Christ Jesus prayed that all those who would believe in Him would be ONE, just as He and the Father are ONE; that they be brought to complete unity so that the world would know that He was sent by the Father. (John 17:20-23)
President Donald Trump has saved lives both in and out of the womb. (Photo credit: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)
At the heart of the job description of a president is the protection of the people in the nation he governs. And the saving of lives, both in America and abroad, is a clear hallmark, a pivotal motivation, and a shining success of the first term of President Donald J. Trump.
Since his inauguration in 2017, his policies on everything from infants born alive after abortion to foreign conflicts to a new initiative to end HIV/AIDS are preserving and protecting people inside and outside the United States.
Not only are they facing the decision for whom to cast their vote for president this Election Day – Democrat Biden or Republican Trump – but mixed in that decision is the issue of their faith.
Who would have thought that religion would play such a big part in this American presidential election?
What's going on?
First of all, there are Democratic politicians who are speaking openly of their faith and in doing that are bragging about it and trying to appeal to Catholic voters.
Implied in their "faith declaration" is the message that good Catholics will vote for them, just because.
Presidential candidate Joe Biden, a Democrat, is referred to as a Catholic as though that adds to his political qualifications.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is referred to as a Catholic, and there are many others – again, with the intent to enhance her political qualifications.
That Biden and Pelosi, very high-profile Catholic politicians, take positions that are in opposition to basic teachings of their church
– they favor abortion even though their church adamantly opposes it – is ignored
For Catholics, abortion is a mortal sin.
But for these two people, abortion must be legal and available for Americans.
It is, by the way, something many "ostensibly good Catholics" also approve.
On the other side of the presidential ticket is Donald Trump – running for a second term.
He is not Catholic, yet he opposes abortion.
Oh dear, what's a Catholic to do?
Many are Democrats, yet they are being asked to vote for a man who finds no problem with the killing of a babies before birth and, in fact, up to the point of birth and perhaps minutes afterward.
Some call that the right of women; others call it murder.
What about the issue of gay marriage?
Homosexual unions are not approved in the Catholic religion, yet Pope Francis has confused the issue by his recent statement that homosexuals are "children of God" and his stated support of homosexual civil unions.
It is known that Catholic Joe Biden has officiated at a "gay wedding."
Then there's the issue of immigration.
Generally, it's seen that the Catholic Church is in favor of immigration
– the more the merrier, legal and illegal.
Any comments about illegal immigration and the legal and social problems it causes the country is ignored by the church.
Pope Francis is on that bandwagon too – supporting open borders not only in this country but virtually worldwide.
What's that all about?
What does the church say about all this?
Nothing.
It presents a huge problem, and there's a battle going on within the church among clerics who refuse to say anything about the political quandary and those who want more openness.
Keep in mind that religious people who are U.S. citizens can register to vote just as any other citizen can, and traditionally, at least in my experience, priests and nuns did not talk politics with parishioners.
Apparently, that has changed, but there are reports that a number of bishops have ordered their priests not to discuss politics.
It became all too apparent when Bishop William Callahan of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, reprimanded and threatened canonical penalties for Fr. James Altman for his homily in which he said,
"Here is a memo to clueless baptized Catholics out there: You cannot be a Catholic and be a Democrat. Period."
Fr. Altman caught a lot of flak for his statement, but he has support too.
Among one of the first to support him was Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas.
He tweeted: "As the Bishop of Tyler, I endorse Fr. Altman's statement – My shame is that it has taken me so long.
Thank you, Fr. Altman for your COURAGE. If you love Jesus & His Church & this nation … please HEED THIS MESSAGE."
In a luncheon speech this month in Chicago, Fr. Altman asked,
"What person worthy to be called American has a problem with making America great again?"
He continued, "This actually is a crucial time in history where Catholics better get it right."
And speaking of U.S. bishops, he added,
"And the shepherds better be getting it right."
In fact, the bishops have taken a lot of flak for their adherence to the Democratic position and their refusal to speak out about key issues facing the church – especially abortion.
Many have followed the lead of the pope and embraced homosexuality, euthanasia and other activities that are intrinsically evil in the church, but which are basic tenets of the Democratic Party.
Another brave Catholic cleric is the bishop of Fairbanks Alaska, Chad Zielinski, the spiritual leader of some 12,500 Catholics across 400,000 square miles of Northern Alaska.
As reported by ChurchMilitant.com, the bishop wrote a letter to his parishioners to guide them as they go to the polls.
"It should go without saying that we have a paramount responsibility as Catholics to support candidates who will protect and defend human life from conception to natural death."
He wrote the letter because a voters' guide issued by the Fairbanks Diocese does not explicitly list abortion as the preeminent issue facing voters – it's just one of many issues.
Bishop Zielinski didn't mince words:
"As Catholics, then, we can never morally support or vote for candidates, laws or initiatives that will maintain or increase access to abortion, euthanasia or assisted suicide.
He claims, "Society proposes that we eliminate problems by eliminating people."
