Simcha Fisher on the self-absorbed self-pity of the Cult capable of empathy only for the Self and those rare people who are extensions of the Self. The cosplay martyrdom of the Cult and its ruthless contempt for all others is a nauseating testimony to the utter failure of MAGA Christianity and of its vile war on the Kingdom of God.
That’s what they say.
What are they actually doing?
They’re not letting prisoners see priests. It took nearly a month of extreme public duress before any member of clergy was granted permission to go inside to minister to the inmates of the sweltering, punitive detention center in Florida grotesquely named “Alligator Alcatraz” And it hasn’t happened yet, and may never happen.
They have been confiscating rosaries and bibles at the border and throwing them away, and feeding only pork to Muslim detainees. This has been going on for years and years, including under Biden and other presidents. But now we have a president who pretends he’s terribly offended by that kind of thing. And yet it continues.
There have been so many violent and indiscriminate sweeps by ICE in Hispanic communities, people are afraid to go to Mass. They are so afraid, the bishop of San Bernardino, CA has given them a specific dispensations from the Sunday obligation.
Will you argue that they brought this on themselves by being illegal? You need to know that, despite the president’s incessant “worst of the worst” fear mongering about rapists and drug lords, the majority of those arrested have zero criminal convictions, and the overwhelming majority have no record of violence at all.
Oh! But they are illegal, Simcha! That makes them criminals!
Wrong again. A shocking percentage of them are legal residents. Here is a running list of all the legal residents who have been detained by ICE.
And all the while, they say they’re promoting religious liberty. You may not be able to own a rosary or Bible or go to Mass or see a priest. But you can go to Hobby Lobby and buy a sign that says “Be Still And Know That I Am God” and hang it in the break room to enjoy after a long, hard day of slapping around Guatemalan grandmothers.
Let’s be really clear. The administration does not care about religious liberty. This administration has been actively quashing religious liberty. If you can’t see that, all you have to do is imagine anything I described above happening to white people.
Imagine if white people were afraid to go to Mass. Imagine if white people were being detained and sometimes deported based entirely, 100 per cent on their appearance, and had their rosaries or crucifixes thrown away. Imagine if white inmates were not allowed to see a priest for over a month. And then imagine if the government put out a memo saying that, thanks to them, we could all finally worship God in peace, all day long.
I remember clearly how American Catholics howled and screamed when the government closed the churches because of COVID. This is when we didn’t understand what COVID was and didn’t know how to treat it, and people were dying in droves. My own parents both died, so I remember what those days were like. But the main thing some American Catholics remember is that the government wasn’t letting them practice their religion.
That’s exactly what’s happening now. It’s just happening mostly to people who aren’t white.
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10 Responses
MAGA is built upon racism. The fear and hatred of black and brown people is what drives it. The MAGA gang denies this, but the truth is there for all to see.
So called “Christians” taking delight at seeing elderly Hispanic men and women and children, smacked around, thrown to the ground and man handled by ICE agents. If questioned about this, MAGA explains that since they are illegal, they have no rights and deserve the worst. Indeed. During WW2, the US Government treated Nazi POW’s better than this.
Trump is popular with many people because he gives them permission to be their worst selves. Beating up immigrants, making them sleep on concrete floors, separating families. These brutal things are cheered by people who consider themselves to be “Good Christians.” Trump said that we need more immigrants from Norway. Yes, we need more tall, blonde, pretty women. But black and brown people not so much.
I’ve tried, but I still can’t fathom the cognitive dissonance of so-called “devout” Christians who cheer on the inhumane actions of the Trump regime — when those actions so blatantly, obviously, clear as day contradict literally everything the Gospel teaches. Honestly, even a toddler could understand that.
Not long ago, I saw a prominent Traditionalist Catholic influencer mock the Church’s “preferential option for the poor,” saying it in a sneering tone. It’s as if he’d never opened a Bible — ironic, given that he holds a degree in Sacred Theology. It’s as though the Beatitudes have been erased. And just recently, I read about a “whites-only / Christians-only” community being built in Arkansas that bans, among others, non-whites and non-Christians — even Jews.
But what was the ethnicity of Christianity’s founder?
The hypocrisy is so staggering that if I were writing fiction, I wouldn’t make my villains this blind; readers would call it too unrealistic.
At the risk of being fatuous, they suffer from no cognitive dissonance because that would first require cognition. And the seething racism on non-stop display here is not troubled by the pre-frontal cortex.
I am proud of my Florida bishops for finally getting in there.
CNA, Catholic News Agency reports that a “silent majority” supports Trump’s immigration policy.
I was happy to see that the top comment on Bishop Barron’s “We have a right to defend our borders” Instagram reel, accused Bishop Barron for his silence about Latin Americans being brutally kidnapped from our streets.
Ignoring or even finding pleasure in brutalizing the weak is what very small men, who are insecure about their masculinity indulge in. I note the change in Barron’s tone. He is now angry and defensive. It’s like his heart has been poisoned. There used to be such grace and wonder in his voice.
Bishop Barron was critical of Democratic Congressmen for not applauding enthusiastically enough at Trump’s State of the Union speech. He is a Trump sycophant, first, last and always. I do not respect him.
The Republican Party has been all about racism since Nixon. It has been an open secret for decades. It was mainly white people who indulged in the pretense of small government, pro-life values, state’s rights etc etc and avoided confronting the truth. Everyone who was black, brown, yellow,.. they have known for a long time . They were mostly trying to get by, in the world as it is, trying avoid calling out the white people in their life on this
The USCCB is a racist organization. It was clear when they showed their true colors with Obama. The fight to kill the ACA through the many religious liberty challenges were the most vacuous and torturous arguments ever cooked up in the nature of religious freedom.
Catholicism in this country is in the grip of a racist white fertility cult, and soon it will explicitly become one. The path of Republicans to MAGA will be repeated by American Catholicism as it journeys to a racist fertility cult.
The bishop of San Bernardino and a few like him are just exceptions. When this period in history is called to account, guaranteed the Church will hide behind these exceptions and pretend that they were the norm. The USCCB is 60-70% MAGA operatives at this time, as repeated elections in that body to elect their leaders have proven. Burke, Cordileone, Strickland, Chaput, Barron, Paprocki, Dolan… I want those guys to achieve all their hearts desires until the whole rotten edifice collapses without any help from outsiders. I hope that no one stops them – not even the pope – and no one provides them an excuse to blame it on the enemies of the Church and atheists and liberals and what not. Let them get what they desire. Let the world see what they are from the fruit they produce
Ironic that Barron would be out of work as a bishop had Egypt been policing its “strong borders” in Year One.
A very dear friend of ours was the most loved Pediatrician in Santa Barbara. Despite being born in Los Angeles, he and his mother were kidnapped from their neighborhood, loaded onto a train with hundreds of other Mexican Americans and forcibly deported to Mexico in the 1930s. He never spoke of it. His daughter, (my daughter’s godmother) told me about his deep trauma associated with what happened.
Simcha is wonderful! Some other people…not so much, if I can judge, which “everyone” tells you not to do, but so hard not to…