Which Blasphemy is Most Shocking?

 

 

There has been a lot of reporting and social media furor this week about the dubious religious messaging being sent by the Trump administration. Most of that has focused on Trump’s posting of an AI-generated picture of himself as a Jesus-equivalent figure, miraculously healing the sick with glowing light beaming from his hands, while fighter jets and a strangely demonic figure hover above him.

Personally, I find the much less-noticed claims being made by Trump’s vice president JD Vance more shocking. Oh, I know, Vance’s statements are just in the form of words, and fairly dry ones at that. People find that much more boring than the zingy offering of blasphemous AI slop image of a deified Trump. But here’s the thing: only the most ignorant and self-deluding think Trump is a devout Christian. The man has never read the Bible, and can’t quote or even name a single passage off the top of his head. He has a long and very public history of enjoying the seven deadly sins, and has said he never prays for forgiveness. Yes, his Christian MAGA followers believe he was chosen by God to save the US, as proven by his “miraculously” being spared from assassination. But the understanding of the large majority of conservative Christian leaders who work with him is that he is a flawed tool being used by God to benefit them—not that he is a devout Christian himself.

When Trump branded Pope Leo “WEAK on crime” this week because the Pope has called on his bishops to stand up strongly for the rights of all immigrants, a lot of Americans of all stripes voiced disapproval because Trump was speaking rudely to the Pope. But am I surprised that Trump is unaware of how common are the demands in both Torah and New Testament that noncitizens and migrants be welcomed and given the same treatment as citizens? No, no I am not.

JD Vance, however, is another story. Raised in a vague evangelicalism and having spent some time as an atheist, he chose to convert to Catholicism in 2019. That process involves having to study the Bible and Catholic theology seriously, demonstrate knowledge of it, and affirm submission to God and the Church. And the man is as slippery as a greased banana skin, but he did go to an ivy league law school . He knows how to study! I am sure he knows the difference between Catholic doctrine and the inchoate, individualistic, choose-your-own-adventure evangelical Christianity of the MAGA masses and his own upbringing. There are a lot of people in the MAGA base who describe themselves as Christians, but never go to church, have never read the Bible, and basically emulate Trump. To them, calling themselves Christian makes no demands of them; it just provides a way of claiming that their Team Red political beliefs are moral ones while those of Team Blue are immoral, and of framing themselves as God’s chosen people.

To be a Catholic, however, involves duties and required beliefs. You must believe that a cup of wine becomes the Blood of Christ during the Catholic mass. You must uphold Catholic doctrines and can’t pick and choose between them: you can’t say that abortion is a sin but the death penalty is good or vice versa; you have to view both as sin. And oh yes, there’s that business of papal infallibility when speaking of matters of Catholic belief.

What did JD Vance say about Pope Leo this week? He presented the Pope as incorrectly calling for peace due to being seemingly unaware of the thousand-year existence of the Catholic doctrine of “just wars” (with “just” used there in the sense of “justice,” as something fair). He went on to basically accuse the Pope of creating fake news, saying, “If you’re going to opine on matters of theology, you’ve got to be careful. You’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth.”

Trump viewing the Pope as basically a rival for the Trumpish fantasy of being seen as King of the World and Prince of Peace is no surprise. The Pope gets much better outfits and what amount to a crown and throne! But JD Vance is an actual Catholic (if one for less than 7 full years). Catholicism is not a religion in which everyone is free to interpret the Bible however they wish and believe whatever they want. It is a religion with specific doctrines to which one must submit, and a hierarchy one is supposed to not just obey, but revere. One is expected to be joyfully obedient to the will of God, and to believe that the will of God is explained to a person through a chain of authorities. A Catholic layperson obeys their priest; the priest obeys a bishop; a bishop obeys the Pope.

JD Vance is speaking as if he, a recent convert, has equal authority to the Pope in determining Catholic doctrine. This is a big no-no! That is to say, it is a sin. I am not a Catholic myself, but I worry on Vance’s behalf. In the world of MAGA politics, Vance can get away with forswearing all his prior espoused beliefs (that Trump is like America’s Hitler; that the US must stay out of wars in the Middle East) and say otherwise to advance his political career. But presuming he was earnest in his conversion to Catholicism, he must believe that choosing to forswear its doctrines in order to advance his political career imperils his soul. It’s essentially a deal with the devil, and believing that would be a heavy burden to bear.

Of course, it’s possible that Vance doesn’t worry about disagreeing with the Pope over Catholic doctrine because his brand of “post-liberal Catholicism” is extreme enough to be heretical. There are reactionary Catholic groups in the US who claim that all popes since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s are heretical anti-popes. (The Second Council updated Catholic doctrine, for example by allowing church services in languages other than Latin.) But Vance has never claimed to be a member of such an extreme fringe. When he met the prior Pope Francis on the last day of his life, and Francis schooled Vance--telling Vance that his telling the media that Catholic doctrine said that you must reserve your resources for your family before serving your nation, and for your nation before serving the world's poor, was incorrect and morally wrong--Vance seemed to react with as much humility as a MAGA politician ever shows. He certainly didn’t say, “No, it is you who are wrong, you anti-pope, and my understanding of Catholicism is the correct one!”

In any case, we seem left with three choices. Perhaps JD Vance’s conversion to Catholicism was insincere, and he’s still secretly an evangelical MAGA Protestant who feels no compunction about following Catholic doctrine and obediently submitting to the Pope. Or perhaps it was sincere, but Vance is willing to sell his soul for a chance to be president one day. Or finally, perhaps Vance is a member of a heretic Catholic sect that believes Pope Leo is an anti-pope and emulates MAGA.

Those are all much more wild than Trump portraying himself as the messiah through AI slop to me. . .