Last week, Joe Biden was put on the defensive over his faith. With his selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate, he has some more explaining to do.
Biden, who is ostensibly Catholic, put out a statement of faith last week, following President Trump’s accusation that Biden would “hurt God.” But Biden’s statement was more anti-Trump screed than Nicene Creed, and the addition of Harris to the ticket shows that the whole exercise is a sham.
Harris made her view of Catholicism clear in July last year, attacking judicial nominee Brian Buescher over his membership in the Knights of Columbus. The Knights are a fraternal Catholic charitable organization, one whose 138-year history includes members of the Democratic Party, such as John F. Kennedy and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.
Harris made it clear her issue was not with the Knights specifically, but with the Catholic faith. Harris asked Buescher during the nomination process, “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?” This is not some trivial issue that the Knights have taken up, but a basic, nonnegotiable tenet of Catholic faith.
Harris doesn’t think Catholics should be able to hold a seat in the judicial branch of the United States, and that appears to be no problem for a man of faith such as Biden. And why would it? Biden has already said that should he win, he would drag the Little Sisters of the Poor back to court, renewing a decadelong fight of the government trying to force nuns to violate their faith by stripping the “carve-out” protections of the First Amendment.
Biden has also sacrificed his support for the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funds from being used to fund abortion. That wasn’t enough to satisfy Harris, who at the time, attacked Biden anyway because he wasn’t sufficiently pure in religious devotion to abortion.
For a man whose faith has been his “guiding light,” Biden has run away from it publicly in the last year to please the Democratic Party, and Harris has been a driving force in fomenting the anti-Catholic sentiment that made that possible. Biden’s country-club Catholicism will get him a pass from the media, who doggedly defended him from Trump’s attack last week. In the end, that’s all that matters to Biden as he pursues the presidency.
