Biden’s Catholic Con Job Continues

'Catholics can expect persecution from both within and without the Church, facilitated by an anti-Catholic presidency if Biden wins, brought to them by their own bishops.'

From The American Spectator

By George Neumayr

Meanwhile, the Vatican squabbles with the Trump administration

This last week saw Joe Biden simultaneously advertising his “Catholic social justice” and touting his denial of it to unborn children. The former claim came at the virtual Al Smith dinner, the latter boast at last Tuesday’s debate.

It is a measure of Joe Biden’s shamelessness that he seeks to snatch the Catholic and anti-Catholic vote at the same time. He is running with an open anti-Catholic bigot, Kamala Harris, who regards mere membership in the Knights of Columbus as a disqualifier for public service, while rolling out ads designed to hoodwink Catholics into voting for him.

“Joe Biden’s campaign is launching three new ads this month targeted at religious voters, broadcasting messages that focus on the former vice president’s faith in hopes of winning over Catholics and evangelical Christians,” reports the Religion News Service.“‘We are running these ads to highlight to faith-motivated voters that Joe Biden is the clear moral choice in this election,’ Josh Dickson, the Biden campaign’s faith engagement director, told Religion News Service in a statement. ‘Religious voters matter to this campaign and are a key part of our broad, diverse, and robust coalition.’”

In the first ad, titled laughably enough “Principles,” Biden is seen talking to a nodding Jesuit about his father, a used car salesman. Biden quotes his father as saying that the “the cardinal sin of all sins is the abuse of power, whether it’s a man raising his hand to a woman, whether it is the government abusing its power, basic essential elements of what constitutes Catholicism.”

What about killing a defenseless child, Joe? Isn’t that the ultimate abuse of power?

“The second ad, titled ‘Morning,” is geared toward evangelical Christian television programs. It details how Biden’s faith has given him strength during times of grief, such as after the death of his first wife and daughter and after losing his son Beau to cancer,” reports the Religion News Service. “The ad closes with footage of Biden in a church reading from the Book of Psalms, saying, ‘Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.’”

The final ad casts Joe as a devout Mass-goer, quoting a member of his Delaware parish, “You can tell how important Joe’s faith is to him.”

“The ads are slated to run in 14 states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin,” according to the Religion News Service.

So far Biden’s con job seems to be working. According to pollsters, he is leading Trump in support from Catholics.

Aiding in his con job is the near-silence of the Catholic episcopate. Most bishops have said nothing about Biden’s scandalous faith. Some have rationalized voting for him, insisting that the “single issue” of abortion shouldn’t dictate the votes of Catholics. Other clerics, such as Cardinal Tobin of Newark, have openly said they will vote for him.

And then there are the in-kind contributions of the Vatican. Another one came this last week in the form of a rejected meeting with Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state. “Pope Francis refuses to meet with Mike Pompeo because of upcoming election,” ran the headlines.

The stories quoted top Vatican official Cardinal Piero Parolin primly saying that Pope Francis doesn’t meet with political figures “close to elections,” and adding outrageously that Pompeo might exploit the meeting: “I have no proof to say this, but certainly it is a thought that may be made.”

This is beyond rich, given Biden’s routine exploitation of his meetings with the pope, which he invoked again this last week at the virtual Al Smith dinner. He used his speech to cast himself as a papal buddy. Is Parolin concerned about that? Of course not. He can hardly contain his excitement at the prospect of a new U.S. president willing to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord. In Biden, he sees a fellow supporter of socialist taxation, open borders, climate change activism, and other causes dear to Francis’s heart.

Of course, the real reason for the slight to Pompeo is that the Trump administration has opposed the pope’s scandalous overtures to the Chinese Communists.

Writing in First Things in mid-September, Pompeo observed:

Two years on, it’s clear that the Sino-Vatican agreement has not shielded Catholics from the Party’s depredations, to say nothing of the Party’s horrific treatment of Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong devotees, and other religious believers. The State Department’s 2019 annual report on religious freedom provides an illustrative example in the story of Father Paul Zhang Guangjun, who was beaten and “disappeared” for refusing to join the CCP-run Patriotic Catholic Association. Sadly, his experience is not unique. Communist authorities continue to shutter churches, spy on and harass the faithful, and insist that the Party is the ultimate authority in religious affairs.

As part of the 2018 agreement, the Vatican legitimized Chinese priests and bishops whose loyalties remain unclear, confusing Chinese Catholics who had always trusted the Church. Many refuse to worship in state-sanctioned places of worship, for fear that by revealing themselves as faithful Catholics they will suffer the same abuses that they witness other believers suffer at the hands of the Chinese authorities’ increasingly aggressive atheism.

Here lies another reason for the Vatican’s sympathetic view of Biden. As a long-time apologist for China — among other examples, Biden once said he “fully understands” its coercive population control measures — Biden won’t give the pope any grief over his sell-out to Beijing. Indeed, Biden, like China’s secularists, seeks to impose the state on Catholics too. Biden’s impositions on the faith will chiefly take the form of a contraceptive and abortion mandate. He has already said that he will resume Obama’s persecution of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Catholics can expect persecution from both within and without the Church, facilitated by an anti-Catholic presidency if Biden wins, brought to them by their own bishops.