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U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington June 25, 2020. Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, announced Aug. 11, 2020, that Harris will be his running mate for the November presidential election. (CNS photo/Al Drago, Pool via Reuters)
Aug. 12, 2020
Catholic News Agency
WASHINGTON — Catholics and pro-life organizations offered a range of reactions to the selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as former vice president Joe Biden’s running mate for the 2020 election.
Biden announced his selection on Aug. 11, triggering a wave of reactions among political and Catholic commentators.
Fordham University professor Charles Camosy, who left the Democratic Party earlier this year over the party’s stance on abortion, called Harris a “deeply flawed” choice for VP.
“It is very good that a Black woman has been nominated for VP. And I can understand a desire to choose the lesser of two evils,” said Camosy on Twitter Wednesday.
“But for Catholics in favor of prenatal justice, and of government defending these children from terrible violence, we must say that Harris is a deeply flawed candidate. Unreserved praise of her VP candidacy is, in effect, yet another example of erasure of the prenatal child,” Camosy said.
Democrats for Life of America also criticized Harris’s selection, saying in a statement that she “does not provide pro-life Democrats with any assurances and will, in fact, further alienate 21 million Democratic voters who have been left out of the party for quite some time.”
Harris’ position on abortion is “far out of line with the majority of Democrats and Americans on this sensitive issue,” the organization said, and encouraged Biden and Harris to reach out to pro-life Democrats and adjust the party’s platform stances on abortion.
Michael Sean Winters, a writer for the National Catholic Reporter and the author of “Left At the Altar: How Democrats Lost The Catholics And How Catholics Can Save The Democrats,” also expressed his reservations about Harris.
“[Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth] Warren was the person I wanted Biden to choose,” said Winters on Wednesday.
“After the racial tensions the nation experienced this summer, putting a Black woman on the ticket is to be commended,” Winters said, but called the selection of Harris a “setback for progressives.”
Winters was critical of Harris’ 2018 questioning of a judicial nominee over his membership of the Knights of Columbus, calling her treatment of Brian C. Buescher “embarrassing in both its ignorance and its bigotry.”
“Whatever difficulties I have with the leadership at the K of C, they do not excuse her dismissiveness towards a religion held by millions of fellow citizens, including her new running mate,” Winters said Wednesday, after the announcement of Harris' selection was made.
At the time CNA broke the story of Buescher's ordeal, America Magazine published an editorial saying Harris’ questions to the prospective judge had shown "a surprising ignorance of the Knights’ many religious, charitable and civic activities beyond their direct political advocacy, not to mention a complete disregard for their history in opposing virulent anti-Catholicism in the nation’s past."
National Review writer Alexandra DeSanctis made a similar observation, saying Harris’s time on the Senate judiciary committee had shown “reprehensible anti-Catholic bigotry, and there’s no reason to believe her views have changed.”
Several commentators from across the political divide also noted Harris’ noted support for unlimited access to abortion.
Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote, described Harris as “staunchly pro-abortion and anti-religious liberty,” and said that she “favors radical abortion policies including late-term abortion paid for by taxpayers, as well as forcing Catholic religious orders like the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide abortion drugs in their healthcare plans.”
On Twitter, CatholicVote called Harris a “devout anti-Catholic.”
Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Diocese of Providence said on Twitter that, in effect, Biden’s selection of Harris pointed to an absence of Catholic values by the Democratic candidate.
“Biden-Harris. First time in a while that the Democratic ticket hasn’t had a Catholic on it. Sad.” Tobin tweeted on Tuesday.
Biden's choice got positive reviews from some Black Catholics.“This is headline news. It’s the first of its kind,” said Dominican Father Aniedi Okure, executive director of the Africa Faith and Justice Network, about the choice of Harris, the first Black vice presidential nominee of a major political party.
A native of Nigeria, Father Okure has lived in the United States since the late 1980s and called himself “a voting card-carrying citizen” of the United States.
“Given what the country has been going through lately, with the fallout from (the killing of) George Floyd,” Father Okure told Catholic News Service, “it is something that’s pointing in the right direction, if I may use the word. The United States is an inclusive community. All of this is happening, and things are getting better in that sense. So I think really it’s something to look forward to,” he added, noting, “They haven’t won yet.”
“I was so elated. We, the community, need good news, and this was just wonderful,” said Donna Toliver Grimes, associate director of African American affairs in the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church. “She wasn’t my top candidate in the primaries, and she wasn’t my top pick for vice president,” she added, but after considering the announcement, “she’s really deserving and brings a lot to the table.”
Black Catholics should look at Biden and Harris for “policy that is favorable to people on the margins. If I say ‘for African Americans,’ it benefits other people on the margins as well,” Grimes said. “That’s a concern to deal with this voting-rights, voter-suppression issue. “I would expect he (Biden) would put good people in his Cabinet, who would not damage the agencies, or ignore the mission,” Grimes said.
“I’m really hoping that he can do something about health care reform. It’s not A vs. B, single payer vs. whatever. Whatever the Affordable Care Act was intended to do, let’s correct that, let’s improve that, and let’s get people the health care that they need. See what happens with that coverage and how it can be improved, not what it’s like to lose your health care, or to have the restrictions people have now.”
Catholic News Service contributed.