He writes:<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a casual reader of yours and a fan of much of what you have said on many topics. With all due respect, however, I think you\u2019re finding it increasingly difficult to see the difference between a differing opinion from your own on public policy and heresy. Even when I agree with you on a particular topic (like your recent post where feeding kids at school should clearly trump a so-called \u201cprincipled\u201d stand on public spending), I find myself thinking about how similar you are to Michael Voris, whom you seem to despise, at least publicly. If there are two people that more perfectly exemplify the boy who cried heresy, I can\u2019t help but find myself hoping they never gain the audience that the two of you have.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
First things first, I hear you.\u00a0 What you are hearing (and it has been a focus of intense prayer and repeated confession by yours truly) is anger.\u00a0 It\u2019s a huge struggle for me (and for Voris by the way, who I do not despise and for whom I feel an increasing sense of empathy and pity since we both are faced, in different ways, with anguish).\u00a0 The issue for me is not, typically, that I think the people I argue with are heretics.\u00a0 It\u2019s something a bit different: I sense a deep and growing hostility to the Spirit from Trumpian Catholics and I don\u2019t know what to do about it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve talked about this in the past, but perhaps you\u2019ve missed it, so let me try to explain.\u00a0 The Church calls us to docility.\u00a0 In other words, our first response to the Church should not be \u201cProve it!\u201d or \u201cWhat\u2019s the least I have to do in order to be saved?\u201d but an eagerness to listen and obey.\u00a0 I used to believe that \u201cfaithful conservative Catholics\u201d were characterized by this and, since I wanted to be that way, I self-identified in that way.\u00a0 But the past 15 years (and especially the past four years and even more especially the past year) have been a traumatizing voyage of discovery that this is a lie for the bulk of so-called \u201cfaithful conservative\u201d Catholics.\u00a0 I watched for years as \u201cfaithful conservative Catholics\u201d labored to defy the Magisterium on such issues as Just War and, most especially, torture.\u00a0 And the curious strategy they used was a) to declare that \u201cprudential judgment\u201d meant you could ignore the plain teaching of the Church and b) you could always appeal to your Precious Feet Pin as a talisman granting you immunity for blowing off the Church\u2019s teaching when it got in the way of your politics.<\/p>\n
With the election of Pope Francis, this ramped up more and I began to notice something else.\u00a0 Again and again the claim was that the Five Non-Negotiables should occupy all our time and energy, not \u201csocial justice warrior\u201d stuff (meaning \u201call the rest of the Church\u2019s social doctrine\u201d).<\/p>\n
Fine, said I.\u00a0 Let\u2019s focus our energy on abortion and such like.\u00a0 But here\u2019s the thing: in practice, that\u2019s not where the time and energy go for the allegedly prolife Catholic conservative in most cases.\u00a0 Instead, that time and energy goes to fighting the Church<\/em> and, in particular, to fighting Francis, not to defending the unborn.\u00a0 Just as the bulk of the time and energy ten years ago went to defending a war that met no criteria of Just War and to sneering at two popes and the bishops of the world for their \u201civory tower\u201d thinking, so an enormous amount of energy now goes to defending a draft-dodging sex predator who mocks POWs, spits in the face of a Gold Star family and, most recently, openly confesses to obstructing justice.\u00a0 Why is defending any of that filth (or the literally hundreds of other lies<\/a> he has told) the #1 priority of \u201cprolife\u201d Catholics?\u00a0 Because the real #1 priority is not stopping abortion but defending every lie, cruelty and incompetence of the Party of Trump.\u00a0 Indeed, one of the most beloved strategies of the \u201cprolife\u201d Christian is to use the unborn as a human shield in defense of every culture of death priority the Right advocates<\/a>.<\/p>\n
And the result is already being felt.\u00a0 The Church is bleeding to death as Millennials\u2013who see what a whorehouse Trumpian Christians have made of the Faith\u2013are fleeing.\u00a0 It\u2019s why the ranks of \u201cNones\u201d are swelling.\u00a0 Trump took the Religious Right to the top of a high mountain and showed them all the kingdoms of the world, saying \u201cAll this will I give you if you bow down and worship me\u201d and they went for it in droves.\u00a0 Indeed, they are still over the moon<\/a> for him as his AG stuffs the world\u2019s largest gulag with more prisoners and profits from it personally.<\/a>\u00a0 The adore that the Party of Trump wants to kick 24 million people off health care.\u00a0 They think it is fantastic that the EPA is gutting environmental protections.\u00a0 Cruelty is a feature, not a bug for these people.\u00a0 And so is stupidity.\u00a0 Truth is not a matter of words corresponding to reality.\u00a0 Truth is simply and solely a matter of what approved Culture War Leaders saying it is.\u00a0 It\u2019s a triumph of nihilism. And yeah, it makes me mad as hell to watch it and watch supposed disciples of the Way, the Truth, and the Life leading the charge for lies while they spit in the face of the Holy Father and call him a Commie.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say I don\u2019t have a lot of respect for you as a writer. I do, and I think you\u2019re spot on in a lot of your criticisms. In my view however, admonishment and public excoriation are two different things and when I read your stuff it makes me put my defenses up even when I agree. I think it\u2019s the constant feeling of anger that I\u2019m sensing that turns me off, whether that\u2019s how you mean it to sound or not. With all of that said, I\u2019m just a young, pro-life, conservative, Catholic never-Trumper who is just trying to learn so I have a questions that I hope to get answered. I just want you to know that despite the above criticism, I know that I may be utterly wrong (or at least mildly ignorant) and I am truly interested in learning from your answers if you have time and are willing to give them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I appreciate that.\u00a0 I\u2019m a work in progress here and I\u2019m flying blind. Nothing prepared me for the reality we face: that all the stuff about the dictatorship of relativism and post-modernism that was discussed as *theory* by the Left 20 year ago is now being implemented in reality by the Right\u2013and especially the Christian Right\u2013in this hour.\u00a0 I know that anger has limited success in reaching people on the Right.\u00a0 But at the same time, I don\u2019t know how to speak the truth about the filthy lies Christians are telling in their defense of this liar without hurting feelings and I don\u2019t know that I think feeling don\u2019t deserve hurting.\u00a0 The Trumpian subculture in the Church is a massive stain on the her witness and the insult and affront she presents to the Least of These in the name of Jesus is a colossal scandal.\u00a0 The main reason I write is not to affirm butthurt narcissists in their okayness when they blithely send a Honduran mother and her five year old to their doom.\u00a0 It\u2019s to tell people rightly scandalized by the casual cruelty of Good White Christian Trump supporters that the Church that is actually in union with the Holy Father denounces and detests this evil done in the precious Name of Jesus and that not all Catholics consent to this second betrayal of Christ in his little ones.<\/p>\n
How would you describe your method of evangelization as far as your online presence goes and how would you describe your success in evangelization in general? I don\u2019t necessarily like the worlds \u201cmethod\u201d and \u201csuccess\u201d because they seem too formulaic but I think you\u2019ll understand the question regardless. I ask this because I\u2019m trying to shape my own way of going about the universal call to mission so I\u2019m curious as to what you think works and doesn\u2019t as you do it for a living.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n