(RNS) — President Donald Trump, who spent two faculty years at a Jesuit faculty, appears to bear an affinity for hiring Catholics.
U.S. Secretary of Explain Marco Rubio and Effectively being and Human Products and services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are cradle Catholics, as is Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Training Secretary Linda McMahon is a convert, as is Vice President JD Vance.
The indispensable exception is Elon Musk, baptized in the Anglican Church of South Africa. He runs a White Condominium program called “DOGE.” If the president has been to Venice to look the Doge’s Palace, he can also know that the Doge used to be elected by Venetian oligarchs, who retained the staunch vitality of the remark. Take into yarn it.
The recordsdata is stuffed with abdominal-turning reports about actions by Trump and his minions. Whereas he hires Catholics, there is nothing remotely connected to Catholic social teaching in what he is doing.
No one objects to inviting, even deporting, criminals. Rounding up folks take care of cattle and flying them who-knows-where is unworthy of this or any administration. Many of the practically 12 million immigrants now in the United States bear attain to procure a closer, safer life. They bear got escaped war and diverse violence. Too many are fleeing poverty, which the U.S. doesn’t relieve in thoughts a justification for asylum. However, being undocumented doesn’t interpret inhumane cure.
No matter how or why they got here, they’re human beings. And Trump and his Catholic personnel explain they wish to provide protection to life.
FILE – President Donald Trump talks as he indicators executive orders in the Oval Explain of labor of the White Condominium, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
By no formulation thoughts that Trump encourages IVF, Vance speaks nonsense theology or that Musk helps racial purity. Mixed, the arena hears them as xenophobes. They disapprove folks from diverse worldwide locations, in particular if they’re brown or Dusky, they generally need U.S. voters to bear extra children. The apt extra or less U.S. voters, to guarantee.
Trump’s war in opposition to “DEI” — diversity, fairness and inclusion — wherever federal dollars contact a program, has it upside down and backward. “DEI” formulation at the side of and accommodating doubtlessly the most certified folks, not discrediting their achievements or credentials thanks to 1 or one other biological truth.
Arguments about transgenderism and homosexuality aside — many folks attain not need federal funding to toughen these affirm initiatives — DEI officers field themselves with issues like wheelchair ramps and changing tables in public restrooms, besides to Braille on elevator buttons and handicapped bus programs. Someone with a modicum of ethical coaching would mood the administration’s knee-jerk reaction to something that’s not straight, white and Trumpian.
On immigration, Vance mangled Catholic teaching so badly that Pope Francis, in his letter warning U.S. bishops in opposition to getting too comfy with Trump & Co., schooled them and him on what the gospel teaches about the “diverse.” The pope pointed to the parable of the Staunch Samaritan to reveal that Christian theology says you support who you would also if you would also.
Sen. JD Vance in July 2024, left, and Pope Francis in Feb. 2025. (AP Photos)
In his protection, Vance steered folks Google ordo amoris to luxuriate in his toughen of wholesale deportation of immigrants, as if Google had been the absolute most practical explainer of Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas and the gospel.
Vance and Trump seem confident of their steal of Christian ethics, nonetheless don’t be fooled by the total Catholics in the cabinet or the Latin coming from the Oval Explain of labor. Trump’s insurance policies now destroying folks’s livelihoods and lives can’t be supported by any individual, Catholic or not.
As for Trump’s years at Jesuit Fordham University, no one knows what ethics courses he took, if any. At a pre-Christmas alumni luncheon, Fordham’s president said her place of job once received a name stressful Trump’s transcript be kept secret.
There might perchance well well even be a reason for that.
by 
