Love is what binds participants in the Blessed Trinity together<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This is a basic article of the faith.\u00a0 He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love, says St. John. Conversely, Christianism, which is a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Love is what binds participants in the Blessed Trinity together\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is a basic article of the faith.\u00a0 He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love, says St. John. Conversely, Christianism, which is a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Catholic and Enjoying It!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-10-19T07:43:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-10-09T15:25:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Shea\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mark Shea\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html\",\"name\":\"Love is what binds participants in the Blessed Trinity together\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2018-10-19T07:43:52+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-10-09T15:25:49+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5\"},\"description\":\"This is a basic article of the faith.\u00a0 He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love, says St. John. Conversely, Christianism, which is a\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Love is what binds participants in the Blessed Trinity together\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/\",\"name\":\"Catholic and Enjoying It!\",\"description\":\"Mark Shea's Blog: So That No Thought of Mine, No Matter How Stupid, Should Ever Go Unpublished Again!\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5\",\"name\":\"Mark Shea\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f287911f45adc932ad24ddbae3597ed5?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f287911f45adc932ad24ddbae3597ed5?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Mark Shea\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/author\/markshea\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Love is what binds participants in the Blessed Trinity together","description":"This is a basic article of the faith.\u00a0 He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love, says St. John. Conversely, Christianism, which is a","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Love is what binds participants in the Blessed Trinity together","og_description":"This is a basic article of the faith.\u00a0 He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love, says St. John. Conversely, Christianism, which is a","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html","og_site_name":"Catholic and Enjoying It!","article_published_time":"2018-10-19T07:43:52+00:00","article_modified_time":"2018-10-09T15:25:49+00:00","author":"Mark Shea","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Mark Shea","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html","name":"Love is what binds participants in the Blessed Trinity together","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website"},"datePublished":"2018-10-19T07:43:52+00:00","dateModified":"2018-10-09T15:25:49+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5"},"description":"This is a basic article of the faith.\u00a0 He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love, says St. John. Conversely, Christianism, which is a","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/10\/love-is-what-binds-participants-in-the-blessed-trinity-together.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Love is what binds participants in the Blessed Trinity together"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/","name":"Catholic and Enjoying It!","description":"Mark Shea's Blog: So That No Thought of Mine, No Matter How Stupid, Should Ever Go Unpublished Again!","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5","name":"Mark Shea","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f287911f45adc932ad24ddbae3597ed5?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f287911f45adc932ad24ddbae3597ed5?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Mark Shea"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/author\/markshea"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

The Trump era is such a whirlwind of cruelty that it can be hard to keep track. This week alone, the news broke that the Trump administration was\u00a0 seeking to ethnically cleanse<\/a>\u00a0more than 193,000 American children of immigrants whose temporary protected status had been revoked by the administration, that the Department of Homeland Security had lied about creating a database of children that\u00a0 would make it possible to unite them<\/a>\u00a0with the families the Trump administration had arbitrarily destroyed, that the White House was\u00a0 considering a blanket ban<\/a>\u00a0on visas for Chinese students, and that it would\u00a0 deny visas to the same-sex partners<\/a>\u00a0of foreign officials. At a rally in Mississippi, a\u00a0 crowd of Trump supporters cheered<\/a>\u00a0as the president mocked Christine Blasey Ford, the psychology professor who has said that Brett Kavanaugh, whom Trump has nominated to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, attempted to rape her when she was a teenager. \u201cLock her up!\u201d they shouted.Ford testified to the Senate, utilizing her professional expertise to describe the encounter, that one of the parts of the incident she remembered most was Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge laughing at her as Kavanaugh fumbled at her clothing. \u201cIndelible in the hippocampus is the laughter,\u201d Ford said, referring to the part of the brain that processes emotion and memory, \u201cthe uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.\u201d And then at Tuesday\u2019s rally, the president made his supporters laugh at her.Even those who believe that Ford fabricated her account, or was mistaken in its details, can see that the president\u2019s mocking of her testimony renders all sexual-assault survivors collateral damage. Anyone afraid of coming forward, afraid that she would not be believed, can now look to the president to see her fears realized. Once malice is embraced as a virtue, it is impossible to contain.\n

The cruelty of the Trump administration\u2019s policies, and the ritual rhetorical flaying of his targets before his supporters, are intimately connected. As Lili Loofbourow\u00a0 wrote of the Kavanaugh incident in\u00a0Slate<\/em><\/a>, adolescent male cruelty toward women is a bonding mechanism, a vehicle for intimacy through contempt. The white men in the lynching photos are smiling not merely because of what they have done, but because they have done it together.<\/p>\n

We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border-patrol agents\u00a0cracking up at the crying immigrant children<\/a>separated from their families, and the Trump adviser who\u00a0 delighted white supremacists<\/a>\u00a0when he\u00a0 mocked a child with Down syndrome<\/a>\u00a0who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when the president\u00a0 encouraged them to abuse<\/a>\u00a0suspects, and the Fox News hosts\u00a0 mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre<\/a>\u00a0(and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault\u00a0 protesting to Senator Jeff Flake<\/a>, the women who said the\u00a0 president had sexually assaulted them<\/a>, and the teen\u00a0 survivors of the Parkland school shooting<\/a>. There was the president\u00a0 mocking Puerto Rican accents<\/a>\u00a0shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria,\u00a0 the black athletes protesting<\/a>\u00a0unjustified killings by the police,\u00a0 the women of the #MeToo<\/a>\u00a0movement who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sadistic cruelty is the defining mark of the Christianist adorer of Trump.\u00a0 They don\u2019t tolerate his cruelty as a regrettable bug in attaining their noble goals.\u00a0 They love it.\u00a0 They savor it. It has the tang of the transgressive about it.\u00a0 Its laughter at the suffering of the weak is the laughter of hell.\u00a0 Real humor punches up.\u00a0 Cult 45\u2019s humor always always always punches down.<\/p>\n

There is only one thing to say to the Christianist connoisseur of cruelty: Repent. Or face the everlasting fires of hell. There is mercy for you if you will have it in Christ. But if you continue to pervert the faith into a study in cruelty to the weak, you will surely perish.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"