Catholic Morality Check 2026

GK Chesterton said Catholicism “is the only thing that saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.” 

This means a foundation built on Christ—who is truth itself—is able to bypass biases, propaganda, and tribal mentality. Catholicism capacitates one to call out an injustice based on the object of an act, not on whether the culprit is a republican, democrat, man, woman, etc. But we have seen in recent months Catholics or other conservative thinkers that have strayed from such basic principles and logical deduction. They have fallen into a variety of logical fallacies. In many cases they hold positions that are contrary to Catholic teaching in favor of political or other loyalties.

A critique of a so-called conservative or someone thought to be a populist, like Trump was at one point, doesn't equate to an endorsement of other corrupt politicians in the past like Obama or Biden etc. Conservatives were able to specifically identify immoralities during those administrations, from sexual perversions in schools to their own share of corrupt wars. Yet this continues under Trump in various forms. 

There are analyses observing how the occupant of the White House is irrelevant because the system is rather a "continuity of agenda" run by other handlers.  In many ways, Republican versus Democrat is a "boomer" politics that no longer applies. In the following analysis, the betrayals attributed to the Trump Administration are to the extent he and his team are the current vessels carrying out that continuous agenda. 

Gustave Dore, "The Judas Kiss," (detail) ca 1866

IMMIGRATION

Let's start with the immigration issue. As the Catechism teaches, a nation has the right to apply "juridical conditions" to regulate immigration.  The mass inflow of foreign individuals by illegal means in recent years has resulted in a variety of financial and criminal problems, both in the US and Europe. It is an acceptable position to support licit deportation, especially of those who have compounded criminal activity while on America's soil, while still supporting legal migration. 

On the one hand American bishops have been reckless in trying to characterize all migrants as if they met the criteria of being a refugee in need of basic resources. The millions of migrants in the current situation do not all meet this status. The bishops have not been entirely open about this nor have they afforded adequate attention to the Church teaching that a nation has the right to regulate migration, because unfettered immigration is unsustainable.

That being said, many Catholics are conflating the just cause of enforcing proper immigration law with the methods to accomplish that. The Trump Administration has employed federal agents throughout the country, heavily armed, with military vehicles, who are themselves masked. In January 2026, the world witnessed videos of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in Minnesota.  A viewing of both sets of the available video angles of these two incidents reveals that neither victim committed an act that merited lethal force from the masked federal officers. 

Catholics, including Vice President JD Vance, incorrectly described what was evident in the Renee Good video footage. They often built arguments on statements about how you can't assault an officer, yet that didn't happen in this incident. It was disturbing to see how many conservatives—who in the past would have broken down in detail videos like Rodney King or the forensics with Michael Brown—avoid that kind of scrutiny of the evidence in this instance. 

The video footage shows Good turning the wheel of her vehicle away from the eventual shooting officer, who leaned toward the vehicle to shoot once through the windshield and twice through the side window when she was clearly past him. Her turned wheels were consistent with an attempt to drive away.  An examination of the various camera angles of the killing reveal that the officer who killed her was not in danger at any point.  He unnecessarily initiated contact with her windshield while holding a cell phone and pistol. The Department of Justice has a protocol  pertaining to use of lethal force if a perpetrator is using a vehicle as a deadly weapon. This protocol forbids lethal force if simply moving "out of the path" is an option. In this case, stepping aside was obviously an option, because the officer did that as he fired.

Any blocking traffic mischief on the part of Good prior to the killing did not merit lethal force. Many drew attention to Good being in a lesbian relationship or that her "partner" on the scene was verbally taunting. None of this justified lethal force either. The discussion isn't whether or not she is a leftist. The legal responses to mischief or obstruction of a police vehicle were not applied. Lethal force was applied. There would be no such controversy had she been arrested on those grounds or if she had fled the scene and was arrested later.

Many conflated the killing of Renee Good with support for immigration control in general. But this is the sort of politicized thinking that abandons the facts on the ground and adheres to something more tribal. It seems even Catholics were unable to objectively interpret this incident for fear that doing so would somehow be tantamount to supporting illegal immigration or the Democrat party in general when the two positions are not codependent. It is possible to simultaneously think all three of the following: Lethal force was not merited against Good, unfettered immigration is a problem that needs to be addressed, and the Democrat party is full of corruption. 

The Trump Administration and others compounded the problem by their histrionic use of the word "terrorist" to describe Renee Good. It was tantamount to years past when the Left would incessantly brand everything they didn't like racist or sexist, etc., diluting the significance of the words. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Good's actions "domestic terrorism."  Vice President JD Vance called Good's actions prior to being killed as "classic terrorism." 

