As Thanksgiving 2023 recedes in the rearview mirror, it’s worth taking one look for a few moments at Joe Biden’s “Thanksgiving” Proclamation, published the day before the holiday.
It’s said that one of the hardest things for language learners are prepositions: which one do you use with what words and what endings? Apparently, prepositions were also a challenge to Mr. Biden as he reflected on Thanksgiving. His proclamation is thick with for what’s we might be thankful about, but much leaner on to whom that thankfulness is directed.
One recipient to whom it is clearly not: God. The “G” word does not appear in the document.
According to this current version of “history, the Pilgrims first sat down to thanksgiving in 1621 “in honor of their first successful harvest.” They also honored “the support and generosity of the Wampanoag people who made it possible.”
Pardon me if I find it hard to digest the idea that William Bradford opened that first Thanksgiving with a “huzzah for the corn and squash!” (“Hooray for the pumpkin pie” was still 223 years in the future, with Lydia Child’s “Over the River and Through the Woods”). Nor do I think that a group that left England—not in search of fusion cuisine but to honor God according to the dictates of their conscience—would attribute the bountiful harvest to “the Wampanoag people who made it possible.”
Were they grateful to the local people, without whose assistance even the remnant that survived that first year probably would have perished? Of course!
But the Pilgrims, as a Bible-based people, would have seen in their first harvest allusions to the Kingdom of God which, like the Sower who, having scattered, leaves the seeds to their fate. “Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how” (Mk 4:27). And the Pilgrims would have seen in their survival and in that initial harvest the stirrings of God’s Kingdom in the New World, what the later Puritan John Winthrop would call their “city on a hill.” Like Paul, who recognized that the growth of the Church in Corinth was the outcome of a seed that Paul “planted …, Apollos watered …, but God made the seed grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow” (I Cor 3:6-7), so the Pilgrims would have seen the Divine Hand in the survival and growth of their seed–literally and figuratively.
Biden’s history continues with George Washington marking Thanksgiving “on the way to Valley Forge” for the winter of 1777-78. Again, Washington’s men were probably most thankful to God just for being alive. After being chased back and forth across New Jersey and losing battles in Wilmington, Brandywine, and fights around Philadelphia, Washington’s remnants scraped to Valley Forge just to breathe and recoup. Their stay there, with von Steuben’s tutelage, made them ready to engage the British successfully when they broke camp the following spring.
Please, however, send the White House a copy of Arnold Friberg’s painting “The Prayer at Valley Forge,” along with Anna Reed’s Life of George Washington. Reed relates Washington’s nephew’s claim that, bringing Washington dispatches and “[w]alking along the passage which led to his door, I heard a voice within. I paused, and distinctly recognized the voice of the general. Listening for a moment, when all was silent around, I found that he was earnestly engaged in prayer.”
I doubt Washington was confused about with Whom he was earnestly engaged.
Finally, the Proclamation says Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving “to honor the blessings of our country, even as he fought to preserve the Union.” Does anyone really think the sixteenth President believed that the preservation of that nation–a “nation under God” as Lincoln reminded us at Gettysburg 160 years ago this month–was a mere human work?
Biden exhorts Americans to “give thanks for the friends, neighbors, family members, and strangers who have supported each other over the past year in a reflection of goodwill and unity.” Who gets those thanks? Each other? What about “friends, neighbors, family members, and strangers” who were less than supportive? Should we be any less grateful for them? To do so seems to make gratitude less, well, grateful and more of a reciprocal exchange, almost an entitlement for gratitude rendered. One may be pardoned to ask whether such sentiments really deserve the name “gratitude.”
Thanksgiving emerged in a consciously religious context among an explicitly religious people. Indeed, “days of thanksgiving” (like “days of fasting and humiliation,” which American Presidents also once upon a time proclaimed) emerged within the religious calendar the Pilgrims and Puritans developed. While they kept holy the Lord’s Day, i.e., scrupulously observed Sundays, they jettisoned the traditional liturgical calendar, dropping feasts like Easter and Christmas. (Christmas was, in fact, illegal in Massachusetts from 1659-81).
