Archbishop slams Biden as a 'cafeteria Catholic' who twists his faith for 'political advantage'

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A Roman Catholic archbishop laid into President Joe Biden on Easter Sunday — a holy day the nominally Catholic Democrat alternatively recognized as the "Transgender Day of Visibility."

According to Cardinal Wilton Gregory of the Archdiocese of Washington, Biden is a "cafeteria Catholic" whose political agenda appears to dictate what well-defined dogmas and moral teachings he'll ultimately accept.

Host Ed O'Keefe suggested to his guests, Cardinal Gregory and left-leaning Episcopalian Bishop Mariann Budde, that politics and religion have become especially intertwined in recent years. He then pressed the clerics on "how the two major candidates we have running for president invoke Christianity."

Cardinal Gregory first suggested that politics and religion have always had a "strange affiliation, but it's switched now. Whereas faith used to be the voice, the moral voice, that political people — whether they adhered to everything — they would turn to find the moral compass with faith."

"I think in some cases it's the political world that's beginning to set or claiming to set the moral voice," continued Gregory. "We've switched position. There is a great need, I believe, to place faith in its proper position, which is not necessarily antagonistic to the political arena, but to seize the responsibility of being that guiding principle, that moral light, for our people to turn to."

After Budde took thinly veiled potshots at former President Donald Trump, whom O'Keefe noted earlier had recently taken to selling Bibles, the host broached the matter of the president's religiosity.

"Do you get a sense that [Biden's] regular attendance and adherence to the faith resonates with American Catholics?" asked O'Keefe.

"I would say that he's very sincere about his faith, but like a number of Catholics, he picks and chooses dimensions of the faith to highlight while ignoring or even contradicting other parts," said Gregory. "There is a phrase that we have used in the past, a 'cafeteria Catholic.' You choose that which is attractive and dismiss that which is challenging."

Biden has claimed as recently as February that he is a "practicing Catholic."

Cardinal Gregory further suggested that "there are things, especially in terms of life issues, there are things that [Biden] chooses to ignore, or he uses the current situation as a political pawn rather than saying, 'Look, my church believes this, I'm a good Catholic, I would like to believe this.' Rather than to twist and turn some dimensions of the faith as a political advantage."

Biden's position on abortion, gender ideology, and homosexual unions puts him at odds with Catholic teaching and the church.

Concerning abortion, the church in which Biden claims membership holds that abortion is a grave moral sin and that political leaders have a responsibility to protect the unborn.

"The Catechism of the Catholic Church" clearly states:

  • "Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception" (2270);
  • "Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law" (2271);
  • "Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life" (2272); and
  • "The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin" (2273).

Cardinal Raymond Burke, a canon lawyer and former prefect of the church's highest court, stressed in 2020 that Biden and other leaders who supported abortion should not receive communion, reported the Catholic News Agency.

Burke said that Biden "is not a Catholic in good standing and he should not approach to receive Holy Communion."

"This is not a political statement," continued Burke. "I don't intend to get involved in recommending any candidate for office, but simply to state that a Catholic may not support abortion in any shape or form because it is one of the most grievous sins against human life and has always been considered to be intrinsically evil and therefore to in any way support act is a mortal sin."

Archbishop Charles Chaput, who ran the Archdiocese of Philadelphia until 2020, similarly suggested in 2022 that Biden was "not in communion with the Catholic faith" and warned that "any priest who now provides Communion to the president participates in his hypocrisy."

Biden has not only stood at odds with the church over his support of the slaughter of the unborn. Biden has also been recognized by leftists as a "champion" for the LGBT agenda, which similarly runs afoul of church teaching.

In March 2023, Pope Francis stressed that the gender ideology Biden advances is "one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations" today.

"Why is it dangerous? Because it blurs differences and the value of men and women," said the Roman pontiff. "The question of gender is diluting the differences and making the world the same, all dull, all alike, and that is contrary to the human vocation."

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also underscored last year that so-called "gender-affirming care" is harmful.

"Any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harms the human person," wrote the bishops in a March 20 doctrinal note titled, "On the Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body."

The Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education made clear in 2019 that there "is a need to reaffirm the metaphysical roots of sexual difference, as an anthropological refutation of attempts to negate the male-female duality of human nature, from which the family is generated. The denial of this duality not only erases the vision of human beings as the fruit of an act of creation but creates the idea of the human person as a sort of abstraction who 'chooses for himself what his nature is to be ...'"

Despite efforts by LGBT activists inside and outside the Catholic church — including James Martin — to distort the institution's teaching, Pope Francis has underscored that while not a crime, homosexuality is a "sin." The church maintains that homosexual "marriage" remains out of the question.

Biden nevertheless ratified the so-called Respect for Marriage Act.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops underscored in a Nov. 23, 2022, letter that the act's "rejection of timeless truths about marriage is evident on its face and in its purpose."

