In the age of Donald Trump, Christians find themselves at a crossroads. It concerns the choice of how to respond to the war against truth that we see coming from the White House of Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Elon Musk. There is the sacrosanct expectation from Catholics (and not only Catholics) that the bishops, the clergy, and lay leaders have the courage to speak truth to power — the power which is now redefining what truth is. This great reversal in Trump’s America might entail a reversal in how Catholics relate to the church.
Trump’s second win and the strong Catholic support for him have triggered something like a post-Christendom stress disorder. At the same time, the rise of influential intellectual and political circles pushing a theological-political agenda has fueled fears of a neo-medieval Christianity making a comeback in the digital age. Certainly, a U.S.-crafted version of Christianity in the form of resentful “Christianism” has provided Trumpism with a legitimization of ethno-nationalism and white supremacy. There is a high number of Catholics in the Trump movement and working as department secretaries in his cabinet. There are attempts, by influential intellectual circles especially close to the Vice President (a Catholic), to push a certain kind of public theology that upends the alliance signed by Catholicism and democracy in the second half of the 20th century. This kind of “Catholicist” politics seeks to make of the church a pillar of illiberalism and personal rule, showing contempt for the rule of law.
Rewriting history and the assault on truth
But there is also another problem. The great reversal that we see under our very eyes in this new United States does not concern just domestic and international economic policies and foreign alliances. It is also an attempt at rewriting history: national, international, and religious. With the official motivation of seeking peace, Trump falsely stated that Ukraine started the war with Russia. Vice President Vance also turned reality upside down with his Munich speech of February 14 by stating that European countries are not democratic. Other members of the current U.S. administration have said the same.
The spreading of alternative (fake) historical facts is an attempt at reshaping collective memory and disrupting the transmission of ingrained values. This attempt is carried out in various ways: via social media, but also with education policies designed to eliminate the liberal arts and humanities from the canon of legitimate disciplines in order to make space for alternative, that is, false narratives. It is just part of a larger attempt at rewriting history.
This is much more than just a casual approach to historical facts. It’s part of a larger effort to teach contempt for those who do not submit, and part of the attempt to force them into submission. Ukrainians are just the first and most visible target. Falsification of historical facts is a weapon of war: against the rule of law, against principles of international justice, but also against religion. Christianity is on the hit list too.
This attempt at destroying the historical record is an integral part of this great reversal effected by Trump and his willing collaborators. JD Vance is a prime example and a potential successor to Trump—if the current president chooses to leave office rather than attempt to change the Constitution for a third term, as some supporters are urging. Catholics should realize that this great reversal will not leave the church and religion undisturbed. It is an attempt against a basic idea of factual truth, without which it is hard to sustain the credibility and intelligibility of all other kinds of truth.
Church’s role in resisting the war on truth
One possible response to this scorched-earth strategy of Trumpism is to respond forcefully to individual policies, on immigration or education, for example. As necessary as these responses are, they fall tragically short. It’s also necessary to meet this reversal with another kind of reversal.
Against a radically disrupting, deconstructing, and dismantling force like Trumpism, the Christian response should be also about re-constructing. In other words, against this politically driven effort of dismantling a shared sense of truth and facts, there should be a religious effort to reconstruct truth. This is a tall order because in the last few decades the attempt to defend Christianity from the temptations of power has expressed itself in deconstruction. The current Catholic polycrisis stems from an ecclesiastical hierarchy in which some of its most prominent members have made a habit of lying or dismissing facts—whether about the abuse crisis, the role of women in the Church, or any other issue.
The question now is: what other public voice do Catholics have that can be trusted as a truth-telling institution at this moment? In this time of neo-imperial powers, I suspect that the Catholic Church is the best anti-empire — warts and all — that we have.
It’s not about crafting a cynically updated old-style Catholic apologetics trying to defend or justify all the church has done and does, all the church has said and says. I certainly would not be able or willing to do it. It’s rather about entertaining the idea that it’s time to reconstruct some trust in the church as a “we”: not in terms of blind loyalty to the hierarchy, but of trust in the ability of Christian thought to look at reality with necessary depth and radicality. What it takes now, is a commitment against a moral barbarousness of which Trumpism is one of the boldest and most tempting incarnations.
One very immediate question is for those with roles of responsibility in the church — clergy, theologians, catechists, and all Catholics. If this is a time of resistance, and I think it is, some demanding choices will have to be made in terms of combating this violent undermining of truth with trusting agencies that claim to have something true to tell. It’s an act of conversion that comes before taking a political position.
The second question concerns the leadership of the church—not just the clergy. Is it genuinely committed to truth-telling, or is its priority to sugarcoat reality, risking any chance of regaining Catholics’ trust? What we have seen in recent years is the normalization of systematic falsehood in public discourse and the church has a central role in combating it. Pope Francis, with his February 11, letter to the U.S. bishops, gave us an example worth following.
Republished with permission by La Croix International.
