Biden’s claim that Harris has ‘moral compass of a saint’ sparks criticism from theologians

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 4, 2024 / 16:16 pm

President Joe Biden praised Vice President Kamala Harris at a Labor Day rally in Pittsburgh, claiming she has “the moral compass of a saint,” a statement that has sparked some objections from Catholic theologians.

“She has a backbone like a ramrod and she has the moral compass of a saint — this woman knows what she’s doing,” Biden told the cheering crowd. 

“I promise you if you elect Kamala Harris as president, it will be the best decision you will have ever made,” the president said.

Some of Harris’ positions — particularly her staunch support of abortion — are inconsistent with saintly values, according to Catholic theologians and philosophers who spoke to CNA. As vice president, she led the administration’s efforts to expand abortion and has vowed to codify the abortion standards set in the now-defunct Roe v. Wade ruling, which would override state-level pro-life policies.

While serving as attorney general of California, Harris co-sponsored legislation that restricted the free speech of pro-life pregnancy centers, which the Supreme Court found violated the First Amendment. As a senator, she questioned judicial nominees about their memberships in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization.

Edward Feser, a Catholic philosopher and professor at Pasadena City College, told CNA that Biden’s assertion that Harris has the moral compass of a saint is “so manifestly ludicrous that it would be unworthy of [a] comment if it didn’t come from a president of the United States, and a Catholic one at that.”

“Someone who truly had the ‘moral compass of a saint’ would condemn abortion as murder instead of supporting it enthusiastically as Vice President Harris does,” Feser said.

Dominican Father Thomas Petri, president of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies, told CNA that promoting abortion “is certainly not the position of a saint” or even “a person with right reason” because defending life “is not simply an issue of faith — it’s an issue of ethics.” 

“A saint is going to have qualities, not just of reason, but of faith, and is not going to advocate for things that are contrary to God’s law,” Petri said.

Petri noted that government leaders can and have achieved sanctity, referencing St. Thomas More, St. Stephen the Confessor, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Officials who rose to sainthood such as these three “understood that … leadership [and] … all authority on Earth stems from God’s own authority, and they understood themselves as subject to that authority,” according to Petri.

“They lived in their roles of authority as believers who understood that they were not a final authority and they would be under judgment themselves,” Petri added.

Petri suggested Biden was being “too cavalier” with his reference to sanctity, which he said is common among Catholics but that “when you take the spiritual life seriously, you start to understand what sanctity really is.”

“Being a saint is a lifelong project and obviously requires grace,” Petri said.

Joe Heschmeyer, a staff apologist at Catholic Answers, told CNA that the best way to determine what the “moral compass of a saint” looks like is “to listen to the actual saints.” He specifically referenced St. John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae, which focuses on the “value and inviolability of human life.”

“St. John Paul II describes how ‘the Gospel of life is at the heart of Jesus’ message’ and how ‘every person sincerely open to truth and goodness’ can come to see ‘the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree,’” Heschmeyer said, quoting the former pontiff.

“For this reason, he reminds us that ‘the mere possibility of harming, attacking, or actually denying life in these circumstances is completely foreign to the religious and cultural way of thinking of the people of God,’” he added.

Biden, the country’s second Catholic president, has invoked religion to promote policies that are inconsistent with Church teaching on several occasions. In March of last year, the president said that banning transgender medical interventions for minors was “close to sinful.” In April, he made the sign of the cross while promoting abortion at a rally, which led to condemnation by several bishops.

The Sept. 2 rally in the battleground state primarily focused on support for unions and workers. Harris spoke about efforts to keep steel manufacturing in the United States and her opposition to a proposed sale of the Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel to a Japanese firm Nippon Steel.

In 2020, Biden won Pennsylvania by fewer than 1.2 percentage points. In 2016, former president Donald Trump won the state by fewer than 0.75 percentage points. For the 2024 election, polling averages show the presidential race virtually tied in the Keystone State.