Left & Right February 17, 2021

 New guest Jonna Carter of South Conway, NH sits in the left chair for this show. She describes herself a "left of liberal" but not a "leftist" which she considers radical. She's a writer and the owner of five rescue dogs. Her column appears in the The Conway Daily Sun on Wednesdays.

We discuss many things including division within the Republican Party, what a Trumpist (her word) is, preservation of historical buildings, my use of "pro-abortion" vs her recommendation of "pro-choice" instead.

Left & Right Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Mark Guerringue again sits in the left chair.

The producer asks us if we think Mitch McConnell can administer an impartial Senate trial and if not should he recuse himself? I say, yes, he can. He’s a partisan, but he can be fair as much as anyone can, but Chief Justice John Roberts will preside over things.

Mark thinks this impeachment is much more partisan than previous ones, especially Clinton’s. He thinks Trump is guilty and cited reasons why including seventeen high government officials who testified before Schiff’s Committee. I begin picking apart some of that testimony but Mark interrupted me to say he didn’t want to talk anymore about impeachment — except to say one more thing. Then I respond to that and he responds to me… and on it goes.

We move to the Horowitz Inspector General report, which Mark says admits there’s no proof of shenanigans by the FBI and other Obama intelligence agencies. I counter that it says there was no documentary or testimonial evidence, in the first paragraphs of the 400-plus page report, but the rest lays out plenty of evidence, some of which I begin to cite. Then Mark interrupts again, but I go on.

Mark then brings up a discussion from a previous show about American oil production. Mark said I credited Trump with increasing production and he produced a chart showing steadily increasing production from 2008 when Obama took office to 2020. I accept the data on his chart and tell him that what I said on a past show was that Obama attempted to restrict hydrofracking activity by petroleum companies but was unsuccessful. He also restricted drilling on federal lands. Nonetheless, oil and gas production increased anyway. Trump, however, has cut restrictions on drilling and production has continued to increase at the same rate.

Mark then brings up a discussion we had last month about the Daleiden Trial in California. Daleiden was sued by Planned Parenthood for secret video and audio taping of conversations with abortionists at public conventions by Planned Parenthood. Then-Atty General Kamala Harris seized Daleiden’s computers and videos not yet released and criminally charged him. So, he was facing both civil and criminal charges for his actions, the only journalist in California ever to be so charged. I had claimed it was legal to secretly record a conversation if they were about crimes. Mark claims I was wrong about that.

I bring up how dangerous it is to wear a MAGA hat in public, especially in a “blue” area like Portland Maine. I had a 21-second video cued up of a 14-year-old Florida boy on a school bus being beaten by eight black kids for wearing a MAGA hat. Mark said he didn’t want to see it, but something went wrong with my laptop signal anyway so I couldn’t show it. He said I was looking for trouble when I wore my hat in Portland, and I found it. I said my objective was to show how intolerant the left is — that I should be able to wear a hat in support of the sitting president of the United States in an American city without being assaulted.

Dearth of Babies

There are jobs for anyone who wants to work here in Maine but nearly every small contractor and small business person I hear from tells me they cannot find enough help. It’s true in western Maine and in the Portland area as well. South Portland’s famous Scratch Bakery recently opened a branch facility in a converted gas station down the street from our South Portland home. Called "The Toast Bar," it was packed with customers. Then, suddenly, it closed.

Why? The Portland Press Herald reported last month that the new bakery couldn’t get enough people to work there. Further out in Cape Elizabeth, a recently-built restaurant called the Bird Dog Roadhouse shut its doors for the same reason. My wife and I drove by and noticed the empty parking lot as well as a sign on the door saying:

Due to an acute ongoing staffing shortage, we’ve reluctantly hit the “pause button” here at BDR. We are not closing. We have a beautiful restaurant, a wonderful location, and fantastic guests. Our business is sound. All of our employees and vendors are paid. We are simply pausing restaurant service operations until proper staffing levels can be achieved…

The economy is booming and wages are rising, so what’s going on? Lots of things; for one, people just aren’t having babies like they used to. Last Saturday, Forbes reported CDC data showing fertility rates in the USA at a record low for 2018. Just to keep the population stable, each woman must have 2.1 children in her lifetime. In the US, however, that rate has declined to just over 1.7 and is still going down. It’s the lowest since the 1970s when Roe V Wade was enacted and abortion skyrocketed. Their headline read: “Another Record Low: Will The U.S. Fertility Rate’s Collapse Ever End?”

