It is said that a society may be judged by its treatment of the most vulnerable. This is generally taken to refer to our treatment of unborn children, a significant proportion of whom are slaughtered prior to birth, in a kind of cultural ritual aimed at asserting one’s dominance over one’s circumstances.
The philosophy underpinning acceptance of this act is so antithetical to Christianity that a truly Christian society cannot flourish wherever abortion is legal. In fact, the link between abortion and a population’s morality is so strong that its legality or otherwise can be seen as an indicator of the general health of a society.
This can be clearly seen in Communist countries like China and Russia where permissive abortion laws tracked with Communism’s rise to power. China’s barbaric forced abortion policy is consistent with its extreme anti-Christian ideology. In the 1920’s, one of Lenin’s first acts was to legalise abortion on demand in Soviet Russia.
The correlation between abortion and a society’s health casts an important light on the presidency of Donald Trump. Since both he and his Vice-president, JD Vance are in favour of abortion, it would be foolish for Christians to expect that America is on the cusp of a Golden Age. Other prominent members of his administration such as Robert Kennedy, Elon Musk and Tulsi Gabbard, also agree with abortion in at least some circumstances, indicating that an anti-life mindset lies at the very heart of the government.
King Saul was a great disappointment to the people of Israel; he began his reign by disobeying God’s prophet and ended up relying on occult powers instead of trusting in God, all the while viciously persecuting his friend, David.
Generally, the first response to any criticism of Trump and his anti-life philosophy is that he is against late-term abortion. “At least he’s not Kamala” is the refrain often repeated by conservatives, although this is increasingly being replaced by “I didn’t have a choice”, the mantra of the post-abortive woman. Voters confused by Trump’s disorienting policies have come to resemble the vulnerable women produced by his pro-abortion mindset.
There is no doubt that late-term abortion is heinous, but the pro-life community knows better: Catholics know better. We know for a fact that the entity which is literally a ‘clump-of cells’ – albeit a very special one – at 5 weeks’ gestation has exactly the same value as a fully-formed fetus at 40 weeks’ gestation. To believe otherwise is to completely undermine our own philosophy. Late-term abortion isn’t ‘worse’ than early abortion; its horror is simply more obvious.
So one can’t be a little pro-life, or ‘mostly’ pro-life any more than one can be mostly pregnant. People are either for abortion or they are not.
Last year’s Republican National Conference should have made it clear to Christians that Trump’s pro-life veneer was beginning to peel away. That event made it a stretch for anyone to claim Trump’s caprices could be attributed to his “baby-Christian” or “baby-Catholic” status, for at the Conference, the Republicans removed protections for the unborn and for traditional marriage from their platform.
For many who had previously supported Trump either wholeheartedly or with serious caveats, this betrayal should have been a line in the sand. It was the sign that something was going very wrong for the United States and for the pro-life community. Coupled with other anomalies like the address from a celebrity porn-provider, backdrops promoting Zionist Israel and the New World Order, all the way down to Melania entering the stage to the strains of “The Age of Aquarius”, the RNC should have been a wake-up call for Catholics.
David, who went on to become a great king in many respects, was carried away by his lust, sinning grievously and scandalizing his people.
Yet on the whole, it was not. And so Trump was re-elected, having galvanised the Catholic vote which the sexual deviant Roger Stone has admitted was crucial if Trump was to regain the presidency.
Stone, a supposed Catholic, prominent Republican lobbyist, gay-pride march attendee [discretion advised] and long-time friend of the LGBTI movement was one of the driving forces behind the recent Mar-a-Lago prayer event. Another organiser was General Michael Flynn, whose Catholic credentials are similarly suspect. Flynn can be seen in a video reciting what he claims is the prayer to St. Michael. However, it is nothing like the traditional prayer known to almost every Catholic; instead it is almost identical to a ritual by the famed occultist, Alice Bailey and popularised by a 1980’s cult leader. With friends like Stone and Flynn, Republicans could wonder, who needs enemies?
