I\u2019m not Catholic, but I\u2019m not that far from it. Mom was Roman Catholic, born of an Irish father and Scottish mother in England, and into the faith. During World War II she married my father, an American soldier of the Jewish persuasion. Mom\u2019s parish priest demanded that she guarantee that any offspring from the union be raised Catholic. But that\u2019s not what she and Dad agreed upon. Mom\u2019s story is that the priest showed up at a wedding party at her house to notify her of ex-communication: forbidding her from the sacraments of the church. My grandfather asked him to leave \u2013 with a punch in the nose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Dad didn\u2019t want us kids to be Catholic, he didn\u2019t go much beyond that. So we were raised in the American Episcopal Church, just a few short theological steps from Roman Catholicism. And while I\u2019m not practicing anything now, the prayers and traditions of my childhood still echo in my memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I know all about venial sins, and mortal sins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For those who are unfamiliar with the Catholic Church, there are degrees of how bad a sin can be. A venial sin is kind of minor, like a \u201cwhite lie\u201d. If you were to die without having received forgiveness and absolution for venial sins, your immortal soul is not at risk. In fact, it is likely that you will die with venial sins, and if you are unable to receive the \u201clast rites\u201d of the Church, you will spend time in Purgatory to \u201cpay\u201d for those sins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, mortal sins are those for which there can be no recovery, without God\u2019s forgiveness and absolution.\u00a0\u00a0If you were to die with an unforgiven mortal sin \u201con\u201d your soul, you risk eternal damnation to Hell.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mom\u2019s \u201csin\u201d, not agreeing to raise us three kids in the Roman Catholic Church, was so grave, so \u201cmortal\u201d, that she was stricken from receiving the Holy Sacraments or Confession. She could not gain forgiveness for her actions, unless she repented and brought us \u201cup\u201d in the Church. Her soul was in \u201cmortal\u201d danger of eternal damnation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thank goodness the Episcopal Church doesn\u2019t believe in quite all that.\u00a0\u00a0So Mom\u2019s soul, might not be in Catholic heaven, but may be down the block in an Episcopal version.\u00a0\u00a0I hope they still serve gin and tonics at cocktail hour, and wine at dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what are the \u201csins\u201d politicians face here in the United States? For what can they be forever \u201cdamned\u201d from getting votes, and what actions can be somehow \u201cforgiven\u201d by the electorate? In short, what are venial political sins, and what are mortal sins, from which there is no recovery?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It used to be that if a politician was divorced, that became a \u201cmortal\u201d sin, making them unelectable.\u00a0\u00a0It was kind of \u201cmoral\u201d test in America \u2013 it wasn\u2019t until Ronald Reagan was elected President that a \u201cdivorcee\u201d gained the office.\u00a0\u00a0That didn\u2019t mean that Presidents had to be \u201cmonogamous\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Let\u2019s see:\u00a0\u00a0in the twentieth century alone Harding, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and of course, Bill Clinton all had affairs; some right in the White House.\u00a0\u00a0I guess those were \u201cvenial\u201d sins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Nixon was caught, on tape, leading the conspiracy to coverup the Watergate break-ins, even the leaders of his own party decided that was beyond forgivable.\u00a0\u00a0They saw no need to carry out impeachment; the threat was enough to get Nixon\u2019s resignation.\u00a0\u00a0And as a \u201cChristian\u201d nation, the next President carried out the act of absolution, pardoning Nixon for any crime he might have committed.\u00a0\u00a0But while Nixon was pardoned, he was never really forgiven.\u00a0\u00a0He spent the rest of his life as the only President to resign, a disgraced figure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Bill Clinton got caught. And he got caught with a twenty-one year old intern, hardly an \u201ceven\u201d relationship. So some in Congress determined that this sin was now mortal, and must be punished with impeachment and removal. The problem was, many of those attacking Clinton lived in \u201cglass houses\u201d. They had their own mortal sins to keep covered. The House impeached him, but the Senate refused to convict. After Clinton left office, he was \u201crehabilitated\u201d into a \u201csenior statesman\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I always thought that Clinton\u2019s \u201csin\u201d was bad enough that he ought to resign.