Dominionism + Integralism = Christian Nationalism
United States Roman Catholics and Evangelical Christians enjoy a "Come to Jesus" moment, a triumph for Christofascism.
The spawn of the union of dominionism + integralism has been gestating in plain sight most prominently under the guise of the so-called “Pro-life” movement.
Behind the scenes, the marriage between U.S. Roman Catholics and Protestants has often been stormy. Protestants and Catholics have always had beef. Born again Christians think Roman Catholics aren’t “saved.” Even Roman Catholic clerics are often not loathe to call the Communion of other Christian liturgies juice and crackers. Some evangelical Protestants reject the binding sanctity of infant baptism, and believe Roman Catholics engage in idolatry, worshipping demi-gods and statues. But politically conservative Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestants in the United States have come together around Christian Nationalism. Project 2025 is one of their projects. The sponsors of Project 2025 is Kevin Roberts, an allegedly Opus Dei Catholic.
One can take a look at Project 2025 ‘s website’s board of advisors to see that there’s now enormous political overlap between Evangelical Christian Nationalists and Roman Catholic (Christian) Nationalists. The offspring of dominionism and integralism has been gestating in plain sight most prominently under the guise of the so-called “Pro-life” movement.
As I argued in the third part of “Pro-life Has Always Been their Misnomer”, the genuine focus of the anti-abortion crusade is NOT and never has been on “saving” the “babies.” The chief goal of the so-called “pro-life” movement has never been to reduce the number of abortions. Sex education coupled with making contraception widely available is what reduces the need for abortion. If forced birthers wanted to reduce the incidence of abortion, they would be engaging in very different forms of activism.
The chief goal of the forced-birth campaign is to use abortion as a vehicle into which can be bundled all matters relating to complementarity.
Under complementarity, women do women’s work,men do men’s work, the only licit sex is heterosexual marital sex, and one retains the gender written on their birth certificates.
In Roman Catholic culture and practice in the United States over the course of the past 60 years, idealized versions of motherhood, fallacious science, puerile Madonna-whore complexes, misreadings of scripture (specifically the Didache), male supremacist worldviews, and fetishization of hyper-fecundity have served as a carrier for other ultra-conservative and misogynistic values.
Many Catholics who claim to care about Catholic Social Teaching cast sheeple votes for Trump in 2016, for example, because the largely neofascist USCCB campaign to sell the idea that faithful Catholics must support forced birth, in large part, succeeded. These Catholics wound up buying the whole neofascist package — cutting of aid to poor people, the war on migrants, the slashing of public education, book-banning, the police state — The abortion issue proved to be a kind of Trojan horse in which were smuggled a host of issues any true Christ-follower should vote against. Following a long (modern!) tradition of siding with fascists, the US bishops and rolled this big dangerous horse into the Catholic voter’s consciousness.
Project 2025 to Ensure a Smooth Transfer to a Conservative President Trump
The aim of the Heritage foundation’s Project 2025 is to set up a broad nation-wide coalition of professionals who will
rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration…
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project is being organized by The Heritage Foundation and builds off Heritage’s longstanding “Mandate for Leadership,” which has been highly influential for presidential administrations since the Reagan era. Most recently, the Trump administration relied heavily on Heritage’s “Mandate” for policy guidance, embracing nearly two-thirds of Heritage’s proposals within just one year in office.
Advisory Board organizations include the following: ALEC States, the American Family Project , the Claremont Institute, Hillsdale College, Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, Moms4Liberty, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Tea Party Patriots and Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America et al.
The New Evangelization Eucharistic Revival Shakedown Circus (as I call it), Hocus Pocus, “You can only get it from us” project.
The Eucharistic Revival, which I have, from the start, called “the Eucharistic Revival Shakedown Circus” is a neofascist, Christofascist, fundraiser sham. I have written this elsewhere but it is important enough to write it here again.
This project was designed in part as a reaction to the well-publicized news (via polls) that most Roman Catholics polled claimed not to believe in what Orthodox and Roman Catholics call “the real presence” in the Eucharist. What that means, is that a majority of Roman Catholics were found to believe what Protestants and non-Roman Catholics believe — that the consecrated bread and wine are metaphors for Christ — not Christ’s essence.
This distinction keeps lots of Roman Catholics in the pews. During the Reformations in Europe this became a crucial distinction. Despite that in most parts of Europe it was sometimes only the priest celebrating Mass who took Communion, the Eucharist became a negotiating tool. The Counter-reformation exploited this “You can only get it from us” idea. The “hocus pocus” consecration powers of the priest were elevated in the various discourses. Today, many people who otherwise might, decline to depart from the Roman Catholic Church because Eucharist is the center of Roman Catholic liturgy and they imagine that to leave is to swap out Christ’s flesh for a cracker and better politics. The Eucharistic Revival Shakedown Circus is a facet of the larger New Evangelization project which is essentially integralist and neofascist.
