As the US Presidential campaign enters its last month, Democrat nominee, Joe Biden, has launched an ad campaign emphasizing his faith.

The campaign that will run in fourteen states, some of which are crucial swing states, are a “direct appeal to people of faith that Vice President Biden’s agenda is much more aligned with their common good values than the divisiveness, racism, and fear we see from the current administration,” said Josh Dickson, Biden’s go-to man on faith engagement, according to a report by conservative media giant Fox News.

In one of the campaign’s radio ads, a woman speaks of  “how important Joe’s faith is to him. It’s what motivates everything: Joe’s beliefs, his values, the kind of president Joe would be,” the woman, identified as Bernadette, says in the ad.

She elaborates, “Joe Biden knows what it means to be your brother’s keeper…to care for those around you, and lift up those who are suffering.”

In recent months, the former Vice President has been heavily criticized by Catholics and Conservatives for his stance on abortion — Biden is staunchly pro-choice — a subject about which Biden’s ad campaign appealing to Catholic voters is noticeably silent.

At the start of the year, Pope Francis addressed health care professionals as part of the celebration of World Day of the Sick. In his speech, he gave an injunction to all those working in healthcare, saying that they must protect “the truest human right, the right to life.” The USCCB, too, is unequivocal: “Abortion ends the life of a child and offends God.”

In their introductory letter to their guide, Forming Conscinences for Faithful Citizenship, the US bishops affirm: “We cannot dismiss or ignore other serious threats to human life and dignity such as racism, the environmental crisis, poverty and the death penalty.” Nevertheless, they maintain: “The threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself, because it takes place within the sanctuary of the family, and because of the number of lives destroyed.”

“A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who favors a policy promoting an intrinsically evil act, such as abortion,” inter alia, “if the voter’s intent is to support that position,” the US bishops explain in Faithful Citizenship. “ There may be times,” however, “when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position even on policies promoting an intrinsically evil act may reasonably decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons,” the US bishops go on to say in the same document.

“Voting in this way would be permissible,” the bishops explain, “only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil.”

In recent years in the United States especially, the issue has become the “third rail” of Catholic political engagement – especially in election campaign seasons.

While Biden says he remains opposed to abortion personally, he has promised to abolish the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion. This promise may prove to be a misstep as recent findings from a poll found that 60% of Americans approve of it.

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