In place of those customary religious days, they kept days of “thanksgiving” when they discerned Providence was especially beneficent and days of “fasting and humiliation” when they felt themselves particularly sinners in the hands of an angry God who, given happenings around them, appeared to require propitiation.
“Thanksgiving” did not emerge, then, for the Pilgrims to honor “their first successful harvest” or even their bonding with indigenous tribes. It emerged in a religious context.
Likewise, after American Protestantism blended into the melting pot of “civic religion” or even co-existed with deism (a minority view of intellectual elites, not the common folk of the colonies), there was still a religious awareness that a Creator God was ultimately responsible for the bounty they were about to receive.
In light of those explicit religious roots, one wonders how we reached the minimally agnostic, arguably atheistic “Thanksgiving” that Joe Biden—a Catholic—proclaims. Virtually every President has always referred to God in his Thanksgiving proclamation. The last time it seems the name of “God” was explicitly omitted was Barack Obama’s 2016 Thanksgiving Proclamation–but even that was salted with references to “faith” and “worship.”
As Fr. Paul Scalia observed, without God, to whom are we ultimately grateful? Recognizing God as Creator (something America does in its foundational document, the Declaration of Independence, was stipulates the origin of “inalienable rights” the task of which to guarantee is government’s obligation) means admitting that all we have is gift, not entitlement. Inasmuch as it is wholly possible the Wampanoags might also have had a lousy harvest or Washington could have been captured on his way to Valley Forge, would that not suggest that what each was “celebrating” was more a fortunate turn of luck than a conscious awareness of Divine gift? Ultimately, absent God, does “gratitude” become simply a Miss Manner cover for a good twist of fate or unspoken expectation of help?
Why does the President’s political party adhere to an “inclusivity” that undemocratically wants Americans to divest themselves of their religious identity and heritage, as the price for admission to the public square (or at least the “right” Georgetown salons)? That this question needs to be asked of the second Catholic in the White House is concerning. That more Catholics are not asking it out loud is even more so.
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Those who think it’s morally alright to kill defenseless human persons have no need for God since they’ve assumed that role for themselves.
Looks like an ad for Trump. No thanks.
No ad. Just read the Biden document and reach your own conclusions. Is this your vision of “Thanksgiving?”
Biden is another lying politician, but I think the quintessential “lesser of two evils.” At least he is not a traitor who attempted a violent coup like that other fellow.
There was no violent coup on January 6th. That’s a progressive talking point.
No violent coup? How about your boys chanting “hang Mike Pence!” Vice President Pence barley escaped with his life via tunnels under the Capitol. You watch too much Fox News. It was violent and thankfully,many of those traitors have gone to prison.
Demonization by playing “the Trump card” is pretty simple-minded.
Right Wing Catholics seem to worship this sorry man, and can’t wait to vote for him again.
What’s the appeal? Is he the best you can do?
Bill;
Shirley we can do better than don v. joe round 2, or is that asking too much?
Maybe God doesn’t believe we deserve any better at this low point in our nations’s life.
At least Trump is ProLife and will make migrants come in legally and not take take advantage of the freebies that the US government hands out to them and gives willingly while our hard working US citizens get hardly anything and some are starving and have no heat and work their tails off.
he will also lower the gas prices again. Biden is evil! I rather have Trump over Biden .Candance Owens is too young I much rather have her !
I didn’t get “ad for Trump” out of Mr. Grondelski’s article at all. With respect, I think you might be reading something into the article. And there are options (e.g., write-ins, candidates running as “Independent”, etc.) if you don’t care to vote for Pres. Trump.
Trump at least wasn’t afraid of the word but he did fear Him.
WHAT looks like an ad? Biden,this article? What?
