 The United States accompanied by Archbishop Garrity, Father Luzo, and Governor Kane. Tony, you belong here. What are you thinking? The President, not me. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Your Excellency, Archbishop Garrity, most reverent bishops, my brother Friars, members of the clergy, honored dignitaries, members of the press, and to all of you, my dear people of Good St. Anne's Parish, as your pastor it is my privilege, my pleasure and honor at this time to welcome to our family of St. Anne's, the President of the United States. Welcome, and may our patroness St. Anne, mother of the mother of God, continue to intercede for you before the throne of Almighty God. Please be seated. That you may be blessed and protected for your dedication and respect for all human life, a promoter of education and a prayer and example of the American way of life. Truly we are honored that you have accepted our invitation to share with us today this joyful celebration of the Feast of St. Anne. Thank you and God bless you, Mr. President. As you are assembled in this hall, the President of the United States. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Archbishop Garrity. Thank you so much. Thank all of you, our host, Governor Cain. We have a young lady here. I shouldn't talk politics, so I won't say a candidate, but a mayor of a nearby city. I'm very pleased to have you here, and I'm pleased to be with all of you. I didn't know that I was going to learn a little more family history. I thought I'd picked up most of it in Bali, Porina, Ireland, a short time ago. But I don't know if any of you or all of you know about how this came about. A few weeks ago, I got a letter from Mr. Santo A. Melisi, and even the letterhead was appetizing. He said, Saint Anne's Festival, a feast for the senses. Nancy saw it, and she said, honey, I think you ought to go to Hoboken. We kept reading, and the letter told about what a great American city Hoboken is. Of course, Frank Sinatra had already told, but I'll tell you what did it. I'll tell you about your secret weapon. I heard about your Zapoli. And so, here I am in Hoboken. I'm very happy to be here at your 74th Festival in honor of Saint Anne. There's something so special about that 74. But if you're thinking what I think you're thinking, no, that's one yet to come. Matter of fact, it's the next one. A few days ago, a member of my staff was here, and she asked a local woman, why is this church and this parish so important to you? And the woman said, I was baptized here. I made my first communion here. I made my confirmation here. I was married here, and my children were baptized here. Now, I know that remark says a lot about continuity, not only the continuity of a neighborhood, but the continuity of tradition and faith and family. At this festival and at other festivals such as the one last week over at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, you show a lot of caring and involvement and allegiance. And these are the things by which our nation lives. God makes the world turn on its axis and keeps the sun and the stars in place, but you are the people who keep America going, who make America happen every day. I'm only the head of a civil government, a secular authority. It's probably true that politics is the prose of a culture, but religion is its poetry. Governments are passing things in the long history of the world, but faith and belief endure forever. You know these things, of course. You show them in your actions as you honor your God, as you work in your parish, as you carry the image of a saint through the streets. In doing these things, I mean adding to the religious and cultural life of our nation, you replenish our country. You reflect the values that help our nation flourish. And so I think it's inappropriate for me, as the head of a civil government, to simply say thank you for being what you are, the backbone and the best. Now this, as you may have heard some place, is an election year, and I am a candidate for reelection. It's traditional for candidates to talk about their accomplishments and their triumphs and to brag a bit if they can. But I hate to brag, I'm the president after all, and I wouldn't do that. I won't, I'm not going to talk about the extraordinary economic expansion that's taking place. About how all of us have more income to spend. Business is good and taxes are down and retail sales are up and working people are enjoying a big increase in personal income and more Americans are working now than ever before. Seven million more than we're working in 1980. But I won't, I wouldn't do that. I won't talk about that sometimes. I could talk about how last year, for the first time in ten years, violent crime went down and how America is at peace in the world in a more stable world and how we're building up our defenses to a reasonable level again, but I won't, I wouldn't do that. And I could talk about how there's a resurgence of pride in our country, an emergence of the knowledge that we live in a good and decent place and we represent good and decent things in the world. And once again, our young people know that and respond to it and are proud of it. But no, I wouldn't say that. I'm not going to talk about that. Now it's true that when you're out on the campaign trail and you start to get very eloquent about all the wonderful things you've accomplished, you can get yourself in trouble. I don't know if you ever heard the story and no matter what you may have heard, he did not tell me this story himself. How about how once in a campaign he was giving a terrific old stemwinder of a speech and a heckler interrupted him very rudely and this fellow in the audience kept yelling, I'm a Democrat. Teddy finally just stopped cold and said, all right, sir, why are you a Democrat? And the fellow said, because my father was a Democrat and my grandfather was a Democrat and my great-grandfather was a Democrat. And Teddy went in for the kill. He said, well, sir, what if your father were a jackass and your grandfather were a jackass and your great-grandfather were a jackass? What would you be then? And the fellow says, a Republican. Now you see, bragging can get you in trouble. Now this is a fine and a happy evening, but just for a moment I want to be serious here. There are great issues at stake in this election, deeply serious issues. They have to do with how we live and how we care for each other. There are four questions I've been thinking about a great deal since the convention in San Francisco. There are four questions that I feel may be of special concern to you and I hope they are because they concern me. Here's the first question. Why do some who claim to represent the party of compassion feel no compassion whatsoever for the most helpless among us, the unborn? How can they parade down the street wearing compassion as if it were a cloak made of neon and they have no compassion for the most helpless of God's creatures? Question two, why