The U.S. government murdered citizens in cold blood on camera, and then told brazen lies plainly contradicting what was on camera. The U.S. Catholic conservative media was utterly silent about this. Instead they chastised cardinals for speaking out, only obliquely, against the nakedly imperialist actions toward Greenland and Venezuela (the latter including open piracy), and criticized bishops for opposing the inhumane anti-immigration actions of the U.S. government, which seeks to deprive people of Fourteenth Amendment rights and abolish birthright citizenship. Apparently, for them the magisterium of Catholic bishops is secondary compared to fealty to Donald Trump, a shameless nihilist who has made little effort to disguise his malignant narcissism. Much has been said about how Trumpism has destroyed the principles of the Republican Party, which is now a party of nihilism. What is more perplexing is the complicity of Catholic conservatives, who should have recourse to broader, more ancient teachings and sources of authority that contradict Trump, who in fact contradicts himself frequently. It is impossible to be a consistent defender of Trump, or to silently refuse to criticize him, without renouncing every intellectual and moral principle, for he will defy all of them at one point or another. How can a Catholic defend a nihilist?
As I’ve written elsewhere, the cultural Protestantism of the United States permeates even the Catholics who should know better. They adopt the pseudo-messianic doctrine of American exceptionalism, and the ignorant bigotries that are joined to it. Although they were once despised immigrants themselves, they now consider themselves “Americans” and reward newer immigrants with the same hostility. Mass deportation as a means of restoring cultural (read: racial) purity is a popular policy. In the most ancient of racist tropes, anti-immigrant sentiment is stirred up by pointing to a few criminals as representative of the group. In fact, undocumented immigrants commit crimes at much lower rates than native U.S. citizens, and their undocumented status is in most cases a civil offense. (Illegal entry is a criminal misdemeanor, but difficult to prosecute.) Local police departments prosecute violent crimes effectively, regardless of the nationality of the offender. The intentional lie that mass deportation is aimed at expunging criminals is promoted by the openly fascistic and racist Stephen Miller. If the conservative Catholic commentariat cannot find fault with a regime that is willfully cruel and builds concentration camps in the literal sense, their Catholic morality would seem to be of little practical use in the public sphere. They have less moral discernment than the average agnostic.
When it comes to foreign wars, Americans have historically had even less regard for the human rights of other nationalities, so here the silence of the conservative Catholics is more to be expected, though some may object on less noble grounds, namely not wanting to commit U.S. resources. In this case, the dictator posing as president has dispensed with even the pretext of seeking authorization from Congress or from any international body. There is at least a fig leaf of a casus belli, but it is so laughable – that Iran was going to attack the U.S. if it was attacked – as to be a mockery and utterly pretextual. This is, after all, a regime that routinely lies in court and declares fictitious emergencies to justify illegal tariffs and deportations to hellish prisons in third countries. The statement, “Donald Trump is a pathological liar,” diminishes both the writer and reader, that they should have to stoop to declaring something so copiously documented. What is relevant here is that truth should not be just one value among many for a conservative Catholic intellectual. It should be a supreme value, and one who disdains it so brazenly should elicit the deepest revulsion in a Catholic, even if his actions were not criminal.
The U.S. has practiced political assassination, in violation of its own law and of international law, for decades. Reagan attempted to kill Qaddafi, and instead killed his adopted daughter. George H.W. Bush tried to kill Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War. Obama authorized 43 targeted assassinations. Trump in his first term famously assassinated an Iranian general, and thenceforth was fearful that he would be assassinated in return, so he discouraged mention of it. Now we are not even pretending to need any reason besides, “he was a bad man,” which would have horrific implications. The simplistic idea that killing the bad guy will make everything well is not only false; it is a brazenly consequentialist rationale for murder. Catholic teaching about assassination is even stricter than the law, but one would never know that from the silence of the conservatives. Shall we go for some lower hanging fruit, such as the destruction of a girl’s school? Shall we go beyond the sanitized Western media, and describe the dismembered limbs and heads strewn all over that school? Shall we describe a similar scene at a plaza where the sickeningly clinical “double tap” strike was employed, to inflict maximum casualties when rescuers come out? Israel has been doing this for years. It would be useless to profess outrage now if one has condoned this silently for so long.
I will not attempt to give an exhaustive list of the moral and legal outrages conducted by this regime – I will not call it an administration. You can use AI for that. A mere mention of some of the more egregious acts should suffice for anyone who has not allowed their moral sense to be deadened. If any of this makes your blood stir, you should rejoice that you are still truly alive. At the same time, beware that your anger does not cause you to emulate the enemy.