Following up on yesterday’s post

Yesterday, I noted that Marco Rubio’s slathering of gooey Eucharistic piety on top of the corpses of his millions of victims of the destruction of USAID was a detestable insult to the Eucharist. I would have thought this was obvious. But I was reminded again in this exchange that many people do not primarily want to learn from the gospel so much as to hear what their itching ears want to hear, as Paul warned (cf.  2 Timothy 4:3-4).

Evidently somebody had forwarded a link to my post about EWTN darling Rubio to EWTN’s FB page. Because the next day a Very Pious Lady wrote in my comboxes to complain:

Whether any of this is true or not, it is an inappropriate post to put on EWTN’s Facebook page. Official Catholic publications should not favor one political party over another. I came to EWTN’s Facebook page to learn about my faith, not to see another political smear when I have already seen so many all over social media! I came here to find something that was above all of that.

So I replied:

I’m confused. Are you complaining because EWTN is endorsing Rubio’s fake piety or because I am criticizing Rubio’s fake piety and teaching you what the Faith actually says with a direct quote from Jesus Christ?

Miss Piety replied:

I go to EWTN to learn about Our Lord, not to read about the sins of other people. You are judging Marco Rubio’s piety as fake and calling him a “Mass-murdering Monster”. Whether he is or isn’t is not the point. In Matthew 7:1-5, Our Lord said, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

He said in John 8:7 to the men trying to stone the woman caught in adultery, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

There are plenty of sites where you can criticize Marco Rubio or anyone else you want to. But, on religious sites, Our Lord is concerned about us repenting of OUR sins, not on concentrating on the sins of other people.

Dumbfounded, I responded:

“Whether he is or isn’t is not the point.” Whether Rubio is or is not the mass murderer of 14 million innocent human beings is not the point?

Like it or not, you live in a democracy and what your leaders choose to do connects directly to you and me and our choices at the voting booth. If you choose to defend this monstrous act of mass murder by declaring it beside the point, you become complicit in it. Hiding behind private, personal piety disconnected from the common good is contrary to the Catholic faith.

Jesus tells us that we will know false prophets by their fruits. Rubio’s fruits are mass death, as is the fruit of the entire Trump cult. Jesus also says, “Why do you call me ‘Lord! Lord!’ and not do what I say?” I’m willing to bet good money that none of what you say about “not judging” applies when you are talking about Catholics who voted against Trump and that you had no problem judging Biden and wanting to bar him from the Eucharist as a false Catholic and all the rest.

Stop defending mass murderers.

Miss Piety wrote back:

You do not know me. You know nothing about me. I do not talk about Catholics who voted for Trump. I did not judge Biden or want to bar him from the Eucharist. I do not judge him as a false Catholic. You are projecting yourself onto me. I am not like that, whatever you write.

I answered:

Ok. I’m fine admitting I’m wrong if you say so. So tell me. I take it you are then fine with supporting Catholics who work in the abortion industry since whether they do or not isn’t the point, right? If somebody in that line of work gains office and uses it to enrich himself, you would be more upset if a mean person like me criticized them than the things they do that earn the criticism?

And she replied:

You write that you “take it” that I am “fine with supporting Catholics who work in the abortion industry”. You are judging me again and putting words in my mouth again. You are going out of your way to come up with elaborate scenarios to trick me again. You know nothing about me or what I approve of or disapprove of.

I have gone into Confession and started discussing difficult situation that I have had with other people. The priest has always said, “I don’t care what other people did wrong. What did you do?” This is a religious, spiritual Facebook page. I am much more interested in correcting my own faults and working on them than I am in the sins of other people.

I know that the current administration has done many evil things. But there are thousands of other places online that can be used to discuss this. I came here to the EWTN page to learn about my faith and how to become a better person, not to learn about other people’s sins.

And I concluded:

I am reading what you tell me and trying to make sense of it. You said that the mass murder of 14 million people is beside the point and that it is mean and judgmental to make it the point. It therefore follows logically that if a Catholic abortion provider likewise enriches their power and wealth you also believe this is beside the point and it is “judgmental” to regard that as evil. I can’t read your heart, but I can and should read your words. Jesus commands me to judge the tree by it fruits. The only fruits you have on offer are your words, in which you tell me that direct responsibility for the mass murder of 14 million people is “beside the point”. I therefore conclude that you must also believe direct responsibility for abortion and profiteering thereby is also beside the point and thinking otherwise is “judgmental”.

If you don’t think a religious and spiritual page is the proper place for denouncing monstrous evil done in the name of the living God, and the urging repentance obedience to the gospel is either religious or spiritual then I don’t know what to say. Neither my page nor EWTN are the confessional. They are open forums for discussing the application of the faith to the real world. Saying that (in this case Marco Rubio) is bringing the faith into contempt has absolutely nothing to do with denying our own sins. Being silent while Catholics use piety as a way to perfume their bloody-handed and impenitent acts of mass murder is a way of becoming an accomplice to those filthy sins.

Oh, and when you have the vapors about pretending to care about “dealing only with our own sins” you should probably re-consider the wisdom of framing your entire argument as, “You know what your problem is? I’ll tell you what your problem is! You talk about other people’s sins!”