Doug Wilson, the Calvinist preacher who appeared in Pete Hegseth's weekly Pentagon prayer meeting, says that in his preferred Christian nation, anything that Protestants consider to be a "public displays of idolatry" would be banned, including Catholic parades.

This is the mindset of people who have put us into a war in the Middle East.

I'm sure I know a lot of Catholics, particularly locally, who voted for Trump.  Most of them were in the category of people who oppose abortion, as I do, and who oppose the gender bizarreness that the Democratic Party seemed to embrace.

I'm not at all certain that a lot of those people would vote for Trump again.  Particularly Hispanics, who nationwide have dumped Trump like a hot rock, and for good reason.

But I know a very few, and I do mean very few, coreligious who are MAGA.  I can think of one, anyhow.  Indeed, as we are coreligious, I think he just assumes I must hold the same views he does, or he did have that view, and is occasionally surprised to his distress.  When the war in Gaza drug on he was surprised that I didn't have unyielding support for it.  He later came to me a bit distressed as his sons weren't for it either, and I again noted, I agreed with them.

He's been pretty silent on the current war.  My guess would be, although I don't know, that he's all for it.

Since before Trump was elected this go around I've sounded the alarm bells that Catholics would come to regret supporting Trump, as there's a strong Calvinist element that basically hates us.

Calvinism is pretty much dead everywhere, save for the United States, which reflects the unique religious history of the United States.  Americans indeed are often amazingly ignorant on the topic of religion, including American Catholics.  A lot of American protestants don suit and tie, or nice dresses, and "go to church" every Sunday sincerely believing that their assemblies resemble those of the Apostolic Age, not realizing that those gathering for Mass or Divine Liturgy are actually reflective of that.  They largely can't be blamed, as they don't know what they don't know, although some protestant ministers should quite frankly know better.  Having said that, many protestant ministers have in fact "swam the Tiber" in recent years.

Then you have guys like Doug Wilson. . . and Pete Hegseth . . . and Mike Huckabee.

After John F. Kennedy sold us out in order to win the Oval Office, most Protestant denominations got used to us and we got used to them.  For that matter, the turmoil of the 60s and 70s, caused a lot of Catholics to become pretty weak in the observance and knowledge of their faith.  Protestant denominations began to go along with the culture to a large degree, even in some of the hardcore fundamentalist branches of Protestantism.  Big debates have happened, for example over the extent to which various Protestant denominations tolerate homosexuality at ever level, while almost all of them have completely given up paying any attention to what Christianity actually holds regarding sex in general.  Unmarried couples, for example, will "go to church" every Sunday, completely comfortable that God is okay with whatever they're doing.

A tiny, and it is tiny, group of really fundamentalist Protestants, however, holds really radical views on a whole set of topics that would surprise Catholics, including on Catholicism itself.  Some of them really hate us.

That element has the ear of the White House.  A group of American Protestants who believe that the United States has a special divinely ordained role actually has a degree of power right now, and amongst the things they believe is that they can force the Hand of God and bring about the Second Coming soon.  A war with Iran is part of that in their view.

Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans and most other Christians believe nothing of the sort.  But then you don't find any of the group I've named acting like Paula White and declaring that Donald Trump has a divine mission, and you don't find any of them claiming to be playing the role of Moses in modern times, like Mike Johnson.

To weak Christians nor non Christians, what's going on with Paul White, Doug Wilson and Pete Hegseth reflects Christianity.  It doesn't.  The Apostolic Christians whose symbols and phrases Pete Hegseth has had tattooed on his body would have regarded him as a heretic.

These are dangerous times for Apostolic Christians.  It's time to let people know that this isn't us.  Associating with the radical New Apostolic Reformation people in this administration is a serious error, and will hurt us in the end.  Indeed, they'll hurt us when they can.