In Gratitude for Joe Biden

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio - articles - email ) | Feb 26, 2021     

Sacraments, according to the Baltimore Catechism, are outward signs instituted by Christ to give grace. The Sacraments define and direct our lives. Our choices form us. When we choose to live a sacramental life, in a sense we become sacraments reflecting the Lord. But the contrary is also true.

In the Sacraments Jesus accompanies us throughout our lives: Baptism and birth, Confession and healing, the Eucharist and food, Confirmation and maturation. Marriage governs families and Holy Orders governs the Church. The Last Sacrament, the Anointing of the Sick, prepares us to enter through the narrow gate of death with God’s grace.

All creation has beautiful sacramental aspects. “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” [Psalm 19:1] Psalm 104 is a poignant hymn describing how all living things clothe God with “honor and majesty.” Wherever we can see the handiwork of God, we see His image.

God created man in His image and likeness. Our response to His grace accentuates the Divine imprint. The saints in their goodness—Mary above all—reflect the holiness of God: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior….” [Luke 1:47]

But sin and evil, by analogy, are also formative and have their own “sacramental” aspects. Perhaps it is better to say, anti-sacramental characteristics. In the Gospels, we see various metaphors for sin. Leprosy is an outward sign of sin in general. Above all, the Cross is a terrible anti-sacrament of sin. But from the point of view of the Resurrection, it is the triumphant sign of final victory.

Just as holy people magnify the Lord, those spiritually deformed by the evil they commit become anti-sacraments of evil. Solomon in his splendor reflected the Lord’s wisdom. But when he took pride in God’s gifts, failing to attribute them to the Lord, he became an anti-sacrament of apostasy and his kingdom split apart.

Throughout our lives we walk the line, magnifying God’s holiness or reflecting sinful pride and rebellion. It is holy and good continually to seek the crown of sanctity. But a single seriously evil act—committed with sufficient freedom and informed consent—threatens our eternity. So it is presumptuous and dangerous to proclaim oneself as a devout Catholic or to encourage (or even allow) the description.

President Biden’s supporters repeatedly claim that he is a devout Catholic. In 2005, Biden himself protested those who questioned his Catholicism: “The next Republican that tells me I’m not religious I’m going to shove my rosary beads down their throat.” But the words of Jesus are foreboding: “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” [Mt. 7:21] Biden’s habitual and unapologetic sinful acts are on full display.

In less than a month after his inauguration, he issued a statement celebrating the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. He said he is “committed to codifying” the decision that legalized abortion. He promised he will be “appointing judges that respect foundational precedents like Roe.” He rescinded the pro-life Mexico City Policy, which ensured that foreign aid would not go to organizations that perform or refer for abortions.

Biden revoked the Trump administration’s ban on so-called gender transitioning in the military, allowing troops to serve based on their gender identity. He called on Congress to quickly pass the Equality Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Washington Post called Joe Biden a “president who has been called the most pro-transgender in history.”

Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, like Biden is Catholic. But contrary to the moral law, he supports legislation that permits partial-birth abortion, forces every healthcare plan to pay for abortions, forces pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise abortions, forces the Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for contraception and abortion drugs, and allows assisted suicide.

For most of his political life—from his consistent pro-abortion record to his officiating at a gay wedding in 2016—despite his Catholic affiliation and public pious practices, Joe Biden has magnified and institutionalized countless major violations of the Ten Commandments. The hypocrisy rivals that of the chief priests and Pharisees and is worthy of the same condemnation. Indeed, Biden is the most aggressively anti-Catholic President in history.

Meanwhile, Catholic clergymen are in disarray. Some of the bishops have tried silence, presumably hoping to avoid greater scandal. Others use flattery, praising Biden for those of his policies that dovetail with USCCB politics, but do not bind the faithful in conscience. A few bishops have attempted praiseworthy polemical pushbacks.

But so far the bishops have not initiated a single disciplinary measure to protect the Catholic faith from scandal. On the contrary, several prominent bishops have declared Biden worthy of Catholic-in-good-standing status. The Georgetown Jesuits celebrate with elation his Mass attendance as President.

As perhaps the most powerful man in the world, Biden’s insistent claim that he is a devout Catholic forces an unavoidable choice. We either: stand with the Church and her sacraments and reject Biden’s iconic culture-of-death policies, or we join those who celebrate Biden’s flouting of Church teaching. In so doing, we will reveal whether we intend to magnify the Lord or magnify Biden’s immorality.

