WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The archbishop of Washington, D.C., Cardinal Wilton Gregory, has said President Joe Biden is “very sincere about his faith,” despite Biden’s very public rejection of Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life and human sexuality, among other things. Biden has called for universal “access” to abortion up to birth throughout the country and, in an Easter Sunday scandal, declared the day of Christ’s Resurrection the national “transgender visibility day” in rejection of Catholic doctrine on sexuality.
READ: Biden denies proclaiming Easter Sunday ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’ after major backlash
In an Easter Sunday interview with CBS News program “Face the Nation,” Cardinal Gregory appeared on a panel with female Episcopal “bishop” of Washington Mariann Budde.
Asked about Biden’s touted Catholicism, Gregory called it “sincere,” even while acknowledging Biden’s rejection of essential Catholic doctrines, implying that one can still be a “sincere” Catholic in good standing without accepting all the Church’s teachings in their integrity.
Referencing Biden’s rejection of Catholic doctrine, the cardinal did admit that “like a number of Catholics, he picks and chooses dimensions of the faith to highlight while ignoring or even contradicting other parts.”
“There is a phrase that we have used in the past, a ‘cafeteria Catholic,’ [in which] you choose that which is attractive and dismiss that which is challenging,” Gregory continued. “I would say there are things, especially in terms of the life issues, there are things that he chooses to ignore.”
“The issues of life begin at the very beginning. And they conclude at natural death,” he said. “And you can’t pick and choose. You’re either one who respects life in all of its dimensions, or you have to step aside and say, ‘I’m not pro-life.’”
Commenting on Biden’s cafeteria Catholicism, Budde praised it, falsely identifying such rejection of Catholic doctrine as a case of what she said St. Thomas Aquinas would call “allow[ing] your conscience to guide you.”
The episcopal leader went on to defend Biden’s aggressive pro-abortion stance as merely a refusal to “impose” his beliefs on the country, as though the protection of human life were a mere matter of faith, and as though one can “believe” that life is sacred without protecting it, a belief that Biden has clearly shown he in no way accepts, vowing in his State of the Union Address this year to make Roe v. Wade “the law of the land” should Congress send him pro-abortion legislation.
READ: Biden reiterates support for Roe v. Wade, radical LGBT policies during State of the Union
Budde herself openly acknowledged her own support of abortion at the early stages of life, euphemistically calling the murder of the unborn “respect for a woman’s right to choose.”
Gregory refrained from calling out the episcopal female “bishop” for her pro-abortion stance and said of the president’s Mass attendance, “He does attend Church regularly with great devotion… but he uses the hot-button issues as a political tool,” failing to acknowledge the scandal and grave sacrilege committed by an openly pro-abortion politician receiving Holy Communion.
Notably, the cardinal himself has both refused to deny Biden Holy Communion, which is required by the Church’s canon law, and has refused to excommunicate Biden for the grave scandal caused his public denial of Catholic teachings as well as his persecution of Catholics throughout the tenure of his presidency. Such refusal on the part of the cardinal archbishop of Washington comes despite the fact that Gregory acknowledges Biden’s rejection of Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life and human sexuality.
In light of the grave scandal of a Catholic president vowing to make universal “access” to abortion the law of the land, LifeSiteNews has published a petition to the American bishops to excommunicate the “abortion president,” as Biden has been dubbed by pro-life members of the U.S. Congress.
READ: Urge U.S. Bishops to excommunicate Joe Biden for scandalously promoting abortion
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former apostolic nuncio to the United States, following Biden’s scandalous proclamation of March 31 as “transgender visibility day,” this week also called on all American bishops and priests to acknowledge that “Joe Biden has incurred latæ sententiæ [automatic] excommunication, and as such must be expelled from the churches and not admitted to Communion.” In a statement on the issue, Archbishop Viganò declared,
The unprecedented and scandalous proclamation of March 31 as “Transgender Visibility Day” by self-styled U.S. President Joe Biden – who dares to declare himself a Catholic – constitutes a most serious offense to God and to millions of Catholics and Christians in America and around the world, before which it is impossible not to react with due firmness.
I urge American citizens and their representatives in government to recognize the total unworthiness of Joe Biden to hold an institutional position, which it is well known that he used fraudulent and manipulative action to achieve in the 2020 presidential election. I ask my brethren in the episcopate and priests to recognize that Joe Biden has incurred latæ sententiæ excommunication, and as such must be expelled from the churches and not admitted to Communion. I call on Catholics and all Christians to pray that, on this solemn Easter Day, the Risen Lord will have mercy on the United States of America and put an end to the onslaught of the infernal forces unleashed today more than ever before.
Former President Donald Trump also condemned the White House for the “blasphemous” transgender day, calling on Biden to apologize to Catholics and other Christians for his “years-long assault on the Christian faith.”
Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign national press secretary, wrote in a statement last Saturday, “It is appalling and insulting that Joe Biden’s White House prohibited children from submitting religious egg designs for their Easter Art Event, and formally proclaimed Easter Sunday as ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ Sadly, these are just two more examples of the Biden Administration’s years-long assault on the Christian faith. We call on Joe Biden’s failing campaign and White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and [other] Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only — the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
In 2005, when the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church was completed, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the necessity of Catholics to accept the whole of the Catholic faith. He insisted, “Dear brothers and sisters how necessary it is today at the dawn of the third millennium for the entire Catholic community to proclaim, teach and witness to the entire truth of Catholic faith, doctrine and morals in a unanimous and harmonious manner!”
Pope St. John Paul II also stressed the need for Catholics to maintain the fullness of the Church’s teachings and not pick and choose the teachings as they saw fit. Speaking to the bishops of the United States at Queen of Angels Seminary in Los Angeles on September 16, 1987, Pope John Paul II stated:
It is sometimes reported that a large number of Catholics today do not adhere to the teaching of the Catholic Church on a number of questions, notably sexual and conjugal morality, divorce and remarriage. Some are reported as not accepting the clear position on abortion. It has to be noted that there is a tendency on the part of some Catholics to be selective in their adherence to the Church’s moral teaching. It is sometimes claimed that dissent from the magisterium is totally compatible with being a “good Catholic,” and poses no obstacle to the reception of the Sacraments. This is a grave error that challenges the teaching of the Bishops in the United States and elsewhere.
Similarly, Pope Leo XIII, in Satis Cognitum, declared the impossibility of Catholics picking and choosing what teachings of the Church they accept or what they do not, in the manner of a “cafeteria Catholic.” He wrote,
The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavor than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence, she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine: they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still, who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. “There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition”.
The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should anyone give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. “No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic” (S. Augustinus, n. 88).
READ: ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’ declaration on Easter was a deliberate attack on Christianity