Of Popes and Trumpists

Some reflection over at Commonweal on living in an extraordinary moment when many Catholics seriously talk as though Trump is somehow God’s Anointed and the Holy Father is some sort of enemy of the Church.

The spectacle of Church Militant telling the faithful that Trump is “Constantine” and gushing on about its own anointing by God in electing this visible from space con man is an amazing enough.  But the further blindness that treats the Holy Father’s calls for compassion to the refugee and the least of these (and the Holy Father himself) with sheer contempt (Bannon calls him a “communist and disgraced former priest and Breitbart hack Thomas Williams urges the faithful to agree) keeps sending my mind back to St. Paul:

The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Th 2:9–12)

I have never in my life seen Christians so eagerly committed to calling truth falsehood, black white, and lies truth as I am seeing now.  It takes my breath away.  And all because of the lust for earthly power.

Speak God!