Magadonia and The Catholic Ghetto

Something’s different now. It feels like the toothpaste is out of the tube, there’s no denying it and there’s no putting it back. The flashpoint came when journalist and Catholic layman Jack Posbiec, in perfect Latin, led the sea of prayer warriors in the Lord’s Prayer. He concluded, like something out of Braveheart, waving his fist with the repeated heartfelt battle cry, ‘Libera nos a malo! Libera nos a malo! Libera nos a malo!’. In English, it means ‘deliver us from evil’. For those who felt it, there was no turning back. It was like the day the quiet, passive kid confronted the bully. A lion-like prayer warrior, he has no time for futile, effeminate dialogue. Finally, in front of Dodger Stadium on June 16, the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart, those who had enough were compelled to act.

The culture wars have been raging for many decades. Recently though, the political and cultural pendulum seems to have reached an inflection point. For the last few decades, It had been swinging leftward, increasingly further away from traditional values. After a series of recent events, I believe it is now beginning to swing back.

It began on April Fool’s Day when Bud Light featured a transexual influencer on its cans less than a week after a transexual shooter killed three adults and three children at a Christian school in Nashville Tennessee. The subsequent boycott of Bud Light has led to a loss of $27 Billion dollars in market value as of June 2, 2023. It was on June the third that presidential candidate Donald Trump coined the term Magadonia to describe a movement that is something other than strictly Republican. He sensed a cultural pendulum shift led by the growing coalition of fed-up moms and dads. In his message he gave them an identity and a mission, ‘We are Magadonians, we are very smart, we stick together as one, we follow Truth Social, we put ‘America first’ and we will make America great again!’

Then on June 6, ‘the Armenian dads’ made news by engaging in a violent scuffle with pro-LGBTQ instigators. The Armenian dads were protesting the sexualization and indoctrination of their children by the Glendale School district in the Los Angeles area. The alphabet people found out the hard way that you don’t want to mess with the Armenians. In the background of all this, throughout the month of June, we had news reports of another boycott. Target Stores lost a staggering $15 billion in market value by showcasing rainbow bedazzled, transgender clothing in their toddler’s section.

This onslaught of events, when combined, felt like a psychological warfare operation against Catholics and Christians.  It culminated in the Dodgers’ plan to honor the demonic Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. We all learned that this group prides itself on an inversion of the good and the holy to mock and desecrate the Catholic Church.

These events were the context behind a convergence between largely apolitical, regular church-going people and those who are politically awakened. Thousands gathered peacefully holding American flags, large crucifixes, rosaries, images of Our Lady Guadalupe and images of the Sacred Heart for a prayerful protest at Dodger Stadium.

The protest was organized by John Yep, CEO of Catholics for Catholics. They describe themselves as  ‘…a group of Catholics who love God and our Country. Our Catholic faith impels us to make our voices heard in the public square as Jesus Christ instructed us not to keep our light under a basket’.

Yep appeared on Steve Bannon’s highly popular podcast, Bannon’s War Room, to rally the ‘War Room Posse’ (Bannon’s viewers) to show up. Bannon, himself a faithful Catholic and former Trump advisor, often invites populist-minded Catholics such as Jack Posobiec on his show. You might say that these three. Bannon, Posobiec and Yep are the Catholic war chiefs of Magadonia.

As the chant ‘Viva Christo Rey’ dominated the ethnically diverse crowd, it became clear that this was an inflection point. The reason this felt different was because the Los Angeles area Latino Catholics are described as mostly Democrat-leaning. Yet here they were, head to head with the Democrat party’s protected class. This time the Left went too far. The Latinos happily combined forces with the dissident populist-minded, American flag-waving Magadonians. The Christian Armenian dads, still fuming, were there too.

Like the historical Catholic ghettos in a predominantly Protestant America in the 19th and early 20th century, the church once again had to overcome ethnic barriers to unite in the face of a type of Know Nothing hostility and overt anti-Catholicism. This time, however, it was led mostly by Catholic laypeople. Only Bishop Strickland from Texas showed up and stood against the LGBTQ corporate lobby at Dodger Stadium. Many other bishops spoke out and led prayers from a distance with parishes offering mass, adoration, fasting and the Sacred Heart litany.

Those historical Catholic ghettos, led by the bishops, succeeded in organizing parishes, schools and laymen to create a robust Catholic subculture. They kept Catholic families safe from the persecution and the anti-Catholic discrimination that has always found a home in America. For some reason, the Dodgers thought it was a winning strategy to perpetuate this historical anti-Catholic bias. However, it totally backfired.

If you saw the video clip of the three Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence being quickly rushed through their own award ceremony before the fans entered the stadium then what you saw was a homerun for team Magadonia and the Catholic Ghetto. Thousands more showed up to protest than were expected and thousands more Catholic Dodger fans refused to attend the game that night. Fueled by the successful boycotts, It was the first culture war victory in a long time that had such a visual and symbolic impact. The size of the crowd caught many in the news media by surprise. As the great Vin Scully once said,  “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!”

Will the pendulum keep swinging toward a restoration of decency and family values? Will this momentum sweep up more fed-up Catholics? Will regular Catholics respect that they were defended by the Magadonians? Will the Latino fathers continue to embrace the bold Cristero spirit? These are questions to ponder as we all celebrate the end of a strange and oddly fruitful Pride Month.