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Joe Biden apparently is not bothered at all by his lack of endorsements by religious leaders. As reported by the Des Moines Register, the Delaware Democrat opened his remarks at an annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Des Moines over the weekend by poking fun at Republicans for cozying up to leaders of the Christian right. This is from the Register’s report:

The Delaware senator opened his speech by expanding on a running joke about Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani, who was recently endorsed by evangelical Pat Robertson. Biden said last week that every sentence Giuliani says “has a verb and 9/11 in it.”

“I should start with an apology ... I was wrong,” [Biden] said. “He called to tell me after Pat Robertson's endorsement that there's an amen in every sentence he says, too. It's amazing how these Republicans get converted, isn't it? Amazing. Rudy Giuliani and Pat Robertson. God bless you.”

Like he does in his new memoir Promises to Keep, Biden dishes to The Christian Science Monitor about how his Catholic upbringing shaped his worldview and politics, in contrast to the religious reticence shown by a certain Catholic Democratic nominee for president in 2004. Also unlike Kerry, Biden challenges the notion that his liberal record on social issues like abortion rights casts doubt on his Catholic credentials, even as he avoids antagonizing the Roman Catholic Church: “My views are totally consistent with Catholic social doctrine. There are elements within the church who say that if you are at odds with any of the teachings of the church, you are at odds with the church. I think the church is bigger than that."

Biden even frames his differences with some church positions as a result of the Vatican II era in which he came of age: "I was raised at a time when the Catholic Church was fertile with new ideas and open discussion…. Questioning was not criticized; it was encouraged."

God-o-Meter doesn’t want to make too much if it, but this lone CS Monitor profile reads like a corrective to so much that Kerry bungled religion-wise in 2004, which helped explain why the former altar boy lost the Catholic vote, traditionally a reliably Democratic bloc. One Kerry problem was that he had no overtly Catholic surrogates to stick up for him when a handful of Roman Catholic bishops denounced his liberal social positions. Biden, for his part, has Monsignor William Kerr of the Claude Pepper Center at Florida State University at his back: “"Joe Biden is one of the most sincere Catholics I've known in my 40 years as a priest.”