Phelim McAleer: Wave of abuse against Catholics in US, but they deserve the beating
It’s not easy being a Catholic in America at the moment. Everyone – or at least all the people who matter – seems to be having a go at us.
The left calls us reactionaries; the right calls us disloyal. And unfortunately, the wounds all seem to be self-inflicted, the direct result of my co-religionists’ bad behaviour.
There are now two very ugly and very prominent camps of Catholics in the United States. They don’t represent a lot of mainstream Catholicism, but they are loud enough to make it seem as if they speak for all of us.
On one side stand the extreme woke voices that dominate the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Vatican itself under Pope Leo XIV. Pope Leo has become particularly troublesome because he is the first American pope.
He has the ability to animate the mainstream media in a way that, only a few years ago, could hardly disguise its contempt for the religion. The relentless pro-immigration advocacy of the clergy, bishops, and pope – and their reflexive opposition to any military posture against Iran – reads less like prudent pastoral guidance and more like partisan activism.
They lecture the administration about “compassion” while ignoring the chaos at the border, the reality of immigrant crime, and the very real threats posed by a belligerent Tehran. Many Catholics in the pews hear these statements and cringe.
Non-Catholics hear them and conclude the Church is just another bunch of left-wing agitators.
On the other side are the self-styled Catholic traditionalists and their fellow travellers – figures like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes. They blame “the Jews” or “Zionist influence” for supposedly manipulating American foreign policy and “controlling” the president. They peddle the old trope that a shadowy cabal pulls the strings in Washington. It is toxic, it is false, and it is embarrassingly un-Christian. Yet some Catholics cheer it on, mistaking resentment and hunger for an audience, for courage.
The backlash has been predictable, and it has come straight from the top. President Trump, who once enjoyed broad Catholic support, has not been shy. He has repeatedly blasted the pope as “weak” and “terrible on foreign policy,” mocking the Church’s immigration sermons and its hand-wringing over Iran.
He has also turned his fire on Owens and others in the right-wing media ecosystem, accusing them of spreading division and antisemitic poison at the very moment he is trying to govern. The message from the president and his supporters is blunt: Catholic voices that undermine his agenda – whether from the open-borders left or the conspiracy-mongering right – will be treated as political enemies, not as moral authorities.
It could have been so different. After the 2024 election, everything looked so rosy. For decades - centuries, really – American Catholics had been reliable Democratic voters. Trump flipped that script. He won roughly 55 per cent of the Catholic vote, the best Republican performance in modern history. For the first time, a Catholic sits a heartbeat away from the presidency: JD Vance is vice president and a very devout Catholic. Catholics were thrilled with their new prominence and influence.
That influence was further bolstered by the most Catholic Supreme Court in history (it normally was a dour, Protestant institution dotted with a few whip-smart Jews). Now the court has six Catholics, and they are wearing their dogma loudly and proudly in a string of conservative judgments on abortion, religious liberty, and the culture wars. Trump had taken care of a lot of their concerns – delivering strong protections for the unborn and confronting the mental illness masquerading as transgenderism in schools, sports, and public policy. Catholic voters felt seen, valued, even triumphant. We had broken the old partisan mould. The future belonged to us.
We got cocky. Instead of gratitude and prudence, too many Catholics chose the left’s virtue-signalling on migrants or the right’s fevered Israel-bashing. The result is a storm of abuse we have not seen in generations. For the first time in modern America, I am noticing casual, open anti-Catholic contempt in comment sections, on social media, and even in polite conversation.
Catholics are not above criticism; no one is. But when their own loudest voices behave badly – whether by making a sacrament of illegal immigration or by reviving medieval blood libels in new packaging – they hand critics the perfect cudgel. They deserve the beating.
l Phelim McAleer is a Co Tyrone born journalist based in Los Angeles. @PhelimMcAleer