Over on the Book of Face, Deacon Steve Greydanus also posted the piece by Mike Lewis about the dismay and disgust so many committed Catholics have experienced since the rise of the MAGA Catholic sect of Francis-hating worshippers of Trump. And, inevitably, somebody wrote to offer the exhausted “Both Sides are the Same” wheeze that conservative Christians always deploy in the effort to deflect from their guilt in enabling the right wing freak show. Steve wrote a very good reply that depicts the heartache he and untold others (myself included) have felt. I reproduce both the gripe and Steve’s reply because I think what he says speaks for so many of us
The reader wrote:
All of this irritates me to no end. Fine, people on the right are too factional. So are people on the left. Every single Catholic group my wife and I ever been involved in (including breastfeeding groups, homeschooling groups, and pro-life groups) fall into the same trap of constantly pointing at someone else and saying “They’re factional!” The devil knows its a perfect trap: Factionalism is really bad, and to constantly complain about factionalism only deepens factionalism. It would be much better, I think, to spend time promoting the good that Jesus Christ offers the world and how that instantiates itself in various proposals. We never get to do that because we always say, “First of all, look what a jerk the other guy is. Now let me tell you about Jesus.
And Steve replied:
I have something to say about this. I don’t think your response is adequate. I don’t think you’re entirely reckoning with what this discussion is really about.
Here’s what I think you may be missing: People like Mike and me (along with many people in this thread, as you can see for yourself) are not just angry or upset about “factionalism,” or people being “jerks.” We are wounded souls processing trauma and grief over the loss of one-time heroes and friends whom we watched in dismay and disbelief as they turned against us, and against, so it seems to us, the heart of the faith we thought we shared with them, in the process of building a militant, powerful Catholic subculture organized around entrenched resistance to the pope (if not to Vatican II), a string of culture-war shibboleths (e.g., knee-jerk repudiation of anything associated with “wokeness”; deep hostility regarding any attempt to treat people who identify as LGBTQ with respect and welcome), unfettered enthusiasm for the hardest possible line on immigration, and, ultimately, uncritical, quasi-religious support of Trump/MAGA.
We have heard these things said from pulpits, from episcopal offices, and in Catholic media spaces. We have been told—by people we respected and cared about, whose words we used to hang on—that we are not really Catholic if we see things differently.
I’m not saying progressive, dissenting Catholics can’t be factionalistic. I’m saying we who don’t (or, in some cases, who once didn’t) dissent from the Church never expected progressive dissenters, or any dissenters, to model Christian unity and integrity. We did expect that of our heroes and friends. Their betrayal—compounded by their accusation that *we* are the traitors—is an open wound from which we continue to suffer.
Cardinal Burke was one of my great heroes, a rock star of fidelity, erudition, and sober judgment in my eyes. To see him brought low by so absurd a rightwing canard as Covid vaccine microchip conspiracy theories was bad enough. Worse was his violence to basic canon law principles—Cardinal Burke, doing violence to canon law!—by redefining “apostasy” to include Catholics like President Biden whom he considers to have “publicly and obstinately violated the moral law,” and his quite literally scandalous “just asking questions” engagement with sedevacantist speculation about Pope Francis being invalidly elected (in discussion with Patrick Coffin, who has repeatedly platformed the likes of E. Michael Jones, among other gross things).
That’s just one example—and I don’t even know Cardinal Burke. I’ve been insulted and attacked in every way imaginable by people I once called friends. I am a fallen and flawed human being who has made many mistakes, and not every ugly word flung my way has been undeserved or incomprehensible. But some of them are simply because I believe God is doing good things in the Church through Pope Francis. Because I believe my Black neighbors and brothers in Christ when they say racism is still a significant problem. Because I believe in treating people who identify as queer first as human beings created in God’s image. Because I believe that immigrants who have lived here for decades have rights that must be respected.
