Linda Rarey

Dear Bishop Joensen, Your October 24th statement said: There are many things tied to this present Administration that are blatantly at odds with our Catholic faith. You named the administration. You did not name the party whose platform contradicts Catholic teaching more directly than any policy you cited. That asymmetry is not a pastoral observation. It is a partisan one. Immigration enforcement is a prudential question, and Catholics may weigh it differently. On abortion, on the surgical and chemical transition of children, on the redefinition of marriage — the Church has not left room for prudential disagreement. Those positions are not at odds with Catholic teaching in some debatable sense. They contradict it outright. If your standard is what is blatantly at odds with the faith, the Democratic Party's platform meets it more directly than any border policy. You know this. Your silence on it, nine days before a national election, while naming only the administration in power, tells the faithful something you did not say in words. A bishop who applies the faith as a measuring stick owes the faithful both ends of it. Selective application is not teaching. It is campaigning with vestments on. In Christ, Joseph Fosco October 26, 2026