(Daily Caller News Foundation) — The publisher of the Eternal World Television Network tore into President Joe Biden Friday over the new president’s “complete opposition to fundamental Church teaching.”
Michael P. Warsaw, Chief Executive Officer of the EWTN Global Catholic Network and the publisher of the National Catholic Register, wrote that Biden’s first 100 days in office are ones of “disappointment” that foreshadow peril for the Catholic Church, warning that “there is an additional hazard associated with Joe Biden’s propensity for promoting radical agendas from behind a benign mask of genial faith.”
“As Joe Biden passes his 100th-day mark in office today, the early returns show how, for faithful Catholics, this period couldn’t be more disappointing,” Warsaw wrote in a National Catholic Register op-ed. “There are also signs that the next 100 days and beyond will be even more disturbing.”
“Sadly, during the second Catholic president’s brief time in the Oval Office, Biden’s policies show he intends to govern in complete opposition to fundamental Church teachings regarding human life and sexuality, despite his spokeswoman’s continual professions of the centrality of the president’s Catholic faith,” Warsaw continued.
Biden, the second Catholic in the nation’s history to become president, has frequently drawn criticism for supporting and advocating for policies which the Catholic Church explicitly opposes, such as abortion.
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will hold a national meeting in June where the bishops will decide whether to tell the president, and other high profile Catholic politicians, not to receive Holy Communion at mass if they continue to publicly advocate for abortion.
“Because President Biden is Catholic, it presents a unique problem for us,” Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas, who chairs the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities, told the AP. “It can create confusion … How can he say he’s a devout Catholic and he’s doing these things that are contrary to the Church’s teaching?”
Warsaw listed a number of progressive and pro-abortion actions that Biden has taken during his first 100 days in office, such as reversing former President Donald Trump’s ban on using abortion fetal tissue for taxpayer-funded research and taking steps to undo Trump’s Protect Life Rule, which prohibited Title X Family Planning Program funds from going to organizations that perform or promote abortions.
“Alongside his promotion of abortion, Biden has gone all-in for promotion of ‘transgenderism’ and other central elements of the ‘LGBT’ agenda,” Warsaw wrote. “As with abortion, Biden initiated his drive with an immediate executive order. It communicated that the federal government will now equate ‘gender identity’ and ‘sexual orientation’ with existing federal statutory prohibitions of sexual discrimination.”
He continued: “Along with facilitating destructive ‘gender-reassignment’ medical procedures — including for minors — and compromising women’s sports by allowing competition by biological males who identify as female, legal scholars warn that Biden’s policies will inevitably transgress against the conscience rights of Catholics and others who reject gender ideology.”
Warsaw noted that Biden’s progressive actions should not surprise anyone, since he was open about his agenda before he became president, but the EWTN publisher said that Biden’s “haste and intensity in pushing forward with these moves” is surprising.
“One major reason Biden has been able to enact an agenda that should be generating far more national controversy is the complicity of most major news outlets,” he wrote. “In contrast to their reflexive opposition to almost everything the Trump administration undertook, the White House press corps has expressed little criticism of Biden’s actions to date.”
Catholics have a “double responsibility at this political moment” to highlight how Biden’s policies are “harming all Americans,” Warsaw wrote.
“We also need to highlight how they are undermining the Church, by making it seem that it’s possible to remain authentically Catholic while dissenting so fundamentally on such key moral issues,” he continued. “This double challenge will not be easy, but faithfulness requires both prayer and action in defense of the truths upon which our Church and our country have been founded.”
Mary Margaret Olohan
Mary Margaret Olohan is a reporter for The Daily Signal.
