Vile MAGA attacks on Robert Prevost started the moment he became Pope Leo XIV.
Using the language favoured by the MAGA demiurge, podcaster Joey Mannarino called him a “liberal piece of s**t”. Laura Loomer, the half-crazy conspiracy theorist, adopted her idol’s syntax by writing “MARXIST POPE!” in all-caps.
Quite. But then she also claimed that Springfield, Ohio, was inhabited by “20,000 cannibalistic Haitians”, and that the American ‘deep state’ had created a winter storm before the Iowa presidential caucuses to boost the chances of an anti-Trump Republican.
Like all cults, MAGA attracts a plethora of unbalanced individuals, and not only in the US. Their typical claim is that everything Trump says or does is right because Trump says or does it, which effectively deifies their idol. After all, only God is always right.
That’s a first step on the road to madness. Of course, equally insane is the opposite claim that diabolises Trump by insisting that everything he says or does is wrong just because it’s Trump who says or does it.
All ideological zealotry courts mental illness by disengaging reason and replacing it with febrile emotions. That’s why MAGA is as objectionable as anti-MAGA, and the statement “Trump was right about everything” is as inane as “Trump was wrong about everything” (even if the former marginally less so).
However, proceeding as I usually do from an aesthetic rather than party-political starting point, I find both sides not so much equally wrong as equally tasteless, which, to me, is the greater failing. And nowhere is it more manifest than when either side co-opts Jesus to its cause.
Jesus Christ isn’t for or against MAGA, and he is neither a Democrat nor a Republican. He is the second hypostasis of God, accepted as such by 2.4 billion people around the globe. And as Jesus himself stated in no uncertain terms, his kingdom is not of this world.
His is the kingdom in which all Christians are subjects and the Pope is the viceroy. This doesn’t mean that the two worlds don’t overlap at all. But when they do, and a Pope pronounces on quotidian affairs, he does so strictly as God’s vicar on earth, not as a mitre-wearing version of JD Vance.
For all I know, Pope Leo may well be a liberal or even a Marxist, or then again he may not. Let’s wait and see, shall we? Give us a little time to get to know His Holiness. So far all we know is that he is American, and a registered Republican to boot.
As Cardinal Prevost, he had an exemplary missionary record in Peru, living the life of his flock and sharing in their hardships and dangers. At the same time, I’m not aware of any flirtation with liberation theology, a popular aberration in those parts.
The pontiff has a good face, and he is also a tennis player which testifies to his character. A man who chases fuzzy yellow balls can’t be all bad, as far as I’m concerned, although I may be biased.
The vitriol he is drawing from MAGA zealots was caused by several instances when His Holiness dared to express mild criticism of Trump and his acolytes. To that lot no such criticism is ever mild or, God forbid, justified. One word against, and the hapless critic is Satan’s spawn, if not the devil himself.
Specifically, when still a cardinal, His Holiness committed the sacrilege of pointing out that JD Vance was speaking out of turn when trying to marry Catholic doctrine with Trump’s immigration policy. And he was absolutely right.
This is what JD, who calls himself a Catholic, said: “There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.”
I don’t think that “a lot of the far left” think in theological terms, and, come to think of it, neither should JD. At least not until he has read up on the subject. Even then, he should realise that dragging in Catholic doctrine to score party-political points is vulgarity at its most soaring.
He was referring to the doctrine of ordo amoris, order of love, first put forth by St Augustine and later expounded by St Thomas Aquinas. However, neither of them made an overt statement about Donald Trump’s policy regarding illegal aliens.
What Augustine meant by ordo amoris was that one should love God first, people second and material things a distant third. And Jesus specifically refused to categorise love depending on the object’s proximity to oneself.
On the contrary, when asked, “Who is my neighbour?”, he responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan, whom Trump and Vance would probably describe as an alien, and possibly an illegal one. Yet it was that foreigner who treated a wounded man with kindness, and so it was he who was the true neighbour.
In Luke 14:26 JC disavows JD explicitly, perhaps anticipating the onset of ignorant Christianist vulgarity 2,000 years later: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”
And also: “For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye?… And if ye salute your brethren only, when do ye more than others?”
Unlike Vance, Christ establishes a different pecking order of love: God first, then everyone else regardless of kinship, origin or their feelings about you. St Paul was also unequivocal on this subject: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” What, even illegal aliens?
While adopting the doctrine of ordo amoris, Aquinas emphasised that love must be first offered those who are in greater need of it, not necessarily to one’s own family:
“For it must be understood that, other things being equal, one ought to succour those rather who are most closely connected with us. And if of two, one be more closely connected, and the other in greater want, it is not possible to decide, by any general rule, which of them we ought to help rather than the other, since there are various degrees of want as well as of connection… .”
Let me stress that I’m not criticising Trump’s immigration policy. In fact, from the standpoint of this world’s politics, his administration is doing what needs to be done, if not always how it ought to be done. But the Pope looks at such matters from a different standpoint – and he recognises that it’s indeed different.
Vance doesn’t. He tried to blend the two standpoints into one and succeeded only in confirming his credentials as an ignorant vulgarian who doesn’t understand Catholic doctrine but tries to twist it for political gain. That makes him a bad Catholic too.
Well, at least he is unlikely to imitate his co-religionist Biden who throughout his career voted for every anti-Catholic legislation, specifically on abortion. If these chaps can’t do politics along Christian lines, they should just shut up about religion and attend to their day job as best they can.
The MAGA movement highlights the frailty of American Christianity; why would people with Christ in their hearts, have such a desperate desire for a quasi-messianic President? Could it be that they don’t really believe in God, but are unwilling to profess atheism, so turn to a larger than life figure who they are sure at least exists? The pretence of religious belief really is the worst thing about U.S. politics. The cloaking of a fundamental neurosis at the heart of that society.
I’d argue that, deep down, the average American is even more atheistic than the average Briton.
As for Christianity, I reckon that in its true form it is liberal, in that it posits an ethic that is impossible to live up to with the proviso that as long as you give it a go, you’re right with God.
The Pope seems to be setting a good example of “leaving Christ out of it”. I know what he thinks about a ceasefire in Gaza, the liberation of imprisoned journalists, and the socialistic teachings of Leo XIII, but if he’s had anything to say about Christ, such as the absolute necessity of worshipping Him in order to be saved, it hasn’t been reported.