The trouble is that while decrying extremes you embrace them.Many of us don’t want Biden or Trump. We want godly leaders and godly laws in the tradition of Lincoln and Washington and others.
Its sad, when the mind is full of clutter, as Father Richard Rohr would say” many suffer with the disease of dualism” my way is right!!
I’m grateful
That Joe Biden did a pretty good Thanksgiving Proclamation especially in these times when you have a Catholic Church 2000 years old trying to find itself..
Joe Biden mentioned both proclamations, that are fantastic. He mentioned the Wamponeg who are very important, chief Massoit, attended and sent Squanto to help them..
Governor Bradford recognize that” Squanto was a gift sent from God for our benefit”
Joe Biden also ended the proclamation ” In the year of our Lord””
Let’s be grateful for this proclamation, and stop the dualistic mindset that is destroying our Church.
Ajd suggests the Catholic Church is having an identity crisis: “…in these times when you have a Catholic Church 2000 years old trying to find itself..”
Jesus the Christ PROMISED He would remain with His church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. Ajd! Too many synod documents or Franciscan exhortations have confused you. The Church founded by Christ is a city upon a hill. The Church is the light shining in the darkness, which the darkness does not comprehend. Those in the light see it clearly. Look for it.
It’s likely that Joe didn’t mention God because he thought he might be struck by lightning for blasphemy in calling on the One in Whom he clearly does not believe.
When God gives him his last breath, he will get one glorious send off by the Catholic church, and will be declared to be in an eternal heavenly home….he knows this already and knows he doesn’t have to repent or change his wicked ways.
We DO NOT have a Catholic president. It’s time for him and the Church to stop pretending that he is. Next year, his only chance of reelection is promising that he will continue to stand for the slaughter of the unborn babies. Please remind me of the Church’s teaching on which trimester that’s ok.
Very few people know that we have never had a Catholic president. Technically, JFK wasn’t – at least materially – Catholic either.
The fact is that given how Protestant this country has been since its beginning as a part of the “Church” of England any time a so-called “Catholic” is acceptable enough to heretics to vote for means that, at least, he isn’t a good Catholic.
A good Catholic would attempt to drive non-Catholics out of public employment – including jury duty. Heretics ought not to be tolerated in the forming and execution of human/positive laws.
A good Catholic, too, would be absolutely uncompromising in his defense of the unborn, and others who have the natural right to life.
The kind and charitable explanation? Biden has forgotten the names of the Persons of his prodigiously bountiful God.
I am dismayed that a professor, a Doctor of Theology, can not immediately see the divisive, theological bifurcation he proposes throughout this article; he contrasts the act of human “…bonding with the indigenous tribes” (as a potential witness of God’s love) to the “religious context” as if the two were somehow opposed. Or is there a latent Euro-centric supremacy at work here, suggesting that the natives are simply pawns in the greater drama of colonialist adventure, not worthy of being loved and “bonded” to enough to be Thanked? As I read, I waited for the dagger to come unsheathed (the real aim of this screed?), and lo and behold, Barack Obama came up and then of course, the gross generalizing and extrapolating of the professor’s criticism of Joe Biden to all democrats and his “political party”. Atheistic? Agnostic? Sound like dog whistles to me. Maybe more Wagging and less Barking is what we truly need!
I think you just bolstered many of the author’s points with your rather passive-aggressive comment. Always enjoy the “golly, could the author possibly, maybe, sorta be a racist?” ploy, which is as obvious as Biden’s continuing hypocrisy.
“Everyone who disagrees with me and criticizes leftists is a racist!” Wow. That’s original. Haven’t heard that one before 🙄.
1) Biden’s proclamation says the Pilgrims were grateful to the Indians. No doubt they were but, to adapt St. Thomas More, “they were grateful to the Wampanoags, but to God first.” And God is conspicuously absent from this document. So let’s not turn the Pilgrims into “anonymous Christians” when they were pretty explicit about their Christianity.
