SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS LEFT FLIPPING OUT
The difference between the secular and religious Left is infinitesimal—they have more in common than what separates them. The latest example is the positive response from Americans United for Separation of Church and State to the election of Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York City, and the negative response from the National Catholic Reporter to J.D. Vance’s defense of ICE.
Americans United was founded in the 1940s as an expressly anti-Catholic organization. The Reporter is a dissident paper founded in the 1960s that rejects the Church’s teachings on marriage, the family and sexuality.
Americans United never gets excited when a Catholic, Protestant or Jew takes office, but now that Mamdani is running New York, they are in a state of eudemonia. Why are they so happy? Because he has no use for Catholics or Jews? That’s not what they say, but they sure don’t hold him accountable for his bigotry.
Mamdani represents religious diversity, they say, which is why they are so glad. Actually, there is little evidence that he is a practicing Muslim—he rejects many core Islamic teachings. No matter, anything that departs from our Judeo-Christian roots is something Americans United likes, and that explains why they heralded his decision to take the oath of office twice—on two different Qurans.
What is fascinating about Americans United is its discovery of anti-religious bigotry. This needs to be qualified: it has never complained about anti-Catholic bigotry, and has indeed been a major contributor to it. The only anti-religious bigotry it objects to is not even bigotry—it objects to criticism of Muslim politicians such as Mamdani, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
What a lousy choice. None of their heroes has condemned the October 7, 2023 slaughter of 1,200 innocent Jewish men, women and children. Indeed, Mamdani blamed Israel, not Hamas. Omar and Tlaib have a long record of incendiary comments bashing America and Israel, and Ellison recently justified the invasion of a Christian church by anti-ICE zealots.
The Reporter is up in arms over Vice President J.D. Vance for criticizing the maniacs who have taken to the streets of Minneapolis trying to stop law enforcement from doing their job. It never once addressed the root cause of the controversy, namely the decision by President Biden to allow 15 million people to crash our borders, taking advantage of our schools, hospitals and welfare system, some of whom have murdered, raped and robbed.
Astonishingly, Vance is slammed for criticizing those agitators who are doxing ICE agents, as if it is okay to publicly identify where these men and women live. Worse, their family members are being outed as well, setting the table for harassment, or worse. And the Reporter has the gall to condemn Vance for choosing MAGA over Jesus. No, he is choosing to do his job, and that has nothing to do with rejecting Jesus.
The Reporter is delighted to quote a woman who called Alex Pretti a “martyr of charity.” Was he expressing his charity when he spat at ICE agents and smashed their trucks a few days before he was shot? We know that when he was shot he bought a gun to the “protest” and was carrying 63 bullets. Was he there to do charitable work? Whether or not he should have been shot will be determined by an investigation, but it is downright absurd to call him a martyr. He was an agitator who sought a confrontation with law enforcement.
“It is time for Catholics to choose who our master is. Do we serve Donald Trump? Or do we serve Jesus?” Too bad they didn’t ask Catholics that question when Biden was promoting abortion, disparaging marriage, sanctioning child-abuse (e.g., transgender operations on minors), and encouraging illegal aliens to invade the United States.
Americans United and the National Catholic Reporter are cut from the same cloth. Their allegiance is not to religious liberty—it is to a radical agenda that undermines the moral foundations of American society. If only they were honest about their true intentions, they could at least be admired for that. But they fail on that count as well.