MORE CATHOLIC OUTREACH ADS SUPPORTING JOE BIDEN

The Catholic outreach around the Biden campaign has been amazing.  We have state, local and diocesan Catholics for Biden groups across the nation.  We've had wonderful participation in our virtual Catholics for Biden events and great volunteers for our Catholic to Catholic phone banks.  We are seeing high quality, meaningful advertisements reaching out to Catholic voters.  Here is another ad.  This one is by Faith2020, an independent group that is supporting the Biden - Harris ticket.  In it a Pittsburgh, pro-life Catholic mother talks about why she is voting for Joe Biden.  Click on below to watch.

NEW BIDEN CAMPAIGN ADS - 'PRINCIPLES' AND 'A MAN GUIDED BY FAITH'

The Biden campaign has two campaign ads we feel will appeal to faithful Catholic voters.  Click below to see them.

TRUMP CAMPAIGN'S CATHOLIC OUTREACH IS TO CATHOLICS HOSTILE TO THE HOLY FATHER

 “A lot of people are holding their hands over their ears until the Argentine socialist is gone.” — former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu (R), the father of current New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R)

From a website accusing Pope Francis of being part of a Masonic conspiracy.

One of the puzzling features of the current Presidential campaign is that while Catholics supporting Joe Biden as well as the Biden Campaign are respectful towards the Holy Father while the Trump Campaign and its Catholic outreach surrogates are often openly hostile to Pope Francis.  This has troubled some mainstream Catholic Republicans as a bad strategy and identified Trump with the anti-Francis cabal.  

Trump has tweeted out support former papal nuncio to the United States Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who was relieved of his duties by Pope Francis and now lives in retirement.  He has called for Pope Francis to resign, an unheard of action of a Catholic archbishop.  Trump also tweeted support for the author and online polemicist Taylor Marshall.  Marshall is known for his criticism of Church authorities and has proclaimed about the Holy Father that "I resist him to his face."   He has accused the Pope of allowing Freemasonry to take over the Vatican.  Marshall has recently been associated with the traditionalist priestly Society of St. Pius X, who are in “irregular communion” with the Catholic Church. He has tweeted that Catholic men should not attend diocesan seminaries, spoken about his “resistance” to Pope Francis, and has recently clashed with Bishop Robert Barron, who reportedly referred to him as an “extremist,” amid a disagreement over the role of clerics and laity amid the destruction of the statues of saints.

Marshal’s 2019 book “Infiltration” claims to outline a plot by which “Modernists and Marxists hatched a plan to subvert the Catholic Church from within. Their goal: to change Her doctrine, Her liturgy, and Her mission,” according to the book’s website.

The journalist Ed Condon of the conservative Catholic CNA news service has written:  

Officials working in the Trump administration have told CNA that they have been frustrated by recent presidential tweets elevating controversial Catholic figures...

Two Catholics in senior positions in the administration told CNA the decision to elevate Viganò and Marshall has put the White House at odds with the U.S. bishops, instead of putting a focus on issues of agreement, and has frustrated some Catholic administration officials.

...[O]ne White House official told CNA. “I believe in the work I’m doing, and believe it matters as a Catholic. But I spend enough time just defending that simple premise – I don’t want to have to deal with crazy Catholic Twitter too.”

A second senior administration official, who attends weekly meetings with the president in the Oval Office, told CNA the president believes he has not been supported by U.S. bishops for his efforts on religious liberty, and that White House strategists have urged him to court Catholic votes through figures like Marshall and Viganò.

Trump apparently considers the Pope and many of the Catholic bishops as enemies, with particular anger for the criticism he received from the Archbishop of Washington for using a Catholic chapel as a photo op background after he had anti-racism protestors tear-gassed.  

With that in mind, the Catholic reporter Michael Sean Winters writes:

That news was followed by the more bizarre — and perhaps more desperate? — news that Trey Trainor, the Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Election Commission had sat for an interview with Michael Voris at Church Militant. And not just an interview. Trainor seemed to fit right into the conspiratorial, fringy, Archbishop-Carlo-Maria-Viganò-loving and Vatican-II-hating climate at Church Militant.  