2) The first President (and last before the current) to omit the word “God” explicitly from his Thanksgiving proclamation was Barack Obama: that fact does not get ignored because he was black and would still remain true if he was an albino.
3) That a greater number of agnostics and atheists coalesce around the Democratic rather than Republican parties is not my conspiracy theory but data from the Pew Research Center, hardly a “dog-whistling right wing cabal of white supremacists.” So, as a good Democrat–Daniel Patrick Moynihan–once observed, you can have your own opinions, but not your own facts.
You seem to forget that in the US that in the US we have separation of Church and State. Government officials do not have to be Christian or even believers in God. All these efforts to please right wing Catholics and Evangelicals are misguided. The fact that so many of them revere a traitor and world class liar makes their self righteousness a joke.
Biden is flawed, but when compared to a traitor who spews hate and lies is the lesser of two evils. Your refusal to even mildly criticize Donald Trump indicates a strange mentality which coincides with the Faustian bargain the Religious Right has made with this evil man.
Try to snap out of the hero worship of Trump and be more logical and critical of him.
“The fact that so many of them revere a traitor and world class liar makes their self righteousness a joke.”
Why do you let The Donald live in your head? Seriously. It’s sad.
Maybe a habit of living in the realm of cliches has limited your thought. There is no separation of Religion and State mandated in the Constitution. You should read it. In fact, States even have the constitutional right to establish a state religion, although none would. Nonetheless, common sense and common decency makes it obvious that it is impossible to separate religion from anything at all. And the constitutional prohibition that prevents the federal government from persecuting Religion in no way precludes criticism of a President for failing to exercise intelligence and good taste on a religiously inspired event to recognize it as a religiously inspired event.
Justice Rehnquist (future Chief Justice) said : William H. Rehnquist (then an associate justice) wrote, “There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the ‘wall of separation’ that was constitutionalized in Everson [v. Board of Education].” The First Amendment, Rehnquist argued, “has been expressly freighted with Jefferson’s misleading metaphor for nearly 40 years.”
One of the commenters here made the point that no president writes their own speeches anymore and that’s probably been true for decades.
Barack Obama’s ethnicity would still be a problem for many voters even if he was an albino. It’s a condition shared by those with African ancestry too.But I agree that leaving the Creator of all things out of a speech about what we’re thankful for would be noticed no matter where a president’s ancestors hailed from.
Can I gather that you speak of the Trump Birther debacle? After much wasted effort he finally admitted he was wrong!
No Morgan, that hadn’t crossed my mind.
We should be grateful for what Biden wrote,last year he did have a sentence on scripture. Saint Paul says we need to pray for our leaders, no leader is in there without God. Let us be grateful for what he wrote, it could get a lot worse, Blessed are the meek!
We need a strong presidential candidate with high morals. However, the toxic political landscape offers many mortal sins on both sides.
President Biden and his “women’ rights” and Trump the “in your face” traitor, hater and liar. My Republican presential debaters sealed their fait when they were asked if they would vote for Trump even if he is a convicted criminal? With the exception of Asa Hutchinson, the 7 said YES!!!
With our fragile democracy in political dissaray, and SCOTUS and the congress in turmoil unable to work on the peoples business and instead investigating the investigators, how can we vote to protect it?
We, unfortunatly, will not vote.
God save the Union.
Who is this “we” you speak of?
Scripture at Mark 5:9 has “We are many.” Would that they all stay home on voting day!
WE = DEMOCRACY!
Dear Athanasius. We = those of US who honor the constitution and protect our democracy.
I was forced to tune out to save my children from hate and lies, but you should tune to MAGA radical platforms of Fox News or Newsmax. The FCC says they have NO authority to screen CABLE TV content. WOW!
Trump’s treasons:
Attempting to overthrow the 2020 election when he knew he had lost… Inciting Domestic terrorists to invade the Capitol. Evidence…
“Go down to the Capitol and fight like hell”. Then 3.5 hrs after the seat of democracy was defiled by criminal thugs Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and Qanan, “Stand back and stand by. Go home in peace, we LOVE you, we know your PAIN”.
