Posts Tagged ‘election 2020’

Fr Robert Morey Must Really Love Joe Biden & Himself

Posted: October 30, 2019 by datechguy in abortion, catholic, Church doctrine, culture, politics, primaries
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“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.

If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.

Remember the word I spoke to you,  ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.

And they will do all these things to you on account of my name,  because they do not know the one who sent me.

If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but as it is they have no excuse for their sin.

Whoever hates me also hates my Father.

John 15:18-23

There’s an old saying that you don’t hear much anymore “Your best friend should tell you.” It refers to when you might have bad breath or are in the process of doing something really destructive. Most people will say nothing and you might ignore your family, that’s when a best friend, a person who really loves you steps up and tells you what you need to know.

Fr. Robert Morey is acting like Joe Biden’s best friend.

The job of a priest is tough, it’s one of the toughest jobs in the world, you are really on 24/7, you forgo many of the pleasures of life, you have to serve those around you ,obey those above you, spend time constantly in prayer and while doing all those thing fight all the temptations and efforts of the other side attempting to draw you to sin that every human being has to deal with knowing that if you fall you can take a lot of folks, particularly those weak in the faith with you.

But boiled down to the most basic task a priest is a doctor for a human soul and like a medical doctor there are time he has to deliver a message that people don’t want to hear. As the Lord said to Ezekiel (Emphasis mine)

Thus the word of the LORD came to me: Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel. When you hear a word from my mouth, you shall warn them for me.

If I say to the wicked man, You shall surely die; and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his wicked conduct so that he may live: that wicked man shall die for his sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death.

If, on the other hand, you have warned the wicked man, yet he has not turned away from his evil nor from his wicked conduct, then he shall die for his sin, but you shall save your life.

If a virtuous man turns away from virtue and does wrong when I place a stumbling block before him, he shall die. He shall die for his sin, and his virtuous deeds shall not be remembered; but I will hold you responsible for his death if you did not warn him.

When, on the other hand, you have warned a virtuous man not to sin, and he has in fact not sinned, he shall surely live because of the warning, and you shall save your own life.

Ezekiel 3:17-21

Thus if a priest fails to warn a member of the flock about to commit mortal sin or consistently commuting mortal sin publicly he is failing his flock.

And that brings us to Joe Biden and Fr. Morey

In holy scripture St. Paul explicitly states the price of receiving the Eucharist in an unworthy fashion (emphasis mine)

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”  In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.  “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.

Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. 

A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.

St Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthians Cor 11 23-29

(That last sentence btw is why non-Catholic can’t receive as they think the Eucharist is “symbolic” rather than the actual body & blood of Christ). So we are dealing with Mortal Sin, and not just mortal sin but PUBLIC mortal sin and Church law is rather explicit on the subject:

He told LifeSiteNews.com, “I don’t understand the continual debate that goes on about it. There’s not a question that a Catholic who publicly, and after admonition, supports pro-abortion legislation is not to receive Holy Communion and is not to be given Holy Communion.”


“The Church’s law is very clear,” said Archbishop Burke, who was appointed last year by Pope Benedict XVI as the head of the Church’s highest court, the Apostolic Signatura. “The person who persists publicly in grave sin is to be denied Holy Communion, and it [Canon Law] doesn’t say that the bishop shall decide this. It’s an absolute.”

via Fr. Z

So when Joe Biden presents himself for holy communion when proudly persisting in a state of mortal sin, what is the duty of a priest? Well Christ answered that in the final question that was put to him:

One of the scribes, when he came forward and heard them disputing and saw how well he had answered them, asked him, “Which is the first of all the commandments?”

Jesus replied, “The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone!  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’

The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher. You are right in saying, ‘He is One and there is no other than he.’  And ‘to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself’ is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

And when Jesus saw that (he) answered with understanding, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And no one dared to ask him any more questions.

Mark 12:28-34

Fr. Morey by his actions obeyed both commandments.