Not unless and until marriage rates increase, according to economist and researcher Lyman Stone. His 2018 research study called: “No Ring, No Baby: How Marriage Trends Impact Fertility” makes a solid case that married women of child-bearing age have by far the most children, but fewer and fewer young women are getting married. He cites several possible reasons including student loan debt, but also that women now are generally more educated than men, making it harder for them to find compatible mates.

The biggest factor, Stone hints, is: “Changing cultural norms and values about sex, family, and religion may have reduced the value of the marriage proposition and tightened the criteria for ‘eligibility’ for marriage.” Is he saying that young people today lack the values of their parents and grandparents? Not explicitly, but he hints strongly at it. Unless you live in a cloistered religious community and never watch television, you'll see the evidence. I’ve written several times on this subject (a sampling here) and I’m not hopeful that the trend will reverse anytime soon.

If I’m right, it would seem that the only way to avoid economic decline would be to increase immigration. It has been increasing, but most of the unskilled, nearly-illiterate, illegal variety, or of “asylum-seeking” Africans, most non-English-speaking, coming over our southern border. Unable to support themselves, they tend to be more of an economic drain than a boost. If we simply returned to pre-1965 immigration policies that required immigrants to be sponsored and ineligible for social services, and then we eliminated chain migration for relatives who were not self-supporting, our country would be much better served.

As it stands now, every 2020 Democrat running for president is pro-abortion. The last pro-life Democrat candidate was Jimmy Carter in 1976. For more than forty years now, preserving Roe V Wade seems to be the most important issue for the Democrat party. Since the Roe V Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973, there have been more than a million abortions every year in the United States. That’s about 50 million Americans who were never born. If they had been allowed to live they would have had at least another 50 million children of their own. Even if Roe V Wade were repealed by Trump-appointed judges, the legality of abortion would simply revert back to the states and not be likely to decline very much.

Although most would deny it, open borders is now the Democrat’s second most important issue. Every 2020 Democrat presidential candidate claims getting rid of President Trump is their biggest goal, but then what have Trump’s priorities been? Appointing conservative (pro-life) judges and stopping illegal immigration are highest on his agenda. That’s what got him elected and if present trends continue, those issues may well propel him into another term.

Half Century of Change

There were a hundred guys in my high school class. At the 50th reunion last Saturday, I learned that a third of them are dead. Keith Academy was a private, Catholic prep school for boys in Lowell, Massachusetts that closed in 1970. Also at the reunion were survivors of a similar-sized class from Keith Hall, the Catholic prep school for girls across town. They, however, had lost only eight. On a screen, reunion organizers from both schools displayed graduation pictures of the men first, one at a time. I recognized them all and wondered what killed them, but I’d been in Maine for forty-two years and out of touch with all those people.

Keith Academy

A former classmate looked me up and left a voicemail with a pronounced Boston accent months ago but I was ambivalent about going. I sent in the $50 to keep my options open and put the date in the calendar on my smartphone. My parents sent me to Keith Academy but I had wanted to go to Tewksbury High with my childhood friends. For four years I felt out of place there.

This had been a small ranch. It has quadrupled.

I drove down early so I could visit the Tewksbury, Massachusetts neighborhood in which I had grown up. The dead-end street I remembered with thirty small capes and ranches on quarter-acre lots, seemed shorter. I’d walked up and down it thousands of times during my childhood — to the bus stop and back every day, then again on my afternoon paper route. Almost every house had doubled in size although there were far fewer children living in them.

At least the woods were pretty much the same

It was a sunny, Saturday afternoon in November. Sixty years ago there would have been a sandlot football game going on and dozens of other kids would be engaged in various playful activities on the street, but all I saw last weekend were two mothers teaching their toddlers to ride tricycles. No other children were visible.

Our old house

Not knowing who lived in our old house, I drove past it to the end of the street and parked. What I really wanted to check out were the nearby woods where I had spent most of my boyhood. About a dozen houses occupied what had been part of the old woods, but most of the white pine forest was still there. In the deepest part of it, I startled two boys beside a small campfire. About eleven or twelve, they reminded me of myself and my best friend Philip when we habituated the area. We chatted a while before I hiked back to my car.

