Posted on 09/19/2020 12:30:16 PM PDT by ebb tide
One of the Trump campaign’s ambassadors to Catholics on Thursday blasted former Vice President Joe Biden as being a “fake Catholic.”
Taylor Marshall, a popular traditionalist Catholic commentator, criticized Biden for his stances on abortion, religious liberty, and gay marriage during a campaign event streamed from his personal YouTube channel. President Trump, by contrast, Marshall said, “honors God” through his presidency.
Marshall, citing a recent interview with Archbishop Carlo Vigano, quoted the controversial former papal nuncio’s prediction that “the right hand of the Lord will deliver the election” to Trump. Marshall added that he is praying for Vigano’s prediction to come true.
“We need to pray that God’s right hand intervenes,” Marshall said. “We are at a crossroads, not just in American history, but in human history. We must pray.”
Marshall also praised Trump for promoting Vigano’s work, saying that the embattled nuncio, who, in 2018, called for Pope Francis’s resignation, was “instrumental” in cleaning up sexual abuse in the American Catholic Church.
In June, Trump tweeted out a letter Vigano addressed to him in which the archbishop commended the president for fighting the “deep state,” just as he is fighting the “deep church.” Vigano added that adherents to a “New World Order” are using both the pandemic and the protests following the death of George Floyd to undermine Trump. Trump said he was “honored” by the letter and encouraged “everyone” to read it.
Marshall, as a Trump surrogate, frequently references Vigano’s letter and other statements, framing the 2020 election in similar terms. And like Vigano, Marshall is a fierce critic of Francis and other church leaders, whom he ties to his political activism by claiming that they are opposed to Trump. In a series of now-deleted tweets, Marshall asked, “Why is Pope Francis Against Trump?” In a YouTube video on the subject, he accused Francis of supporting “open borders globalism,” in contrast to Trump, and, he said, St. Thomas Aquinas, who support border security.
The Trump campaign in July tapped Marshall to join as a member of its outreach coalition to Catholics. Marshall’s appointment came after Trump tweeted a line from an appearance on One America News Network in which Marshall said, “There is a war on Christianity.”
Marshall’s declaration fit in with one of Trump’s key messages throughout the summer — that an ongoing spate of nationwide protests is aimed at destroying dearly held American practices, including Christianity. Trump has relayed this message to Catholics with his condemnation of attacks on churches, references to Marshall, as well as his favorable mentions of Vigano, who became a prominent critic of Pope Francis after a 2018 sexual abuse scandal rocked the church.
Marshall has also staked himself out as a fierce critic of overly restrictive coronavirus regulations, including on church services, as well as calls for a vaccine. In August, when Francis announced that he believed potential coronavirus vaccines must be made available to poor people, Marshall, in a now-deleted tweet, called it “disturbing news” and asked if Francis’s support for “universal vaccines” signaled a “great reset.”
In a Wednesday video titled “VIGANO: Trump vs. Pope Francis — 50 Years of Revolution,” Marshall spoke favorably of the same recent interview in which Vigano called former Vice President Joe Biden a “perverted Catholic,” whom Marshall then also referred to as a “fake Catholic.” In that interview, Vigano claimed that Francis’s “political program” coincided with Biden’s priorities of “migration, environmentalism, Malthusian ecologism, gender ideology, the dissolution of the family, and globalism.” The nuncio also accused the left-wing billionaire George Soros of funding the Jesuits, a Catholic order of priests.
Marshall’s videos regularly receive hundreds of thousands of views. Marshall did not respond to request for comment.
Even before his addition to the campaign, Marshall played an outsize role in shaping the opinions of conservative Catholics since 2018, when a New York Times investigation revealed widespread cover-ups of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. Marshall, a Catholic convert from Anglicanism, seized the opportunity to escalate his criticism of the way that American bishops lead the church.
Through a series of videos, podcasts, as well as his 2019 book, Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within, Marshall launched himself into stardom as an ecclesiastical gadfly. He briefly became an international figure last summer, when it was revealed that he had funded the theft and attempted destruction of several statues at the Vatican’s controversial Amazon Synod, which some Catholics alleged were pagan idols.
Marshall’s view of the Catholic Church, that it has been attacked from within by the forces of modernism, Marxism, and Freemasonry, is generally ignored by Catholic leaders. Marshall, however, has feuded publicly with Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron, another Catholic media figure, who represents a more centrist view of the church.
Barron, like Marshall, has been friendly to the Trump administration. He is slated in September to be one of the speakers at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, an annual event that typically brings together church hierarchy and Republican politicians. This year, the breakfast will honor Attorney General William Barr for his “long history of dedicated public service and his commitment to the defense of the vulnerable and religious liberty.”
Barron, in July, said, amid his feud with Marshall, that online “provocateurs” need to “cut it out.”
Marshall, in recent weeks, has, rather than slowing down, ramped up his criticism, both of church hierarchy and of Biden. Throughout September, he has championed Father Robert Altman, a Wisconsin priest who said that “you can not be Catholic and be a Democrat. Period.” Altman's comments, and the ecclesiastical censure that followed them, in part prompted Trump's FEC chairman on Wednesday to say that bishops should not "hide" behind the church's nonprofit status when it comes to speaking out against specific political candidates, namely Biden.
Marshall on Thursday tied Francis to the Biden campaign, accusing bishops and the pope of wanting the former vice president to win in 2020.
Ping
The TRUTH hurts, so You Tube will be taking down this guys channel in 3...2...1... :(
This filthy bag of crap gave himself the sign of the cross when he visited that church. He should have been struck by lightening.
Joe Biden, Catholic in Name Only. Chameleon Harris, no known religious affiliation, yeah that makes a saintly team.
Should by some strange twist of circumstances, the ticket gets declared the winner for the Presidential sweepstakes, if Harris dies, Biden gets to be President.
Still, some Catholics will vote for Biden(Jimmy Carter lite).
Closely associating with Marshall can only hurt Trump. I’m surprised he doesn’t realize Marshall and Vigano are naysayers and rabble-rousers, anti-V2, not conservative Catholics. Or maybe in some strange way this is a strategy?
A blindly obedient Nouvs Ordite catholic?
Yes, sir! May I have another!
Actually, it's Fr. James Altman, who was a guest on Dr. Marshall's podcast last week.
(The late Robert Altman directed movies.)
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