At Helsinki where he favored Putin saying “I have President Putin here and I see no reason why Russia would be involved in our elections”. Rejecting his intelligence experts warning.
At the White House where he invited arch enemy Russian Ambassador Lavrov to show him secret military documents.
At Mar A Lago where he revealed sensitive stolen archived documents to members.
Thank you for asking “We”
Watch this space.
Morgan,
Jow many great leaders in history had high morals? Or if they respected moral values, failed to live those out perfectly in their personal affairs?
We get played when we vote for candidates based on their family photo ops and appearances at prolife banquets. It’s what public servants and leaders actually accomplish that’s important. If you don’t care for what a president accomplished in office then don’t vote for them based upon that. It’s that simple.
“How” many…
Sorry hit the wrong key again.
Maybe the wrong key. I hit the wrong note.
Maybe everybody should read the president’s document again and not be so judgmental and biased in what they want with their dualistic Minds. As far as the professor who wrote the article, if I didn’t have access to Joe Biden’s Proclamation, and if I didn’t have the knowledge I have regarding the history of Thanksgiving I would have taken his pathetic writing as truth, but the knowledge that I have and reading Joe Biden’s document which includes both presidents who are hated today by the American people George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are hated by the American people and he includes them in his Proclamation, and mentions their proclamations which are the two best you’re ever going to read he also ends his proclamation in the year of Our Lord so he does acknowledge God the second person of the Blessed Trinity it’s pathetic sometimes to read these articles by totally biased individuals, and I can’t use the words I’d like to but these twisted writers enjoy a mutual to distort information to satisfy their dualistic nature. thank God for the Catholic church thank God for Joe Biden and thank God for the proclamation that was once again prepared in 2023 the year of our Lord!!!
Thank God for Joe Biden. You seriously wrote that? You’re kidding right?
No
Sad and delusional.
What is all this talk of hate? Who hates whom and what is your point in talking of it? Happy Thanksgiving to you too.
“I can’t use the words I’d like to [sic] but these twisted writers enjoy a mutual to distort…” What prevents you from using words you want? How do you define a ‘twisted’ writer? What is the meaning of “a mutual [???] to distort”?
The Devil knows scripture. A pious Christian with fervor for the Trinity will have no problem specifying the lord to whom he renders obeisance. ‘Catholic’ that he is, Joe Biden didn’t glorify his Lord Jesus Christ. Biden himself probably doesn’t fully know the lord he serves.
“George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are hated by the American people.”
That’s a new one.
I think people forget that everything president biden says and or does has been handed to him via script or told what to do by all his handlers….are there any catholics let alone Christians on his staff….I doubt it what do you expect to be written then for him….he isxa party loyalist before he is catholic obviously….
And Trump is a good choice for Catholics? Really?
Trump is certainly better than Biden or any other Dem. One thing for sure Trump won’t send the FBI, like Biden did, to hunt down Catholics who go to the Latin mass or protest against abortion. Trump a protestant is by far better than a CINO Biden
Look back to my article on Trump’s treasonous actions. Are you a Trump MAGA supporter? Seems so. And because of President Biden’s stand on abortion, we may not vote.
God bless.
Does “Any other Dem” = any and ALL Dems? Broad brush for sure.
The fact that Biden is bad doesn’t make Trump good. That’s a logical fallacy, and no one is saying that. That’s your TDS talking.
If one MUST choose between him and Biden, the answer to your question is (reluctantly) – yes.
Mr. Kiehl,
I don’t know that Donald Trump was or is a “best” choice (he wasn’t my 1st choice) but he certainly turned out to be a better choice that what the other side was offering.
I’m curious what you believe Catholics shouldn’t like about his administration? Not Mr. Trump’s personality, his choice of comments on Twitter, or his past history, but which accomplishments should we not like?
That was one of my first thoughts.
