Mined from the notebooks, Sunday afternoon, May 24, 2020. Posted Tuesday morning, May 26.

Our most godly President, leading a prayer in praise of himself at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, February 6, 2020. AP Photo by Evan Vucci.
He’s a bad man. We all know it. The general tendency is not to say it directly. We call him a sociopath, a malignant narcissist. He’s destructive, divisive, vindictive, malicious. Corrupt. He’s a thug. He’s a bully. A con artist. A grifter. The Criminal-in-Chief. He’s worse than racist. He’s far more than merely sexist. He’s vicious and cruel. We use political terms that carry the heaviest moral judgment---fascist, tyrant, traitor. We should flat out call him evil except evil implies intent and intent requires consideration and forethought and he’s too lazy to bother with either---he allows himself to be governed by appetite, ego, and whim. But the word for him is bad. Just plain bad.
The trouble with calling him that, though, is it almost lets him off the hook. It confuses the issue. It suggests he’s simply a bad President, which he is, arguably the worst at the job we’ve ever had, but it doesn’t emphasize he’s a rotten human being to boot.
Bad men have been President and proved good at the job of presidenting, Several exemplary men were less than successful Presidents. Some very good men did terrible things as President. But none of them did as many bad things---immoral and incompetent---in the course of an average day. None of them were as bad at the job and as bad an individual.
Which makes it such a bitter irony that he’s “ordered” the states to let the churches re-open, confirming for his Right Wing Christian voters that he’s the most godly President we’ve ever had.
There’s really no point in arguing with them that he’s far from godly and not by the least measure Christian.
He was raised to worship money. The only divine eye he’s ever cared is watching him is the camera’s eye. He rarely goes to church. He doesn’t know how to comport himself when he does.

The photo is from last June. He barged into MacLean Bible Church in Vienna, Virginia coming right in from the golf course still in his cleats. He stayed for eleven minutes. And the service he interrupted was dedicated to the twelve people who’d died in the mass shooting in Virginia Beach a few days before. He didn’t pray for them. He let the pastor pray for him. Look at him smirking. It’s like he thinks he’s getting an award. And he was, wasn’t he? Better to say a reward. The same one the hypocrites do when they pray in public. On Easter last year, asked what Easter means, he gave the impression he’d never heard of the Resurrection. He’s unclear about the Crucifixion too. This year he wished us all a Happy Good Friday. At the National Prayer Breakfast in February where the President traditionally leads the gathering in prayer, his “prayer” was a self-pitying jeremiad full of spite and vituperation aimed at the sinners who’d brought about his impeachment. In place of a Bible, he held up the front page of the Washington Post with the headline “ACQUITTED”.
Supposedly he has a spiritual adviser. More like a coach. Paula White. She’s a grifter too, like most everyone who goes to work in the Administration or sets themselves up as his advocate, apologist, or unofficial aide. Her job is to help him crib for moments when he’s supposed to sound like the leader of a “Scripture-based”---read White Christian---nation his religiously minded voters expect him to be. He probably pays as close and sustained attention to her as he does to all his advisers.
Try pointing all of this out to any of the Right Wing Evangelicals who make up the real majority of his voters and the ones who don’t meet you with blank stares will tell you he stopped sinning when God made him President. Others, who are more honest with you and themselves, will tell you he in himself and as himself doesn’t matter, the Lord has often used broken vessels for His purpose. Look at David. And if you look, you can see where they’re coming from.
Donald Trump, the idiot who would be President, is often viewed by the fanatical Christian right as delivered by God. Yes, a man who has had three wives, cheated on all three of them, five kids total (well, and possibly another one out of wedlock), paid off a porn star and a stripper, lied, cheated, stolen and conspired with a foreign adversary to cheat his way into the White House - he is their moral compass.---Red Painter, Crooks and Liars, June 2, 2019.
You can write a reductive biography of David yourself that almost matches that. In fact, you have to leave out a couple of details to avoid making David sound worse, like arranging to get one of his own soldiers killed in battle so he could sleep with the man’s wife. On the other hand, to make the comparison work, you have to ignore that David was punished for his sins. That he repented and begged for forgiveness. Trump has cavalierly confessed he’s never asked for forgiveness or seen any need to. And you have to ignore that David was a warrior and hero, a good king---as in competent and successful, along with, for the most part, wise, just, and answerable to his people and attentive to their needs and concerns. But if you add this to the discussion, and you’re not met with more blank stares or insistence that Trump is a good president, you’ll get reminded that it doesn’t matter what he is personally. What matters is he’s doing the work God wants done. And, you know, as a former Catholic, I half-see the point.
