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Joe Biden: When The Last Hurrah met Catholic Lite

The 46th President of the United States pursued an agenda that could be properly described, not simply as “un-Catholic” but as anti-Catholic.

Joe Biden clasps his hands in prayer position during a news conference at his transition headquarters in Wilmington, Del., Jan. 6, 2021. (CNS photo/Kevin Lamarque, Reuters)

Four years ago, this column praised the courage of Archbishop José Gómez of Los Angeles, then-president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), for his Inauguration Day letter to President Joe Biden. In an entirely respectful tone, the archbishop pledged the bishops’ support for the president’s goal of healing our divided country while raising concerns about the abortion license as “a matter of social justice.” Americans, Archbishop Gómez wrote, “cannot ignore the reality that abortion rates are higher among the poor and minorities, and that the procedure is regularly used to eliminate children who would be born with disabilities.”

That letter reflected a deep consensus among the American bishops. Yet the Vatican tried to delay its publication, as did several bishops whose batting averages in USCCB elections consistently fall below the Mendoza Line. Some of those bishops then marked the limits of their collegiality by petulantly and publicly deploring Archbishop Gómez’s letter.

What are those Gómez critics thinking now?

For President Biden, who threatened to “shove my rosary beads” down the throat of anyone who suggested that his was the party of secularism, led, over the next four years, the most rabidly pro-“choice” administration in American history — with the president as cheerleader-in-chief for an unrestricted, unregulated abortion license, on which he doubled down after the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision consigned a spurious federal “right” to abortion to constitutional oblivion. That cheerleading took many forms; it was grotesquely summed up by Biden’s awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor, to Cecile Richards, longtime chieftain of Planned Parenthood.

But that was not all.

During the Biden administration, gender ideology — a frontal assault on the biblical idea of the human person and a threat to religious freedom — became embedded in virtually all federal agencies. Thus it was no surprise that the administration promoted “Pride Month” and the LGBTQ+ agenda, even as it became empirically demonstrable that “transitioning” did not improve mental health outcomes over time, and that surgical interventions and puberty blockers with gender-dysphoric youngsters deserved condemnation as child abuse.

And that was still not all.

In pursuing an agenda that could be properly described, not simply as “un-Catholic” but as anti-Catholic, President Biden worked hand in hand with another Catholic of the same generation, Nancy Pelosi: who, like many other senior officials, helped hide the president’s cognitive deterioration from the public — until that deception imploded after Biden’s zombie-like performance in the June 2024 presidential debate. Pelosi (whose denial that she was involved in the president’s post-debate defenestration suggests deficient Eighth Commandment catechesis during the 1950s at St. Leo’s parish in Baltimore’s Little Italy) and Biden then arranged to hand the Democratic nomination to Kamala Harris: who was, if anything, even more fiercely devoted to the deconstruction of the biblical idea of the human person via the abortion license and the LGBTQ+ agenda than Biden and the former House speaker.

I would like to feel pity for the now-former president, but that’s a steep climb. Those who have watched him for decades have long known that Joe Biden is a not-so-bright combination of glibness, ambition, and gall, with a tenuous grip on the truth of his own curriculum vitae and zero understanding of Catholic ethics as applied to life issues. That an arrogant belief in his own indispensability led him to put the country at risk by denying the reality of his own incapacities makes pity even harder to come by.

It should also be said, however, that some responsibility here may have to be borne by Biden’s pastors in the nation’s capital and in Delaware. Did they make any attempt to appeal to his piety in bringing him to recognize the error of his moral judgments about public policy, or to help him get to grips with his personal circumstances? If not, why not?

As he fades from public view, Joe Biden strikes me as a strange hybrid of pre-conciliar, Last Hurrah-style, ethno-tribal Catholicism and post-conciliar Catholic progressivism. He was an accidental president, nominated because his party gagged at the thought of the Vermont Menshevik, Moscow honeymooner Bernie Sanders, as its presidential candidate.

Yet this accidental president, who reached the office he craved long after whatever ability he had to meet its demands had dissipated, did grave damage to Catholic public witness in the United States. He did so at a time when liberal Protestant wokery, evangelical Protestant lust for access to power, and secularist aggressions combined to make a mockery of serious moral reflection in the American public square, and the insights of Catholic social doctrine were sorely needed.

As they still are.


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About George Weigel 529 Articles
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He is the author of over twenty books, including Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999), The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (2010), and The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. His most recent books are The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020), Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse Cast of Characters, Most of Them Admirable (Ignatius, 2021), and To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II (Basic Books, 2022).

