By DEXTER DUGGAN
Imagine that your girlfriend, a prominent figure known throughout your state, is admired for a high-quality reputation and public record.
A different widely known state figure is a brutal blowhard who never misses a chance to kick a dog, hit a child or beat a woman. He never expressed any contrition for his behavior. Instead, he says people who irritate him deserve what they get.
Promoting abortion is his favorite cause.
One day there’s a scheduled public event where your girlfriend gives her blessing to this brute’s announced political campaign. She doesn’t seem a bit uncomfortable in his presence. Instead, she smiles widely, keeps shaking his hand for the photographers, and even gives him a big hug.
Would you change your opinion of the unrepentant brute and think he’s probably a good guy after all? Or would you wonder what has become of your girlfriend’s mind and think you’d better talk over her bad judgment with her?
Then you discover she has been visiting other states and endorsing downright political cads there, too. Maybe it’s time for you to reconsider your close relationship with her?
On October 9 Pope Francis received House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) at the Vatican. Pelosi acted like a faithful daughter of the Church delighted to meet its leader, and the Pope seemed equally pleased at her presence. No stern glances or disapproving gestures by him.
However, both Pelosi and Francis knew that she, one of the most politically powerful so-called Catholics in the world, is a pro-abortion fanatic committed to the deaths of tens of millions of preborn babies, as is bad Catholic Joe Biden, who is scheduled to visit the Vatican soon.
In her own words, Pelosi regards permissive abortion as key to women’s basic dignity and rights, the effusions of a committed radical who helps set the tone of the Democratic Party of Death and Depravity. This is no more the party of the lunch-bucket working class than it would be if it fed poison to kindergarteners every day.
If the Pope intended to tell Pelosi quietly that she needed to hurry up and make a good Confession, one would hope his public manner would have been more serious and reserved. Or that he would have not met publicly with her at all.
Only two weeks before greeting the Pope, Pelosi led the House of Representatives on an almost entirely party-line vote to approve a radical abortion bill that would crush whatever pro-life laws the individual states had been allowed by courts to enact.
Nor was Pelosi the first strong pro-abortionist welcomed at the Vatican. A procession of abortion advocates and population controllers and even left-winger Italian politician and previous abortionist Emma Bonino marched right in.
Francis repeatedly flatly has described abortion as “murder.” But as long as the murders are enabled by his left-wing political pals, Francis appears untroubled. To him, apparently, pushing left-wing politics comes first — even though permissive abortion has become a worldwide left-wing priority.
The Wanderer asked national conservative commentator Quin Hillyer for his reaction to Francis receiving Pelosi. Hillyer replied on October 11: “I defer to the Pope on his knowledge of Catholicism, but he certainly sends a very, very confusing message when he receives Nancy Pelosi without the slightest public mention of her massive and obvious apostasy on abortion.
“One would think even if he otherwise graciously receives her as a top leader of the world’s most important government,” Hillyer said, “a Pontiff would want to reinforce crucial Church doctrine. A failure to do so sends the signal that the doctrine isn’t very important after all — and it is a dangerous and tragic signal.”
This newspaper posed the same question to Mary Ann Kreitzer, who runs the Virginia-based Catholic blog Les Femmes — The Truth. Kreitzer replied on October 11: “I thought the timing of the meeting between Pelosi and Pope Francis was interesting. Her bishop launches a prayer crusade for her conversion and the Pope gives her a private audience and major photo op right after.
“I think he belongs to the ‘I’m okay, you’re okay’ school of philosophy,” Kreitzer said. “She calls herself ‘devout,’ and he has the same level of devotion. She worships power and money. He brought an idol into St. Peter’s for worship. She talks about protecting the weak and those who are left out while she champions the murder of God’s least ones.
“He honors her along with abortionists, euthanasia proponents, and population controllers,” Kreitzer said. “Some wag called them two P’s in a pod: and that’s exactly right. Pelosi and the Pope: enablers of abortion, enemies of Church doctrine, liberals who put climate change above human life and the salvation of souls. This is not likely to end well for either of them.”
Kreitzer’s reference to Pelosi’s bishop’s prayer crusade meant San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s recent request for people’s fasting and prayer for her conversion of heart. Cordileone said in part on September 29:
“A conversion of heart of the majority of our congressional representatives is needed on this issue, beginning with the leader of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. I am therefore inviting all Catholics to join in a massive and visible campaign of prayer and fasting for Speaker Pelosi: commit to praying one rosary a week and fasting on Fridays for her conversion of heart.
“Please sign up for the ‘Rose and Rosary for Nancy’ campaign at BenedictInstitute.org, and a rose will be sent to her as a symbol of your prayer and fasting for her,” he said.
The prayers and sacrifices of others are welcome as well.
Last May the Daily Caller News Foundation reported that Cordileone said he had “conversations” with Pelosi about abstaining from receiving the Eucharist as a pro-abortion Catholic.
