Bp Barron On Jordan Peterson And Sam Harris

Bp Barron has a new video that touches on issues within the so-called intellectual dark web:

I think the intellectual dark web traces its origins to the populist response to the 9-11 attacks and their aftermath. The main issue at the time was the inability of Western elites to recognize the threats from Mahometanism. I think in part this was a consequence of the end of the Cold War, in which Mahometan states which had become clients of the Soviet Union were released from obligations imposed by membership in the Soviet sphere and began freelancing into military adventurism and terrorist activity. The end of the Cold War was also unforeseen by the CIA and George XLI; the policy establishment was left without a coherent strategy. This probably fed into his electoral defeat in 1992.

Prior to the rise of the intellectual dark web (this article makes a stab at defining it, but I definitely exclude Ben Shapiro, who is an old-fashioned neo-conservative, and I would include others like Carl Benjamin -- but remember, this is the New York Times) there were two strains of US academic and policy thought, neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism. Both, as the election of 2016 showed, had proven themselves incapable of addressing the challenges represented by the 9-11 attacks and subsequent developments. The US military response, a neo-conservative policy, proved extravagantly expensive yet inconclusive.

Neo-liberal tolerance of mass Mahometan migration into Western societies proved self-destructive, but it was only one result of the social disorder fostered by neo-liberal domestic policies. Dissatisfaction with both strains of thought led in part to Donald Trump's electoral success in 2016. However, there has never been a coherent strain of thought behind the populism that's replacing the older and outdated philosophies -- no National Review has emerged to give any sort of systematic presentation to the views of people like Peterson or Benjamin, while Buckley's magazine is no longer much other than self-parody.

The problem is that neither Peterson, a fully credentialed product of the academic establishment, nor Benjamin, who appears to have an elite university education of some sort, has enough of a philosophical background to articulate a fully coherent philosophy. Benjamin is a professed atheist, while Peterson clearly endorses Darwinian selection as part of an essentially materialist world view. The problem for both is where they can find an origin for questions of virtue or truth, which both clearly find important.

Here is where Bp Barron's observations are productive. Sam Harris, who is also a member of the intellectual dark web, is a hard atheist. Peterson, not quite so hard -- as Bp Barron correctly points out, Peterson finds a kind of Jungian archetypal value in scripture that promotes some sort of transcendental virtue, as opposed to Harris, who sees scripture as an evolutionary vestige and religion as pure superstition.

Bp Barron then moves to a much more important point: Peterson is coming from a modernist philosophical background, which he expresses fairly clearly. Nobody would have much disagreed with any of his points 50 years ago, when I was an undergraduate. I picked up Peterson's world view fairly well at that time, now that I think about it. The problem is that it isn't consistent, and Descartes, Hume, and Kant, not to mention Hegel or Darwin, don't form an adequate philosophical foundation for moving forward.

Actually, one reason I'm a big fan of the Fringe TV series is how much of it is a sendup of modernist thought as it's crept into elite popular culture. My wife and I are near-cultic followers. One of our favorite episodes is Momentum Deferred, in which shapeshifters from the alternate universe hijack a shipment of cryonically frozen heads, which have been preserved by transhumanists who hope to reattach them to new bodies at some future date. The shapeshifters are interested in only one of the heads, and as they go through identifying each to find the one they want, they toss the rejects away down a ravine. From a Cartesian-transhumanist point of view, this is a hilarious blasphemy.

I think the collapse of modernist thought is part of what's behind the rise of the newer, so far inchoate, movement represented by Peterson. Bp Barron doesn't quite come out and say this, but I think he agrees with Prof Feser that Sam Harris and the other New Atheists aren't worth debating. Peterson, who does think clearly within the limitations of his academic background, is a different matter, as is, I think, Carl Benjamin.

In fact, Bp Barron's explication of Kant's views on reason is quite good. Bp Barron is a Thomist. A debate between him and Jordan Peterson would be worthwhile. The problem is that, with the decline of both neo-liberal and neo-conservative intellectual forums, I'm not sure in what context it could take place.

