Frank Pavone tweets support for Trump’s racist attack on AOC and Squad.

atience; I’ll get to that tweet present­ly. But first things first. At a gen­er­al Audi­ence in 1993, Pope St. John Paul II deliv­ered a cat­e­ch­esis enti­tled “Priests Do Not Have a Polit­i­cal Mis­sion.” (For those who don’t know, a cat­e­ch­esis of the pope dur­ing a gen­er­al audi­ence is part of the ordi­nary Mag­is­teri­um of the Church. It belongs to the pope’s teach­ing author­i­ty.) The entire text is worth read­ing, but here are a few high­lights:

Jesus nev­er want­ed to be involved in a polit­i­cal move­ment, and fled from every attempt to draw him into earth­ly ques­tions and affairs (cf. Jn 6:15). The king­dom he came to estab­lish does not belong to this world (cf. Jn 18:36). For this rea­son he said to those who want­ed him to take a stand regard­ing the civ­il pow­er: ‘Give to Cae­sar what belongs to Cae­sar and to God what belongs to God’ (Mt 22:21). …

[T]he role of priests in social and polit­i­cal action is not iden­ti­cal to that of the laity. This is said more clear­ly in the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, where we read: “It is not the role of the pas­tors of the Church to inter­vene direct­ly in the polit­i­cal struc­tur­ing and orga­ni­za­tion of social life. This task is part of the voca­tion of the lay faith­ful, act­ing on their own ini­tia­tive with their fel­low cit­i­zens” (CCC 2442). …

Fol­low­ing Christ, the priest is more direct­ly con­cerned with the growth of God’s king­dom. Like Jesus, he must renounce involve­ment in polit­i­cal activ­i­ty, espe­cial­ly by not tak­ing sides (which almost inevitably hap­pens). Thus he will remain a man for all in terms of broth­er­hood and, to the extent that he is accept­ed as such, of spir­i­tu­al father­hood. …

In par­tic­u­lar, he will keep in mind that a polit­i­cal par­ty can nev­er be iden­ti­fied with the truth of the Gospel, and there­fore, unlike the Gospel, it can nev­er become an object of absolute loy­al­ty. …

It should be added that the [priest’s] right to express his own per­son­al choic­es is lim­it­ed by the require­ments of his priest­ly min­istry. This lim­i­ta­tion too can be an aspect of the pover­ty he is called to prac­tice fol­low­ing Christ’s exam­ple. In fact, he can some­times be oblig­ed to abstain from exer­cis­ing his own right so that he can be a strong sign of uni­ty, and thus pro­claim the Gospel in its full­ness. …

 

[And here’s the key part:]

 

In their gen­er­ous ser­vice to the gospel ide­al, some priests feel drawn to polit­i­cal involve­ment in order to help more effec­tive­ly in reform­ing polit­i­cal life and in elim­i­nat­ing injus­tices, exploita­tion, and every type of oppres­sion. The Church reminds them that on this road it is easy to be caught in par­ti­san strife, with the risk of help­ing not to bring about the just world for which they long, but new and worse ways of exploit­ing poor peo­ple. In any case they must know that they have nei­ther the mis­sion nor the charism from above for this polit­i­cal involve­ment and activism.

PAVONE’S DESECRATIONS

Fr. Pavone angered many peo­ple in 2016, when he took a dead fetus and put it up on an altar and filmed a cam­paign com­mer­cial for Don­ald Trump. As I point­ed out then, this was in vio­la­tion of Canon 1239. Canon 1239 says: “An altar, whether fixed or mov­able, is to be reserved for divine wor­ship alone, to the exclu­sion of any sec­u­lar usage.” I said Fr. Pavone should have his fac­ul­ty to say Mass sus­pend­ed. Many peo­ple called or wrote his dio­cese and asked his bish­op to do some­thing to dis­ci­pline Fr. Pavone. The dio­cese of Amar­il­lo, Texas, said they would inves­ti­gate. In the end, the dio­cese did noth­ing. So it goes. It appears it is not in the habit of bish­ops to do any­thing to address cor­rup­tion and malfea­sance among the cler­gy. Yet they dare to won­der why Catholics are leav­ing the Church.

