Catholic Biden Supports Gay "Marriage"

Biden: It's about 'who do you love?'

From Politico:

Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday he was “absolutely comfortable” with gay marriage, sending his office into an immediate effort to clarify his comments as reflecting no change.

Asked on “Meet the Press” Sunday if his views on gay marriage had “evolved,” which is the word the president has used to describe his own thinking, Biden spoke forcefully about his own position.

“I am vice president of the United States of America. The president sets the policy. I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly, I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that,” Biden said.

The fact that ole' Joe Biden supports this is not at all surprising and is less interesting to me than what, if anything, the Catholic leadership here, which is never particularly eager to issue public rebukes (or more) to wayward, abortion-pushing Catholic politicians, will do about it. We're waiting to see who will rise to the occasion. A lot is hanging in the balance. All too often, the leadership operates under a faulty notion of what it means to be pastoral, to the extent that scads of so-called Catholic politicians get away with horrendous deeds with nary a slap on the wrist from a bishop. Cardinal Burke remarked on this point in an interview.

I think that in latter years there has been a false sense of being pastoral, in the sense that priests and bishops can only talk about positive things. The whole notion about confronting the evils of society — especially those things that have become politically acceptable — became difficult, as if these subjects should not be raised.

How can bishops talk about the sacrosanct integrity of marriage and the urgency for Catholics to defend it on the one hand, and then turn a blind eye when such a prominent member of their flock as the vice president publicly gives his approval homosexual unions? It represents an intolerable inconsistency. Biden just made these remarks today, so time will tell if we see any different reaction from those at the top.