Some prominent bishops and cardinals have already declared themselves sheep of Biden’s flock. Others apparently hope to go unnoticed by their silence. But they are successors of St. Peter, St. Paul, and the other apostles, who were not silenced even when authorities threatened them with incarceration or martyrdom. (Of course, fear of crippling lawsuits likely explains a good deal of current episcopal paralysis.) So their continued silence is an anti-sacrament of cowardice and the spiritual treason of collaborating with the enemy.

The election of Biden has forced a crisis. From the ashes, we can expect the Holy Spirit to raise up successors to those who opposed another anti-Catholic tyrant: Saint John Fisher and Saint Thomas More. May there be many of them.

If only for the clarity this brings to the Church, we have Joe Biden to thank.

https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/in-gratitude-for-joe-biden/

Fr. Jerry Pokorsky is a priest of the Diocese of Arlington who has also served as a financial administrator in the Diocese of Lincoln. Trained in business and accounting, he also holds a Master of Divinity and a Master’s in moral theology. Father Pokorsky co-founded both CREDO and Adoremus, two organizations deeply engaged in authentic liturgical renewal. He writes regularly for a number of Catholic websites and magazines.  See full bio.

 

The President and the Bishops: What’s Next?

BY WILLIAM KILPATRICK | JAN 24, 2021

Catholics have never been more confused than now about what they are supposed to believe.  The causes of the confusion are not difficult to find:  widespread immorality among priests and bishops and even more widespread coverup of same; a pope who affirms traditional teaching one moment, and tears it down the next; Church leaders who seem more concerned about climate change than Christian persecution; and the introduction of pagan elements into Catholic liturgy.

To add to the confusion, a highly contagious virus swept across the world in 2020.  Although the virus had a low fatality rate, reporters and politicians alike treated it as though it were the second coming of the Black Death.  Schools and shops were shut down, and so were churches.  Catholics got used to “attending” Sunday Mass in front of computer screens.  The fact that the vast majority of bishops readily complied with the shutdown gave the impression to many that worship of God was not, after all, a very important activity.

For American Catholics, the confusion has now been compounded by the election of a Catholic president who rejects essential Catholic teaching, yet is warmly welcomed by the pope along with many American bishops.

Of course, several past American presidents have pursued policies that contradict Catholic teaching and they, nevertheless, received good wishes from the Catholic hierarchy.  The difference is that they were not Catholics, and there was no danger that their policy positions would be mistaken for Catholic positions.

But that’s not the case with President Biden.  Not only is he a Catholic, but he also makes a show of his Catholicism.  He attends Mass weekly, wears rosary beads around his wrist, blesses himself in public, refers to scripture and Catholic hymns during political speeches, and speaks often of how his Catholic faith has helped him through difficult times. To top it off, he has installed a photo of Pope Francis in the Oval Office.

 In many respects, Joe Biden appears to be a traditional pious Catholic. Yet Biden is strongly pro-abortion and favors policies that would spread abortion throughout the developing world.  In addition, he seems to be on board with the whole LGBT agenda.  He officiated at a wedding of two gay men, wants to reverse the transgender military ban, favors the Equality Act which allows men to compete in women’s sports, and believes that 10-year-olds should be able to choose whatever gender they please.  And, in what seems a deliberate slap at the Catholic concept of gender, he has appointed Dr. Rachel Levine (nee Richard Levine) as Assistant Secretary of Health despite his/her minimal qualifications for the job.

Attempts to present Biden’s brand of Catholicism as the real thing is bound to have a confusing effect on both Catholics and non-Catholics. Stephen P. White, Director of The Catholic Project, observed that “Biden’s words and actions will shape how the Catholic faith is perceived and understood.”  Some bishops understand this, and they realize that simply extending good wishes to the new president is not a sufficient response to the new situation—namely a President who proudly proclaims his Catholic identity while trampling on central Catholic beliefs about marriage and sexuality.

It was refreshing, then, that a statement issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) tempered the congratulations with sharp criticism.  Archbishop Jose Gomez, the president of the USCCB, wrote:

I must point out that our new President has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender.  Of deep concern is the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.