I imagine the wealth makes him thankful
One thing you Democrats and other extreme Leftists don’t seem to understand is that a vote for Trump is not so much an endorsement of the man but the voice of protest against a government that’s gone woke, is an over-inflated bureacracy that doesn’t serve the people but serves itself, and is convincingly corrupt.
Votes for Trump are votes which say, “This government is illegitimate and I reject it.” It’s what was said recently in the Netherlands, in Argentina, and Italy. It’s voice is spreading across the globe.
People are no longer willing to surrender control of their lives to government.
Parenthetically, it’s what many Catholics are saying to the Bergoglian Papacy as well.
“Other extreme leftists?” So anybody who doesn’t support General Bonespurs is a leftist? Trump wants more tax cuts for billionaires. Is that what you want? Right wing claptrap.
Yup.
Give one good reason why shouldn’t government stealing from productive employers be reduced, especially since most billion dollar enterprises tend to teter on the edge of bankruptcy?
Deacon, with all due respect. It is mind numbing that you broad brush, (Mom said DON’T use ALL or NONE without facts), and blame the “extreme Dem leftists” when you seem to ignore that the Trump’s, (the MAN), Make America GAG Again criminal Proud boys, Oath Keepers INVADED the US Capitol, the bastion of our democracy. The man… “Go in peace now, we love you and feel your pain”. That is treason by giving aid and comfort to a DOMESTIC enemy. Lets put the MAN aside, if we can. Lets look at the moral impact that MY GOP congress and SCOTUS has had on the constitution, which they took an oath to protect.
Trump appointed justices Thomas and Alletto violated their “ethics” by taking millions and not report it. Roberts made a weak attempt to implement an ethics code w/o a plan to invoke a penalty.
The GOP House is impotent not able to address the people’s business, rather investigate the investigators. Jordan, Comer, M. T. Green, Gaetz, Bobbert.
Facts.
“It is mind numbing that you broad brush…”
Not much self-awareness going on here, is there?
Lots of snarky comments to moderates and liberals, but none for right wing buffoons, who spout Fox News propaganda. Lots of attacks against Biden and Pope Francis but either silence or faint praise for Trump. “Catholic” World Report? No. More like Fox News masquerading as a Catholic website. Read Matthew 25, and try to be more balanced about the former President, the treasonous liar in chief. Goodbye. Your website is nothing more then. Right wing echo chamber with comments from a few less than literate regulars.
First, morganb has been singing the same hysterical tune re: Trump for years. Repetitive and tiring. So there’s that.
As far as I can tell, William, you’ve been coming to CWR for a few months. There was plenty of time to deal with Trump back when he was President. There were plenty of criticisms of him at CWR. The fact that he lives rent-free in so many heads in late 2023 is curious, but not something I lose sleep over. At least Trump, for all his arrogance and ugliness, actually did some substantive things for the pro-life movement, unlike, say, the past several Presidents, of either party. Long time readers know that I have strong disdain for both parties, but for differing reasons.
And I have just as much disdain for FOX News, which I haven’t watched in years. I know you probably don’t have time to go back and read CWR pieces and editorials from, say, 2012 or 2017 or whatever. That’s fine. But you are showing your true colors here, while my track record as editor of CWR for 12 years there for all to search and read.
Further, my mild retorts to Biden lovers and abortion apologists is rooted in my pro-life beliefs, not in political loyalties (as I really don’t have any). Joe Biden has been living off the public teat for 50 (!!) years, and his record as a Catholic is absolutely horrific. I recall how nasty and ugly he was back in the 1980s–so bad that Sam Donaldson, Connie Chung, and Co. concluded that a lying, plagiarizing blowhard like Biden would never last in politics (ah, those were the days, when some in the media actually had some brains and principles).
And you’ll never know how many comments by angry right-winger and Trump-lovers we have not let through over the years. Plenty of craziness by conspiracy theorists that we simply don’t let through. We manage to anger nearly everyone, which I tend to think is a positive.
