I have prayed many times with President Trump, both in person and via conference call. He is a man who believes in the power of prayer, as do the vast majority of Americans. He and his team regularly invite pastors to pray with him. And no president has done more for believers, and for the protection of their religious freedom, than he has.
I have also seen the way that the United States Catholic bishops respond to the Trump Administration, and it’s sad. Consider the “Public Apology” that Archbishop Grob of Milwaukee just issued, following upon the opportunity he had to pray with the President in the Oval Office, and the statement of Bishop William Joensen of Des Moines, Iowa about the same event, saying the Administration “exploited our meeting for partisan political purpose.”
It reminds me of the truly baffling response of then-Archbishop of Washington Wilton Gregory after the visit President Trump made to the St. John Paul II National Shrine in DC in June, 2020. The Archbishop said the institution “allow[ed] itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated.”
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It also reminds me of a moment I had together with several very good Catholic priests as we sat together a few years ago for breakfast at a conservative political conference, and at a certain point they began expressing a concern that they might be getting “used” or “exploited” for political purposes.
In Catholic circles, we call this “rash judgment.”
There is no evidence whatsoever that any of these events or gatherings were anything other than public expressions of prayer and devotion that belong to the very fabric of America, as well as public expressions of a commitment to policies that implement the Gospel.
For decades, policies of the Democrat Party as well as court decisions guided by the now obsolete precedent of the “Lemon test” (prohibiting “excessive entanglement” of religious institutions with the state) have led us far away from what our Founders established in this land of religious freedom.
Today’s Court, today’s President, and today’s Republican Party are bringing us back to the authentic understanding and practice of religious freedom.
Is that one of “the president’s policies” that Archbishop Grob said in his statement had “harmed” the people he heard complaints from about his White House visit? What other Trump policies does the Archbishop think we should be concerned about? Might it be President Trump’s actions to increase the freedom of students to pray in public schools, of pastors to speak freely from the pulpit, or of parents to have the financial help to send their students to a Catholic or other private school?
Maybe the Archbishop is concerned about the people who “had been harmed” by President Trump’s current success of bringing crime and murder rates to record low levels, or bringing poverty to a record low level, or having more Americans working now than ever, or raising the median household income higher than it has ever been, or lowering drug-related deaths by record numbers, just to name a few.
I’d invite the bishops – and everyone else – to check out the comparison piece I recently created showing the historic record of accomplishments that President Trump and the Republicans have achieved for the common good, as opposed to the radical and destructive policies of the Democrats.
In the light of the incredible successes that have flooded America and the world in just these last two years thanks to the Trump Administration and the tens of millions of Americans who voted it into office because they wanted these successes, our religious leaders should be PROUD to publicly associate themselves with this President and his Party.
Proud.
Not paranoid.
There is nothing to “apologize” for.
The behavior and words of Archbishop Grob and those who agree with him are yet another symptom of a bigger problem I outlined in my book Abolishing Abortion (2015, Thomas Nelson publishers), namely, that the Catholic hierarchy in America have been seriously misguided, and are seriously misguiding the faithful, regarding the extent to which the institutional Church is supposed to be “neutral” in matters of politics.
My book outlines numerous diocesan memos warning priests not to “discredit” any candidate, party or position they may take.
Excuse me, but how do you preach the Gospel in the light of such advice, especially when we have a political party that promotes unlimited abortion, the redefinition of marriage, the multiplication of genders and the suppression of religious freedom, not to mention its current enabling of terrorism, anti-Semitism, and socialism?
Some pastors don’t want to be political, because they “just want to preach the Gospel.”
It’s time to wake up to the fact that unless we exercise our freedom to get involved in politics, we will lose our freedom to preach the Gospel.
Nobody in American politics has protected and promoted that freedom more than President Trump and the Republican Party. It’s time to both recognize and celebrate that fact. And that’s nothing to apologize for.
LifeNews.com Note: Frank Pavone is the national director for Priests for Life.
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