For his apparent refusal to accept the Catholic Church's guidance on these moral issues, various Church officials have indicated that Biden has effectively become an apostate.

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British High Court orders death of baby girl after preventing her parents from taking her to Italy for treatment

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Britain's High Court effectively executed a sick 8-month-old girl early Monday morning.

Dean Gregory and Claire Staniforth of Derbyshire fought desperately in recent weeks to see that their daughter, Indi Gregory, would continue receiving treatment for her mitochondrial disorder or potentially undergo experimental treatment abroad so that they could spend more time with her.

Hope came in the form of support from Italy, not just from the Vatican but from the government, which gave Gregory citizenship and paved the way for her to be treated at the Vatican's Bambino Gesu Children's Hospital in Rome.

Despite international pressure, a fully comped alternative, and the parents' desperate pleas, England's High Court determined that Gregory would be better off dead sooner rather than later.

— (@)

Indi Gregory was born on February 24 with a rare degenerative mitochondrial disease that saps energy.

The staff at Queen's Medical Center in Nottingham recently decided to give up on helping the girl and sought to take her off life support, noting that death was in the girl's best interests, reported the BBC.

High Court Justice Robert Peel granted the medical center's application to stop life support in October, suggesting that despite the parents' moving "belief in Indi's resilience, courage, and fortitude," the medical evidence justifying termination was "unanimous and clear."

Peel's ruling cleared the way for the physicians' plan to wean the girl off of intubation and let her die, "at home or at a hospice."

Gregory's parents were evidently unwilling to let a London judge and some masked strangers determine the fate of their daughter.

"The doctors painted a terribly bleak and negative picture of Indi's condition during court proceedings," said the girl's father. "Indi can definitely experience happiness. She cries like a normal baby. ... We know she is disabled, but you don't just let disabled people die. We just want to give her a chance."

With the backing of the British advocacy group Christian Concern, Gregory and Staniforth made repeated attempts to have their little girl moved to a hospital that might actually try to keep her alive. The parents attempted to persuade Court of Appeal judges in London as well as judges at the European Court of Human Rights in France to overturn the fatal decision, reported the Telegraph.

Italy ultimately intervened, granting Gregory citizenship on Nov. 6 and agreeing to cover the cost of Indi's medical treatment at the Vatican's pediatric hospital. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni pledged to do what she could to "defend her life" and pressured Britain's lord chancellor to help facilitate the girl's transfer to Rome.

Simone Pillon, a lawyer and former senator who helped secure a spot for Indi Gregory at the Vatican hospital, said in a statement, "A place is ready and waiting for Indi at a leading paediatric hospital, which will be funded by the Italian government. I hope there will be no further delay in the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust cooperating with the specialist Air Ambulance Service and to work with the family rather than cruelly denying them this chance."

On Thursday, the girl's Italian guardian, the consul in Manchester, Matteo Corradini, reportedly made a plea to the U.K. High Court, calling on Justice Robert Peel to cede the case to him under Article Article 9§2 of the 1996 Hague Convention.

The next day, the High Court ruled that the Italian efforts to save the child from the British health care system were "wholly misconceived" and that the baby's life support had to be removed "immediately," reported the Catholic News Agency.

Dean Gregory responded to the ruling, saying, "Claire and I are again disgusted by another one-sided decision from the judges and the Trust. The whole world is watching and is shocked at how we have been treated."

"This feels like the latest kick in the teeth, and we will not give up fighting for our daughter's chance to live until the end," added Gregory.

Justices Peter Jackson, Eleanor King, and Andrew Moylan all denied the distraught parents the ability to appeal the ruling, thereby sealing Indi Gregory's fate.

On Sunday, Christian Concern indicated that the baby had been transferred from Queen's Medical Care Center to a hospice, apparently with a security escort and police presence.

Indi had been moved to a hospice as opposed to home because Justice Peel reneged on his earlier order last Wednesday.

"Indi's life ended at 01:45. Claire and I are angry, heartbroken and ashamed," said Dean Gregory. "The NHS and the courts not only took away her chance to live a longer life, but they also took away Indi's dignity to pass away in the family home where she belonged."

"They did succeed in taking Indi's body and dignity, but they can never take her soul. They tried to get rid of Indi without anybody knowing, but we made sure she would be remembered forever. I knew she was special from the day she was born," added Gregory.

The grieving father indicated that Indi ultimately passed in her mother's arms.

While not religious, Dean Gregory had Indi baptized in September, telling an Italian newspaper, "When I was in court, I felt as if hell pulled at me."

"I thought that if hell exists, then heaven must exist too," said the father, noting he wanted his daughter to go to heaven.

Parents ‘heartbroken’ as baby Indi Gregory dies following failed legal battleyoutu.be

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HERO: Louisville police officer shows up for roll call one day after being shot in riot

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