Christopher Cervantes
[email protected]
I don’t understand why people still try to mix politics and religion. Here we have two institutions that have existed hand-in-hand in the past but in the modern day are a volatile combination that tend to, more often than not, lead to explosive results that leave few involved completely unscathed. And this is when someone calculates this mixture intentionally, Sen. Ted Cruz. When it is done accidently, the results can vary.
Take, for example, the conflict between Donald Trump and Pope Francis that occurred last week. Word on the street was that the Catholic leader gave a harsh statement regarding the Republican presidential hopeful, saying that “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” referring to Trump’s highly publicized plan to build a wall between the United States and Mexico.
This started up a political hailstorm that dominated the nation, with the pope receiving both praise and criticism. Trump himself did not take the issue lying down. He described the pope’s claim to be disgraceful, and that the government of Mexico is using Francis to further its agenda. He took it even further by claiming that, “if and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows, is ISIS’ ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed Donald Trump would have been president, because, it’s true, it’s true this would not have happened because ISIS would have been eradicated.”
I hate when a simple misunderstanding turns into something far more inappropriate.
For the most part, it seems as if people have translated their own version of what the pope says. They see that quote, and it is assumed that it that Francis directly called out Trump by saying he is not a Christian. That is not the case at all. According to the Bible, if we want to really delve into a good Christian teaching, people shouldn’t eat shrimp, getting divorced is frowned upon, and women should not be allowed to teach. I’m pretty sure some of us are guilty of not being perfect Christians.
What I find amusing is how Trump has been handling all this. At one point he says that the pope should stay out of American politics and calls him disgraceful but on another day speaks of him in a cordial and friendly tone. More likely than not, this has to do with the Catholic voting populace in the United States.
Trump criticized Mexico for using the pope, but now he himself is using the incident to spread his own agenda. Surprisingly enough, I don’t blame Trump for this, nor do I blame the pope. As hard as it may seem, this is just a misunderstanding that picked up so much steam that it grew into something that should have died down days ago, almost like President Obama’s “coffee cup” salute in 2014, in which the president showed his patriotic side by saluting troops with a cup of coffee in his hand.
Like any misunderstanding, the only true way to rectify the situation is to simply move past it. Or wait for something else to be overly sensationalized. I suspect the latter is more likely to happen.