Their critics call them Maga Catholics. Others label them as traditionalists, even fundamentalists. What is certain is that conservative or “faithful” Catholics, as they prefer to be known, seem to be everywhere at this time, from the new candidate for the United States ambassador to the Holy See to celebrate dinners and sentence services. This little but fervent wave of conservative Catholicism is exploiting throughout the country, more visible than ever while they celebrate their resurrection victory this Easter Sunday.
On March 19, Who’s Who of the New Catholics appeared in Mar-A-Lago for the second consecutive year. The event showed the direct connection between these groups, the Trump administration and the Maga Movement.
In Mar-A-Lago was Eduardo Verastegui, a fervent Catholic activist and former Mexican soap that became a successful Hollywood filmmaker, along with Taylor Marshall, the Anglican priest at once became a Catholic podcaster, and Joseph Strickland, the former bishop of Tyler, Texas.
“Our true love for the Lord is the opposite of liabilities. And he will create jealous warriors.” John C. YEP said, CEO of Catholics for Catholics, who was the host of the Mar-A-Lago event. Formally known as the Catholic Prayer Gala for America, the meeting has attracted high -profile converts such as Vice President JD Vance along with actors such as Shia Lebouf and Rob Schneider (both of Jewish origin), and Tammy Roberts Peterson, wife of the reputation of the fame of fame of fame.
During most of the last century, lay Catholics were seen as a shy cluster that silently adhered to conventional politics and society. But that changed the duration of the Covid pandemic, when the radical leftist groups prohibit public attacks on the church doctrine and the Ideology of Tranger were increasingly promoted in primary schools. A blessed reaction, and leaders like YEP and their conservative flock were ready for it. “This movement represents the common man and the well -known VIP,” YEP said. “It resonates with the Americans who love this nation.”
Rod Dreher, former New York writer and author of religion -centered books as “the Benedict option,” he said he sees the new Catholic conservatives as more pragmatic than previous traditionalist groups, which were intentionally inclined but less roots. But newcomers in no way avoid becoming politicians.
“A more normal and middle -class Christianity form could be well when culture is basically stable,” said Dreher, “but the madness that began in 2020, Floyd’s summer, the normalization of the transgender, many people think
No figure better symbolizes this new Catholic conservatism that Vice President Vance, who became the Catholic faith in 2019 and looks like a model to follow for the new wave of Catholicism. It was Dreher, a confidant from Vance for a long time, who originally presented the Dominican priest to the vice president who baptized him to Catholicism.
Vance has openly talked about the power and meaning of his conversion. Writing in the Catholic magazine The Lamp, in its edition of Easter 2020, he said: “I had to pray more, participate in the sacramental life of the Church, confess and reproduce publicly, regardless of how much tremor it is, being and being, being. Catholic, not simply thinking about it.”
Like many other conservative Christian organizations, the key objectives of groups such as Catholics for Catholics, YEP said, is to defend the Church and the country against Hardcore leftist ideologies while stimulating the Catholic vote and the Pro-LIF. His mission is to be a religious version of a fast response command, ready to defend his faith.
In June 2023, for example, the Los Angeles Dodgers honored the sisters of perpetual indulgence, a self -denominated “main egg order of the queer and trans nuns”, one night of pride, an annual LGBT baseball game with LGBT theme.
Believing that the sisters were making fun of their faith, Catholics for Catholics gathered short believers in just days that protested outside the Dodger stadium, praying rosaries and holding banners with signs such as anti -attack hate. “(” Save Christ, the King! “).
The public exhibition demonstrated a marked change of typical Catholic policy. Charles A. Coucombe, a Catholic writer of Los Angeles and author of “Vicars of Christ”, who tells the life of the 266 potatoes, said that historically the American Catholic Church, directed by the bishops, has maintained an agreement and politicians without speaking and curious agreements and curious agreements and curious of the Egtailanes and Curityans and Curiosity EG. Egtailans and Curityt.
The roots of the pact date back to more than half a century, when John F. Kennedy, who would become the first Catholic president, told the Houston Ministerial Association in 1960 that his behavior would never allow his faith.
“That speech was really the Declaration of Rights of the Catholic politic who wanted to feel that he was Catholic without saying anything, without taking the accounts that our religion demands us, that we are politicians or spaywright, Way Paartombes, Counkters said
Such a conciliatory accommodation position was a form of “sale”, an attempt to mix with society and government. Ultimately, however, this could not serve the nation or the Catholics, coulombe added.
Even so, not everyone in the Church are fans of the new Catholic traditionalism. One of his greatest detractors is none other than Pope Francis, the former bishop of Buenos Aires that the Papacy assumed in 2013. The Pope, for example, seemed to criticize the conservative young people in 2015 when he said that the family “” “at the end of 2023, the Pope also stirred the traditionalists when he declined that the Church would begin blessing Catholics in relations with the same Ox-Stex.
In addition, the Pope has been critical of the “Latin mass” arc-transitional, the ornate mass, highly ritualized, full of incense only Latin that defined Catholicism until the 1960 Excessive, with many merchants who have adopted the old form of worship.
Mike Lewis, the founding editor of WHERE PETER, a progressive online Catholic magazine, said there are numerous conservative Catholics in a state of opposition to Francis for his progressive points of view.
“They have attacked man for eight years, but what they did not realize is that the real Pope, even if he does not like the authority of the Pope, has the authority in the Catholic Church,” Lewis said.
Jesse Romero, former deputy of the Sheriff of the Los Angeles County who is a popular Podcaster and Catholic author, described Francis as one of the most ineffective potatoes in history. And this has led young Catholics, like Americans of all religions, to seek a return to traditionalism.
“Now that we have a more literate Catholic population, it is seeing that people who are arriving along the ranks are orthodox Catholics,” Romero said.
Similar to Catholics for Catholics, Catholicvote, a non -profit organization based in Madison, Wisconsin, works mainly on the electoral front to advance the conservative causes.
Duration The presidential elections, for example, the organization sent to the field workers all swing states and 5,000 volunteers to help the Trump Valencia ticket to obtain the Catholic vote, said Joshua Mercer, vice president of the organization. They succeeded.
“We feel the need to have an organization to be the voice for Catholics in the name of pro-life life, family and religious freedom,” said Mercer. “Catholics must have a seat on the table on all issues.”
In what many conservatives believe that it is a great victory to ensure that seat, this month the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the hero confirmation hearings for Brian Burch, 49, president of Catholicvote and a father or nine, for the ambassador position at the Holy See. They believe that with Burch they have had one of theirs in the heart of the church.
Veronica Flamenco, a 9 -year -old communications graduate that emigrated to Los Angeles since El Salvador two decades ago, personifies the new conservative Catholic Latina. Now a member of Catholics for Catholics and living in Phoenix, Flamenco believes that Hispanics are particularly vulnerable to the awakened ideologies that are feeding the emergence of the Catholic right.
For more than a century, Catholics have the second largest religious body in the country. According to the United States Census, one third of the 61.9 million Catholics, such as flamenco, are Latin.
Flamenco admitted that Trump has its defects, but pointed out that she agrees with him on matters such as illegal immigration. She is productive aligned with the president, when she said that many undocumented Central American women ran the risk of being raped or killed when crossing the American border without papers. By helping Catholics, he is helping Latinas, he said.
“In spite of everything, we believe he is a man who can help us move forward, instead of back,” Flamenco said. “We feel that Trump and Vance are allies of our cause.”
Joseph Treviño is a journalist based in Arizona and author of the novel “The Wolfress.“