Janet Baker at ‘Restore D.C. Catholicism’ blog has been working carefully to counter the onslaught of NeverTrump moralizing by faithful Catholic leaders. The latest loathsome example comes from Philadelphia Abp. Chaput. Baker’s message to leaders like these is clear: If you stand on your conscience, then why is your conscience wrong? A conscience is not a means to an end (unless of course you’re a Pope Francis catholic and you want to go to Communion too).
In her latest effort, Baker adds:
I think for some of the #nevertrump crowd, their animosity towards Trump is a very strange sort of pride.
This gets to the heart of the ‘conscience voter’ problem but it’s too generous. Pride isn’t the issue for some NeverTrumpers. It’s an issue with all of them – both their pride and their pliant capitulation to power. Trump has a knack for teasing out his opponents’ pride. His stumbling bluster and his insulting careless manner bring out their worst. But the problem of too-proud elites is not strange at all. It’s very common thing among leaders and paid ‘thinkers’ in our totalitarian world. That’s why we try to employ democracy: because the will of the people, on balance, has a salutary effect in face of an arrogant oligarchy.
Insofar as votes actually counted, democracy gave us Obama. But the GOP establishment tried, just as they did again this year, to undemocratically foist liberal and unpopular candidates in opposition. Now democracy has given conservatives Trump, but the NeverTrump geniuses inside and outside Catholic circles disagree with its choice. The people, they imply, are duped, foolish, unintelligent, ignorant, and depraved. If that’s true, why is it so easy for us to detect when we’re being sold out and patronized to protect someone’s lofty perch?
Our traitorous ‘conservative’ Catholic leaders are half right though. Many people are the way they describe, but those ugly characteristics trend among liberals: people with malformed consciences who are ignorant of the truth. The NeverTrump Catholics of the world are treating the actual faithful like we’re wicked and stupid. Why?
Archbishop Chaput:
Presidential campaigns typically hit full stride after Labor Day in an election year. But 2016 is a year in which two prominent Catholics [it’s a scandal, particularly for a bishop, to call Biden and Kaine Catholics, when they clearly neither hold nor keep the Faith] – a sitting vice president, and the next vice presidential nominee of his party — both seem to publicly ignore or invent the content of their Catholic faith as they go along. And meanwhile, both candidates for the nation’s top residence, the White House, have astonishing flaws. [Obama has at least as many flaws as Hillary. He’s just better at it.]
This is depressing and liberating at the same time. Depressing, because it’s proof of how polarized the nation has become. Liberating, because for the honest voter, it’s much easier this year to ignore the routine tribal loyalty chants of both the Democratic and Republican camps. [If I hear that word ‘tribal’ again! It doesn’t make you civilized to say it. It betrays your own disloyalty. ‘I’m too sophisticated and Catholic to lean one way or the other, you know.’] I’ve been a registered independent for a long time and never more happily so than in this election season. Both major candidates are – what’s the right word? so problematic – that neither is clearly better than the other.
This outrageous statement is typical. It’s nothing but assertions, too lofty to present an argument. This is the bishop who so many ‘conservative’ American Catholics love to praise. Did you see Abp. Chaput tell people Amoris Laetitia didn’t encourage sacrilegious Communion? The problem’s solved! What was all the fuss about Francis for, Our Very Holy Father? But here is a bishop whose ‘conscience’ is so refined he has never been a Republican, yet he’s telling the Church how to vote, or in this case, not vote.
It’s amazing how Abp. Chaput has been able to rise to such heights in the American Church and not promote Republicans, yes? I’m sure none of the other bishops would blindly advocate abstaining from supporting the GOP platform and self-righteously hand power to the oppressive pro-death Left. Who could imagine a bishop of the Church throwing his moral weight to the Democrat agenda that way? How is it ‘socially just’ to enable mass murder and an impoverished, terrorized country? The bishops must all be Republican voters, right?
The fact is there’s no longer any political resistance to the Left in the Catholic Church. What remained was kicked, kit and caboodle, out of the entire apparatus the moment Benedict read his odd notice and disappeared. So now we have to endure the brilliant conclusions of the better sort like Bishop Barron who, without even mentioning a name, enlightens us on how St. Thomas Aquinas would react to Trump. To state Trump’s name would be inappropriate and hurtful, I suppose.
