Potus, Remote Evil, and the Inevitable Collapse of Complicit Catholicism

With the abortion-tainted vaccine debate, we have seen a fair amount of coverage on the topic of remote evil. We have been advised, by means of “greater good” arguments, that we can sometimes justify passive complicity in remote evil. It is a subject that has been well-covered by a number of fine articles, perhaps none better than this one by Monica Seely, in which she succinctly demonstrates that the “remote” in so-called remote evil is often not anywhere nearly so remote as we have been led to believe.  Though I did not find the remote-evil argument to be a necessary component of a religious objection to a medical mandate, it is a subject that deserves the kind of devoted effort and exposure that Monica Seely’s article gives it.

And the larger question of remote evil is immensely important. Complicity in remote evil for the sake of a greater good is always very treacherous moral ground to tread because it always involves a judgment call on the part of the complicit.

Complicity is not a word often heard, other than in the description of assistance given toward the commission of a crime. It is defined as “association or participation in a wrongful act.” —a pretty broad definition. How is it that such a huge concept has succumbed to such narrow, legalistic usage? Why is it not more widely applied? The answer to that question is another question: In a world of glasshouses, who’s going to be the one to cast the first stone?

It’s quite commonly known that to become a mafioso, you have to prove your resolve, your commitment to the club, by committing a horrendous deed. Such complicity gives the brotherhood leverage—it weeds out the stool pigeons. Once you’ve proven yourself a soulless thug, you’re not going to be telling anybody anything—you’re not going to be the one to cast the first stone.

Bear with me on what may seem like an aside. I grew up on a small farm in North Dakota, one of eleven children, so I know a thing or two about the realities of what could often be a hard life. The simple truth is, when I was growing up, farmers had a hard time getting a fair price for their products, so the government decided to give them subsidies.

Why did farmers have a hard time getting a fair price? We could explore claims that those price guarantees were actually subsidizing the middlemen who collectively held a chokehold on commodity pricing, but that’s a subject for another day. My point is that farm families became addicted to government handouts, and as the party of big government was the one pushing the legislation, those farmers became beholden to one party: the party of Jim Crow that was soon to become the party of legal abortion.

When that party’s transition to the dark side became eminently clear, my parents made it eminently clear that they would no longer be voting for any of their candidates. And then I watched with dismay how it tore them up that their friends and neighbors continued to vote for the money, aborted babies notwithstanding. To be sure, a similar story can be told of city life and union workers. People held their noses and voted their pocketbooks.

And that’s where the Church comes in. In the past, in many parts of the country, Catholics found themselves to be personae non-gratae. The only work they could get was often menial, and thus, labor union membership was often disproportionately Catholic. It did not take long for one of the political parties to notice that this constituency constituted a formidable voting bloc and an equally formidable campaign fund source, one they wasted no time in harnessing.

The Church, of course, is understandably deferent to the plight of the poor, the worker, and rightfully encourages the solidarity of peaceful collective bargaining. And so it was that affiliation with one political party became woven into the fabric of the working-class American Catholic.

America’s first Catholic president was the result of that weaving. So intense was the Protestant outcry against the possibility of a Catholic presidency that in September 1960, then-candidate J.F.K., in a speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, told them, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute…”,a concept that also seems to now be woven into the fabric of the American Catholic.

A short twelve years after that speech, riding the towering, trendy wave of “feminism”, the party that put him into office became the party of death, and complicity in that evil became the ticket to play. If you want to run for office and are not complicit, you will get no funds, no backing, no matter how large your following appears to be.

There are local politicians who are pro-life in the party of death, but few will ever mount the national stage. That requires deep complicity in a host of evils. Is the old J.F.K. “absolute separation of church and state” split-personality dogma successfully mitigating the current POTUS’ complicity in immense evil? Old Joe seems to think so.

And speaking of Joe, a recent story taken up by National File details the cozy and very lucrative relationship between Biden, the University of Pennsylvania funded thinktank The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, Pfizer/BioNTech, and Maderna. It seems that Joe’s excitement for the vaccine and zeal for the perpetuation of mandates is not nearly so pure as new-fallen snow. Yes, folks, there’s plenty of money being made by plenty of people from the immense profits generated by industries deeply tied to not-so-remote evil. Adding insult to injury, FactCheck.org is housed by and supported by you know who—that’s right, the U. of Pennsylvania. Independent fact-checkers? Conflict of interest? Ya think?!

When a gangster wannabe embraces complicity, he accepts that he is sealing his fate. But that is not the case with, oh, what shall we call it? –soft complicity? I mean, it’s not like farmers who voted for grain subsidies went out and killed babies—they were just watching out for themselves; it’s not quite the same as shooting someone in the face.

No, it’s not, but the end effect is much worse.

The gangster might say: “I was asked to knock off Guido Chump, the guy who took out Big Ralphie last year. Big Ralphie was just doing his protection rounds, minding his own business and Chump took him out; it was murder. I evened the score. He got the death penalty—it was justice.”

