Biden has spent his life drawing from his Catholic faith

The Washington Post has a very good article today in response to Trump's blasphemous and false accusation.

By Julie Zauzmer and Sarah Pulliam Bailey

August 7, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

When Pope Francis visited the United States in 2015, his welcomer-in-chief was then-Vice President Joe Biden.

Almost wherever Francis went, Biden was there — in the White House and the Capitol, and also in sacred spaces, including at Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Biden followed the pope from Washington to Philadelphia, leading a farewell ceremony for the visiting dignitary he has called “the single most popular figure in the world.”

This week, President Trump painted a very different picture of Biden, mocking his presumptive Democratic opponent as a man hostile to religion. “Take away your guns, take away your Second Amendment. No religion, no anything,” Trump said of Biden on Thursday. “Hurt the Bible. Hurt God. He’s against God. He’s against guns. He’s against energy, our kind of energy.”

Biden, who was the country’s first Catholic vice president and would be the first Catholic president in more than half a century, has been motivated by his faith throughout his long career in politics.

Although he has prominently disagreed with the political goals of some religious groups, including the Catholic Church, he also has often proved that he understands them.

“When you went to an event in Washington, D.C., with [Biden], it was the only room that included priests and nuns," said Christopher Jolly Hale, who was executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good during the Obama administration and is now running for Congress in Tennessee. “It was always strange to see the habits and collars among the most powerful in Washington.”

Others noted that Biden almost always has rosary beads in his pocket, and frequently holds them in his hand — including while he monitored the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011. He has written and spoken at length of how faith helped him grieve the loss of his first wife and daughter many years ago, and his son Beau more recently.

Biden declined an interview request. In a statement, he called Trump’s attack “shameful,” saying that his faith is the “bedrock foundation of my life."

”President Trump’s decision today to profane God and to smear my faith in a political attack," Biden said, "is a stark reminder of what the stakes of this fight truly are.”

Francis's 'politically loaded gift' to Trump during his Vatican visit: A copy of his own writing on climate change

Like John F. Kennedy, the only Catholic president to date, Biden has been criticized from both the right and the left for policy stances that are related to his religion, especially on the issue of abortion.

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Catholics, who make up nearly one-quarter of voters, historically are politically split, with Latino Catholics favoring Democrats and White Catholics somewhat more favorable toward Republicans. Polling by Pew Research Center in July showed Biden slightly leading Trump among Catholic voters, 52 percent to 47 percent.

Trump is far less popular with White Catholics than with White evangelical Protestants, who also strongly oppose abortion.

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Rocco Palmo, editor of Whispers in Loggia, a news site on Catholicism, questioned Trump’s connection of support for gun ownership to religious belief, noting that Catholic bishops have spoken out several times on the need for gun restrictions.

"Some Catholics are going to say, ‘You don’t tell us who’s one of us and who isn’t,’ " Palmo said. “Since when was that the role of government? The bishops are the authoritative teachers of the faith, not the president of the United States.”

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The relationship between the U.S. government and the Vatican has been uneasy since Trump’s election in 2016. Francis has provoked Trump several times, including calling him “not Christian.” Trump, in response, called the pope’s words “disgraceful.”

Biden’s campaign, and Catholic Democrats who have worked with him, say that Biden would repair the bond — a relationship with diplomatic implications, not just religious ones, as the Vatican has a history of working with Washington to deliver aid in global trouble spots and of brokering international agreements.

In a call earlier this year with Catholic leaders, Trump called himself the “best [president] in the history of the Catholic Church,” according to the online Catholic newspaper Crux. He has campaigned hard to win Catholic votes, particularly White Catholics in key swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Biden, too, is reaching out to Catholics, holding prayer calls and Zoom meetings for faith leaders and planning virtual house parties where supporters can invite friends from their parishes to talk about electing the next Catholic president.

Campbell, the nun who advocated for Obamacare, remembers her family’s joy when Kennedy was elected in 1960, even though some of his policy positions clashed with the church.

If Biden became the second Catholic in the Oval Office, Campbell said, “There would be pride in that."

Washington Post