JANUARY 8, 2021
Hey, evangelical Christians: Take notice.
The editors of the National Catholic Reporter issued a blistering denunciation of the Capitol coup that named names of fellow Catholics who have spent the past several years spreading lies and sowing the seeds that led the MAGA cultists to storm the building.
“Catholic apologists for Trump have blood on their hands,” they write.
We’re talking to you CatholicVote.org, Attorney General William Barr and other Catholics in the Trump administration, Amy Coney Barrett, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, rogue prolifer Abby Johnson. Sadly, the list goes on.
And what about the everyday Catholics — some 50% of them — who voted for Trump this year, after four years of incompetence, racist dog whistles and assaults on democratic norms? Not all were at the “protest” in Washington, but many have supported organizations that fanned the flames. Too many Catholic voters were content to cozy up to Trump in exchange for tax breaks, or Supreme Court judges, or subsidies for Catholic schools.
Many of these folks have been shaped by right-wing Catholic media, whether rogue priests on Twitter, websites such as Church Militant or LifeSiteNews, or the Catholic media conglomerate the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). The latter, with its veneer of respectability, has misinformed millions of Catholics worldwide with its biased news and opinion shows. EWTN anchor Raymond Arroyo, who moonlights on Laura Ingraham’s show “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News, where he is freed from the EWTN’s alleged respectability, deserves singling out.
Daaaaaaaamn.
They didn’t just go after prominent Catholics. They went after Republicans in the pews. That’s how you do it. It’s not just for show either; they’re targeting the right people. Plenty of Catholics defended Trump long after there was no good reason to do so. They encouraged others to join them in the name of Christ. They didn’t mind if there was personal benefit involved.
I mean, we’re ultimately still talking about a publication whose very existence rests on defending a giant criminal enterprise… but still. When have you ever seen a major white evangelical publication just unleash on the religion’s worst people like this?