We learn of course the Angelic Doctor employed a much higher method of discourse than the candidate to say the least. Barron closes his lesson thusly:
What this Thomistic method produces is, in its own way, a “safe space” for conversation, but it is a safe space for adults and not timorous children. It wouldn’t be a bad model for our present discussion of serious things.
Bishop Barron is only harmlessly instructing the faithful on political rhetoric, on a ‘catholic’ method of discourse that’s neither dangerous nor childish, and appropriate to serious things.
According to our betters like Bishops Chaput and Barron, and the Weigels, the FirstThings, and the NRO Catholic pundits of the world, there’s nothing ‘serious’ about Donald Trump – except that he’s the landslide GOP nominee for president. But somehow ever since Fidel Castro was lowered into the Chair of Peter true Catholic voters get handled like enemies of the Faith.
I still am shocked at the vile NRO article a few months ago by Robbie George et al.
Their working against Trump (hence providing support for Clinton) undermines everything they ever purported to be for.
I feel so betrayed, as though they were BSing all along with their “Pro Life” and “Pro Family” alleged stances, and simply used them to make a name for themselves.
Nothing seems reliable anymore–not the Church, not the people you once thought you knew and were genuine (i.e. Prof. George and others that authored the NRO plea that used discourse that was beneath them, and effectively bolstered the pro-Hillary faction of Catholic voters), and oh I could go on but I won’t! What a sad state of affairs we are in.
So when a holy Archbishop like Chaput tells you to pray over the election, you attack him? I find this attack malicious. The Archbishop is not telling anyone how to vote. If you are offended by this, then maybe you need to pray more. God Bless Chaput for his spiritual advice which is always very traditionally Catholic. I use to like Cannon 212 until these attacks on Chaput. You have lost me as a reader.
The problem is that the Archbishop should be telling people to seriously, diligently, ardently, consider the full implications of the principle of subsidiarity, which has been consistently defended by the Church.
It is clear that, in spite of purported imperfections in Trump, that he, alone, of the candidates advocates positions that best accord, given actual possibilities, with all that subsidiarity implies.
And only such a scenario will support not only the survival of the family, but also a better economic atmosphere not manipulated by plutocratic and oligarchic ideologues who serve only their own interests over against the common good.
For a purported ‘holy’ archbishop to glibly offer clichés and generalizations that will not truly incline and inform his faithful to act appropriately when the stakes are so high is nothing short of scandalous and cowardly.
Archbishop Chaput gives himself away once again. His blind affection for the likes of Bergoglio, so obvious when the Bishop of Rome visited Philly, told us clearly how loyal he really is to the true Faith and Revelation of Catholicism. He had a moment of conscience after the circus ended when he interpreted AL. He must get those moments once in a while. His dislike of Trump again sways no one who knows that battle lines are quite simple. Hillary Clinton is the front runner of the party of death and Donald Trump wants to build up the United States as opposed to going global. Hillary Clinton, however, has more stage presence than blunt Donald, but Chaput sees no candidate better than the other. And you wonder how he climbed so high in Church politics? Chaput’s duplicity is apparent to those who are watching him.
Yes, Barbara—to you and this post.
In the old days, candidates for Office worked hard to “earn” a voter’s vote. They listened. They represented what they heard.
These days, it is compelled by torches and pitchforks and a howling mob yelling insults. “Prideful Jerk! Give me your vote!”
This election year, I see no reason to support either Caesar. They are both bad. I will not sell my soul for the sake of this dying, sinful nation, so perfectly represented by Trump and Hillary.
When you only get two choices, how good can they be?
“I’ve been a registered independent for a long time and never more happily so than in this election season. ”
TRANSLATION: I’ve been a smug, self-satisfied, fence-sitter, that refuses to take a stand on difficult issues so that I can lord my superior superiority over normal people for a long time, and never more arrogantly than in this time of crisis.
Craig, how difficult is it for you to take a stand? Whoever the GOP places forward, find the R, vote yes.
In the face of this kind of vitriol, I think Independents really are the courageous ones.
Another possible interpretation, perhaps more charitable than yours:
TRANSLATION: Consider the issues of the day; Give every candidate a fair hearing; Apply what you hear through a moral Catholic theology filter; Pray; Discuss; Choose the best candidate in accord with your fully formed conscince.
In a funny way Trump is very humble. I hope he wins.