For one cardinal, Joe Biden’s not Catholic enough

In a new interview, Cardinal Gerhard Muller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — what was in more robust times known as the Roman Catholic Inquisition — has made a quite extraordinary statement about the U.S. and President Joe Biden.

“Now the U.S., with its conglomerated political, media and economic power,” he says, “stands at the head of the most subtly brutal campaign to de-Christianize western culture in the last 100 years.”

That century, of course, included the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and numerous other murderous dictators, the slaughter of millions of innocent people, and attempts as genocide. It also included the rape of countless children by clergy in the cardinal’s own church, and the elaborate and long-term attempt by that church to deny and disguise those hideous crimes.

So, the statement is one of quite breathtaking insensitivity, inaccuracy, and, in fact, sheer cruelty. I, for one, am deeply critical of the U.S. and many of its values, but modesty and accuracy are vital in all this.

Honesty too. Because the reason for the statement seems to be that Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, believes in equal marriage and, most significant in this case, women’s rights to control their own bodies. In other words, he refuses to condemn abortion.

Muller continues, “Anyone who relativizes the clear acknowledgment of the sacredness of every human life with tactical games, sophistries and window dressing because of political preferences, publicly opposes the Catholic faith.”

Here, as they say, we go again. Abortion isn’t a linear or facile issue, but the monomania some Christians exhibit around it goes to the heart of a deeper crisis in the modern church. Because the genuine vocation of Christian believers should be based on Jesus’s central teachings: which are to love God, and to love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus never mentions abortion, and nor is it condemned in the entire Bible, which as you might know is a fairly long book!

The few references to the womb in scripture are in fact poetic descriptions of the extraordinary, even unique status of a handful of people, not an explanation of biology. Indeed, the Bible actually calls for abortion in the case of a woman who commits adultery. Scripture can be taken seriously or literally, not both. A conservative, fundamentalist reading of the Bible leads to all sorts of problems, and can cause incalculable harm. Can, has, does.

This obsession with abortion by a minority of Christians is a fairly recent phenomenon and has allowed them to coalesce around other right-wing positions — witness the adoration of Donald Trump by the anti-choice community. It’s so much easier to scream about the fetus than to struggle for a fair economy, human rights, the dignity of refugees, the need for social housing, for peace and justice in the Middle East, and so on.

But there’s something else, something more directly hypocritical. If someone genuinely did want abortion rates to decline they’d demand free contraception, socialized medicine, universal daycare, modern sex education in schools, female empowerment, an end to poverty, and enforced paternal support payments, to name just a few.

Anti-abortion activists not only ignore these subjects, they’re downright opposed to contraception and sex education, and see public daycare as a threat. In the U.S., the movement is usually against socialized health-care, certainly not supportive of gender equality, and — by the way — often favours the death penalty.

It’s difficult not to conclude that this is all about power and patriarchy rather than life and love, and is a way to embrace a sense of soft self-martyrdom, to retreat into the comfortable bunker of righteousness, and be able to point at those horrible people out there who just don’t understand.

As for Muller, he should hang his head in shame, and apologize for such irresponsible hyperbole. Joe Biden is far from perfect, but after four years of leadership by a sadistic narcissist, the man is a glorious release and relief, and has at last offered some hope to his country and to the world.

The thing is, of course, that Donald Trump was an anti-abortion sadistic narcissist and that makes all of the difference. Doesn’t it, your eminence.