Flashback into the trauma of 2016. I’m still in university, still very Catholic, still working on exploring who I am and what I believe and what I know to be true. A lot of universities in the U.S. have what are called “Newman Centers” — and these are basically on-campus Catholic ministries for students. And I had a lot of friends in our Newman Center. I was so involved that for a time I was the VP of our little gang. And I had a lot of fun. (I did make lifelong friends but, but in the grand scheme of things those were not friends I made over a shared religion… most of them were friends that were friends of the Newman Center.) And there was love, and there was heartbreak. People paired up, had kids, all the things you do when hanging out in an echo chamber.
But still, I really wanted to maintain a separation between religion and politics. Sure, there are certain things that you hold true as a Catholic that are inherently politics. Catholics believe in the sanctity of life from conception through death, and so naturally you’re against the idea of abortion. (I’ve personally come a long way since then—as I’ve certainly noted in person if not here, all religion comes with an element of brainwashing and it takes time and dedication to recognize it and break free from it.)
Things started to change in 2016 though, with Trumpian politics ramping up. I started noticing propaganda littering the welcome tables in our foyer (we had a dedicated house in which we all hung out), and I would frequently remove such things. And people started becoming more brash about their distaste for immigrants, their (ironic) prejudice against higher education, their ambivalence toward maintaining a green Earth. I had known before then that Catholics have a variety of often conflicting sociopolitical views. I knew people that, as an autistic child, I questioned for behing vehemently against abortion while also being extraordinarily in favor of the death penalty. But I should have seen the nature of many of the folks I was hanging out with much earlier than I did. We had literally had conversations where certain members attempted to justify the Crusades, for example.
I eventually left of course. My interests in quantum phenomena and the reexamination of my own axioms made it impossible to justify any sort of supernatural goings-on, nixxing the idea of God entirely. But I often wonder about those individuals. Back in college those very traditional Catholics would even then show disdain for Pope Francis, as comparatively liberal as he was. Near the tail end it was obvious to me that Catholocism had become a mask to justify their conservative thoughts and behaviors and I wanted no further part in it.
These days those same folks ramble on about stupid talking points, being Q Anon conspiracy theorists and the like. They were some of the first people to yell wildly about Epstein until it became clear that Trump was involved, and then they dropped off. But something interesting has happened. The new Pope Leo XIV, the first pope from the United States and a native from Chicago, has recently criticized the administration and was essentially met with threats.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
“Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
Many unverified claims have indicated that the Pentagon has threatened the Vatican, essentially saying that the U.S. military can do “whatever it wants” and one official was reported as referencing the Avignon Papacy, a time in history wherein popes were forced to live in Avignon (now in France) after the assassination of Pope Boniface VIII. Now it should be said that Trump’s administration has denied many, if not all, these claims. Candidly, the credence I’ve assigned to the likelihood of truth emerging from said administration is absurdly low.
Be that as it may, now that reports have come out of the threats against the Vatican and the pope directly, it seems quite interesting to me that my former peers are now strangely silent. Not a word from those individuals, or the priests, or the bishops that I still have on Facebook. Only the continued brown-nosing that I’ve come to find and standard.
Catholocism has its major problems, some of which I’ve noted in this blog from a logical perspective, rather than a perspective rooted in pathos. But I detest liars and I’m more glad than ever that I’m not associated with them. I’m quite confident that Trump could rape their own mothers and they’d be asked by their children what they were wearing—in their eyes, he can do no wrong. And as much as I dislike religion in general, I loathe individuals that use their religions as a mask for being truly awful people.
I was going to post something similar to my own Facebook page but alas, I am a coward. It’s why I hide behind this keyboard on a quasi-anonymous blog (though I have no doubts that tracing would be fairly trivial, in which case, fight me). But it does make me wonder when cowardice becomes no longer tenable, when thoughts must turn to words, must turn to action. It’s something I fear that I’ll continue to ponder for some time to come.