This past Friday was the 48th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that struck down pro-life legislation and common law in every state in the union. Unfortunately, due to the Democrats’ lockdown of Washington, the Annual March for Life had to be canceled – for the first time in its history.
But on his last Sunday in office, President Trump’s administration continued to prioritize LIFE by declaring January 22, “National Sanctity of Human Life Day.”
As a public service, we read it here in its entirety.
Every human life is a gift to the world. Whether born or unborn, young or old, healthy or sick, every person is made in the holy image of God. The Almighty Creator gives unique talents, beautiful dreams, and a great purpose to every person. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, we celebrate the wonder of human existence and renew our resolve to build a culture of life where every person of every age is protected, valued, and cherished.
This month, we mark nearly 50 years since the United States Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. This constitutionally flawed ruling overturned State laws that banned abortion, and has resulted in the loss of more than 50 million innocent lives. But strong mothers, courageous students, and incredible community members and people of faith are leading a powerful movement to awaken America’s conscience and restore the belief that every life is worthy of respect, protection, and care. Because of the devotion of countless pro-life pioneers, the call for every person to recognize the sanctity of life is resounding more loudly in America than ever before. Over the last decade, the rate of abortions has steadily decreased, and today, more than three out of every four Americans support restrictions on abortion.
Since my first day in office, I have taken historic action to protect innocent lives at home and abroad. I reinstituted and strengthened President Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City Policy, issued a landmark pro-life rule to govern the use of Title Ten taxpayer funding, and took action to protect the conscience rights of doctors, nurses, and organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor. My Administration has protected the vital role of faith-based adoption. At the United Nations, I made clear that global bureaucrats have no business attacking the sovereignty of nations that protect innocent life. Just a few months ago, our Nation also joined 32 other countries in signing the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which bolsters global efforts to provide better healthcare to women, protect all human life, and strengthen families.
As a Nation, restoring a culture of respect for the sacredness of life is fundamental to solving our country’s most pressing problems. When each person is treated as a beloved child of God, individuals can reach their full potential, communities will flourish, and America will be a place of even greater hope and freedom. That is why it was my profound privilege to be the first President in history to attend the March for Life, and it is what motives my actions to improve our Nation’s adoption and foster care system, secure more funding for Down syndrome research, and expand health services for single mothers. Over the past 4 years, I have appointed more than 200 Federal judges who apply the Constitution as written, including three Supreme Court Justices — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. I also increased the child tax credit, so that mothers are financially supported as they take on the noble task of raising strong and healthy children. And, recently, I signed an Executive Order on Protecting Vulnerable Newborn and Infant Children, which defends the truth that every newborn baby has the same rights as all other individuals to receive life-saving care.
The United States is a shining example of human rights for the world. However, some in Washington are fighting to keep the United States among a small handful of nations — including North Korea and China — that allow elective abortions after 20 weeks. I join with countless others who believe this is morally and fundamentally wrong, and today, I renew my call on the Congress to pass legislation prohibiting late-term abortion.
Since the beginning, my Administration has been dedicated to lifting up every American, and that starts with protecting the rights of the most vulnerable in our society — the unborn. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, we promise to continue speaking out for those who have no voice. We vow to celebrate and support every heroic mother who chooses life. And we resolve to defend the lives of every innocent and unborn child, each of whom can bring unbelievable love, joy, beauty, and grace into our Nation and the entire world.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 22, 2021, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. Today, I call on the Congress to join me in protecting and defending the dignity of every human life, including those not yet born. I call on the American people to continue to care for women in unexpected pregnancies and to support adoption and foster care in a more meaningful way, so every child can have a loving home. And finally, I ask every citizen of this great Nation to listen to the sound of silence caused by a generation lost to us, and then to raise their voices for all affected by abortion, both seen and unseen.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this seventeenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.”
Now why did I have to read it out loud?
Well, I found that text on the White House website four days ago. Two days later, an hour after Catholic Joe Biden was sworn in, his staff removed the proclamation for life from the White House site. The proclamation of Life is just another victim of the Democrats’ cancel culture.
But wait, there’s more. Democrats who surrounded Washington’s entire downtown with barbed wire made it impossible for the half a million prolifers to attend the March for Life this year.
It was cancelled.
Catholic Joe Biden’s crowd thinks we’re all terrorists and seditionists. They want to shut us down **every** day of ** every ** year.
We are up against a Satanic enemy folks, but that won’t stop us. We will keep fighting for life and invoke the help of He who is the way, the truth, and the life.