A Visitor On The Parable Of The Sower

From a visitor:

As I was reading your blog today, it brought to mind the parable of the wheat or grain that was sown in turn on rocky land, shallow soil, amongst the weeds and in fertile, deep soil. The seed (the Word of God, and by extension, the Truth of the Catholic Church) is the same in all cases; the difference is where it lands (meaning in what kind of person or heart). It seems to me (in a sweeping generalization that in no way encompasses each individual situation) that people drawn to the Ordinariate as a stopping point rather than a way station on the path to the Original Church seem to be content with replanting every time a difficulty arises that chokes/stymies their growth rather than doing the more difficult work of conditioning the soil to make it more hospitable to receive the seed. As long as it can get away with replanting rather than actually having to bring in a harvest, the Ordinariate can stave off judgement day… until it can’t. With that kind of mentality, anybody want to make any bets about which lasts longer, the Ordinariates or the EU? It might be interesting to see what would be the Vegas Odds on that!

The idea of Anglicanorum coetibus as a way station rather than a final destination is intriguing. I'm not sure if Rome was ever completely clear about this -- notice the ambiguity about how long married priests will be allowed, as well as the deep suspicion in some quarters that at some point, it will be cut off altogether.

Fr Longenecker, a former Church of England priest ordained a married diocesan Catholic priest in the US without going through either the Pastoral Provision or the OCSP, had remarks in a similar vein recently:

People sometimes ask my what gifts I bring to the Catholic Church as a convert.

I’m not really quite sure how to answer since I feel I have received far more than I have given, and perhaps they are thinking that my answer will be that I have brought with me the Anglican choral tradition or Evensong or a love of fine liturgy or some such, but as I get older I realize more and more that while I love Anglican tradition and treasure my fifteen years in that church, I was never more than passing through.

They gave me a warm welcome, but I didn’t really fit in. I always felt like the son of the gardener in a grand house who happened to have befriended the son and heir of Lord Faunci.

I have a similar sense -- I was raised Presbyterian, fell away in college, and became Episcopalian at about 30. Like Fr Longenecker, I'm not sure if I was ever really at home there. I'm more in agreement with those I've talked with from time to time who saw Anglicanorum coetibus as "an easy way to become Catholic", but I think the implication here is that those of us who thought this way weren't intending to stay Anglican, or Anglican-like, or however else one might put it.

And of those who saw the OCSP as simply a way to become Catholic, it didn't work out for us! (I think in hindsight that was a feature, not a bug.) We had to turn around and take a more conventional route, while the ordinariate types pursued their boutique groups, flirting with the idea of not just unique, but separate.

The problem I see with how the story of the St Bede group and Fr Treco has been turning out is that overall, these people seem to want to be separate. The first link to the story I found provides a worthwhile context:

In addition to my wife and I being parishioners at the FSSP apostolate here in Minneapolis, we also from time to time attend St. Bede the Venerable, which is a mission parish of The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. While neither my wife nor myself were ever associated with Anglicans or Episcopalians, the Ordinariate Form of the Roman Rite is much more palpable than Novus Ordo masses.

While my friends and I were looking for an easy way to become Catholic (and not finding it with the OCSP, probably because there's actually no "easy way" to do it), these folks seem to have been drawn to the St Bede group because it shared their wish somehow to be more Catholic than the pope. It's a whole different approach.

This reminds me, actually, of the remarks Fr Ripperger, himself highly traditionalist, sometimes makes at conferences: he doesn't like traditionalists very much. He goes as far as to say they often make a great show of looking traditionalist while persisting in private sin. Something says to me that the most enthusiastic ordinariate people see themselves, and traditionalists see them, as at least close cousins.

Last Sunday I was enjoying the reverent mass at our diocesan parish. There are altar girls as well as altar boys. Somehow it reminded me of what I actually sort of liked about high-church Episcopalians: there were ladies in cassocks and surplices. It occurred to me that if Rome approves woman deacons, it'll be anything but a last straw for me; I never thought woman priests in TEC were a terrible scandal -- perhaps a doctrinal blunder, but not something to treat as a distraction.

There are more important things to focus on. If Rome ever ordains women priests, I'll be pushing up daisies by then anyhow.

"Why Is He In The Ordinariate, Then?"

