CatholicVote, a conservative Catholic advocacy group, plans to spend $9.7 million in swing states to persuade Catholic voters to support Trump.  ABC's Matthew Dowd is bewildered because Biden goes to Mass and, in Dowd's mind, is closer to Christ's teachings than Trump.  Dowd's confusion is typical of Jewish and Christian Democrats who consider themselves religious, but who substitute ritual for faith and whose moral principles align more closely with the Democrat platform than with the Bible.

This is the powerful pro-life ad that CatholicVote will run in swing states:

According to The Hill:

The organization also released "The Biden Report for Catholic Voters," which covers Biden's career "from a Catholic perspective" and highlights where he stands on issues like "sanctity of life," religious liberty, judges, education and the dignity of work. It plans to send a condensed version of the report to 5 million "active Catholic voters" in swing states. 

Dowd, in his turn, professes bewilderment that any Catholic could oppose a man who goes to Mass and supports the Democrat agenda:

This is such a reflection on right wing Trump supporting Catholics. They are going against a devote Catholic who regularly attends Mass who stands far more for what Jesus taught than Trump. As a former altar boy and Catholic, i find this appalling. https://t.co/Tw2jCmLHDg

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) September 15, 2020

In many ways, Dowd, Biden, and all the other left-leaning "religious" Democrats are like the Pharisees in Jesus's time.  The problem with them, as Jesus saw it, was that they'd substituted ritual for faith.

Religiously oriented leftists also believe that their outward religious observances compensate for the fact that they've abandoned the core tenets of their faith. Biden, Dowd, and a host of other Democrat-voting Catholics go to weekly Mass, and Reform Jews across America are getting ready for the holiest time of the year, with Rosh Hashanah (the New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) almost upon us.

All those things, though, are the outward trappings of their faith.  What they reject is that the core tenets of both Christianity and Judaism cannot support abortion, gay "marriage," or the idea of dozens of different genders.

Regarding abortion, both faiths draw on the biblical idea that each life is in God's image and is sacred.  Deuteronomy 30:19 is unambiguous: "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.  Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live."  Additionally, it's profoundly wrong to make those who are morally opposed to abortion pay for others to have them, as Biden demands, whether through Obamacare or federal funds at home and abroad.

Gay "marriage," too, is at odds with the Bible.  Marriage for Catholics is a sacrament, and it's a fortuitously happy obligation in the Jewish faith.  ("Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.")  Because of marriage's deep religious significance, traditionally minded Catholics and Jews are worried that making "marriage" a constitutional right creates the possibility of a clash between gay "marriage" and religious people's First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.  If Biden is elected, a leftist Supreme Court, which is what Biden promises, could well mandate that conservative faiths officiate at and in other ways recognize same-sex "marriages."

The Bible is remarkably clear that God created male and female.  He did not create 57 other genders.  Those who believe themselves to be something other than their biological sex are to be pitied.  Still, they must not be given legal rights ahead of the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.  Again, though, religious people know that a federal government with Biden as its figurehead, and a left-leaning Supreme Court, is going to force them to have multi-sex bathrooms and to call a bearded, 150-lb transgender person "ma'am."

And Jesus charged his followers to take on themselves the responsibility for caring for the least among them.  He was explicit that this was not a job for a government collective.

A Biden presidency is a threat to everything that people who support a more traditional approach to faith believe.  They're not deceived by Biden's having found a priest who will allow him to take Communion every Sunday, even though his politics are hostile to core Catholic principles.

Image: Communion Table, by John Snyder. CC BY-SA 3.0.