Trump’s unholy alliance with Catholicism in full view at Al Smith dinner…
So, Catholics invited the original sinner to their party this week, and the church heard his confession: “Bless me, Father… “ Donald’s next words were unnecessarily, sinfully, mean.
“I used to think the Democrats were crazy for saying men have periods. But then I met Tim Walz,” said Trump.
Our first confessions were filled with made-up sins or vague sins of omission- lying to Mom… forgetting to feed the dog. Trump has mastered the art of the sin. He is capable of offending someone before breakfast while brushing his teeth.
The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation annual fundraising dinner has been a stopover for presidential candidates since 1960. This year Donald Trump was in attendance while Kamala Harris chose to campaign in battleground states. The remarks at the affair are intended to bite but only gently. The thin-skinned with fragile egos are protected species at events like this- the humor dipped in political affability. With his opponent on the stump, Trump was left alone with an audience who attended the affair to help raise millions of dollars for New York’s most vulnerable women and children- topics the misanthropic ex-president could have spoken to with personal conviction(s).
The charity affair is named for Al Smith, the first Catholic to represent a major party as its presidential candidate. Smith, born in 1873, grew up impoverished in New York. He dropped out of his parochial elementary school when his father, an Italian immigrant, died when He was 13. Smith never attended high school but found his way in and around the Tammany Hall political machine because of his oratorical skills. Elected governor of New York four times, his popularity led to a presidential run against Herbert Hoover which ended in a landslide loss partly attributed to anti-Catholic sentiment in the nation. Smith lost the 1932 nomination for president to his successor Franklin Roosevelt who had succeeded him as governor.
In a reversal of fortunes, the national hierarchy of the church has entered into a transactional arrangement with Donald Trump’s MAGA movement that is centered on abortion. White Catholic voters have followed their leaders in supporting Trump in both of his campaigns for president and this year PEW Research cites polling that shows that Trump has a vast lead among white Catholics with 61% stating that if voting were held today they would support Trump- 38% intend to vote for Harris. That gap is only exceeded by white evangelical support (81% to 16% for Harris). When all Catholics are counted the gap narrows to an even split. The American church has fallen on hard times, mostly of their own making. The priestly sexual abuse scandals have rocked the church. Catholic churches abandoned many urban areas where its immigrant parishes once flourished. Now, Sunday mass attendance is falling. The bishops have followed their wealthier flock to the suburbs. The church has decided to mix politics and religion into a toxic brew that has divided its followers and added to its theological entanglement for what they were once admonished to “render unto Caesar …”.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, expressed disappointment that Kamala Harris chose to campaign in Wisconsin rather than attend the dinner in person (she sent a video). Meanwhile, he embraced Trump whose adult behaviors would appear to be antithetical to any religion’s core values- and certainly the ones drilled into us by our parish nuns and priests. Before he threatened to dissolve the Constitution, Trump had eviscerated the commandments- the simple moral guideposts that along with the Golden Rule have endured. When asked for the greatest commandment, Christ responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” then He added, “‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
In their moralistic intransigence, the church in America has forgotten Jesus’s great commandment. The basic tenets found in most religions are as pertinent today as they were in biblical times. Donald Trump has lived a public life paying little heed to societal rules, often skirting them with impunity. Consider him a “prodigal son” who has continued his “ prodigaling “ with no intentions of returning to the Father. The fatted calf is safe.
At the dinner, Dolan was seated next to the Philanderer-in-Chief and led off the speaking stating while motioning toward the exPOTUS “We need you more than ever,” then referring to Trump as his “neighbor” who was “working so hard to see that we can safely return to church as safely possible.” Under different circumstances, the phony praise could be dismissed as a courtesy if not for the consequences of Dolan’s and many American Catholic bishops’ transactional Faustian bargain with the MAGA GOP:
In April, Bishop Robert Gruss of the Diocese of Saginaw, Michigan called President Biden a “stupid” Catholic “who is not living the life Jesus wants for him” during a talk on — of all things — Christian forgiveness. And Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, baselessly accused President Joe Biden of “making a mockery of our Catholic faith” in May.
The Roman Catholic bishops of America are in lockstep with the GOP’s antediluvian policies toward women, children, and well, anyone they disagree with. The fallout has been pronounced. No matter if their victims are Catholic or not, women, LGBTQ+, and the poor are victims of their policies. In addition, they must be aware that their strong support of the MAGA agenda aligns them with the other strong supporters including Christian Nationalists, neo-Nazis, and white nationalists:
Dolan and his church have won the right to deny loving same-sex couples the chance to adopt children; the ability to flout employment laws and fire ministers and teachers at will for any reason; the freedom to deny women, both Catholic and non-Catholic, access to contraception; the privilege of blocking millions of dollars of critical funding to international aid organizations if they even dare to advise poor and victimized women about the option of abortion; the chance to obstruct women from their constitutional right to reproductive choice.
- National Catholic Reporter, “On a call with President Trump, Cardinal Dolan reveals his true colors,” by Jamie Manson
Dolan, and the Catholic hierarchy in America, have chosen to enter the profane world of politics to impose their faith’s sacred dictum on abortion and the human rights of their adherents. The choice to be judgmental clouds the hypocrisy evident in the quotes above. A faith that proclaims to hate the sin while loving the sinner is rightfully guided by nontemporal concerns. Conversely, they have forgotten that while here on earth moral law is a personal commitment while civil law and justice are societal. The church’s stance argues the sin they hate so much is far outpaced by their more sinful hypocrisies- that their devotion to Donald Trump ranks right up there with idol worship. Matthew writes in the New Testament:
Matthew 7:1–7
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
And so the Al Smith dinner was treated to the vapid j ibes of an unrepentant apostate :
“We have someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have the mental faculties of a child. It’s a person that has nothing going, no intelligence whatsoever. But enough about Kamala Harris.”
AND
“Tradition holds that I’m supposed to tell a few self-deprecating jokes this evening. So here it goes. Nope. I’ve got nothing. There’s nothing to say.”
AND
“The only piece of advice I would have for her [Harris] in the event that she wins is not to let her husband Doug anywhere near the nannies.”
AND
Referring to the group White Dudes for Harris, Trump joked: “There’s a group, White Dudes for Harris. But I’m not worried about it because their wives and their wives’ lovers are all voting for me.”
For those not in attendance- and who will vote for the Democratic ticket in November- the confessional perp line starts to the left. It would appear that Archbishop Dolan has already absolved his irredeemable guest. For my part, I’ll choose to pass.
In a church turned unashamedly partisan, who will forgive the confessor for his false piety, for his smug reverence for his most vulgar penitent?
“You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me.” (John 8:15–16)
- Jesus Christ
If the Father sent us His only Son, who the hell sent us Trump?
Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com.