At a time of great moral confusion, this is exactly the kind of clarity that Catholics need to see and hear.  But this is not only a time of confusion.  It’s  also a time of great danger—a time when Catholics and other Christians stand in danger of being stripped of their right to free speech and freedom of religion.  Hence, Archbishop Gomez adds: “Of deep concern is the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.”

As some of the bishops are beginning to realize rather late in the day, the party that is coming to power in Washington has a totalitarian streak a mile wide.  How much longer will priests and bishops be able to tell their congregations that abortion and same-sex “marriage” are contrary to God’s laws without being fined—or worse?

In his statement, Archbishop Gomez, says “Rather than impose further expansion of abortion and contraception, as he has promised, I am hopeful that the new President and his administration will work with the Church and others of good will.  My hope is that we can begin a dialogue…”

But what if the dialogue never gets off the ground?  What then?  If Biden goes ahead with his pro-abortion policies, and the bishops do nothing, except to ask for more dialogue, it will only serve to confuse Catholics even more.  Unfortunately, many will conclude that abortion can’t really be that serious.  If it was, the bishops would surely have taken stronger action.

And so, they must.  Moreover, the action they should take is no mystery.  The bishops already understand full well that after dialogue fails, the next option is denial of Communion, and after that, excommunication.  These are options, not requirements.  And in the case of ordinary Catholics, these two remedies are rarely used.  However, Joe Biden is no ordinary Catholic.  He is, as Stephen White puts it, “the most powerful and influential Catholic layman in the world.”  Moreover, Biden presents himself as one who is in full communion with the Catholic Church.  But someone who persists in promoting such a grave sin as abortion has already broken communion with the Church.  And denial of Communion is just an acknowledgment of that fact.

Because of his position and influence, the bishops have a duty to make clear that Biden’s brand of “progressive” Catholicism is in opposition to Catholic teaching. But there is a difficulty involved in refusing Communion to Biden.  The difficulty lies in getting all the bishops to agree to this approach.  We already know that Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the Archbishop of Washington, D.C., will not deny Communion to Biden, and undoubtedly there are many other progressive bishops who will follow suit.  Since Biden will, for the most part, be attending Mass in Washington, D.C., he will continue to receive Communion.

Of course, Biden will have to travel from time-to-time, and individual priests and bishops in different states may refuse him Communion.  But this will only serve to strengthen the impression that Catholicism is a pick-and-choose religion.  Many will conclude that, if the bishops are divided on the issue, it can’t be that important after all.  Many will further conclude that, as the pro-choice forces would have us believe, it’s up to each individual to decide whether abortion is right or wrong.

Moreover, don’t expect that refusal of Communion by a single cleric will be a big news event which will put Biden in an awkward position, and force progressive Catholics to search their souls.  Father Robert Morey of St. Anthony Church in Florence, South Carolina did refuse Communion to Biden in November, 2019 and the news was largely ignored by the mainstream media.  It seems that a scattershot approach to challenging Biden’s anti-Catholic version of Catholicism will simply not work.  If the American bishops wish to make a sufficient impact, a unified plan of action will be required.

There is another, more serious option to consider:  excommunication.  While denial of Communion is similar in some ways, it is not the same as a formal excommunication.  There is a strong possibility that a denial policy won’t have the intended effect because many bishops and priests will simply ignore it, with the result that more Catholics will be left wondering why they too can’t ignore Church rules they disagree with.

Given the current situation, it seems that the strongest possible penalty is required.  Biden advertises his Catholicism at every opportunity, and his acolytes in the media are now portraying him as if he were a new Saint Francis.  If the bishops do nothing, Biden and his backers will get to define what it means to be a good Catholic.  It is even possible to imagine the eventual creation of a state-run church along the lines of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association—a church where elements of Catholicism and party doctrine are skillfully blended.  Don’t dismiss the possibility.  If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that strange and unexpected developments have become the order of the day.

Undoubtedly, many in the media and in the Church itself will dismiss excommunication as a relic of medieval times.  But there is a relatively recent precedent for excommunicating Catholic politicians, and it’s one which liberals would find it difficult to criticize.  On April 16, 1962, Joseph Francis Rummel, the Archbishop of New Orleans, publicly excommunicated three local political figures for their flagrant opposition to the desegregation of New Orleans Catholic Schools.

One wonders what Cardinal-Archbishop Wilton Gregory thinks of Rummel’s action, and why he thinks the current case of a Catholic politician who flagrantly promotes abortion should be treated any differently.