37 Comments

  1. Biden is an outlaw, and he won his life-long goal of “getting to be President of the United States,” in the same way he got everything in his life: he lied and cheated his way there.

    His very fitting monument is “the Biden rest-stop” on I-95 in Delaware, where people can stop, for years to come, to empty their bladders, in memory of Biden. May the Biden Bladder Stop stand forever as a testament to the legacy of Joe Biden.

    And may all of the Bishops esteeming Biden also have toilets named after them.

    • Chris, This is great and suitably fitting news! The Biden Bladder Stop is SO suitably becoming, summing what Joe made himself to be and far from the Cathedral upon that City on a Hill.

    • JMJ
      THANK YOU, GEORGW WEIGEL/CWR.

      JMJ
      Yes, “I would like to feel pity for the now-former president, but that’s a steep climb. Those who have watched him for decades have long known that Joe Biden is a not-so-bright combination of glibness, ambition, and gall, with a tenuous grip on the truth of his own curriculum vitae and zero understanding of Catholic ethics as applied to life issues. That an arrogant belief in his own indispensability led him to put the country at risk by denying the reality of his own incapacities makes pity even harder to come by.

      Emphasis on “Joe Biden is a not-so-bright combination of glibness, ambition, and gall, with a tenuous grip on the truth of his own curriculum vitae and zero understanding of Catholic ethics as applied to life issues.”
      And even so, we realists, we true believers, will prevail.
      AMEN! AMEN! AND EVEN AMEN!!!

      OREMUS!

  2. Many good points in the article, but I would like to comment on two items.

    I would say that more than just “some responsibility” is borne by Biden’s pastors.

    The use of the phrase “pro-choice” even if choice is put in quotes, and this is not just Mr. Weigel but many pro-life authors. These people are not pro-choice, they are pro-abortion. Before Dobbs, any time a state tried to require more information to a woman seeking abortion, such as a two day waiting period, a sonogram, or literature on the development of the unborn, it was fought tooth and nail by pro-abortionists. They do not want choice, they want abortion. Those who are pro-abortion know the importance of words and phrases. That is why they never say that they are in favor of killing the unborn, but say they are in favor of women’s health, women’s reproductive health, etc.

    • The desire to end the ability of a beloved son or daughter residing in their mother’s womb to continue to live is certainly not a health decision, and, in fact, if a particular pregnancy was some how a danger to the mother, and a health decision was made to attempt to save the life of both mother and child and the child died, that would not be, in essence, an abortion.

  3. Thinking expansively in terms of fallen CIVILIZATIONS, the Biden thing is more elementary than that he was not only “’un-Catholic’ but anti-Catholic.” Prior to any religion, even prior to faith in the Self-disclosure of the infinitely Other in the Incarnation, is the already inborn, universal and violated Natural Law…

    Three points and a question:

    FIRST, now that we are into the historic year 2025 and the 1700th anniversary of the COUNCIL OF NICAEA, we might consider the modernday sequel to Arianism (in the year 325). Instead of dissolving the very nature of the Triune One into a medley of reintroduced pagan deities (as Arianism was poised to do), today we dissolve the very nature of Man by our free-fall descent into abortion and euthanasia, into LGBTQ+ tribalism and transgenderism, and into uncounted personal pronouns and woke identity politics. Nature, what’s that?

    SECOND, once the nature of MAN is also dissolved, what meaning can ever be found in the central stability of the Second Vatican Council, which still affirmed: “Christ the Lord…by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to himself [!] and makes his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 22). Or, Scripture: “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are [!], yet without sin” (Heb 4:15).

    THIRD, “…as we are,” meaning “us”? The fluid phenomenon of Biden is not his likeness to Pelosi et al, but rather his likeness to another occupier of the White House, Billy Boy Clinton who also enjoyed scribbling, or whatever, on the desk in the oval office. So, to paraphrase, the deeper CRISIS of our civilization: “It all depends on what the meaning of ‘us’ is.”

    As the Chinese emperor once said, when asked what he would do to save his nation: “I would restore the meaning of words.”

    QUESTION: In the woke wake Biden-Pelosi-McCarrick-Rupnik-Martin et al, how is the perennial Catholic Church of Nicaea and the future to clearly proclaim the divine wonder of the Triune God, the human/binary wonder of Man, and now and forever the incarnated wonder of “the WORD made flesh”?

    • Peter;

      Re. your question – I would suggest that a rasberry would be suitable for a starter.

      We’ll get through this.