I ran into the comment above somewhere on a blog discussing Fr Treco's removal, but I can't locate it now. It refers to his list of complaints against the Church and the seeming fact that he got his back up so hard that I would think the most pastoral and even indulgent efforts by Bp Lopes and Msgr Steenson to bring him home were of no avail. Yet he'd blogged for 15 years or so about how much he wanted to be a Catholic priest. My regular correspondent has what I think is a good insight:

Changing denominations seems to be commoner in the US than elsewhere. In the case of some OCSP clergy, as we have discussed, it seems to reflect simple careerism. But I have also encountered the kind of personality, clerical or lay, that seems perennially dissatisfied with the ability of any denomination to meet his or her high standards. For a time, each new institution seems like the One True Church, but gradually the leaders turn out to be flawed, the rules ignored in practice or even changed, the philosophical underpinning inadequate. So, on to the next! Surely certainty and perfection are out there somewhere. Perhaps Fr Treco is of this school.

This seems to have been the case with the Charismatic Episcopal Church, from which Fr Treco came. According to Wikipedia,

In the United States, the ICCEC experienced rapid growth for the first ten years of its existence. . . . In 2006 the US church experienced a crisis resulting in the departure of approximately 30% of its clergy and congregations, including seven actively serving bishops and one retired bishop. Though from diocese to diocese a variety of reasons were given for these departures, the crisis stemmed from allegations against some ICCEC leadership in America.

This is simply one fringe denomination among the pool from which Houston has been recruiting. Let's be clear: Fr Treco is the fourth OCSP priest who's required serious action by a bishop -- Fr Phillips was removed by the Archbishop of San Antonio while he still had authority over the parish, but shortly before it entered the OCSP. Under Bp Lopes, Phillips returned to the parish only as a retiree and was immediately replaced as pastor. Every indication is that Phillips had been a long-standing problem for whomever was ordinary.

In addition to Fr Phillips, Frs Kenyon and Reese have had to be removed before Fr Treco. This isn't a good record, and the two most recent, Reese and Treco, have given Houston a black eye, since they required action by the local archdioceses as well, and in the case of Reese, also made the eleven o'clock news.

This is cause for me to renew my reservations about Anglicanorum coetibus:

• Both priests and laity are likely to have a higher-than-normal proportion of malcontents who won't be satisfied in any denomination
• Priests in particular come from an applicant pool reflecting jurisdiction-hopping among fringe "Anglican" denominations, which suggests personnel issues aren't sufficiently probed in the discernment process
• Candidates for priesthood have widely disparate backgrounds, ranging from elite Episcopalian seminaries to no formal MDiv
• Both Reese and Treco are at the no-formal-MDiv end of the spectrum, and extended remedial training was clearly of no effect in both cases (UPDATE: Apparently Fr Treco has an M.Div from Trinity International University in Deerfield, IL class of 1988) This is an evangelical school that would not be much good for Catholic formation, and the degree is 30 years stale.
• The poor formation of OCSP priests raises the question of how effectively laity are catechized before they're received.

All of this suggests that the current trend of instant ordinations -- reception into the Church, ordination as a deacon, and ordination as a priest in a single weekend does happen -- has a great deal of risk attached. With a small pool of priests to start with, the pattern of one or two removals per year, sometimes amid scandal or at least public attention, is not encouraging. I don't think Fr Treco will be the last such case.

Situational Awareness

There were two major stories that affected US Catholics over the past week, the Covington Catholic hatefest and Governor Cuomo's "celebration" of New York's expansion of legal abortion. The Covington story is a serious indicator of what can happen to ordinary middle-class Catholics these days, and it should make all of us take notice. The other has raised new questions about exactly what sanctions the Church can apply to politicians who claim to be "Catholic" but support laws in opposition to Church teaching (or for that matter that are just bad public policy).

Good and faithful bishops have weighed in on both issues, and the laity on one hand has stood up for itself when directly threatened and attacked, while on the other it's loudly made its feelings known to the public figures involved. Certainly these events have served to clarify current issues for large swaths of Catholics. And, at least on the blogs and YouTube channels I've followed, nobody has claimed that traddies or Latin mass followers have the sole truth -- I get an overwhelming sense that everyone thinks we're all in it together.

