Aquinas vs. Trump, SCOTUS & Antichrist: My New E-book

My new e-book, Trump & MAGA as Antichrist: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, was essentially the quickest e-book I’ve ever written. In fact, I used to be underneath a time strain, for the reason that thought got here to me this July after returning residence from instructing for every week in Orvieto, Italy. 

Our weeklong workshop was in honor of the 800^th anniversary of Thomas Aquinas’s beginning, and Aquinas taught and wrote poetry in Orvieto.

Whereas there, I encountered the long-lasting fresco of “The Antichrist”  painted by Luca Signorelli within the Cathedral of the Assumption, a gorgeous church begun shortly after Aquinas died.  (The fresco dates to 1503 nevertheless.) The encounter with that portray, as I relate within the e-book, had me uttering one brief sentence: “It seems like Donald Trump.”

I start my e-book with a web page containing three quotes from Aquinas apropos of democracy. 

The primary speaks of Christ’s instructing of the “dignity of human nature,” and I later use that quote as the premise for my chapter on “Jesus and Democracy.” Democracy at backside is in regards to the dignity of all individuals—and subsequently their equality, as in “all males are created equal” and share “inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” per the US Structure.

In fact, that dignity, these rights and that equality are utterly up for grabs within the US right now, because of many antichrist forces. Chief Justice John Roberts of the unsupreme courtroom has embraced the antichrist vitality full throttle, together with his choice in Residents United that companies are individuals, and that untold quantities of darkish cash from particular person billionaires and companies are simply hunky dory for elections in a democracy.

The choice to intestine the Voting Rights act (see Shelby)—as if the racism of sure states has one way or the other magically disappeared—was an final knife within the again to Martin Luther King, Jr. He struggled, marched and went to jail 39 occasions, with a whole lot of hundreds of others, to get the Voting Rights Act permitted in 1965, and sadly paid the last word worth, martyred at solely 39 years of age.

Justice Roberts and his completely compromised unsupreme courtroom repealed Roe and inspired males to think about they’ve the proper to manage girls’s our bodies. And sure justices are completely happy to have their palms greased by billionaires desperate to fly them world wide to luxurious vacationing and extra.

And the Chevron choice that successfully offers courts, slightly than scientific consultants, the ultimate phrase on points earlier than the EPA, FDA, and many others. And the newest choice about immunity that ensures that one particular person within the land, a president, is above the legislation and may commit any crime he needs as president with whole immunity. 

Such choices from SCOTUS hardly guarantee “equal justice underneath legislation” or the dignity of all. 

This utterly contradicts Aquinas’s instructing that “Christ teaches the dignity of human nature.” And Abraham Lincoln’s stance {that a} authorities “of the individuals, by the individuals and for the individuals shall not perish from this earth.” 

To be continued.

Tailored from Matthew Fox, Trump & MAGA as Antichrist: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, p. ix.

See Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Reworking Evil in Soul and Society.

And Fox, Authentic Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.

And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the Earth.

To learn the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video instructing, click on HERE.

Banner Picture: A fresco of the Antichrist within the Osogovo Monastery, Republic of Macedonia. Photograph by Edal Anton Lefterov. Wikimedia Commons.

Queries for Contemplation

Do you agree that “Christ teaches the dignity of human nature”? What follows from that? Does democracy comply with from that? The place democracy is underneath risk, is the dignity of human nature underneath risk additionally?

Really helpful Studying

Trump & The MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election

Matthew Fox tells us that he had at all times shied away from utilizing the time period “Anti-Christ” as a result of it was so usually used to unfold management and worry. Nonetheless, given right now’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables on this e-book using the archetype for the reason for justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a second, for analyzing the archetype of the Antichrist, it’s now…Learn this e-book with an open thoughts. Good and evil are actual forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, creator of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Reworking Evil in Soul and Society

Visionary theologian and best-selling creator Matthew Fox presents a brand new theology of evil that basically modifications the standard notion of fine and evil and factors the way in which to a extra enlightened remedy of ourselves, each other, and all of nature. In evaluating the Jap custom of the 7 chakras to the Western custom of the 7 capital sins, Fox permits us to suppose creatively about our capability for private and institutional evil and what we will do about them. 
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a greater imaginative and prescient and depth of notion far past the grasp of anybody single science.  A breath-taking evaluation.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, creator of Quantum Theology: Non secular Implications of the New Physics

Authentic Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out an entire new route for Christianity—a route that’s in truth very historic and really grounded in Jewish pondering (the truth that Jesus was a Jew is commonly uncared for by Christian theology): the 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an prolonged and deeply developed method.
“Authentic Blessing makes accessible to the Christian world and to the human neighborhood a radical remedy for all darkish and derogatory views of the pure world wherever these might have originated.” –Thomas Berry, creator, The Dream of the Earth; The Nice Work; co-author, The Universe Story

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the Earth

Fox’s spirituality weds the therapeutic and liberation present in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of each non secular and political persuasion to unite in a brand new imaginative and prescient by means of which we be taught to honor the earth and the individuals who inhabit it because the reward of an excellent and simply Creator.
“A watershed theological work that gives a standard floor for non secular seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Apply.