Trump backers are preparing to push back against Joe Biden’s outreach to Catholics as the former vice president emerges as the near-certain Democratic presidential nominee.
Biden has long faced criticism from Republicans for touting his Catholic faith, the teachings of which often conflict with his political positions, particularly on abortion.
“Catholic voters in particular are not simply voting for the name, a person who claims to be Catholic, but whether their record and vision for the country coincides with their values,” said Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote.org, pointing out that while Biden polls well with nonpracticing Catholics, abortion is often an uncrossable line for those who consider themselves active members of the church.
Catholic bishops and priests have also criticized Biden on abortion. During Biden’s 2008 presidential bid, Scranton Bishop Joseph Martino denounced Biden’s position on abortion and said that he would deny the then-senator communion. In 2019, Robert Morey, a priest in South Carolina, did refuse Biden communion and later said that he did so because “any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching.”
Biden responded in an MSNBC interview by saying that the incident was off-limits for discussion because it is his “personal life.”
But as the campaign for the general election begins, affiliates of the Trump campaign coalition Catholics for Trump, which, if not for the coronavirus would have launched this week, said that the accusations that Biden is unfit to receive communion because of his positions on abortion will likely only increase.
“The nuns taught him when he was still in grade school, but it doesn’t seem to show in his votes on that end,” said former Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp, who is involved in the campaign coalition.
Huelskamp added that, while Biden appeals to the “Kennedy Catholics” who vote Democratic out of historical loyalty to the party, the former vice president’s record has provided ammo to the Trump campaign. Biden’s flip-flops on issues such as the Hyde Amendment, which bars federally funded abortions, as well as his involvement in an Obama-era mandate that triggered a lawsuit that sent the Little Sisters of the Poor to the Supreme Court have already given Trump opportunities to jab at Biden.
During his 2020 speech at the March for Life in D.C., Trump touted his administration’s defense of the Little Sisters of the Poor while excoriating Democrats for taking the most “radical and extreme positions” on the issue.
As campaigning intensifies on both sides, Trump’s needling in these areas won’t stop, Huelskamp said.
“He can have Joe Biden and the Democratic Party hating the Little Sisters of the Poor,” he said. “That is just not a good position to be in for the Democratic Party.”
Trump campaign spokeswoman Mercedes Schlapp said that Biden’s past positions, especially on abortion, religious liberty, and the Supreme Court, create an opportunity for the campaign to contrast him with Trump’s own positions on these issues.
“The idea that Biden is trying to reach out to Catholic voters when his policies are so out of touch with Catholic voters, especially on the pro-life issues where he supports taxpayer-funded abortion, where he supports late-term abortions, and will do nothing to protect the unborn and also push forward and support judges who would not be strict constitutionalists in any way, I think that creates a huge problem for Joe Biden,” she said.
The Biden campaign has largely ignored abortion and religious freedom in its efforts to reach Catholic voters, focusing instead on economic issues. His campaign released a video in February entitled “Faith,” which shows Biden talking about how “going to Mass” and “saying the rosary” has given him “solace” in hard times.
The section of Biden’s campaign website devoted to Catholics focuses on healthcare, immigration, and environmental protections. In the final section, the campaign says that Biden’s support for “stewardship” is informed by Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, which called upon global leaders to care for their people by caring for the Earth.
In the early primary states, Biden sent out surrogates to vouch for his Catholicity, including former Ambassador to Ireland Kevin O’Malley and the candidate’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens. Biden also enlisted the aid of the Sisters of St. Francis in Dubuque to help him win Iowa’s Catholic vote, posing with them in a campaign video posted to his Instagram account. Biden came in fourth in the Iowa caucuses, behind Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.
Buttigieg, Iowa’s winner, also faced sharp criticism among many religious people for his public profession of Christianity matched against his stances on abortion. During a Fox News town hall in late January, Buttigieg told an anti-abortion Democrat that he was not “going to try to earn your vote by tricking you” and said that he did not think the Democratic Party should shift its defense of abortion rights to accommodate voters who disagree with that position.
Abortion and Catholicism were last a major issue in presidential politics during the 2004 cycle for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a professed Catholic. The conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke said he would refuse communion to Kerry on the grounds that the Eucharist must be protected from a person “who knows that he or she is unworthy and yet presumes to come forward and to take the Holy Eucharist.”
Kerry responded in an NBC interview that he didn’t think his positions on abortion and his eligibility to receive communion conflicted because of a “separation of church and state.”
When the issue arose during a 2012 vice presidential debate between Biden and then-Rep. Paul Ryan, another Catholic, the vice president characterized his positions in a similar manner to Kerry.
“With regard to abortion, I accept my church’s position on abortion,” Biden said. “Life begins at conception in the church’s judgment. I accept it in my personal life. But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews. I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that — women — they can’t control their body.”
The Trump campaign plans to push Biden harder on the issue. With Catholics for Trump, it plans to organize a “very aggressive outreach” to Catholics across the country, detailing Trump’s achievements on abortion, judicial appointments, and religious freedom, according to the campaign.
Already, the president has made abortion one of his recurrent criticisms of Democrats after the issue won Trump votes from many initially hesitant Catholics in 2016, said Frank Pavone, the controversial director of Priests for Life who is also set to work on Catholics for Trump.
“If I were Biden’s campaign, I would strongly advise him, at this point, not to play the Catholic card,” Pavone said.
