There was an interesting confluence of tweets last week. One was from GOP racist bomb thrower Ann Coulter who, though not a Catholic, feels free to attack the Church for obeying Jesus as She helps brown refugees whom the governor of Texas hopes to use as scapegoats to gin up racism in New York.
The story is pretty straightforward: Texas GOP Governor Abbott (a Catholic) decided to bus some desperate refugees to New York in order to gin up race hatred against them among the minority of Red-pilled racist Trump supporters in that intensely Blue state. But Cardinal Dolan instead welcomed them and offered to help educate their kids.
So Coulter attacked:
Bad news, Ann. The Church of Jesus Christ is neither a state actor nor a wholly-owned subsidiary of the GOP or FOX. She can help whoever she likes and MAGA bigots can go suck eggs if they don’t like it. Oh, and the sudden fake pretense of interest in American brown people you hate against non-American brown people you hate even more, like the fake interest in homeless vets whenever your ilk wants to weaponize them against non-military homeless people you despise even more (just before you reject medical benefits for vets), fools no one. If it were up to you guys, all the poor would be shoveled into the street–or into their graves. All you really mean is what Judas meant when he complained “Why were these things not sold and given to the poor?”: Namely, “I want that money for me and my cronies.”
Ironically, just to underscore the bigotry at work here, Coulter’s phony concern about black Americans was immediately undercut by two even more straightforward GOP white racists who weren’t going to stand even for that. They got right to the point:
Meanwhile, here’s the Church teaching on the Preferential Option for the Poor guys. Learn it. It’s only hard if you want it to be.
The reason Dolan is focusing his efforts on refugee kids is because the love of God focuses first on those in the most desperate need, while fake concern trolling such as these MAGA cultists defend is always and only just code for their massive, narcissistic selfishness, like Judas.
That’s why Catholic court prophets who try to pretend racism is not a sin but merely “politics” are committing a grave sin when they say things like this:
Here’s the deal (which somebody who works for “Catholic Answers, the largest apologetics and evangelization apostolate in North America” ought to know): Another word for “systemic racism” is “racism”. And what the Church (as distinct from the heretical MAGA cult) teaches is that racism is a grave sin. Indeed, in the Christian tradition, racism is the very first issue the Church had to deal with in Council (Acts 15). Precisely what was argued by the heretics at the Council of Jerusalem was that if you were the wrong race you could not be a disciple of Jesus. And exactly what the Council definitively asserted was that absolutely anybody from any race in the world could be saved through Christ. As Paul put it:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Ga 3:28).
So, what Horn calls a “culture war issue” the actual Magisterium of the Church speaks of this way:
We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man’s relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: “He who does not love does not know God” (1 John 4:8).
No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.
The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to “maintain good fellowship among the nations” (1 Peter 2:12), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all men,(14) so that they may truly be sons of the Father who is in heaven.
What Horn is actually saying is, “We get to deny is a sin and minimize it to a “culture war issue” all we like 24/7/365 forever as we falsely equate voting GOP with the Faith. If you oppose us, you are politically obsessed. Signed, the MAGA Cult Where Accusation is Always Confession”
It’s a first-rate Court Prophet defense of GOP racism, but it is not Catholic faith.
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5 Responses
Cardinal Dolan is a good soul. He has been criticized by both the left and the right. He has been called a “conservative” but gets attacked by the toxic right that is now prevalent in the US. My take is that he does his best to be a bridge-builder and a peacemaker in an era where it is hard to be those.
I believe that CS Lewis points out that an authentic Christian is likely to be slammed from both the Left and the Right since Christianity isn’t a political movement in the first place. I am not always a fan, but Tim Dolan is no fool, and nor is he naive. When he sticks up for immigrant kids that Governor Abbott shipped to NYC to make headlines, he at very least robs Abbott of the chance to pose as the Voice of Catholicism, and that’s important.
And I’m comfortably certain that the Cardinal Archbishop of New York doesn’t give a damn what Ann Coulter thinks of him, for good or ill.
I think it was Chesterton, not Lewis. But still, your point is well taken.
“Trent Horn” as the name ofra right-wing Catholic? John Bunyan would have said “Nah, dial it down.”
No, it was definitely CS Lewis. See Book III of MERE CHRISTIANITY:
“To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always insisting on obedience — obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all of us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is going to be very unpopular) from wives to husbands…. If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious impression. We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, “advanced,” but that its family life and its code of manners were rather old-fashioned — perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic. Each of us would like some bits of it, but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing. ”
Chesterton may have written something similar but it would have been more his usual “so left-wing that it is right-wing – nay, it is far further to the right than even the most right-wing of the right; indeed, we may say that the right wing itself can never be so left-wing as the left-wing when it is being right-wing” etc shtick.