Now let’s take a closer look at that enemy, and what he’s up to next.
Remember George Orwell’s novel 1984? Written in 1948, it predicted a lot of what’s going on today. Especially poignant is its hijacking of hate for political purposes. Listen to this from Orwell’s 1984:
“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in.”
“The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one’s teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one’s neck. The Hate had started.
As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared.
The sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically. … But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were — in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State…
In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen.
And then it ended. Big Brother appeared on the screen, and then his slogans, printed in huge letters on the headquarters of the Ministry of Truth.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”
Those will be the watchwords not for the next two minutes or the next two weeks, but for the next two years.
George Orwell was right, For Democrats, Trump Will Be The Enemy Forever
The Democrats bullhorn will be blasting Trump long after inauguration day. After all, it’s working.
Right now, as Joe Biden puts it, Democrats are a “one horse pony,” and “Blame Trump!” is the their cattle call as long as Joe is tied to the saddle like a burnt-out buckaroo. What else have they got?
Oh, come on, really? “Announcing the Administration of Joe Biden!” Where’s the applause? There isn’t any. Catholic Joe’s agenda is as brain-dead as he is. To invoke the words of John Nance Garner, another former Vice-President, Joe’s action plan is about as scintillating as “a bucket of warm spit.”
So what’s the only word that resonates in DC’s echo chamber? “Trump!” All others are like trees falling in a faraway forest. Nobody hears them, and nobody cares.
So it’s settled. The DC Hive will be blaring “Trump!! Trump!!” forever. Big Brother’s Ministry of Truth had to have its Emmanuel Goldstein, and without “Trump!” the worker bees in Bidenville’s version would be sitting by the side of the road.
Consider: How long would the Washington Post last if its pages were full of snits over Kamala’s bad Vogue cover, or Dr. Jill’s 100th visit to an impoverished kindergarten?
But wait, there’s more. Where would Nancy Pelosi be without Trump? You’d think she’d want to finish him off. She wants to impeach Trump again, doesn’t she?
But observe her stated reason. She wants to prevent him from running again in 2024. Behind that fatuous fraud lies a very real fear: if he does run, he might win. Sure, she has a bucketful of wrenches she can throw into the election machine: mass immigration, free citizenship for illegals, universal mail-in voting, no Voter ID … and she can propose countless new ones as well: voting online, lowering the voting age to 16, even giving members of favored minorities two votes instead of one. But Pelosi is right: he still might win. So the noise will continue full blast.
Pelosi has to keep “Trump!” alive, and well, and hated.
Otherwise, we might be discussing the fraud. Look at @SpeakerPelosi’s tweet on May 16, 2017: “Our election was hijacked,” she wrote then. “There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts.” What about the Big Steal? The Democrats were cheering the really rioting “mostly peaceful” leftists all summer long – and what about their lockdowns?
Well, that was then, and this is now. And the then and the now are subject to revision by means of Orwell’s Memory Hole, which is a whole lot deeper than Joe Biden’s basement.
So instead of recounting the outrages (their name is Legion), let’s look at what the Left is doing inside their Cacophony Machine. There they are mounting a surprisingly effective and sophisticated strategy to divide three targeted communities: Republicans, pro-lifers, and Trump supporters. These groups overlap, to be sure, and as a disciplined and united coalition they are almost invincible. The Democrats aim to destroy all three of those coalitions, and unfortunately there are a lot of Republicans who are willing to help them.
Here’s why:
Consider the GOP gains in the House last November – fourteen new pro-life Republicans! The GOP had momentum, and Nancy got a lot of heat for it from her own members. She’s got to make sure that 2022 isn’t an instant replay, not just of last November but of 1994 and 2010.
In those two off-year elections, the last two Democrat presidents lost big-time after controlling the House and Senate for the first two years of their tenure. In 1994, two years into the Clinton Administration, Republicans gained 54 seats in the House and eight in the Senate. In 2010, two years into Obama, Republicans gained 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate.
If that happens again, Pelosi’s toast.
And that’s why she’s relentlessly attacking, non-stop.
But why would the GOP be such an easy target?
Bear in mind that not every Republican has the same strength of spine as Donald Trump or Jesse Helms. These two figures come to mind as the only two politicians in recent history who could not only survive media assassination attempts, but actually grew stronger because of them.