Self-justification is a fine art that many of us have perfected, and mafiosos are no different in that regard. But what if we voted to legalize such activity? You want someone dead, just take ‘em out. Which is the worse crime, murder, or the legalization of murder? Which has the deepest, most devastating effect on culture? On the most lives? But, most important for our purposes, which creates the greater complicity?

We are in the midst of a national hand-wring-athon over the current cultural divide, all while the crevasse grows bigger and deeper.

If that abyss has a name, it is complicity.

And, as they do for the mafioso, the steaks keep getting higher for the complicit voter. In order to ascend the ladder of command in the underworld, increasingly ruthless tactics become necessary—the depth of complicity deepened. Similarly, the party of death is not stopping at abortion. Their fascination with death goes well beyond the womb. In a previous article, “Redefining Healthcare – One Word at a Time”, I detail how medical terminology is being perverted, all in the interest of promoting death. The party of legal abortion is always looking and acting to expand their horizons, making them the party of assisted suicide and euthanasia—even infanticide.

Years ago, I had a fellow employee who was a Jehovah’s Witness, and we enjoyed a lot of good-humored banter about religion. One of the Witnesses’ more unusual beliefs is that it is wrong to vote, to be involved in self-government. He was aware that I was involved in the pro-life movement, and when asked about their stance on the issue, he said simply, “Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t get abortions.” He somehow thought that that unverifiable claim was the ultimate get-out-of-responsibility card. I tried to convince him that people who abort their babies don’t own those children—they are children, not things: irreplaceable, unique gifts from God to all of us—but he would have none of it: he wasn’t responsible, end of story.

I bring that up only because there is a huge element of that within cultural soft-complicity.

The old saying, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”, applies well-enough to the Jehovah’s Witness, but what about those who confess a responsibility in self-governance but, in participating in that governance, do what facilitates great evil in the name of minor temporal gains? They’re not good men and women doing nothing; they’re voting, which—if the hullabaloo after the last election is any indication—is definitely not nothing. In Revelations 3, we find the following:

I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,’ and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white garments to put on so that your shameful nakedness may not be exposed, and buy ointment to smear on your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise. Be earnest, therefore, and repent.

But repentance comes very hard for the lukewarm, the culturally complicit, coddled as they are by the safety of the pack. The cold-hearted gangster who took out Guido Chump is much more likely to repent than the culturally complicit voter. The gangster’s crime is bold and cold and his brazen self-justification has not enjoyed a widespread cultural sanction. He knows he’s a dirtbag. When destiny looms, he may well acknowledge where he’s headed if he doesn’t repent.

But what about the lukewarm masses comfortably numbed by cultural complicity? —attending church and giving each other high-fives over their social-justice-warrior status? It is one thing to justify murder, it is quite another to justify the death of millions and the destruction of the family; indeed, of civilization. But the need to maintain sanity won’t allow them to see it.

Who can live with that? They are busy celebrating the immense charitability of their voting record, donating their time at the animal shelter, hand-sewing rainbow flags, enjoying their wealth—their highly-subsidized lives—and flaunting the flood of emotion it all brings; an emotion that tells them that they have generous hearts. Emotion displays the soul, you know. Emotion saves.

That’s what they want to believe. But what does emotion really do? It is the balm that soothes the complicit soul. They mistake their intense, socially-coerced empathy for meaningful love, perhaps even for charity.

Of course, there is the complicity of silence and complacency—of comfort—which is perhaps even worse than that of the self-deluded. The complacent are not concerned about self-justification because they’re not concerned about anything that really matters.

And what about the clergy? Where are they in this cultural complicity? Near as I can tell, many are neck-deep, adrift in a sea of 501(c)(3) tax exemption fearmongering that seems to provide a safe haven, a façade to camouflage their complicity. The law only prevents the corporate non-profit religious entity from openly campaigning for a particular candidate; it does not prevent it from discussing issues or a candidate’s view on the issues.

But if complicit in any evil, a cleric may just label it a political issue so that not confronting it gives the appearance of an effort on his part to save the ministry from the ravages of the tax monster. Of course, by the power of their sanctimonious semantical antics, anything that can be legislated becomes a political issue, so saving the ministry means never, ever having to be a “sign of contradiction”—never having to talk about moral issues or anything else that really matters.

If those who support the politics of the left have read to this point, they may be mumbling under their breath, maybe even dropping a few profanities about how the party of the so-called right is far from perfectly pure.

Of course, they are right. Perfect purity is impossible to find in this life. But when you build death strategically into your political platform and flaunt that platform in no uncertain terms, you have forfeited any platform you may have ever enjoyed for discussing questions of purity—your “what-about” questions are rendered hollow and stupid by your own proclaimed complicity. If you buy a product and the label says “contains filth”, you either didn’t read the label or you didn’t buy the product for its purity; you bought it in spite of, or because of, the filth.

But the comfortable among us are blind to their own complicity. Comfort numbs the soul and blinds us to filth. A complicit Church is not sustainable, and no one knows it better than Satan. He’s keeping a list, checking it twice, hoping you like the Church of nice.