And so now it is three years lat­er, and Fr. Pavone is still act­ing less like a priest of Jesus Christ and more like a shill of Don­ald Trump. With no shame, or fear of reprisal from his bish­op, Fr. Pavone freely posts pic­tures like this on his Face­book page:

His Twit­ter feed is glut­ted with pro­pa­gan­da in sup­port of Mr. Trump. In one tweet, he denies that we need to help migrants at the bor­der so long as abor­tion con­tin­ues to be legal. (That is not what the Church teach­es.) In anoth­er, he says that what he did dur­ing the 2016 election—I assume he means his stunt with the dead fetus—was jus­ti­fied because it got us SCOTUS nom­i­nees like Brett Kavanaugh. (Nev­er mind that St. John Paul II taught that Con­se­quen­tial­ism is a heresy. The ends do not jus­ti­fy the means.) The USCCB has rules that for­bid polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy by priests. Thus not only is it illic­it that Fr. Pavone be so deeply involved in such advo­ca­cy, but he defies the teach­ing of Pope St. John Paul II, as well as the U.S. bish­ops, who have said that we must wel­come migrants and treat them just­ly. One bish­op even sug­gest­ed the Church with­hold com­mu­nion from Catholic politi­cians who sup­port Trump’s bor­der poli­cies.

Would that include remov­ing the fac­ul­ty to say Mass from a priest who sup­ports them?

And now Fr. Pavone tweets these fist-pump­ing words:

God bless the men & women of ICE as they do their job today & every day enforc­ing our laws. Let’s not for­get that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was called “Deporter in Chief” in 2012. What did we learn in grade school about the exec­u­tive branch of gov­ern­ment? They enforce the law! #ICEraids!

Giv­en that the Church has long taught that an unjust law is no law at all, Fr. Pavone’s appeal to the law here is still one more defi­ance of teach­ing he is oblig­at­ed as a priest to defend. Pavone would rather defend his idol Trump and the ICE raids than Catholic doc­trine.

Does Fr. Pavone for­get that abor­tion is the law? Should Trump fund Planned Par­ent­hood in fur­ther­ance of the law? Slav­ery was the law. Seg­re­ga­tion was the law. The killing of Jews in Nazi Ger­many was the law. Herod’s mur­der of the inno­cents was the law. But we must car­ry out the law, the law, the law. No king but Cae­sar.

(Inci­den­tal­ly, on Pavone’s staff at Priests for Life is Alve­da King, niece of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Did­n’t Dr. King write a let­ter from the Birm­ing­ham jail about how an unjust law is no law at all, and defend­ing his moral right to defy it?)

The U.S. bish­ops have con­demned the ICE raids, so Fr. Pavone defies the bish­ops in this too. As ear­ly as Jan­u­ary 2016, the USCCB called for an end to depor­ta­tion raids. (Yes, this was dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion.) They said it again in May of the same year. Then, on June 22 of this year the USCCB said:

We rec­og­nize the right of nations to con­trol their bor­ders in a just and pro­por­tion­ate man­ner. How­ev­er, broad enforce­ment actions insti­gate pan­ic in our com­mu­ni­ties and will not serve as an effec­tive deter­rent to irreg­u­lar migra­tion. Instead, we should focus on the root caus­es in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca that have com­pelled so many to leave their homes in search of safe­ty and reform our immi­gra­tion sys­tem with a view toward jus­tice and the com­mon good. We stand ready to work with the Admin­is­tra­tion and Con­gress to achieve those objec­tives.

The last I checked, Catholic priests in this coun­try are under the author­i­ty of the U.S. bish­ops. They’re under the author­i­ty of the pope too, and in Evan­geli­um Vitae, John Paul II named depor­ta­tion as an offense against the gospel of life. By his shame­less and loud sup­port of an action the bish­ops have called inef­fec­tive and unjust, Fr. Pavone defies the suc­ces­sors of the apos­tles (and the suc­ces­sor of Peter). That is action unbe­com­ing a priest, and he ought to be dis­ci­plined for it. He ought to be shut down from engag­ing in any pub­lic activ­i­ty; and he ought to be sent off some­where to live a life of prayer and penance.

CHEERLEADER FOR RACISM

But the worst was still to come. Fr. Pavone’s idol Don­ald Trump, for whom he has aban­doned Christ to shill, tweet­ed that Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashi­da Tlaib should leave the Unit­ed States and go back to their orig­i­nal coun­tries. Mr. Trump wrote Sun­day morn­ing:

So inter­est­ing to see “Pro­gres­sive” Demo­c­rat Con­gress­women, who orig­i­nal­ly came from coun­tries whose gov­ern­ments are a com­plete and total cat­a­stro­phe, the worst, most cor­rupt and inept any­where in the world (if they even have a func­tion­ing gov­ern­ment at all), now loud­ly and vicious­ly telling the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States, the great­est and most pow­er­ful Nation on earth, how our gov­ern­ment is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the total­ly bro­ken and crime infest­ed places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help bad­ly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nan­cy Pelosi would be very hap­py to quick­ly work out free trav­el arrange­ments!