The Alex Pretti killing was arguably a worse injustice (Video). He was standing on the sidewalk holding a cell phone. He had a concealed pistol that he was licensed to carry. An ICE agent shoved a female civilian to the ground near Pretti.  Pretti stood over the woman and held up a "whoa" hand toward the agent as he was backing up and turning away. The agent then shoved Pretti in the back. Pretti attempted to pull the woman up. He is then swarmed by agents who disarm him and shoot him multiple times, apparently disarmed. 

Keeping in mind our Catholic faith that measures "object"-ively, even if one wishes to interpret Pretti pulling on the woman as interference with police activity, that does not merit lethal force. Catholics and others also tried to justify the killing of Pretti by pointing to a video of Pretti over a week prior in which he was yelling and kicked out an ICE vehicle's taillight.  However, again, none of this merited lethal force on the day he was shot.

To compound the horror of Pretti's killing, members of the Trump Administration again took to defaming the victim. FBI Director Kash Patel lied to the public in an interview when he said, "You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines (sic) to any sort of protest you want."  The Minnesota carry law has no such restriction.  US Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino took the histrionics to another level, asserting gratuitously that Pretti "approached US Border Patrol agents with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun ... [and] wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement."  Trump official Stephen Miller called Pretty an "assassin."  President Trump recklessly (and incorrectly according to the law) said regarding the Pretti incident, "You can't have guns."  Catholics and any reasonable person who supports Second Amendment rights to self-defense should be scandalized by this entire incident from start to aftermath. 

In both the Good and Pretti killings, it was also disturbing to see how many who profess to be pro-life tribally cheering their deaths. Some even went so far as to use the vulgar taunt FAFO, as if chanting at a sporting event and killing the other "side" equals a touchdown.  Even if these killings had merited lethal force—which they did not—to be pro-life is predicated on the value and dignity of human life. And it is unbecoming to cheer on the killings of individuals based not on some tragic-but-justifiable use of lethal force, but based on a politically motivated support of groundless use of lethal force.  These are the types of mentality that gave rise to the gestapo in the Third Reich, which also operated as a Police State and with immunity. Despite a reasonable desire to address the immigration problem, cheering on federalized police force on the streets, who operate with disguises and immunity, is a recipe for long term disaster.

IMMIGRATION BIG PICTURE

But there is yet a larger picture missed throughout all this. Catholics and others are acting as if the concept of ICE—trying to round up millions of individuals, wearing masks, acting with brutality, and according to the Vice President with immunity —were the only way the immigration problem can be addressed. However, not only are ICE's recent methods paving the way for a Police State intentionally or not, they are not addressing the larger picture. 

Both Trump and a host of conservatives pointed out how politicians were inviting people into the country illegally in order to skew elections with illegal votes or artificial alterations of district populations. 

The people voted for Trump based on his apparent intent to address this broken system. But where are the Administration's efforts—at least as aggressive as what ICE is doing in the streets—to serve justice to those politicians? Where is the Administration's effort to prosecute corporations that were also part of the illegal entry system that exploited the labor illegally? ICE has verbalized threats against the executives running corporations but where are the mass raids on them on any scale?  Where is the Administration's effort to prosecute NGOs, including supposedly Christian ones, that may have been involved in the illegal transportation or harboring of individuals across the border?  How many times during the campaign were we told by Conservatives about the bussing that was going on bringing individuals into the country illegally? 

Furthermore, US sanctions against other nations have—by their own admission—caused civil unrest among those countries' populations.  When done in Latin America, it incentivizes illegal migration, which is then brought to the public as a problem to be solved, even though at every turn, the powers-that-be engineered the whole problem.

Why is there basically zero effort to break the system of the criminal wealthy and elite? These are part of the Swamp Trump incessantly promised to drain. Catholics should not be missing this point. This intentional network is the main source of the problem, not the individuals who accepted their invitation. The current method is tantamount to going after every single drug user in the country instead of going after the dealers. It's not only inefficient but it won't solve the problem. Deportation according to the law is licit, but isn't the root cause.

What's also disturbing is that the Administration shows an awareness that you have to go after the orchestrators of a scheme. On the January protest that occurred inside a church, Assistant AG Harmeet Dhillon vowed to go after whoever "paid for, coordinated, or participated" in the crime. Great. Why are they not doing the same with those who coordinated the immigration problem in the first place?

VENEZUELA

Catholics and others might consider a refresher on Just War Theory, including: 

• grave and certain damage from an aggressor
• exhausted diplomacy or alternatives to war
• prospect of success based on the previous
• result must not produce greater evil than original condition

Many Catholics were okay with the indiscriminate bombing of Caribbean speedboats without knowing the identity of the boatmen, had no ability to reach the American border (that Trump said his Administration "closed" in February 2025) because they were thousands of miles away in a small speed boat. 

