Why Roman Catholics Must Vote for Vice President Kamala Harris !

1. Trump is not (so-called) “pro-life.”  

He adopted a “pro-life” orientation to get GOP votes. Unfortunately lots of Christians fell for it. He is not “pro-life.” In the run-up to the 2024 election, he changed his tune on abortion again, because he thought it necessary to beat Harris.   

2. Trump is not a person of faith.

Despite his recent penchant for sharing of holy Roman Catholic memes on “X”, Trump is not faithful to worship and belongs to no church. Recently he admitted that he never asks God for forgiveness because he doesn’t do anything “wrong.” 

Trump’s recent commissioning of Chinese book manufacturers to produce translations of The Bible is a profit-bearing scheme. Trump is financed and supported by fundamentalist Evangelicals and Catholics aligned with Opus Dei, a Roman Catholic cult that came to prominence under fascist dictator and Hitler ally Francisco Franco, who conducted a savage authoritarian rule in Spain for 34 years.

Many extremist Catholics and Christians backing Trump who know he suffers from dementia are looking past the 78 year-old’s cognitive deterioration 78 year-old ex-president towards his more presidential-looking running ex-president running mate, J.D. Vance, who converted to Catholicism five tears ago under Opus Dei-aligned sponsorship and “formation.” Catholics who are not interested in supporting Project 2025 and voters interested in the health of Catholic Social Teaching must vote against Trump in the interest of preserving the spirit of the Vatican II Church must refuse to vote for Trump and Vance.

 3) Trump has contempt for immigrants, the vulnerable, and the Catholic “preferential option for the poor.”

The Gospels are clear about Jesus’s teaching on how to respond to the stranger, and even the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has, in the past, advocated for the “preferential option for the poor.”  Even the current extremely conservative USCCB understands the enormous role immigrants have played in building the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.

Trump, whom the USCCB tacitly helped to elect in 2016 regularly characterizes migrants seeking asylum as “vermin” and “animals.”

Donald Trump doesn’t read, and therefore does not know what is in Project 2025, but his some of his former staffers helped to shape the 900-page document, which calls for the dramatic slashing food and housing supports for poor, disabled and elderly people; most of the United States’ food insecure people being minor children.

Shutting down the Department of Education is also on the 2025 agenda as well. In New York City, where I live, 50 % are poor and 10% of public-school children have no homes. For them, school is the closest thing they have to home. Savaging public education violates the Catholic “preferential option” for the poor.

Parents who choose Catholic schools for their children also have the moral obligation to support public education, but for those who do not feel thus obliged, they should know that dashing public education to smithereens will have dramatic negative impact on Catholic school students’ learning. Project 2025 would likely slash the services Catholic school students with learning disabilities receive from the government.

While education alone is obviously not a sufficient remedy for poverty, people who fail to attain literacy often wind up in homeless, jobless and trapped in the criminal justice system. It is more humane and more cost-effective to protect and improve public education than it is to pay the high ethical and financial costs of incarcerating people.

See Matthew 5:3-1

4) Climate Change. Listen to the Pope on this.

Project 2025 includes plans to close the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies that protect the American populace before and after climate disasters. Scientists agree that the United States must move immediately to reduce emissions and implement policies to address global warning.

Climate Change is an area in which Pope Francis has spoken clearly. Though not a scientist, per se, the pontiff solid capability to understand science reporting. Taught science and worked in a lab. In his encyclicals Laudato Si’ (2015) and Laudate Deum (2023) Pope Francis wrote unequivocally and with great passion about the threat of climate disaster and Catholics’ obligation to serve as conscientious stewards of the Earth.

Trump is a climate change denier. He refers to “the Green New Deal” as “the Green New Scam”  He pulled out of the Paris Accord. Not all Trump backers are climate crisis deniers. Many of the billionaires among them expect to buy their safety if matters get dire. These are the same usurers and predators who pollute, and hope to continue to pollute our water, land, and air without government-imposed restraints. This explains the Project 2025 plan to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies that address climate disasters.

5) Christian Integralists and dominionists hope to do away with the separation of church and state.

Project 2025 reflects a coming together of conservative Evangelical and ultra-conservative Catholic extremists. Both groups hope that the election of Trump will pave the way for aligning  United States (civil, secular) law with Christian Law.

By now most Roman Catholic news consumers know that conservative Catholic extremists have infiltrated all three branches of the United States government. The overturning of Roe v. Wade was one result of this incursion.

Almost half of Catholics in 2020 and 20216 did not vote for Trump. But many Catholics underwrote his campaign unwittingly. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is currently led by two extremely conservative prelates have enormous political influence. Jose Gomez, the archbishop of Los Angeles, educated in the Opus Dei seminary in Rome, began a three-year term in 2019.  Many Catholics have funded the MAGA effort indirectly for nearly a decade, unknowingly through weekly parish donations to so-called “Right to Life” groups, Knights of Columbus, Eucharistic Revival events, and Catholic colleges and institutes.  

Many Roman Catholic are unaware that dioceses and archdioceses receive a percentage of all parish donations. “Earmarking” donations is a myth — money is fungible— and “ordinary” bishops, the ones who run dioceses, spend donations without oversight. Voting for Harris and Walz offers Catholics the opportunity to undo some of the damage Catholics did by supporting Trump in previous elections.

6. A symbolic vote is both a peril and a wasted vote in this presidential election.

Either Vice Harris or Trump will win. Those who fail to vote for Harris will be casting a vote for Trump.

A a large-margin win for Vice President Harris is important because it will add a degree of difficulty to those who are already contriving to challenge the results of the election if the Vice President wins.

Catholics who vote for anyone but Harris are effectively voting for Trump.

They are also voting for a third world war. If Trump wins, he will offer Netanyahu a blank check and all the armaments he needs to expand the Palestinian Genocide. As well Trump with authorize Putin to claim whatever is left of Ukraine.

Vice President Harris has served her city, state, and nation all of her life. She will not slash services for the poor and vulnerable. She will not trade Americans’ freedom for favors or alliances with authoritarian dictators. She will not hand Putin and Netanyahu blank checks for their genocidal efforts. She will uphold both religious freedom and the Establishment clause.

Finally, for those Catholics who are content to continue to view the male supremacist structure of the institutional Roman Catholic and the magisterium’s steadfast commitment to the enshrining and promulgation of bigotry, it may be pleasing to know, that when — To say “when,” in this, is to love in hope — Harris wins, little Catholic girls all over the United States who are learning, as they prepare for first Holy Communion in May, that women are unfit for priesthood, will see a woman become the President of the United States, and thus experience a measure of the grace, in secular life, that is denied them in their faith tradition.

Catholic voters have an opportunity to show Americans that they are for justice, not against it. I hope we can rise to this occasion.  

MMS

October 28, 2024