Biden To Bishops: “Come On — I Dare You!”
By CHRISTOPHER MANION
Picture this:
Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York is at the podium of the Republican National Convention next Monday, August 24. He has graciously accepted the invitation to offer the opening prayer.
He begins:
“My brothers and sisters, Have you hear the news? Joe Biden is running for president as a Catholic!”
He then lets out one of those endless, raucous belly-laughs that made him famous. The convention hall erupts in laughter, and millions of Americans watching the proceedings join in. The laughter eventually subsides, and he proceeds with his prayer.
Just about the right tone, don’t you agree?
But it ain’t-a-gonna happen.
Not that it would be untrue. After all, Basement Joe Biden is now the Democrats’ nominee, and he’s hitting the campaign trail hoping to romance all those deplorable Christians who cling to their Bibles. And what’s his pitch? Those wonderful nuns who inspired his candidacy! Joe just can’t thank them enough. They’re undoubtedly offering up rosaries day and night before the Blessed Sacrament for him.
Yes, Joe is grateful, for sure, but he’s going to make them pay for contraceptives anyway.
Oh, and abortions, too.
What’s really going on here? While Joe’s been buried in his bunker, his staffers have been running the numbers. Joe’s support of abortion until birth isn’t popular, they find, but who better to dismiss those worries than Pope Francis himself? The flaks pore through the archives. Sure enough, they reveal a stark contrast: When Pope Francis met with President Trump, His Holiness put on the sour face that he should have saved for Pachamama. But when he met with Catholic Joe, Francis was all smiles.
In this age, when the medium is the message, that’s all the viewer needs to know. Joe’s team has identified a group that they call “Pope Francis Voters,” and they’re taking it to the bank.
Consider: polls find that Pope Francis’ popularity among Catholics (75 percent) is higher than either Catholic Joe’s (54 percent) or President Trump’s (44 percent). So Biden’s Bunker Squad figures there’s no downside, right? After all, is Trump gonna run against the Pope?
But hey, wait a minute. There’s a group right here in America that could pull that mildewed basement rug right out from under Joe’s smug perfidy. They’re called “America’s Catholic Bishops.” Why, they’re keeping up with the current news, they know the score — they’ve voted to make abortion their “pre-eminent issue” in this election year, didn’t they? Of course, that vote has been put in a cellar miles deeper than Biden’s basement, so please forget about it. They sure have.
And why?
Sauce For The Goose — Period
America’s bishops have been having a tough year, and they’ve got to pick their battles. And fighting the pro-abortion Democrats is a war they don’t want.
So they’re curiously silent on Donald Trump’s real accomplishments on Catholic issues that most bishops quietly support. Among them: the Trump administration has reversed Obama’s policies on religious liberty, the HHS mandate, UN abortion funding, Planned Parenthood funding, the Mexico City Policy, and “transgender” student regulations. OK, maybe some bishops are grateful — the laity sure are. But our beloved shepherds are in the tank for Catholic Joe nonetheless. They have to be.
Consider: It’s been just a year now that USCCB Public Affairs Director Judy Keane was put on leave because she had praised the pro-life Trump administration on her private social media account. Soon after, the bishops shoved her out to the curb.
Keane was replaced by Chieko Noguchi, who had served as press director for the scandal-ridden Washington Archdiocese under Donald Cardinal Wuerl since 2011.
A year later — just last week, in fact — the Catholic News Service (CNS) ran a story on Biden’s selection of Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) as his running mate. CNS is the official PR platform for the bishops, and the author asked “black Catholics” to comment on the Harris pick. One of them, Donna Toliver Grimes, was ebullient.
“I was so elated,” Grimes told CNS. “We, the community, need good news, and this was just wonderful . . . she’s [Harris] really deserving and brings a lot to the table.”
CNS’s original story identifies Grimes as “associate director of African American affairs in the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church.” An “editor’s note” was later appended to the story, stating that “Grimes was not asked to speak on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, nor did she say she was speaking on behalf of the conference.”
Of course, Judy Keane wasn’t speaking “on behalf of the USCCB” either — but she was fired.
Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Va., heads the conference’s communications operation and has said in the past that “it’s time for transparency and accountability.”
So The Wanderer asked Bishop Burbidge to tell us, transparently, “Why was Judy Keane put on leave and then replaced a year ago, when Donna Grimes has not been put on leave and replaced?”
In spite of repeated requests, Bishop Burbidge and his USCCB spokesman James Rogers have not yet responded to our inquiry.
Real Racism Continues To Be Ignored
John Jiang reports in The American Spectator that Cannon Hinnant, a five-year-old boy from Wilson, N.C., was shot and killed execution-style in front of his family on Sunday, August 9.
“Hinnant was playing with his sisters, ages 7 and 8, near their father’s house when the shooting occurred. The suspect, Darius N. Sessoms, walked up to the boy, shot him in the head point blank, and then fled the scene, according to a witness…the family suggests that the murder was in retaliation for Hinnant riding his bike into Sessoms’ yard.”
Jiang calls the murder “one of the most heinous in recent American history.” Yet, he reports that for five days there was “virtually no coverage by any of the national news outlets. Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post have mentioned the story once. Nor have NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, or NPR. Search Hinnant’s name and you’ll find only local news affiliates covering the story.”
So, nothing to see here, move along. After all, Cannon Hinnant was white, and the man charged with the murder is black. Now the media might not consider that crime to be racist, but surely our bishops would — right? And for Bishop Luis Rafael Zarama of Raleigh, the Hinton murder was indeed a local story.
So The Wanderer contacted Leonor Clavijo, who serves as the communications specialist for the bishop. “Has Bishop Zarama commented on the murder of young Cannon Hinnant in your diocese,” we asked; “if so, has His Excellency condemned the murder as a racist act?”
We have not yet heard from Mr. Clavijo. And that is curious, because our bishops have been crowding every corner of the airwaves with their constant drumbeat of racism,
So what’s really going on? Beyond the noise, dioceses nationwide are plagued by financial woes. Many are closing parishes and schools at historic rates. On August 5, five cardinals and two USCCB officials pleaded with Congress to bail out the “hundreds [of parochial schools that] are in danger of being unable to open in the fall.”
Having agreed with secular authorities to bar the faithful from Mass for months, bishops now face the prospect that millions of them might never return. And they’ll take their financial support with them.
That’s the real story. And alas, the government is apparently their only hope.
Abortion doesn’t matter. Our shepherds can’t afford to alienate Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi. So they’re Catholic, folks.
It’s that simple.