The story said Daily Caller writer Mary Margaret Olohan “asked Cordileone whether the archbishop would give Communion to President Joe Biden or Pelosi if either pro-abortion politician were to show up in his Communion line at Mass.
“Cordileone noted that in [his teaching document] Before I Formed You In The Womb, I Knew You, he discussed the need for conversations to take place between pastors or bishops and the individual in question ‘so they can understand the error of their ways’,” the story said.
However, the Daily Caller story said, if the politician didn’t heed this counsel and still came up to receive the Eucharist, according to Cordileone, “Because we are dealing with public figures and public examples of cooperation in moral evil, this correction can also take the public form of exclusion from the reception of Holy Communion.”
It often may seem easier to put off a problem until later, or hope it simply goes away. This would be the reason many passive bishops brought the Church to the current day, where flagrantly defiant Catholics like Biden and Pelosi have learned to act as if it’s their right to commit sacrilege.
Cordileone wasn’t one of these weak-willed prelates. Even back when he was auxiliary bishop of the San Diego Diocese, he spoke up for Eucharistic coherence, and The Wanderer interviewed him in his office about it. But many other bishops weren’t equally forthright.
Another example of failing to stand up has been the issue of massive illegal immigration. The United States has been generous about welcoming others, but they still were expected to come through the door, not sneak through the windows or jump over the back fence and expect the homeowner to provide for their every demand.
Not so long ago, even liberal Democratic politicians like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — as well as a Latino activist like Cesar Chavez — publicly opposed illegal immigration. They knew, for instance, how their own poorer constituents were hurt by new unlimited, unauthorized arrivals.
But when left-wing extremism started to drive so many traditional Democrats out of that party, Democrat leaders decided their future power depended on how many illegal immigrants they could rush into the U.S.
Unfortunately, the Catholic bureaucracy acquired a taste for the gushing federal funds it could receive as a social-service agency for illegal immigrants. And a widespread attitude among bishops grew that rather than demand foreigners improve their own countries, they should be welcomed here unquestioningly, even though unvetted and unlimited.
Thus the Marxist-poisoned Biden administration goes forward with utter contempt for border protection, gleefully bringing in anyone by the millions, including terrorists, drug pushers, gang members, and COVID-diseased people free to travel wherever they please.
One might think every bishop would have paused at seeing the lessons of this chaos, but not so.
Even the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, a short drive from the Mexican border, distributed a flier inviting participation at its October 11 “Prayer Vigil for Migrant Justice” at its St. Mary’s Basilica, led by Bishop Thomas Olmsted and Auxiliary Bishop Eduardo Nevares.
It was co-sponsored by the Catholic Coalition for Migrant Justice, and was to last for two hours, including recitation of the rosary.
There was no word on the flier about praying for the welfare of all the people of the United States, or questioning the chaos the open border has caused. It was only about more “immigration.”
The flier boldly said the “Purpose of the Vigil” is “To support our Catholic Church’s moral authority on immigration; to spur Arizona’s Catholic community to embrace the Catholic Church’s social teachings in support of our immigrant brothers and sisters; to promote immigrants’ human dignity; to pray for our immigrant brothers and sisters, their hopes, dreams and struggles as they seek a new life in the United States.”
Olmsted was to preach a long homily including this passage: “Born of all this, then, is a crisis within, characterized by division, fear, and suspicion that dominate our discourse on immigration. There has been a lamentable rise in anger towards migrants that is unbecoming of a nation of immigrants with such a clear and defined Christian heritage.
“If we are honest with ourselves,” Olmsted said, “we can recognize that prejudice is a driving factor behind much of our political discourse. The most troubling aspect behind the debate on immigration is that we, as Catholics, no longer see the strangers among us as our brothers and sisters in Christ, but only as thieves or criminals or a means to an end. This is our ‘crisis within’.”
In 2006 Olmsted had authored a pamphlet on the responsibilities of “Catholics in the Public Square.” It said absolutely nothing whatever about supposed Catholic responsibilities to welcome unlimited illegal immigrants. That idea was to come later — as it also did for Democratic Party leaders.
For Olmsted to suggest that bigots simply have dreamed up the idea there’s a serious issue of criminals flooding across the border is to make Catholics despair of such prelates’ grasp of this crisis.
Trump Calls Border A “Wreck”
On the other hand, Arizona GOP Cong. Andy Biggs told the Travis & Sexton national radio program on October 5 that the Biden administration has hung out a welcome mat for the entire world, intended to change the political landscape here.
Or, as Donald Trump said in an email blast on October 12: “Our border has gone from the safest and most secure in history, by far, to a broken, dirty, and disgusting wreck with thousands of unknown people from unknown countries, including from their now-emptied prisons all over the world, unsustainably pouring in.
“No country has ever seen anything like what is happening on the southern border of the United States — and no country is stupid enough to allow such a thing to happen,” Trump said. “Crime will go up at levels that the U.S. has never seen before (it is actually already there), and terrorism will be the next big wave to lead the way.”
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