By CHRISTOPHER MANION
The real news from the March for Life in Washington came with President Donald Trump’s stunning, historic promise to the crowd:
“Today, I have signed a letter to Congress to make clear that if they send any legislation to my desk that weakens the protection of human life, I will issue a veto.”
This bombshell should have led the news for days. It warned the Democrat House majority that any legislation championing their flagship issue — abortion — would be, in Ronald Reagan’s terms, “Dead on Arrival.”
But the media left couldn’t let abortion be the headline on a story on the March for Life. That would be too . . . honest. So they cooked up another one, based on a string of lies that was, as Justice Arthur Goldberg put it, “a gross canard cut out of whole cloth.”
Hundreds of thousands attended the March, many of them young, including one group from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky. After the March, they were waiting for their bus near the Lincoln Memorial, when an American Indian named Nathan Phillips walked up to student Nick Sandmann and started beating an oversize tambourine six inches from his face.
Phillips, a seasoned left-wing provocateur, couldn’t get a reaction. Sandmann just stood there, smiling. So the bitter Indian “Elder” and his camera crew went to the media, claiming that he had been “mocked” and “surrounded” by the students. The kids had kept their cool — and that enraged the chief Indian.
(Phillips is a seasoned agitator. That same evening he led a group of drum-beating, chanting Indians who tried to invade a Mass being celebrated at Washington’s Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. They were stopped by security agents, who were forced to lock the doors. Major media did not report this blasphemy; Catholic News Agency [CNA] did).
Major networks needed an antidote to Trump’s good news, and Phillips gave it to them. They all ran breathless news breaks reporting the “innocent Indian harassed, mocked, and threatened by white, pro-life, toxically masculine, students wearing MAGA pro-Trump hats” meme.
Enter “Social Media” — especially Twitter, Facebook, and Google. They all censor conservatives. They cooperate with the left to make their platforms a very effective mass organizing tool for radicals. And it works: Once the Fake Indian News spread, death threats, bomb threats, and literally millions of vulgar insults inundated Sandmann and anyone and anyone else connected with Covington Catholic School.
Those insults came from Catholic prelates as well. Covington Bishop Roger Foys issued this joint statement with the high school:
“We condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students towards Nathan Phillips specifically, and Native Americans in general, Jan. 18, after the March for Life, in Washington, D.C. We extend our deepest apologies to Mr. Phillips.”
Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., piled on:
“I join with Bishop Foys in condemning the actions of the Covington Catholic students towards Mr. Nathan Phillips and the Native American Community yesterday in Washington.”
Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, who participated in the March, joined in:
“The Archdiocese of Baltimore condemns the disrespect shown toward a Native American elder during the March for Life. Respect for life demands all are treated with dignity.”
What Happens
When The Truth Comes Out
And then the full videos started appearing — proving to the scandalized critics that they’d all been had. The kids had kept their cool, and Phillips had lied through his teeth.
Apologies started rolling in. National Review took down its scandalous attack; Princeton Professor Robert George, joining dozens of other pro-lifers who had been taken in, apologized profusely for believing the Fake News. Secular news outlets didn’t apologize, but, afraid of lawsuits, they quietly reported that there was more to the story.
And the horrified bishops? Not a word of apology. Archbishop Kurtz quietly deleted his endorsement of Bishop Foys’ earlier screed; Bishop Foys’ website is now blocked by a statement promising a full investigation. Covington Catholic was closed due to multiple death threats. It reopened January 23 under heavy police protection.
And Archbishop Lori? He issued a “clarification”; the situation was apparently “more complex,” his website said, while recommending the archbishop’s “pastoral letter on racism, released today when our nation is honoring the enduring legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”
One of the most revealing diatribes came from one Daniel P. Horan, OFM, who pirouetted his superior virtue on Twitter with this gem:
“I am so deeply appalled and disgusted by the racist, shameful, disrespectful behavior of the Catholic High School students wearing MAGA hats and harassing a Native American elder and Vietnam Vet. I’m so angry and yet not at all surprised at pervasive white supremacy exhibited. . . .”
Fr. Horan had been duped, of course. Phillips was not a Viet Nam Vet, although he apparently had advertised himself as such. That’s called “Stolen Valor,” but who cares? The narrative was so perfect, so appealing, that details didn’t matter.
So far, Horan merely resonates the millions — literally — of hate blasts. What makes him special is his segue:
“Just one of many reasons I find the so-called ‘march for life’ often repulsive and futile. It’s basically a gathering for many right-wing anti-abortion hardliners (not consistent ethic of life, i.e., not true pro-lifers) and teens to get a free trip to goof off (at best) in DC.”
Thank you, Fr. Horan. It’s not often that Social Justice Warriors pull back the curtain on their hatred and reveal how “disgusted” they really are that good Catholics don’t buy into their radical political agenda. And that includes many bishops. As we have often reported, USCCB officials — always after they leave — confirm that our beloved shepherds buried the pro-life cause long ago, replacing it with pandering to the Democrat left and receiving billions in taxpayer funding in return.
To sum up: Many pro-lifers who bought into the Fake News were chagrined that our movement would be so profoundly sullied. When the truth emerged, they apologized. They were ashamed, but at least they admitted it. Why won’t the bishops?
Lessons Learned
First, even good people who know it’s Fake News are sometimes taken in by it.
Second, bishops are so terrified they will not confront the media even when its reports are proven false. That fear is resonated by their fear of each other, of the laity and of lawyers and criminal investigators. They are literally paralyzed.
Third, all too often, bishops are ready and willing to betray their sheep — and their priests — rather than defend them. The proper term for this defect is “spineless.”
Fourth, the Covington charade is a huge victory for the left. It has exposed the fault lines that they will undoubtedly work to magnify in their ongoing campaign to destroy the Church.
Fifth, the bishops will do nothing to stop them.
Sixth, Catholic Social Justice Warriors will lie, steal, hijack our movement, and join the anti-Catholic left at the drop of a Fake News story.
Seventh, once more the bishops demonstrate the rancid invasion of their chanceries by the Social Justice Left. Apparently, not one legal or PR “professional” advised them to wait until the facts were in.
Eighth, Social Justice Warriors have captured many bishops, but still benefit when those bishops participate in scandal. The less powerful the principal, the more power wielded by the bureaucracy.
Ninth, the fact that a school is named “Catholic” means nothing when it comes to defending the faith or the faithful.
Tenth, the laity has learned never to trust a bishop when a child is abused by a prelate or a priest; always call the police. Likewise, when your child has a problem in a diocesan school, never trust the bishop: hire a lawyer.
And last but not least: Nick Sandmann and millions of young Americans are proudly pro-life and supportive of the president who defends the unborn. The left wants to intimidate them into silence.
Don’t let them.
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