Sunday Morning Scene. Back to the Coliseum.
I've been expecting it all along. It just came in a surprising fashion.
Deep hatred of Catholics is the last acceptable form of outright bigotry in the United States, although there's been a general rise of bigotry and racism during the illegitimate Trump interregnum. Trump's a populist, and populist tends to boost ignorance, with bigotry feeding on that. Most of the major populist movements a person can recall, the Nazis, the Communists, the Know Nothings, featured a lot of really ignorant people who were willing to be lead around by a others, sometimes a charismatic, to them, other.1 MAGA is a populist movement, masquerading as a conservative one, as Nazism was a populist movement that claimed conservatives within it. It's not too surprising, therefore, that we're seeing more of this sort of thing than we have at any point since the 1960s.
Quite a few of the more ignorant members of MAGA claim they support Trump as he's Godly, which is patently absurd, but there's no denying that far right wing Evangelicalism is a major component of MAGA. The Press, which isn't very well educated on religion anymore, just keeps calling them "Christians", which is really misleading. Some, but not all, far right Evangelicals supporting Trump hold religious beliefs that are very recent and very novel and well outside the mainstream of Apostolic Christianity and also out of the mainstream of most Protestant beliefs. Almost all MAGA Evangelicals fit into the ignorant of theology and Church history camp that's strong in the United States of being "Bible Believing Christians" who are pretty ignorant of a rule on the history of the books of the Bible.
Around the periphery of MAGA, however, there's been some Apostolic Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox, who have been, if not fully in the Trump camp, at least allowed to pitch a tent on its edges. Some of this is just flat out opportunistic on their part, and it looked like it would have a major impact on the Trump administration due to Trump's flat out ignorance and laziness. Inside the administration you have the example of J. D. Vance and Marco Rubio, and outside of it you have people like Kevin Roberts. You even have Peter Thiel, who claims not to be a Catholic but who keeps popping up in certain Catholic circles, as does Jordan Peterson and the Orthodox pundit Rod Dreher.2 National Conservatism has a strong right wing Catholic element to it, which is interesting in that it's sort of the intellectual heir of Fr. Charles Coughlin whose movement was shut down and who remains not widely admired in mainstream Catholic circles.
Most CAtholics that have supported Trump, however, have done so for one of two other reasons. The thinking ones have done so as it seemed like he was probably the only candidate who would address long held Catholic concerns, like abortion. People know that Trump himself was a louse, but they were willing to "hold their nose and vote". Others were Protestantized Catholics, of which there are a lot in the United States in the Boomer and Gen. Jones generations. These people are victims of the bad Catechization of the 1970s and as the US is a Protestant country, they've picked up a lot of Protestant beliefs.
Throughout Trump's second claim to power I've worried that the "Christian", i.e., far right Evangelical support of Trump would result in two things for Catholics. The first, which we will not address here, is that the association of "Christian" with Trump would result in Christianity taking a major hit. Evangelicalism definitely will. The second is that getting on the bus with Evangelicals would result in them beating us up as soon as we weren't of use to them.
And that's starting to happen.
The reason it started is because Pete Hegseth, who is festooned with Crusader themed tattoos announced that the U.S. Army is going to livestream the execution of former US Army Major Nidal Hasan who killed thirteen unarmed U.S. soldiers in 2009. 3 4
The Catholic Church is opposed to killing people. It's opposed to killing people in pretty absolutist terms and always has been, claims of Catholic haters aside. It's always been opposed to infanticide, including abortion. Early on in Church history there were serious debates if Christians, which were all Catholic, were required to be pacifists, and there are some saints who were. St. Martin of Tours, who had been a Roman soldier, famously told his commander "I am a soldier of Christ; it is not lawful for me to fight." Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer, went to his death in Nazi Germany rather than fight for the Nazi state. Ben Salmon, an American Catholic layman who has not been beatified went to prison as a conscientious objector during World War One as he held the view that all war was immoral. 5 And starting with Pope John Paul II, the Church has opposed the death penalty.
Catholic Bishops immediately responded to Hegseth's live stream the killing announcement by condemning it. Quiet a few individual priests with a net presence did as well. And then almost immediately after that Pope Leo XIV did, stating:
This caused an immediate reaction by some Evangelical Christians on the far right, and it did from a few very far right Catholics who are probably in the Rad Trad camp. Predictably, a notable number of the Evangelicals threw of pretending they approved of Catholics in any fashion. Laughable comments that the Pope doesn't know theology were out there, but more radical ones by the Invincibly Ignorant immediately arose as well.
Los of hte comments immediately cited the Old Testament, which is a bit ironic as frankly the CAtholic Church uses the Old Testament much more than any Protestant group does. There's a number of quotes from the Old Testament that address the death penalty, for example:
Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.
Genesis 9:6
Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death.
Exodus 21:12
So there you go. . .but wait:
Anyone who attacks their father or mother is to be put to death.
Exodus 21:15 & 21:17
Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.
Exodus 21:15 & 21:17
Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession.
Exodus 21:16
If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death."
Leviticus 20:10 (Adultery)
If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Leviticus 20:13
Anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them."
Leviticus 24:16
Okay then, if we apply to the Old Testament, we need to be killing anyone cursing their parents, kidnappers, adulterers and adulteresses, homosexuals and blasphemeres.
