According to Press Secretary Jen Psaki, President Joe Biden’s sins are “personal” — but Biden’s unwavering support for abortion is a grave and public violation of the Church he claims to be a part of.
After rebooting a program to fund overseas abortions, removing restrictions on human fetal tissue research, authorizing taxpayer-funded abortions, promoting family planning through abortion, actively supporting Planned Parenthood, supporting legislation that would allow children to change their gender, and limiting the ability of faith-based organizations to assist in foreign aid, one thing is clear: Biden’s sins are as public as they come.
“Joe Biden is a strong man of faith and as he noted just a couple of days ago, ‘it’s personal,’” Psaki said during a press conference on Monday. “He goes to church, as you know, nearly every weekend, he even went when we were on our overseas trip. But, it’s personal to him, he doesn’t see it through a political prism, and we’re not going to comment otherwise on the inner workings of the Catholic Church.”
When asked if statements by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which met last week to discuss “eucharistic coherence,” amidst plans to issue a document in November that will clarify who should receive Holy Communion, would make Biden reconsider his public support for abortion, Psaki repeated that the president’s faith is personal.
Biden and his team were more than happy to discuss his faith to win over battleground states in 2016 or when he wrote in his 2007 memoir, Promises to Keep, that “My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion.” It certainly wasn’t personal when Biden wrote in an op-ed for the Christian Post in October 2020 that his Catholic faith founded the “principles that will shape all that I do.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines scandal as “an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil.” Specifically addressing political leaders, the Catechism clarifies that “they are guilty of scandal who establish laws or social structures leading to the decline of morals and the corruption of religious practice,” noting that whoever uses their political power to cause scandal “becomes guilty of the scandal and responsible for the evil that he has directly or indirectly encouraged.”
So according to the Church, a Catholic politician is required to prevent the sins of others to the best of their ability. By publicly declaring his support of abortion and by enacting laws that make it easier to recieve an abortion, Biden has done the opposite.
Biden has made conscious decisions to reject his faith and encourage sin. Biden isn’t the only one affected by his sin — the unborn babies who have perished with the help of his public policy can attest to that.
Catholic doctrine isn’t subjective. Just like the rest of the Catholic Church, Biden can’t choose to reject Church teaching on abortion and accept Church teaching on charity. Doctrine doesn’t allow for personal or political distinction to justify sin — it expands into all aspects of life and must be renounced as publicly as it’s been proclaimed.