Thanksgiving Plans…Or Not

By DEACON MIKE MANNO

This month, in fact this week, is Thanksgiving and, apparently, it has not been totally banned, although some of our political leaders and medical bureaucrats are telling us that it might be best to skip friends and family celebrations this year so we can all be around for next year. A little silly, in my book, since there is no guarantee that any of us, especially our elderly parents and grandparents, will be around in a year.

So in order to do my part in the face of the pandemic, as if I haven’t been isolated enough, I decided to look into some of the recommendations our leaders have given us for how to handle this week’s holiday. And as I reviewed them, I wondered if perhaps this was just a way to extend their control over their citizens. After all, to many of us the pandemic seemed to be the perfect vehicle for some politicians to exert control over the public almost as if they were trying to see how far they could push us.

Many used the virus as an opportunity to flex their muscles against the Church, demanding that it close its doors completely in some places or drastically and ridiculously limit attendance, sometimes to as few as 10 in a cathedral that could seat 2,000. In some locations, drive-in services where no one left their vehicles and heard their ministers over low-powered FM stations were banned and their drivers ticketed.

And, of course, the classic example was that due to the disease we could not safely vote, thus the need for mail-in voting, which would, according to the experts, provide a safe, tamper-proof way to beat the virus and safely choose our leaders.

So much for the experts. And as I researched some of what we are being told about this Thursday, I wondered why we have leaders who act as if we’re too ignorant to figure out how to celebrate safely on our own. To me it’s really simple: Be careful, you know the risks; maintain proper hygiene, and if you are in a category that is apt to be vulnerable to the pandemic, or you don’t feel well, stay home. Otherwise act prudently and enjoy this most American of holidays.

Instead, this is what we get, mandatory guidelines and threats of legal enforcement: In California residents are told, “All persons planning to host or participate in a private [Thanksgiving] gathering . . . must comply with the requirements identified below . . . .

“Gatherings that include more than three households are prohibited. This includes everyone present, including hosts and guests. . . . Gatherings must be outdoors [in certain] counties. . . . If gathering indoors, increase fresh air circulation by opening windows or doors, as much as possible, especially in the rooms where people are gathering. . . .

“Seating must provide at least six feet of distance (in all directions — front-to-back and side-to-side) between different households. People at gatherings are advised to limit removal of their face coverings to when they are actively eating or drinking.

“Gatherings should be two hours or less. . . . Singing, chanting, shouting, cheering, playing of wind instruments and similar activities are not permitted in indoor gatherings.”
Remember for some of us Thanksgiving is a big football day. So how do we watch football if we can’t cheer?

In Chicago, where I hear there is a lot of shouting and cheering going on, Mayor Lori Lightfoot issued a stay at-home order and asked residents to cancel their “traditional” Thanksgiving plans. And if anyone hosts more than ten there will be consequences: “If we see you violating these rules in any way, we’re not going to hesitate to take action,” she decreed.

Hmmm, so much for Chicago being a toddlin’ town.

Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer has cautioned us not to gather with friends and family, but instead do a video call or share photos with each other. I wonder if just logging into Cousin Nancy’s Facebook page will work. “The more people we have in our homes, talking, eating, drinking, hugging, and yelling at the Lions, the higher the risk of catching or spreading this virus, and the higher the risk there is that the people we love will die,” Whitmer said.

She seems concerned about too much cheering for the Detroit Lions. But with a record of 37-40-2 on Thanksgiving Day games, there probably won’t been much to cheer about in Michigan, anyway.

Our friends at the CDC have provided its own guidelines for us:

“Have a small outdoor meal with family and friends. . . . Limit the number of guests. . . . If celebrating indoors, make sure to open windows.” I’m sure that’s going to work in Minnesota.

Along the same lines, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (not to be confused with CNN’s resident stand-up comic, Chris Cuomo) who consigned thousands to COVID deaths by ordering the infected back into nursing homes, has placed a ten-person limit on in-home gatherings. “New York follows the science,” Cuomo said. “We know indoor gatherings and parties are a major source of COVID spread.”

He’s a new author, you know. He wrote a book touting his “leadership” during the COVID crisis: American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic. Good for you, Andrew; I bet it will be a best seller in nursing homes.

And so it goes. As I was checking these rules out, and to be sure, there are a lot more out there, I was reminded of an episode of the old TV show, The Big Bang Theory. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s based on a relatively simple concept. It follows the lives of four nerds and their interaction with the world. One of the characters is Sheldon Cooper, a genius who earned his Ph.D. before he was old enough to vote.

