Inside Biden’s Parish

Central to President Joe Biden’s image as a coal-country-born, old-school Democratic politician is his Roman Catholicism. Since his first years in the Senate, the President has always cited his Catholic faith as the inspiration for his political beliefs, calling the Church “the bedrock foundation of [his] life.” 

Since his ascendance to the Oval Office, Biden’s relationship with the Catholic Church has been complicated by his liberal beliefs on gay marriage, transgender issues, and, most pointedly, abortion. Biden, who styles himself as a champion of abortion rights, has come under sharp criticism by both the Catholic laity and clergy, with the bishop of his hometown, Scranton, Pennsylvania, claiming that he would deny Biden communion during the 2008 campaign. 

Contrary to the general mood of Catholics across the country, Biden’s reception by prelates in his home diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, has been far gentler, with neither the current nor the former bishops of Wilmington denying Communion to the President over his stances. When pressed on the issue, the current Bishop of Wilmington, William Koenig, argued against “politicizing the Eucharist,” a refrain common amongst Catholic clergy when the topic of excommunicating heterodox politicians is raised. The tension between Biden’s open violation of church teaching and the soft-spokenness of the church in response is not only palpable in national or diocesan level discourse but in the life of the President’s own parish. 

St. Joseph on the Brandywine is a quaint Catholic church in the affluent Wilmington suburb of Greenville, Delaware. The unassuming chapel serves as a microcosm of the American Catholic story. St. Joseph on the Brandywine was initially constructed in 1841 to serve the budding Italian and Irish communities laboring at the DuPont plant, who had previously relied on a network of house churches staffed by itinerant priests. The parish grew steadily after its initial construction, becoming Delaware’s most prominent Catholic community by the turn of the 20th century. It also acquired its iconic bone-yellow paint job as a gift from the DuPont family around the same time, a feature still maintained at the church. 

The Biden family moved to the area in 1953, and Joe Biden was firmly rooted as a regular congregant by the late 1960s at the latest. The early 1970s were a time of momentous change for both Biden and his church. In 1972, campaigning on a comparatively progressive platform and promising change, Biden won his Senate seat against incredibly steep odds, flipping the seat to the Democrats, who have held it for the last fifty years since. St. Joseph on the Brandywine, too, underwent massive structural reforms in line with Vatican II’s liturgical changes, tearing the altar rails and side altars out of the church. Senator Biden tragically lost his wife and daughter in an auto accident in 1972, who would be buried at St. Joseph, later to be joined by Biden’s parents in the 2000s and Biden’s son Beau in 2015. 

After Biden’s two terms as vice president 2009-2017, he would return to Delaware to chair the eponymous Biden Institute at the University of Delaware. Similarly, in 2016, St. Joseph received a State Historic Marker, leaving both Biden and his church enshrined in the state’s cultural history. St. Joseph on the Brandywine and Joe Biden are, in a sense, images of each other. Both have working-class ethnic roots, committed to reform in the 1970s, and now are considered prestige artifacts of the historic tradition of American Catholicism. 

It is in light of this shared history and deeply rooted sentimental connection that Biden’s relationship with his parish must be understood. 

Biden’s decades-long relationship with St Joseph remains irenic despite his controversial stances on life and family issues. Since Biden has been a member, St. Joseph has seen fourteen pastors come and go, none of whom have confronted the now-President Biden on these issues, despite periodic requests to do so on behalf of incensed parishioners. 

Some of Biden’s willingness to flagrantly defy the church’s moral teaching is due to insolence, but the issue is more complex. Biden is the product of a specific model of American Catholicism that prioritizes personal private faith and is skeptical of the church’s involvement in social and political issues. This broadly liberal, post-Vatican II brand of a hip, modern Catholic Church is central to Biden’s engagement with his tradition. His favorite hymn is “On Eagles Wings,” he regularly chooses Jesuits as his faith advisors, and consistently places love and social justice at the heart of his religious waxings, evidencing his affiliation with this model of Catholicism. 

The same forces have largely shaped Biden’s Delaware parish. If one is looking for a dramatic showdown between a zealous pastor and an apostate president at St. Joseph, it won’t be found. Instead, find a modest suburban parish, grateful for the public role Biden has placed Catholicism in but cautious about making the church seem too dogmatic or stuffy to continue relevance. 

Politicians like Biden, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes make easy fodder for conservative Catholic media, but their positions are not as alien from the church as some would like to think. Rather, the enduring presence of liberal Catholic politicians is hand-in-glove with the enduring presence of liberalizing strains in the church. 

If conservative Catholics expect Catholic politicians to obey the church’s moral teachings, they will need to address the culture of sheepish shepherding that has dominated the church since Biden has been a member.