      Recommended reading – Michael O’Brien – The Lighthouse. Ignatius Press

      • About fiction novels (even good ones)…waiting here to see if popular fictions printed on ecclesial letterhead will insinuate that Nicaea, by today’s standards, failed in fluid synodality because it was too rigid and exclusive. “Time is greater than space.” The rehabilitation of Arius: all religions lead (equally?) to God!

        So, about our place in history, shortly after the last Ice Age yours truly sat daily through a university psychology class, listening to a fossilized professor announce repeatedly: “You are just a sack of chemicals worth barely 98 cents on today’s market.” Prophecy!

        But yes, “we’ll get through this,” yet not all, and only in a century or two. Souls are being lost, and “this” is the reason.

        • Read the book.

          It’s a quiet book, only 200 pages, can be done in one day if you prefer, or read over a period of time and savored.

          But – read the book.

    • With Time, The Universe is expanding.

      “You cannot be My Disciples, if you do not Abide In My Word.”- The Charitable Anathema as Endowed to us By Jesus The Christ.

      “As Two Churches Within The Catholic Church Further Embattled”, AND, as a schismatic , who has neither the ability or the desire to accept The Office Of The MUNUS and thus The Ministerial Office, Continues “To Challenge Catholic Teaching”, The True Church Of Christ Affirming Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, And The Teaching Of The Magisterium, Grounded In Sacred Tradition And Sacred Scripture, The Deposit Of Faith that Christ Entrusted To His One, Holy, Catholic And Apostolic Church, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), For The Salvation Of Souls. Outside Of Which There Is No Salvation, Because Christ’s Church Exists “Through Him, With Him, And In Him, Oh God Almighty Father , In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost” (Filioque) And “It Is Not Possible To Have Sacramental Communion Without Ecclesiastical Communion”, Due To The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), AND, the counterfeit church, with its counterfeit magisterium, led by its counterfeit pope who denies The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), and thus The Papacy, and is attempting to subsist within The One Body Of Christ, which is simply not possible, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), and the fact “It is not possible to have Sacramental Communion without Ecclesiastical Communion”, who can deny that the fact that a Usurper, is occupying The Seat Of Peter, is the most obvious sign of The Great Apostasy, and that , this counterfeit church with its counterfeit pope, who is attempting to create a counterfeit magisterium, is, in its darkness, as we speak, illuminating The True Church Of Christ through its schism?

      Let the counterfeit church, with its counterfeit pope, and its counterfeit magisterium that is attempting to subsist within Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic , And Apostolic Church, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, while denying The Deposit Of Faith, be declared anathema by those whose competence it is, for the sake of Christ, His Church, all who will come to believe, and the multitude of prodigal sons and daughters, who, hopefully, will soon return to The One Body Of Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost 🙏💕✝️💕

  4. I would argue with Weigel’s claim that Biden “did grave damage to Catholic public witness in the United States.” I am a practicing Catholic and have been so for many years, and I don’t know one single Catholic who ever took him seriously as a ‘Catholic’ President. It is true, though, that non-Catholic people may have looked at him and taken him seriously as a typical Catholic which, of course, brings one to question THEIR intelligence. .
    It is worth remembering Barack Obama’s words when introducing him as his VP candidate, describing him as a ‘practicing Catholic’, and Biden’s saying “I am personally against abortion but I would never impose my beliefs on others” or words to that effect. Those words sound very noble, and that’s fine – we would have been content with him DEFENDING those beliefs, and that never happened – not once.
    The film clip of him playing intellectual with Antonin Scalia is beyond pathetic.

    • “I am personally against abortion but I would never impose my beliefs on others” or words to that effect. Those words sound very noble, and that’s fine – we would have been content with him DEFENDING those beliefs, and that never happened – not once.

      It is not possible for a human person to conceive a son or daughter who is not, in essence , a human person, thus we can know through both Faith and reason that every son or daughter of a human person, can only be, in essence ,a human person.

      We can know through both Faith and Reason grounded in Truth, that there is nothing that is noble or intelligent about claiming that who is, and who is not ,a human person, is merely a matter of opinion, and , in fact, to deny the essence of being, in essence, a beloved son or daughter, brother or sister, husband or wife, father or mother, is to deny the inherent Dignity of all human persons.

      Error has no rights, although it can often illuminate that which is True, Beautiful, and Good.

      Thank God, “For The Light That Shines In The Darkness”, Our Savior, Jesus The Christ, The Way, The Truth And The Life Of Perfect Love Incarnate.