In that episode, the other three nerds are meeting and partying at one of the other’s apartments, unlike their regular confabs at Sheldon’s. One of the other characters is trying to get Sheldon to go to his friend’s party, and tells him: “They’re all having fun over there.”

To which Sheldon replies, “Yeah, but they’re having fun wrong.”

Unfortunately, some believe that there is now a prescription for how to celebrate. But, fear not, the best is probably yet to come at the end of January when we get locked down again.

Realistically, the China virus is very serious. The inflated case numbers and political games aside, this is a threat. Unfortunately, too many have died and some even without consolation from Church and family. I’ve not been able to get into a hospital or nursing home to visit and take Communion to sick parishioners since March. I can’t figure out why it would be so difficult to have clergymen simply make an appointment at the hospital chaplain’s office, get screened, be suited up, if necessary, and be escorted to the proper room, especially those with non-COVID ailments.

But instead we can try to regulate how many we can have for Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately, that’s the imperfect world in which we live. It makes prayers for those affected more important than ever.

Have fun the right way, and remember what you are truly thankful for and be sure to let God know! He’s the author of every good thing and deserves our humble thanks. After all, He gave us turkey and football and that may be the diversion we really need this year.

God bless you all.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday [not this week] on Faith On Trial at 10 a.m. CT on IowaCatholicRadio.)

Biden's Allies Threaten Religious Liberty

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

Left-wing advocacy organizations are wasting no time pressing Joe Biden to do away with the religious liberty protections afforded by the Trump administration. As we have previously detailed, no president has done more to secure religious liberty than Donald Trump.

The three most prominent organizations asking Biden to undo Trump's progress are the American Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Center for American Progress.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is obsessed with sex: it wants to make sure that homosexuals, the sexually confused (transgender people), and women seeking an abortion never have rights that are subordinate to religious rights. It does not matter to the civil libertarians that the former are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution and the latter are enshrined in the First Amendment. The ACLU is worried that "a new wave of bills seeking to create religious exemptions" will succeed, endangering the rights of "LGBTQ" people.

No right is more important than conscience rights, a liberty which is ineluctably tied to religious rights. It is this premier right that the ACLU loathes. In a statement released after the election, it condemned "attempts by the Trump administration to invoke religious or personal beliefs." It said that such exercises can be used to discriminate against LGBTQ people. It further stated that "invoking religious or moral objections" to the LGBTQ agenda cannot be tolerated.

On November 11, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) issued its "Blueprint for Positive Change 2020." It is chock-a-block full of recommendations for Biden. One of its priorities is to upend the new direction taken by the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Health and Human Services under President Trump. It specifically takes aim at the Office's enforcement of "federal conscience and religious liberty laws." Once again, the LGBTQ agenda is considered to be more important. Thus HRC joins the ACLU in the left-wing assault on conscience rights.

HRC also wants to pare back the religious liberty protections afforded faith-based programs by the Trump administration. If its position were followed, it would essentially excise the faith element in faith-based initiatives. This, of course, is its goal.

The most draconian recommendation promoted by HRC is its call for the Department of Education to reconsider its standards for accrediting religious institutions of higher education. In short, it wants to deny accreditation to religious colleges and universities that do not meet its secular vision of education.

HRC is incensed over the current mandate that accreditation agencies "respect the stated mission" of these religious institutions. It takes particular umbrage at the religious liberty protections cited in the Higher Education Opportunity Act, a law passed by the Congress during the outgoing Bush administration in 2008.

The Center for American Progress (CAP) encourages the Biden Administration to do everything the ACLU and HRC want, focusing on doing away with religious exemptions initiated by the Trump administration. However, it does have a few novel ideas of its own.

CAP is big on "diversity outreach" efforts to minority religions. This multicultural game, of course, is less interested in recognizing minority religions than it is in whittling away at our Judeo-Christian heritage. It does not stop there.

"Religious outreach efforts should also specifically include secular humanist or nonreligious groups, as well as faith-based or spirit-rooted communities who do not observe a specific religious tradition." If the gurus who wrote this were honest, they would simply say that religious outreach efforts should embrace organizations founded to subvert religion. Inviting atheists to have a table at religious gatherings is like having racists participate in a forum on racism. Yes, there are non-bigoted atheists, but organized atheist entities invariably harbor an animus against religion.

