Tyler O'Neil for PJMedia
Is Joe Biden Really a 'Practicing Catholic?' CNN Doesn't Want You to Ask
CNN apparently regards the sincerity of Joe Biden’s professed Catholicism as a matter of faith. When a Daily Caller reporter reached out to ask about Biden’s aggressive support for abortion and the incident when a priest denied Biden communion over the issue, CNN’s head of strategic communications responded by attempting to shame the Daily Caller for heresy.
Matt Dornic, the CNN communications head, tweeted a screenshot of the email with the statement, “This is really gross.”
The Daily Caller reporter had sent Dornic an email with the subject line “Press Inquiry.”
“Reaching out to see if CNN could comment on a CNN fact checker calling Joe Biden a ‘practicing Catholic,’ though Biden is pro-abortion, supports expansion of abortion access, and has been denied Holy Communion by a Catholic priest,” the Daily Caller reporter wrote.
Dornic appears to consider it “really gross” to question the sincerity of Biden’s professed Catholic faith, even though there are good reasons to do so.
The presumptive Democratic nominee does not just support abortion — he supports a wide array of extremely radical policies promoting the killing of unborn babies in the womb. According to his campaign website, Biden supports repealing the Hyde Amendment (which protects pro-life taxpayers from funding a practice they consider to be murder), rescinding the Mexico City Policy (which prevents abortion funding overseas), striking down state limits on abortion, and restoring federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
Biden has also bragged about his character assassination of Robert Bork, the Supreme Court nominee whose last name became a verb thanks to the vitriol he endured. The former vice president insisted that he protected Roe v. Wade (1973) by defeating Bork.
Yet Biden also supports restoring the Obamacare contraception mandate that forced Catholic organizations to pay for forms of contraception that cause abortion in some cases. The Little Sisters of the Poor fought this mandate all the way up to the Supreme Court — twice! The latest Supreme Court decision ruled that the Trump administration could legally withdraw the mandate, but it did not bar future administrations from imposing the rule that so egregiously violated the religious freedom of a group of Catholic nuns.
Hours after the Little Sisters won the temporary reprieve at the Supreme Court, Biden announced that he would violate their religious freedom yet again. While Biden reportedly fought for a broader exemption to the original Obamacare contraception mandate in 2011, he seems to have left any such moderation behind.
While reporters should take a candidate at his or her word when it comes to matters of religious affiliation, Biden’s extreme positions on abortion and his opposition to religious freedom for members of his own faith raise serious questions about what kind of “practicing Catholic” he may be. Biden’s flagrant opposition to his own church on the issue of abortion and his shameful advocacy against the Little Sisters of the Poor raise questions about the sincerity of his profession of Catholicism.
To be fair, Joe Biden has been confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church. He does attend services and he has not been excommunicated. Regardless of his positions on abortion and religious freedom, he is a “practicing Catholic.”
CNN could have responded with this answer. Instead, Dornic tried to shame the Daily Caller.
Ethan Barton, editor in chief at the Daily Caller, called Dornic out. He responded to the CNN staffer’s tweet with this simple message: “This is really unprofessional.”
