While the Bible says you can't serve two masters, official Foxpriest Fr. Jonathan Morris is able to balance his roles as Catholic priest and purveyor of right wing propaganda on Fox News. This morning, he earned his Fox tithes in defending Donald Trump from a Papal diss!
Brian Kilmeade reported the backstory of the Pope's apparent questioning of Donald Trump's Christianity. Devout Catholic Kilmeade emphatically stated that he "sides 100% with Trump" and that he was "stunned to see a pope calling out a presidential candidate about his immigration policy." Morris criticized the Pope: "No matter how we parse his word, one phrase in particular, not the part about his immigration policy but when he said that if Donald Trump said these things, that that man is not a Christian, I think he made a mistake." Morris quipped that he isn't "used to saying that the Pope should apologize" and although he isn't saying that, he does think that Pope Francis will either apologize or "clarify" his remarks
Morris explained that he even though people do bad things, they don't stop being Christians. He pimped the requisite anti-immigration agitprop with his explanation of what the Pope is really saying: "The Pope's larger point, to his broader point is that if we're just going to go from one day to the next deport 11, 12, 15 million people after the government, both parties has tacitly them to come over because they say that if they can get through our porous border and it is porous well, you're going to be able to get a job, but you're not going to get a real working wage, it's going to be, you're going to be living in the shadows. That, I think is unchristian. It doesn't mean that Donald Trump is not a Christian but that's an unchristian policy." (Notice how Morris is blaming the government for the influx of undocumented immigrants when it's our beloved business community. Morris didn't mention that Pres. Obama is still deporting undocumenteds)
The notoriously anti-immigrant Brian Kilmeade pontificated that "it's against the law to go into our country illegally." Morris validated Kilmeade: "It's illegal, it's wrong to cross our border illegally." Kilmeade: "the Pope doesn't believe that." He claimed that the Pope doesn't believe in borders and "that's why he had a Mass at the Texas border tacitly condemning America."
Morris continued his attempt to Foxwash the Pope's commentary with his claim that the GOP candidates aren't all that far off from what the Pope thinks which is "what the system, as it is, is disgusting and Donald Trump is saying that as well but they have a different way of going about it." (really?) Morris asserted that "Trump has a point" when he says that the present "situation" is "bad" in that 12 million undocumented people are working and "that's bad for our country, bad for them." (The folks Trump wants to deport?) Morris did admit that the solution "isn't just putting up a wall."
And to further prove that Fox is right and the Pope is wrong, Kilmeade showed a Fox & Friends Facebook poll that showed 86% agreed with Trump. Kilmeade and Morris agreed that there was "nothing immoral about securing the border." After Morris said that poor Mexicans can't get visas but "we let them get jobs," a confused Kilmeade said that the border patrol isn't allowing that. (Wait, I thought that the border is being overrun!)
Funny, Fox News has no problem with religious leaders and Fox faves Franklin Graham and Pastor Robert Jeffress questioning Pres. Obama's Christianity. And one imagines that if a Democratic candidate dissed the Pope, Fox would be all over them like holy water on hypocritical Fox News Catholics!
On the other hand, Pope Francis is exactly the reason why Catholics like myself are encouraged about the church these days. He holds some hard and fast views that some of us may not totally agree with. But it is clear he has a good heart and understands the church cannot be immobile. I’ll take the latter every time.