Cardinal Wilton Gregory criticized President Joe Biden for being a “cafeteria Catholic,” selectively choosing which doctrines to follow. He specifically mentioned Biden’s support for abortion rights and transgender visibility as examples. Biden, the second Catholic president after John F. Kennedy, has advocated for expanded abortion rights, gay marriage, and gender-affirming care, despite opposition from the Church. Cardinal Gregory implied on Face the Nation that Biden is cherry-picking aspects of Catholicism to align with the Democratic platform.
“I would say that he’s very sincere about his faith,” the cardinal stated. “But 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,’” the U.S. prelate said, adding, “You choose that which is attractive, and dismiss that which is challenging.”
“Especially in terms of the life issues, there are things that he chooses to ignore, or he uses the current situation as a political pawn,” Gregory said of the president.
In his State of the Union address, Biden made repeated mentions of the importance of “Restoring Roe,” among other key points, without directly using the term “abortion.” The U.S. Bishops’ Conference (USCCB) issued a reprimand to Biden in 2022 for his executive order that aimed to simplify access to abortion.
According to the USCCB website, the president’s “executive order facilitating abortion” was his second such move following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
It remains “the policy of my Administration to support women’s access to reproductive healthcare services, including their ability to travel to seek abortion care in States where it is legal,” Biden wrote in his executive order. “I am directing my Administration to take further action to protect access to reproductive healthcare services and to address the crisis facing women’s health and public health more broadly.”
The president announced plans to utilize Health and Human Services (HHS) along with “the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other relevant HHS components” to assess the impact of access to reproductive health care on maternal health outcomes and other health outcomes. In reaction, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, chairman of the Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, released a statement urging the president and all elected officials to enhance assistance and care for mothers and babies, instead of enabling the harm of vulnerable, voiceless human beings.
“Continued promotion of abortion takes lives and irreparably harms vulnerable pregnant mothers, their families, and society,” the archbishop asserts. “It is the wrong direction to take at a moment when we should be working to support women and to build up a culture of life.”
