The National Catholic Register warned this weekend Joe Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris as running mate may hurt his appeal with religious voters due to her “aggressive pro-abortion and anti-religious freedom record.”
In her August 15 essay, Register staff writer Lauretta Brown notes that Harris’s stance on a number of issues directly collides with Catholic teaching and thus could “spell trouble for his efforts to appeal to religious voters.”
As Breitbart News has reported, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has called out Sen. Harris as an “openly anti-Catholic bigot” while Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, has warned that Biden’s running mate has a “Catholic problem.”
Harris’s anti-Catholicism was on full display in 2018, when she grilled U.S. District Court nominee Brian Buescher over his embrace of Catholic teaching on abortion and gay marriage during his confirmation hearings.
As Michael Gerson wrote in an op-ed last Friday in the Washington Post, Harris suggested Buescher’s membership in the Knights of Columbus was “disqualifying for the federal bench.”
“Harris was effectively treating membership in a distinctly Catholic organization as if it were allegiance to a hate group,” Gerson wrote.
In her essay, Ms. Brown notes Sen. Harris currently identifies as a Baptist but her presumptive Christianity has not stopped her from supporting taxpayer-funded abortion up through birth as a vocal advocate for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment ban on taxpayer funding of abortion.
The Catholic Church teaches “the moral evil of every procured abortion” and the U.S. Bishops reiterated last fall that opposition to abortion remains their “preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself,” Brown observes.
She also notes that Harris has been a long-standing ally of abortion giant Planned Parenthood and met with Planned Parenthood representatives in 2015 just before raiding the home of investigative journalist David Daleiden, who had released undercover videos showing that Planned Parenthood trafficked in fetal organs.
Harris has also sought to roll back provisions for conscience objection in the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), Brown adds.
While Biden has tried to position himself as a moderate, the selection of Harris seems intended to broaden his appeal with more radical elements of the Democrat Party, as Harris has come out in favor of guaranteed income and the Green New Deal, Brown writes.
None of this is going to help Mr. Biden woo Catholics or any serious religious believers.
Ashley McGuire, senior fellow with the Catholic Association, reportedly told the Register that “Kamala Harris has come to be a ringleader of the anti-Catholic bullying that increasingly defines the Democratic Party.”
“It is equally disappointing to see Joe Biden tout his Catholic faith while picking as his running mate someone who has made her anti-Catholic bona fides clear,” she said.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.