OPINION:
The Christian community will soon be celebrating what it considers to be the holiest days of the year. Much of the media will focus on the pageantry that is offered during Holy Week by the pope and the Catholic Church. Sure to be mentioned in the American coverage is that President Biden is Catholic.
The mainstream media will take it a step further. They will laud him as a “devout Catholic” yet they will immediately follow that proclamation with a laundry list of beliefs and policies that Mr. Biden disagrees with the Catholic Church on.
At the top of that list will be the contrast between the Vatican’s recent statement that the Catholic Church cannot and will not bless gay unions and the Equality Act, currently being promoted in the United States. The Equality Act would “normalize” the transgender classification and force schools, churches and others to embrace it. Unlike the Catholic Church, Mr. Biden supports gay marriage. Also in conflict with Catholic doctrine, Mr. Biden has called transgender rights “the civil rights issue or our time.”
A young gay activist posted the following this past week on Facebook, “The Vatican missed an opportunity this week, no doubt. But whenever I’ve gone to Mass since baptism my relationship with Catholicism has never been defined by what a cabal in Rome says. Rome at odds with the teachings of Jesus is not now nor will ever be a surprise. Christ is LOVE.”
Note to gay activist: You can’t really refer to yourself as Catholic if you A) don’t attend Mass regularly and B) refer to the pope and Vatican as “a cabal in Rome.” You may well have a belief in Jesus, but you aren’t Catholic. As for the suggestion that his lifestyle choice is more in keeping with Christ’s teachings than the Roman Catholic Church, that’s just megalomania on full display.
Apparently the young man hasn’t actually read the teachings of Christ in any detail and most certainly didn’t read the statement from the Vatican.
Pope Francis, like Jesus, is clear that he (and the Catholic Church) love the sinner. That does not mean, however, that Jesus, the pope or the church must embrace the sin. The document issued by the Holy See actually addresses this quite clearly. It points out that God “does not and cannot bless sin: He blesses sinful man, so that he may recognize that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him.”
For decades and through multiple Popes, the Vatican has said the church loves and supports gay individuals, but has been clear that love does not extend to condoning unions. According to an official 2003 document, the Catholic Church’s support “cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”
The Bible is full of stories of Jesus embracing the downtrodden and the sinful. Despite the elders looking down on his interactions with prostitutes, adulterers and corrupt tax collectors, Jesus repeatedly shared his love and good words with all of them. Today we might call him a man of the people.
At no point however, did Jesus endorse their sinful actions. Instead, he used his interactions with them to promote change in their behavior. He was clear that he loved them, but he did not love their actions or their choices. He promoted redemption and forgiveness. It’s never too late to change, but please don’t expect Jesus to endorse acting out.
If one believes that Jesus was indeed the Son of Man, why on earth would they suggest the teachings of Christ must be changed to accommodate the cultural shifts of the time? If there is a greater good, a Creator, surely the rules of good and bad don’t arbitrarily fluctuate with the whims of mankind.
Yet that is what the “devout” Mr. Biden is expecting of the Catholic Church. He promotes homosexual marriage. He is the self-proclaimed champion of the transgender community. Perhaps his most glaring conflict with the Catholic Church is his promotion of abortion.
The Catholic Church is crystal clear on the topic of the sanctity of life. A baby curled up in his or her mother’s womb, one with little tiny fingers and tiny little toes, can’t be simply referred to as an “it”, or worse yet, an “inconvenience”, and killed. Destroyed and discarded. Flushed away.
The gay activist felt that the Vatican has missed an opportunity this past week. Perhaps that description can be better assigned to Mr. Biden. Someone who wears the moniker of “devout Catholic” while serving as the most powerful human on the planet has an amazing opportunity to make change for good. Much like Holy Week’s greatest disappointment, Pontius Pilate, Mr. Biden knows what is right and yet is giving into the mob mentality. Pilate gave up Jesus’ life in an attempt to save his own position. Mr. Biden will give up millions of babies lives in hopes of cementing his own place in history. Now that is a missed opportunity.
Mr. Biden will indeed be remembered, but like Pilate before him, for all the wrong reasons.
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