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NEW YORK, February 16, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — An acclaimed Catholic author and essayist has called upon Joe Biden to call time on attacks by Big Tech and the mainstream media on ordinary believing Catholics.
In her second open letter to Biden, published in Newsweek, Mary Eberstadt listed several examples of recent censorship and defamation of Catholics or Catholic institutions because they express the doctrines of their faith, and stated:
In her first open letter to Biden, Eberstadt asked Biden to reach out to the March for Life in January, as a way of reassuring those who did not vote for him. Biden did not do this, but rather promoted abortion with some of his first executive orders. Nevertheless, Eberstadt hopes that the politician, who was baptized and professes to be a Catholic, will do something to protect his fellow Catholic Americans from further abuse.
“As the first president with a photo of Pope Francis in his office, you should be the last to ignore what that same pontiff has called 'the challenge posed by legislators who, in the name of some badly interpreted principle of tolerance, end up preventing citizens from freely expressing and practicing their own religious convictions in a peaceful and legitimate way’,” she concluded.
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, author and founder of the Ruth Institute, told LifeSiteNews via email that she was “grateful” for Eberstadt’s intervention.
“I am grateful that Mary Eberstadt catalogued in one place all the problems a Biden Administration is likely to pose for faithful Catholics,” Morse said.
The foundress of the Ruth Institute observed that Eberstadt wrote the letter in “a way that takes Biden's self-identification as Catholic at face value.” Morse is not inclined to do that.
“I seriously doubt that he cares about the harm his administration will impose on the Little Sisters of the Poor and David Daleiden,” she said.
“Biden is a self-described Catholic who is in active dissent from the Magisterium on every major contentious issue,” she continued.
Morse said that there is a “bigger problem” than the censorship and deplatforming of Catholics by non-believers: the activities of dissenting Catholics.
“The bigger problem that Eberstadt did not mention is that the government of the United States of America is now in the hands of dissenting Catholics,” she stated.
“This unprecedented situation will heighten the tensions within the Catholic Church, and cause damage far beyond that which a purely secular administration could cause.”
Carl Olson, the editor of Catholic World Report, told LifeSiteNews that he “certainly” agreed with Eberstadt but also that he believes “they will have no effect at all on President Biden.”
“He’s been in the public eye since the early 1970s, and his public record reveals, again and again, a man who is willing to say nearly anything (some of it plagiarized or blatantly false) to climb the political ladder,” the CWR editor said via email.
“It’s ironic, I suppose, that Eberstadt calls on Biden to use 'the bully pulpit' of the Presidency to push back against the anti-Christian haters and bigots, as Biden himself has often used his various positions of power to bully and attack others,” he continued.
“Robert Bork is a prime example of this [bullying], among others.”
Olson thinks that appealing to Biden as a fellow Catholic is “a pointless exercise, except to expose just how contrary Biden’s actions and stances so often are to clear Catholic teaching about sexuality, marriage, life, and related matters.”
“Biden’s many anti-life initiatives during his first weeks in office tell us what we need to know about his approach and priorities,” he added.
“And they are rarely, if ever, pro-Catholic. I don’t expect him to do much, if anything, to push back against the online hectoring, bullying, and bigotry.”