According to Lifesitenews:

The annual Youth Rally and Mass for Life in Washington, D.C. has been cancelled for 2023.

The Archdiocese of Washington announced the decision to cancel the event in an undated notice. The Youth Rally and Mass for Life have attracted thousands of young people over the past 25 years; they gathered in Washington D.C. to celebrate life and pray for an end to abortion as well as taking part in the National March for Life to the Supreme Court.

…

[Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory has said that he] would not refuse Holy Communion to pro-abortion House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Similarly, in 2020, Gregory did not deny then-Vice President Joe Biden the sacrament despite the latter’s public promotion of abortion.

Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory is one of a vast, repugnant mass of priests and bishops who washed up in clerical orders because they were suited to nothing else (except maybe being night managers at very small Cracker Barrel outlets). Not bright enough to work for the Democratic National Committee, without the taste for the fashion industry or the talent to dance on Broadway, they still wished to live in palaces like the Disney princesses they always secretly knew they really were. And the priesthood rolled out the red carpet for them.

Archbishop Gregory has shown himself to be among the worst, to be an outright Sadducee whose first loyalty is to Caesar. He offers “solidarity” to the cossetted, wealthy, privileged and powerful LGBTQ lobby. But to the most vulnerable, persecuted people in America, our unborn children, he offers the back of his carefully manicured hand.

A Tradition of Depravity and Corruption

The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., has had a long run of filthy bishops. I use that word advisedly. Ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick himself molested a young boy over many years — and sexually harassed the more attractive seminarians over whom he wielded power. Then he used his power in 2002 to exempt bishops like himself from penalties linked to covering up sex abuse.

As the grand finale of his ecclesiastical drag act, McCarrick personally brokered Pope Francis’ alliance with Communist China against the West, which threw persecuted Christians in that country under the bus. In his decades of power and influence, McCarrick handpicked most of the wretched leaders that now plague the U.S. church, such as cardinals Blaise Cupich of Chicago and Joseph Tobin of Newark.

Covering Up for Sadist Child Pornographers

Not to be outdone, McCarrick’s successor Cardinal Donald Wuerl came to Washington with a track record of nauseating dishonesty over sex abuse. I wrote here back in 2018 about

the 5-year-old boy who was molested by Fr. George Zirwas, of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. He was part of a sex-ring of gay predator priests, who focused on teenage boys. His preferences were well-known to then-bishop Donald Wuerl … .

But Wuerl never called the cops. He didn’t tell Rome to defrock him. After moving Zirwas from parish to parish, watching him re-offend, Wuerl finally put him on paid leave, for the rest of his life. When Zirwas offered Wuerl names of still more priest offenders, Wuerl paid him more not to tell him. Instead, Wuerl asked him to sign a false declaration that he had no such information. Which would get Wuerl off the hook, legally speaking.

As a Pennsylvania grand jury concluded:

This [predator priest] ring also manufactured child pornography on Diocesan property, including parishes and rectories. … This group of priests used whips, violence and sadism in raping their victims.

A Cozy Pension and a Hero’s Funeral Mass

Church Militant reported on Zirwas’ subsequent life of comfort, at church expense:

Zirwas spent his retirement in comfort, living off a monthly stipend from the diocese (paid by Catholic laity), using it to fund his homosexual lifestyle in Cuba. His boyfriend would later reveal that Zirwas was a fixture on the gay scene in Havana, his apartment a popular stopping place for foreign visitors. Meanwhile, the diocese was telling the public Zirwas was ministering to the poor in Cuba.

As I noted in 2018:

We’ll likely never know what Zirwas was doing to poor boys in Cuba. When Zirwas was murdered and went to meet Justice, what did Cardinal Wuerl do? He lifted Zirwas’ suspension from the priesthood, so he could be buried with full church honors. Wuerl welcomed the body and said the funeral Mass himself. Zirwas’ sins and crimes? They were still a church secret.

In his glowing eulogy, Wuerl said: “The one thing we know is that George Zirwas responded to God’s call. … [Wuerl expressed] great confidence that Father George will experience new life in Christ.”

The Queen of Denial

Wuerl was succeeded by Gregory, an equally sickening leader. Some complain that Gregory’s nickname among local clergy back in Atlanta, “the African Queen” was … racist. (He is black.)

I tend to agree. So instead I will call this longtime champion of LGBTQMYNAMEISLEGION causes within the church “the Queen of Denial.” He has consistently denied the sex abuse crisis, denied support to wholesome causes, and denied the rights of the faithful. Gregory supported McCarrick when that sex predator exempted himself and other bishops from penalties back in 2002.

According to Complicit Clergy:

• Gregory, as Archbishop of Atlanta, maintained Bernardin’s program of gay promotion and propaganda in the Church.
• Gregory appointed a pro-gay priest to be diocesan spiritual director for victims of sexual abuse by clergy.
• Gregory restored priest to active ministry after involvement in a homosexual relationship.
• Gregory personally invited pro-gay Vatican adviser Fr. James Martin to give a speech titled “Showing Welcome and Respect in Our Parishes to LGBT Catholics” at both St. Thomas More Parish and at Atlanta’s Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Martin described Gregory as “thoughtful, progressive and open-minded,” and noted his LGBT outreach.
• Gregory has permitted the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Atlanta, GA) to act as a center for LGBT events, including LGBT potluck socials and participating in the city’s Pride Parade. Since 2014, he has also allowed the pro-homosexual and pro-transgenderism “Catholic” group, Fortunate and Faithful Families, to hold retreats in his Atlanta Chancery, while personally saying Mass for the group.

Gregory recently shut down long-cherished traditional Latin Masses of his diocese, which for decades had nourished the faith of D.C.’s most fervent Catholics, while doing no harm to anyone.

Why Degenerate Priests Resent Pro-Lifers

I can see why ridiculous clergymen like Gregory resent the pro-life movement. There’s a reason that Catholics are leaders in that movement. It’s where we spend the energy we would use in our church, if it hadn’t been hijacked by degenerates and heretics.

For 50 years, lay Catholics have tried to defend traditional faith, worship, and practice in our church against bishops like Gregory. But we have zero power, except the power of the purse. And our bishops have found a way to do without us almost entirely; the USCCB gets 40% of its funds from federal non-profit contracts, mostly “serving immigrants.” No wonder they squeal about every attempt to enforce our nation’s borders, while whispering on abortion. They don’t get a bounty for each baby saved from the dumpster, the way they do for illegals they set up on U.S. public assistance.

Learned Helplessness: The Fate of the Laity

Faithful Catholic laymen can pour our hearts, souls, and treasure into building up a parish that has a solid, holy priest. Overnight, the local bishop can pluck him out and send him off to man a cemetery chapel, and hand the thriving congregation to one of his Disney princesses. He rips out the art, hangs up the rainbow flag, and hires quasi-Marxists to teach at the school. We have no recourse but to flee, in search of some other parish full of strangers where our faith won’t be persecuted.

Learned helplessness is the ordinary state of the Catholic layman today. We can do absolutely nothing to protect our church, especially now that we have a pope who is (at best) a kind of Pantheist, aligned with global elites and friendly with abortionists.

But we can work to save unborn babies. We can at least fight one appalling, egregious evil. And the bishops can’t stop us, even those who want to. I think that the massive energy of pro-life Catholics for the past 50 years has been the redirected efforts we might have made to support our church — whose leaders titter at us as they liquidate our heritage and our faith. They’re handing out stones and serpents, but they’re running out of millstones.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”