Cardinal Ratzinger, shortly before his election to the chair of Peter, talked about the danger posed by those who talk about God but live contrary to him, and how this opens the door to unbelief. He talked about the great need for people who, by the enlightened faith they live, “make God credible” in the world. Our crisis, our wound, is that the very people who once made God credible for us have now turned out to be people who talk about God but live contrary to him. This has led many to doubt, to struggle with unbelief, to fall away from the Catholic communion, or to lose their faith altogether. This is not about mere factionalism. This is about making God’s love visible in the world, or distorting it in the pursuit, ultimately, of political power.
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10 Responses
Disappointment, disillusionment, and betrayal are the operative words to how I have felt the last decade as well. I never imagined that I would be hated by so many Catholics for loving and be obedient to the current ecumenical council, the current pope, and my current bishop.
However, it has for me been a time of a deep purification of my faith and the deep roots that politics had in my life. It has been a great opportunity to truly place my faith in Christ and His Church, but the wounds are deep and abundant.
I lost two friends to MAGA. They are good people, but they got sucked into the right wing foolishness via online overdose. They tried to recruit me. Their emails, filled with idolatry towards Trump were alarming. They said Trump is “God’s annointed” and if you don’t vote for Trump, you are a traitor. They exhibited classic cult like behavior. They actually seemed to worship this sorry man. Incredible.
I kind of miss my lost friends, but I cannot abide this cult like MAGA devotion they have. I have tried to understand why this is happening. I can only think that these MAGA people have a giant hole in their life, and that MAGA and it’s cult like beliefs somehow fill that hole.
I wonder if and when they will come to their senses? They seem to be logic resistant. But then this is also cult like behavior. When will the fever break?
There is a quote by Cardinal Francis George that bears repeating:
“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”
Card. George indeed died in his bed in 2015.
His successor, Card. Blase Cupich, advocates for consistent life ethic and is an ardent supporter of Pope Francis’s vision for the Church.
It might be that Cardinal Georges’ words will in fact turn out prophetic, but not in the way that culture warriors expect them to be. If Cardinal Cupich ends up incarcerated, it will be entirely because of MAGA.
The MAGA mind has been seduced by an anti trinity of: Fear, tribalism, and the love of money. But Fear is what drives them. They see their old way of life giving way to something smaller, poorer, seedier.
When given an opportunity to clothe this grand fear with Catholic piety, they leap at the chance. Who wants to admit that they are afraid of being poor/less rich?
This is why they hate the poor. They feel that they are being consumed by them when in fact it is the other way around. They see themselves in Donald, Melania and their well dressed family.
“Beware the Devil’s dung (money)”
-Pope Francis
Btw, I think a lot of us are feeling gripped by this fear for our old way of life, and a nostalgia for what once was. We are like mice, shaking our heads at our brethren scurrying into the arms of the cat.
Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to find great advice in the confessional from a Dominican priest. He told me this is what he does when challenged with fear/lack of trust:
“Pray: Lord Jesus, I trust in you.
Take deep breaths while saying it. Let your body relax into the words, praying them as statements of faith, and repeating them, –only each time you pray the words, give emphasis to a different word.”
LORD Jesus I trust in you
Lord JESUS I trust in you
Lord Jesus *I* trust in you
Lord Jesus I TRUST in you
Lord Jesus I trust IN you
Lord Jesus I trust in YOU
I am finding that this is already helping my soul a lot.
For several years, I have been trying to figure out the appeal of Trump/MAGA. A friend explained it to me. Trump gives people permission to be their worst selves. It’s OK to be greedy, and throw the poor under the bus. It’s OK to hate immigrants, gays and those not like us. And you can cloak this with religion and patriotism. You can be greedy and hate and be considered a “Good Christian.” How convenient.
The religious right has perverted Christianity into a twisted version of itself. Lots of greed and hate, but little love. And people fall for it.
I think this may have come out too long for the comment box, so I’m splitting it up into two parts.
