Joe Biden: Theologian!

A priest friend of mine, one of the 5 smartest people I know, has for many years referred to now Vice President Joe Biden as the dumbest man in the Senate.  I have sometimes argued in favor of one or two others for that slot, but my good friend usually prevails.

It appears that VP Biden is now, like Pres. Obama, a theologian.

Agere sequitur esse.

From Life News:

Pro-Abortion Joe Biden Claims Paul Ryan Violates Catholic Teaching
by Steven Ertelt

Joe Biden is at it again, attempting to represent the views of the Catholic Church and asserting someone else had violated them — all while he steadfastly supports abortion. [As well as unnatural acts, as we learned on Meet The Press last weekend.]

Biden spoke today at a rabbinical assembly and made the claim that Republican congressman Paul Ryan’s budget, which GOP lawmakers strongly support and around which Republican voters may rally in this year’s elections, violates Catholic social teaching. [See my comments, above.]

Biden made the claim that the budget is “contrary to the social doctrine you teach and the social doctrine my church teaches.”

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air noticed Biden’s comment and said he found it hypocritical.

Few parts of Catholic doctrine are as misunderstood as the Catholic teachings on social justice, which is Biden’s reference here. Tina Korbe wrote about this very topic in connection with the Ryan budget a month ago, when Ryan defended his budget approach in relation to his faith,” he said. “But even apart from Ryan’s defense — which as a fellow Catholic I find compelling — let’s take a look at Pastor Biden and his own adherence to Catholic doctrine related to public policy.”  [Yes, let’s do!]

“In 2008, when Biden joined Barack Obama on the ticket, NBC’s Tom Brokaw asked him about his support for abortion rights after Edward Cardinal Egan ripped pro-abortion politicians as unworthy leadership in a self-respecting democracy. Brokaw asked how Biden would answer Obama if asked about when life begins,” he said.

This is the same Biden who, earlier this year, admitted the Obama Administration “screwed up” on protecting rights of conscience when the Obama administration issued its controversial mandate — also a key Catholic teaching and one the nation’s Catholic bishops have pressed against the Obama administration for years.

“I [Biden, lest you have lost the thread…] was the one that was tasked to meet with the National Conference of Bishops, and others and Cardinal Dolan, to talk about this,” Biden said in videotaped remarks that are making their way across the Internet today. “The fact of the matter is, the ultimate resolution to this problem is where it should have been in the first place.”

“The conscience clause is being honored in its literal sense. [?!? In that… what… there is an admission that people have consciences before the administration violates them?] What is happening now is that we have been able to provide what was hard to set up — it got screwed up in the first iteration — is that any hospital, no matter where it is, no matter who runs it, profit or non-profit, religious-based or otherwise, has to provide insurance to their employees like everybody else does,” he said.

Joe Biden’s own bishop has had to correct the pro-abortion politician on his misstating the pro-life teachings of the Catholic Church.

In the interview with the Delaware News Journal, Biden continued to misrepresent the position of the Catholic Church on abortion in a way that has gotten him in trouble recently.

“But throughout the church’s history, we’ve argued between whether or not it is wrong in every circumstance and the degree of wrong. Catholics have this notion, it’s almost a gradation,” Biden claimed. [See my remarks, above.]

Not so, says Rev. W. Francis Malooly, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington.

He writes in a new letter to the editor that Biden “presents a seriously erroneous picture of Catholic teaching on abortion.”  [CANON 915!]

“This is simply incorrect,” he says of Biden’s interpretation. “The teaching of the Church is clear and not open to debate. Abortion is a grave sin because it is the wrongful taking of an innocent human life.”

“The Church received the tradition opposing abortion from Judaism. In the Greco-Roman world, early Christians were identifiable by their rejection of the common practices of abortion and infanticide,” Malooly goes on to say.

“The Didache, probably the earliest Christian writing apart from the New Testament, explicitly condemns abortion without exceptions,” he continues. “This has been the consistent teaching of the Church ever since.”