St. William's School

Then I drove to St. William’s, my old elementary school about a mile and a half away, now also closed. I remembered the sandlot baseball games we played behind it but that field was gone. I looked at the entry door where we lined up to go back inside after recess. I could almost see the girls in one line and boys in the other, all of us dressed in our school uniforms with a nun supervising. I looked up at the classroom windows where I attended 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Some of my classmates at St. William’s went on to Keith Academy as I did, and Keith Hall too, but I didn’t see any of them at the reunion later that evening. That disappointed me.

At 68 now, I wear glasses and use hearing aids. There were over a hundred people in the hall at Lowell’s Mt. Pleasant Golf Club, all talking at once and the acoustics were terrible, especially for me with my hearing impairment. A DJ played sixties music much too loudly for my liking. Not only was it difficult to understand what people were saying, but I also made myself hoarse trying to talk over the din. Twice I walked over and asked him to lower the volume until after dinner when people would start dancing. He did but turned it back up minutes later.

After dinner I found myself standing next to another former classmate from out of town and told him I live in Maine now. He said he had flown in from Washington, DC and I asked how he happened to move there. He said he’d started working for a Democrat political consulting firm in Boston which led to fundraising for the ACLU and Planned Parenthood in Washington. I almost said that put us at polar opposite ends of the political spectrum and then thought: “Nah.” I get enough of that with my column and Left & Right TV Show.

At about 9 pm I concluded that my effort to enjoy myself was unsuccessful and Michael Connelly’s newest novel was on the nightstand in my hotel room. I found my jacket and went out the door. I doubt anyone missed me.

Left & Right October 23, 2019

Newspaper publisher Mark Guerringue again sits in the left chair and we open with a question from the producer about whether President Trump has improperly profited from his business enterprises as president. I cite the now-dropped plan to use Trump's Doral facility for a G-7 meeting, a resort that has been losing money of late. I question whether Trump meant to let it be used free to taxpayers as he said. Mark cites a Washington Post story of 2500 instances where Trump has profited from government using his facilities worldwide, and that his sons are making plans for future resorts in Asia post-presidency. Mark raises a recent statement by former Ambassador William Taylor, who claims in an opening statement before his secret testimony to Adam Schiff's committee that there was a quid pro quo between Trump and the Ukrainian president. Not having read the 15-page Taylor statement, I question him about details. Mark said I" took my eye off the ball" and I asked what ball? I said the ball his eye seems to be on is getting rid of Trump and I see this Taylor statement as another in a series of "We got him now!" efforts to bring Trump down ever since his inauguration. Mark sums that up as old conspiracy theories. I see Trump's experience dealing with corrupt politicians in NYC as good background enabling him to deal with strongmen in the world. Mark suggested that I think "Cozying up to all the dictators in the world is good foreign policy." I respond that any US leader has to deal with scumbags and sometimes "cozy up" to them to get things done. It's the nature of the job. My stated position is that I agree with what Trump is doing domestically and in foreign policy. Compared to what the Democrat candidates want to do, I'm still with Trump in spite of his sometimes obnoxious behavior. I suggest that Mark looks at most recent political events in the context of getting rid of Trump. He says he isn't. He says there are clear reasons to impeach him: non-cooperation with the House impeachment efforts, emoluments, Ukrainian things, etc. Mark said I look at conspiracy theory web sites and get obscure information that supports my political views. I say I look at lots of web sites, including the ones he looks at but he only visits the ones that support his world views and not sites that offer contradictory information. With five minutes left, we take the second question from the producer: "Which candidates gave the strongest and weakest performances in the most recent Democrat debate?" Having only seen parts of it, I suggest that Buttageig gave a strong performance and Biden gave a weak one, that he's never seemed a very bright guy and now seems to be more and more confused about what he's saying, and maybe he's in the early stages of dementia. Mark saw little of it too, but he thinks Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttegeig did well. He doesn't think Biden has dementia. "I think Biden's always been Biden," and he thinks the primary process pushes Democrats to the left and Republicans to the right. I close with the 2200 dead babies found by an abortionist from South Bend clinics that Mayor Pete didn't mention for over a month. That the abortionist was an admirer of Adolph Hitler. Mark hadn't heard about it and I said that was because his web sites avoid those issues. He asked why I think they'd avoid the Nazi angle. I suggested that it was because Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger had views on eugenics similar to Hitler's and media would avoid mentioning abortion in that context.

Body Control

Alyssa Milano wants women to be in control of their own bodies. Everyone should be, although it does get more difficult with age. I’ve added Milano to a list of “celebrities” of whom I had never heard until they made news by saying something stupid. I don’t know what she was famous for before her recent attempt at rallying American women to stage a sex strike in protest of legislation passed in a few conservative states that would virtually eliminate abortions. The irony seems lost on her, but seeking an abortion is a sign that women have not been in control of their bodies and got pregnant when they didn’t want to.

