Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 12, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- President-elect Joe Biden made several Cabinet appointments this week, offering insight into the possible policy priorities of his administration, and areas of concern for Catholic institutions.
As CNA reported, Biden already appointed officials to the State Department and Department of Health and Human Services, sensitive departments which could have important repercussions on religious freedom issues both at home and abroad.
Biden’s selection of Obama-era officials Antony Blinken and Linda Thomas-Greenfield as Secretary of State and Ambassador to the United Nations could signal a continuance of that administration’s diplomatic approach to prioritizing LGBT rights while deemphasizing or taking a softer approach to promoting religious freedom.
Biden’s selection of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as HHS Secretary has also raised serious questions about the possible effect his leadership could have on issues central to Catholic organizations.
Becerra was involved in two Supreme Court cases against pro-life groups and the Little Sisters of the Poor, and aggressively enforced California’s abortion coverage mandate. His office also continued fighting pro-life activist David Daleiden in court for his publishing of undercover conversations with Planned Parenthood officials.
Also this week, Biden tapped Rep. Marcia Fudge to be the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The agency oversees policy in a number of areas of concern to Catholics, including homeless shelters and fair housing practices.
Rules from that agency have drawn criticism from the U.S. bishops’ conference under both the Obama and Trump administrations.
In 2016, the Obama HUD required shelters partnering with the government to accept clients based on their gender identity and allow them equal access to facilities—through the Equal Access Rule. Under the rule, for instances, biological males identifying as female would have to be housed with women and have access to women’s bathrooms.
The bishops said that the law “impeded” the ability of Catholic shelters to place clients based on their biological sex, and would threaten the security of women in single-sex housing.
Fudge supported keeping this rule, cosigning a July letter from members of Congress to the Trump administration asking them not to change it. She was also an original cosponsor of the Equality Act, which would make sexual orientation and gender identity protected classes in a number of areas, including housing.
This past summer, the USCCB was critical of the Trump HUD’s changes to federal fair housing rules. The conference said that the rule change—supposedly taken as an attempt to deregulate policy—weakened federal oversight against racial discrimination in housing practices.
Fudge has been hailed by groups like the National Fair Housing Alliance for her previous work to ensure equitable access to affordable housing.
Biden has also announced his pick of Susan Rice to head his Domestic Policy Council. Rice served in foreign policy circles in the Obama administration as Ambassador to the United Nations and then as National Security Advisor to President Obama.
Rice made promoting LGBT rights a priority in her work in the Obama administration, and has said that she is “pro-choice.” Planned Parenthood praised her appointment as UN ambassador, saying she would help bring “equality to women and women’s health around the world.”
In an August interview with NPR, Rice discussed her relationship with her son and areas of agreement and disagreement. “We disagree on things like choice. I’m pro-choice. He’s pro-life. That’s the kind of difference that we ought to be able to respect,” she said.
In 2016, Rice addressed an audience at American University about LGBT rights. Rice said that when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, she and her husband took a photo together outside the White House which was lit in rainbow colors.
“That Friday night of the landmark Supreme Court ruling, my husband I took a photo together that we cherish, outside of the White House lit up in the colors of the rainbow to celebrate what we’ve always known—that love is love is love,” she said.
Biden’s White House chief of staff will be Ron Klain, who previously served as his chief of staff when Biden was vice president.
In a June 11, 2019 op-ed in the Washington Post, Klain warned that the Supreme Court could overrule Roe v. Wade and “impose nationwide restrictions on abortion — even in pro-choice states — in the name of ‘fetal rights.’” During the campaign, Biden pledged to enact sweeping federal protections for unlimited abortion access in a bid to preclude future state limitations being placed on the practice.
Biden also made appointments to critical health care positions during the coronavirus pandemic. He tapped Vivek Murthy to be Surgeon General after he served in the position from Dec., 2014 until the end of Obama’s presidency.
Murthy supported the Obama administration’s contraceptive mandate; at his confirmation hearing in 2014, he was asked by Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) if he believed “contraception coverage should be mandatory regardless of religion.”
Murthy did not confirm or deny that, but answered that “I respect people’s individual beliefs and religious beliefs” and that as surgeon general he would “bring the science, not just to the public, but to legislators as well” to make policy decisions.