CAP urges the Biden administration to "safeguard the separation between religion and government." Really? Then why does it say, "Together with Pope Francis, the Biden administration should organize a global gathering of religious leaders to discuss climate change and refugee issues"?

Whatever happened to that proverbial "wall" separating church and state? No matter, if the pope is to have a voice on climate change (not exactly his specialty), why not invite the Holy Father to share his views on gender ideology—the fanciful notion that we can switch our sex? He properly calls it "demonic."

Constitutional law professor Patrick Garry notes that it was never the intent of the Founders to "place religion and nonreligion on the same level." In fact, "Textually, the Constitution provides greater protection of religious practices than for any secular-belief-related activities." This is what gnaws at the ACLU, HRC and CAP.

Much is being made of Biden's alleged "devout" Catholic status. Yet many of his polices on life, marriage, the family, and sexuality are at variance with the teachings of the Catholic Church. Now he is being besieged by organizations that are positively inimical to his professed religion. He cannot have it both ways any more. It is time for him to draw a line in the sand, before his allies eviscerate it altogether.

Hyping Lay Catholic Divisions

By Bill Donohue, Catholic League President

Most of the news stories on the alleged widespread division in the ranks of the Catholic laity are bogus. How do I know? Because most writers, and many pollsters, fail to disaggregate on the basis of religiosity. To be exact, those who do not make a distinction between practicing Catholics and non-practicing Catholics are intellectually dishonest. Lumping them together yields a distorted profile of the Catholic community.

Virtually all polls that disaggregate on the metric of religiosity have long found that most non-practicing Catholics reject Church teachings on life, ordination, marriage, the family, and sexuality. To what extent can they be called Catholic? If their views are practically indistinguishable from non-observant Americans, why are they not classified as secularists?

This is not a new phenomenon, but it is already clear that if Joe Biden is elected president next month by the Electoral College, this issue is going to escalate in the media.

A clear case in point is the November 18 AP story by David Crary, "Catholics Divided as Bishops Examine Biden's Abortion Stance." While Crary properly notes that Catholics split the vote on Trump-Biden (50% to 49%, respectively), he makes the point that there is an alleged Catholic divide over comments recently made by Archbishop José Gomez, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Gomez told his fellow bishops that Biden's record on many policy positions, such as abortion, is problematic: it posed a "difficult and complex situation" for the Church. According to Crary, Catholics are "sharply divided" over Gomez's remarks.

Crary cites no evidence, save for a few comments made by so-called progressive Catholics. He provides no survey data. That is because most Catholics—you can take it to the bank—have no idea what Gomez said, and this includes real Catholics (i.e., those who are practicing). So why the need to make up a controversy when there isn't any?

Here's what's going on. Catholics who reject Church teachings on the aforementioned issues are all ginned up these days, hoping to press the bishops to fall in line with Biden (or at least not to challenge him.) That's what this is all about. Just consider the comments made by left-wing Catholics.

David Gibson of Fordham's Center on Religion and Culture says, "The USCCB leadership simply can't embrace the idea of engagement and goodwill that Pope Francis has asked of them." It apparently does not occur to Gibson that it is Biden, not the bishops, who can't embrace many central teachings of the Catholic Church, and it is that—not episcopal recalcitrance—that is driving this issue. If only Biden would obey.

Natalia Imperatori-Lee, who teaches religious studies at Manhattan College, also blames the bishops. She says, "they'd like to start an antagonistic relationship" with Biden. The truth is that Biden is at war with the Catholic Church: He opposes teachings on abortion, marriage, sexuality (he is a big transgender fan) and religious liberty. That's the cause of the antagonism. Her attempt to portray Biden as the victim is risible.

Thomas Groome of Boston College blames Gomez for his "dreadfully unfortunate" address. Spoken like a true dissident. Crary also quotes Jamie Manson, another dissident—she is now the head of an anti-Catholic and pro-abortion letterhead (Catholics for Choice)—lashing out at Gomez for his "condescending remarks." Practicing Catholics would be more inclined to see his statement as unpretentious, even humble, like the man himself.

Left-wing Catholics cited by the media are not representative of Catholics found in the pews. Indeed, they are more closely aligned with secularists. This is a shell game, designed to shape public opinion with a false narrative. Biden is the problem, not the bishops.

Faith On Trial for November 19

This week we’re going to discuss the case of a third grader who was told she cannot wear a “Jesus loves me” mask in school while BLM masks were permitted. Michael Ross of the Alliance Defending Freedom’s Center for Academic Freedom will join us to discuss that case.

