President Donald Trump became the first sitting president to address the “Values Voters Summit” organised by the Family Research Council’s political arm. The annual event brings together conservative Christians and aims “to help inform and mobilise citizens across America to preserve the bedrock values of traditional marriage, religious liberty, sanctity of life and limited government that make our nation strong.”
“We are stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values,” the president told the crowd. “And something I've said so much during the last two years, but I'll say it again as we approach the end of the year. You know, we're getting near that beautiful Christmas season that people don’t talk about anymore. They don’t use the word ‘Christmas’ because it's not politically correct. You go to department stores, and they'll say, ‘Happy New Year’ and they'll say other things. Well, guess what? We're saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”
Although most of the attendees at the summit were evangelicals, a significant number of Catholics spoke to the gathering, including former White House advisers Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka. Mr Gorka is a regular guest on EWTN’s “The World Over.”
Catholic critics of the summit questioned which values the event celebrated. “Catholics who applauded Trump at this summit give moral cover to an administration that has contempt for Gospel values,” said John Gehring, Catholic Programme Director at Faith in Public Life. “As Catholics, we’re called to advance a politics of the common good. The president’s attacks on immigrants and dismantling of health care reforms that help the most vulnerable are an affront to Catholic teachings.”
“This gathering sounds more like the ‘ecumenism of hate’ that Fr. [Antonio] Spadaro [editor in chief of the Jesuit publication La Civilta Cattolica and close confidant of Pope Francis] wrote about [in his publication on 13 July] than the Church as a field hospital Pope Francis speaks of, or even St. Pope John Paul II’s call to build a civilisation of love,” Professor Cathleen Kaveny of Boston College told the Tablet.
PICTURE: President Donald Trump speaks at the 2017 Values Voter Summit on 13 October
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