Far Right Catholics Join Evangelicals in Favoring Trump Over the Gospel Message

This blog frequently looks at (i) the still raging sex abuse scandal and moral bankruptcy in the Roman Catholic Church and (ii) the rejection of the Gospel message - and, I would add, any shred of morality - by evangelical Christians who continue to embrace Donald Trump.  While seemingly two separate issues, the two are intersecting as far right Catholic "news" outlets continue to increasingly join evangelicals in their preference for enraging in political fellatio or Trump and members of his ministry of propaganda and an outright rejection of Christ's Gospel message.   A piece in the National Catholic Reporter - which is not controlled by the Vatican - looks at the manner in which Eternal Word Television Network ("EWTN") is rapidly becoming the Fox News of religious broadcasting networks, including fawning interviews of Trump sycophants and outright liars like Sarah Huckabee Sanders.   Here are article highlights: 

On Memorial Day, viewers who tuned into EWTN's News Nightly for "news from a Catholic perspective" were treated to two previously recorded one-on-one interviews by anchor Lauren Ashburn.

In the first, a 10-minute sit-down with Mike Pence during his March visit to Ave Maria University in Florida, the vice president bashed "media elites and Hollywood liberals," called Democrats "the party of abortion on demand, even the party of infanticide" and described President Donald Trump as "the most pro-life president in American history." 

In the second interview, Ashburn served up softball questions for 11 minutes with former White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders. The EWTN anchor gushed about the latest unemployment numbers and asked why the mainstream media hasn't given more coverage to this accomplishment, held up a devotional book she learned Sanders reads daily before asking about religious liberty . . .

The segment was clear evidence of how a television outlet once devoted to expressions of Catholic piety and conservative catechesis and apologetics has grown into a truly influential media empire, well connected to Republican politicians and the Trump White House. EWTN, where the "Catholic perspective" is unabashedly partisan, has also become the media star in a web of connections including wealthy conservative Catholic donors and some of the most public anti-Pope Francis forces in the Catholic world. Those connections, traceable through a maze of non-profit organizations, helped fuel EWTN's development. It is a complex tale involving the matchup of a peculiar brand of U.S. style conservative Catholicism with conservative political ideology and economic theory.

Less than two weeks before the 2016 presidential election — while Trump was still embroiled in the "Access Hollywood" controversy in which he was caught on tape joking about sexually assaulting women — EWTN news director and anchor Raymond Arroyo did an "exclusive" sit-down with the candidate at Trump's Miami hotel.

Arroyo asked about the tapes and gave Trump two chances to apologize or take back the extremely lewd comments about women, but the candidate insisted it was "all made up" and "just locker room talk," adding that "You can't go back. You have to look forward." In the end, he blamed the "nasty primary" and "nasty campaign."

During the 15-minute interview, Trump refused to talk about his prayer life and rambled about the Affordable Care Act being a "disaster" and religious liberty being "in tremendous trouble," but he gave clear, succinct answers when it came to an issue that is a central concern to the EWTN audience.

"Yes, I am pro-life," Trump affirmed. "You said you are going to appoint judges who are pro-life," Arroyo said, again in statement form. "Right," said Trump.

Although the network had been friendly in the past to the Republican party because of shared positions on abortion, gay marriage and religious liberty issues, EWTN's political partisanship has become more visible since Trump's election, most notably on its two news shows, "News Nightly" and "The World Over."

Both shows regularly include as guests political conservatives discussing domestic and international policies.

Since 2017, Arroyo has been a regular contributor to Fox News and has substituted for Laura Ingraham on her commentary show on Fox News. Ingraham has stirred considerable controversy for defending a white nationalist, mocking a Parkland school shooting survivor and calling immigrant detention facilities "summer camps."

While secular alternatives to Fox News exist — from its counterpart on the left, MSNBC, to more centrist major network broadcasts — no alternatives are available to EWTN in the Catholic world. Once it overtook an early and flawed attempt by the U.S. bishops to form their own network, EWTN quickly became the only major Catholic voice on the television landscape in the United States — and that voice has gone global.

[T]he network founded in 1981 in the monastery garage of a then-unknown Poor Clare nun named Mother Angelica, arguably has more influence than the official church leaders, especially since their authority, already in decline, was further diminished by their mishandling of the clergy sex abuse crisis.

The bishops themselves are now apparently shaped by the EWTN empire. According to a recent study of the U.S. episcopate, the EWTN-owned National Catholic Register is the religious publication read by the most bishops, with 61 percent saying they read it.

But what the bishops — and others, Catholic and non-Catholic alike — are getting is a very particular slice of Catholicism from EWTN and its affiliate organizations, one not necessarily representative of the U.S. church as a whole. Polling and ongoing studies of the Catholic population in the United States consistently finds a far greater diversity of views and tolerance for questions than is the case on EWTN broadcasts. EWTN has become the only regularly televised image of Catholicism in America.