In Massachusetts the legislature is considering a bill that would greatly expand abortion in the state by reducing the age for which teen aged girls do not need parental consent, allows viable babies to be aborted outside of hospitals, and removes medical protections for babies born after a failed abortion. Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, will join us to discuss the ramifications of this if it is passed into law.

Faith On Trial, every Thursday (except Thanksgiving) at 10 a.m. CT on Iowa Catholic Radio, and streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com.

Brooklyn Catholic diocese asks justices to block limits on attendance at church services

Brooklyn Catholic diocese asks justices to block limits on attendance at church services

Cuomo's Animus Against Religion Laid Bare

By Bill Donohue, Catholic League president                                                                                                             

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, who heads the Diocese of Brooklyn, has a lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court that could prove to be historic. 

All reasonable persons understand the right of government to impose limited restrictions on the public during a pandemic, but only unreasonable persons maintain that such powers are boundless. It is more than unreasonable—it is unconstitutional—to target churches and other houses of worship for special treatment. 

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo acted irresponsibly when he placed greater restrictions on churches than he did on hardware stores. That is what the Brooklyn Diocese's lawsuit contends. By declaring that pet stores and brokers' offices should have greater freedom to operate than synagogues, for example, Cuomo is showing his animus against religion. 

If anyone has any doubt that Cuomo exhibits a flagrant hostility to religion, let him read what the governor has said. At a press conference, he admitted that his Executive Order is "most impactful on houses of worship." That is where he crossed the line. Not only are houses of worship not considered "essential" businesses, they are intentionally relegated to a second-class status. 

The lawsuit nails this point just right. It argues that Cuomo's Executive Order "expressly singles out 'houses of worship' by that name for adverse treatment relative to secular businesses, and does so in a way that is not narrowly tailored to any compelling government interest, in direct violation of the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause." 

Similarly, Cuomo put a cap on the number of people who can go to church in his so-called "red" and "orange" zones—10 and 25, respectively. As the lawsuit says, the "fixed-capacity limits imposed by Governor Cuomo on 'houses of worship'—and only 'houses of worship'"—proves once again his bias. When a 7-11 can have more people in its store than a church, it tells us volumes about what is really going on. 

Bishop DiMarzio has once again done the right thing. When Covid-19 is behind us, Catholics will remember bishops like him who defended their religious rights, refusing to be treated as pawns of the state.

This week on Faith On Trial

This Thursday:

Bias in the media; what’s next for pro-lifers? Dexter Duggan from The Wanderer, and Fr. Frank Pavone, national director, Priests for Live.

10 a.m. CT Thursday on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM, and streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com, or just download our free app.

And The Losers Are . . .

By Deacon Mike Manno, JD

(The Wanderer) Well, maybe by the time this is printed we’ll know who has been elected president. But don’t hold your breath; there’s more than counting going on and litigation is sure to follow. But since the presidential winner may not be known by publication, I think it is fair to acknowledge the losers for their contribution to this election mess.

My first pick: The Mainstream Media. As a former journalist, beat reporter, and newspaper editor, I am completely embarrassed by the conduct of most of the media during the last few years. They have berated the president, his family, religious conservatives, and much — if not all — of the GOP with the savageness of the Roman Praetorian Guard.

While Mr. Trump was (and to them still is) a xenophobic Russian plant and a racist with white supremacist leanings, all would be well once the election was over and the nation was rid of the big, orange buffoon. And, of course, the nation would be saved only by a popular uprising that gave control of the White House and Congress to the Democrats.

Well, it just didn’t happen that way. While the presidency may yet be undecided, the great mass of the unwashed (so despised by the media) rejected that advice. The Senate, which figured prominently in the Dems’ plans for court-packing, filibuster ending, and state adding was kept in GOP hands, despite the Democrats spending literally billions of dollars to knock off some of those pesky senators deemed too close to the Trump administration.

And despite the unfavorable press treatment, the Republicans, while not taking control of the House, did pick up six House seats as of this writing.

But it doesn’t end there for my biggest loser. The blown reporting, the repeating of lies and insinuations, most long since discredited, has not gone unnoticed.

