Forum: Well, Well, Well: It’s decision Time!
Published 1:30 am Saturday, April 18, 2026
HERALD FORUM | Who are Catholics going to follow?
I must admit, when Donald Trump ran for President, I was shocked that so many of my fellow Catholics voted for him. Especially after the infamous Hollywood Tapes, where he openly admitted to sexually abusing women on a regular basis: “You know, when you’re famous, they let you do it.” But, he did promise them he would end abortion: which in reality he just muddled up more; like everything else he has done.
It has always fascinated me how we can get so wound up about “someone else’s so-called sin” but blind to my own. Say, I think I recall a Christian Scripture passage pointing that temptation out.
My entire adult life, I have listened to a particular element of the Catholic Church derogatorily describe their fellow Catholics who held more “liberal” convictions on certain elements of Catholic beliefs as “Cafeteria Catholics.”
When the late Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen came forcefully out against the Trident nuclear base, the more “conservative” elements of the Catholic population went ballistic, even to the point of writing letters to the sitting Pope demanding the Archbishop’s head. It was rumored at the time that the sitting President whose Secretary of The Navy was Catholic, dispatched the Navy Secretary to Rome to demand that the Pope reign in the “radical, communist, left-wing” Archbishop. Which the Pope attempted to accomplish.
For me personally, it was truly disheartening to once again witness so many of my fellow Catholics vote for someone who, in my opinion, does not reflect Christian values at all: especially since we all witnessed what he really was like the first time around.
Now here we are: mired down in another war of death and destruction, where the current resident of the White House has threatened the use of the very weapons of mass destruction Archbishop Hunthausen warned against. Running up billions of dollars in National debt, while claiming at the same time we now can’t afford those pesky social programs for “the undeserving”.
I don’t get it? We can afford to spend billions on futile wars of adventure, but can’t instead, afford to spend money on health care?
I don’t think it’s an accident that the current Pope is American-born. Only growing up in the American experience can equip someone to genuinely critique our national missteps.
So here we are at another crossroad of history in the American experiment.
The question facing those of us who call ourselves Catholics, who are we going to take our moral direction from? A man who has consistently demonstrated a disdain for “Christian values”, except to get votes or sell merchandise (Trump Bibles); or a man who actually, daily lives a life guided by those “Christian values”.
It’s always easier for us to see the “sliver in someone else’s eye”, especially when it comes to those below-the-belt issues, but it’s far more challenging and difficult to see “the plank” in our own eye, especially when it comes to one’s own prejudices.
So from one “Cafeteria Catholic” to another, who are you going to follow?
Deacon Phil O’Loane lives in Arlington.
