The Man Who Can't Convert
I don't think Donald Trump is about to start RCIA
On January 3rd, which only feels like it was fifteen years ago, Liberty Hangout - which I guess is a real Twitter account with tens of thousands of followers that posts pro-Trump pro-coup things in earnest - posted the above. I’ll be honest, I don’t think it’s going to happen. I really don’t think looking for and starting a Rites of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) program is top of mind for Trump right now. Who would he even ask to sponsor him? Melania, I guess? Is she still practicing? Are they looking for more activities to do together?
Here’s the thing, Liberty Hangout isn’t the only right-wing Catholic shithead that fantasizes about Trump converting to Catholicism. Here’s former second mic on Taylor Marshall’s podcast and Stop the Steal enthusiast Tim Gordon fantasizing about the same thing back in October, which only feels like it was twenty years ago:
Again, I really don’t think Donald Trump is about to convert to Catholicism. I don’t think he remembers the name of the church where he was baptized, and he’d have to dig that up at some point and ask them for his baptism certificate to transfer over to his new parish, and then once he’s registered at the new parish, oh boy, they’re gonna start sending collection envelopes and there’s no way to get off of that list. Basically, I don’t see the boring paperwork and Sunday afternoon classes that conversion would require as a traditional area of interest or strength for Trump.
Here’s the thing: before that tweet, all the way back in July of 2020, which only feels like it was twenty-five years ago, a Marshall Mathers LP-style bleached blonde Michael Voris went and posted a whole-ass video on Church Militant asking Trump to convert, which I’m just going to embed here for your viewing pleasure but it’s unbelievably boring once you’re done laughing at his hair:
Voris urges “Mister President, you need to become Catholic, and you need to convert now.” Look, I don’t think it’s going to happen (I mean, it certainly didn’t happen in July). I don’t think Trump is going to take diligent notes on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit from the forty-five year old bespectacled Director of Religious Ed lady at Mary Seat of Wisdom parish over by the highway. It doesn’t strike me as his next move.
Where does all of this, from LH and Gordon and Voris, come from? Well, some of it comes from conservatives being horny for the emperor Constantine and desperate to compare Trump to him to justify squaring their understanding of Catholicism for their love of Trumpism. Voris and Gordon both make it explicit above: Trump will see the light, understand how becoming Catholic will finally solidify his hold on America, and convert straightaway, much like Constantine converted on the eve of a military victory and eventually made Catholicism the state religion of the Roman empire. We’ve looked at this horny-for-Constantine phenomenon before in the G.O.T.H.S. piece with the second-best title I’ve ever written.
The Constantine comparison, especially in 2016, was stupid, but you could trace how everyone got there. Constantine was not a great example of Christian living as emperor, but because he made Christianity the state religion of the Roman empire and then, along with his successors, enforced that religion through violence and oppression, right-wing assholes see Trump’s boorishness as an acceptable trade-off if Catholic power gets cemented in the American government (where the Chief Justice, Speaker of the House, and incoming President are, as it turns out, practicing Catholics). The goal, for any of these people, does not appear to be Donald Trump’s soul or cred for the Catholic church; it appears to be power and violence, especially if the main point of reference is a Roman emperor.
Regardless: formally converting to Catholicism, in real life, is not a cinematic moment that happens before a military victory. It is, like most things the Catholic church does with regularity, a very long process that is mostly kind of dull. Of course, Catholics are called to lifelong conversion, to push ourselves towards greater mercy and hope and charity, but that would require a sincerity and humility that Trump has, perhaps, not always wanted to demonstrate. Plus, Trump already announced this year that he had changed religions from Presbyterian to nondenominational Christian, in a cynical attempt to pick up more evangelical Christian votes. He’s not going to convert a second time, at age 74, to a religion with more paperwork and people of color. Donald Trump is, perhaps first and foremost, a man fundamentally incapable of conversion.
Think about that for a second. I fyou have a sense of conscience, or morality, or, I guess, memory, you look at Donald Trump and see that something is missing. It’s not just that he’s stupid and cruel, although he is very stupid and cruel. There’s something else that’s not there, something much harder to articulate, some human guardrail that keeps most of us from turning on others on a dime, from barrelling through reality and crashing through consequences, from insisting that everyone else around us must be mere background actors. Conversion is when we take a look at something outside of us, then turn to our past selves and say “I don’t want to be that person anymore”. Even if you’re not religious, this is a skill that you use to navigate the world and grow as a person. Donald Trump, for whatever reason, does not appear capable of doing this, possibly because he can’t perceive a reality outside himself, possibly because he doesn’t have the memory of his past self, I can’t explain it. But we’re not used to seeing this in the presidency, or in public service in general: a man who not only refuses to change but who seems incapable of understanding what ‘change’ even means.
Not that conversion always works out perfectly, we’ve seen that with previous subjects of G.O.T.H.S. Taylor Marshall used to be a professor worried about hard-right conservatives in the Catholic church before he became their Marc Maron. Abby Johnson used to preach tolerance and humility to anti-abortion activists before she realized she was leaving cash on the table. Bishop Joseph Strickland used to celebrate the church and Pope Francis before coming around to the idea that Pope Francis was actually was an evil secret Soros agent. Then Donald Trump, to whom they are all professionally tied, lost his election, and refused to accept that he lost his election because he lacks that fundamental skill, and we all got to see the natural endpoint of that this week.
We had an armed insurrection at the Capitol this week from the “Stop the Steal” folks, the folks who held a bunch of DC rallies a few weeks ago, and one of them was an explicitly Catholic rally at which Abby Johnson and Taylor Marshall and Joseph Strickland all spoke, the latter of whom is an actual bishop and thus lending the teaching authority of the church to this whole thing:
And then Abby Johnson, as it turns out, was at the Capitol during the actual insurrection, which I know because she posted about it (because she’s not very smart), and then she deleted the post because she was worried about being accused of committing sedition, and it doesn’t matter because there’s also video of her (or, I guess, her fucking secret twin sister) right there as it’s happening:
The weirdest Catholic response of all, of course, came from unapologetically pro-Trump EWTN anchor Raymond “Simp-ony of Destruction” Arroyo, who decided this was the right time for a musical theater joke (which also doesn’t appear to be structured as a joke? What is he trying to say here?):
Also, there was at least one Notre Dame fan there, even after two brutal postseason losses:
It used to be funny to imagine Donald Trump sitting in RCIA class. It became less funny, over time, seeing right-wing Catholics try rationalize all of the cruelty and bloodshed they embraced over the past few years for some impending conversion that is never going to come. What’s not funny was National Catholic Reporter’s damning and very good editorial from yesterday, titled “Catholics need to confess their complicity in the failed coup”:
“This is the culmination of what this presidency has been about from the beginning — and some Catholics have remained silent, or worse, cheered it along, including some bishops, priests, a few sisters, right-wing Catholic media and too many people in the pro-life movement…Our religious leaders, many of whom perpetuate the very white supremacy that led to yesterday’s coup, must begin the long, hard work of trying to rebuild a political culture of trust and unity. That cannot be done with hyper-partisanship and an intense focus on only one issue.”
Assholes fantasizing about a Trump conversion may be funny, but the truth underneath it is not funny at all: Trump doesn’t need to convert to Catholicism, because much of the Catholic church spent the past four years converting over to him.
Grift of the Holy Spirit is a series by Tony Ginocchio detailing stories of the weirdest, dumbest, and saddest members of the Catholic church. You can subscribe via Substack to get notified of future installments.