Another courageous man.
Thank you, Fr. Altman.
Thank you, Bishop Zielinski.
Catholics and non-Catholics need leaders like you.
When people as disparate as John Cleese, of "Monty Python" fame, journalist Piers Morgan and Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald raise their voices in concern, you know that there's a problem.
A very big problem. Censorship by the giants of media and social media has gotten out of control.
Ted Cruz's grilling of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has rightly gone viral.
Yet the answers given by Dorsey were chilling.
To paraphrase, "Even though we blew it, if the New York Post" – yes, the Post, one of the nation's leading and historic newspapers – "wants to access its account again, it must remove the tweet we don't like."
In other words, "Play by the rules we make, as uneven and biased as they may be, or we will silence you.
And make no mistake about it.
We have that power."
I remember the first time Facebook shut down one of our ministry's pages and locked me out, along with our page administrator.
We had been falsely accused of hate speech, as a result of which we could not post anything to the page or access our account.
Thankfully, I was given the name of someone within Facebook who helped religious organizations, and after reviewing the complaints, Facebook apologized and reinstated our page.
You spend thousands of hours posting material and interacting with your followers.
You build a constituency and they become your co-workers, sharing your material with others.
And then, suddenly, based on false charges by people who themselves are bigoted, you are shut down.
Silenced. Cut off from your constituency.
Unable to communicate or even explain what has happened.
And if you dare cross the line again – so say the ominous warnings you receive the social media gatekeepers – you will be banned for life.
IMPORTANT NOTE: America’s “mainstream media” has become a clone of the former Soviet Union’s “Pravda” – a cravenly servile, constantly lying propaganda operation disguised as actual journalism. Today’s total corruption of what was once a vibrant news establishment is powerfully explored in the October issue of WND’s acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled “GUARDIANS OF THE SWAMP: How angry, entitled and shockingly dishonest ‘journalists’ are destroying America.”
Should the feds take stronger action against social media companies?
What kind of power is that?
It felt like a personal violation.
But it's not just the unfair censoring of social media. It's the media itself, as illustrated by the virtual blackout of the Hunter Biden scandal by the left.
It really is frightening.
A few days ago, I asked a friend of mine who is an ultra-Orthodox rabbi about his community's voting patterns in recent years.
After explaining that they have largely voted Republican for some time now, he wrote:
"I think that the support for Trump is more vocal because the two positions are so starkly contrasted
– the left has lost any veneer of morality, their anti-Semitism is out in the open, their corruption is no longer questionable, they stand on the side of anarchy against law and order (which according to the Avot 3:2 [a citation from the Mishnah] and common sense is the primary function of a government)
– and I think that the corruption of the media plays a big part in this
– people are frightened of such an extremely corrupt media
– in a certain sense the media is more powerful than government.
A vote for Trump is a vote against the liberal media."
Yes, "people are frightened of such an extremely corrupt media."
Are we that much better than oppressive regimes like North Korea, where the people are fed only what the government wants them to see and hear?
Here in America, we have an endless stream of news services from all perspectives, almost all of them available online in one form or another.
But if the social media giants suppress the flow of that news according to their own biases, and if the media outlets we follow on the right or left are selective or even deceptive in what they report, then we will think we are getting the whole story when, in fact, we are not.
As for Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of the Intercept, he resigned because his co-editors, all of them fiercely loyal to Joe Biden, would not allow his latest article to run.
He explained, "The Intercept's editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.
The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden's conduct."
They would not even allow him to publish it elsewhere, and they also declined his invitation to write a rebuttal to his article, challenging his points.
And so, he resigned.
As for Piers Moran, who seemed quite at home on CNN during his stint there, he slammed the media's failure to report on the Hunter Biden investigation, saying,
"Imagine if we switched the names around.
Imagine if the story was about Donald Trump Jr. and Donald Trump.
What would be happening?"
He added, "Do you think that the tech giants would be suppressing the story, would the mainstream media be ignoring the story and say that it's all just an unfair smear on the Trumps?"
Yes, "The job of a newspaper, of a television network, of anybody, frankly, in the media, who believes in freedom of speech and believes in journalism is to go and investigate the allegations the New York Post has made."
Not if it might hurt Joe Biden's chances for election.
As for John Cleese, with reference to the creative process, he said,
"I mean, if you're going to come out with something really interesting artistically, it's going to come out of your unconscious, and if you're having to edit everything you say before you say it then nothing it going to happen creatively
– and also things that are rather lovely and funny in ordinary conversation, they're not going to happen either, because everybody's thinking 'Ooh, somebody might [be offended].'"
This, in turn ties in with the larger cancel culture, which is yet another, chilling aspect of censorship and silencing.
What, then, should we do?
Shout our messages from the rooftops.
Speak out all the more loudly and clearly.
Investigate and study and research.
Get to the truth and share the truth.
As Paul wrote, "For we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth" (2 Corinthians 13:8).
By Fr. Frank Pavone | October 29, 2020 | 1:42pm EDT
