Donald Trump and the Catholic Vote

If you're connected to the Catholic political social media pages you've no doubt noticed the veritable blitz being waged by Catholic Vote and other organizations against Trump's Catholic voting block of supporters. Most notably is the openletter written by Robert P George and George Weigel calling for Catholics to not support Trump in the race for the White House. To quote the letter:

“Donald Trump is manifestly unfit to be president of the United States. His campaign has already driven our politics down to new levels of vulgarity. His appeals to racial and ethnic fears and prejudice are offensive to any genuinely Catholic sensibility. He promised to order U.S. military personnel to torture terrorist suspects and to kill terrorists’ families — actions condemned by the Church and policies that would bring shame upon our country. And there is nothing in his campaign or his previous record that gives us grounds for confidence that he genuinely shares our commitments to the right to life, to religious freedom and the rights of conscience, to rebuilding the marriage culture, or to subsidiarity and the principle of limited constitutional government.”

Those are heavy charges. And, to be truthful, they are true. Trump has said all of these things. He has indeed said that he wants to ban Muslims, that illegal immigrants are rapists, and that terrorists' families are fair game in foreign policy. These stances are troubling for anyone with a conscience. So why are Catholics and other Christians supporting Trump?

Donald Trump gets a lot of support from those who reject the culture of political correctness that is being forcefully promoted by the Obama Administration, Hollywood, and the Democratic candidates for president. Trump speaks in a way that resonates with everyday working people. His language, while brash, is seductive in that it perfectly channels the anger that right-thinking Americans have towards the Democratic cultural Marxist candidates and those who want to engage in censorship. It appears that Trump speaks his mind and says what he means. Clearly he doesn't care about hurting anyone's feelings, and that's a good thing given the madness of the Obama administration and the continuation that Clinton or Sanders administration would represent.

Yet Christians shouldn't be supporting someone like Trump because Trump ostracizes other human beings. He dehumanizes human beings for his own political gain. Sanders does this as well but he does it along class lines, which is why he gets away with doing so. Trump unabashedly does this along racial and ethnic lines. If you're reading this and are Catholic consult your Catechism and you'll understand why this is a problem.

So what are Christians of conscience supposed to do given that both Clinton and Sanders support late term abortion, censorship and the increasingly crazy domination by Leftists of the mechanisms of cultural education (Hollywood, schools, etc)? If the elections continue as they appear they will then Trump is highly likely to be the GOP nominee, and Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. For now, Weigel and George call for Catholics to not support Trump in the primaries, which seems simple enough but it doesn't address the underlying issue: why are Catholics identifying with Trump at all?

One commentor on the posting of the article on National Review's site offers that American Catholics have failed to distinguish support for freedom from support for capitalism and the cult of money that is connected to capitalism. To quote the commentor: “By not distancing ourselves from Capitalism, we have not effectively distanced ourselves from Marxism. We are Clintonians in spite of ourselves: It’s the economy, stupid. And then we try to dress this in Catholic garb, forgetting that we have exchanged Catholicism for a neo-Pelagianism which leads finally to the worst sort of spiritual frustration, as the present Pope has affirmed with great spiritual insight.” Capitalism relies on consumerism, and consumerism relies on the lust for material goods that the Church has condemned since at least Rerum Novarum was published in 1891. This is the stuff of Americanism, which is a condemned heresy, yet I suspect that it is the driving force for Trump's support among American Catholics.

I realize that I haven't addressed why Catholics support Trump. Aside from Trump's stated opposition to the social ills that the Democrats gleefully embrace, one does wonder why Catholics support Trump instead of Marco Rubio (a Catholic who opposes these same ills) or Cruz (who also opposes those social ills). I suspect support for Trump among Catholics is because Trump is a bully. American Catholics are tired of being bullied by Leftists who tell us that if we oppose gay marriage then our business and property-interests are forfeit, that if we oppose abortion then we want to oppress and enslave women, and that if we support freedom of religion in real practice then we are authoritarians. In short, American Catholics have been bullied and Donald Trump represents someone who will bully those who bully us back. It's the only reason I can understand and it is very unsettling. This is the motivation of fascist revolutionaries supporting the ugliest of dictators around the world, and Trump certainly has some things in common with them though I'd not call Trump a fascist.

For the record I don't have a candidate in the American election. I'm, for the moment, a registered Independent and live in a closed-primary state. I have some time to re-register as a Republican if I want to vote in my state's primary against Trump. Sanders concerns me as much as Trump does so I may re-register as a Democrat to vote against him. I do believe that Trump has a better chance of becoming president than the statisticians are suggesting given Mrs. Clinton's corruption charges and her track record of dishonesty. It is a sad state of affairs when a reality show demagogue has a real chance of becoming the President of the United States. It certainly doesn't say positive things about the health of the American republic.