did those who claim to represent the middle class take such high moral offense at the idea of giving the middle class a break by giving them tuition tax credits to help them bear the cost of sending their children to a pro-killer independent school and then those children or those parents who pay for that pay taxes, their full amount of taxes, to support the public schools? They ask no help in burying the extra cost they incur and isn't it fair, just bottom line fair, to help them with a tax credit. Now why is the other side so opposed to giving the middle class that simple and compassionate help? Question three, how can the leadership on the other side as they did last week open each session of their great convention with an injunction to the Lord and end each session with a prayer to God and still insist on denying that right to a child in a public school who might want to do that? Leadership of the House of Representatives has repeatedly resisted voluntary prayer in school and I do mean voluntary. This was distorted in the debate to think that somehow we were asking for organized prayers in these public schools in which you had to wonder who was going to be responsible and the issue was something that was illustrated in one of our states recently when some children doing what they did at home in the school cafeteria wanted to bow their heads and give thanks, say grace, before they ate and they were told they could not do it and a court upheld the school authorities in saying that they couldn't do that. This was just simply the voluntary right of any individual who felt the urge and the need to and shouldn't be denied because he was in a so-called public building. Thankfully, a majority of Republicans and Democrats finally rose up in defiance yesterday and passed the equal access bill. Now, by what logic do they resist? If they're so opposed to children witnessing prayer why did they condone such a big show of it last week? I grant you they need prayer but what do you suppose they were trying to prove or hide? Question 4. Why do those who claim to represent the most enlightened thought on Central America refuse to listen to the testimony of one of the greatest moral leaders of our time, His Holiness Pope John Paul II? Last year, John Paul went to Nicaragua on a mission of peace. He went armed only with love and a message of goodness. This is what happened to the Pope when he entered the land of the Sandinista regime. He was forced to stand in the brutal sun this man who had languished so long in a hospital bed after being shot. He was forced to stand in the brutal sun as Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinista government, delivered a long and hate-filled diatribe against the West. Then he was booed and jeered by the Sandinistas when he tried to speak. The Sandinistas tried to humiliate His Holiness. But it was not possible to humiliate that kind of greatness. When they booed him and jeered him, he said, silence, and they were silenced by the sheer force of His Majesty. Two weeks ago, Pope John Paul II stood in the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square, and he said that the Sandinista government is oppressing the Catholic Church of Nicaragua. He deplored the arrest and deportation He spoke out to protect the Catholic Archbishop of Minagua against repeated pressure from the Sandinistas who the Archbishop has charged are trying to abolish the Church of Rome and replace it with a so-called popular church. Why can't those who claim to represent the most enlightened opinion on Central America come to grips with what is happening there? Why can't they admit that the Sandinistas are only totalitarian thugs who are squelching freedom in their country including the freedom of religion? Those are just four questions. I ask you to ponder about them, think about them this evening or tomorrow and to give them long thought. These questions, these four questions help define the differences between my administration and the other side. They help define what the issues this year are about. You can come to some hard truths as you answer these questions and if you have any doubt and I don't think you do about where we stand we are for life and against abortion. We are for prayer in the schools we are for tuition tax credits and in Central America we're rather more inclined to listen to the testimony of His Holiness the Pope than the claims of the communist Sandinistas who believe you on a somber and serious note. There's much to be happy about this evening much to be joyous about in our country and I'll let you in on something else I've been thinking about. I want to serve another four years as your president I make no bones about it and there's some very serious reasons for it but there's one I haven't talked about. I've been thinking about it now and then at night or in a spare moment when I'm summing up a day or thinking about the next one that I feel something in common with Franklin Delano Roosevelt the much admired president of my youth I cast my first vote for president in 1932 for him and John Kennedy that bright spirit and Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman they all loved the presidency loved the bully pulpit of the office loved looking out for the interests of our country so do I and so would I for the next four and a half years and I have no reservations about throwing my candidacy on the mercies of the good people of St. Ann's church in Hoboken, New Jersey and asking them to give the kid a chance I do want to say if they'd have played one more chorus of the spirit of Notre Dame I was going to do a broken field run through the through the tables there do some table hopping I told the Archbishop and was surprised he didn't know maybe you'd be interested to know I was extremely proud when I found out recently that every year they run that picture at Notre Dame for the incoming freshman class a student indoctrination anyway thank you all God bless you and now I have to work for my supper I have to pull I understand it the winning raffle ticket Mr. President over the past few months we were we here at St. Ann's parish family have been involved in the special fundraising for our Catholic school we are all aware of your interest and dedication for good quality education and to bring back into our school systems the need for prayer I would like to invite you to give us the honor Mr. President to draw the winning ticket and if the winner is present to present the prize and Mr. President if the winner is not present would you please write a congratulations to our winner on this envelope who could not be present for the drawing we thank you very much Mr. President I have to tell you what the prize is the prize is $3,870 and Rique Gomez is Mr. Gomez present so Mr. President would you sign the congratulations to him just on this page given the full address after given the full address the full address is Enrico Gomez 566 west 126th street New York, New York