Two-Timing Jesus - Joe Biden's Last Confession

'I am not a Cafeteria Catholic', Joe insisted to his wife.  'I am a real Catholic'; but the Pope disagreed on two counts - first and foremost, nobody could call himself The Abortion President and still remain Catholic; and if that didn't take the cake, then promoting genital mutilation, the ultimate interference with God's Creation certainly was. 

'How many legions does the Pope have?', Joe said, recalling Stalin.  'And besides, a sin is only a sin if you believe it is one'; but the damage was done.  As all Catholics, good or bad, know there is no greater thing to keep you awake than guilt, and Joe began to worry.  'I am the President after all', he shouted, 'and that carries national responsibilities with it'. 

‘Yes, but what about your immortal soul' whispered the other side of his brain, the altar boy side, the one that said the rosary and did the Stations of the Cross?

Joe was befuddled, felt himself at some kind of crossroads but did not know which.  'The road less taken'? he said out loud, remembering the line from...Who was that? St. Paul? Some poet? In any case there were decisions ahead, and in this unfamiliar foggy state he could only envisage them as soft pillows, cotton candy, or fluffy clouds. 

Joe, to his recollection, had never been partner to an abortion or ever counselled one.  He had kept his wick dry and his intentions pure, and the occasion of that particular sin was ghetto territory, not his; so allowing others to make the decision to kill...No, no, can't say that, his political conscience reminded him.  Got to get it right; but wasn't that what it was, scraping out a perfectly good human being and feeding it to the chickens? 

He became more agitated at the complexity of the problem and his inability to get his head around it. By making abortion easy, like picking penny candy at a dime store, didn't he have a hand in the killing?  The harsher the penalties for abortion, the fewer abortions there would be; and not only would he be free from sin, he would be one of God's heroes. 'Oh, Lord', he sighed and started to get down on his knees when Jill came into the room. 

 

'What on earth are you doing, Joe?  You're the President, for God's sake'.  A poor choice of words in his febrile state, but there it was as clear as day.  He had a choice to make; but if he admitted - confessed - that he had indirectly committed abortion - he would have to promise never to do it again, which he couldn't do.  His 2024 platform was set in stone. 'Abortion for All' was in fact the banner headline of the campaign.  Couldn't possibly undo that...that bitch next door would be after my ass....and that cunt from Brooklyn...I'll be toast...

'I'll explain', he said to himself.  Priests today, particularly since so many of them are gay, have confidently skirted the issue.  How, Joe wondered, could you possibly stay Catholic when you were buggering some altar boy in the vestry? So be it, but the question of logistics was even more complicated than the sexual one.  

Should he invite a gay priest to come to the White House? That would set tongues a-wagging.  Go to a local parish on Saturday afternoon and wait for confession like everyone else? Hardly.  The Secret Service and the phalanx of security vehicles could not be secreted away.  Virtually? Was there now virtual confession? 

 

The former, he decided would do.  The priest could come in mufti, no one would have to know who he was.  He would write 'Community liaison' on the calendar, meet and greet, closed door session, and he would make a good act of contrition; or so he hoped. But the priest, gay though he might be, was an Originalist, an Opus Dei conservative, a Vatican reactionary, a Catholic nag worse than Benedict XVI; and he told the President in no uncertain terms that his sin had been compounded by as many abortions as he had enabled, a thousand times, a million times, and simple absolution and a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys would not do the trick.  He would have to reverse the inhuman, diabolical, unfaithful policies he had put into place. 

'But I don't believe abortion is a sin', the President said to the young priest. 

'Sin, shmin', the priest replied. 'Of course you do', and the priest had hit the nail on the head.  Joe knew exactly what he was doing. He was two-timing Jesus.  Not only was he a baby-killer on a monumental scale, but he was an apostate, a heretic who threw over his Lord and Savior with no more thought than taking out the trash.  Hell was his and his alone. 

'So, Mr. President, what's it to be?'

When Biden hesitated, began to hem and haw, the priest said, 'Call me when you're ready'. 

'The balls on that guy', thought the President.  'How dare he talk to me that way?', but the priest was God's messenger, the only one who could speak honestly with a president, and Joe had to listen.  So the next day he tested the waters.  Perhaps if he nudged and fudged a bit, there might be some divine wiggle room in the cards. 

He called an impromptu meeting of the Campaign Abortion Group to test the waters.  Perhaps the 'Abortion now, Abortion Tomorrow, Abortion Forever' was too reminiscent of Governor George Wallace who had stood in front of the doors of the University of Alabama and said the same thing about segregation, but both statements had resonance and traction.

When he reminded those in the room of this coincidence, they all looked at him blankly.  Their history was as bad as their test scores.  He had hired a bunch of affirmative action babies who didn't know shit from Shinola; and here again the President stopped himself.  This was definitely not the way to think. 

However brainless about history and public policy the group might be, they knew what was what on social issues.  Abortion was a human right, period.  There was no give, no nudging and fudging possible when it came to this primordial issue. 

'You're a good man, Joe, leave it at that', said his wife before bedtime. 'God will understand'. 

Now, had the President been in his right mind, not always walking in a foggy landscape of indistinct ideas, he might have made a Presidential decision, a courageous one where governance trumped Jesus and where a President put his own soul at risk; but as it was, he wanted to go to confession, make a clean breast of it all, return to the Catholicism of his youth, and go to heaven. 

This moral conundrum was the straw that broke the camel's back.  This wobbly, increasingly feeble man did not need one more puzzle to wrack his brain, let alone one which involved his immortal soul.  Yet there it was, and the wheels came off the bus.  The President now made absolutely no sense whatsoever, interspersed ghetto bling with Calvary, corned beef and cabbage with The Last Supper; and only when he was hooked from the wings by his Vice President, pulled into the arras and told to shut up, was the crisis over, and the President was once more at peace.