Poor man.  He probably can’t help it.

But you would think that, with a modicum of good will, he would be able to get right the Church’s teaching about abortion.

 

 

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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23 Comments

  1. “Poor man. He probably can’t help it.”

    For a life long practicing Catholic, can it really be explained by mere stupidity? How can it fail to be obstinate willfulness?

  2. The Astronomer says:

    He’s deliberately obtuse to remain faithful to the Democrats’ anti-life agenda.

  3. wmeyer says:

    “Poor man. He probably can’t help it.”

    Biden has always been intellectually and morally challenged (see his plagiarism, which may have been the first time he came to national prominence), and I see now that time has made little difference.

    Still, given that he appears not to be illiterate, one might hope that someday he would read and attempt to comprehend the CCC. That, or stop claiming in public to be a Catholic.

  4. Frankly, I believe he has a misquote of Christ in mind. He thinks Christ taught “Render unto Caesar the things that are God’s.” So much for Catholic Social doctrine.

  5. weneleh says:

    The only thing that he’s said recently that I like is “President Romney.”

  6. Maxiemom says:

    I think the hair plugs sucked any gray matter that he had out of his head. Which is why we refer to him as “Joey Hair Plugs” at our house.

    Not only does he say some of the most incredibly dumb things, just watch him at any function where the president speaks – he’s like a bobble head agreeing with every thing and looking for cues when he must applaud.

    I’m not a big Mitt Romney fan so I am hoping that he will, at least, find a worthy VP candidate so that I can feel better about voting this November.

  7. rcg says:

    Why is Biden lecturing a rabbinical assembly about Catholic Social Doctrine? And you friend is correct. When I was in school we had to go to Capitol each day to get passes and ‘walk the halls’ finding out what was going on in various committees, etc. Biden’s office stands out in my mind as the most inefficient, unfriendly, unprofessional, and poorly run of all that I encountered, and I went out of my way to visit as many as possible.

  8. wmeyer says:

    “Why is Biden lecturing a rabbinical assembly about Catholic Social Doctrine?”

    Why is Biden lecturing anyone about anything? He is clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, nor the straightest. I’m sure the rabbis hoped for straight talk about the administration position on Israel. I’m sure they were disappointed at what they got.

  9. Cathy says:

    Theologician is more like it. Biden and the “social justice” community twist the Word of God to make believe that the anti-word is to be upheld and worshipped and proclaimed “rights”. They change the historically accepted interpretation of Biblical passages to fit their agendas, then tell us that our social teaching is to demand that stones become bread, welcome unnatural unions as normal – lack of hospitality being the modernized version of the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, and proclaim that those who would defend innocent vulnerable human life as terrorist suspects.

  10. SKAY says:

    Having watched Biden on rhe judicial committee on C-Span, I have to agree with your friend Father. Of course I would love to know your suggestions. A case could be made for a tie.

    [Any list of candidates would have to include Sen. Boxer (D-CA). I am tempted to include the foul-mouthed cheat Al Franken (D-MN) of my native place Minnesota. He isn’t lacking in intelligence, but one could argue from his filthy routines and degrading comments about women that he is deeply foolish.]

  11. AvantiBev says:

    How I wish that priests, nuns, bishops and lay people had attacked the underlying DISEASE (sexual revolution) rather than just protesting one of the symptoms (abortion). The perfect storm of Sexual Revolution meets Great Society Programs back in the 60’s began the destruction first of the Black family and now coupled with other “symptoms” such as hooking up, shacking up and divorce we have the destruction of ALL of society’s basic building blocks: the family. How they needed to preach JOHN 4: 1-23 to every young woman of the past 4 decades!

    Worried about violence and poverty as part of your Social Justice mission? Look no farther than the 70% bastardy rate in Black America and the overall bastardy rate of 42% ! Yep, I used the correct word for it rather than “out of wedlock” because it IS ugly and doesnt’ deserve pretty little euphemisms. It ROTS our moral fabric. See MALACHI.