Even when I was a leftist, I knew abortion dismembered human babies and I was always firmly opposed to it. “Then don’t have one!” was the knee-jerk answer from pro-abortion lefties I debated, “but don’t stop a woman from getting one.” That’s been the legal status quo of abortion ever since 1973 when the US Supreme Court passed Roe Vs Wade, which claimed that somewhere in the Constitution is a woman’s right to abortion. Having read that document many times while I taught civics, I know abortion is not in the Bill of Rights. The twisted legal gymnastics that Harry Blackmun wrote in Roe is among the most labyrinthian since the Dred Scott Decision. That was reversed in a subsequent court and Roe Vs Wade may be as well, Allysa Milano’s sex strike notwithstanding.

My taxes don’t pay for abortion, I’m told — not directly at least. Some tax money goes to Planned Parenthood which does more abortions (about 1000 a day) than anyone in America, but the pro-abortion lobby insists the money pays for mammograms — but Planned Parenthood doesn’t do mammograms. And now, Maine Democrats have passed a bill that will make me pay for abortions and Democrat Governor Janet Mills is expected to sign it very soon. What can I do about that? Nothing, except continue to object. As far as I know, Catholic hospitals in Maine will not be forced to perform abortions as they are under Ireland’s new law.

Maine Governor Janet Mills

Because my mother was active in pro-life politics early on, I learned decades ago exactly how abortions are done at various stages of pregnancy right up to birth. The procedures are appalling, especially photographs of the results — pieces of dismembered babies that are unmistakably human. Most Americans have little idea of how abortions are done and pro-abortion activists desperately want to keep it that way. Transparency is abortion’s enemy. The “Pro-Choice” side doesn’t want women to see just what it is they’re choosing.

When I see print-outs of ultrasounds on refrigerators, I wonder how it must feel for women who had abortions to look at them. Do they get a lump in their throats when they congratulate the expectant parents who proudly posted the image? Technology has improved so much that the latest ultrasounds are vividly realistic. For decades, the abortion lobby has been lying to millions of women, convincing them that what is being aborted isn’t a human being, but just a lump of tissue.

They all support abortion

All Democrats running for president support abortion and the issue looms larger than it has in the past several election cycles. Four months ago, when Virginia Democrat Governor Northam commented on an abortion bill he would be asked to sign, we got an unvarnished view of how most Democrats think, and infanticide doesn’t repulse them at all. Northam, a pediatrician no less, said: "If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen [under the bill he supported]. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

The discussion would be about whether the now-fully-born infant would live or die. This month, during debate on the Alabama law outlawing abortion, Democrat state legislator John Rogers said: “Some kids are unwanted, so you kill them now, or you kill them later. You bring them into the world unwanted, unloved, then send them to the electric chair. So you kill them now, or you kill them later.”

Such blunt talk by Democrats used to be only behind closed doors, but times have changed. Voters who were tired of the abortion debate hear this and think: “Wait, I thought it was just a lump of tissue, not a baby. What are they saying? Isn’t it murder to kill a baby?”

If Roe is reversed, I’ll still have to pay for abortions in Maine. The issue will again be decided at the state level, just as it was prior to 1973 — and Maine women won’t likely join Alyssa Milano’s sex strike.

Left & Right April 24, 2019

Democrat Gino Funicella of Jackson, NH sits in the left chair this week. We begin with a question from the producer asking if we think the handling of the Mueller Report by Atty. General William Barr has been impartial. I say "Yes."

Gino went off with nearly all the Democrat talking points since release of the report, that the "no evidence of cooperation by the Trump campaign with Russian interference in the 2016 election" doesn't mean what it says. He insists there was evidence but not enough to prove cooperation, but he cannot come up with any such evidence.

I get exasperated when he interrupts me repeatedly as I'm making my points citing solid evidence that there was evidence of cooperation with Russia by Democrats, and calling it "supposition." He points out all the Mueller indictments that had nothing to do with conspiring with the Russians by the Trump campaign and cites them as purported evidence that there was cooperation.

My response is to point out both ongoing and upcoming investigations into Obama Administration officials who abused power to spy on the Trump campaign and then attempt to frame him for conspiring with the Russians. Gino continues to drag red herrings into the debate to sidetrack me.

