A Lapsed Catholic’s Sunday Bible Study
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
Hello, I’m Rayne, and I’m a lapsed Catholic. I fell away from the Church over a period of time, beginning roughly with the Reagan years and the uptick in Christian fundamentalism’s influence on politics.
It didn’t happen all at once but I finally had enough when the Church became little more than a crypto-fascist mouthpiece for right-wing ideology, focusing almost exclusively on anti-abortion efforts instead of what I was taught were Christ’s teachings.
And yet more than 10 years of Catholic catechism shaped my values and morals, underpinning my Democratic identity. In hindsight I don’t think I left the Church so much as it left me.
Perhaps I should have nailed a thesis to the the Church’s doors in protest but when the entire Church has been subsumed by a political movement, it didn’t occur to me as an effective option.
Now we may need to figuratively nail a thesis on fellow American Christian citizens who’ve lost their way. They have forgotten altogether what Christ taught while forcing on us their corrupt vision of a white Christian nation.
If a nation is truly Christian, it’s not identified as white; the supremacy of whiteness is not what Christ taught. It’s certainly not what I was taught.
From Matthew 22:35-39, the New Testament, King James Version:
35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
During catechism, instructors elaborated on how we must love ourselves as we are the Creator’s handiwork; to love God as commanded means loving His works as well.
And loving His works meant to love our fellow humans because they too, were God’s handiworks.
You can see where I’m going, of course. What the Trump administration does is a rejection of what I’ve understood to be God’s commandments.
Not just the top two commandments, but so many other teachings from both the Old and New Testament representing the core of Christianity:
Old Testament
Exodus 12:49
The same law applies both to the native-born and to the foreigner residing among you.Exodus 22:21
You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.Exodus 23:9
Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.Leviticus 23:22
When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the LORD your God.Leviticus 24:22
You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.Leviticus 25:35
Now in case a countryman of yours becomes poor and his means with regard to you falter, then you are to sustain him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you.Deuteronomy 10:18
He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.Deuteronomy 10:19
And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.Deuteronomy 15:7-11
“If there is a poor man with you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns in your land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother;Deuteronomy 24:14
Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns.Deuteronomy 27:19
Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow. Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”Zechariah 7:10
and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.New Testament
Matthew 25:35-46
For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink?3 John 1:5
Beloved, you are acting faithfully in whatever you accomplish for the brethren, and especially when they are strangers;James 1:27
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.Galatians 3:28
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.Hebrews 13:2
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.
I don’t know how any Christian can have learned these tenets and not objected strenuously to Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and the funding of ICE as his personal anti-immigration militia.
Immigrants are strangers, travelers from foreign lands, asylum seekers looking for aid and justice. Christians haven’t been told to segregate the legal from illegal when it comes to treatment of immigrants; they have been told repeatedly to treat immigrants with kindness and generousity because all humans are ultimately the descendents of immigrants.
I thought of that last verse from Hebrews in particular after learning ICE shot a pastor in the face at the ICE detention facility in Broadview, IL.
I thought of Hebrews 13:2 again when ICE turned away interfaith clerics who came to administer communion to the faithful in detention two weeks ago.
And ICE has been harassing Catholic faithful by menacing them outside Chicago-area churches.
It doesn’t matter if Christian clerics representing the faith have appeared to protest ICE’s abuses and Trump’s immigration policies, let alone administer to the faithful. How much closer to an obvious an angel does one have to be for Trump and ICE to halt the perversion of Christ’s teachings these so-called white Christian nationalists are forcing on fellow humans?
It’s obvious Trump would have no compunction about shooting an angel in the face on Fifth Avenue given his administration’s policies and actions.
Even a lapsed Catholic like me finds the Trump adminstration’s behaviors decidedly un-Christian. It makes me think of yet another lesson I learned during catechism:
James 2:14-26
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. …
Deeds not words. Attacking immigrants is far from demonstrating Christian faith.
Three things:
— Peterr, feel free to instruct me if you think I’ve gotten something wrong here.
— I may have cited from multiple versions of the Bible. There are differences in translation related to certain words like stranger versus foreigner versus traveler, so on. See commandment number two; all humans are your neighbors.
— I have at least one other Bible study bit I’m stewing on because the above chapters and verses are only a portion of the teachings from which Team Trump’s vision of a Christian nation veers hard away from Christ’s teachings and Christian tenets.
ADDER: this post was a response to Ed Walker’s discussion items in his post, Examples Of Not-Free People.
Looks good to me, Rayne. Let me add three thoughts . . .