    It has created a cycle of dependency and irresponsibility. It leaves us with confused young men prone either to violent gangs or effeminate behavior. It generates young girls looking for love in all the wrong places and then like Obama’s fictional “Julia” expecting tax paying strangers and bureaucratic programs to do the child rearing wrought by their slutty behavior with boys who like Peter Pan and Hugh Hefner don’t want to grow up and be MEN. Child rearing was intended by God for men and women committed to each other.

    We will go insolvent shortly and then the social injustice and misery will finally be 100%. After WWI, fatherless males gave us Hitler and today’s fatherless males and females will soon give us a similar “dear leader”.

    Meaningless, soul killing hook ups, abortion, divorce and its attendant polygamy on the intallment plan, kids hungry for the food and more importantly hungry for the love/discipline a father provides —all these symptoms of this horrid disease misnamed “Sexual Liberation”. Yet, we expect to live in peace and prosperity if we just keep old tax paying Bev working a little longer, a little harder to fund yet another Social Justice program???

  12. AvantiBev says:

    I apologize for my constant rants on marriage and fatherhood. This month will mark my 17th anniversary working for this law firm which specializes in “Family Law”. I get to see things such as paternity and child support actions, divorces, spousal spying and abuse, child neglect, etc on a DAILY basis and wonder how my beloved country can survive this all out Satanic assault on families?

    And as an Italo American very proud of her heritage, I am enraged that 700 + gangtser movies and countless Italo-denigrating TV programs have made the term, “the family”, into a synonym for criminality. The CRIME is the destruction. ooops. I feel another rant coming on. Got to get my own blog started.

  13. Michelle F says:

    I think we got a sneak peek at Biden’s problem with the Church at the beginning of the Rabbinical Assembly. It wasn’t mentioned above, but during his introduction to the audience, when the rabbi who was introducing him mentioned how long Biden was in the senate, Biden made the sign of the Cross as a joke. It was also received by his audience as a joke; they laughed.

    The article with a video clip are on ABC News’ website:

    http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/joe-biden-makes-sign-of-the-cross-in-front-of-rabbis/

    I don’t fault the audience for laughing – at least not too much – but Biden shouldn’t be using our religious practices as a vehicle for a joke. The fact that he did makes me think that he takes all of it (Catholicism) as a joke.

  14. Johnno says:

    We should make it a point that a number of us attend any one of his meetings/lectures, and the moment he says something stupid, start laughing out really really loud to the point he can’t continue on and we are asked to leave. He needs to be ridiculed for his own good.

  15. Supertradmum says:

    Stupidity does not excuse him for being a very bad Catholic. Even stupid people can be humble and obedient.

  16. Amazing to me that Barack Obama chose this apostate fool [I don’t think that Biden has apostacized.] who says the most outlandish and stupid things to be his vice president. I guess that means Barack Obama shares in his stupidity.

  17. wmeyer says:

    How can it be amazing, when Obama has made so many stunningly poor choices? Van Jones? Eric Holder? Timothy Geithner? Kathleen Sebelius? Seems pretty consistent to me.

  18. Supertradmum says:

    It is on the news here in England that Obama just came out for same sex marriage…am texting

  19. wmeyer says:

    Obama did endorse same sex marriage. Then he said it should be up to the states. But as he has challenged states which vote not to permit same sex marriage, I suppose the message really is “states should approve same sex marriage, before we force them.”

  20. Denis says:

    I’m sure that there will be a clear statement of condemnation from the archdiocese very soon. Any day now.

  21. Martial Artist says:

    Dear Father Z,

    I do believe that your priest friend is incorrect in his assessment.

    With respect to the {gentle sounds of involuntary shuddering at the thought of my having verbally to specify the individual in question} Vice President: If brains were Torpex, he would be incapable of blowing his own nose!

    Pax et bonum
    Keith Töpfer
    ___________
    P.S., If you aren’t familiar with Torpex, Google will inform you.

  22. HeatherPA says:

    “Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn’t misuse it.” -Blessed John Paul II

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