“Mark! What was it about Trump that radicalized you?”
Nothing. I haven’t been radicalized. I just continued on in the same direction of taking the Faith seriously that I have been since I became Catholic in 1987.
“But you really changed starting in 2015 and then again in 2020.”
Yeah. About 2015 I wrote a series for the National Catholic Register about Catholic Social Teaching. I took it seriously and tried to subordinate my politics to the Tradition and the Magisterium. One particularly funny moment was when I published what was effectively a huge bunch of quotes from papal, conciliar, patristic, medieval, and contemporary magisterial sources and got called a Marxist by some of the Greatest Catholics of All Time in the Register comboxes.
Nope. Just a garden variety Catholic.
“Well then, what happened in 2020?”
Around that time, I was asked to turn that Register series into a book: this book.
I took that even more seriously and learned a bunch more. Taking the teaching of the Church seriously, far more than Trump’s antics, is what made me who I am today. This is why it kills me when people complain that the Church is not addressing the crisis. The Church’s teaching has been addressing this and a huge number of other crises beautifully for 2000 years. To be sure, the Church’s members often don’t do that. But the Tradition and Magisterium reliably do. To quote Chesterton, “God and humanity made it and it made me.”
If you are looking for a way to be equipped, not merely to oppose the disastrous Regime assaulting our country and the world, but far more important for beautiful way to rebuild it once the Regime is gone, I recommend this book as a place to start. It is precisely because it is not about Trump, but about the Catholic social vision that I am pleased with it. Check it out!
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7 Responses
One of the most annoying things about MAGA Catholics is their attitude that if you disagree with Trump, you are then not a “good Catholic.” They have elevated Trump into some sort of junior varsity messiah, annointed by God to save us. They even take his side in any disagreement with the Pope.
They excuse his lies and personal immorality with the “imperfect vessel of God’s will” nonsense. It’s really quite amazing how easily bamboozled the Trump Catholics are. He throws the poor under the bus, but gives his Catholic supporters a few culture war bones such as attacking transgenders, so they revere him.
Even Bishops,such as Robert Barron have fallen under his spell. Barron attacked Democrats for not applauding with enough enthusiasm during Trump’s State of the Union. Is this North Korea?
Does Barron understand his hero worship of Trump makes many people repulsed by what he says? Is he a Bishop or just another sycophant?
I’ve crossed swords with a few Trump Catholics and I have noticed how defensive they become when you probe them and their hero worship. Perhaps, deep down,they know how very twisted and perverted the whole MAGA drek really is?
Yeah, MAGA is not a cult. No way. Nothing to see here!
I should have invited Trump to my daughter’s wedding. He might have saved me money on the bar tab, by changing water into wine. Maybe he could have fed all the guests with a few loaves and fishes?
You’re a Catholic Apologist? All you talk about Trump though! Like did the Pope do anything notable this week?
I’m a Catholic writer, living in an age when roughly half the American Church has given itself body and soul to a dimestore antichrist and committed to fighting the Pope. If you want news about the pope it is in copious supply. Read his new encyclical. Meantime, my task is to present the Church’s social teaching in contrast to the nightmarish false gospel the MAGA Catholic Cult is pushing. That’s what I am doing here, and you completely ignore it. Why do you suppose you are so invested in doing that?
I haven’t read the new encyclical, but I’ve read about it. It deals in good measure with the threats of AI.
To the limited extent I understand the nature of this encyclical, I can count it as perhaps one of a very, very few instances in which I as a Pagan agree 100% with the Catholic Church, or at least it’s top bishop.
I also find exact parallels with Frank Herbert’s Dune, which I have come to see, only half-jokingly, as prophecy.
What the pope issued is no less than the core commandment of Dune’s fictional Orange Catholic Bible:
“Thou shall not disfigure the soul”. The core of that commandment in the books and movies is that giving over powers of intellect and governance to thinking machines is an abomination.
I believe AI is, even more than our environmental problems, an existential threat to humanity.
I’m not even Catholic nor Christian and yet I too became “radicalized” against this regime.
How did that happen? Despite growing up in a nation where sociopathy is the core value, and sometimes to my very great annoyance, I still retain a functioning conscience and capacity for empathy.
I actually don’t enjoy beating down on the powerless and innocent for amusement, or seeing it done in my name and with my dollars.
That marks me out as very un-American these days.