Tag Archive for: Roman Catholic Church

Trump Kicks Off Coalition to Shore Up Catholic Support

Former President Donald Trump is launching a new initiative to bolster his support among American Catholics. On Wednesday, Trump’s campaign launched the “Catholics for Trump” coalition.

“The Catholics for Trump Coalition is committed to safeguarding the vital principles of religious liberty and the sanctity of life that President Donald J. Trump has ardently championed,” the coalition’s mission statement says. “Under President Trump’s leadership, our nation witnessed unprecedented support for religious freedoms, with significant victories both domestically and globally. President Trump restored protections for faith-based organizations and bolstered the rights of religious institutions against governmental overreach.”

“Unlike the Harris-Biden administration, which has systematically undermined these fundamental rights, President Trump has stood unwaveringly in defense of traditional values and the sanctity of human life,” the mission statement continues. “Catholics for Trump stands with President Trump to continue building a nation where the rights of every individual to practice their faith freely is protected. Together, we have the opportunity to secure a future that honors the principles of freedom, faith, and life that are integral to our American heritage.”

Trump has been encouraging Catholics to back his reelection, noting the anti-Catholic policies of his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D). Trump recently posted on social media, “Catholics are literally being persecuted by this Wack Job, just ask the Knights of Columbus. They say that she is the most Anti-Catholic person ever to run for high office in the U.S.” He called on “ALL CATHOLICS TO VOTE AGAINST KAMALA…”

While polling over the years has shown Trump — and the Republican Party more generally — gaining support from American Catholics, especially as the Democratic Party embraces increasingly extreme positions on abortion, a more recent EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research survey found that Trump is trailing Harris among Catholic voters, though neither candidate has the support of a clear majority. Abortion has proven to be a dividing issue, with Trump’s declaration that the federal government has no role in abortion-related legislation finding little favor among Catholic voters. Like most Americans, Catholics rank inflation and the economy, as well as border security and illegal immigration, the most pressing issues ahead of November’s election.

The Catholic Church is strictly and directly opposed to abortion, unequivocally declaring the practice a grave moral evil. Trump’s positions on abortion, voiced over the course of this year, along with the positions of his running mate, Catholic convert and Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), have caused some concern among pro-life Americans, including Catholics. For example, Trump recently suggested that he would support an amendment to Florida’s state constitution allowing abortion, which is currently prohibited past the sixth week of pregnancy in the Sunshine State. In response to backlash from pro-lifers, including Catholic pro-life activist Lila Rose, Trump reversed his position and announced that he would be voting against the amendment. The former president’s abortion-related comments have thus been a source of consternation for Catholic voters.

In comments to The Washington Stand, Catholic League President Bill Donohue explained, “Most practicing Catholics are pro-life (the non-practicing ones are more in tune with the secular pro-abortion side), but they also want to win, and that means we need to be pragmatic.” While Donohue did say that Trump “did the right thing initially” by focusing on politically winning issues like inflation, the economy, and illegal immigration, his more recent comments on abortion show that he has “faltered” and needs “to rebound” on the issue. “He will find a sympathetic audience with Catholics, and most Americans, if he talks about the real extremists — Democrats who favor late-term abortions and who vote against bills that protect the life of a child who survives a botched abortion. He needs to be more consistent on this issue,” Donohue continued.

He added, “Trump won the Catholic vote in 2016, 52% to 45%, but he barely won it in 2020. Given the anti-Catholic animus of the FBI, and other agencies under Biden-Harris, the Catholic vote should be his in 2024.”

The “Catholics for Trump” coalition boasts that, while in office, Trump “did more for Catholics than any administration in history!” Among the achievements listed are conscience protections to ensure that Catholics in the health care industry are not forced to commit or support abortions, pro-life executive orders, and Trump’s address to the annual March for Life — the first time a sitting U.S. president ever spoke to attendees of the event.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Pope’s Document on Blessing Same-Sex Couples Will ‘Cause Chaos and Hurt Souls’

Pope Francis caused widespread controversy and confusion on Monday by appearing to allow priests to bless individuals and couples involved in unchaste same-sex marriages and unrecognized civil marriages, a decision faithful Catholics have said will “produce chaos” in people’s lives “and hurt souls.”

The pope gave priests in the Roman Catholic Church, the world’s largest Christian denomination, “the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples,” as long as this is done “without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.” The decision came through a statement titled “On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings” (Fiducia Supplicans) signed by the 87-year-old pontiff and issued by the Vatican’s chief doctrinal guardian, the Dicastery (formerly the Congregation) for the Doctrine of the Faith, now led by close Francis ally and fellow Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández. The blessing is not to be a wedding Mass, nor a “liturgical rite or blessing similar to a liturgical rite that can create confusion” that implies the Church has celebrated a wedding or nuptial service.