(1/2) Due in large part to the spiritual damage I caused myself by trying to maintain it despite mounting cognitive dissonance – a story that I think could be repeated with many of the…er…unfortunates who have embraced sedevacantism in its various forms – I’ve come to believe beyond any doubt that the absolutist reading of religious submission proffered by the folks at WherePeterIs (that which is routinely pilloried by their opponents as “hyperpapalism,” “hyper-ultramontanism,” “Loftonism,” “papolatry,” et al.) is a deeply unsound and distorted way of thinking, especially when it crosses over from simply defending the Pope’s teaching to actively excusing or covering up for his actions when they shouldn’t be. As a mild example, even Mike Lewis was willing to admit on his Substack that Pope Francis’ actions (or lack thereof) regarding Fr. Rupnik were extremely distressing, but he also made blisteringly clear in the comments that he would never under any circumstances publish such a piece at WPI:
https://mikelewis.substack.com/p/silence-is-unacceptable
https://mikelewis.substack.com/p/silence-is-unacceptable/comments
HOWEVER, while WPI’s interpretation of it may have jumped the rails, they do possess one tremendous saving grace: The principle of religious submission in and of itself is perfectly sound and it SHOULD be the default position of every orthodox Catholic under normal circumstances. Any legitimate deviation from it ought to be undertaken with extreme caution and be devoid of any desire for personal gain (and how often does THAT happen?). Sadly, there WAS a time that even the most hardcore Trads might have recognized this. As Dr. John Rao stated in his “Traditionalist New Year’s Resolution” from 2015:
“I also resolve to remember that I myself am not the Catholic Church, that I may have my own misconceptions about what she teaches, and that I cannot exclude my own pet heresy from the judgement of the whole of the Catholic Tradition.” [He may have forgotten that – or perhaps he never meant it to being with – but I sure as hell haven’t.]
Which brings me to my next point: Team Donald and its various offshoots possess no such saving grace. Their philosophy, if you can call it that, is nothing more than a virulent combination of Americanism and caesaropapism that would be perfectly at home in some backwater Eastern Orthodox cult but is absolutely unbecoming of the Church of Rome. If any man on Earth COULD be worthy of absolute submission, it would most certainly be the Pope – who is, after all, the Vicar of Christ and Successor of St. Peter and does in fact possess the charism of infallibility under certain circumstances. The fact that these people have rejected him and instead submitted themselves body and soul to a man who is orders of magnitude LESS worthy – a man who, among other disgusting things, believes that making deals is the only way to go about life and that taking revenge on one’s enemies is the only measure of a man – shows exactly why the First Commandment is first: When you worship anything or anyone else in place of God, you open the door to every other sin in the book.
(2/2) Even as someone who doesn’t feel comfortable with or represented by either side of this incredibly depressing conflict, I can state this with absolute certainty:
No, both sides are NOT the same. One side, at the worst, pursues a healthy, legitimate Catholic impulse in a disordered fashion. The other side peddles snake oil dressed up in pseudo-Tridentine clothing, thereby poisoning any corporate attempt to live the Faith in a more traditional way (at least here in the U.S.), barring Divine intervention and a heroic degree of virtue on the part of any cleric or layperson who tries to stay the course. Needless to say, as someone who has tried to do just that – both as part of a Latin Mass parish and an Ordinariate community – this puts me in an extremely irritating position and generates a great many thoughts that need to be taken to a confessional (and most likely a therapist as well).
Sancte Michael archangele, defende nos in proelio: contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium. Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, Princeps militiae caelestis, satanam aliosque spiritus malignos qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute, in infernum detrude. Amen.
I left the church about five years ago. This was after returning to the church in 2005 after a 40 year absence. I believed at the time that I would not leave again due to the rigidity of beliefs and a lack of love. I was wrong because I lacked tolerance. I also have a case of compassion burnout from my 30 plus years as a counselor and psychotherapist. I saw family members and friends fall for the lies of trump and nothing would change their beliefs. It got to the point that I would go to mass and come home angry. So I quit. I’ll take my chances with God
Everyone’s got a good excuse.