Trainor warned that electing Joe Biden constituted an "existential threat" to the Catholic Church and — apparently ignorant of canon law and the theology of the sacrament of holy orders — asserted that priests should defy their bishop if the bishop orders them to stay away from partisanship in the pulpit.

Here is the problem for the Trump campaign. Yes, he needs to motivate his base. He also needs to avoid giving reasons to stay home and not vote to his "soft" supporters, the 4% or 5% who do not approve of his job performance but tell pollsters they plan to vote for him over Biden. He needs their votes, too, and cozying up to cranks like Church Militant tends to turn off those more moderate voters.

Then there is Frank Pavone, the priest heavily involved in the Trump campaign but also denied any pastoral ministry from his bishop.  Pavone apparently has been for the second time dismissed from his diocese (a very rare action) and seems to now be permanently without a priestly assignment or diocese. 

It has been noted why people like Viganò, Pavone and Marshall appeal to Trump. Conspiracy theories, communists, freemasons, tons of retweets and YouTube followers? It’s right up his alley.  

The question is, why would a Catholic loyal to the Holy Father support a presidential candidate attacking the Pope and supporting those trying to destroy him?

BISHOP OF SAN DIEGO STANDS UP FOR JOE BIDEN

Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego slammed people questioning Biden's personal Catholic faith based on his positions on abortion rights. McElroy said that when it comes to questions of public policy, abortion legislation is a matter of prudential judgment.

"One very sad dimension of the election cycle we are witnessing," said McElroy, is "the public denial of candidates' identity as Catholics because of a specific policy position they have taken. Such denials are injurious because they reduce Catholic social teaching to a single issue. But they are offensive because they constitute an assault on the meaning of what it is to be Catholic."

During the campaign Republican political operatives, Catholics hostile to the Holy Father, and some others have crudely attacked Joe Biden's Catholic faith.

"Being Catholic means having a grace-filled relationship with God. Being Catholic means loving the Church. Being Catholic means participating in the sacramental life of the church. Being a Catholic means trying to transform the world by the light of the Gospel," McElroy continued. "To reduce that magnificent, multidimensional gift of God's love to a single question of public policy is repugnant and should have no place in public discourse."

On the question of abortion, he said that because Catholicism teaches that some actions, including abortion, are "intrinsically evil," meaning that they are "always and everywhere wrong," some church leaders have claimed that "candidates who seek laws opposing intrinsically evil actions automatically have a primary claim to political support in the Catholic conscience."  McElroy rejected that claim, telling attendees that "the framing of legislation is inescapably the realm of prudential judgment, not intrinsic evil."

"While a specific act of abortion is intrinsically evil, the formulation of individual laws regarding abortion is not," he said. "It is an imperative of conscience for Catholic disciples to seek legal protections for the unborn. But whether these protections take the form of sanctioning the doctor or the pregnant mother, whether those sanctions should be civil or criminal penalties, and the volatile issues pertaining to outlawing abortions arising from rape, incest and danger to the mother are all questions of deep disagreement among advocates wholeheartedly devoted to the protection of unborn children. Like the issues of fighting poverty and addressing climate change, the issue of abortion in law and public policy is a realm where prudential judgment is essential and determinative."

McElroy encouraged all Catholics to approach the ballot box with a thorough examination of their consciences, prayer and commitment to fully advancing the Gospel, and said that it is "morally legitimate" for Catholics to come to different conclusions as to for whom to cast their vote. 

San Diego is the second largest diocese in California, after the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.  Other American bishops and cardinals have made comments similar to Bishop McElroy including Cardinal O'Malley of Boston, Cardinal Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Tobin of Newark, Archbishop Gregory of Washington, Archbishop Wester of Santa Fe, Bishop Stowe of Lexington, Bishop Callahan of La Crosse, Bishop Seitz of El Paso, and Bishop Zubik of Pittsburgh.  

CATHOLIC AD SUPPORTING JOE BIDEN

Another independent group is placing ads urging Catholics to vote for Joe Biden.  This is just one more example of the robust effort to support Catholics voting for Joe Biden.  Keep it up!