      “You cannot be My Disciples, if you do not Abide In My Word.”- The Charitable Anathema as Endowed to us By Jesus The Christ.

      The use of The Charitable Anathema is, in fact, The Dogma Of The Catholic Faith that was changed at Vatican II, and the failure to continue to use The Charitable Anathema, The Supreme Act Of Charity, which affirms The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), was, in fact, a rupture from Tradition, because “It is not possible to have Sacramental Communion without Ecclesiastical Communion, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque).

      See: The Charitable Anathema by Dietrick Von Hildebrand

  5. Biden/Pelosi to their credit certainly enjoyed the political support of 50% of those in the pews and on the alter up to an including Rome.

    • Biden and Pelosi are just living out the bad Catholic theology they have been under their whole life. 50% is a very kind number….I think it’s way higher than that. There are very few Christians in your church, the majority are unrepentantly Catholic.

      • brian: You cannot be a Christian and a willfully ignorant anti-Catholic bigot at the same time. Neither can you find salvation.

      • CWR editors,
        Two years ago, and after a long and relentless pattern of anti-Catholic cheap shots, the unrepentant “Brian Young” finally found that he was self-blacklisted from this website. But, along the way and after much evasion, he had let down his guard and identified himself, finally–as a former Catholic who had been salvaged by a sola Scriptura Pentecostal minister.

        So, today, what has changed that now the Old Brine is again puking his undigested consumables onto these pages, and onto the readers of CWR, and even onto himself? Three strikes, he’s out. Yes?

      • brian: If the Holy Spirit guided Catholic Church, the only Church founded by Christ, did not forcefully witness on behalf of the unborn, there would very likely not be one single Protestant on the face of the earth who would do so.

        • Despite having reasonable familiarity by family and blood with Catholicism and Judaism, abortion and adoption, I come from a Presbyterian family. So please note my respectful disagreement with your statement. I don’t know precisely how you would define “forceful witness” for the unborn but — speaking as one person with limited ability — I consider that I’ve been and remain publicly and firmly opposed to abortion at all levels. Further, I believe I have so stated more than a few times in these columns.

      • There are plenty of Christians in our Catholic Church. If they are baptized in the name of the Trinity, then they are a Christian.

        You Brian, have no authority to determine who is a Christian, and who is not.

    • Especially Rome, and especially George Weigel in this hypocritical essay. When did he ever criticize Francis for calling Biden a “good Catholic?” When did Weigel ever criticize Francis for praising any architect of the culture of death? When did Weigel ever criticize Francis directly for anything substantial at all?

  6. The Biden administration is a shameful chapter in American Catholicism for all the reasons Mr Weigel articulates so well. Mr. Biden repeatedly trumpeted his Catholic bona fides, all the time aggressively advancing a pagan agenda. His bishops stood by, and the pope apparently agreed and raised no concern about his policies. One is reminded of the Apostles quickly deserting Christ when he was arrested – no courage among this group.
    And I suppose the episcopal cowardice will continue and when Mr. Biden dies, a lavish Catholic funeral awaits him – as with faithless Mario Cuomo, Ted Kennedy and others who have flaunted their Catholic identity.

  7. This is a well-written, scathing indictment of Skellington Joe. Joe has earned and so deserves every thin or well-veiled venomous stream of antipathy we write about him. Inducing empathy, prayer, or pity for the confused, demented, dishonest “not-so-bright combination of glibness, ambition, and gall, with a tenuous grip on the truth of his own curriculum vitae and zero understanding of Catholic ethics as applied to life issues. That an arrogant belief in his own indispensability led him to put the country at risk by denying the reality of his own incapacities makes pity even harder to come by.” On point, George.

  8. The larger question is why the Pope did not condemn Biden and Pelosi, prominent Catholics, for creating scandal with their VERY PUBLIC support of “anything goes” abortion. Instead, he allowed them to meet with him, and him all smiles with warm handshakes. Not condemning their leftist political posture on abortion ( and many other issues) was bad enough. Providing them a friendly meeting where he all but pat them on the head was beyond the pale. And where was his warning to Catholics who gave their votes to people of this ilk in defiance of church laws? All we heard was crickets while we watched more leftists appointed to head the church.

  9. Probably a post-writing of this article event, but the USCCB and individual bishops today have produced a veritable symphony of statements concerned about immigration. Compare that to Gomez’s one statement four years ago about Biden doing anything about life like the Catholic he marketed himself as, a statement undercut by, among other, some bishops. And, as usual, on the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the USCCB issued a loud, ringing … nothing.

    • J.M.J.