Not their colleagues. There, many Republicans still want the media to be nice to them. Many a GOP member trembles at the prospect of a smear job from the Washington Post. This is true even after Donald Trump has spent the past five years exposing “media professionals” as the lazy lightweight lapdogs of the Democrat Left.
Cowardice dies hard.
So the current noise plays a critical part in the effort to keep Republicans on the defensive, knocked back on their heels if not actually knocked down. That circus will not subside, because the media conglomerates have nothing worth saying about Joe Biden’s administration and its agenda. Without exception, it constitutes an endless, boring replay of the usual platitudes. Yes, Joe’s agenda is radical and dangerous, but it’s intellectually vapid. Tyranny usually is.
On January tenth, Biden said that “[o]ur priority will be Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American owned small businesses, women-owned businesses, and finally having equal access to resources needed to reopen and rebuild.”
His vulgar racism went unnoticed, as usual. Why bother?
Tough Times To Come
Two weeks ago, ten House Republicans caved, as usual, and voted for impeachment. One of them, Liz Cheney, a member of the GOP House leadership, savagely attacked Trump. Finally, payback for the guy who leveled similar criticism at her father’s wars. Then House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) chimed in and blamed President Trump for the riots on Capitol Hill.
Oh, the irony. In badmouthing Trump, he kissed his chances of being Speaker in a Republican Congress forever.
Why are Democrats pushing a futile impeachment effort?
Near-term, “Trump!” justifies everything. Down the Memory Hole go their scandals, the fraud, Hunter Biden, Joe’s China ties, Antifa’s real riots. Instead, Democrats have made Washington D.C. look like Baghdad or Kabul, with thousands of troops locking it down to “prevent violence.”
A defiant Democrat Left is flexing its muscle. No crowds would have shown up for Biden’s inauguration anyway, so they make lemonade, signaling that Trump is dangerous and his supporters are literally the enemy, the nation’s capital is still off limits, and the entire country is a war zone.
“We can shut you down at will!” And they didn’t have to abolish the electoral college, pack the Supreme Court, overturn the Second Amendment, or have a Democrat in the WH or a Democrat majority in the Senate to do it.
This agitprop serves as a very effective cover story for their long-term political goal – fomenting the split in the GOP and exacerbating it through the 2022 elections. And it’s working. And with Democrats in charge at the White House, the House, and the Senate, this will be a tough two years.
Segment two
75 Days After Election, Catholic Bishops Finally Confront Biden on Abortion
On the morning of January 20, USCCB President José Gómez released a statement on the inauguration of Joe Biden, promising prayers and repeating many of the conference’s familiar buzzwords regarding its Social Justice agenda.
Pope Francis, never a fan of President Trump, had also sent a warm message to Biden, and we expected that Gómez would continue in the same vein in his own.
But after his generic greeting, the Archbishop of Los Angeles made what must be seen as a stunning departure from the Conference’s usual aversion to confronting absolute evils: “I must point out,” he wrote, “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.”
Note: we should not let the archbishop’s mild-mannered prose distract us: “concern” is the USCCB’s most emphatic noun of choice.
No, the archbishop’s statement is historic: after more than a year, he has finally said out loud what bishops promised in November 2019 to make their Prime Mandate.
We recall how that “preeminence” came to pass: it was the result of a heated debate that found a third of the American hierarchy, led by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, opposing it.
Having won the vote in 2019, the USCCB majority immediately went silent for over a year – until last Wednesday.
Today Abp. Gómez perseveres. “For the nation’s bishops, the continued injustice of abortion remains the ‘preeminent priority’,” he writes. But he quickly attempts to soften his bold resuscitation of the abortion issue with the mandatory reaffirmation of the Conference’s Social Justice agenda: “Preeminent does not mean ‘only’,” he writes. “We have deep concerns about many threats to human life and dignity in our society. But as Pope Francis teaches, we cannot stay silent when nearly a million unborn lives are being cast aside in our country year after year through abortion.”
Archbishop Gómez ’s statement is striking not because it is so powerful – it is clearly not – but because it is so rare. This is true not only for the USCCB’s statements during the Trump years, but those in earlier times as well. Long before Trump, the USCCB was so enamored of Obama’s open-borders policy and the launch of Obamacare that the abortion issue didn’t just take a back seat, it was put on ice.