Not coincidentally, the mention of Archbishop Gregory’s name brings up one of the chief difficulties with pursuing the path of excommunication.  Normally, the jurisdiction to pronounce an excommunication belongs to the local bishop.  In Biden’s case that would be Wilton Gregory, and, barring a miracle, Gregory would refuse to excommunicate.

However—at least to a layman’s eyes—the issue of jurisdiction is a very fuzzy one.  In the case of the President of the United States, it would seem that jurisdiction should not belong to the local bishop (Gregory) because the President is not just the President of the District of Columbia, but of the whole nation.  His decisions affect the lives of millions of Catholics outside D.C.  Arguably, the bishop who should have jurisdiction should be an American bishop in a position comparable to the one held by the President.  And that would be Archbishop Jose Gomez, the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  Unlike Cardinal Gregory, he was elected to his position by a vote of his fellow bishops. Moreover, unlike Gregory, he understands that this is not a time for business as usual. Gomez has already indicated that certain of Biden’s policies “advance moral evils.” Consequently, the claim that Biden is a Catholic in good standing cannot be left unchallenged.

More than many in the hierarchy, Archbishop Gomez seems to realize that the election of Biden has brought the Church to a major turning point.  Let’s hope and pray that he has the courage to move it in the right direction.

William Kilpatrick is the author of What Catholics Need to Know about Islam and other books about culture and religion. His work is supported in part by the Shillman Foundation.

Pictured above:  President-elect Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden attend services at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle

Photo credit:  FOX 5 DC

 

Why Did God Allow Biden-Harris to Prevail?

churchmilitant.com/news/article/why-did-god-allow-biden-to-prevail

News: Commentary

by David Gordon  •  ChurchMilitant.com  •  January 7, 2021   

Because your family, friends and neighbors are crooked as hell. 

The specter of an impending Joe Biden presidency is haunting America's Christian faithful, leaving many wondering why providence would grant the forces of evil such a pivotal political victory. The simple answer is this: America has gotten exactly the type of government that she deserves. She's reaped the poisonous chaff that she's spent decades and decades sowing. America will be governed by a wicked, Culture of Death, homosexualist, socialist shill because the majority of Americans are wicked, Culture of Death, homosexualist socialists (whether expressly or not). After all, the beauty — and horror — of self-governance is that nations always get the government they deserve.

President Reagan

In order to be free, a people must be virtuous and God-fearing. On this, the Founding Fathers were unanimous, with, perhaps, Samuel Adams putting it best: "Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt." Since most men this side of Eden live vile, bestial lives, the norm for mankind has been to live as serfs underneath brutal, vicious regimes.

America is no exception to this infallible political calculus. A nation is always just one generation from tyranny: All that stands in the way of the degeneration from republic to dystopia, from free people to cattle, is the orientation and vitality of the aggregate conscience of the populace. As Ronald Reagan famously warned:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

The universe naturally inclines from order to disorder. The firewall against political entropy is virtue built upon grace. When virtue degenerates, so does freedom.

Our Founding Fathers — men of honor, nobility and high ideals — gifted us a constitutional republic built from the ground up as a hedge against tyranny, the default condition for the fallen human race. Ours was the unmerited privilege of taking the blank slate of a free nation and making of it what we willed. And we chose our path and chose it clearly. In her collective recklessness spurred on by hedonistic excess, intoxicant-fueled indifference and practical atheism, America has frittered away her freedom posthaste for gold-plated dung. We have assembled our own chains of political bondage "link by link and yard by yard" (as Dickens' Jacob Marley would say), girding them on by our own free will.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

We have, since the dawn of the republic, allowed judicial tyrants (beginning with Chief Justice John Marshall) to legislate from the bench, rewriting the Constitution under the guise of interpreting it. So we've been left with an untrammeled Supreme Court drunk on its own power — a judiciary that's blighted us with, inter alia, universal access to contraceptives, a "right" to possess pornography, a "right" to slaughter our own children in utero, and sodomitical faux marriage. We didn't do a thing about it, save offer a token, lip-service resistance so characteristic of the indolent, impotent Right.