\u00a0\u00a0While I didn\u2019t think his private behavior was impeachable at the time, I did think that he disgraced the office.\u00a0\u00a0And on a more practical level, Clinton staying in office meant that someone else would pay the price for his transgressions.\u00a0\u00a0That fell to Al Gore, who had to run for President in 2000 with the \u201cstatus\u201d of Clinton\u2019s sin still unresolved.\u00a0\u00a0In short Clinton stayed, and the price was George W Bush for eight years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Which brings us to Donald Trump. We know he committed sexual transgressions before he ran for the Presidency. Those, I guess, were venial sins, even if the whole going into the dressing rooms of Miss Teen America, the Access Hollywood <\/em>tape, and getting spanked by a porn star were more than creepy. We know that he was a \u201cshady\u201d real estate guy, always slanting the deal. America determined that, like used car dealers, that was \u201cjust\u201d part of the job, venial at worst. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And we know that his campaign was ugly, starting from the \u201c\u2026drug dealers and rapists coming across the border,\u201d at the bottom of the golden escalator.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But clearly his statements for many were just \u201cplain speaking\u201d, as if he were some kind of modern-day Lincoln.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In short, Trump was granted \u201celectoral absolution\u201d for all of his sins, venial or mortal, before his first election.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n And America could not reach a consensus on Trump throughout his Presidency. He tried to ban Muslims from entering the country, he had children ripped from their parents arms at the border, he talked about \u201cfine people on both sides\u201d of Charlottesville. All of those felt like \u201cmortal sins\u201d to one side of the nation, and were, at worst, venial sins to the other side. Many thought those were all \u201cgood ideas\u201d, even if ugly, or racist, or un-American.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there was the first impeachment, when the President, Trump, tried to leverage the power (and money) of the United State to get another nation\u2019s leader, Zelenskyy, to investigate a political opponent, Biden.\u00a0\u00a0Surely that was a mortal sin.\u00a0\u00a0If not eternal damnation, at least impeachment and conviction were in order.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n But our nation is so polarized, so divided, so \u201cloyal\u201d to our \u201ctribes\u201d, that we are willing to accept the mortal sins of our side\u2019s leader, rather than give-way to the other side.\u00a0\u00a0So Trump was not convicted, and doubled-down on his sins after the trial.\u00a0\u00a0He went on the \u201crevenge tour\u201d, cleansing the executive branch of anyone with questionable loyalty, to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All leading to the election of 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am not going to relitigate what happened in 2020.\u00a0\u00a0We can all do that together, watching the January 6th<\/sup> Committee hearings.\u00a0\u00a0We are seeing a series of Republicans, many Trump appointees, who in the weeks after the election stood up against Trump and for the Constitutional process.\u00a0\u00a0They watched Trump commit the ultimate political moral sin; attacking the Constitution itself.\u00a0\u00a0He threatened the very foundations of our Democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet some, even after acknowledging that Trump committed those \u201cmortal\u201d sins, still say they would vote for him again.\u00a0\u00a0Conservative Republican leaders like Rusty Bowers of Arizona, stood up against Trump. He held the line of the Arizona election results, and was attacked and suffered for his stand \u2013but still says he would vote for Trump again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t get it.\u00a0\u00a0I called for Bill Clinton to resign in 1998.\u00a0\u00a0My membership in his \u201ctribe\u201d didn’t not grant absolution from any wrong.\u00a0\u00a0Rusty Bowers, Mitch McConnell, say they don\u2019t want Trump to be the nominee in 2024, but they would vote for him if he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no limit to the sins they will accept. If subverting the US Constitution, threatening our two-hundred and forty-six year experiment in Democracy, isn’t sinful enough, what is?\u00a0\u00a0 It must be that the alternative, \u201cmy tribe\u201d, is so evil, awful, terrible; that any level of sin is acceptable except for one: being a Democrat.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Living Sinner<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Presidential Sins<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Ultimate Sin<\/h3>\n\n\n\n