This is dan­ger­ous nativist, racist rhetoric—leave and go back where you came from, and make it fast, schnell, schnell—and it has nev­er end­ed well.

What’s more, Trump’s facts are false, as they often are. (Pavone shills for a liar.) AOC was born in the Bronx. Tlaib is from Detroit. Omar is the only one of three who was not born in the U.S. (she’s from Soma­lia); but she’s lived here since she was ten and has been a cit­i­zen since she was sev­en­teen. They are all Amer­i­cans. The idea that some Amer­i­cans are not wel­come and should leave, because they are not white, because they are lib­er­als, is big­otry and racism. And it’s cer­tain­ly not some­thing a Catholic priest ought to be sup­port­ing.

But Alt! You’re assum­ing that because Pavone sup­ports Trump in gen­er­al he auto­mat­i­cal­ly sup­ports every­thing Trump says. You can’t do that!

Real­ly? Take a look. “Thank you, Mr. Pres­i­dent,” he respond­ed to Trump, “for refus­ing to stand for this non­sense.”

Let’s recall what St. John Paul II said about the dan­ger of priests becom­ing polit­i­cal­ly involved:

In their gen­er­ous ser­vice to the gospel ide­al, some priests feel drawn to polit­i­cal involve­ment in order to help more effec­tive­ly in reform­ing polit­i­cal life and in elim­i­nat­ing injus­tices, exploita­tion, and every type of oppres­sion. The Church reminds them that on this road it is easy to be caught in par­ti­san strife, with the risk of help­ing not to bring about the just world for which they long, but new and worse ways of exploit­ing poor peo­ple.

There is no bet­ter exam­ple of the truth of this than Fr. Frank Pavone. He start­ed out in “gen­er­ous ser­vice” to the idea that the unborn ought to be saved from abor­tion. And in his effort to achieve that goal, he sought to change hearts, and then laws. And then he sought to elect a politi­cian who promised to save babies. But then he got caught up in par­ti­san strife. By sup­port­ing Trump, he defiled a Catholic altar and became a shill, not a priest. He end­ed up sup­port­ing every­thing that Trump would say. And that has led him into sup­port­ing injus­tice against migrants and the poor and des­per­ate. And in this lat­est exam­ple he sup­ports a nativist attack on Amer­i­can cit­i­zens (includ­ing one Catholic, by the way) of a dif­fer­ent race than his own.

That is a large rea­son why the Church has told priests not to involve them­selves in polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy. Leave that to the laity. A priest is sup­posed to be anoth­er Christ. He is sup­posed to be a wit­ness to the Gospel to all men and women, of any polit­i­cal par­ty or no polit­i­cal par­ty, of any race, of any nation. A priest such as Pavone ends up becom­ing a wit­ness of an anti-gospel to white Repub­li­can racists only.

Just as big a prob­lem, how­ev­er, is that no bish­op has shut Pavone down. No bish­op has told him to pack it up. No bish­op has ordered him into a life of seclu­sion and prayer. And yet these same bish­ops won­der why peo­ple are leav­ing the Church and what they can do to bring them back. I have some ideas.

Fr. Pavone is far from the only priest whom polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy has dis­tort­ed beyond his abil­i­ty to wit­ness to the Gospel. But he’s one of the most promi­nent. And I mean the Gospel that says that in Christ there is nei­ther Jew nor Gen­tile. The Gospel that says there is no respect of per­sons with God. The Gospel that says we will be judged by whether or not we wel­comed the stranger, because to not wel­come the stranger is to turn Christ away. I was a stranger and you tweet­ed that I should go back where I came from.

Fr. Pavone is no longer wit­ness­ing to the Gospel, and he is no longer wit­ness­ing to the sacred­ness of all life. He is wit­ness­ing to the entire racist agen­da of his true christ, Trump. That’s not some­thing his bish­op ought to tol­er­ate. If he does tol­er­ate it, if he gives lip ser­vice to look­ing into it but does noth­ing, then I don’t want to hear any tears from the bish­ops about why Catholics are leav­ing the Church.

The last I heard, Fr. Pavone’s bish­op is Patrick Zurek of the dio­cese of Amar­il­lo, Texas. You can write or call Zurek. And you can pray that Fr. Pavone repents and believes the Gospel.