Blog Post February 2021
What a year this has been, and we are only a month into it! Covid persists and stay at home orders or lock-downs become necessary. Business people, employees, health care workers, students, teachers, parents, struggle and experience everything from grief to fatigue to anger, to depression and burnout. Politicians waver, hoping that the vaccines will bail them out. All of us try to maintain hope but some days that is in short supply. And when we turned to our faith community, we found that we were prevented from gathering with them other than by video link. Most understand that this is a health and safety issue, however, not a rights and freedom issue. In any case, it is one of the losses of the times.
Fortunately, people are also writing about positive things that have come from the pandemic, the ‘hard gifts’ we mentioned here in a previous post. Fortunately, too, people are learning what the term ‘Common Good’ actually means. That learning has been prompted by moral and ethical issues about whom to vote for, who gets vaccinated first, why I should wear a mask, and so on.
All in all, the history of the 2020's will provide fodder for academic analysis and learned papers for many years to come. We will tell our grandchildren that we lived through a frightening time.
You cannot comment on anything this year, though, without mentioning the January 6 assault on the Capitol in Washington D.C. Timed to coincide with the certification of the U.S. presidential vote, the transition period of the leaving of office by one president, and the inauguration of another.
In all of this, in the long list of terrifying issues we have been faced with, one has troubled me greatly for a long time, and that is why I am writing now. I have referred to it in recent posts, and who knows, we may face it again. That is the role of religion in the ascendancy of the outgoing president of the United States. More specifically, the role of Catholics in that ascendancy. In trying to talk about it, one enters into the domain of both topics you never bring up at a dinner party: politics and religion. Both are emotionally laden, and both are important elements of the identity of each of us. We do not alter course easily. So forgive me.
But there is something urgently important in this instance. Very well meaning and sincere people really believed the last president was an answer to what they thought was the only issue that mattered, namely the abortion situation in the U.S. Because you could see, right?, that he was pro-life. They were willing to look past the list of public offenses he has committed and bragged about. They were willing to look past his cynical desecration of St. John Episcopal Church and the statue of Pope St. John Paul ll in Washington. All because he would act on abortion. All because he was going to root out socialism. All because, for some people, he was going to save the world from the pedophile ring led by Hillary Clinton in the basement of a pizza shop. I will spare you the name of the movement if you don’t know it. Its members were front and centre on January 6.
I refer you to a recent article that is important reading for Catholics and Christians of all stripes, I think (it includes the photo of the Trumps standing in front of the statue of Pope St. John Paul ll): https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/how-catholics-got-conned-donald-trump.
Here are a couple of brief excerpts from the article, written by a Franciscan Sister and a Catholic priest:
It was never about "pro-life." Many Americans, including Catholics, voted for Donald Trump because they believed he was "pro-life." Those who did were conned by the con artist himself. Others knew but did not care that his recently claimed "pro-life" stance and his revolving membership in the Republican Party were born less of personal conviction and more of political expediency.......
The authors talk about Trump’s apparent sociopathy: Using real-life examples from Trump's life: a sociopath has no qualms about separating babies from their mothers, mocking a disabled reporter, ridiculing public figures or firing others at will. He will stop at nothing to get what he wants, including inciting violence........
They go on: But what about Catholics? How do we explain the fact that nearly 57% of white Catholics voted for Trump in this last election? Or that many Catholic bishops likely cast their ballots for him as well? How did the leaders of the Catholic Church and so many of its members get pulled into this quicksand of resentment, this hijacking of the Gospel?
The authors suggest a number of reasons for the move that took place among Catholics. In the last item on their list they call out American bishops who in part got to their support of Trump through their opposition to Pope Francis:
This, in turn, has given encouragement for right-wing Catholic movements to become more vocal in their opposition to Francis. Timothy Busch, the Napa Institute, the Knights of Columbus, William Barr, Steve Bannon and the Federalist Society now lead the lay resistance to Francis and the opposition to finishing the work of Vatican II.
On the other side of the ledger, Catholic friends have indicated they would never vote for Joe Biden, a practising Catholic who has not condemned the politics of abortion on demand. An article in the Globe and Mail by Michael W. Higgins titled ‘The unassuming Catholicism of Joe Biden prepares him well for the hard journey ahead,’ paints what will be a study in contrast between the two presidents.
Again, a couple of excerpts:
He doesn’t showcase his religious convictions with dubious sincerity – as did, say, Bill Clinton when he carried a Bible with him during his impeachment controversy, or Donald Trump, who visited an Episcopal church for a photo-op after protesters in the area were cleared by armed police in riot gear – nor does he theologize with the cognoscenti, as Barack Obama did with Marilynne Robinson. He just carries his rosary, attends mass regularly, publicly delights in singing 1970s Catholic hymns and credits his faith as the bedrock of solace during those times of bereavement when he lost two children and a spouse........
If some in the U.S. hierarchy are distrustful of his commitment to his faith, the Bishop of Rome is not among their number. In fact, Mr. Biden and Pope Francis have spoken on several occasions. Mr. Biden is on record as sympatico with the Pope’s prioritizing of the poor, prophetic teaching on the climate crisis, hypersensitivity to the social and economic upheaval of forced migration, and he remains deeply grateful for the pontiff’s personal accompaniment at the time of the death of his son Beau.
There is a pro-life vision here that Trump abhors and that Pope Francis endorses. People that see this pro-life vision in the context of Catholic teaching on the Common Good (see my last post) will be able to support Biden even with his blind spot. People who do not, and especially those with the double barrel animus that involves indignation at Pope Francis, will not. I am a tad embarrassed for their Catholicism.
Here is the conclusion from the NCR article ‘How Catholics got conned....’:
How are we to respond to this painful reality? We offer not advice, but an image of active hope. Late Wednesday night, following the riots in the Capitol, U.S. Rep. Andy Kim spent almost two hours on his knees picking up debris on the floor of the Rotunda before returning to the congressional caucus to certify the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Kim is the first Asian American congressional representative from New Jersey.
His response is a challenge to each of us. What can we do now? We can kneel and pick up the broken promises of justice, the scattered pieces of the Gospel. We can kneel as humble servants to clean up the debris of fear and hatred. And we the people, all the people, can stand together in the long road of healing.
That is the U.S. We in Canada watched it all unfold. The last four years, the last four months. We were affected by it: we resonated to large pieces of the turmoil, and we have been repulsed by much of it. We can certainly heed the advice of the authors’ conclusion. We can, above all, kneel and pick up the ‘scattered pieces of the Gospel.’ The Gospel got brutalized in the last four years. We Catholics - all of us, including bishops and organizations called out in the article - can also reaffirm our allegiance to Pope Francis, the duly elected, legitimate successor of Peter. He is our best guide to living the Gospel, and he is our best protection against ever being misled like this again.
