Cardinal Accused of Sex Crimes Has Secret Dinner with U.S. Official Attacking Climate Change Findings and Federalist Society Members: Where's the Punchline?

Think about this - a leading curial cardinal, George Pell, is meeting secretly with those in the Trump administration whose main goal in life is to undermine climate action, which Pope Francis sees as one of the leading moral issues in the world today. https://t.co/TIwfxaooQf

— Massimo Faggioli (@MassimoFaggioli) May 11, 2018

Massimo Faggioli's tweet above is a response to Eric Lipton, who tweets,

Dinner at La Terrazza is not cheap. It costs $240 per person, before wine and other stuff for the tasting menu. Pruitt, his chief of staff and senior political adviser were there, along with Leonard Leo, of the Federalist Society, Cardinal Pell, among others. pic.twitter.com/pvDc0MS3bs

— Eric Lipton (@EricLiptonNYT) May 10, 2018

If you want to see toxic MAGA "Christianity" in its fullest, most doltish expression, check out the thread of responses to Massimo Faggioli. They run the gamut from claiming, stupidly, that a dinner of a state official should always by definition be considered private, to hateful taunts and insinuations about Dr. Faggioli's sexuality (he's a heterosexually married man), to astonishingly heretical theological statements attacking environmental concern as a key Christian value at this point in history. 

It's all there, on full display — and I say to young Christians, keep on walking away. As fast as your feet will carry you….

Here's valuable commentary on what the Federalist Society exists to do, by the way. And here….

And here's valuable commentary about the cozy ties between yet another of the ideologues central to the Trump era's political agenda (Steve Bannon) and yet another prince of the church (Cardinal Burke) who does not, one concludes in following the news, stint himself either sartorially or culinarily. 

You, too, can be the proud owner of a $125-plate ticket for dinner with Cardinal Burke at the upcoming black-tie event at the Savage Club in Melbourne, hosted by Australia's Latin Mass Society.

If someone wrote a novel about all of this, people would find the plot far-fetched, I suspect.

But this is not a novel.