Furthermore, the Administration kidnapped Maduro, the president of Venezuela, based originally on the narrative that Venezuela was, according to Trump, killing 25,000 people every time a speedboat from there supposedly came to America with fentanyl. Yet, in the Trump Administration's own DEA National Drug Threat Assessment report from May 2025, Venezuela does not appear once under the fentanyl section and only once in unrelated street trafficking. 

The fentanyl narrative then morphed. The US tried to justify Maduro's kidnapping because he was the ringleader of a drug gang called Cartel de los Soles. But the Adminstration subsequently had to admit no such organization still exists.  

Multiple reports in October 2025 said Maduro had offered the US oil deals according to what the Trump Administration was demanding, but was refused. After having refused Maduro's offer, Rubio later said Maduro was "simply not a guy you can make a deal with." 

The entire affair failed to meet Just War's main criteria of no immediate or certain threat and no exhaustion of diplomacy. 

Later, Rubio also denied that the kidnapping or bombing of speedboats constituted an "act of war," which would require Congressional approval. Despite an "armada" of US military involved for months on Venezuela's doorstep, including for the kidnapping, Rubio argued that the kidnapping only took 4-some hours and was a "law enforcement" operation, so it couldn't be an act of war.  Senator Rand Paul pointed out the nonsensicality of Rubio's testimony,  positing how the kidnapping would have been perceived by the US if it had been done to the US, and concluding: "Of course it would be an act of war."

Crisis Magazine Editor Eric Sammons succinctly described the matter:

The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, was abducted and captured... It is Orwellian to claim this was merely a law enforcement function. We literally had our military enter another country without invitation - that is, by the way, called an invasion. They captured and abducted the head of state and then took him to our country. If that's not an act of war, I don't know what is. Okay. If somebody did that to us — if some other country came in, went after Trump, and got out — would we not think that's an act of war? There's not a single American who wouldn't think that's an act of war. 

Sammons also pointed out how Catholic just war theory "cuts through the propaganda." 

In another interview, Rubio let out the underlying motive for Venezuelan regime change. It wasn't to protect Americans or stop drugs or any of the original narratives. It was to control the oil and prevent China, Russia, and Iran from lawfully buying it as they had done.  The US wanted to control those purchases, which is not a grave matter justifying a war. It's violation of other nations' own sovereignty. This isn't much different than the mobster who says "I control this street corner" and takes over the shop infringing on the mobster's profits.

IRAN

Catholic professor and philosopher Dr. Edward Feser expounded on why US getting involved in war with Iran failed to meet Just War theory criteria.  Reasons include specious claims that have persisted for decades that Iran was on the brink of obtaining a nuclear weapon, and that Middle East regime changes by the US have consistently resulted in a worse outcome for the region.

In June 2025, the US involved itself in war against Iran on the false premise that Iran had or was days away from having a nuclear weapon and was about to use it unjustly. The United States National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard testified about 12 weeks prior to the US-Israel bombing of Iran that "Iran is not building a nuclear weapon..."

Also in June 2025, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who functions as a UN inspector of nuclear capabilities, said, “We did not have elements to prove that Iran had a plan or a systematic effort towards a nuclear weapon.”

In collaboration with Israel, dozens of Iranian officials were assassinated on June 13, 2025.  The Trump Administration then directly bombed Iranian facilities, supposedly containing imminent nukes. 

After the whole fiasco, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said Trump had dealt the "final blow" to Iran's nuclear program  That "final blow lasted all of 6 months as the Trump administration has again reignited tensions with Iran. Currently, a US military armada has been sent to the region on the pretext of the exact same "nuclear weapons" matter they claimed they solved months earlier. 

Saying the quiet part out loud again, Rubio admitted that the US used their aggression against Iran to pressure China who purchased oil from Iran as well as Venezuela. 

GAZA

The worst war of them all is the US's collaboration in the genocide perpetrated by the State of Israel against the people of Palestine. After Israel had imposed two years of disproportionate and merciless aggression against the people of Gaza, the Vatican's Cardinal Parolin issued a statement:

"[T]he war waged by the Israeli army...disregards the fact that it is targeting a largely defenceless population...buildings and homes are reduced to rubble. ...countries truly capable of exerting influence have so far failed to act to stop the ongoing massacre." 

Pope Leo, when asked about the interview in which Parolin made his comments, said, "The Cardinal expressed the Holy See's opinion very well." 

Conservative estimates of 70,000+ civilians, including many children, have been slaughtered at the hands of Israeli attacks or starvation tactics in the past 2+ years.  Israel has conceded this number, suggesting the total is much higher.  Given the number of bodies beneath the rubble, and given that Israel is reported to have used thermobaric weapons that can vaporize victims, some victim total estimates are over 200,000 . 