Admonishing the sinner is a spiritual work of mercy and to do any less would be like a doctor refusing to tell a patient in his care that his actions put his life in danger. Thus he showed love of neighbor by not giving Joe Biden Holy Communion in a public state of mortal sin and thus not letting him bring condemnation on himself, at least for that moment.

Furthermore Fr. Morey showed love of God by remembering the Lord’s words to Ezekiel and saved himself by being the watchman and obeying the laws of the church when it would have been a whole lot easier to do otherwise. He is going to get a lot of grief and notoriety over this. The national press will go after him, some in his parish will go after him and there will be those in the church who do so as well. Yet he was more interested in the love of God than the love of man.

But DaTechGuy you ask how can he assume that Mr. Biden was in a state of mortal sin? Doesn’t he have to give him the benefit of the doubt? Now it’s true, many of us including me, struggle with sin, even mortal sin and sacramental confession is available for those who do. Shouldn’t a priest allow for that? Fr. Z has a great post on the subject using the example of a couple in a 2nd marriage who stay together for the kids and agree to live as brother and sister:

Now I will track back to what I asked about Communion at the top.
What is it that they want?


Communion with its holy effects? Or do they want to be seen receiving Communion?
Do they want the Eucharist or the “white thing” that symbolizes affirmation?


If they really get the Eucharist, with the full implications of receiving as Paul describes in 1 Cor 11:27 (“Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord.”), and if they really get the Four Last Things, then … would they really want to put at risk their eternal salvation by sacrilegious reception?


If they have been working with a sound priest who helps them to understand what mortal sin is and what matrimony is according to the Church’s teachings – BECAUSE THAT’S HIS JOB! – would they really want to receive Communion in their irregular state?

Or course there may be times when they fail in their determination to live in continence and they have sexual relations. What then?
Simple.  They go to confession and start over with a firm purpose of amendment.
That’s what we all do when we sin in any way.  We go to confession with a firm purpose of amendment and start over with God’s help. 

In some Amoris scenario, they might have to live in a near occasion of sin, but for the sake of care of children, etc., they have to bear their Cross.
However, there is a rock solid principle that cannot be set aside:

No firm purpose of amendment, no Communion.
My solution, given the aforementioned conditions are met: occasional Holy Communion in private, outside of public Mass, away from observing eyes.

Now it’s certainly possible, though highly improbable, that Joe Biden had just before mass, confessed his sins before the mass and the expressed a firm purpose to amend his life and stop publicly advancing mortal sin as a virtue. Furthermore given the poor job of catechists that the church has done since the 60’s it’s even possible, or in my mind even probable that one or more Bishop(s) has told old Joe (and Pelosi & Cuomo etc/al) over the years that what’s he’s doing is OK and the Biden and others like him really believes they can push and promote mortal sin and still receive communion with no danger to his soul

But Fr. Morey’s job is to shepherd the souls in his care and by presenting himself for communion old Joe by definition became one of those souls Fr. Morey didn’t look for an improbable out for himself. Instead for the sake of his own soul and the sake of all the souls in his care, including at that time Joe Biden caring more about his soul than about any blowback he might get he did his job.

In other words: love wins!

Key Phrase: “Friendly Room”

Posted: October 14, 2019 by datechguy in elections, politics, primaries
Tags: ,

We’re already talked a bit about how Beto O’Rourke’s admission in front of TV camera concerning taxing churches has confirmed what we’ve all known for years concerning the left. Now comes the left with the “Beto as Strawman” argument claiming that he’s a nobody, a non-entity who doesn’t really matter:

Given his low and static polling, it’s hard to tell what, exactly, Beto O’Rourke hopes to accomplish by staying in the presidential race. But while his actual goal seems a bit elusive, he is increasingly playing a very specific role: the human straw man, the embodiment of every seemingly irrational conservative fear about what the left really wants.

