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| Sen. Joseph Biden, who's making his second run for president, says Catholic teachings taught him that 'the cardinal sin was
abuse of power.' Andy Nelson – staff |
Joseph Biden: a frank and abiding faith
How Catholic ideals of fighting the abuse of power have shaped the life and politics of the presidential hopeful.
from the August 27, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 4
First was a family crisis. After a surprise upset victory to win his Senate seat in November 1972, Biden lost his wife, Neilia, and baby daughter, Naomi, in a traffic accident the week before Christmas. His sons, Beau and Hunter, were badly injured. He considered resigning but was persuaded by the Senate majority leader to give it six months. Colleagues urged him to bury himself in work. Gradually, he did.
His spiritual crisis was not so readily resolved. "I never doubted that there was a God, but I was angry with God," he says. "I was very self-centered: How could God do this to me?"
Friends close to Biden during this time credit his faith for helping pull him through the despair. "In times of crisis, he goes to church a lot," says Ted Kaufman, a former chief of staff who was with Biden for 22 years.
What also helped break his rift with God was a cartoon his father, Joe Biden Sr., gave him. It showed "Hagar the Horrible" blasted by lightning. The bubble read, "Why me, God" – and the answer: "Why not." Biden says: "I realized, who am I to think that I'm so special?"
On the Senate floor, the tough votes also came early and often. In his first term, Biden faced the first of many votes on whether to curtail abortion rights for women. As a freshman Democrat, he was approached by all sides. He told them that while he personally opposes abortion, he would not vote to overthrow the US Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that gave women the right to terminate a pregnancy. Nor, however, would he vote to use federal funds to fund abortion.
"I don't think I have the right to impose my view – on something I accept as a matter of faith – on the rest of society," he writes in his autobiography.
A natural consensus-builder, Biden thrived in the Senate, despite an epic daily daily commute to Delaware to be with his family. He credits his second wife, Jill, with giving him back his life. In 1987, he launched a campaign for the presidency that was gaining traction in early primary states, until derailed by allegations of plagiarism. Then came a health crisis. Facing extensive brain surgery, he asked his doctors if he could keep his rosary under his pillow. It gave him comfort, he said.
Issues of faith also played in his decision to draft the 1994 Violence Against Women Act and to prevent genocide in the former Yugoslavia – both instances of abuse of power, he says. "My interest in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia started with a very persistent monk," writes Biden in his recent book. The monk, a Roman Catholic from Croatia, briefed Biden on what ethnic Serbs were doing to Catholic shrines in the former Yugoslavia. He says the conversation, and subsequent visits to the region, sparked his interest in how the US should respond to abuse of power in the region.
It's an ongoing theme in his foreign-policy judgments. In his recent speech before the National Press Club, Biden described his visit to a refugee camp in Chad, where tens of thousands of people had been forced to flee their homes in the Darfur region of the Sudan. Young families swarmed him, he said.
"I saw in their eyes the same look I'd seen just a few days earlier in Iraq among the Shiites who no longer had to hide from Saddam Hussein's Baathist thugs who had killed well over 100,000 of them in decades before," he said. "It was the look of hope and expectation, as if America could make a difference in their lives."
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Heading into Election 2008, the Monitor profiles the candidates through the lens of their core convictions – through their values, worldviews, and, when applicable, religious faiths. |
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