The past few years, but with much greater intensity and pervasiveness over the last two years, there has been a strong ideologization of the Catholic Faith by the laity and “professional Catholics” (but not limited to them) in the United States for political and/or self-serving purposes. Many conservative Catholics, in particular the “Bible-thumpers” who go around attempting to ‘evangelize’ with Scripture in the one hand and guns in the other hand, have tried hijacking the Faith into a spiritual doppelgaenger of Trump’s Republican Party – proselytization for political ambition. Other Catholics, many of them liberal, have used it as ‘currency’ to overtly try currying favor with the ‘pro-lifers’ as anti-abortion, while in reality believing in nothing but themselves as “intellectually, morally, and spiritually superior” persons (little g gods) and covertly voting for Clinton and the Democratic Party – proselytization for monetary gain. Neither of the above, however, is genuine Catholicism; just garden-variety perversions of the Faith, which need to be explicated in order for the unaware or the insufficiently aware to have the choice of not falling headlong into their traps.
Opposite Sides of the Same Coin
The former camp loves to speak a lot about God and the Catholic Church, giving the impression of great piety and leadership in particular on social media, yet at heart and in fact dismisses as irrelevant core tenets of Catholic teaching. The latter camp also speaks a lot about God and the Church, giving the impression of great knowledge and scholarship, yet in the same way brackets as inadequately relevant other core tenets of the Catholic Faith. Neither camp presents the fullness and the comprehensiveness of the Faith in both justice and fairness to the Truth Who is Christ, the Truth they so profess to love, because neither of them finds the fullness of the Truth digestible or adequately suitable for their underlying respective agendas.
Where, therefore, is God and where is the Holy Spirit in all of the above? Can either camp truly lead people to Christ and to the Father if they insist on presenting just a partial truth, which is no truth at all?
One thing is clear. Both camps have attempted and keep on attempting to refashion both the Catholic Faith and the Catholic Church into their image, consequently trying to remake God Himself into their image and likeness and presenting that to the people (the literal inversion of the father of lies), instead of attempting to discover, with a modicum of humility, what God wants, which is to make them into His own image and likeness.
