Opus Dei, MAGA, the Dark Money Cult, & the 2024 Election

Daily Meditation by Matthew Fox - October 12, 2024

 Many people, when they hear about the rise of Christian nationalism in America, think it is all about evangelicals who are Trump supporters.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  

The fascist wing of the Roman Catholic Church amply represented by Opus Dei (and others such as the Legion of Christ), have played a major and expanding role in Washington, D.C. ever since the papacy of JPII that linked up with the far-right CIA of the day to bury liberation theology and base communities operating in South America.  

Those who stood by the poor, such as Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador who was martyred while saying Mass, were badly treated by Rome.  Indeed, one of Archbishop Romero's close friends, Bishop Casigalida with whom I spent a week in the amazon which was essentially his diocese was silenced by the Vatican of that time for daring to call Romero a saint (Romero has since been canonized under Pope Francis).  

I wrote about these goings-on 15 years ago in my book, The Pope's War, which traces such matters under Ratzinger and JP II and includes a significant chapter on Opus Dei.  New Testament scholar Bruce Chilton, who wrote the Foreword to the book, called it "prophetic." 

Now Gareth Core, a British financial journalist, has released the best book ever written on Opus Dei, with special emphasis on the mighty role they have played in recent American politics:  e.g., rendering SCOTUS beyond recognition and a wing for the Republican party.  Yes, part of MAGA, which I propose in my new book on the antichrist, stands for:  "Make America Grotesque Again." 

Gore's book is called Opus:  The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church.  It is 450 pages of solid research and clear storytelling of the takeover of American politics, including of course SCOTUS and the Republican Party by the fascist wing of the Catholic church, which is dead set against Pope Francis.  It includes the conversions of Newt Gingrich, former Senator Sam Brownback, Robert Bork, Larry Kudlow, and Laura Ingraham to that peculiar version of Catholicism.  Trump players like Bill Barr, Pat Cipolione, Steve Bannon, belong to the same religious club.  

Now vice-presidential candidate J. D. Vance should be added to that list of hardline climate deniers and Trump acolytes.  If Trump and Vance are elected next month, the Opus Dei wing of the Catholic Church will be one step away from the presidency.  

Pretty scary indeed, considering the already own the unsupreme court and Trump is currently the oldest presidential candidate and showing serious mental and physical decline not to mention his ethical and spiritual ill health.  Or, in traditional language, his links to the archetype of the antichrist.  

Gore tells the story of how Leonardo Leo led the fight to forbid Obama from nominating a justice for the Supreme Court because it was "too close to the next election."  Of course, Senator Mitch McConnell was all in on that unprecedented move, but Leo provided the legal ammunition.  Later however, with Trump as president, it was not too late to appoint Judge Barrett even though the election was already in progress.  

Leo is a far-right Catholic who barely admits that Pope Francis exists (or his excellent encyclical Laudato Si that defends the rights of Mother Earth and the rights of the poor).  He prefers the company and ideology of billionaires like Harlan Cros, sugar daddy to ever willing Supreme Court judges like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.  Gore makes clear that Leo is also very chummy with Ginni Thomas.   

A fine summary of the book can be found in the New York Magazine by investigative journalist Nina Burleigh.  It is called "How Opus Dei Conquered D. C."  (September 19, 2024).  Read it and weep.  And act.  And spread the news of the antichrist in waiting. And get out the vote for alternatives.

FROM REDEEMER TO REVOLUTIONARY

 

God of the Absurd  

Jesus of Nazareth was declared God and Redeemer through his crucifixion by the Council of Nicea.  Now that the myth of original sin is historically and theologically found impossible as a credible myth, Jesus and his death can now be looked at as a challenge to the Roman Empire.

Jesus of Nazareth was not the first to be crucified by the Roman Empire for advocating freedom.  He is the best known for advocating a nonviolent jihad for freedom.  

See:  

God & Empire by John Dominic Crossan  2007

Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography by John Dominic Crossan  1994

Original Blessing by Matthew Fox  1983

Recovering the Sacred: Teilhard, Newell & the Celtic Tradition By Matthew Fox October 5, 2024

Celtic Spirituality, Philip Newell, Teilhard de Chardin, The Sacred

I ended my Daily Meditation yesterday with the all-important practical question:  What other ways are there for recovering a sense of the sacred?  Meaning, besides Lakota teacher buck Ghosthorse's practice of going without water to recover the sacredness of water.

And Thomas Berry's teaching that bringing back the experience of awe and wonder that the "numinous" universe gives us.  (And, let me add, what the Webb telescope makes available daily to us.)

I am reminded of Teilhard de Chardin's observation on the death knell of religion in the West.  Because it is not sufficiently moved by a truly human compassion, because it is not exalted by a sufficiently passionate admiration of the universe, our religion is becoming enfeebled.

These words were translated into English in the year 1968, the spring I sat in class with Pere Chenu and he named the creation spirituality tradition for me the first time.  Chenu had great respect for Teilhard.

Teilhard elaborates in another place.  I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us.  In order that the sense of humanity might emerge, it was necessary for civilization to begin to encircle the Earth.  

The experience of awe and wonder at our home, the universe and the cosmic sense, Thomas Berry equates with our moving from a human-centered and narcissistic relationship to nature to a sense of the sacred.  Teilhard again:  The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as humanity found itself facing the frost, the sea and the stars.  And since then we find evidence of it in all our experience of the great and unbounded:  in art, in poetry, and in religion.  

We find the awareness of the sacred well named by Celtic scholar Philip Newell in our time.  "The Celtic tradition has been saying all along, "he reminds, "that we cannot contain the sacred.  Rather, we are to look for it everywhere, and we are to observe it and be liberators of it in one another and in the earth."

And he reminds us that there is work ahead.  "The labor pains of a new birthing will be mighty.  there is no going back to the small God."  Anthropocentrism and human narcissism is in no way the future--of religion or politics or a viable path for humanity.  

What I call "deep ecumenism" in my book on the Cosmic Christ is born of this renewed sense of the whole.  As Newell puts it:  We now know too much about the interrelatedness of all life to pretend that well-being can be sought for one part alone and not for the whole, for only one religion, one nation, one species.

There is no returning to the limited notion of sacredness as if it were somehow the preserver of one particular people over another, of one race gender, or sexual orientation.  Sacredness is the birthright of all that is.  It is the grace that comes with existence."