Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin has a long history on entering the political arena with ugly attacks, and barely minutes after the Biden campaign announced U.S. Senator Kamala Harris would be the vice presidential running mate, he struck again.
“Biden-Harris,” Tobin, the Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, tweeted. “First time in awhile that the Democratic ticket hasn’t had a Catholic on it. Sad,” he wrote, in Trumpian fashion.
In other words, this Bishop has effectively declared Joe Biden is not a Catholic and not allowed to be a Catholic. It’s an ugly attack on a man who is a devout Catholic – and a similar line of attack the Trump campaign made last week.
Weeks before the 2016 election Tobin posted a message to his followers on Facebook, essentially given his support to Donald Trump, writing: “Only with strong Christian values can we ‘make America great again!’”
Tobin last year generated controversy for posting an extremely homophobic tweet warning his fellow Catholics about LGBTQ Pride month, and falsely claiming that gay pride and gay “culture” “are especially harmful for children,” an ironic statement given that the Catholic Church itself has proven to be especially harmful for children.
Last year the Boston Globe published an opinion column titled, “If Donald Trump were a bishop, he’d be named Tom Tobin.”
In 2009 Tobin declared Catholic elected officials owed a duty to their faith first, not to the people they were elected to serve.
“Any Catholic in public office – his first commitment has to be to his faith,” he said.
But Tobin has no problem praising a president who is the epitome of anti-Catholic.
Many are angered by Tobin’s Tuesday evening remarks: