Liberal Catholic slanders and the election of 2024

The 2024 elections are now two weeks in the rear-view mirror, but the conversations (to use a polite word) over the what, why, and how of November 5, 2024, continue. While there is no shortage of opinions and analysis (or venting) in the secular press, I have not seen much about the interesting—again, a polite word—takes offered by some left-leaning Catholics. Since my preferred form of evil social media is Twi—er, X, that’s where I’ve mined for the nuggets that follow.

Let’s begin with a benign (or puzzling, as it may be) November 7th post by Rich Raho, who can fairly be described as a “social justice Catholic”:

Catholics, of course, did vote for Trump, to the tune of a 15-point margin: 56 to 41%, “a 10-point swing in favor of Trump from 2020 to 2024” (more on that in a moment). Author and professor Anthony Esolen, responding to Raho’s post, stated:

Author and reporter Brendan Hodge was also having none of it:

Ouch.

So, did the Catholic vote spring for Trump because of the economy and inflation? Or because of the Biden-Harris’s positions on abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, wokism, and related matters? Or because of illegal aliens, immigration, and concerns about security and safety? Or because of wars and foreign policy? Or because of worries over religious liberty?

The answer, I think, is … yes, absolutely. To all of the above. Mary Eberstadt, always an astute observer of culture and politics, argues that there were three main factors: “key Democratic party policies have been locked in combat with key Catholic moral teachings for a long time now…”, the “record of the Biden-Harris administration, for its part, pushed some voters rightward on its own…”, and “the addition to the ticket of Ohio senator JD Vance.” Kenneth Craycraft, writing here at CWR, pinpointed two (of many) factors: Harris’s “abortion absolutism” and the trans ideology of the Harris-Walz ticket.

However, many of our friendly left-leaning Catholics are having none of it. They, well-educated and cultured and erudite, are convinced otherwise. The clear reason that Catholics chose Trump, some of these regular and vocal X-users insisted, was misogyny:

And here is lefty Catholic journalist and pundit Robert Mickens, reposting a remark by a lesbian comedian:

(Dare I tell them that my wife and daughter both voted for Trump?) Mickens, who has been a Catholic reporter and editor for quite some time, clearly struggles to contain his frustration and anger over the election. His feed, for example, demonstrates a marked fear of and loathing for JD Vance. But, for our purposes here:

Ah! Not just misogyny, but also racism, stupidity, and nastiness motivated Catholics (and others) who voted for Trump! Mr. Lafferty, a Canadian Catholic who recently opined that masturbation is “a normal and healthy part of sexual maturation … that’s just the truth,” was clearly taken by Kamala Harris and is obviously annoyed that stupid Americans could not see how “competent, charismatic, blah, blah” she was. Let’s just say that his take on political candidates is about as good as his understanding of basic sexual morality.

As for Mickens, would it surprise you to learn that a decade ago “The Tablet, a British Catholic weekly, has suspended its Rome correspondent Robert Mickens after he publicly referred to Benedict XVI as ‘the Rat’ and anticipated his death”? Following that March 2024 incident, British journalist Damian Thompson wrote: “The truth is that Robert Mickens has never been able to hide his contempt for Benedict XVI. He should have been replaced by a more dispassionate correspondent years ago.” And to think this is a man who refers to Trump as “President-elect Hate Monger”.

David Gibson, a longtime lefty Catholic pundit and head of the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture, is equally chaffed and angered, as evidenced by his reposting of this liverish X post:

Ah, yes, fascism! (Because we are all 1930’s Italian now!) How original. Gibson seems to possess a certain repressed characteristic that continually comes to the fore, as in this recent sneer at Mike Johnson fo rmaking a 101 observation about reality:

Brilliant! Devastating! Articulate! And did I mention that Gibson is the author of an embarrassing, half-baked screed of a book attacking Pope Benedict XVI? Shocking, right?

Which brings us to British author Austen Ivereigh, who is known for his hagiograph—er, biographies of Pope Francis and involvement in piecing together various (dull and banal) synodal documents. The day following the election he offered this revealing remark:

In other words, if you voted for Trump (as I did) you are a racist, a fascist, and a hater who is opposed to the Catholic Faith and synodality.

It’s easy enough to be both annoyed and amused (as I am) by such infantile stupidity. But we shouldn’t let that distract anyone from just how obscene, insulting, and (again) revealing this is.

Ivereigh and Synodal Company like to act as if they are reading the signs of the times with the wisdom of wizened sages. However, I’m convinced that not only have they failed to read the signs of the times, they cannot even read the room. Nay, they aren’t even aware of where the room is or what the room is. This is due, in large part, to their reliance on the usual clueless outlets and their ignorance for what is happening “on the ground”. And that, I am also convinced, is because of their overt disdain for ordinary Catholics, their refusal to acknowledge the insanity of the past decade, and their thinly disguised dislike for much Catholic doctrine, morality, and tradition.

There is plenty to reasonably criticize and question about Trump, but resorting to whining cries of “Fascism! Racism! Misogyny!” is the epitome of toxic imbecility. To take just one example, Harris ran a campaign that was relentlessly pro-abortion, to the point that you had to wonder if she thought “democracy” could only be saved through the murder of unborn children. Most Americans, even if they hold somewhat incoherent views about abortion, are not fans of this sort of relentless, bloody nihilism. Meanwhile, Pope Francis “takes roses and chocolates to Italy’s abortion pioneer” and “praised her as an example of ‘freedom and resistance’.” Say what? And the papal hagiographer feels free to denigrate Americans as “individualists”?

The simple fact—and is a fact—is that Ivereigh and other synodal hacks are quite clueless about the Catholic Church in the U.S. The delicious irony is that everything they claim to be “synodal” is what the Church here, however imperfectly, has been doing for decades: listening, evangelizing. going to the fringes, helping the poor, creating vibrant apostolates, upholding the Faith, and so forth. But Ivereigh and Company are such myopic ideologues, they refuse to see; they certainly refuse to even consider what is really going on in the room.

Here are three things, in short order, that they do not get and apparently never will.

First, the 2024 election was not about Trump as much as it was about the past quarter of a century. This election was, in so many ways, a rejection of both Bush II (who fostered wars in the name of “democracy”) and Obama (who spurred on racial tensions in the name of healing racism). It was certainly a rejection of faux experts (here’s looking at you, Tony Fauci) and undoubtedly a rejection of the nastiness foisted on the citizenry via a vile mixture of ideology, sexual insanity, and anti-human perversity.

Secondly, most Americans have suffered financially in recent years under the inept leadership of Biden, and have chaffed under the technocratic tyranny foisted upon them by and through COVID measures, DEI mediocrity, woke nuttiness, trans-mutilation, homosophistry, manufactured racial tension, riots and destruction, cancel culture, endless insults from elitist phonies, and corruption that is moral, financial, and systemic. Middle America is done with it. (Not that I am an expert, but I live in rural Oregon, not Manhattan, D.C., or Rome, so…)

Finally, regarding the neo-synodality of the past few years: I’m convinced it is a failure and that it will soon be a distant memory. It is an idea not only unhinged from any real historical or theological premise (however desperately its proponents seek to manufacture connections and “processes”), but the strained and artificial attempts to make it everything have condemned it to be next to nothing.

Put another way, “fascism” in the U.S. is just about as real, imbedded, and powerful as is “synodality” in the Catholic Church. That is, not at all. And no amount of screeching, shouting, and shrill falsehoods are going to make it otherwise.