A Fascinating and Perverse Trick of the MAGA Cult

…is the sleight of hand that demands we “focus on what really matters” while the cult focuses on defending evil.

I first noticed in the Cult’s habit of demanding we “focus on abortion” while the Cult instead focused on defending torture, the death penalty, denial of a living wage, Trump’s rapes, sexual assaults, lies, cruelty, racism, frauds, felonies, and treason. Every time somebody would raise an objection to the latter, we would be told that we could not let ourselves be “distracted” by “lesser matters” because the #1 priority was Abortion. But then the MAGA cultist would immediately stop focusing on abortion in order to passionately defend the lies, sexual assaults, rapes, treason, racism, felonies and frauds. Eventually, even somebody as thick as me figured out that the unborn didn’t matter to the Cult at all except as human shields for the real priority: the evils the Cult wanted to commit.

Similar tactics are deployed using other good things as shields for evil. Case in point, the following conversation between my friend a) John, b) a MAGA cultist (who, depressingly, teaches theology at some conservative Catholic hatchery for larval MAGAs in Connecticut), and c) myself that occurred over on the Book of Face after John posted this:

In this particular conversation, the MAGA Cultist started by demanding that we keep the focus on the Mystery of the Faith while laboring to downplay, deny, and dismiss the social justice implications of that Faith. But he fairly quickly pivoted to the old trick of using he unborn as human shields to rationalize making war are those the MAGA cult hates. Read the whole thing and note how the sleight of hand works. You will see it deployed a lot in the next four years as the Cult labors to defend the cruelties they mean to inflict on their victims:

MAGA Cultist: The nativity of Jesus is his birth, not his flight to Egypt.

John: Thank you for totally missing the point.

MAGA Cultist: It doesn’t miss the point. It shows that the point is misusing the mystery of the faith. The Nativity is not about immigration. That is the point.

John: “Misusing”??? Srsly?? The more I meet “Christians” like this, the more I understand why people are atheist.

MAGA Cultist: It is the reduction of the mystery of Christianity to social justice.

John: Well, you just proved my point. What else is the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain except social justice? Or the whole gospel, for that matter?

MAGA Cultist: Seriously?? Divine revelation. Forgiveness of sins. The gift of eternal life. Participation in divine mysteries. Divine adoption. Citizenship in a heavenly kingdom. Resurrection from the dead. The glorification of the soul and body.

The Old Law was social justice, the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount is that it interiorizes the law, that it is precisely NOT just about outward action, which is more closely related to social justice.

Me: No. Pitting the Nativity of Jesus against the Flight into Egypt (and our duty to the poor) is the real reduction of Christianity (into a MAGA cult at war with having to give a shit about your victims) so you can dwell in abstract pieties and warm fuzzy Christmas feelings without having to give a fuck about Lazarus at your gate.

John: The reduction of the sermons to “interiorizing the law” is a reduction indeed, and not at all what these things say. Identifying the OT with Social Justice is an oddity. Not that it would be opposed, but it’s certainly not the point.
If you can’t see the commandments being superseded by the blessings and the woes, I don’t know that there is much I can do for you. All the things that bother the conservatives are things not mentioned at all, or hardly mentioned, or held up for ridicule.

Me: You write, MAGA Cultist, “The Old Law was social justice, the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount is that it interiorizes the law, that it is precisely NOT just about outward action, which is more closely related to social justice.”

I am absolutely horrified to see that you teach the Faith. Your reduction of the Church’s tradition of social justice to mere exteriority and your MAGA habit of pitting interior conversation against social justice (except, no doubt, when it comes to allegedly “opposing abortion”) is everything wrong with American MAGA Catholicism.

MAGA Cultist: It’s not pitting them against each other, it’s pointing out that they are different mysteries and have different meanings, and that we should reduce the meaning of Christmas to social justice.

John: Yes, Mark, and it also means that every pope since Pius XI is wrong, since they all declaimed on social justice. The term enters papal teaching in 1931 with Quadragesimo Anno, and is part of every social encyclical since then, is part of the Catechism, and the Compendium of Catholic Social Teaching. But what I want to know is how all these popes had the gall to disagree with MAGA Cultist; the nerve of them. Anti-Catholics all!

MAGA Cultist: I don’t put them against each other. I simply don’t replace the faith with mere social justice as many Catholics do.

John: I think you meant “not reduce,” but who is doing that?

Straw man argument.

All actions that concern your neighbor are part of social justice.

Me: Of course it is, MAGA Cultist. Your entire assumption when you entered this thread was that by mentioning the social justice aspects of the Infancy Narratives, John was ipso facto, somehow “misusing the mystery of the faith” and “reducing” it to social justice. It is an extremely common assumption among MAGA Christians whenever orthodox Catholics point out that you cannot love God whom you have not seen if you do not love your neighbor whom you have seen.

What evidence do you have that John “replaces the faith with social justice”? Nothing whatsoever. Meanwhile, it is an absolute commonplace (and you are doing it right here) for MAGA Catholics to shout down every aspect of the Church’s social teaching that offends the sensitive palate of MAGA Catholics (particularly when it comes to race, wealth, power, and class). There was nothing at all in the OP that so much as hinted at “replacing the faith with social justice”. But there was everything in the OP that suggested the MAGA cult is at war with the poor and with the gospel. *That’s* what threatened you and *that*, not the mystery of the faith or the Incarnation, is what you are defending–and using the sin of rash judgment against John to do it.