As for Pope Francis, I have been very consistent in offering reasoned, factual, and orthodox criticisms since 2013. Disagree if you wish, but I’ve never said (as far too many people have) that he isn’t the real pope, or that he’s a Freemason antiChrist. I just think that he is, overall, a very flawed pope, whose record on many fronts is bad or worse.
So, well, goodbye.
William, please. Like all doctrinaire leftists, you make broad claims and assumptions that you never back up with facts.
But over the past seven years, we have had an unparalleled opportunity to compare the country when it is governed by conservative principles (under Trump) to the country when it is governed by leftist principles (under Biden).
Under Trump, we saw the lowest unemployment in a half century in America.
And the greatest number of people working in our history.
We saw that prosperity spread throughout the economy, with historically low unemployment among blacks, latinos and women.
Wages rose 3.2 percent in Trump’s first year in office — with no inflation.
And, before you complain that those gains were not evenly distributed, let me point out that the poorest quarter of workers’ wages rose a full percent more than the top quarter of workers’ wages — fully 4.4 percent more money for the poorest workers.
(Please read that last paragraph again.)
And, as I said, those wage increases were real, since inflation was negligible during Trump’s entire term.
Under Biden?
The average family has lost more than $10,000 in purchasing power, just due to inflation. Plus, the flood of low-skilled, uneducated workers that has surged over our open border under Biden has kept American workers’ wages artificially low.
Incredibly, the number of illegal aliens allowed to enter the country over the past three years totals nearly four million. Which is greater than the population of 22 of our states, plus the District of Columbia.
And there’s so much more I could mention. Like the fact that, under Trump, North Korea was negotiating a reduction in its nuclear arsenal; the Arab nations in the Middle East were signing a pact with Israel — the Abraham Accords; America was not only self-sufficient in crude oil production, we were actually selling oil around the world; and under Trump, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade which has meant that children who would have been killed are now allowed to live.
While, under Biden, by contrast, inflation is higher than it’s been for more than forty years; the Middle East is in flames; the world stands on the brink of a world war; China is expanding its control of world markets and energy supplies; the national debt has exploded to more than $33 trillion dollars; the FBI has targeted Catholic believers as “extremists” because they oppose abortion; crime is out of control in America’s Democratically run cities, and so much more.
The undeniable fact is, governing with conservative principles makes people’s lives freer and more prosperous.
Whereas leftism makes people less free, poorer, and much, much more dead.
Now, I realize that this screed is not related to the above CWR story about our godless President’s godless presidential Thanksgiving statement. But neither are William’s baseless attacks on Trump related in any way to the story.
It’s annoying to see the CWR comments sections devolve into partisan bickering, and this is my way of protesting — by actually marshaling facts, something that William and morgan and the rest of the nominal Catholics seem unable to do.
Matthew 25? You mean where Our Lord emphasized what conservatives take to heart in contrast to liberals, as well as your presumptions? A former liberal economist wrote a book, “Who Really Cares”, that summarized the research he conducted trying to prove how compassionate liberals are. He found the exact opposite. Self identified Christian Conservatives give more time and money to aiding the poor and downtrodden than liberals by a factor of ten to one to a hundred to one depending on the activity. Conservatives even donate blood at thirty times the rate as liberals.
Extreme Leftist claptrap. You’ve convinced no one.
I’m sure your mother tried better than to leave you with a mindset where your primary “fact” involves a caviler attitude towards the Eighth Commandment, especially when you perform the guilt by association reasoning with which you fault and project. Are you responsible for the personal actions of any stranger to whom you ever gave a speech? Suggesting the fictional myth that rioters at the Capital, many of whom were left-wing agitators, had any chance of “overthrowing” a government, unlike the very real threat in 2016 when dozens of prominent Democrats demanded that the 2016 election results of Trump’s victory be ignored and disallowed, is like comparing a rain drop with the ocean in significance.