The media portions of the organization — from EWTN to the Register to the Catholic News Agency — are hardly objective, doing a type of "journalism" expected on Fox News but not necessarily from what started as a devotional network where the homebound could find televised Mass and other spiritual programming.

In addition to its slanted political coverage, EWTN and its affiliate journalistic enterprises also have connections to economic libertarian ideologues, including EWTN governors' board member and major donor Timothy Busch, who has said he supports anti-union "right to work" laws, opposes minimum wage increases and advocates for free market capitalism as a tool for raising people out of poverty.

This merging of ideological and political causes with theological ones is concerning. Said Massa [Jesuit Fr. Mark Massa, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College]: "When religion links itself to political causes, it always turns out badly for religion."

Knowingly or not, EWTN may accelerate the exodus of younger generations from Catholicism.  It certainly is increasing the perception that Catholicism is a morally bankrupt tradition that cares only about abortion and persecuting gays while covering up for sexual predators. 

The Failure of Christian Political Leadership

I will concede that there have been quite a few posts on religion and failures of religious leadership to even remotely reflect the gospel message of Christ.  As I have noted often, in the aggregate, I have come to view religion as among of the most toxic forces in society.  And then there is the hypocrisy, largely demonstrated by "religious conservatives" who seem most motivated by hatred of others and a desire to divide society into "us" versus "them" - those labeled as "other."  Be it Franklin Graham preach hate (and enriching himself) under the guise of serving "Jesus," the Catholic hierarchy turning a blind eye to - if not outright abetting - the sexual abuse of minors, or Paul Ryan pretending to care about the poor and unfortunate even as he seeks to gut the social safety net, far too many religious leaders either support the reprehensible or look the other way.  In yet another column in the Washington Post, Michael Gerson blasts the failure - I would call it moral bankruptcy - of leaders of Christian denominations, some of whom have thoroughly prostituted themselves to the amoral occupant of the White House.  Here are excerpts:

Three recent news items:
● At the Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said: “We see moral relativism becoming more and more pervasive in our culture. Identity politics and tribalism have grown on top of this.” Ryan went on to talk about Catholic social doctrine, with its emphasis on “solidarity” with the poor and weak, as “a perfect antidote to what ails our culture.”

● In the Oval Office, according to new reporting from The Post, President Trump boasted in February 2017 about how easy it is to appeal to audiences with an anti-immigrant message: “Acting as if he were at a rally, he recited a few made-up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, such as rape and murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country.” In The Post’s account, “[Stephen] Miller and [Jared] Kushner laughed.”

● At the U.S. border, the brutal separation of confused, weeping children from parents who cross illegally is being implemented. Unaccompanied minors, too, are suffering. According to the Arizona Republic, “The Office of Refugee Resettlement reported at the end of 2017 that of the 7,000-plus children placed with sponsored individuals, the agency did not know where 1,475 of them were.” Some could be lost to abuse or trafficking.

What do these incidents add up to? A political, moral and religious failure of massive, discrediting proportions.

It is often difficult to apply theological doctrines to public policy. But if there is one area where the teaching of the Christian faith is utterly clear, it is in the requirement to care for the vulnerable stranger. According to the Hebrew scriptures: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born.” In the New Testament, Jesus employs compassion for an abused, reviled foreigner (a Samaritan) as the test and definition of neighborly love.

The dehumanization of migrants and refugees has been one of the most consistent themes of [Trump] this president — including using the fact that some criminals enter the country illegally to fan a generalized hostility to Hispanic immigration. Can you imagine what would have happened if a White House staffer attending a policy meeting on family separation had said, “This is cruel. This is immoral. This is wrong”? They would have been quickly cleaning out their desk. The rejection of Christian teaching on this issue is pretty much a job requirement in the Trump administration.

And how did Ryan address the issue of Trump’s habit of dehumanization at the Catholic Prayer Breakfast? By avoidance, under a thick layer of hypocrisy. . . . . Ryan was effectively criticizing the whole theory of his speakership. . . . . Ryan can no longer speak of “moral relativism” as the defining threat of our time. . . .  In the name of survival, Ryan has ignored and enabled the transformation of the GOP into an anti-immigrant party. 

My tradition of evangelical Protestantism is, if anything, even worse. According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, white evangelical Protestants are the least likely group in America to affirm an American responsibility to accept refugees. Evangelicals insist on the centrality and inerrancy of scripture and condemn society for refusing to follow biblical norms — and yet, when it comes to verse after verse requiring care for the stranger, they don’t merely ignore this mandate; they oppose it.

This represents the failure of Christian political leadership — not only from the speaker but from most other elected religious conservatives, too. . . . it indicates the failure of the Christian church in the moral formation of its members, who remain largely untutored in the most important teachings of their own faith.

Ryan concluded his remarks by quoting Mother Teresa on God’s call to “be faithful,” not to “be successful.” But what if one is neither? Perhaps silence is the best option.