On this episode of Faith and Reason, Deal Hudson joins John-Henry Westen and Deacon Keith Fournier to discuss the major cultural shift in U.S. politics under Trump, the administration’s feud with the USCCB over immigration, and more.
(LifeSiteNews) — On this episode of Faith and Reason, Deal Hudson joins John-Henry Westen and Deacon Keith Fournier to discuss the major cultural shift in U.S. politics under Trump, the administration’s feud with the USCCB over immigration, whether relying on government funding has turned the bishop’s conference into a bureaucratic institution instead of an ecclesial one, and more.
Westen opened the episode by asking Hudson, a Catholic political activist and former publisher and editor of Crisis Magazine, about how Catholics should view the Trump presidency.
Hudson explained that Trump’s election was part of a major cultural shift in the U.S. He emphasized that this shift began because the American people were fed up with both political parties and the mainstream culture.
“Enough corruption became visible, enough nonsense was uttered, from both sides, that the American people finally said: ‘No, we don't believe the messaging that's coming to us through the mainstream media anymore, we don't believe the messaging of the Oscar ceremony, we don't believe the kind of movies that are coming out and these documentaries that are bashing everything that we care about,’” Hudson said. “And that opened the door for someone like Trump to come along and make the kind of changes or attempt to make the kind of changes that we're seeing now.”
A bit later, the panel turned to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) battle with the Trump administration over immigration and Trump freezing the bishop’s funding for refugee resettlement.
Deacon Keith underscored that the bishops have abandoned the Catholic principle of subsidiarity - the idea that governing is best at the lowest level - and become a bureaucratic institution heavily relying on government funding.
Hudson agreed, highlighting how the USCCB’s reliance on government funding has affected their ability to act as bishops.
“If the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is getting a substantial part of its budget from the United States government, it can't be United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, because it has to toe the line when it comes to whatever administration they're dealing with,” he said.
“If Catholics want to help the poor, if Catholics want to help the homeless, the hungry, let Catholics pay for it directly through the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops,” he added.
Deacon Keith jumped in to note that bishop’s conferences didn’t exist in the early Church and highlight the need to return to the more ecclesiastical model.
“Why were [bishop’s conferences] set up? To give bishops some sort of sense of fraternity with one another, not to become another layer of bureaucracy,” the deacon said.
“We lost the ecclesial model of the Church. And so, with all of this shaking and the removal of funding, maybe we'll go back to that apostolic mission with which the Church is fundamentally called and not be enmeshed in this governmental corporatist mentality.”
For more discussion on the USCCB becoming a bureaucracy, the major cultural shift in America, and much more, tune in to this episode of Faith and Reason.
Faith and Reason is available by video via LSNTV on YouTube, Rumble, Banned, and right here on LifeSiteNews.
It is also available in audio format on Acast. To subscribe to the audio version on various channels, visit LifeSite’s Acast web page here.
We’ve created a special email list for the show so that we can notify you every week when we post a new episode. Sign up now by clicking here.
