Donald Trump may be struggling to win over white suburban women and Black women, but he has some fans among Catholic nuns. Here is a taste of Elle Hardy’s piece at Unherd:
Bespectacled and berobed, a softly spoken nun may seem an unlikely figurehead for the hard-Right of American politics — but Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God isn’t just any nun. With her broadsides against liberalism, President Biden, and Satan’s hold on the media, she is a fitting representative for the conservative turn of fringe Catholicism in the United States.
Last month, unconsecrated nun Rosalind Moss, as the Vatican would have her, was praised by Texas Governor and practising Catholic Greg Abbott for supporting what has become the holiest of causes for Republicans: the re-election of Donald Trump. “Across the globe, men and women are waking up to the alarming truth that governments no longer serve God and the people,” Moss said in her weekly broadcast on the Catholic Media Network, simulcast on Facebook. “If President Trump gets in, it’s a complete act of God,” she continued. “We are up against not just an election, but an absolute war for good against evil.”
Mother Miriam, a Jewish-turned-evangelical-turned-Catholic convert who wears a full nun’s habit, claims to have been kicked out of two dioceses, and had her vows cancelled by one bishop and denied by three others. Yet this has only increased the size of her pulpit among a reactionary coalition of defrocked. Joining her in the “Nuns for Trump” crusade are The Dominican Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a disavowed Michigan “order” of anti-socialist activists, and Ohio-based Children of Mary, who have attended rallies wearing MAGA masks.
Not to be outdone, in 2020 Wisconsin priest Father James Altman went viral with a YouTube video stating that “you cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat”, warning that those who were would “face the fires of hell” with “60 million aborted babies standing at the gates of heaven barring your Democrat entrance”. Altman was subsequently stripped of his duties, but gained the support of prominent Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland, who was himself removed from his post late last year by Pope Francis, reportedly after calling him the “usurper of Peter’s chair”.
Suffice it to say that the vision of God promoted by these extremist figures differs widely from that worshipped by the Pope, who has been critical of the exploitative nature of global capitalism, and even declared that, in a “sociological” way, “I am a communist, and so too is Jesus”. But despite their fundamentalism, the views of these consecrated influencers still speak to a broader shift among American Catholics. Although the White House is now occupied by a mass-going Catholic, his co-religionists have lurched dramatically to the Right. Joe Biden might be a Catholic, but in this febrile political climate, he is not Catholic enough.
Read the rest here.