One of my early and favorite lessons on the value Catholics place on good works as the ticket into heaven is the story of the mean-spirited and cold-hearted miser who is nonetheless a philanthropist and dies beloved by the people in general and celebrated and mourned by the nation even though his family is not the least bit sorry to see him go. His dead soul is surprised to find itself welcomed into heaven and even makes the case to St Peter that there must have been a mistake. He was a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner, worse than Scrooge before Scrooge’s reclamation, and if anyone deserved damnation it was himself.
St Peter reminds him of his philanthropy and of all he gave and did to help people in need and make the world a better and happier place.
The miser says, “But I only did all that to spite my greedy relatives and do them out of the money they expected to inherit!’
To which St Peter answers, presumably with a smile broadening his tear-scarred face, the reminder of his own damnable sin of denying Jesus three times on the night of Jesus’ arrest and his repentance and forgiveness, “It doesn’t matter why you did it. It matters what you did and you did the world a great good.”
The “good” Trump does is in hurting THEM, Those Others! Like appointing hack judges who will rule to ban abortion and to make America great again by making it a white Christian nation where only straight, white Right Wing Christians can claim to be real Americans, no others need apply.
But the why he’s doing something is inseparable from what he’s doing. What he’s doing is trying everything he can think of to get himself re-elected, which includes pushing for churches to re-open their doors on Sundays. He’s doing exactly what he means to do---trick his own most loyal voters to march out and get sick and die to save his political skin.
Most churches remained closed to in-person worship. Ones that had already re-opened their doors have closed them again as it’s turned out they were tempting their Lord and God and their ministers and congregants came down with COVID-19. It’s all God’s will, right?
Fortunately, polls are showing that the vast majority of Americans, including many of his voters, are far more sensible than he gives them credit for. We’re more inclined to listen to our doctors, local health officials, local newspapers and TV station news, to our families, friends, and neighbors, and our own common sense than to him and the idiot Right Wing Republican Governors aping his reckless political skin-saving.
Still, it’s infuriating. It’s even gotten to Father James Martin, the popular Jesuit priest, author, and theologian. Martin is usually close to saintly in his mild-manneredness, as anyone (like me) who’s been watching his daily live Faith Sharing video chats on his Facebook page can tell you. Friday, though, he wasn’t as characteristically mild-mannered in his post reacting to Trump’s “order” that states allow churches to open their doors. You can almost see his jaw-clenching as he typed:
The President said today that he will "override the governors" and force states to allow churches to open. Churches should not be opened (or closed) by order of a president, but because it is safe to do so. To open churches before it is safe would needlessly put more lives at risk. And that would be the opposite of pro-life. Governors and religious leaders should follow the advice of public health experts and epidemiologists to help prevent the spread of infection and preserve life. Everyone wants to go back to church, including me, but not at the risk of increased infection and death, especially among the most vulnerable.
Churches are indeed essential for Christians, and the desire to worship together is a holy desire. But holy though your desire may be, it's not just about you and your desire. It's about protecting the other person, especially if you are, like many people, asymptomatic. Wearing masks, maintaining social distance and even not gathering in churches protects the other person…
I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand. If you have the measles and a doctor says, "Don't go to church because you might infect a woman who is pregnant," you don't rail at your doctor for "impinging on your freedom." You listen to the doctor, make the sacrifice, and stay home, as a way of protecting the other person.
All these preventive actions are ways of caring of the other person--that is, ways of loving.
You can read Martin’s whole post and watch his videos by following the link to his page.
By the way, Sunday was an important Holy Day in the Church calendar: the Feast of the Ascension. (I’m betting Paula White didn’t get that into Trump’s head. I’m betting she didn’t even bother to try.) But in most dioceses Catholics weren’t obligated to go to church to attend mass. In most dioceses they still couldn’t.
Needless to say, Trump doesn’t care that there are other kinds of houses of worship besides Christian churches, congregations of believers other than Christian, and they all don’t meet for services on Sundays. He doesn’t seem aware that even at Christian churches the faithful don’t need them only on Sunday and for things other than singing a few hymns, muttering half-hearted prayers, and trying not to fall asleep during the sermon.
And even more needless to say, he didn’t go to church Sunday.
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