Vice President J.D. Vance assured Catholics during Friday’s National Prayer Breakfast that President Donald Trump’s administration has already erased the previous administration’s anti-Christian policies.
President Joe Biden’s administration prosecuted pro-life Christians and targeted traditional Catholics under the suspicion that they were extremists and were susceptible to having a “white supremacist ideology.” During the breakfast, Vance said that Trump, though he is not himself a Catholic, has taken multiple actions to protect Catholic and Christian Americans from being targeted by federal officials.
“I feel very confident in saying that between protecting the rights of pro-life protesters, between ensuring that we have an opportunity to protect the rights of the unborn in the first place and most importantly, protecting the religious liberty of all people, but in particular Catholics,” Vance said. “I think we can say that President Trump, though not a Catholic himself, has been an incredibly good president for Catholics in the United States of America.”
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The vice president criticized the Biden administration for prosecuting pro-life activists who prayed and protested outside of abortion clinics. Under the Biden administration, at least 15 FBI agents raided the home of Catholic pro-life activist Mark Houck in Oct. 2022 and arrested him for allegedly violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act over an altercation between himself and Planned Parenthood abortion clinic escort, Bruce Love.
Houck, who faced up to 11 years in prison and pleaded not guilty to the charges, stated he was defending his 12-year-old son from verbal harassment and pushed away Love in the process, according to the Catholics News Agency. A jury found Houck not guilty of all the charges in January 2023.
In a separate case, the FBI retracted a leaked memo from the Richmond field office in 2023 that considered infiltrating groups of Roman Catholics who prefer Latin mass due to their supposed potential of committing “violence.” The document accused traditional Catholics, who attend the pre-1970 Latin Mass, as being susceptible to “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and white supremacist ideology.”
Vance further said that the Trump administration is taking steps to prevent late-term abortions. Despite Biden identifying himself as a “devout Catholic,” both himself and officials in his administration repeatedly refused to say at what point in a pregnancy an abortion should no longer be permitted.
“On every single one of those issues, in 30 short days, Donald J. Trump has gone in the exact opposite direction and I am thankful for that and I’m sure every single person in this room is thankful for that as well,” Vance said.
The vice president further said that Trump’s efforts to bring world peace by ending wars will bring more religious freedom to Christians on a global scale. The president said he is currently involved in negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about ending the Russia-Ukraine war.
Biden came under scrutiny by Catholic priests and clergy for his support for abortion and could face excommunication in the church for joining a historically black Freemason lodge just one day before he left the presidency. Father Robert E. Morey denied communion to Biden at Saint Anthony Catholic Church in South Carolina in 2019 over his stance on abortion.
The former president supported changing the filibuster in order to codify Roe v. Wade, which the Supreme Court overturned in June 2022 to return abortion laws to the states.
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