By Ray Cardello for January 22, 2025, Season 30 / Post 16

I am unsure what I find most offensive about the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning. The WOKE message delivered was inappropriate. The DEI Bishop who delivered the sermon was offensive, and the President, Vice President, and their families had to sit and bear it because the cameras were rolling. Trump and Vance had too much class to equal the rude behavior of the woman at the podium. Trump could not hide the look of disgust, but who could blame him for his outward display of emotion?

Mariann Edgar Budde is an American prelate of the Episcopal Church. She has served as Bishop of Washington since November 2011. Before being elected Washington’s first female diocesan bishop, she served 18 years as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Those two assignments would make a Left-leaning, Woke sermon natural for the Bishop, but she is not a newcomer to the profession. She should have read the room more carefully, or her intentions were as clear as the frosty D.C. sky. This woman of the cloth saw her opportunity to address the biggest audience of her life, and she seized the moment to get political. It was a bad decision. I am not familiar with the chain of command in the Episcopal Church, but I hope and pray that someone is contemplating Ms Budde’s future, and it is not bright.

Budde was elected the ninth Bishop of Washington on June 18, 2011, and was consecrated at the Washington National Cathedral on November 12 of that year, becoming Washington’s first female diocesan bishop. As bishop, she serves as spiritual leader for 86 Episcopal congregations and 10 Episcopal schools across the District of Columbia and four Maryland counties. She has a lot of influence over many people for someone with such radical views and no fear for who she is preaching. If you can be this offensive to the President, Vice President, and their families, there is no limit to your courage or bad judgment.

Is the recognition and praise that someone like Budde gets from the Far-Left worth the angst and disgust that her words stir up on the Right? Where she is next week will answer that question. With the lack of accountability on the Left, she will be behind that same podium on Sunday morning, which is unfortunate.

Bishop Budde had a tremendous opportunity to seize the spirit of encouraging most Americans to feel and deliver a Christian message that would unify the masses, even if just for the moment. Instead, she went for division. She had the right to say whatever she felt comfortable relaying to the country. Unfortunately, she made a terrible decision. The irony of her comments was she lumped the people she was referring to in a very low spot on the pecking order. To say that these are the people who pick our crops, make our beds, and clean our toilets is a veiled insult to the 10 million people who violated our border and sovereignty. In asking President Trump to have mercy on these people, she put them in a subservient place in society.