On the subject of vaccine mandates, Murthy spoke out in 2015 of the need for parents to vaccinate their children against diseases such as measles and expressed concern about the spread of disease in areas where large religious communities refuse vaccinations.
“When you’re in a pocket with low vaccination rates, that’s when you find yourself at greater risk of getting measles,” Murthy said in an interview with CBS News.
Biden has also tapped two other Catholics as cabinet heads—Gen. Lloyd Austin who, if confirmed, would serve as the first Black Defense Secretary, and Denis McDonough, former White House chief of staff under Obama, to serve as Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
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No Texas Bishop will welcome Bishop Strickland in public now that he has been offered up to this pontificate by them in private – especially, the carpet bagger “in charge.” Half are shills for the Democrats, especially their socialist lobbying arm in Austin. The rest have cozied up to big business RINOs who killed pro-life bills for decades when none could see save God and a few faithful friends of life. The pro-life example of Bishop Strickland was a constant irritation to them. Mt. 8:20
History has seen weak Bishops gang up to do worse than banishing Bishops Torres in Puerto Rico and Strickland in Texas. This purge shall pass. Stay Catholic.
I can’t put this any other way than to say I am ashamed of how the so-called leadership of our Catholic Church operates. Truth is that these characters ought to be ashamed of themselves. But, I’ve concluded that they’re incapable of feeling shame.
retired? a nice euphemism for forced removal
Agreed.
The retirement of a bishop is a formal process in which the bishop submits a letter to the Pope short of his seventy-fifth birthday. The Pope either accepts or rejects said bishop’s retirement. To date, no such information has been forthcoming about any such letter from Bishop Strickland. This state of Limbo is an unreasonable punishment. Obviously the Holy Father does not wish to engage in a dialogue with those who disagree with him.
Then one wonders why there is a shortage of priests. Can’t be conservative and be Catholic to the higher ups. God will prevail in the long run. Stay Catholic and don’t vote democrat,please.
The “reporter” Matt McDonald is a back-bencher, and statements in this article show his bias against Bishop Strickland. It’s poorly written too.
Let’s demand clear and professional reporting from these supposedly Catholic news sources. The diocese of Tyler, now under the direction of an “administrator” bishop, has not been helpful at all in setting the record straight. But we know that’s not what they want to do. How do we know that? Because they did not inform Bishop Strickland of more than one action taken against him. And this goes back to the Vatican and whoever is actually making these decisions. It could be Bergoglio, but we don’t know for sure. It could be one or more of his henchmen “advisors”.
Kinda a “get off of my ranch” moment…they are playing butch, ironically. Even dark tragedies have their lighter nanosecond.
You can’t make it up.
And this, not any liturgical or doctrinal dispute, is by far the number one reason why our Eastern Orthodox brethren will never consider reunion with the Catholic Church under its current policies. For all the empty talk of synodality and subsidiarity, the bishop of Rome arbitrarily and summarily simply removes his brother bishops from their posts, whi have plainly committed no canonical crimes, not only without any due process at all, but without even any reason given for the removal.
Does Bishop Strickland have an address where we can send money to support him?
Surely there’s a providential and tutorial connection between the 8th-century St. Boniface and the 21st-century Bishop Strickland.
Boniface was sent forth as the missionary bishop to Germania—as a bishop without a diocese (!). Post haste, he chopped down the pagan’s sacred Donar’s Oak, and in this way converted the mystified tribes toward steadfast Christianity. But, too bad, though, about all those acorns remaining on the ground. Later coming to fruition, as the 15th-century Reformation and now as a boring 21st-century apostasy. Cardinal Marx and Bishop Batzing—the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Waiting, here, to see what cometh forth from Bishop Strickland, likewise without a diocese, and hopefully without painting another Twitter-target on his own back.
Underlining the historical parallel, Boniface’s famous oak tree is said to have been near Hesse, which recalls Luther’s endorsement of the elector Rudolph of Hesse’s bigamy (also the bigamy of Henry VIII). Not to be outdone, and in addition to more bigamy, pagan Germania now also presumes to bless the “marriage” of homosexuals, something that even the voracious Henry VIII could not even imagine.