The easily predictable hullaballoo over 12 Roman Catholic bishops being videoed and photographed with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on the cusp of a historic election continues to build steam. Some of the bishops have formally apologized and said they were “exploited.” But that hardly ends the story.
Offering a “public apology,” Archbishop Jeffrey Grob of Milwaukee said the bishops were “exploited” and the video was released without their consent. Yet he admits the Heritage Foundation extended the invitation — they who were responsible for the Project 2025 playbook for how to make America fascistic. They who formed the birthplace for Roman Catholic now billionaire Leonard Leo who almost single handedly created the current Supreme Court with its six far-right justices.
Matthew Fox
I wrote a chapter on Project 2025 and others on how Jesus represents the opposite of MAGA philosophy in my recent book on Trump and the MAGA Movement as Antichrist which appeared before election 2024. A new version of it has just come out in time for this election with a new subtitle, Recognizing the Archetype of Evil in Our Time.
Were the bishops so naïve that they felt they could enter the inner sanctum of a president who is a liar-in-chief and not be used? After all, this White House proudly sports an “Office of Faith” down the hall from the Oval Office headed by none other than Christian nationalist pastor Paula White-Cain, who can be seen on a video preaching messages like these: “To say ‘No’ to President Trump would be saying ‘No’ to God. … Antifa and Black Lives Matter are anti-Christ. … Any tongue that rises against him (Trump) will be condemned according to the word of God. … It is God that raises up a king and it is God who sets one down. … Principalities cannot control this man because he surrounds himself with Christians. He is a Christian.”
In the same video, Trump admits he has “never asked God for forgiveness.” (Nor anyone else I have ever heard of.)
The spiritual question at hand is this: How could churchmen be so naïve?
In 1924, shortly before he died, the great German mystic and philosopher Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture to a group of priests that ended this way: “Will the priests be capable of representing the spiritual world in its full reality rather than in the sentimental manner that has come into fashion over the last few centuries, so that as soon as one talks of the spirit one feels disinclined to include the power of evil? The question is whether their energy will be sufficient to represent the reality of the spirit. This, dear friends, is absolutely the main thing.”
“Our culture is afraid to talk about evil.”
Our culture is afraid to talk about evil — and this very much applies to our religious culture including bishops and religious journals and magazines. I offer some reasons why this is so in my MAGA antichrist book among which is the darkness in America’s past including genocide toward Indigenous peoples and slavery and also because so many refugees to America were escaping traumatic experiences from their homelands that they wanted to forget and leave behind.
But to wander into the Oval Office on the eve of an election that will determine whether America remains a democracy and then be surprised that photos and video would be employed by this evil administration is beyond imagination.
Like evangelical Protestants, the Catholic vote in America often determines elections — studies have shown that John Kerry’s defeat at the hands of George Bush in the 2004 election was traceable to several Catholic bishops condemning Kerry (who was Roman Catholic) for his support of women making decisions for their own bodies instead of politicians.
Yet one of the 12 bishops currently said, “The bishops of the United States teach that the church cannot champion any candidate or party. I hold to that.”
Another bishop tried to explain their actions by saying he attended in his “own individual capacity (and) not on behalf of, or representative, of his archdiocese.” Excuse me? Does he imagine he would have gotten an invitation to visit the White House at the apex of an election as an individual and not a bishop?
David Gibson, director of Religion and Culture at Fordham University (a Catholic institution) says, “The Catholic vote is absolutely critical in electoral politics in the United States, and particularly in the midterms.” And that Catholic vote is more fluid than any other religious bloc in America.
In 2024, Trump won 55% of the Catholic vote to Harris’ 43%. That can be understood as the difference in the election.
Besides the above, it should be underscored that Trump is the first president ever to have a public fight with a pope, and Pope Leo, the first North American pope, disagrees with him on numerous issues including the treatment of the environment, the onslaught or violent expulsion of immigrants, the war in Iran, the extreme void between rich and poor, exploitative capitalism, and so much more.
Maybe these Catholic bishops and the Catholic press itself should spend more time reflecting on evil and how it loves to hang out in powerful places and how readily it can steal one’s soul. And the soul of a government.
Fascism has fascinated Roman Catholicism for long enough — recall that Mussolini’s Italy was Roman Catholic and Hitler never was excommunicated and neither was Franco.
Maybe it is fitting and timely that Pope Leo write an encyclical stating clearly that fascism and the gospel are incompatible. This would apply to the Silicon Valley AI fascist movement as well as to Christian nationalists everywhere. And to many on the boards of Heritage Foundation, the Catholic University of America and other places of power where oligarchs love to spread their spiritual vitriol and public largesse.
Let the bishops study evil — and talk less about sin. And let them study the sacred — which is the opposite of evil — and talk more about that.
Matthew Fox is an Episcopal priest, theologian and author of 40 books on spirituality and culture that have been translated into 81 languages. His most recent books are Trump and The MAGA Movement as Antichrist: Recognizing the Archetype of Evil in Our Time and Let the Beloved Guide You: St. John of the Cross and the Triple Dark Night of Our Times.
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