Obama Fact Check Needed: Biden, 'Committed Catholic'??

Listening to the first hour of CNN’s live coverage of the Obama-Biden unveiling in Springfield on Saturday afternoon, it was quite apparent that CNN and its cast of reporters and analysts didn’t find anything unusual about the liberal Democrats trying to counter-program the idea that they were elitists with the false notion that Joe Biden is a "committed Catholic."

Any reporter who’s doing fact-checking would find a problem there. The Catholic Church strongly opposes abortion, and yet NARAL Pro-Choice America honored Biden’s selection yesterday: "Sen. Biden has consistently expressed support for a woman's right to choose....Most notably, Sen. Biden has a strong record of opposing judicial nominees with hostile anti-choice records."

The blog Catholics Against Joe Biden is already up and running. But Obama strongly suggested twice that Biden was a committed Catholic:

His family didn't have much money. Joe Senior worked different jobs from cleaning boilers to selling cars, sometimes moving in with the in-laws or working weekends to make ends meet. But he raised his family with a strong commitment to work and to family, to the Catholic faith and to the belief that in America you can make it if you try....

He's that unique public servant who is at home in a bar in Cedar Rapids and the corridors of the Capitol. In the VFW hall in (Congress) and at the center of an international crisis. That's because he's still that scrappy kid from Scranton who beat the odds, the dedicated family man and committed Catholic who knows every conductor on that Amtrak train to Wilmington.

In his remarks, Biden was more circumspect, citing his Catholicism as part of his upbringing, not part of his political career:

I was an Irish Catholic kid from Scranton with a father who, like many of yours, in tough economic times fell on hard times.

CNN didn't really notice this right away, although Obama-hallowing analyst Roland Martin effusively touted the new ticket's appeal to "values" voters:

If you listen to both speeches, especially Senator Joe Biden, he kept dealing with the issue of values. Talk about the Freudian slip with Obama, but also, Biden made a Freudian slip when he said "Barack America". He said "Barack America."

He kept talking about Obama growing up, single mother, being on food stamps, working hard, him going to school, his own background. What the Obama campaign has failed miserably, I think, since winning the nomination, they have not been able to lay out, this is who he is in terms of his values. That's where the Republicans have been so strong in nailing Obama, and that is patriotism, judgment. So, that's why you heard a lot of that, those family values and how our values are the same as yours.

Millions of faithful Catholics would like to offer a rebuttal: pro-abortion values are the opposite of Catholic values.