1) With regard to your first blockquote, In the parallel story to this told in Luke’s gospel (Luke 10: 25ff.), the exchange between the lawyer and Jesus doesn’t end with “love your neighbor as yourself.” Instead, the lawyer makes the mistake of asking a question he did not know the answer to: “Who is my neighbor?”
The answer given by Jesus is the parable of the Good Samaritan, where a priest and a Levite (think “respectable layperson”) both pass by the man who was beaten and left to die in a ditch. The Samaritan — a hated foreigner, heretic, and the epitome of all that is wrong with people (from the Jewish perspective) — tended the man, brought him to safety, and paid to have him lodged and cared for. The hero is the most unlikely person, as he embodies all that a pious Jew of that day would disdain.
I preached on this years ago at an ecumenical community worship service, and to drive home how unlikely a hero Jesus had chosen, I retold it in modern terms with a pastor, president of the church council, and a trandsgender person as the three characters. After the sermon, one of the first people to greet me was the white father with his (presumably) adopted black daughter. Leaning in close, he whispered “Thanks – but I think you really pissed off most of the folks here.”
He was not wrong. Indeed, I was ghosted by the majority of the local ministerial alliance after that.
2) In recent months, I have seen a big uptick among my local Lutheran colleagues in their willingness to speak out publicly, echoing much of what you have said here. I have seen the laypeople from various Lutheran churches coming out for various protests and rallies around KC, and not just the outspoken folks who’ve been doing this for years. I’m talking about little old ladies who tell me that at 80 years old, this is their first protest. I’m talking about younger couples with their kids in tow, who say they *had* to speak up somehow, and they were pleased to see me in my collar, even if their pastor was not there. “Tell your pastor you were here,” I reply, “and maybe you can show them that if they are afraid that folks won’t like it because “it’s politics,” maybe they need to rethink what they believe “folks” actually think.
3) Most Christian nationalists haven’t read the Bible. They read or listen to nationalists who sprinkle their writings with scripture, twisted and misrepresented almost beyond recognition. I’ve studied (and continue to study) the “Deutsche Christen” – the German Christians of the Nazi era, who were much much more German than Christian — and Trump’s minions sound more and more like 1930s Germany every day.
Thanks, Peterr. It was Ed’s reference to the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) which triggered this post.
I hope more laypeople come out to protest, but we’re now being called to do more. It will be difficult for some to show up if they’re struggling with food insecurity, for example.
Rescuing “Bluebeard’s last wife” — America’s version of “Good Germans” and “Deutsche Christen” who fall for the Trumpian prosperity gospel — will be a continuing challenge. I don’t know if my catechism will be strong enough to get through this but as always I remember we need deeds not words.
Peterr, re: your continung study of the Deutche Christen there is a book by John Cornwell titled Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII that may be of value. While Catholicism is a probably a subset of your study, it has a fascinating discussion of what the Catholic Church was trying to preserve in Germany under the guidance of Eugenio Pacelli (PIus XII) before and during his time as the pope.
There is another book that others as well might be interested in: Catherine Nixey’s book The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World. It is an eye-opening account of Christian ascension in world affairs.
I am familiar with but have not read Cornwall’s book, and my sense from the various scholarly reactions to it is that he overstated certain things in making his points about Pacelli/Pius. A short review from a Jewish perspective that gets into some of this this can be found here.
My interest in this is not so much about Pius and the German bishops (Catholic and Lutheran alike) and more about ordinary parish pastors, priests, and especially laypeople.
“I don’t know how any Christian can have learned these tenets and not objected strenuously to Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and the funding of ICE as his personal anti-immigration militia.”
You’ve answered your own (implied) question. The difference between you and those people is that you gave up the claim rather than use it falsely for your own purposes.
AMEN!
The fundies tend to believe that faith is all you need – but they never seem to check their beliefs against what Jesus told them to do. (NB: Black churches are different in this.)
Rayne, I’m not Peterr (and that’s my loss), but I have tripped over at least a couple of Bible editions focused on justice, including treatment of the poor.
Without linking to Amazon, one can find “Contemporary English Version Poverty & Justice Bible” and “God’s Justice Bible: The Flourishing of Creation and the Destruction of Evil” using a nearby search engine of your choice.
I can only vouch for the first one (I own it), but it’s not the only such edition on the planet.
I think the problem with asking about the unChristian attitude of the right wing is that they seem to derive their theology from Calvin, with his ideas of the elect and predestination. If they are already deemed saved by god, it doesn’t matter what they do, as they have already been chosen, while the rest are relegated to damnation, so they can be treated how they wish, because god has turned away from them.