Indeed, if this was fully applied, Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, Paula White, and Scott Bessant wouldn't be in Washington D.C. as they're either adulturers or, in Bessant's case, a homosexual. Shoot, probably about 1/3d of the congregation of Protestant congregation would have to be offed, based on my observation that they don't take divorce or pre marital sex as a sin.
Well, what the heck? Why aren't we imposing the death penalty with sweeping abandon?
Well, that's because the Apostolic Churches and the Mainline Protestant Churches hold the view that Christ fulfilled the law and the Mosaic law does not apply to Christians. There are a pile of laws in the Mosaic Law that nobody seeks to apply to Christians due to the Catholic Church having alway taken this view. That's why Christians can eat shellfish and pork. Protestants who are running around declaring that the death penalty is Biblically mandated are apparently ignorant of the Bible and is laws, or they'd be killing adulterers, blasphemers, parent disrespecters, homosexuals and not eating shrimp.
Indeed, this was the case from day one. One of the very first debates in the Church was whether converts had to be circumcised. Nope, no longer applied. The dietary laws no longer did either.
It's also odd to see how all of these people aren't citing the New Testament. While the law was fulfilled by Christ, Christ did set down some pretty strict behavioral requirements. We are, for example supposed to love our enemies. That's a tough one.
Some have tried to drag out Church history, of which they're largely ignorant. "Well, the Church has always killed people. . ."
Nope. Indeed, from antiquity it's tried to stop it.
As Christ led you from death to life, so you should try to save not only the innocent, but also the guilty from death.
Pope St Nicholas the Great.
Now, I suppose you could argue that Pope St. Nicholas was talking about eternal life, but you sure are't going to save a guy by killing him.
And of course, there's the customary ignorant citation to the Black Legends were demonstrably untrue, but which lots of people still believe.
The Church as been against killing of all types right from the onset. But people, deep in their hearts, like killing. Lots of people make compromises with their Faith to justify their own acts and desires. Today, for example, is the anniversary of the murder of Hymie Weiss, the gangster who sanctioned hits, but who also carried a rosary in his pocket. As noted, plenty of very conservative Catholics have tried to say "well, I know that the Popes have said no death penalty, but it's still okay . . "6
It isn't.
And the real surprise to those not paying attention will be how prolife Catholics really are. Indeed, I've seen surprising statements in support of the Pope from completely secular sources.
And there's utterly no support for making this execution a public spectacle. We really are in the last days of the Roman Empire if we've reached that state. "War, inflation, . . . don't worry, look at my shiny baubles, come watch somebody die." Panem et circenses.
A danger of politics is that, for people who have a religion, even slightly, that it becomes easy to confuse your politics or your personal beliefs with your religion. The various flavors of the American Civil Religion are packed with that. Divorce is okay, and even extramarital sex, unless it's homosexual. . . Trump must be a Godly man as he's doing what I want him to, even if he's a liar and a serial polygamist.
There was always going to be a day when the Evangelical far right discovered that the Catholic Church is the Universal Church, it's everywhere, and that local politics are secondary to it. We're not right, not left, we're Catholic, the original Christians.
Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’
But he will answer, "I don’t know you or where you come from."
Luke 13:22-30.
This warning applies to us as well. "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more." Luke 12:48. We really can't ignore the barbarism of the Trump administration any more. We've invaded a foreign nation without cause, we're killing Iranians in an undeclared war, and we're murdering people on the high seas. The Nuremberg Defense or just ignoring it all doesn't work.
Well, we were always going to be hated. Frankly, as Catholics, when everything is going well for us, it's not going well.
Footnotes:
1. Hitler was reportedly very charismatic, although watching him from the outside, it's hard to see why. To his followers, Trump is charismatic, while to most other people he certainly is not.
2. I'm not claiming that Peterson is influential in the administration, but rather he's in the Catholic end of the National Conservatives even though he is not Catholic. His wife is. Dreher was Catholic at one time and converted to Orthodoxy, where he remains with one foot in the Catholic door and nearly, for that matter, in the back pews. Dreher is partially responsible for the intellectual atmosphere that made Trump possible even though he now outright holds Trump in contempt.
3. Hegseth is some sort of Evangelical on the far right. Actual Crusaders would have regarded him as a weird heretic.
4. The fact that the killings occurred in 2009 is a really good argument against the death penalty in and of itself as it takes so long and is so expensive that the punishment aspect of it is nearly lost by the time the sentence is carried out.
5. St. Augustine famously developed the Just War Theory, which people sort of naively regard as a Catholic free pass to war. It isn't. The theory has always been fairly restrictive and even though Catholics have waged and been in a lot of wars, a lot of wars don't fit the category of being "just".
Even when they are, finding a war that's justly waged is difficult. World War Two probably stands out as a war which, for the Allies, was just, but the Allies clearly took deeply immoral actions in it, the nighttime bombing raids of the RAF, and the USAF nuclear bombings, being the two primary examples for the Western Allies.
Recently Pope Leo has further clarified the doctrine and while I do not think that his statements actually develop it in any fashion, they caused shock waves and they probably should as Catholics really need to consider if they can morally serve in the U.S. military at this point.
6. No Pope has declared the death penalty invalid ex cathedra, so a slim ability to argue it's still okay exists. But it's very slim.
