By David Carlin

But first a note from Robert Royal: We're still doing well in our mid-year fundraising, but we're slowing down. And that just can't happen. Not until we get to where we need to be for the rest of 2024 and beyond. If you need convincing, just look at today's column. David Carlin makes a strong case about not only President Biden but all those Catholics like him who have rationalized their heresies way beyond being mere "cafeteria Catholics." To use an old phrase, they've embraced a different Gospel. And are proud of it. What then is to be done? To tell the truth, truthfully. And not to stop even when we're ignored, mocked, called "suicidal" conservatives, and much more. So don't wait to be generous. The challenges aren't slowing down. Neither should we.

Now for the column...

Head of the Democratic Party.

Joe Biden, in addition to holding the exalted title of President of the United States of America, holds a number of informal and unofficial titles. For instance:

Commander-in-chief of the US armed forces.

The second Catholic President of the USA.

Leader of the free world.

Father of Hunter Biden.

"Cafeteria Catholic" - this title having been recently bestowed upon him by the cardinal-archbishop of Washington D.C., Wilton Gregory.

America's foremost champion of abortion rights.

America's foremost champion of transgender rights.

John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic President, was no model of Catholic virtue, at least when it came to the Sixth Commandment. But Kennedy took the trouble to keep his sexual sins concealed from all but his friends and a co-operative press. He didn't broadcast them. We (the general public) didn't learn about them until after his death. More important still from a Catholic point of view, Kennedy, unlike Mr. Biden, didn't make public pronouncements declaring certain sins are morally good.

America's foremost champion of homosexual rights.

He didn't, for instance, shout from the rooftops that fornication is good and adultery even better.

But something like that is what President Biden is doing. When it comes to religion, Biden is not a man who presents himself to the public as a person who grew up Catholic but has long since outgrown that childishness and now embraces an anti-Catholic view of the world and of morality. Far from it. He presents himself as a true Catholic. "When you see me, you see a Catholic, a genuine Catholic, the real thing."

And so when he tells the nation, including the very sizeable Catholic portion of the nation, that abortion and homosexuality and transgenderism are morally allowable and deserve legal protection, he is in effect saying, "I can assure you from the point of view of a true Catholic that abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism are morally permissible things. And not only morally permissible but deserving of legal protection."

A theologically unsophisticated person can hardly be blamed for saying to himself/herself, "If Biden, a good Catholic who must, after a lifetime of Catholicism, understand the teachings of his religion, says this, isn't it almost certain that he's correct? And if an occasional bishop slaps him on the wrist for saying such things, isn't the weakness of the slap a clear indication that the bishop doesn't truly disagree with him?"

In 1984, Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, a New York Catholic, was running for Vice-President on a Democratic platform that endorsed the right to abortion. Cardinal John O'Connor of New York was quite blunt in denouncing her for that.

Mario Cuomo, like Ferraro a Catholic Democrat, and at the time governor of New York, rushed to the defense, delivering a then-famous speech at the University of Notre Dame arguing that it's right and proper for a Catholic politician to be "personally opposed" but publicly indulgent.

That may sound like Biden's defense of abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism. But it wasn't. Just as Dan Quayle (according to Lloyd Bentsen) was no Jack Kennedy, so Joe Biden is no Mario Cuomo. Cuom...