Joe at St Joseph’s
In attendance at Sunday Mass with President Joe Biden.
May 5, 2021|
12:01 am
Nic Rowan
GREENVILLE, Delaware — St. Joseph on the Brandywine is an ordinary Catholic parish, except in one respect. About every other Saturday afternoon, Secret Service vehicles surround the church. Armored guards and bomb sniffing dogs patrol the churchyard. A security detail wands down parishioners as they enter the building. And an executive aide stands in the vestibule, ready to play usher for the parish’s most prominent member, President Joe Biden, who is, almost without fail, late.
Biden this week sneaks into the back of the church just as the permanent deacon is beginning to read from the Acts of the Apostles. The president just got off the golf course, and he looks relaxed in his blue turtleneck and unstructured brown blazer. This is pretty casual attire, at least by the standards of his fellow congregants, many of whom sport Ivy League neckties. The Mass’s celebrant, Fr. Glenn Evers, shoots Biden a piercing glance as he shuffles into the second to last row on the right, the pew in which his family has sat for decades. Other than that, his appearance goes mostly unacknowledged.
There’s no reason why it would be a big deal, since Biden is a longtime fixture at St. Joseph. He’s been a member since his time in the Senate. His children and grandchildren were received into the faith here, beneath the baptistry’s embroidered banners. His first wife, Neilia, and their daughter, Naomi, are buried behind the church. So is his son, Beau, whose gravestone has become a minor Democratic pilgrimage site. The granite rock is covered in Biden-Harris campaign material—bumper stickers, wrist bands, and lapel pins—in addition to more personal tributes presumably left by friends and family.
Biden himself often visits the St. Joseph cemetery after the Sunday vigil, which he almost always attends. This is a well-known fact in Wilmington, and whenever Biden is around, a dedicated band of protesters outside the church keep watch for his approach. Usually they hold signs highlighting the discrepancies between Biden’s publicly professed Catholicism and his vocal support for legal abortion, which directly conflicts with the Church’s teaching on human life.
This Saturday, a lone protester heckles the president as he walks into the church.
“Joe Biden commits sacrilege by receiving Holy Communion,” he shouts from the street. “Joe Biden is a fake Catholic.”
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https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/joe-at-st-josephs/
