I correspond at Christmastime with a friend from my college years who just happens to be a Catholic priest. This year we’ve gone back and forth since Christmas due to his support of, and my lack of support of, Trump for president. It surprised me that he was a Trump supporter, but I’m finding out that a good number of Catholic priests supported Trump for president, and rallied for him from their pulpits. I’m also finding out that this did not sit so well with many of their parishioners who could taste and smell the hypocrisy of this blatant support of a man who basically has little to no understanding of Christian principles and behavior. I am not trying to change my friend’s mind, but I want to present the other side, as it were, because it strikes me that the Catholic Church doesn’t really pay much attention to or listen to its followers. Perhaps it doesn’t need to do so, but I think it would behove them to do so.
The American Catholic church’s blatant support of Trump has upset many
parishioners who react to the hypocrisy--how we as normal Catholics have been
told for years to ‘abide by the laws of the church, to avoid adultery, to not
steal, to not worship idols, to follow the commandments’. Sex outside of and
before marriage are mortal sins according to my priest friend, therefore
adultery must also be. Yet Trump was held up as a savior of the USA in many
Catholic churches, because he is (presumably) anti-abortion. He is also a liar,
a cheater, an adulterer, but those sins were not discussed from the pulpit. Yet
priests have been lecturing about the evils of sexual immorality for years when
it pertains to normal married couples and young people. Yet during the
entire pedophile scandal, there was not one peep from the pulpit about the
crimes of pedophile priests, how they belonged in jail, how they had betrayed
the loyalty and confidence that parishioners had in them. Likewise with
Trump--no criticism of him, only held up as savior. Cardinal Dolan in NYC
was/is also a Trump supporter, and he has been criticized roundly for failing
to acknowledge how parishioners felt about this: (https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/05/04/cardinal-dolans-praise-president-trump-was-pastoral-failure).
People who are staunch Catholics, who go to mass every Sunday, who pray and read
Catholic literature--are quite upset about the utter hypocrisy they are witness
to, as I am. The Church will surely endure, but it lost many followers due
to the pedophile scandal, and perhaps its support of Trump will result in the
same. The Church can say that it is no problem to lose followers, but perhaps
it should still take a look at why they leave. The reasons are not always
frivolous, as is often stated by well-meaning priests who have their heads in the sand.
And just as a reminder to those who thought otherwise, the
Church was forced to deal with the pedophile scandal by external organs
and institutions. It did not seem as though they took it seriously enough, at
least in the beginning. They reassigned pedophile priests to other parishes. They
wished to deal with it as an internal matter, and it is not. Pedophilia is a
crime. The children who were victimized were hushed up, pushed aside, and held
down by church leaders who knew what would happen if the truth came out. These
children did not choose to be ‘victims’ of evil behavior. Neither did their
parents.
I have never particularly identified with any societal group. I don’t trust group mentalities, and that includes blind loyalty to any religion. I am not blindly loyal to science either. My loyalty is to God and Jesus Christ. I will speak up when I see wrongdoing, as do many Catholics. We don’t interpret Christ’s words ourselves; we read the Bible and know what we have been taught through the years. After many years of Catholic education and churchgoing, we can at least do that. Apart from the pope when he speaks “ex Cathedra” about matters of faith and morals, the clergy are human and fallible. My father always made the point that the church was a human institution, founded by Christ, yes, but run by men; I believe that GK Chesterton made the same point. Priests are human beings first, and fallible like the rest of us.
Trump is not a good example for children, nor for marital
partners be they male or female. I know both married male and female Trump supporters. There is nothing Christian
about one partner in any marriage spewing out his or her belligerence and
aggression toward their families who don’t share their blind worship of
Trump, who don’t want to listen to their constant daily screaming about
socialism and the end of America. Trump is not holding a gun to these people’s
heads and telling them to behave this way. But they bought into his hype.
Misery loves company. Trump’s anger and frustration with his own life have
seeped into the minds of these people in an insidious way. They are not poor,
downtrodden or victims. Trump is no longer president, and they are still spewing
their rage and frustration. They are acting as though they have been victimized
and that the country will go down the drain with Biden--illegal immigrants
flooding into the country, taking jobs away from Americans, etc. etc. Who has
‘victimized’ these people, I ask? They are privileged beyond their wildest
dreams--they own their own homes, several cars, they have hobbies and they
travel, they eat out, they have good jobs and good incomes. What the heck is
wrong with them? They should know better.
If there is a role for the Catholic Church in all this, it
is to support a ‘live and let live’ philosophy. Or a ‘love your neighbor as
yourself’ philosophy. Isn’t that what we are called to do as Christians? It
doesn’t mean that we have to necessarily like everything about our neighbors or
other cultures, but ‘do no harm’ is a good mantra. My view of Christian behavior
is for the most part shaped by my parents, who tried to live a Christian life
as best they could. If they had their prejudices, they kept the basest of them
to themselves, as I wish most people would do. I don’t want to listen to you spew your bile and your hatred. That’s MY prerogative. My soul will be forever glad for my
parents’ good example. My mother always said ‘if you can’t say something nice,
don’t say anything at all’. She also said ‘you can catch more flies with honey
than with vinegar’. I do believe that Trump could have learned something from
my mother and my father about how to behave.
