Christine Flowers: Kamala’s useful idiots
I don’t much care when non-Catholics hurl insults at us. I mean, I do care, but it’s not all that significant because there is a long history of bigotry against the faith.
My dad went down South to Mississippi in 1967 to help register voters, and when the people found out that not only was he a Yankee trying to help “Negroes” but that he also had a St. Michael card in his wallet, they called him the kind of things that fall sweetly from mouths with three teeth in them.
My Italian grandparents were insulated from the bigotry since they lived in a lovely little immigrant enclave in West Philly where everyone was Catholic and where coordinates were measured by parish names, but when they ventured outside of the old neighborhood, they got shamed for their papist identities.
And it’s not just history. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The bigotry is still as strong and as fierce as it ever was. It just comes packaged more intelligently, and with a bit more caution. Kamala Harris has perfected the art of letting Catholics know she hates us, simply by ignoring our important events, pretending we don’t exist and in the occasional instance, humiliating our judicial nominees. Who can forget the time that she suggested that membership in the Knights of Columbus, one of the most honorable Catholic institutions devoted to charitable works was un-American? Never mind, that was a rhetorical question. There are a lot of people who have forgotten Kamala’s unfamiliarity with the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment.
But as I said before, I expect hostility and prejudice from people like the current Vice President. It oozes out of her and her supporters, and forms a malodorous puddle around them as they move through this campaign fraught with tension and animus.
The thing that bothers me much more than the attacks from non-Catholics is the phalanx of what I like to call “spiritual battered wives” who profess to be practicing Catholics but who excuse the bigotry in the name of something bigger: politics.
I don’t use the term “battered spouse” glibly. I have worked with many women who have been abused, and they usually exhibit a lingering affection for their abusers, unwilling to initially acknowledge that they have been victims. It is human nature. I think that the Catholics who have come after the church for allowing Donald Trump to speak at the Al Smith dinner, and who are slavish supporters of his opponent are equally human, and equally afflicted.
I was reading the Substack of one Charlie Sykes, a Catholic convert and a man who used to consider himself a conservative until he criticized Trump and found a whole new group of friends on the far left. Now he is a cosseted member of the MSNBC squad, a man whose only use is as a weapon against the people that network hates: pro life people of faith. It is sad that, in an attempt to obtain a greater audience, Sykes abandoned his values and principles, throwing it all over for an invite to the Harris White House and a few sound bites with Rachel Maddow.
Charlie spent some time attacking Timothy Cardinal Dolan who hosted Trump at the Al Smith dinner. According to the faux conservative, he should have used the opportunity to call Trump out for his “inhumanity,” writing that “Instead of telling Trump he was over the line, Dolan enabled him in his blasphemous effort to cast his campaign as a quasi-religious crusade and himself as a saintly martyr saved by God. The conservative cardinal didn’t care about soiling the legacy of the great Democratic patriot Al Smith.”
It’s not a coincidence that Sykes uses the phrase “conservative” as an insult.
And then you have the Twitter/X crowds of self-defined “devout Catholics” who vow that they won’t send another cent to Catholic charities (as if they ever did before) and who are disgusted that the “church” is being used to legitimize a “rapist.”
Let me interject here that I am not presuming to tell anyone that they need to vote a certain way. Religion and politics are separate things, and you can very easily envision voting for Harris by putting aside your spiritual concerns, if you think she is the lesser of two evils.
But you cannot pretend to be a devout member of your faith if you embrace someone who rejects its fundamental principles. That’s a whole other ballgame there.
These people are religious versions of the useful idiots that Stalin employed to maintain his position of power. These are the true believers in a cause, who are more wedded to a political victory than they are to the principles of their faith. If you are a Catholic who thinks that abortion is a choice, and who agrees with Kamala Harris on a host of moral issues, far be it from me to stop you from bloviating. If you think that her continued disrespect, and her eye rolling, and her attacks on our traditions and values is okay, have at it. First Amendment, and all.
Additionally, that most important of amendments prevents any of us from imposing our version of faith on the rest of the country. But that same amendment allows me to tell that breed of “Catholic” that they are exercising the wrong religion if they think that they and their souls are in good standing with my church. That goes for Charlie Sykes, and the anonymous folk in the social media sewer.
Christine Flowers is an attorney and lifelong Philadelphian. @flowerlady61
When ever I read one of Ms. Flowers columns about Catholic discrimination. I believe that when she writes them she is wearing a sackcloth, smeared with ashes, and engaging in self flagellation. Like any good Catholic in her view should, instead of helping others in need no matter what their faith, with empathy and understanding.
She often fails to remember that one of the reasons there is separation of Church and State in America is to avoid the religious wars and discrimination various sects of Christianity used to devastates and persecute Europe for over 1000 years. Nor does she ever give an example of law in America that discriminates against Catholics by name.
I do have one question for Ms. Flowers, who would Christ vote for? Does she truly believe that Christ would vote for a man who is an adulterer, a rapist, a liar, a thief, a con artist and a man who wants to be President so he can take vengeance on his “enemies”?
Judah,
What’s the difference between a hippo and a zippo? One is really heavy, and the other is a little lighter.
Ms. Flowers wrote 931 words and not one of them was the word “Christ.”
Christ comes from the Greek word Christos, which means “the anointed one” or “the chosen one”. It is a title used by most Christians to refer to Jesus, and it is a translation of the Hebrew word Mashiach, meaning “Messiah”
You asked a couple (not one) multi-part questions. Supposedly Jesus found humanity in many adulterers, liars, thieves, and even tax collectors…
Your last multi-part question focuses on intent. Do you really claim you know others’ intent? Are you God?
Most people are going to vote for the 4,000 people that will comprise the President’s Administration. And no matter the choice they will all be flawed. They will all spend too much money. But hopefully the Trump Administration avoids unnecessary wars, lets RFK, Jr. get rid of some poisonous dyes, and protects our children from the real monsters that roam among us.
If = you are support the death penalty which is murder and you support targeting children and sentencing them to death to avenge a political war then you are not a Catholic either. You don’t get to choose which mortal sin to excuse. Donald Trump is going to throw your clients over the wall. He’s not kidding around. He hates them. No practicing is as cruel to refugees as Trump and MAGA. Republican women who Trump’s terrorized in the past (Megyn Kelly) now bow to their monster so no surprise you find excuses to support him as well. I already voted. Whatever happens happens. But, don’t you dare complain when your clients are thrown out of this country. You voted for it. By the way, my husband has a big Trump sign out in front of the house, but neither I, nor any of our adults daughters voted for Trump.
Penn’s Woods Voter:
From 2010 to 2016, there were 2,362,966 adults apprehended illegally crossing the Southern border, and 492,970 were referred for prosecution. But that doesn’t tell us anything about how many children were separated from their parents under Obama.
The Democrats don’t tell the truth. California, Maryland, New Hampshire and New Jersey do not report data about abortions to the CDC. That’s weird.
Baltimore is in MD. The entire state of NJ is a metropolis.
Your devotion to abortion is killing millions of brown skinned babies. Women enjoy the privilege of voting because men in the United States operate differently than Shari’ah.
You should look up Charles Martel and teach your daughters about him. Can’t wait until men decide they have had enough of women’s suffrage.
“But that doesn’t tell us anything about how many children were separated from their parents under Obama.”
There is a reason you can’t find numbers on family separation under Obama, he didn’t have one. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ap-fact-check-obama-didnt-have-a-family-separation-policy