That’s Jordan Weissman arguing in Slate that O’Rourke’s positions aren’t actually positions of the left and all he is doing his stoking conservative fears. This is only part of his attack on Robert Francis O’Rourke

This is not the first time O’Rourke—a politician, it should be noted, without a constituency: no district, almost no support in the polls—has promised to make conservatives’ worst nightmares come true. After adopting gun control as a marquee issue following the mass shooting in El Paso earlier this year, O’Rourke promised a mandatory gun buyback program for assault weapons, memorably telling a moderator, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.” Not long after, Trump and Republicans blamed his comments for making it harder to get a gun control deal done in Congress. (Yes, that’s a bit rich coming from the GOP, but I’ll come back to that).

These are not the only far-left positions Beto has staked out recently. He’s strongly pro reparations, for instance. But his comments about churches and guns are especially remarkable, in that he’s essentially adopting unpopular stances that Democratic politicians have spent years claiming are unfair caricatures of their actual beliefs. He is turning himself into a walking straw man, the non-fringe guy Republicans can reliably point to when they want to say: “See, the libs really do want to take your guns and shut down your churches.”

emphasis mine

There are two problems with this man’s point. The 1st is highlighted by the emphasized text. It’s rather comical to see this argument given that it was the same lefty media created him out of the whole cloth, extolling Mr. O’Rourke, promoting him as “Beto” as a counter to Ted Cruz authentic ethnicity and put him up and the sign that Texas is finally turning their way. They drew millions of dollars from liberal activists all over the country in his failed effort for senate seat and then floated him as a potential presidential candidate before they knew that the Democrat field would become large enough to field a shirts vs skins Basketball game with benches for both teams.

But it’s the second point that really give the lie to the entire piece and it comes from four simple words in the 1st sentence of the piece following the embedded video (again emphasis mine):

O’Rourke’s comments drew a warm round of applause in the friendly room, and riled conservatives, who have spent years worrying that Democrats might try to do such a thing.

That’s the key line, the room was full of Democrat activists, the people who give the money, who put the pressure on candidates and decide who can choose to make hell for any candidate who doesn’t toe the line.

  • Did those activists boo or cat call that line making it clear that this is not what Democrat believe?
  • Did they rush to defend the black church which had for so many years been the place, despite existing tax laws where Democrats openly campaigned organized and raised money?
  • Did they defend conservative Muslims who have increasingly become an important part of the Democrat coalition?
  • And most important of all did any Democrat candidate rush to clearly state that this is completely contrary to what the Democrat party in general or they in particular believe?

The answer to all of these questions is not just no but HELL NO and the reason for this is the same as why when Joe Biden they didn’t do any of these things when Joe Biden went all in on gay marriage in 2012 because he knew that this is what the people who matter in the party believe..

Beto is playing a similar gambit. He understands that the people who matter in the party along with the college students taught by their minions in school are already at this place. He furthermore is in a can’t lose proposition for him. At worst by forcing the issue he raises his profile and lasts longer int he primaries ensuring him face time for a while. At best he’s getting some chits in for next time around and assuring himself of good speaking fees for the next four years.

There are many descriptions that can be made of these moves that are apt, but “Strawman” is not one of them, in fact “Strawman” is best used to describe those on the left who are trying to pretend that Beto’s opinions are an outlier rather than someone saying aloud what everyone knows.

Update: added link and image plus this Atlantic link via Instapundit which touches on a cost that the left, in my opinion, simply doesn’t care about.

…and there’s more to that poll concerning the Black Vote than meets the eye.

Posted: October 10, 2019 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, elections, politics
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Yesterday I linked to a an instapundit post that noted that the in a recent poll 32% of black men preferred the re-election of Trump to any democrat nominee. Yet let’s take a look at the opening lines of the story that contained this incredible information:

An overwhelming majority of black voters — 85 percent — said in a new Hill-HarrisX poll that they would choose any Democratic presidential candidate over President Trump in an election The survey, which was released on Monday, found this sentiment to be particularly true among black voters along partisan lines.

