It seems that Joe Biden, who calls himself a Catholic does not know the convention in making the sign of the cross. "In making the sign of the cross, we make profession of our belief in the Blessed Trinity by the words "In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost."
In making the sign of the cross, by the very form of the cross which we make upon ourselves, we make profession that the Son of God died for us upon the cross." https://bellarmineforum.org/bf_catechism/the-catechism-explained/part-i-faith/ix-the-sign-of-the-cross/#:~:text=240)%20says%2C%20%E2%80%9CAt%20the,during%20holy%20Mass%3B%20at%20the
However, Biden made the sign of the cross at rally in defence of hyper-liberal, up to birth, abortion. As Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote said: "Biden's use of the Sign of the Cross in support of abortion is a disgusting insult towards all Christians, but especially of Catholics whom he claims as his own. The Sign of the Cross is a sacred gesture used by believers to bless themselves, ask forgiveness, or to protect them from temptation. Instead, Biden has turned this ancient Christian practice into an endorsement of abortion extremism."
Yet wait and see the numbers of Christians who will vote, Democrat. But by right, not a single one should.
"Ordinarily, you'd think that if a Roman Catholic made the sign of the cross in the context of an abortion rally, it was because he or she was praying for an end to the child sacrifices and a return of America's recognition that the right to life is, as Thomas Jefferson put it, unalienable. But the Catholic in this case is Old Joe Biden, who just added to the mountain of evidence that his much-ballyhooed piety is all about getting votes and really doesn't mean anything to him at all by making the sign of the cross in the context of supporting abortion.
Yes, he really did. As Athena Thorne noted Wednesday, "at a campaign rally alongside Florida politician Nikki Fried, Biden listened while the Democrat gubernatorial candidate raged against her opponent, Gov. Ron DeSantis, for signing the state's strict abortion law. 'Then we come back here to the state of Florida where Ron DeSantis felt like he needed to run for president and so 15 weeks was not good enough,' Fried seethed, as though politics were DeSantis's motive. 'And then we had to go to six weeks.'"
It was at that point that Old Catholic Joe crossed himself as if to express his pious horror at the idea that someone might be trying to save babies from being dismembered in the womb. One of Old Joe's Irish forbears could articulate it in a fine blarney brogue: Saints presairve us, they want to restrict abortion to six weeks! What is this sinful old world coming to?
The ghastly tone-deafness of Biden's gesture cannot be overstated. Fox News reported Thursday that Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote, was furious, saying: "Biden's use of the Sign of the Cross in support of abortion is a disgusting insult towards all Christians, but especially of Catholics whom he claims as his own. The Sign of the Cross is a sacred gesture used by believers to bless themselves, ask forgiveness, or to protect them from temptation. Instead, Biden has turned this ancient Christian practice into an endorsement of abortion extremism."
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Burch added: "No Catholic, regardless of their position on abortion, can support this grotesque abuse of religious piety. Voters of faith need to wake up and understand what is at stake this November. The new abortion religion, which seeks to mock and ultimately destroy Christianity, is on the ballot." Indeed it is.
The reaction of Bishop Robert Gruss of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saginaw, Mich., was less heated but even more devastating: "I don't have any anger towards the president. I feel sorry for him. I'm not angry at him, he's just stupid. It's not stupidity in the derogatory way, it's stupidity in the sense of [...] he doesn't understand the Catholic faith."
That seems clear enough. Biden seems to think of the sign of the cross in a superstitious fashion, as a gesture one makes in order to ward off evil. That is clear from other occasions when he has made it, most notoriously last September, during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he clearly detests.
As the leader of the world's lone Jewish state began speaking, Old Joe bizarrely took the opportunity to make the sign of the cross. Calculated disrespect? Galloping dementia? Could be either, or both, but it certainly wasn't an expression of a deeply held faith. And remember: Biden didn't make the sign of the cross when he met with his friend Mahmoud Abbas.
Biden has also made the sign of the cross in the context of denunciations of his enemies. Also in September 2023, according to the Daily Mail, Old Joe was speaking in Philadelphia: "As he gave shout-outs to some of the other Democratic politicians in the crowd, an attendee yelled up at him that Biden, 80, would live until 90, prompting the president to do the sign of the cross over his chest." Biden then proceeded to denounce Trump while touting his own supposed achievements as president."