Why Biden’s Pitch to Catholics Will Fall Flat

In recent presidential elections, few indicators have predicted the winner of the White House more accurately and consistently than the national Catholic vote. Less than six months out from Election Day, Joe Biden is once again poised to boast about his supposedly “devout” Catholic faith in an attempt to win support from swing state Catholic voters.

But for a growing number of reasons, Biden’s outreach to American Catholics is likely to miss the mark—and could instead only succeed in rallying Catholic support for former President Donald Trump.

Throughout his half-century-long political career, Biden has vigorously attempted to paint himself as upstanding practicing Catholic committed to the precepts of the faith. Over the course of his presidency, however, this narrative (never all that convincing to begin with) has completely crumbled, with Catholic bishops and other members of the Catholic hierarchy even publicly criticizing Biden for his adoption of policies and rhetoric that flagrantly contradict the Church’s core teachings and doctrines.

Perhaps most notably, Biden has embraced the Democrat Party’s radical position of abortion-on-demand, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church outlines as “gravely contrary to the moral law.” Biden has also openly supported far-left gender ideology, which the Vatican recently denounced in a wide-ranging document as amounting to “grave violations of human dignity.”

During his time as vice president in the Obama administration, Biden also backed attempts to force Catholic nuns to violate their consciences by mandating that the institutions they run provide birth control, and has since routinely demonstrated hostility towards religious freedom and traditional expressions of faith.

One of the organizations targeted by the left with backing from Biden and many Democrat attorneys general was the Little Sisters of the Poor. The individual who led that particular assault was none other than current Biden Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. As Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow for the Catholic Association, observed, Becerra “spent years tormenting the Little Sisters of the Poor in court, trying to force them to pay for things like abortion pills against their consciences.”

As president, Biden’s Department of Justice has also repeatedly targeted traditionally-minded Catholics (whom the FBI smeared as “possible domestic terrorists”) and persecuted pro-life activists.

In response to Biden’s hostility toward Catholic believers, Biden’s own archbishop Wilton Cardinal Gregory—the archbishop of Washington, D.C. who is often regarded for his leftist political slant—scolded him on national television as a “cafeteria Catholic,” or a Catholic who selectively picks which doctrines to adhere to while conveniently discarding those deemed personally unpalatable.

Just weeks later, Bishop Robert Gruss of Saginaw, Michigan lambasted Biden as a “stupid” Catholic “who is not living the life Jesus wants for him.”

“I don’t have any anger toward the president. I feel sorry for him. I’m not angry at him, he’s just stupid,” Gruss said, insisting Biden “doesn’t understand the Catholic faith.”

Even Pope Francis—whom the media has long misleadingly attempted to frame as a liberal Catholic hero—has increasingly challenged many of Biden’s positions. In a symposium earlier this year, for instance, the Pope condemned gender ideology as the “ugliest danger” of our time, lamenting attempts to extinguish all natural distinctions between men and women as being made in the image and likeness of God. In April, the Vatican released Dignitas Infinita, a document criticizing the practices of transgender surgery and surrogacy while condemning gender ideology as part of an “ideological colonization” that must be “rejected.”

“Only by acknowledging and accepting this difference in reciprocity [between men and women] can each person fully discover themselves, their dignity, and their identity,” the document states.

Furthermore, in 2022, the Pope derided Biden’s support for abortion as an “incoherence”—reinforcing the mounting conflict between Biden and the faith he professes to be the “bedrock foundation of [his] life.”

Church leaders have not been the only Catholics to express concern about Biden’s embrace of extreme left-wing social and cultural views. By every account, Catholic voters are also rejecting Biden’s espousal of far-left ideas at the expense of his devotion to upholding the teachings of the Church.

A recent Pew Research poll found that 55 percent of Catholics now support or are leaning toward Donald Trump in his looming November matchup against Biden. In 2020, by contrast, Trump led Biden by only a narrow 50 percent to 49 percent margin. Pew Research polling data also finds that Biden is leading with Hispanic Catholics by a mere two-point margin—a far cry from his 67 percent to 26 percent point advantage with the same demographic in 2020.

Moreover, an overwhelming majority of Americans reject Biden’s presentation of himself as a “devout” Catholic. According to Pew Research, only 13 percent of Americans believe Biden is “very religious,” while 44 percent say he is “not religious at all” or “not too religious.”

Also notable is the fact that Catholics make up a significant fraction of voters in the crucial Rust Belt swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Trump’s current lead with Catholic voters—which can still continue to grow—could very well be enough to put him over the edge in these three states and propel him to a second term in the White House this fall.

Historically, the national GOP apparatus has failed to invest the same time, resources, and energy into winning the Catholic vote as it does with other key voter blocs. But if the Republican Party were to start more aggressively campaigning on the issue of Democrats’ anti-Catholicism, the GOP could see Catholic voters joining them by even more massive margins.

If the party establishment directed any effort to earn the support of politically disaffected Catholics (particularly Hispanic Catholics in sunbelt purple states), Catholic voters could become a permanent Republican voting bloc that delivers substantial conservative victories for years to come.

Should the GOP opt to go down this path over the next six months, it could very well find itself with an unprecedented electoral majority—and at the forefront of the movement to restore Christian values and religious liberty in American life.

Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.