Calvinism doesn’t explain the behavior of SCOTUS’ right-wing Catholic justices.
I was thinking more of the evangelical base with this comment.
For all his faults, Calvin was closer to the original message than the Prosperity Gospel people.
My pithy comment, is that christofascists must have some extra verses on this section:
Matthew 4:8-11 American Standard Version (ASV)
Again, the devil taketh him unto an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and he said unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him; and behold, angels came and ministered unto him.
They have 11a, where they were standing by Jesus, and when he turned the Devil down, they asked if they could get the same deal.
ms. Rayne, thank you. as a lapsed Episcopalian, I fully agree. for years as an altar boy at the early mass, I only heard about love, and serving others.
[Welcome to emptywheel. Please choose and use a unique username with a minimum of 8 letters. We adopted this minimum standard to support community security. Because your username is too short, your username will be temporarily changed to match the date/time of your first known comment until you have a new compliant username. /~Rayne]
That’s got to be from the Trump Bible.
And Catholics have taken over the Supreme Court (presumably because they can be relied upon to be anti-choice).
That. SCOTUS’ right-wing Catholics exemplify the Church that left me back in the 1980s. They appear to have blown off Pope Francis and now Pope Leo though they have punctured the separation of church and state.
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.
Whenever he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.
Yes, that, though I like not only Matthew 7:15 but verse 16 as well:
Makes me think of Stafford Beer’s aphorism: A system’s purpose is what it does.
What fruits are Team trump producing? That’s their purpose.
As for John 8:44, the entire verse is worth chewing on —
Paints the extrajudicial execution of Venezuelans and Colombians on the ocean in a different light.
Somrthing very similar to the warning in Matthew also exists in the Didache (‘teachings’ IIRC) which predates the written Gospels (IIRC) and therefore provides proof that the concept of excessively phony religiousity was known from the beginning. This isn’t surprising given how well the Apostles knew the Sadducees and Pharisees.
A simple point which our pastor made many times. When Jesus returned (and resurrection is a whole nother complicated business) he didn’t gather the twelve and say – “Right. Those bastards strung me up, so we’re going to mess ’em up good and make ’em suffer.” He fed the twelve with a fish fry on the beach, and he said, go out and spread the word, that is, spread those two grand commandments.
Thank you, Rayne. A great read…. Especially the citations and quoted texts.
Religion’s claim to absolute authority continues to be used by corrupt entities for endorsement, ‘blessings’ and mutually reinforcing claims to control.
There is great humility and compassion in forgiving the crypto criminals. Go forth, and sin no more.
Ah yes, Matthew 21:12-13 —
I am picturing Christ entering this white Christian nation’s Epstein Memorial Ballroom to flip the tables on the cryptocurrency fascists gathered in what is supposed to be the People’s House.
Great read, Rayne and hat tip to PeterRR for “The Good Samaritan” parable.
J D Vance and both Pope Francis and Pope Leo have had an indirect colloquy on the subject of who is the “Neighbor” in “Love Thy Neighbor”, with both popes correcting JD Vance’s doctrinal error of prioritizing love depending on proximity and nationality.
A great discussion of the history of prioritizing love can be found in an essay by UCLA history professor John Connelly published in the Washington Post on May 19, 2025: “Pope Leo Teaches A Lesson from Jesus That J D Vance Should Listen To”. Essentially the restrictive notion of prioritizing love based on proximity and nationality had developed over the years. It was used by German Catholic prelates to justify looking the other way during the Holocaust. The Catholic Church under Pope Paul VI recognized the error of that thinking after the war and made it clear that prioritization was not Church doctrine. Now the parable of “The Good Samaritan” for Catholics is used to show that “Neighbor” can be strangers or foreigners.
The Western tradition of treating strangers well is long. The myth of “Philemon and Baucis” is one of several that show that treating strangers well can yield surprisingly good results. The stranger at the door may just be a god in disguise. Similarly, kicking the stranger can result in curses from the disguised god.
The US doesn’t have infinite resources to care for the physical needs of all the strangers of the world but that doesn’t come close to justifying the restrictive priorities of the “Christian” nationalists nor their cruelty.
PS I don’t think of myself as a lapsed Catholic. I just don’t go to mass (except in other countries) or to confession. I do miss falling asleep during sermons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0A4SJoYv5s
No worries. Mrs. Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian has it all figured out!