White House Fires Back After Catholic Archbishop Issues Groveling Apology for Praying for Trump in Oval Office
The White House has rebuked Roman Catholic clergy who backpedaled after praying with President Donald Trump.
On Thursday, a collection of Roman Catholic leaders met with President Donald Trump and prayed over him. Images of the event circulated on social media and in the news.
That led Archbishop Jeffrey Grob of Milwaukee to accuse the White House of having “manipulated” the event in a statement on his website.
Noting that the meeting to which he agreed a month in advance “was in no way an endorsement of the president, his policies, or his party,” Grob was miffed that it was “publicized by the administration without the consent of the participants.”
“We should never have been put in that position by the White House,” he wrote.
Grob said he was unsure of whether he really wanted to go, but said he went because “if I had the opportunity to offer my voice in a way that might improve the lives of God’s children, I ought to take it.”
When they arrived at the Oval Office, he said, “We were then directed to stand behind him and pray. After which several photos were taken and we were ushered out. Unbeknownst to the group of bishops a video was also taken. But permission for the public distribution or posting of either the video or photos was not given by the bishops.”
Then came criticism that he had veered into politics and endorsed someone his flock disliked, leading him to “feel a heavy sadness, not only over the pain I caused, but also for the fact that something so sacred to a group of religious leaders, prayer to our Heavenly Father, would be manipulated.”
White House representative Taylor Rogers responded to the remarks, per a report from Fox News.
“There has never been a greater president for Catholic Americans than President Trump, and his strong record proves it: he stopped the weaponization of the federal government against Christians, proudly defended and expanded our religious rights, pardoned pro-life activists, stopped the chemical mutilation of our nation’s children, and protected parents’ rights,” she said.
Des Moines Bishop William Joensen offered a public apology as well, Fox News reported, while Denver Archbishop James Golka said he also had concerns as well that his good intentions might be misused.
Opinion columnist Joseph Fosco said in viral social media remarks that the pearl-clutching was over the top.
He wrote that bishops are staging “ecclesiastical theater that would be more at home in a melodrama than in a chancery.”
“Let us be clear about what actually happened, because the bishops’ framing depends on everyone forgetting it. They were invited in mid-September. They knew the date. They knew the midterm elections were twelve days away,” he posted.
“These are men of presumed higher-than-average intelligence, men entrusted with the spiritual care of millions, and they accepted an invitation to the White House on a date they could not possibly have missed.”
“As for somehow being betrayed by being publicly seen with Trump, the idea that any imagery emerging from that room constitutes some kind of covert, high-channel, confidential betrayal is not serious. It is theater,” the post added.
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“If these bishops believed the meeting was so delicate that any record of it would be an act of egregious wrongdoing, they had no business attending. No one held a gun to their heads. They walked in, they prayed, they walked out.”
Fosco noted that the White House never said the clergy supported Trump.
“No one from the administration said the word endorsement. That word, that accusation, that entire defensive posture — it was invented by the bishops themselves. They have constructed a claim that was never made and then positioned themselves as its victims. That is not clarification. That is exploitation,” the post said.
Fosco added, “What these bishops have done is guarantee that this stops being a quiet meeting and becomes a very political event.”
“One is entitled to wonder whether a phone call or several phone calls came in — from liberal Catholic donors, the sort who are pro-choice, who support or endorse the LGBTQ lifestyle, who hold positions the Church does not recognize as Catholic, expressing displeasure at the optics, or perhaps from someone higher in the hierarchy urging a response,” the post continued.
The post said the whining turned a meeting that would soon be forgotten into a “morality play in which they are the wounded innocents,” adding that “their public statements have sown the very disunity they lament.”
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