A unique talent for self-service in facts is illustrated by calling Thomas (26 years before Trump) and Allito (11 years before Trump) Trump appointments, not to mention characterizing the reception of hospitality as the equivalent of “receiving millions.”
Edward, You are correct. I made an error on Trump’s appointees. I apologise.
8th Amendment? I did not lie. Trump lies incessantly. Our innocent childrens are bein brainwashed by observing, (Fox News, Newsmax, etc) his tirades of hate and vengeance. Trump’s leaning toward autocracy, (Putin, Xi and Un are briliant leaders”), puts him a clear and present danger to our constitution and democracy. Mom was a devout Catholic Democrat. Except for Gail and I, Republicans, Mom’s family were Dems.
Try not to mention mom in the future. She is in heaven.
God bless.
Trump has been the least autocratic president since Calvin Coolidge. You might consider becoming less Orwellian and not buying into the preposterous contrived disinformation of the elitist media, which you apparently see as a counterpoint of legitimacy to those you’ve reduced to the level of caricatured imagery contrived by these same elitists exercising venomous anti-Christian hatred and resistance towards their dominant autocracy. The elitist establishment, wholly dominant in academia, media, and entertainment, exists as a function of anti-religious bigotry, effective for those with stunted desire to identify evil in themselves and are thus willing to organize systematic means to project an explanation for evil in the world on those they imagine to be of a different sort, or their innate inferiors. This is why we have wars and other forms of exterminating inconvenient life.
Those who gravitate to Trump know he is an anti-elitist, the most important thing a decent human being can be whatever his personal faults and inability to articulate the intrinsic evil of totalitarian elitism. Elitists hate anyone representing a threat to their orchestrated mythologies, so they’ve established unified disinformation systems, ever since the dark age of the enlightenment, made even more effective because they actually believe them and have sustained them over multiple centuries, without being dissuaded from how their nihilistic premises have always led to mass murder. Space does not allow me a rebuttal to how deeply you’ve allowed elitists their contrived disinforming influence upon you. I pray you at least consider that the same mindset that has slaughtered 200 million innocent lives in the past century alone is darker than an idiosyncratic accident.
Is there anyone there who still thinks of this man as a SERIOUS ‘catholic’?
The man taught American literature at university; Moby Dick was one of his special interests. With a love for fine detail, impeccable scholarship, enlivening lectures, subtle wry wit, kind acts, and the idea that America’s founding people and principles were wrought by high ideals, later to falter, fail, and fall, he taught. I give thanks to God for a great professor, teacher, friend.
His son, endowed with similar gifts, passed them along in “Mayflower.”
Note well: The Puritans left England for Holland because they did not accept the Church of England as the Church God intended. They were separatists; IOW, they were lawbreakers for God’s sake. “Taking their cue from Paul’s admonition, ‘come out among them and be separate,’ they sought to congregate with “like-minded believers to worship God as the Bible instructed.” They boarded the Mayflower. Landing on a Saturday at Provincetown Harbor, after a harrowing Atlantic crossing, they “remained aboard ship, worshipping God….As Puritans, they believed that the entire Sabbath must be devoted to worship–both a morning and an afternoon meeting along with personal and family prayers throughout the day. Work and especially play on a Sunday were forbidden.”
“Years later, Bradford looked back to that first morning in America with wonder. ‘…I cannot…make a pause,…and stand half amazed at this poor people’s present condition….[T]hey had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor.’ In the next four months, half of them would be dead. But what astonished Bradford was that half of them would somehow survive. ‘What could now sustain them, but the spirit of God and His Grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: “Our fathers were Englishmen who came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice and looked on their adversity.'” (quotes from N. Philbrick’s ‘Mayflower’, Penguin Books, 2006).
Joe Biden errs when he neglects God and fails to incite US citizens to same.
So you desire an atheistic Church that rejects the idea of immutable truth? Immutable because all truth, not some of it, all of it comes from God and none of it comes from His creation?