I was early to this awareness because my former bishop, an Opus Dei adherent was a “Duc in altum” (“put out into the deep”) enthusiast. “New Evangelization” aims, ultimately, to use media, social media to bring secular law in line with Catholic law, to use media to identify and convert the Catholic-curious, and to impress upon Catholics in the pews the need to raise Catholic families and increase the fold. When I read or hear “New Evangelization,” in Roman Catholic context, I recognize that I am in most instances encountering an Opus Dei member, adherent or ally.
The Eucharistic Revival Shakedown Circus principals are for the most part silently hoping for, stumping for, planing to vote for Trump. They are likely to deny this. Do not believe this. It is a Christofascist project.
The Society of of American Civic Renewal (SACR)
According to a piece in today’s Talking Points Memo by Josh Kovensky, unearthed some new information about the men-only secret society, the Society of of American Civic Renewal (SACR), which does not reveal information about its boards or membership, the Claremont Institute and graduates of Harvard Law School:
It is open to new recruits, provided you meet a few criteria: you are male, a ‘trinitarian’ Christian, heterosexual, an ‘un-hyphenated American,’ and can answer questions about Trump, the Republican Party, and Christian Nationalism in the right way. One chapter leader wrote to a prospective member that the group aimed to ‘secure a future for Christian families.’
It’s an uncanny mimicry of the clandestine engine that, in the right-wing’s furthest imaginings, has driven recent social changes and left them feeling isolated and under siege: a shadowy network occupying the commanding heights of business, politics, and culture, open only to a select, elite few, committed to reshaping the United States to align it with the group’s radical values.
Harvard Law and Harvard in general are notoriously hospitable to Opus Dei and integralist Catholicism. ‘Un-hyphenated American’ discourage, though not exclusively, African-Americans. think once the roster is out, we will see that this is a largely integralist, Catholic Nationalist society open to ecumenical engagement with its Christo-fascist counterparts in the dominionist evangelical Christian Nationalist camp for reasons of
Read Kovensky’s whole piece. It is terrifying and great.
The D.C. Catholic Prayer Breakfast
Brian Fraga lays it all out for for anyone who doubts that the mainstream leadership of the Roman Catholic institutional Catholic Church is aligned with Project 2025 in his February 9th piece on the Catholic Prayer Breakfast in the National Catholic Reporter. In his lede, Fraga points to Bishop William Byrne of Springfield, Massachusetts, who opens his talk with gratuitous maligning of Dr. Anthony Fauci. William Byrne doesn’t like Fauci because Fauci doesn’t attend Mass.
William Byrne has given speeches at D.C.’s famous Opus Dei outpost, the Catholic Information Center. He currently the Chair of Communications for the USCCB.
Byrne said: "If you're wondering why we need a Eucharistic Revival, Dr. Fauci explains it perfectly."
Byrne said that Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, "succinctly articulates the voice of the majority of Americans who identify as Catholic but do not recognize the beauty and the power of their baptism."
(from Fraga’s February 9th report, National Catholic Reporter)
Who attended the D.C. Catholic Prayer Breakfast? The usual Christofascist integralist suspects: Leonard Leo, representatives from the Trump-stumping Catholic Vote, the Opus Dei permeated global television network EWTN (Eternal World Television Network).
Who sponsored the D.C. Catholic Prayer Breakfast? Knights of Columbus, Catholic Vote and “the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025.”
Will the USCCB announce their support for Project 2025? No. They will not. They don’t have to. They’re already bedfellows.
The good place to start, for people who care to take the time to understand the growing connection between the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is with their Voting Guide.
Will the USCCB announce their support for Project 2025? They don’t have to. They’re already bedfellows.
The Claremont Institute is in bed with the secret society SACR, which is probaby predominantly Catholic, AND Project 2025. The Heritage Foundation, which sponsors Project 2025, sponsored the February 8th D.C Prayer Breakfast. The prayer breakfast featured a keynote in which an (allegedly) Opus Dei bishop targeted fellow Roman Catholic Anthony Fauci for not going to Mass.
ALEC States which organizes to promote unrestrained greed, a few forced-birth women’s groups, an organization that promotes misogyny and complementarity, a union-busting “right to work” org, an anti-teachers’ union org, gun violence advocates Moms 4 Liberty, a fundamentalist Christian college — these are all the Project 2025 advisors.
If you are a Catholic who thinks the bishop of your Roman Catholic diocese won’t provide Project 2025 with silent support financial and otherwise, you probably are wrong. But there is no way to tell, because they lie about this.
MMS
March 9, 2024
NYC