Yet when a couple in a same-sex relationship approach their church pastor, the priest now has papal authority to offer a blessing on them collectively which “unites intercessory prayer with the invocation of God’s help by those who humbly turn to him,” says the document, “a blessing that descends from God upon those who — recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help — do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit.”

Pope Francis “remains firm on the traditional doctrine of the Church about marriage,” the document says.

The media have largely portrayed the document as a triumph of the LGBTQ movement. For example, a Reuters headline declared, “Vatican approves blessings for same-sex couples in landmark ruling.”

“This really is a very bad document,” Fr. Gerald Murray, a priest at the Church of the Holy Family in New York City, told “Washington Watch” guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice on Monday afternoon. “And it’s going to cause immense grief and sorrow in the Catholic Church, not only in the U.S., but throughout the world.”

The declaration purports that it does not change official Roman Catholic doctrine. As Fr. Murray told Hice, “[T]he teaching of the Church cannot change, but the pastors of the Church can act in a way that undermines that teaching, and that is simply what’s going on here.”

Traditionally, the Church has ranked sodomy as one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. The Roman Catholic Church also bars divorced Catholics from being remarried by a priest.

Dissenting Catholics celebrated the papal statement allowing the public blessing of same-sex couples. “The change here is that these blessings are now officially sanctioned by the Vatican,” wrote Jesuit priest James Martin, a leader of New Ways Ministries, a radical ministry intent on normalizing LGBTQ relations inside the Catholic Church, in the liberal America magazine. “Today, with some limitations, I can perform a public blessing of a same-sex couple. Yesterday, I could not.”

But traditional Catholics warned the new formula makes the Roman Catholic Church seem to bless the underlying sexual activity of the couple, which receives a public blessing despite living in unrepentant sin.

“The practical consequences of this decision are obvious to anyone with eyes,” said Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote.org, in an email sent to The Washington Stand. “LGBT activists have never been simply interested in a ‘blessing’ as individuals. That has always been available to everyone. … [T]he LGBT movement wants the Church to endorse its goals, including the condoning of same-sex lifestyles, unions, and even sexual acts as authentic expressions of human love.”

Priests who want to remain faithful to the traditional, biblical teaching on sodomy and the lifelong nature of marriage now find themselves in a “quandary and dilemma,” said Fr. Murray. “The document may say that this doesn’t legitimize the relationship, but I don’t know how anybody can say that.” He went on to argue that Pope Francis’s new declaration “go[es] along with the agenda of the sexual revolution of the 60s.” Instead of uniting married people and procreating more members of the human race, the Sexual Revolution teaches that “sex is about pleasure, and you do whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt people, everybody agrees to it, then you’re fine. And the Catholic Church says, absolutely not. God’s law is good, pure and holy, and it’s binding on all mankind. You can’t exempt yourself from the law of God simply because you want to do something against it.”

The issue of formally blessing same-sex unions, which most recently became an issue at the Synod on Synodality, received a negative response from the pontiff in 2021. Answering a number of cardinals, Pope Francis said priests cannot give same-sex couples formal liturgical blessings, which the Church would call “sacramentals.” But the new declaration asks priests “to perform blessings spontaneously that are not found in the Book of Blessings.”

This declaration follows other actions traditional Catholics say create confusion among the faithful. In November, Pope Francis wrote, “Under certain conditions, an adult transgender person — even after undergoing hormone treatment and sex-reassignment surgery — may be admitted to the function of serving as a godparent,” the adult charged with nurturing and developing a young child’s faith. Yet in March, in an unofficial statement to an Argentine median outlet, the pope declared, “Gender ideology, today, is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations.”

The progressive pope has infuriated faithful Catholics from the beginning of his pontificate, asking “Who am I to judge?” same-sex couples, unceremoniously replacing conservative prelates with liberal bishops, and renewing a deal to recognize the state communist-led “Catholic” church of China.

“Quite frankly, no pope in history has ever suggested that this is the way the Church should act,” Fr. Murray told Hice. “And I think precisely because it does undermine the Catholic moral teaching on sexuality that is such a dangerous innovation.”

Conservative Catholics agree, in an environment of chaos and confusion, Christians must know and apply the scriptural teachings in their own lives. “If there’s anything we need to do is have more Bible study and more reading of the Scriptures in a prayerful and thoughtful way, and then taking the questions of the day and trying to find out what has God revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures about those questions,” said Fr. Murray.

“This innovation has to be resisted,” said Fr. Murray, “because it’s going to produce chaos in so many lives and hurt souls.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson 

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.