We've sat idly by and allowed Congress to become a den of thieves, one that has rapaciously appropriated to itself legislative powers reserved to the states alone under the Constitution. We allowed this wake of vultures — under the pretexts of the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Commerce Clause and the Tax and Spend Clause — to invade with onerous regulations and profligate spending every facet of our daily lives. They've destroyed health care; unduly restricted the right to bear arms; financed child-assassination mills like Planned Parenthood with generous gifts from the public coffers; warped our education system with No Child Left Behind; tanked manufacturing; driven up the price of energy; gutted college sports with Title IX and attacked the nuclear family with insidious, feminist legislation like the Violence Against Women Act  

And the few duties that actually wereconstitutionally delegated to the congressional circus are carried out with haphazard incompetence by vainglorious career-politician legislative pimps. The postal service is slow, expensive, disgruntled and flighty; the military, while being overextended to the four corners of the world contra the solemn admonition of George Washington in his Farewell Address, is lowering its fitness standards at the expense of public safety so that women can play soldier and treat it like a job-advancement program; the tax code is a fear-inducing labyrinth of asinine complexities where somehow, despite our communist-inspired graduated income tax, the most opulent corporations pay nothing but average citizens fear debtors' prison; and the borders are porous inlets for drug cartels and unvetted undesirables from all of Latin America.

Depiction of President Washington's
Farewell Address

We have an imperial presidency where cult-of-personality strongmen rule by executive fiat, unlawfully bypassing the legislative branch to make policy from on high while at the same time often refusing to enforce the laws that the chief executive is, by definition, charged with enforcing (e.g., President Obama's creation of the "DACA" program to avoid deporting illegal aliens in contravention of extant federal law). And we've done nothing to restore order and justice, because the Center is vulgar and illiterate, the Right is apathetic and the Left is affirmatively evil.

How did American civics devolve to this point? Make no mistake about it: We got here because of the unconstrained moral degeneracy of our good-time-Charlie family members, friends and neighbors. To care about justice in government, you first have to care about truth and goodness. And don't give me the reflexive, warmed-over, regurgitated talking points endemic among gutless conservatives: "I believe in the fundamental decency of the American people"; "I remain hopeful for America's future," yadda yadda. No. I don’t. And you shouldn't either. 

Confronted with the bleak prospects of a Marxist doom pock-marked by mob violence and overt anti-Christianity, there's no more room for optimism, not by a long shot. The "aww shucks" whistle-past-the-graveyard contrived cheerfulness that was dishonestly passed off as charity by cowardly preceding generations has to be declared anathema to men of goodwill. I hold my many ignoble countrymen in contempt, and so should you. 

Why has God allowed us to escape the natural (and preternatural) consequences of our moral decay for as long as He has?

A brief survey of Americans' moral outlook should suffice to sober up the delirious glass-is-half-full automatons of the nominal Right. So drink in deeply this alarming bevy of statistics:

• 83% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in some or all circumstances
• 73% believe divorce is morally acceptable
• 65% believe having a baby outside of marriage is morally acceptable
• 65% believe that smoking marijuana recreationally is morally acceptable
• 91% believe birth control is morally acceptable
• 69% believe fornication is morally acceptable
• 67% percent believe homosexual relations are morally acceptable
• 54% believe euthanasia is morally acceptable.

To put this in perspective, a higher percentage of Americans believe it's immoral to wear fur clothing (37%) than believe embryonic stem cell research is unethical (29%).

Looking at the various bellwethers of America's moral integrity, it's hard to believe that the nation has been as resilient to outright socialistic tyranny as she actually has. By all indicia, we're a nation of acedia-ridden, playboy savages. So the question is not, "Why has God allowed a corrupt Biden-Harris ticket to win (or steal) this election?" The real question is, "Why has God allowed us to escape the natural (and preternatural) consequences of our moral decay for as long as He has?" That we've made it this far without a catastrophic national meltdown is a minor miracle. It's delusional to think that our countrymen are so perverse and backwards that they view almost every major vice as a virtue but that such ignominy will not translate to the polls. Of course it will, and it has. And barring a national religious awakening, things are only going to get worse.

So never again scratch your head and wonder aloud why it is that evil has been allowed to prevail politically in 2020. The answer is as close as your nearest neighbor.

David Gordon holds university degrees in political science, law and theology. He is co-author of Rules for Retrogrades: Forty Tactics to Defeat the Radical Left. Gordon is an associate copy editor at Church Militant and a co-host of the Resistance Podcast with Joe Gallagher.