Texas Catholic Bishop Joseph Strickland said Friday that he is praying for President Joe Biden’s conversion because the pro-abortion politician is “not a real Catholic.”
“Hate me if you want but Biden is not a real Catholic … just a fact,” Strickland wrote on Twitter, CNS News reports.
Biden professes to be a devout Catholic and attends Mass regularly, but he also supports abortions “under any circumstances” and want to force taxpayers to pay for them – positions that violate Catholic Church teachings and jeopardize millions of unborn babies’ lives.
Strickland, who leads the Diocese of Tyler, said the president’s support for the destruction of unborn babies grieves him deeply.
“I join other bishops in voicing our dismay at President Biden’s aggressive support of abortion as he also flaunts his self-proclamation that he is a devout Catholic. A devout Catholic does not support an anti-life agenda,” he wrote Friday. “I pray for his stoney heart to be converted.”
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Biden’s hypocrisy has caused division among American Catholic leaders, with some calling for him to be denied communion and others defending the president receiving it. Amid the controversy, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops began but then quickly ended a new working group to explore how to deal with Biden, his Catholic faith and his political policies that contradict what he claims to believe.
Strickland has not been hesitant about sharing strong and sometimes unpopular opinions about pro-life issues and politics. He repeatedly has criticized the president and, once, even the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for not speaking out more strongly against Biden’s radical pro-abortion views.
“A dark cloud has descended on this nation when the USCCB and Planned Parenthood speak in unison in support of a Biden-Harris administration that supports the slaughter of innocents by abortion for all 9 months of pregnancy,” Strickland wrote on Twitter in November.
And while priests are discouraged from publicly endorsing or opposing candidates or political parties, Strickland and some others have anyway. In the fall, he endorsed a controversial video by Father James Altman of Wisconsin urging Catholics to reject the Democratic Party because of its radical pro-abortion stance. Strickland also praised Father Edward Meeks of Maryland for telling his parishioners that “Biden is unabashedly pro-abortion.”
Biden already is making the killing of unborn babies in abortions a priority in his administration.
Just a week after taking office, he rescinded the Mexico City Policy and restored tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which kills babies in abortions around the world and lobbies to legalize abortions in pro-life countries.
He also began rolling back President Donald Trump’s Title X policy, which defunded the Planned Parenthood abortion chain of more than $50 million taxpayer dollars.
“It is grievous that one of President Biden’s first official acts actively promotes the destruction of human lives in developing nations,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops responded in a statement. “We urge the president to use his office for good, prioritizing the most vulnerable, including unborn children.”
Biden said he plans to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law and appoint U.S. Supreme Court justices who will support abortion on demand. He also said he would fight to end the Hyde Amendment and force taxpayers to pay for elective abortions – which could lead to 60,000 more unborn babies’ deaths to abortion each year.
Last April, he went so far as to call the killing of unborn babies an “essential medical service” during the coronavirus pandemic. His health care plan would expand abortions as well by forcing insurance companies to cover abortions as “essential” health care under Obamacare.
On religious freedom, Biden’s position also is deeply troubling. Biden has endorsed anti-religious freedom policies that would force nuns, religious charities and hospitals to violate their deeply-held beliefs by funding the killing of unborn babies in abortions and potentially even by helping to facilitate their deaths.
Among them, he and his vice presidential running mate Kamala Harris oppose a religious exemption from the Obamacare contraception mandate for the Little Sisters of the Poor, a nuns’ charity that serves the poor and elderly. The Supreme Court recently granted the Little Sisters relief from the Obama-era mandate, which would have forced them to fund contraception, including forms that may cause abortions, in their employee health plans.