CHRISTIANS RESPOND TO TRUMP ATTACK ON OUR FAITH IN NEW AD

A group of prominent Christians, both Republicans and Democrats have formed 'Not Our Faith PAC'. The group will roll out six-figure TV and digital ads focused on Protestant and Catholic voters in swing states. Its first ad will run in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

You can view the ad here:

Jeannie Gaffigan’s Whole Life Case For Voting Out Donald Trump

Jeannie Gaffigan writes in the October 7, 2020 issue of MILLENNIAL:

Here is my confession: I am a real Catholic, and I am not going to vote for Donald J. Trump….

My faith, family and Catholic education have given me the belief in the innate dignity and worth of every single human being. Human life is sacred, and all humans have equal value. Of course, this means it is wrong to intentionally take a human life under any circumstances, but it is also wrong to disregard human life through racism, unjust social and economic structures, providing inadequate access to health care, wantonly harming the environment, abusing or neglecting anyone—a child, a mother, a father, a grandparent, an immigrant. I am not sure how one thing that harms a life can be weighted more strongly than another, but based on the reaction to Jim’s now-infamous tweetstorm, it is abundantly clear that there is a segment of the Catholic Church that feels that the single issue of abortion, for lack of a better word, trumps every other evil. Somehow a vote against Mr. Trump has become synonymous with not only being a “bad Catholic” but ultimately, being complicit in murder. And even worse, the murder of “society’s most vulnerable.”…

The dignity of the human person extends to all of us created in his image, both in the womb and out of the womb. As a Catholic I desire to support a society that strives to protect every life. Systemic racism in our culture has led to such economic and social inequality that it is virtually impossible to have a “culture of life” without addressing the fact that we have been complicit in a long history of devaluing our fellow human beings based on the color of their skin or the way they came to this country.

Can we really sit in our homes with our private health insurance and judge our neighbors who have nothing? How can we strive to heal the tragedy of abortion without acknowledging the deep wounds and life-threatening crises that drive people to it? How arrogant we are to condemn women of any color living in poverty, faced with the unimaginable and horrific circumstances that would drive them to seek an abortion, without taking a good look at how we have failed them by not offering adequate health care, child care, education and employment opportunities? Do we ever stop to think about how far we are from achieving a “culture of life” in light of the well-documented and video-recorded police brutality against Black Americans? Are refugee children, homeless pregnant women or the prisoners on death row not also “society’s most vulnerable”?…

Some Catholic friends have advised me to simply cast a “protest vote” so I can walk away with a clean heart and conscience. I’ve got news for you: This is going to be a close election. There is only one candidate that has a chance to unseat President Trump.

As much as some of my well-intended fellow Catholics will hate to hear this, it is crystal clear to me that the right thing to do is vote for Joe Biden. I believe it will be impossible to tackle these other issues with a president who is working overtime to sow division and hatred in this county through insults, intimidation, fear and blatant racism. This venomous “us against them” mentality is trickling down, seeping into our churches and poisoning our pulpits. To a culture of life, vipers are deadly.

PRO-LIFE CONGRESSMAN TIM ROEMER WRITES ABOUT THE CATHOLIC CASE FOR JOE BIDEN

Catholic voters were instrumental in electing the past three presidents of the United States, tilting toward Barack Obama in 2008 and again narrowly in 2012, and subsequently siding with Donald Trump in 2016.

Catholic voters are going to help determine which candidate prevails in 2020, especially since they comprise a crucial voting bloc in key swing states such as Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona.

Here’s why I will be voting for Joe Biden:

As a former Democratic member of Congress from Indiana, I believed more along the lines of a pro-life voter. My role as a public servant and as a faithful Catholic were to work with others to reduce the number of abortions, not inflict my personal view of a complicated moral issue on my colleagues who represented other religions.

Biden was America’s first Catholic vice president, and might become our second Catholic president, the first being John F. Kennedy. He is steeped in our religious teachings and highly sensitive to the full scope of issues impacting life issues, from birth to prenatal care, from reproductive care to access to contraception.

Electing a Catholic who was vice president when abortions were reduced in overall numbers (during the Obama-Biden administration 2009-2017) by almost 25% is a positive sign.