In September 2025, the United Nations issued a report, stating, "“It is clear there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”

The landscape is demolished. 

WE CANNOT STOP TALKING ABOUT GAZA. The US is complicit. Republicans and democrats funded, supported and empowered Israel to do this. We have a choice America! It’s time we put Americans first! It time we put humanity first! https://t.co/gDisONlK5w pic.twitter.com/jAwclGSQJi

— Anthony Aguilar (@AnthonyAgu88102) February 1, 2026

Colonel Anthony Aguilar, a first-hand witness of the scene, described it as something out of the dystopian Terminator films.  In January, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner spoke of plans to build resorts on the demolitioned landscape. 

Not only has President Trump collaborated in these atrocities but he (i.e. his handlers) appointed Israel—the perpetrator of atrocities in Gaza—to the "Board of Peace" overseeing Gaza going forward (in addition to concerns this is also a scheme to supplant the UN). In November 2025, Trump called for Israeli PM Netanyahu to be pardoned, repeating the demand in December and again in February 2026 when he criticized Israeli President Herzog for not issuing the pardon yet.  Trump also praised Netanyahu—the PM of the political nation responsible for the maiming (graphic warning) and deaths of thousands of innocents and children—for being a "wartime president who’s a hero."  This is arguably the worst holocaust of the 21st century, ironically perpetrated by Israel, and Trump is praising the perpetrator as a "hero." 

Trump's Secretary of State Marco Rubio, another professed Catholic, has innumerable times espoused a "stand with Israel" policy.  A leaked 2015 email revealed Larry Ellison—a billionaire and frequent lobbyist for the state of Israel—said "Marco will be a great friend for Israel.”  As Secretary in 2025, Rubio specifically protected Israel's atrocities in Gaza when he condemned  the International Criminal Court's upholding of an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. 

At one point in August 2025, the Trump Administration threatened to withhold federal funds from any US State that engaged in protest against Israel's war on Palestinians.  In February 2026, the Trump Administration was involved in trying to oust Carrie Prejean Boller, a Catholic, from the so-called "Religious Liberty" Commission for declaring that Catholics have a right to speak out against Zionist ambitions in the Gaza genocide. Israel has meanwhile put millions of dollars into media control and openly have called for censorship of opposition. 

It will be very difficult for Trump to politically or morally escape his reputation as a collaborator in the worst genocide of the century. 

EPSTEIN

Addressing one atrocity after another brings us to the Epstein coverup. Relating to the last topic, Epstein was also apparently working for or with Israel's Mossad intelligence division. 

 At the behest of congressmen Thomas Massie (who Trump attacks regularly) and Ro Khanna, multiple files have been released, albeit heavily redacted. (The link references in the following sentence contain disturbing descriptions.) The public has learned that there is indeed a sex and child trafficking movement among the world's elite that apparently involves cannibalism, pedophilia, torture, in addition to major political leverage exercised through the Epstein network on the lives of citizens globally. Multiple global politicians have already resigned from their posts after the recent exposé.  

Both AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have arguably perjured themselves or engaged in public fraud when they denied that the Epstein files had any evidence of criminal activity or minor trafficking. Trump, prior to his second term, spoke of intent to release Epstein files.  Yet, even in recent weeks, he continued to thwart Massie's efforts to release the files and maintained they were a "Democrat hoax." 

During a February 2026 congressional hearing on the Epstein files that expose some of the horrors, Bondi was asked about why names were redacted or why there have been no indictments. Bondi gave devious non-sequitur answers, asking instead why wasn't the previous corrupt AG asked these questions or why not talk about the stock market?  AAG Dhillon, a supposedly pro-life lawyer, said she was "so proud" of Bondi's testimony that blatantly thwarted efforts to expose crimes against children, among other crimes. 

Bondi's testimony, had it been given by a common citizen in a court of law, would have resulted in that citizen immediately held in contempt and taken out in handcuffs.

The nightmarish crimes continue without justice. The network of elites orchestrating the crimes remain in power throughout the world, influencing policy, trade, and wars. When asked about the Epstein network, Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt—also a professed Catholic—said in February 2026 "We're moving on from that." 

CONCLUSION

Catholics, conservatives, or anyone of good will should not shy away from identifying moral decadence based on the object of the act, not who is saying it. They should not shy away from acknowledging Trump has been a monumental betrayer on his lack of prosecution of the Swamp involved in the immigration problem, his failed "no wars" promises, his failed Epstein justice promises, etc. 

There's often a philosophical or sci-fi scenario where people imagine going back in time and what they would do to stop various horrors. Those horrors are today, from crimes against children, wars, legal injustices, genocide, abortion holocaust too. They are here and must be first recognized before they can be addressed. And not enough are recognizing the crimes. Cling to the Catholic faith to cut through the noise.