I Haven’t Been Called a Fake Catholic Lately

I haven’t been called a baby killer or a fake Catholic in the past few weeks.

It’s the kind of lull you don’t notice until it’s pointed out. My friend, the Catholic author Mark Shea, mentioned it a bit ago, and that’s when I realized it was true. Maybe we’ve both just blocked the right people. But I feel the wool has been pulled off quite a few sets of eyes.

I have summarized my falling out with the pro-life movement more times than I can count. I’m one of many who were vocal in denouncing Frank Pavone, and lots of people helped me track down all that I know about the dead baby. I’m one of many who denounced Abby Johnson for her repeated racists tirades. I was disillusioned about all kinds of people I used to admire and trust. I have accepted that the pro-life movement only exists to elect conservative politicians.

No, that’s not true either. Nobody in this mess is a conservative. Conservatism is supposed to be about fiscal responsibility, family values, revering the constitution, loving America. I’m not saying that that’s what conservatism IS, I’m saying that’s the line they use. The people I know who are actually still conservative are speaking out against the current Republican party. The movement exists to elect… whatever these politicians are.

They don’t care about babies, and I don’t think they ever did.  They just used babies as an excuse.

And as for “fake Catholic,” well, I’m extremely weary of what I’ve been through in the Catholic Church. I’m trying to hold onto my faith as best I can. But I just want to remind people of the rules again.

The Catholic Church does NOT have a political party. It doesn’t. Whatever you’re typing in the comment box right now, you’re wrong. You can be Catholic and vote Republican, or Democrat, or Whig, or the Green Party or the American Solidarity Party or whatever Andrew Yang’s up to now. You can write in Bernie Sanders. None of those are sins, depending on your motivation. Catholics are not allowed to directly cooperate with intrinsic evils, but we’re allowed to make the best choices we know how even if evil could happen as a side effect.

All political parties support at least something a Catholic isn’t allowed to cooperate with. You’re still allowed to vote for a member of that party IN SPITE OF the evil they support, if you think they’d be the best people to govern the country overall. You’re just not allowed to vote for them BECAUSE of the evil they support. The Pope has declared that the death penalty is inadmissible. If a politician supports the death penalty, and you vote for him in spite of his stance because he has some good ideas as well, you don’t sin. But you do sin if you vote for him because you’re excited at the thought of people being killed. The same is true for other intrinsic evils: mass deportation, abortion, weapons of mass destruction, you name it. That’s how it works. As long as you’re voting for the good you think they can do instead of for an evil they support, you haven’t sinned.

That doesn’t mean that if we disagree strongly on a political issue, one of us isn’t wrong. It doesn’t mean that all sides are the same and you can just make a choice without any real thought. If I think that trickle-down economics doesn’t work and you think that it really does, one of us is correct and the other is mistaken. But neither of us is in sin.

Now, with all of that said: Americans went to the polls and made our choice. It wasn’t a landslide victory for the Republican party, but they got control of all three branches of our government for the time being.  A lot of faithful Catholics voted for Kamala Harris or a third party, and a lot of faithful Catholics voted for Trump. More people voted against Trump than voted for him, but when the dust settled, he won.

In the seventy days or so that he’s been in office, Trump has gutted the maternal and child health bureau. He’s gutted Health and Human Services.  He’s frozen food funding grants. And he just put the entire world’s economy into a tailspin with tariffs that nobody, not even his lackeys, have been able to defend, just because he wanted to. We’re on the verge of another Great Depression.

What do you think all of that is going to do to the abortion rates in America– and all over the world?

Is a woman in a predicament more likely to feel safe to go through with her pregnancy and bring that child into the world now, than she was last October? Abortion rates were already rising, and they have been since the first Trump term. Do you think that will get better now?

If there’s anybody left who actually does care about babies– and I do, in spite of everything: I still am Catholic and I still care about babies– what do you think that the MAGA movement has done for the safety of babies?

What are we going to do now?

I still think that if all of us who actually care about babies, and every other sort of human being, and all of God’s creation, have an opportunity to bring something good out of this mess. But we’re running out of time.

Let’s all work to make this a better world.