While serving as U.S. ambassador to India, I personally witnessed the power of partnerships and alliances with other countries.

When we form these leveraged and effective coalitions of like-minded countries, we not only share the burden of these overseas programs cost to our taxpayers, we increase the proclivity for success. Whether it’s a program working on water security, schools for girls or disaster relief, we benefit from the collaboration, best practices from other cultures and more effective outcomes. We improve our image and increase our power abroad.

Biden believes in rebuilding our partnerships with friends and allies in the world to help America become more powerful and respected. He also intends to implement a new foreign policy to benefit our middle-class families and workers. Biden will return jobs to the Midwest. 

I remember when my dad told me when I was 12 that I needed to work to pay for college. My first jobs in Mishawaka, Indiana, included mowing lawns, watering yards for families away on vacation and shoveling snow from driveways.

I learned early in life that jobs were not only about making and saving money. They represented a sense of dignity and worth. Jobs represented values associated with personal responsibility, showing up on time, and working with other people from various backgrounds.

I continued in various jobs all the way through college and graduate from school while still taking out a loan.

Biden knows that his first job as president is to help rebuild the middle class, restore equal opportunity in our economy and make the American Dream more accessible to everyone.

Coming from Scranton, Pennsylvania, he has never forgotten what good jobs and hard work mean to a family. Furthermore, he fights for Medicaid expansion and protecting people with pre-existing conditions with coverage, issues that save people thousands of dollars.

Going to Catholic grade school, I tried to embrace the lessons of early morning Mass, occasional raps on my knuckles from a wooden ruler to improve discipline and memorizing scores of Scripture and hymns. We were taught the Ten Commandments and Stations of the Cross, yet the first two New Testament Commandments have always been codes I have tried to live by: “Honor God” and “Love thy neighbor.” I know Biden practices and acts on these words each day in his family life and in his public service. Character and truth are reflected in these actions.

He respectfully listens to others, even when he disagrees. Our American leaders, even when they make mistakes and are flawed, must be held up as positive mentors and role models to our children. I can do this with Biden to our four kids.

I will vote for Joe Biden for president, not only because he’s a Catholic, but because he’s a good man trying to do good things for our deeply divided country; good things that make America, our families and our friends in the world believe that the United States is an exceptional place and capable of serving as a beacon of hope to mankind.

Biden has the class, character and midwest common sense to be a successful president for the entire country, and especially for middle America.

Tim Roemer is a former Congressman from Indiana. He served as U.S. Ambassador to India from 2009-11.  The full article can be found here:  The Catholic Case for Joe Biden

LaCrosse Catholic Responds to Altman Tirade

You may remember the priest in LaCrosse, Wisconsin who made an anti-Biden video saying Catholic Democrats are going to Hell.  He is currently in deep trouble with his bishop.  But in addition to the bishop and many priests, the lay faithful of LaCrosse are also expressing their rejection of his harsh views.  Here is a letter in the LaCrosse Tribune:

I am writing in response to coverage of Father James Altman from La Crosse.

l am a Catholic and l am very much against abortion. The Catholic church is also against divorce and adultery, grievous lying, bigotry, revenge and retaliation.

Caring for all the people God has created is a good Christian. Trump is not an example of a good Christian.

We are fortunate enough to live in one of God's most beautiful countries and l believe we have an obligation to Him to preserve it for the future.

As a result, l will vote for Biden.

Patricia Becker, La Crosse

BIDEN LEADS TRUMP BY 12 POINTS AMONG CATHOLICS IN NEW POLL

The Hill reports...

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden holds a 12-point lead over President Trump among likely voters who identify as Catholic, according to a poll released Monday.

A EWTN News/RealClear Opinion poll found in a poll of 1,212 likely Catholic voters that 53 percent favor Biden, compared to 41 percent who prefer Trump. The poll was taken before the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The poll found that 50 percent of respondents voted for 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton while 45 percent voted for Trump, a sign that Biden has widened the gap among Catholic voters.

….

Among Hispanic Catholics, Biden has a commanding 63-31 lead.

