A Family Story: When "Pro-Life" Catholic Trump Voters Confront Sexual Abuse of Minors by a Priest — In Their Own Family Circle

I have a story to tell you this morning. It's a story with a question embedded in it. The question is one with which I am personally struggling. This story is about a specific family and family situation, but it also seems to me a parabolic story, in that this specific family in some ways mirrors many white Christian (to be specific: white Catholic) "pro-life" families who voted for Donald Trump, claiming that he is "pro-life," and who continue stoutly to defend him even as he wishes to rip healthcare coverage from millions of economically challenged citizens.

Attack on LGBTQ People Coupled with Attack on Healthcare Coverage: Double-Whammy Attack Emanating from "Pro-Life" White Christians

THREAD: 1. People choose to end their lives for all sorts of reasons.

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) July 27, 2017

The "Debate" About Transgender People: Don't Buy Framing That It's About Gender

THREAD: 1. Those pushing anti-trans discrimination with religious warrants would like you to think this is all about gender.

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) July 27, 2017

The Current Spectacle of Astonishing Cruelty in U.S. Cheered by White Christians: Jesus Makes Winners, Not Losers!

This is going to the worst day of a lot of people's lives. And for absolutely no reason. Astonishing cruelty.

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) July 26, 2017

Mark Joseph Stern tweeted the tweet above one minute ago.

In Which I Explain Why I'm Responding to This Blog's Latest Troll As I'm Choosing to Do

I asked two ppl close to Trump why he is tormenting Sessions instead of firing him. The answer from both, paraphrased: Because he can.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 25, 2017

I struggle to understand the psychology of someone — in this case, an ordained minister of the Christian gospel, a heterosexually married priest in a non-Catholic church — who occasionally logs in here to voice his contempt for the author of this blog and for everything he writes. What kind of strange masochism compels someone to slum in this way, when there's so much better reading everywhere online — and when, presumably, no one has a gun to the man's head to force him to read the words of someone he characterizes as a failure?

Donald Trump and the Scouts: Feeding Appetite for Disdain of Targeted Minorities (and, No, the Hitler Parallel Is Not Overblown)

Trump tells Boy Scouts he hopes GOP can kill Obamacare (stripping 22M+ of health coverage)

Boy Scouts respond by cheering "USA USA USA" pic.twitter.com/nIprrj5PoX

— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) July 24, 2017

Signposts on the way, which we overlook to our great peril:

Tom Roberts on Clergy's Task to Confront Abuse Crisis: A Response Noting Impoverishment of Communitarian Imagination of U.S. Catholic Intellectual Leaders

I am, of course, sympathetic to Tom Roberts' recent essay in National Catholic Reporter calling on Catholic clergy and hierarchical leaders to confront the clericalist base of the abuse crisis in the Catholic church. This argument echoes an argument made powerfully by one witness after another confronting the abuse crisis and its cover up.