence to Catholic doctrine related to public policy.”
“In 2008, when Biden joined Barack Obama on the ticket, NBC’s Tom Brokaw asked him about his support for abortion rights after Edward Cardinal Egan ripped pro-abortion politicians as unworthy leadership in a self-respecting democracy. Brokaw asked how Biden would answer Obama if asked about when life begins,” he said.
This is the same Biden who, earlier this year, admitted the Obama Administration “screwed up” on protecting rights of conscience when the Obama administration issued its controversial mandate — also a key Catholic teaching and one the nation’s Catholic bishops have pressed against the Obama administration for years.
“I was the one that was tasked to meet with the National Conference of Bishops, and others and Cardinal Dolan, to talk about this,” Biden said in videotaped remarks that are making their way across the Internet today. “The fact of the matter is, the ultimate resolution to this problem is where it should have been in the first place.”
“The conscience clause is being honored in its literal sense. What is happening now is that we have been able to provide what was hard to set up — it got screwed up in the first iteration — is that any hospital, no matter where it is, no matter who runs it, profit or non-profit, religious-based or otherwise, has to provide insurance to their employees like everybody else does,” he said.
Joe Biden’s own bishop has had to correct the pro-abortion politician on his misstating the pro-life teachings of the Catholic Church.
In the interview with the Delaware News Journal, Biden continued to misrepresent the position of the Catholic Church on abortion in a way that has gotten him in trouble recently.
“But throughout the church’s history, we’ve argued between whether or not it is wrong in every circumstance and the degree of wrong. Catholics have this notion, it’s almost a gradation,” Biden claimed.
Not so, says Rev. W. Francis Malooly, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington.
He writes in a new letter to the editor that Biden “presents a seriously erroneous picture of Catholic teaching on abortion.”
“This is simply incorrect,” he says of Biden’s interpretation. “The teaching of the Church is clear and not open to debate. Abortion is a grave sin because it is the wrongful taking of an innocent human life.”
“The Church received the tradition opposing abortion from Judaism. In the Greco-Roman world, early Christians were identifiable by their rejection of the common practices of abortion and infanticide,” Malooly goes on to say.
“The Didache, probably the earliest Christian writing apart from the New Testament, explicitly condemns abortion without exceptions,” he continues. “This has been the consistent teaching of the Church ever since.”