The producer asks if the next census should include a question about whether people present in America are citizens or not. Democrats don't want the question. Republicans do. I make the point that Democrats want it because all people counted will then be assumed to have citizenship and states with millions of illegal aliens, like California, will then be given more representation in Congress. They'll also get more federal assistance of various kinds. Gino doesn't want to make the citizen/non-citizen distinction.

I bring up the headline used by the New York Times to report on the Muslim slaughter of Catholics in Sri Lanka: "Religious minorities across Asia suffer amid a surge of sectarian politics." Clearly, this is worded to protect Muslims from blame and divert sympathy away from their Catholic victims. Gino disagrees.

I bring up the Notre Dame fire and how French authorities declared in only one hour that it was "not arson." They still cannot point to what did cause it but hurried to declare that it wasn't arson, in spite of the 800 Muslim attacks against Christian churches in France in 2018 alone, and one previous attempt to burn Notre Dame by three Muslim women.

Gino suggests I'm paranoid and too quick to blame Muslims for violence, and that 30% of Republicans are racist and "hate brown people."

We briefly discuss abortion developments and I claim the issue is again looming large for the 2020 election with every Democrat candidate supporting abortion. Gino disagrees.

The Power of Images

Pictures and words: Both are powerful. Governor Ralph Northam’s remarks about an abortion bill last week put him on the hot seat, but pictures from an old yearbook released a couple of days later left him hanging by a thread. He began the week describing how a newborn baby would be kept comfortable while parents and doctors discussed killing it. Two days later he tried to explain two of his old pictures: one in blackface; another of a figure wearing a KKK hood. If he has to resign, it’ll be the pictures that force it and not his talk of killing babies after they’re born.

The Congressional Black Caucus knew a 2005 picture they had of then-Senator Barack Obama smiling with Black Muslim Minister Louis Farrakhan would make his election to the White House difficult, so they buried it for twelve years. It only came to light in 2018 when his second term was over. "I do believe that it would have had a very, very negative effect in that given moment as far as the candidacy of candidate Obama at that time," says Dr. Shayla Nunnally, president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.

As I’ve reported before in this space, my students often debated abortion in my classes. During one of the first debates, pictures of aborted babies were introduced by the pro-life side and it was all over. The pro-choice side conceded immediately. After that, I made a rule against using them. The purpose of debating was expressing ideas, making coherent points and counterpoints, and stimulating thought. The pictures were so powerful they prevented that exchange and rendered mere words superfluous.

Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) knows the power of images. Shortly after announcing her candidacy for president two weeks ago she took on the gun lobby. Referring to a failed gun control bill following the Sandy Hook massacre, she said: "This is going to sound very harsh, [but] I think somebody should have required all those members of Congress to go in a room, in a locked room with no press and nobody else, and look at the autopsy photographs of those babies.”

However, when at least one video image of a baby murdered at an abortion clinic was revealed during Harris’s tenure as Attorney General of California, she worked to suppress it, claiming it was deceptively edited. Together with videos of abortionists discussing how they try not to crush heads and other body parts so they could sell them later, those images threatened government funding of Planned Parenthood and exposed it to prosecution for trafficking in aborted babies’ body parts. Dozens of undercover videos had been recorded at public events attended by David Dalieden and abortionists, then released online.

Planned Parenthood was a major contributor to Harris’s US Senate campaign. In April 2016, her office sent eleven agents to raid Dalieden’s home and seize all his equipment and remaining videos after which Dalieden released a statement saying:

Today, the California Attorney General’s office of Kamala Harris, who was elected with tens of thousands of dollars from taxpayer-funded Planned Parenthood, seized all video footage showing Planned Parenthood’s criminal trade in aborted baby parts, in addition to my personal information. Ironically, while seizing my First Amendment work product, they ignored documents showing the illicit scheme between StemExpress and Planned Parenthood. This is no surprise–Planned Parenthood’s bought-and-paid-for AG has steadfastly refused to enforce the law against the baby body parts traffickers in our state, or even investigate them–while at the same time doing their bidding to harass and intimidate citizen journalists. We will pursue all remedies to vindicate our First Amendment rights.

President Trump felt the power of images while campaigning for president in 2016 after NBC released a video of him talking to someone about grabbing women by their genitals. While he squeaked by in the November election, the video definitely cost him support among women. The day after his inauguration, hundreds of thousands marched wearing “pussy hats” in Washington, DC. Tens of thousands more marched in cities and towns across the country.