      At this hour it is late, but not too late, to affirm The Unity Of The Holy Ghost In The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, and thus the fact that there is only One Word Of God.

      “Behold your Mother.”- Christ On The Cross

      “Penance, Penance, Penance”.

      Dear Blessed Mother Mary, Mirror Of Justice And Destroyer Of All Heresy, Who Through Your Fiat, Affirmed The Filioque, and thus the fact that There Is Only One Son Of God, One Word Of God Made Flesh, One Lamb Of God Who Can Taketh Away The Sins Of The World, Our Only Savior, Jesus The Christ, thus there can only be, One Spirit Of Perfect Complementary Love Between The Father And The Son, Who Must Proceed From Both The Father And The Son, In The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Complementary Love, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity (Filioque), hear our Prayer, that those whose competence it is, will convene a Council to restore The Charitable Anathema, and visibly restore Peace in your Son’s One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, Through the affirmation of The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque).

      “Penance, Penance, Penance”


      “At the heart of Liberty Is Christ, “4For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5Have moreover tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come…”, to not believe that Christ’s Sacrifice On The Cross will lead us to Salvation, but we must desire forgiveness for our sins, and accept Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy; believe in The Power And The Glory Of Salvation Love, and rejoice in the fact that No Greater Love Is There Than This, To Desire Salvation For One’s Beloved.


      “Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.”

      

“Blessed are they who are Called to The Marriage Supper Of The Lamb.”



      “For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”


      “Behold your Mother.” – Christ On The Cross


  10. I believe that Pres. Trump loves children (he has several of his own!) and has done an amazing job of helping his various wives to raise them well. He has also donated to children’s charities (e.g., Figure Skating in Harlem, which can boast a 99% high school graduation rate for all the girls who are members).

    I would like to suggest that we pray often for First Lady Melania Trump, who is a serious Catholic who will hopefully be able to influence her husband to continue to support pro-life policies and a pro-life nation. A wife can often influence a husband, even a strong-minded husband like Pres. Trump, to do good…or evil. We’ve seen this over and over throughout world history.

    Like all of us, Pres. Donald Trump has been involved in sinful practices during his long and eventful life and has obviously decided that the later years in his life will be spent doing good and trying to help his country become stronger and in his words, “great again.” I’m so happy that he won this election and pray that he will accomplish all his good goals and abandon any of his questionable goals!

    And I also pray that the Democratic Party will search its soul and make changes that are more in line with the thinking of decent, hard-working, religious American citizens. This last election saw the Democrats approaching the very precipice of hell, and I pray that they will see the evil in some of their policies and reverse their course.

    • It is public knowledge that Melania Trump is pro-choice.

      It is part of Church law that for a Catholic to marry someone who has been married before, with the spouse surviving, without first obtaining an annulment, commits adultery.

      I think you could say that she is a cultural Catholic, or a struggling Catholic, or a Catholic who hasn’t fully converted yet, or many other kinds of Catholic, but I’m not convinced “serious” is an apt adjective.

      I’m glad Trump is president. I’ll pray for both Trumps to become faithful Catholics.

  11. Curiously, Biden made a big deal of being “Catholic.” He was nothing of the kind, but now he is gone. We have not had a good President since Reagan, current occupant included.

  12. That the bishops were never uniformally united against abortion showed that alongside Biden they too,share the blame for the continual slaughter of the innocent. That Biden would in the dying moments of his presidency still advocate for this vial practice shows how far he is from the hope of everlasting life!! He may slur and dribble his choc chip ice-cream, I hope he has a lot of it, for where he is going, he’s going to need a lot to ward off the heating!!!

  13. George Weigel is a meretricious thinker, and a man with little sense of humour. His article is (at best) vapid from beginning to end.

    • As to your incredibly rude comment, Mike Stewart, I couldn’t disagree more. Mr. Weigel summed up Biden’s sad time in office perfectly.

  14. If the clergy in DC had intervened, I hope it would have been private and humble unlike the sanctimonious, political pronouncements of the Episcopalian bishop at Trump’s prayer breakfast. The comments seemed directed to the wrong audience anyway.

  15. Thank you Author Mr Weigel for this research’s brief summary of the anti-Catholic Biden Presidency/Pelosi reign (& predecessors). As a faithful Catholic I pray for their souls and those led away from Christ’s narrow path by Demoncrat unholy philosophies.
    Talk about the Truth coming to light. . . God’s cleaning up His Clergy’s House, while President Trump is cleaning up our country’s programs’ evils. Thanks be to God!

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