YouTube Screengrab / PBS News Hour
CV NEWS FEED // A pair of controversial liberal priests visited President Joe Biden’s White House Sunday as part of an event billed as a “St. Patrick’s Day Brunch with Catholic Leaders.”
Frs. James Martin and Thomas Reese, SJ, were among the brunch’s attendees.
Three days earlier, Biden running mate Vice President Kamala Harris became the highest-ranking incumbent official in American history to visit an abortion facility, where she praised Planned Parenthood and attacked the work of pro-life elected officials.
Addressing Martin, Reese, and the other attendees on Sunday, Biden said:
The Catholic Church has always stepped in when people were suffering to meet their needs — food, shelter, healthcare, education. Your organizations make real the instructions of Jesus and — gave his apostles, “Whatever you do unto the least of my brothers — these, my brothers and sisters, you do unto me.” And that’s kind of the essence of who we all are.
>> FR. JAMES MARTIN’S OUTREACH: A CLOSER LOOK <<
Martin is the founder of Outreach, a deeply controversial organization that bills itself as an “LGBTQ Catholic ministry.”
In an exposé published last year, CatholicVote called Martin’s group an “LGBTQ pressure group … hardly distinguishable from its secular counterparts except by its exclusive focus on opposing the Catholic Church’s resistance to the LGBTQ movement’s aims.”
CatholicVote also noted that Martin and Outreach broke with many U.S. bishops over the Los Angeles Dodgers’ “decision to honor the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI),” an anti-Catholic hate group. “Outreach published a piece sympathizing with the anti-Catholic drag group.”
“Jason Steidl-Jack published an article for Outreach defending a piece of artwork entitled ‘God is Trans’ being displayed inside a liberal parish in New York,” CatholicVote added in its exposé.
The exposé reported that “Outreach has published numerous articles advocating for the most controversial tenets” of the LGBTQ movement:
Nearly every such essay names particular bishops or criticizes the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, often for their directives against LGBTQ ideology being taught in diocesan Catholic educational settings.
On Sunday, Martin posted wrote on social media that he was “honored” that Biden invited him to the brunch at the White House and “deeply honored to meet the President.”
Reese boasted about his brief encounter with Biden as well.
“You can see me shake hands with the president as he walks into the room,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Also present for the festivities were Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, several members of the Kennedy political family, and Sr. Simone Campbell, a liberal nun who purports to advocate for “social justice.”
As an ex-Catholic leader of a majority-Catholic country, Varadkar played a prominent role in Ireland’s 2018 legalization of abortion, as well as its 2015 legalization of same-sex “marriage.”
In his remarks, Biden called Ireland a “global voice of liberty … equality, and peace.”
The president also honored Special Envoy for Northern Ireland and former Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-MA, at the brunch. Like almost all recently elected Democrats, Kennedy had a strongly pro-abortion voting record. He is a self-professed Catholic.
Campbell presents herself as an advocate for “social justice.” She received much scrutiny in 2020 when her group launched an online voter guide claiming that “Catholics Cannot Vote for Trump.”
“The sacred issues the Pope asks us to bring into the voting booth include protecting people in poverty, the elderly, and migrants and rejecting racism,” Campbell’s voter guide claimed.
It did not mention the Church’s teachings nor the pope’s own words against abortion.
>> FR. JAMES MARTIN’S OUTREACH: A CLOSER LOOK <<
Reese is known for his outspoken support of the incumbent president.
Last November, Breitbart reported: “In 2020, Father Reese stumped for Joe Biden, urging his fellow Catholics to join the ‘grassroots’ group ‘Catholics for Biden.’”
“The launch event sought to ‘engage Catholic voters’ and whip up enthusiasm for the Biden-Harris ticket,” Breitbart continued:
Father Reese also attempted to convince Catholics that it is okay to vote for Catholic candidates who openly flout Church teaching on issues such as abortion.
“A Catholic Democrat might feel impelled to vote for Biden despite his position on abortion and gay marriage because of other morally grave reasons, for example, his positions on racism, immigration, global warming and COVID-19,” Reese argued.
The same month, Reese penned an article calling former President Donald Trump an “antichrist.”
“If we compare the Gospel message with that of Trump and other authoritarian leaders, we can only conclude that he and they are antichrists,” the controversial priest wrote.
>> PRO-BIDEN PRIEST: DONALD TRUMP IS AN ‘ANTICHRIST’ <<
Prior to resigning 18 years ago, Reese was the editor-in-chief of America, a left-wing magazine published by the Jesuits, where Martin currently serves as editor-at-large.
Per CatholicVote’s previous report:
The National Catholic Reporter (NCR), another left-wing source, then described that his resignation was “at the request of his order following years of pressure for his ouster from the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”
NCR added that the leader of the Congregation during much of its investigation of Reese was none other than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the eventual Pope Benedict XVI.
