I do not like Joe Biden. (I think he’s a good guy, but as president I don’t like him.) I think he’s too old, he’s visibly showing his age, I disagree with probably 90% of his policies–including his support for abortion rights, including his support for same-sex “marriage.” But if this were an earlier year, if it were a very different candidate on the Republican side, all of that would actually matter. I would not hesitate to vote for Ronald Reagan over Joe Biden. I would not hesitate to vote for George W. Bush over Joe Biden. If the GOP did what it will not do and nominated Lynne Cheney, I would vote for her over Joe Biden. But that is not the election choice we actually do have, and for that reason none of those criticisms I have of Joe Biden matter.
The last thing I am going to write about Donald Trump.
BY: Henry Matthew Alt • May 24, 2024 • Politics
So the Court overturned Roe. The price was far too high. The 1/6 insurrectionists and those who support or condone them still loom over future elections, and the same Trump who made 1/6 possible, who egged those traitors on, and who pals around with anti-Semites, still holds the GOP and GOP voters hostage to his ego and his desire for power. The GOP has been overtaken by nationalists, which is just a polite word for fascists. Anti-abortion states lust to exact retributive justice on women who, once upon a time before Roe, were understood to be victims in need of compassion. I’d rather have Roe back and lose all those other things. Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Nancy Pelosi had an audience with the pope, and as sure as Old Faithful will blow, right-wing Catholics proved themselves faithful. Among them was Joseph Strickland, the bishop of Tyler, Texas; who mounted his pulpit on Twitter and declared, with all the solemnity of an edict, that Pelosi was not even a member of the Catholic Church. “Claiming to be Catholic is easy,” he tweeted. “Living the Catholic faith centered in Jesus Christ is extremely hard. As long as Nancy promotes the slaughter of the unborn she is not a member of the Catholic faith centered in Jesus.” Stop there.
Poor Raymond Burke, a prince of the Church, who everyone tells me is a canon lawyer, doesn’t seem to know his canon law. He seems to think Joe Biden is an “apostate” who can be excommunicated over being pro-choice. (That is to say, Mr. Biden thinks that abortion should be legal, not necessarily that abortion is good.) I’m afraid both claims are false, and we can dispatch with both of them quickly. On the latter point, canon law expressly lays out what a Catholic may be excommunicated for, and disagreeing with the Church’s teaching about legal abortion is not one of them. 
We are all going to have to assume that Fr. Frank Pavone is being utterly honest in his tweet, because to assume that he is engaging in mere bluster would be uncharitable. Fr. Pavone never engages in bluster and is entirely honest in all things — particularly his canonical status in the Church and the fact that his new, supportive bishop is waiting until just the right moment to come out from behind the curtain and announce his identity to an anxious, waiting world. None of these things are lies, and the Diocese of Amarillo is not refusing to answer questions about Pavone because they think they’re not really accountable to anyone; it would be uncharitable to hint at such a thing.
Fr. Frank Pavone, despite being forced by anonymous “Church authorities” to resign from Trump’s re-election campaign (i.e., in an “official” capacity), keeps insisting that Catholic clergy somehow ought to be calling out the immorality of “Democrats.” No one can seem to find out to whom Pavone is accountable. At the same time, random strangers in social media keep trying to bully Catholic voters who plan to vote for Joe Biden. Actual Church teaching takes a dim view of both stances. [
It’s very sad to watch. People all over Facebook are calling this letter “powerful” and “one for the history books.” “He represents the true Church,” one said. “Extraordinary courage,” said another. When you can say words like that about a letter filled with conspiracy theories and eschatalogical gobbledygook about the “children of light” and “children of darkness,” I don’t think you’re in a position to be reasoned with. Viganò’s letter is what a faction’s itching ears want to hear, and they have turned unto fables.
Mr. Pavone is so much more than a Trump apologist; he struts and waves pompoms for the stable genius, and he will not be caught protesting anything, unless it’s abortion. Good Mr. Pavone loves America, and babies. And because he loves babies, he has typed many hundreds of characters on Twitter defending the separation of children from their families. That’s what happens when you violate the law, he says. (And the children at the border are a very different set of babies than the infinitely more precious babies yet to be born.)
In their generous service to the gospel ideal, some priests feel drawn to political involvement in order to help more effectively in reforming political life and in eliminating injustices, exploitation, and every type of oppression. The Church reminds them that on this road it is easy to be caught in partisan strife, with the risk of helping not to bring about the just world for which they long, but new and worse ways of exploiting poor people. In any case they must know that they have neither the mission nor the charism from above for this political involvement and activism.”
