I hate to say it, and I wish it wasn’t true, but Christian religious leaders are destroying their own prophetic voice and moral teaching authority by teaching and preaching that the false gospel of Trump is actually the true Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
They are teaching a lie and they are preaching damnation instead of salvation. They have become stumbling blocks to their followers and are leading people away from the Way instead of to it.
The single best thing that could happen to them is if Trump loses the upcoming election and their followers do not have the reap the whirlwind of what will probably happen to this country, the world and to themselves as the many destructive things he’s done to this country pile on top the almost certainly worse destruction he will bring down on us if he is vindicated with an election win. If he wins, and the real suffering he can cause takes hold, the ultimate reaction may very well be a mass repudiation of Christ and His Gospel due to the fact that these false preachers have conflated Christian faith with following Trump.
I believe that the mass apostasy from Christianity in Europe has its foundations in the moment when the churches in Germany kowtowed to Hitler. The power of the Christian witness died in the gas chambers, but it was fatally stricken when Christian leaders backed Hitler and helped put him in power and keep him there. Hitler murdered 60,000 Catholic priests, Bonhoeffer was hung, Kolbe murdered, Corey ten Boom went to a concentration camp and her sister died in one. But this witness of faith, while it heartens many of us now, could not dispel the evil pall over Christianity that was cast by faithful pastors in large numbers who bowed down before the German Ceasar with a swastika.
It is the same today. Despite the fact that many clergy of various denominations are willing to stand against the evil that afflicts America, they are outshouted by the political preachers of the right. Then, as now, Christian people are sheep without shepherds, lambs led to the slaughter.
The current political situation did not, as it happened with Hitler, grow up in a single decade, led by one man. America’s right-wing is the result of many decades of organized effort by a small club of billionaires without conscience whose greed and indifference to the common good is only exceeded by their sense of entitlement.
They have used America’s tax laws — and used their puppet elected officials to rewrite those laws to their advantage — to buy influence in every area of our lives, including stacking the Supreme Court with their “pro business,” partisan toadies. Catholic ministries that we have loved and trusted for many years are now nothing but mouthpieces for this evil cabal.
The reason is simple: Money. They use our tax dollars, courtesy of a tax structure they used their bought and paid-for politicians to enact, to fund foundations and think tanks that in turn “grant” monies to various seemingly unrelated enterprises. That’s why, when you watch a formerly faithful Catholic television network, you see their news arm interviewing and supporting a right-wing nationalist who is organizing other right wingers to attack the pope. It’s why formerly thoughtful and faithful Catholic publications suddenly will not publish anything critical of Trump, why they attack the Holy Father and why they back right wing politicians.
Abortion is not the reason. Abortion is the excuse they give. Money is the reason. Money has bought their “ministry” and purchased their witness.
They no longer speak for Christ. They no longer follow Him.
They are following the money.
If Trump wins re-election, all the chickens from all four corners of the box of lies they’ve been telling will come home to roost. We are already facing one act of duplicity and lies right now.
We have five votes on the Supreme Court. Abortion is — or it certainly should be — no longer a federal issue. We have the pro-life court we’ve sacrificed America to get.
Or we should have.
But when I talk to leaders in the pro life movement, I find them decidedly unconcerned with the question of whether or not this court will overturn Roe. The Supreme Court has a case they’ve already heard that would give them the vehicle they need to do that. If they don’t overturn Roe now, we’ve been lied to.
But pro life leaders are unconcerned about that. They’re already talking about getting more “pro life” justices, and the need to elect more Republicans to see that happen.
The reason they’re doing that is because the inside story is that the Court won’t overturn Roe, because overturning Roe would take away the big club that religious leaders use to browbeat their followers to vote Republican.
Trump has made it clear that his strategy for re-election is to organize the churches and get them out to vote. His whore preachers have made it equally clear that they’re going to do every single thing they can to help him do it.
The whole strategy for winning this election, despite the fact that Trump is flat-out crazy and anybody can see it, is to yell Abortion! and tell Christians that they will be considered the Christian equivalent of infidels and satanists if they do not openly and violently support Trump. In simple, human terms, they have to support Trump, or sit by themselves at the church bean dinners.
I’m not supposed to ask this, I know. But I will anyway.
Where is Jesus Christ in all this?
I don’t see Him in it anywhere.
Where is the genuine concern for the sanctity of human life? It seems to me that we are being blackmailed into supporting policies that will lead to the death of countless numbers of people in order to claim — with no fact to support it — that we are doing it for the unborn.
Notice, I said, “with no fact to support it.” The reason why is obvious. If the people who are attempting to blackmail us into supporting Trump for the unborn were sincere, they would be using every pressure point they have to get the Supreme Court to overturn Roe right now.
Where are the resolutions from the “pro life” Republican legislatures memorializing the Court to overturn Roe? Where are the rallies calling for the Court to overturn Roe? Where are the sermons demanding that the five “pro life” justices do what we’ve been told they would do?
All I hear is crickets and business-as-usual lies saying that we have to re-elect Trump for the babies.
If these people cared about the babies, they’d be pushing the Court right now.
But they won’t do it.
I’m not guessing about this.
I know they won’t do it.
I’ve talked to pro life leaders and practically begged them to do something to push this court. All they do is ramble and talk about the need to elect more Republicans.
We’re not going to save the lives of the unborn by being fools for the Republican Party. We’re going to end up killing a lot of other people, instead. We might even end up killing ourselves.
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