It is possible that Trump’s famous ‘Art of the Deal’ is not exemplified most by his humiliation of Zelenskyy at the White House or by his intimidation of China with tariffs. Rather, perhaps Trump’s seduction of Catholics and conservative Christians is his real triumph.
The scent of compromise and complicity now lingers around the Catholic MAGA movement. Nowhere was this clearer than at the Washington March for Life which officially ratified the disastrous election outcome by inviting Trump and Vance to address the crowd—a major strategic error according to Roberto de Mattei who notes “… the evil nature of the pro-abortion and pro-IVF policies being pursued by Trump and Vance as arguably the world’s most powerful politicians.”
Having pro-abortion politicians address the March for Life was a travesty which sent the clear message that abortion will from now on be tolerated in the US as long as it is not ‘something worse’. At least it’s not late-term abortion. At least it’s not sex-selective abortion. At least they are against DEI.
Trump’s election was the moment the pro-life movement lost its credibility and when America sealed her fate.
It seems timely to recall that when God appointed kings to judge His Chosen people, Israel, it was not a reward for their faithfulness, but rather a punishment for their rejection of Him. As recounted in the first Book of Kings, Saul was anointed by the prophet Samuel and presented to the people, who cried, “God save the king!”
Samuel admonished the people in the name of God, warning them to remain faithful to God and to reject “vain things which shall never profit you, nor deliver you, because they are vain.”
Samuel admonished the people in the name of God, warning them to remain faithful to God and to reject “vain things which shall never profit you, nor deliver you, because they are vain.”
Vain things – like redeveloping Gaza after being an accessory to ethnic cleansing, like sending billions to foreign wars while numbers of working homeless rise in one’s own country, or like completely destabilising the world’s economy with the stroke of a pen?
King Saul was a great disappointment to the people of Israel; he began his reign by disobeying God’s prophet and ended up relying on occult powers instead of trusting in God, all the while viciously persecuting his friend, David. David, who went on to become a great king in many respects, was carried away by his lust, sinning grievously and scandalizing his people. While David was repentant and remained ‘a man after God’s own heart,’ Saul was defiant and eventually lost everything, including his life and possibly his soul.
Our Lady has promised us an Era of Peace, so we must expect it and live as though we believe it. Small wins are always possible in the meantime, but there is no Golden Age on the horizon from a human perspective.
Someone who believes abortion is acceptable simply thinks differently from someone who thinks it is abhorrent. Trump’s toleration of abortion fits perfectly with Ed Feser’s profile based on a survey of Trumps’s long-held views:
“… Trump’s vision of life, like Hobbes’s, is fundamentally at odds with Christianity. Certainly it is hard to think of an ethos that more manifestly contradicts Christ’s Sermon on the Mount than Trump’s celebration of egotism and revenge (not to mention adultery and divorce).”
By adding abortion to the list, the point is only made more strongly.
The price for drawing attention to Trump’s failings can be high. Although an Australian living in Australia, this author was reprimanded for criticising Trump on a personal social media page by a conservative Australian Catholic organisation. A regular contributor for more than 5 years, I chose to leave the organisation rather than comply. Conservative censorship, as Michael Matt has coined it, is real.
Our Lady has promised us an Era of Peace, so we must expect it and live as though we believe it. Small wins are always possible in the meantime, but there is no Golden Age on the horizon from a human perspective. To admit that Trump is an agent of God for bringing about an era of safety and prosperity is to behave like an Israelite adoring the idol of gold. Just as Moses on Mt. Tabor was only a stone’s throw away from the adulterous throng, so too is Our Lady very close, historically speaking, to triumphing over the serpent. We must not be distracted by an idol when the genuine article is at hand.
God may indeed use Trump, perhaps not as a Saul or Cyrus, but as an agent of chaos. Barring a radical conversion, he will never have the best interests of the unborn at heart, nor the best interests of Catholics. Like the canary in the coal mine, little children will continued to be sacrificed as our culture ventures further and further into the black pit. Yet unlike the miners of old who heeded the warning, Catholic MAGA is jubilantly following Trump into the darkness.
Put not your trust in princes, in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation. (Psalm 145:2-3)
