There are matters on which men can disagree strongly without any of them necessarily holding outright untruths or committing any sins. These are matters of taste and opinion only. Then there are topics on which a man might come to hold a belief that is in defiance of the laws of God and nature. Worst of all, some people hold to an entire ideology or worldview that is inherently unjust, unnatural, and demonically destructive.
A great American under consideration for official Catholic Church canonization now is Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who spurred a spiritual revival in post-WWII America and gained popularity not just among his fellow Catholics, but among Christians of multiple denominations. One of his reflections presented as peculiarly Lenten is, “As a man gets more wicked, he understands his wickedness less and less, just as when a man’s fever climbs to a point of deliriousness, he understands his sickness less and less.”
And this is perfectly true. The deeper one indulges in adultery, gluttony, fornication, anger, violence, thievery, sexual perversion, or any other sort of immoral self-indulgence, the harder it is to break the sinful habit. Even secular people will admit this if one uses the examples of alcoholism or drug addiction.
Related: Taking Care of Your Own Business: A Lesson Leftists Never Want to Learn
My random Lenten thought, however, since I am a journalist who spends all day reading and writing news, is whether or not a political ideology can be in itself both thoroughly wicked and a sort of moral and mental sickness. When we look at the transgender-identifying mass shooters, the child-grooming drag queens, the anti-ICE rioters, the Antifa terrorists, the TDS-brainwashed politicians, and the abortion lovers, we cannot help but notice that they are not only espousing evil ideas, but they themselves are severely mentally ill.
The Democrat Party has always made at least one thoroughly unjust and wicked policy a part of their platform, from the early 19th century onwards, so it is a question whether it was ever a justifiable moral choice to be a Democrat, but I think in our present day, there can be no doubt. A party that praises terrorism, serial criminality, baby murder, child mutilation, sexual perversions, and grossly weaponized justice is obviously villainous.
We therefore return to the point that Sheen made and apply it to Democrats. "As a man gets more wicked, he understands his wickedness less and less, just as when a man’s fever climbs to a point of deliriousness, he understands his sickness less and less." As an example, take Robert Dorgan, the man who pretended to be a woman, made numerous accusations of abuse against family members, and eventually, this week, murdered his ex-wife and son because she and her children would not affirm his gender dysphoria.
Long before he shot multiple family members at a hockey game, Dorgan had convinced himself that he was a victim because his family was honest about the insanity and harm of his claims of being a woman. Just before his murder spree, an X account that appears to be Dorgan's threatened to go "berserk" in response to criticism of a congressman's transgender "identity." Dorgan went so deep into his wickedness and deliriousness that he convinced himself that gunning down his family was not only justifiable but brave.
This Lent, as we develop spiritually, it is not out of place for us to ask ourselves whether we or our family members have allowed ourselves to accept political evils that are truly sinful.