That story is from The Hill, and the headline says: “Poll: Overwhelming majority of black voters back any 2020 Democrat over Trump“. The only problem is when when you look at the actual poll vs the spin of the story it doesn’t look very good for the left. In addition to what Mr. Bernstein spotted there were two other data points that are pretty significant:

  1. The poll sampled more that two women for every man on presidential preference. That’s over 67% women on that pol! That’s quite a gender gap!
  2. Of the black men polled 3% were republican and 21% were independent. That means that if every single republican and independent man in the poll supported Trump then there would still be 8 percent of black Democrat men who want Trump to win in 2020.

That’s bad enough but there is something even funnier going on here: there seems to be two different pools of people being polled. The preference for president question has a sample size of 210, but the poll in general has a sample size of 1200.

Over 1000 missing people.

Oddly enough the story doesn’t note this discrepancy let alone explain it, nor does it touch on the skew in the presidential preference question 67% women , vs everyone in the poll 57%.

I’m sure there is a perfect innocent explanation for this that I’m completely missing that has absolutely nothing to do with the attempt to convince people that the president’s economy and policies might be leading to a historic realignment that could change the face of the American political scene for decades.

After all the media would not try to manipulate the public for political reasons would they?

What I saw during a side visit at CPAC 2018 to a Pinball Spot in Bethesda is finally showing in polling…

Posted: October 9, 2019 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, economy, elections, politics, special events
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In 2018 I was at CPAC with my sons when the younger seeing that I was, as usual, driving myself to a ridiculous point suggested doing something different, so we went on a little trip to a pinball place in Bethesda where I found what I thought was the most significant interview of the trip.

and wrote why this interview was so significant

Now a person like my self who has covered angry mobs last year, and is constantly bathed in the political fight, not to mention the media narrative of absolute Trump / GOP hatred and constantly in the company of activists both at home and at CPAC,  might expect a Democrat woman of color living in a blue state to give answers fitting the us vs them narrative, particularly if filmed and in the presence of her friends.
She did not.
She gave the President mixed marks, complemented him on keeping campaign promises that he made to his people, noted that as a Democrat she’d like to see some more moderate moves. Her answers had none of the rancor or the division that the media has pushed on us for the year or that I’ve seen from angry activists. They were completely reasonable answers that would not have been out of place several decades ago in a saner time when I remembered people could disagree and get along. In other words they reflected who she is, a normal American trying to get by whose primary focus is real life instead of manufactured outrage.

Remember this was 2018, Mueller was still out there, plenty of people thought there was lot of “there” there. Stormy Daniels was still out there as was the creepy porn lawyer. In fact we were still in the pre-Kavanaugh era. In other words the entire spectacle had not yet blown up on the left.

This interview, given in public on film in front of friends made me draw two conclusions, the second being the most significant

  1. Despite what our media friends are trying to sell us, Regular Democrats, even democrats in a blue place like Maryland are not wedded to the Peloxi/CNN/MSNBC line and are seeing this president for what he is rather than what they are being told he is.
  2. People like Lea are winnable and the media narrative is all about convincing us she is not.

When we got back to CPAC I couldn’t wait to upload the video and rushed to tell every person I ran into that this was incredibly important and tremendously significant. Nobody seemed to care, we were in the CPAC bubble which meant all eyes were on the pols and the activists there, not to mention the President’s upcoming speech. The idea that this might be a signal of an opening to the black community for the President and the opposition of blacks to the president might be softer than other think was something totally off everyone’s radar.

Not anymore:

From David Bernstein at Instapundit

BUT MUH NARRATIVE: 32% of African American men would vote for Donald Trump over a generic Democratic nominee.130

Well what do you know, I guess this info is out of the bubble now, and if it’s true then the danger to the Democrats goes well beyond this election.

But there is more to this poll story than meets the eye that doesn’t bode well for the left, but that’s a story for tomorrow’s post.

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