Confusing Personality with Character

From Catholics for Trump:

One thing I have noticed a lot of well meaning Catholics doing when it comes to Donald Trump is to confuse personality with character. In our soft American parishes today we are used to hearing constant messages about being polite and nice often at the expense of any real substantive Catholic teaching. The problem is that there are plenty of people who are very polite, nice, and well-mannered on the outside, but corrupt on the inside. Very many politicians come to mind (think Hillary Clinton). They talk a very good game, but their actions are quite a different story.

Enter Donald Trump. Trump is the exact opposite of what almost every social justice priest at your local guitar Mass says a Christian should be. He’s brash, boasting, confident, tough, unyielding, demanding, and blunt. In our very feminine and politically correct Church of 2016, these attributes alone are enough to horrify sensitive Catholic parishioners and have them mistakenly assume the man is evil , immoral, and Satan incarnate.

Yet, if one has any experience with the Greatest Generation of men, the World War II generation, they will have known many men who were brash, tough, who cursed, who had a temper, but who on the inside were decent and good men and possessed natural virtue. And one thing is for certain, they got things done, and they didn’t complain. Sure they made mistakes, they sinned, they weren’t perfect. But sometimes you didn’t get to experience their true character under the gruff exterior unless you were with them on a daily basis. These were the men who fought our wars, who worked blue collar jobs. Many of them Catholic men. Were they all bad or evil men because they were tough, hard working, and no-nonsense? Hardly. Feminine does not necessarily equal holy. The God that said “Let the little children come to Me” also drove out money changers with a whip and called the Pharisees a “brood of vipers.” (Read more.)

Share