Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 4, 2024 / 16:16 pm (CNA).
President Joe Biden praised Vice President Kamala Harris at a Labor Day rally in Pittsburgh, claiming she has “the moral compass of a saint,” a statement that has sparked some objections from Catholic theologians.
“She has a backbone like a ramrod and she has the moral compass of a saint — this woman knows what she’s doing,” Biden told the cheering crowd.
“I promise you if you elect Kamala Harris as president, it will be the best decision you will have ever made,” the president said.
Some of Harris’ positions — particularly her staunch support of abortion — are inconsistent with saintly values, according to Catholic theologians and philosophers who spoke to CNA. As vice president, she led the administration’s efforts to expand abortion and has vowed to codify the abortion standards set in the now-defunct Roe v. Wade ruling, which would override state-level pro-life policies.
While serving as attorney general of California, Harris co-sponsored legislation that restricted the free speech of pro-life pregnancy centers, which the Supreme Court found violated the First Amendment. As a senator, she questioned judicial nominees about their memberships in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization.
Edward Feser, a Catholic philosopher and professor at Pasadena City College, told CNA that Biden’s assertion that Harris has the moral compass of a saint is “so manifestly ludicrous that it would be unworthy of [a] comment if it didn’t come from a president of the United States, and a Catholic one at that.”
“Someone who truly had the ‘moral compass of a saint’ would condemn abortion as murder instead of supporting it enthusiastically as Vice President Harris does,” Feser said.
Dominican Father Thomas Petri, president of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies, told CNA that promoting abortion “is certainly not the position of a saint” or even “a person with right reason” because defending life “is not simply an issue of faith — it’s an issue of ethics.”
“A saint is going to have qualities, not just of reason, but of faith, and is not going to advocate for things that are contrary to God’s law,” Petri said.
Petri noted that government leaders can and have achieved sanctity, referencing St. Thomas More, St. Stephen the Confessor, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Officials who rose to sainthood such as these three “understood that … leadership [and] … all authority on Earth stems from God’s own authority, and they understood themselves as subject to that authority,” according to Petri.
“They lived in their roles of authority as believers who understood that they were not a final authority and they would be under judgment themselves,” Petri added.
Petri suggested Biden was being “too cavalier” with his reference to sanctity, which he said is common among Catholics but that “when you take the spiritual life seriously, you start to understand what sanctity really is.”
“Being a saint is a lifelong project and obviously requires grace,” Petri said.
Joe Heschmeyer, a staff apologist at Catholic Answers, told CNA that the best way to determine what the “moral compass of a saint” looks like is “to listen to the actual saints.” He specifically referenced St. John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae, which focuses on the “value and inviolability of human life.”
“St. John Paul II describes how ‘the Gospel of life is at the heart of Jesus’ message’ and how ‘every person sincerely open to truth and goodness’ can come to see ‘the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree,’” Heschmeyer said, quoting the former pontiff.
“For this reason, he reminds us that ‘the mere possibility of harming, attacking, or actually denying life in these circumstances is completely foreign to the religious and cultural way of thinking of the people of God,’” he added.
Biden, the country’s second Catholic president, has invoked religion to promote policies that are inconsistent with Church teaching on several occasions. In March of last year, the president said that banning transgender medical interventions for minors was “close to sinful.” In April, he made the sign of the cross while promoting abortion at a rally, which led to condemnation by several bishops.
The Sept. 2 rally in the battleground state primarily focused on support for unions and workers. Harris spoke about efforts to keep steel manufacturing in the United States and her opposition to a proposed sale of the Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel to a Japanese firm Nippon Steel.
In 2020, Biden won Pennsylvania by fewer than 1.2 percentage points. In 2016, former president Donald Trump won the state by fewer than 0.75 percentage points. For the 2024 election, polling averages show the presidential race virtually tied in the Keystone State.
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He also said his son was the smartest man he knew and he was “all in” the election.
When a pathological liars becomes demented and loses that “inner filter”, the lies become more audacious and disordered.
Such a statement has clearly provoked disapproval, etc. from ‘Catholic theologians’ et. al, and this is a good thing, but it is NOT asking too much of these learned ‘Catholic theologians’ to treat it with the simple contempt it so richly deserves.
For the rest of us it is simply hilariously funny – we have a good laugh and move on.
Try this – consider the source.
“Consider the source.”
Really?!
