This Iowan is Catholic, MAGA, and proud to be both

During a recent exchange on one Facebook political page, I was confronted with the unfortunate reality that timeworn anti-Catholic calumnies persist in 2023. They're even regurgitated by beknighted interlopers who've attached themselves to the MAGA movement of which I am a longtime, enthusiastic member.

Catholic believers are "papist idolators," my internet opponent sneered. He smeared us as "child abusers," thundered that Pope Francis is "satanic," and predicted a looming political storm that would not be a "welcome time" for us.

My rejoinder was terse. "Trump recognizes the significant contributions Catholics have made to America throughout our nation's history, and he stands in opposition to bigotry against us. Perhaps the MAGA movement is not an appropriate vehicle for you."

After all, in a 2016 letter to the Catholic Leadership Conference, Trump had been adamant: "The United States was and is strengthened through Catholic men, women, priests, and religious Sisters ministering to people, marching in the civil rights movement, educating millions of children in Catholic schools, creating respected health care institutions, and in their founding and helping the ongoing growth of the pro-life cause. 

"I have a message for Catholics," Trump continued. "I will be there for you. I will stand with you. I will fight for you."

Bigotry against Catholics like that vented by the online antagonist has endured throughout American history. Not too many decades ago, the Ku Klux Klan propagandized against Catholics. Whenever a baby was born into an Irish Catholic family, went an old KKK line, a pistol was buried and a map to it drawn.

That way, on the eventual day of the mythical Vatican-led takeover of America, Irish Catholic kids could grab their maps, dig up their pistols, and join the revolution.

Historic political illustrations of bigotry aimed at Catholics include the hysterical reactions to the presidential candidacies of Al Smith in 1928 and John F. Kennedy in 1960. And in 2017, pro-abortion Senate Judiciary Committee member and since-deceased Democrat Diane Feinstein implied Catholic, Trump-supported Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett would not be fair. Feinstein charged "the dogma lives loudly within you." 

Even as I pen this essay, the Biden Department of Justice is under congressional investigation for infiltrating Catholic churches and spying on members who hold fast to traditional, catechism-consistent perspectives.

Just as the world's most learned scholar is no more than a speck beside God's wisdom and omniscience, so earthly measuring is insufficient for condemning the Catholic Church He instituted for our salvational benefit. Attacking it is as futile as trying to topple a stone castle with a papier mache sword.

The late Bishop Fulton Sheen advised persons exploring churchly options to "Look for the Church which is accused of having a devil, as Our Lord was accused of being possessed by Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils. Look for the Church which, in seasons of bigotry, men say must be destroyed..."

That astute observation might make my online antagonist's ears burn. Were he to read it.