Bishop Barron came out with a statement today with a less than enlightening comparison of Joe Biden to Abraham Lincoln.
"...Can you see why so many Catholics, including your humble scribe, find the President’s statements and actions in regard to abortion policy so repellent? The man claims that he objects to abortion, that he considers it morally wrong, and yet, time and time again, in the most straightforward, even strenuous manner, he strives, by word and deed, to make it more available, more acceptable, more legally defended. "In the nineteenth century, the viscerally anti-slavery Abraham Lincoln did not pursue the extreme anti-slavery policy advocated by the abolitionists; rather, he took a more moderate position, endeavoring to hem slavery in, to limit its spread, in the hopes that he was setting it on course for extinction. This was, for the sixteenth president, a matter of prudential political judgment. "If our current president, convinced as he claims to be that abortion is wrong, were to take steps in the direction of curtailing the practice, or if he could have found positive words to say about the Dobbs decision that at least gives individual states the right to restrict abortion, I might see him in the mold of Lincoln. But instead, he presses forward, advocating the most radical pro-abortion policy imaginable, seeking to codify into law the Roe v. Wade and Casey decisions that essentially made abortion up to the moment of birth a matter of legal impunity in our country.
And then Bishop Barron comes up with this wacky conclusion:
"President Biden speaks often of his Catholic faith, attends Mass regularly, and prays the Rosary. I have absolutely no reason to doubt the sincerity of his Catholicism. But I am sorry to say that, in regard to the most pressing moral issue of our time, he stands athwart both right reason and the explicit teaching of his Church." [1]
So, please, will anyone explain to me how Bishop Barron can say he has no reason to doubt the sincerity of Biden's Catholicity, while acknowledging at the same time that Biden explicitly rejects Catholic teaching?
[1] https://www.cal-catholic.com/bishop-barron-compares-biden-to-lincoln/