The “source” is the President of the United States of America, elected by the citizens of the United States of America in a free election open to all people 18 years old or older!!!
We’re not talking about a movie star or online personality or late-night talk show host or musician or writer or the locals down at the Sit and Sip Cafe! We’re talking about the POTUS! THAT’S your “source!”
The POTUS is one of the most powerful people in the (secular) world, looked to by most of the free nations as an “authority” figure that must be consulted on various world issues, and feared by the dictators of the non-free nations.
He isn’t some silly comedian or sports figure that we can laugh off. The POTUS is the ONLY person in the United States who has the authority to order the use of the nuclear missiles that are hidden several stories below the surface in isolated areas of the U.S. The code word to “launch” by the POTUS would result in the mutual destruction of an enemy nation along with our own dear country.
Of course, his power is pitiful compared to the power of God, but as a human, he is certainly in possession of very great power to help or harm the world.
The fact that we, the citizens of the U.S., elected a man like Sen. Joseph Biden to the most powerful position on earth is frightening. Even more frightening is the very real prospect that we will do it again in voting VP Kamala Harris into this position of power.
WE, the people, including many Catholics, elected Pres. Biden, and in spite of Pres. Trump’s prolonged clinging to the Presidency and his very reasonable accusations of a “cheat,” Pres. Biden took the office and made a moral mess out of our country and to a certain extent, the world. He has promoted immoral and EVIL stands on various issues while still professing his Catholic faith–blasphemy!
If elected, VP Harris will do the same, only worse, as she has much less experience in federal and international governing than Pres. Biden and will be an easily-manipulated pawn in the hands of some of the most evil and godless people in the United States and in the world. And VP Harris does not profess adherence to a religion as Pres. Biden claims; she claims to be “committed” to the Black Baptist churches and to the Hindu church of her mother.
It is distressing to me that so many Catholics (and others) don’t “get” what’s happening with the Democratic Party at this time in history. Most of the people who lived through the Great Depression, WWII, and Pres. Franklin Roosevelt’s life-saving policies are gone now, and those of us who are still here should have more sense than to vote for members of a Party that includes in its official Party Platform unrestricted abortion and allowing children to choose their sex and have surgical intervention without requiring their parents’ permission. These policies are pure evil, and those Catholics (and other Christians) who vote for Democratic candidates are supporting the evil.
I’m not saying that Pres. Trump is a saint (far from it!), but the alternative of voting for VP Harris should be unthinkable for Catholics and other serious Christians. As for voting for a 3rd Party candidate–that’s a wimp decision and a total waste of a vote. You may as well write your OWN name onto the ballot!
Plug your nose, sigh loudly, say a lot of prayers, and then vote for Pres. Trump, and work to hold him and the Republican Party accountable. Pres. Trump doesn’t seem to answer to the Republican Party or ANY political organization, but makes his own decisions, and if we, the people, petition him, I think (and hope) he is much more likely to pay attention to those of us who elected him instead of dismissing us as out-of-date religious fanatics as the Democratic candidates currently do and WILL do and possibly do worse when it comes to practice of religion in the U.S.; e.g., loss of employment, arrests, imprisonment, hefty fines, etc. if we are stupid enough to elect them again.
I wish that just one of these (undoubtedly learned) theologians had had the common sense to state – “such a statement is simply too absurd to take seriously for an instant.”
PLEASE tell me that I am NOT the only one to look at that pathetic picture of the two and realize how absurd it is – on ANY level.
“We have serious problems and we need serious people to solve them” – POTUS Andrew Shepard.
ROFL.
Saint who? “Saint” Judas Iscariot? “Saint” George Floyd? “Saint” Greta Thunberg? The type of people leftists consider Saints makes Biden’s comment a lot more disturbing than he intended.
Johann – Biden’s comment – consider the source.
It is becoming increasingly obvious to the whole world that Biden is nothing more than a pathetic old man clearly in the grip of a progressive cognitive decline (who happens to be the President of the United States – terrifyingly enough), and the democratic party will answer to history for the situation we find ourselves in.
If Joe Biden knew anything about ANY kind of compass–moral, navigational or otherwise–he would have been able to find his way off many a stage, out of his failed presidency, and away from Harris five years ago.
If Biden considers his anointing of Harris worth the dentured breath accompanying the thought, he needs a higher dose of Leqembi and a much larger jug of snake oil.