MAGA Cultist: The same people that make those memes are the ones who vote to legalize abortion. What does the nativity scene teach us about the social justice of abortion? Excuse me if the hypocrisy is mind numbing.

MAGA Cultist: I’m sure you’d like to think that, Mark. This comparison has been made for years with political implications behind it. Stop acting like it’s not politically loaded. And as if this is the first meme I’ve ever seen John post. I’m not naive.

Me: Prove it. You have now committed the single most disgusting tactic of the MAGA cult, weaponizing the unborn and pitting them against every form of human life the MAGA cult wants to rob, harm, oppress, exploit, deport, rape, and murder. Neither John nor I (both prolife Catholics) have said a word in defense of abortion, while you have been fighting tooth and nail to pit the gospel against the Church’s teaching on social justice.

John: Let me be perfectly clear on this point: It IS politically loaded. Indeed, that’s the job of the Church: to speak truth to power. All of Christ’s statements are politically loaded. Which is why the politicians killed Him.

Me: Note that you have moved the goalposts, MAGA Cultist. You started with the false witness that John was reducing the mystery of the faith to social justice. When this falsehood was exploded, you did not retract, correct, or apologize. Instead, you simply advanced a new libel, that to give a shit about refugees is somehow to support abortion. This also is false, but it at least kills the fiction that you are “defending the Faith”. You aren’t. You are defending MAGA racism, cruelty, and selfishness and trying to sell that as compatible with the faith.

Me: You write, MAGA Cultist: “This comparison has been made for years with political implications behind it.”

Correct. It was made by that notorious pro-abort lib Pius XII in Exsul Familia Nazarethana in the very first line of the 1952 document: “The émigré Holy Family of Nazareth, fleeing into Egypt, is the archetype of every refugee family.”
What a liberal maroon he was! What an ignoranimus!

And you are right as well that it has huge political implications for the evil MAGA cult at war with the Church. The Cult you are desperately defending and using the unborn as human shields to do it.

Be ashamed and repent.

MAGA Cultist: Liberal Catholics have been making or sharing memes like this for years to use the faith to justify voting and being democrat (read: pro-choice) as a way to interpret their pro-choice and even pro-abortion political allegiance as “pro-life.” John shares memes like this non-stop, regardless of what the issue is.

My goodness. John posts all the time. Go read what he has said.

John: So, sympathy for immigrants is “pro-abortion”?

Here’s a clue: Being anti-abortion doesn’t make you “pro-life.”

Me: I have read what John has said, MAGA Cultist. John is a garden variety consistent life ethic Catholic who relates the unborn to, not (as you do) pits them against, all the forms of human life your evil, predatory MAGA cult means to rob, harm, exploit, oppress, rape, deport, and murder. It is that Cult, not the Faith, you are fighting to defend when you pit social justice against the rest of the Church’s teaching and weaponize the unborn into human shields for the evil your Cult does. And don’t kid yourself: your Cult doesn’t give a shit about the unborn either except as human shields. As you guys proved during the Pandemic, you would happily offer pregnant mothers and their children as human sacrifices to your “freedom” to ignore safety precautions and reject vaccinations and spread deadly lies. Your orange messiah and your Cult help kill hundreds of thousands (including unborn children) in your selfish sociopathic struggle for “freedom” from sane public health measures with your lies, conspiracy theories, and claptrap. The unborn matter to you insofar as they are useful to your cult. When they get in your way, they are completely expendable.

MAGA Cultist: Mark, you have a very vile and spiteful way of speaking. Notice that I have said nothing about Trump. That is your projection. I don’t pit social justice against the rest of the Church’s teaching, I simply do not reduce everything to social justice, and then I also do not reduce social justice to the economic order as many do.

John: “I also do not reduce social justice to the economic order…”

Huh? What? WHAT? You can’t mean what you’ve just said. At least I hope not.

What part of social justice is separate from the economic order? Can you share that with us? Or do you not know what the word “social” means?

Even abortion is connected with economics. We live under an evil system that the demands the work of women but takes no account of the fact that they are women and even penalizes them when they become mothers. So even this issue, which seems to be your go-to issue, is connected with the economic order. As is every other social issue.

Me: MAGA Cultist, you have a very vile way of slandering John with every standardized MAGA trope that uses the unborn as human shields for your contempt for the least of these. If you don’t want to be taken for a MAGA cultist making war on refugees, spitting on the Church’s social teaching, and weaponizing the unborn against everyone the MAGA cult wants to rob, harm, exploit, oppress, rape, deport, and murder, then stop parroting their rhetoric. That includes, by the way, this most recent pivot to self-pity for being called out on your bullshit. Nobody is “reducing” the gospel to social justice except you, in your accusations against John. John is simply noting that social justice is part of the gospel: something your MAGA Cult hates, fears, and rejects just as you have been consistently doing throughout this conversation, because your real goal is not to defend the Church’s teaching, but to deny the Church’s social justice teaching to protect the MAGA Cult.