Catholicism’s Never Trumpers

Every time that something really good happens in the world, there is always someone trying to destroy it in the name of… Good.

It’s a well-spread disease, and whilst at times it is the fruit of narrow views and inability to simply look at the greater good, at others it is just the product of bad faith and a biased agenda.

Padre Pio was harshly criticised, in life, for being a guy who talks very openly and does not hesitate to be very, very frank. Then as now, there were those people who, perhaps in good faith (some certainly not so) thought that his behaviour needed to be censured in the name of “niceness”, this permanent alternative goddess so many keep confusing with Christianity.

Or think of Saint John Vianney; a great saint and immeasurable treasure for the Church, but also criticised for not being educated enough, or for not having had a priestly formation considered adequate by those who were, in fact, not saintly.

Coming to the present day, the examples also abound. The Never Trumpers (I do not give them any excuse; evil people one and all, led by their own vanity or by their own private interests) have actually tried to destroy those same values they claim to protect, “because tweets”.

In all cases, the criticism takes something that has, at its root, something true to it; an issue that is existent, and might be even considered grave in abstract, or deemed worrying if looked without a proper perspective; but then, they magnify this issue and make of it the defining character trait, or quality, of their target; target which, after their treatment, becomes worthy of being forgotten, condemned, or outright destroyed.

In some cases, there might be good faith involved. In other cases, not so much.

Why do I write all this? Because one-sided attacks to the best Catholic organisation currently residing on Planet Earth, and vastly exceeding the Vatican in Catholic spirit, Catholic practice, and, in a word, Catholicism, are just not right; and because this very organisation keeps being attacked by Primadonnas who have now proved themselves entirely unable to put (granted: real) problems in the proper perspective, and aim instead at the destruction of the best the Catholic spirit has produced in the last fifty or so years.

When problems arise, they should be pointed out. It is fine, and actually healthy, that it should be so. But to go for the jugular in the way that we have been seeing for a long time now (you are about to get a link with some good examples) is beyond the pale.

More in general, what grates me in the entire matter is the tragic lack of perspective. You don’t throw Trump out of the window because of his tweets. You don’t punish Padre Pio because he screams in church (he has his reasons, of course). You don’t throw away the baby together with the bath water.

Because if you keep doing it you will look, at some point, like an enemy of the baby.