A dorky-looking picture of Governor Michael Dukakis wearing a helmet in a tank may have contributed to his loss against George H. W. Bush in 1988. An image of John Kerry crawling around in a spacesuit at NASA hurt him in his campaign against George W. Bush in 2004. Richard Nixon reinforced voter impressions of being too stiff when a picture emerged of him walking on a beach in San Clemente wearing his wing tips.

How many words is a picture worth? Sometimes it seems like way more than a thousand.

Courage From a Boy and a Priest

Father Peter Shaba

America sent many missionaries to Africa. Now Africa is sending them to us because the Catholic faith is growing there but has atrophied here. One such is Father Peter Shaba from Nigeria who said 10:30 mass last Sunday at Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Fryeburg, Maine. His homily on abortion was only the third I’ve heard in thirty years of attending mass nearly every week all over New England.

“If the mission of Jesus is to save life,” said Father Shaba in reference to Sunday’s mass readings, “for us his followers, our mission is to save and protect life as well. Yes, to save and protect life no matter how young or old that life is, especially the most vulnerable, the unborn. But is that the world mission today? Especially [for] those [who] call themselves Christians — good Catholics? Brothers and sisters, good Catholics don’t support the killing of innocent children — never.”

“We [all]watched what just happened in New York — the passing of the abortion law legalizing abortion up until birth, the Reproductive Health Act which was called ‘a historic victory for New Yorkers and for our progressive values…’ Are we progressing as humans in matters of life or are we retrogressing?” asked Father Shaba. “When we can kill babies who are very vulnerable, who should be cared for and protected since they cannot do that for themselves — but instead of doing that, we are happy and joyous that a law signing their death warrant has just been passed?”

He was referring to all the Catholic legislators who celebrated as Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law on the 46th anniversary of Roe V Wade. As Fox News reported it: “Cuomo directed the 408-foot spire on the One World Trade Center, the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, the Kosciuszko Bridge, and the Alfred E. Smith Building in Albany to be lit pink to ‘celebrate this achievement and shine a bright light forward for the rest of the nation to follow.’” 

Father Shaba continued: “I watched with sadness the man who signed this law [and] the women who were with him, other men and women present there especially those close to him — how happy they were, cheering him on, the grandmother who sat close to him, happy, laughing, cheering evil and thinking that all is well? These people should be crying and wailing. Brothers and sisters, I am telling you today: all is not well. We need to pray for our nation.”

Catholics, including lay people, priests, and a few American bishops are calling on their fellow bishops to censure Governor Cuomo — either excommunicate him or at least to deny him the Eucharist in his home parish. Is anything stirring? On Saturday, Bishop of Albany Edward Scharfenberger wrote to Governor Cuomo, according to according to Fox News: “Your advocacy of extreme abortion legislation is completely contrary to the teachings of our pope and our Church.”

Cuomo knows what he’s doing: making an ass of his bishop. So what now Bishop Scharfenberger? Another strong letter to follow? Only days before signing this sinful bill, Governor Cuomo “touted his Catholic faith during the State of the State address,” according to Fox News. Ordinary Catholics want their bishops to do something and we’re gravely disappointed with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for refusing to uphold, or even practice Catholic teachings. How can they now allow Cuomo to peddle his Catholicism for political purposes and days later publicly defy the church to which he claims to belong? According to the Catholic Encyclopedia of Canon Law: “The diocesan bishop governs with legislative, executive, and judicial powers according to the norms of law.” Do your job, bishop!

Nick Sandmann, Bishop Foy

And speaking of cowardly bishops, what did Covington, Kentucky Bishop do last week after a Covington Catholic High School boy was pilloried in the pro-abortion media for marching against abortion? Did he defend the boy? No. The bishop threatened him with expulsion! As LifeSiteNews reported: “Bishop Roger Joseph Foy of Covington, Kentucky, along with the Covington Catholic High School administration succumbed to the mainstream media's leftist spin of the Friday, January 19 altercation.”

When our bishops lack the courage of a sixteen-year-old high school junior in the face of political and media pressure, what are we to think? Do they really believe in the teachings of the church they pretend to lead? It’s no wonder pews are emptying and churches are closing in America and Europe. Too few priests and bishops believe strongly enough in church teachings to champion them.

It takes a boy and a priest from Africa to show us what courage looks like, to shine the light on what America has become when “progressive” Catholics celebrate the slaughtering of our unborn children while calling it “Reproductive Health Care.”