The poll found that Catholics are overwhelmingly opposed to demonstrations that have devolved into defacing churches or toppling statues of prominent figures in the religion like Christopher Columbus, but respondents still trust Biden more than Trump on nearly every issue, with the exception of China trade policy.

The coronavirus pandemic also proved to be a troublesome issue for Trump among Catholic voters surveyed. Fifty-seven percent of respondents disapproved of Trump's handling of the crisis.

….

The president has seen his support among Catholics erode, however, over the course of his presidency, which has been marked by inflammatory statements about minorities and policies that restrict the admittance of refugees and immigrants.

Trump may have a tough time turning around his support among Catholics running against Biden, who is a practicing Catholic who has openly spoken about how his faith aided him through numerous personal tragedies.

"Joe Biden's faith is at the core of who he is; he's lived it with dignity his entire life, and it's been a source of strength and comfort in times of extreme hardship," Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said in a statement at the time.

Read the full story here:  The Hill

MIDWESTERN & 'RUST BELT' CATHOLICS TURNING TOWARDS BIDEN

 

Erin Covey in today's edition of the National Journal writes:  

When President Trump tear-gassed peaceful protestors in front of the White House to take a photo in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Christian leaders had dramatically different responses. For Pittsburgh resident Kevin Hayes, who had organized Catholic groups for Clinton and Obama, it was the tipping point that pushed him to galvanize his community for Joe Biden.

“I actually wrote an email to about 600 people who had been the remnants of [Catholics for Obama and Catholics for Clinton], and said, ‘I just reached the point, I want to do everything I can to make President Trump a one-term president, and do you want to join me?’” Hayes said.

Almost all responded and said they were interested—a significantly larger response compared to 2016, when Hayes said about 250 were members of the Clinton group.

Since 1992, a majority of Catholics have voted for the winner of the popular vote—except for 2016, when exit polls indicated that a little more than half of Catholic voters picked President Trump. But with observing Catholic Joe Biden on the ballot this year, white Catholic support for Trump appears to be eroding in the Midwest. 

In Pennsylvania, a Marist poll this month found Biden leading Trump among white Catholics, 53-43 percent. And an Aug. 30-Sept. 3 Marquette poll had Biden leading Trump among Catholic voters in Wisconsin, 50-46 percent.

Hayes’s group, which now has about 800 members, reached out to the Biden campaign, which announced in July that it hired Josh Dickson as its faith outreach director. During the past month, the campaign launched Catholics for Biden, along with other faith-based coalitions, and named three dozen Catholic politicians and other lay leaders as cochairs. The Democratic National Convention also featured two ... Catholic leaders, the Rev. James Martin and Sister Simone Campbell.

“The Biden-Harris vision is something that is deeply rooted in the ideals of loving our neighbors as ourselves, of being our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, caring for the poor and vulnerable,” Dickson told National Journal. “[It’s] really rooted in that ideal of imago dei, that everyone is created with inherent human dignity in the eyes of God.”

The Biden campaign has made explicit appeals to religious voters. On Monday, Biden spoke at a virtual event with the Poor People’s Campaign, a progressive faith-based activist group led by Rev. William Barber II.

“We are all created in the image of God, and everyone’s entitled to be treated with dignity and respect,” Biden said, going on to discuss the dignity of work, a major tenet of the Catholic Church’s social teaching.

“What's unique about it, and frankly, I think different than what we saw in past presidential campaigns, is that you have a candidate who understands the Catholic social teaching ethic of striving to put above all else that which achieves the common good,” Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Catholics for Biden cochair, told National Journal.

Boyle, an Irish Catholic who represents a large white Catholic population in his Philadelphia-based district, emphasized the American Catholic community’s political and ethnic diversity, quoting columnist E.J. Dionne Jr.’s line that “there is no Catholic vote.” But he did say he believed the language of Catholic social teaching, echoed by the Biden campaign, would resonate with Catholic voters.

....

On Thursday, John Carr, a former political adviser to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, endorsed Biden—a sign that cracks may be forming in the firmly antiabortion side of the Catholic electorate. Carr had not made political endorsements in any previous election.

read the entire article here:  National Journal