Just one example will suffice to indicate the depths to which the media have sunk: The media — which were so aggrieved that the bad orange man nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court that they left no stone uncovered trying to find evidence that he was a sexual harasser that they even combed through his high school yearbook — were suspiciously unconcerned with the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The Mainstream Media were the biggest loser in this election, having jettisoned journalistic standards to join in running interference for the Dems. Journalism, as we knew it, and as it was taught to me, is dead. We now understand that we have re-entered the period of the party press. Listen to and read what you will, just remember it is coming to you from a party flack.

My next loser is the polling industry. With the exception of a few notable exceptions, the polling in this election was worse than horrible: Dewey defeats Trump horrible. Don’t tell me it was the “shy Trump” voter who threw the polls off; it wasn’t. It was pollsters who — whether or not they realized it — actually skewed their own polls. When pollsters take samples, they must ensure that their samples are representative of the universe as a whole. When independent voters are not factored in properly, or not apportioned correctly, the poll results get skewed.

The big red flag for the industry should have been that Mr. Trump was not a typical politician. Independents and others who historically are prone not to vote were attracted to him because he was not a politician. When did you ever hear a crowd erupt in chants of “we love you” to any politician? It hasn’t been done, except perhaps in Nancy Pelosi’s dreams. That, and the size of his crowds should have tipped pollsters off that there was an undercurrent they might be missing, as had happened in 2016. But it didn’t.

Normally races tighten as they move closer to Election Day. Unfortunately that’s when pollsters start to narrow their sample sizes. They go from surveying registered voters to likely voters. A lot of Trump votes didn’t fall into the likely voter category, a lesson they should have learned from President Hillary Clinton’s victorious campaign.

In 1948 when Gallup predicted Mr. Truman’s defeat, polling had come a long way since the then-respected Literary Digest poll predicted in 1936 that Kansas Gov. Alf Landon would garner 57 percent of the vote against President Franklin Roosevelt. It was Roosevelt, however, who won with 62 percent. The failure of that poll was using a huge undisciplined sample that overwhelming failed to respond to the magazine.

In Gallup’s mistakes we can see some of today’s mistakes for which no correction has been made. Not one of them, however, was that Gallup stopped polling two weeks before the election, having considered it a done deal. But it did make some assumptions and mistakes that our modern pollsters have done. They did not obtain representative samples but samples that were weighted heavily with more educated people; it failed to correctly determine who would actually vote, and assumed that undecided voters would split in the same proportions as the decided voters.

While some polls did catch the movement to Mr. Trump, having learned their lesson four years earlier, many did not. One of the latest polls published just before the election, ABC News/Washington Post, gave Mr. Biden a 17-point lead in Wisconsin and a seven-point lead in Michigan: Dewey defeats Trump all over again!

One of the polls that produced the most accurate results was The Des Moines Register poll. A few others did satisfactory. Most, however, failed. My advice to pollsters: Find out what the Register did and do it next time.

An Egregious Case

My final loser is Chief Justice John Roberts.

President Trump, many Republicans, a large contingent of conservative commentators (including this column) were warning of electoral hanky-panky. Concerns were raised about mail-in and absentee balloting flooding the system, opening the door for results to be compromised by those with the ability to do so.

One of the most egregious cases complained of was in Pennsylvania where the State Supreme Court, an elected body with partisan members, voted on a party-line basis to “redefine” the state’s election law. The redefinitions included accepting ballots beyond the legal deadline, defining them as on time if postmarked by the election. Okay, that might sound reasonable, but the court ruled that any returned ballot with an illegible postmark, or no postmark was to be assumed to have been mailed on time. In addition, the ruling left open the possibility that returned ballots without voter signatures or non-matching signatures could be counted.

Republicans challenged the matter in the U.S. Supreme Court and the court ruled 4-4, with Chief Justice Roberts joining the liberal bloc to allow the Keystone State’s court ruling to stand. Those ballots, however, will be kept separate from the others pending further review.

Now the court is full. Amy Coney Barrett has been sworn in as the ninth justice. But the problem will probably come up again. Roberts’ mistake, and a huge one, was not to take the case before the election so all would know the rules by which mail-in ballots would be evaluated. A simple, decisive decision on how to conduct the count was needed, but it didn’t come from Roberts.

Instead, now that the election is over, if SCOTUS needs to rule on Pennsylvania’s count it will be accused of picking the president — politics — something that Roberts, by trying to avoid initially, might now be stuck with.

There’s a saying in legal circles: “Hard cases make bad law.” Roberts turned an easy case into a hard one — for himself and the court.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com, and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. CT on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)