With the election of Donald Trump four years ago, our bishops were confronted with a president who reversed Obama’s anti-life policies and made great strides in defending religious liberty and positive positions on abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender – precisely the advances that Abp. Gómez today fears that Biden will reverse. But during the Trump years, the bishops fired a senior USCCB official who had dared to praise Trump’s pro-life policies, while they focused on opposing the president on a host of issues, from refugee policy and Cuba to sanctuary cities and foreign aid.
Meanwhile, despite abortion’s “preeminence,” the Conference left it on the shelf as bishops zealously advocated their “Social Justice” agenda.
Tempestas Surgit
Abp. Gómez ’s cautious prose wasn’t soft enough for Cdl. Cupich. Within hours, the Chicago Cardinal publicly registered his disapproval with a statement of his own:
“Today, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued an ill-considered statement on the day of President Biden’s inauguration,” he wrote. “The statement was crafted without the involvement of the Administrative Committee, a collegial consultation that is normal course for statements that represent and enjoy the considered endorsement of the American bishops.
“The internal institutional failures involved must be addressed,” he continued, “and I look forward to contributing to all efforts to that end, so that, inspired by the Gospel, we can build up the unity of the Church, and together take up the work of healing our nation in this moment of crisis.”
Cupich followed up with his own statement on the inauguration:
“The Catholic community of the Archdiocese of Chicago joins our prayers with those of Pope Francis for the new President and First Lady, Vice President and Second Gentleman, and we extend our warmest wishes as they assume their new service to the nation.
“Only two weeks ago, the world watched as our democracy was attacked,” Cupich continued. “Today, we proved its resilience. The new administration begins in a time of global pandemic, economic peril and deep division, when millions of our brothers and sisters have been brought low by illness, poverty and racism. We pray that the way forward will be inspired, as the Holy Father asked, by dreaming together.”
Cupich’s statements fail to mention the threat that Biden poses with regard to abortion, contraception, marriage, “gender,” or religious freedom.
A Memorable Day for the American Church
On the surface, Cupich bases his disagreement on Gómez’s alleged end-run around the Conference’s “Administrative Committee.” Given the USCCB’s frequent invocation of policies, procedures, protocols and platitudes in their day-to-day operations, his objection has legitimacy on those grounds. But as his own official statement shows, his disagreement is based on substance. He fought “preeminent” fourteen months ago and he is fighting it now.
Catholics, take note: on this historic day, Cardinal Cupich made clear the profound division that exists among the American hierarchy and the American Church. That division is based on principle, not procedure. Cupich’s faction not only supports the Social Justice agenda, it supports nothing else. For them, Biden’s support of the entire anti-life agenda is of no more importance than his views on tax rates, deficit spending, or mail-in voting. Good Catholics – like Joe, like Cupich – can disagree. Don’t get bogged down in the “rabbit hole” of objective evils. The point is, as Pope Francis puts it, “dreaming together.”
Cupich doesn’t mention it, but we should note with approval another rare but equally revealing and vital affirmation in Gómez’s statement. After addressing objective evils like abortion and euthanasia, he refers to the bishops’ other political agenda items. There, he says, “our duty to love and our moral principles lead us to prudential judgments and positions that do not align neatly with the political categories of left or right or the platforms of our two major political parties.”
Objective evils versus prudential positions: This is a major distinction that Social Justice bishops rarely acknowledge. In fact, many react with scorn to the charge that the conference’s “prudential judgments and positions” aren’t just as magisterial as those dealing with objective good and evil.
That’s because they would have to append a critical sentence at the end of each of the thousands of letters and official statements on dozens of prudential issues that incessantly flow from the USCCB staff offices in Washington: “Of course, the views expressed here reflect the prudential judgment of bishops; good Catholics can disagree and are encouraged to propose other positions equally informed by the Faith.”
The Cupich faction wants to eliminate that crucial distinction for good. The battle is on, and meanwhile – back to business as usual.
Surprise! Right on cue, on Thursday the USCCB palaver machine returned to autopilot, announcing the bishops’ delight that Biden will go whole hog on Global Warming. “Catholic Leaders Express Hope with President’s Announcement that U.S. Will Rejoin the Paris Agreement on Climate Change,” the headline reads. Another welcomes Biden’s “Commitment to DACA and the Call for Legislation on Immigration Reform,”
So our shepherds demand higher energy prices while Communist China thumbs its nose, and welcomes 22 million cheap foreign workers who will lower entry-level wages. So much for their celebrated “Preferential Option for the Poor.”
Archbishop Gómez ’s sober moment has passed. Unfortunately, it looks like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is drifting back into its familiar obscurity.
