Nicole Gaudiano

USA TODAY

They’re not naming names, but three Catholic bishops sure seem to be chastising the first Catholic vice president, Joe Biden, for officiating a same-sex wedding last week.

“When a prominent Catholic politician publicly and voluntarily officiates at a ceremony to solemnize the relationship of two people of the same-sex, confusion arises regarding Catholic teaching on marriage and the corresponding moral obligations of Catholics,” Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, Bishop Richard J. Malone and Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski wrote in a Friday blog post on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops website. “What we see is a counter witness, instead of a faithful one founded in the truth.”

The bishops all hold leadership roles with the conference. Kurtz is president, Malone chairs the committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, and Wenski chairs the committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

Their blog post comes less than a week after Biden, an early supporter of marriage equality, officiated the same-sex marriage of two longtime White House staffers, Brian Mosteller and Joe Mahshie, on Aug. 1.

The wedding was held at Biden’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory and was attended only by immediate family members of the grooms, according to Biden’s office.

“Proud to marry Brian and Joe at my house,” Biden tweeted with a photo of the ceremony. “Couldn't be happier, two longtime White House staffers, two great guys.”

Biden’s office had no response to the bishops’ blog post.

A Religion News Service article theorized that the blog post wasn't more strident because decisions on dealing with “wayward members of the flock” are left up to the bishops in charge of each diocese. As of Sunday, the article said, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who leads the Archdiocese of Washington, hadn't commented on Biden’s action, but the story said conservative Catholics were pressuring him to do so.

The story also points to an Aug. 3 column by Edward Peters, a canon lawyer at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, who wrote that Biden “went out of his way to act with contempt” for church teaching and “is daring the church to do anything about it.” Peters noted that no canon excommunicates a Catholic for officiating a same-sex wedding, but the pope or Wuerl could issue legislation “making such officiating an excommunicable crime.”

Biden has wrestled with questions on how to reconcile his faith with his politics. He described that difficulty in a 2007 interview with USA TODAY Network on the subject of Roe v. Wade, which he supports.

“As a Catholic, the hardest thing for me to do is make a judgment that other equally religious and God-fearing people who have a different decision with me on this are somehow: I can impose my view on them,” he said then.

Biden was emphatic about his support for gay marriage in 2012, ahead of both President Obama and Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton.

“I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men marrying women are entitled to the same exact rights,” he said on Meet the Press. “All the civil rights, all the civil liberties.”

Sarah McBride, national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, wrote in an email that Biden’s actions reflect the large majority of Catholics “who support equality and consistently affirm the dignity and worth of LGBTQ people.”

“Joe Biden is a deeply religious person and, like other Americans, likely supports equality not in spite of his faith, but, in large part, because of it,” wrote McBride, who previously worked on the two successful campaigns that the late Beau Biden, the vice president's son, ran for attorney general in Delaware. “He recognizes that we are all God's children and a central tenet of practically every faith is to love your neighbor, even if that message is not always preached from pulpit when it comes to LGBTQ people."