I covered an additional story on this blog, of things visible and invisible, this one among the smallest -- the removal of Fr Vaughn Treco as administrator of the tiny group-in-formation in the Twin Cities area. The puzzling thing is that on the blog where it came up, this appears to be an utter tragedy that's eclipsed all others. The main issue in the comments is whether the membership -- I'm told regular mass attendance is in the range of two dozen, though probably not all are canonical "members" of OCSP -- is unanimous in supporting Fr Treco, or whether there are Quislings in the group.

By the same token, I made a rare visit to the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog and found no reference to the current crises, although several frequent contributors are from the US. The one post that seemed potentially relevant was entitled A question of identity for Catholics of Anglican Tradition (say that quickly three times), but the "question" at hand there is

The most recent flurry was precipitated by Shane Schaetzel who changed the name of a private Facebook group entitled Ordinariate Catholics to Traditional English Catholics.

Shane accompanied the abrupt name change—which he admitted was meant to spark discussion–with this essay entitled On the Use of the Word “Anglican” in reference to the the Ordinariates.

Influential people are trying to destroy the lives of Catholic schoolboys purely for being Catholic at the March for Life, bad bishops are piling on, and the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society is debating the use of the word "Anglican" over high tea. As far as I'm aware, Bp Lopes has had nothing to say on the big crises, although other junior bishops, like Scharfenberger and Strickland, have. I don't know what any OCSP priests have said to their tiny groups of faithful on these subjects -- as far as I can see, it isn't public.

Yet once more, I will not go anywhere near an OCSP group or parish.

Transcript of Bp Foys's Speech To The Covington Catholic Students

On January 25, the Diocese of Covington ran the article below in its newspaper, the Messenger, containing at least part of the transcript of Foys's January 23 talk to the Covington Catholic students. It was almost immediately overtaken by the full apology issued by Foys in a Friday-afternoon bad-news dump, covered in my post here yesterday. I've got to think that even this transcript was made public under pressure, since Foys's intent was clearly to speak only to young students without parents in attendance -- in other words, a naive and uncritical audience. He presumably hoped the parents would somehow accept this.

From comments on various sites, it appears that after a week of the Diocese of Covington not picking up the phone, people were calling the Archdiocese of Cincinnati across the river to complain. I imagine they loved that over there. I saw as well that apparently people were running ads on Cincinnati radio stations demanding that Foys apologize. It appears that the chancery was finally forced to issue some sort of response, but this clearly wasn't sufficient. And there were now two law firms on Foys's case.

It's worth noting that as of this Wednesday talk, Foys's plan was still to conduct an "investigation" of indefinite length (it "isn't going to be over overnight") and make no public statement until it was complete and the "truth" could be known. This reinforces the idea that this talk was initially not to be made public. That lasted only two days. I'll have some other reactions below after the quote: :

You could literally hear a pin drop as the faculty, staff and student body of Covington Catholic High School waited in the gym, Jan. 23, for the arrival of Bishop Roger Foys. As Bishop Foys entered the gymnasium the entire assembly stood up, waited for Bishop Foys to take his seat and then in unison took their seats. He was there to address the students about the events that took place Jan. 18, after the March for Life in Washington, D.C., where a student standing face-to-face with an elder Native American was captured on video and ignited a firestorm on social media — making headlines around the world

Bob Rowe, principal, opened with a prayer, then introduced Bishop Foys. “These last four days have been a living hell for many of you, for your parents, for your relatives, for your friends and it certainly has been for me,” Bishop Foys said as he began to address the assembly. “We are under all kinds of pressure from a lot of different people, for a lot of different reasons.”

Bishop Foys began by sharing how impressive the March for Life had been, especially the Mass celebrated at St. Dominic Church just before the march. “I know many of you couldn’t be at the Mass because you had a problem with your buses. It was really a moving time,” said Bishop Foys. “Over 1,000 people gathered for that Mass and there’s a real reverence about it.

“I told the students before we dismissed that … when they left that church and when they marched on the streets of Washington, D.C. for life, like we’ve done for the last 46 years, that they represented what was best about the Church and what was best about the Diocese of Covington; that we were sending out our best to stand up for life. It was a wonderful day, filled with real grace. That night I slept peacefully. It was the last night I’ve slept peacefully.”

Bishop Foys explained that by Saturday morning he and Curia staff were beginning to receive calls and e-mails from news stations and people from all over the world commenting about the confrontation in Washington. By Sunday morning the diocesan website was receiving over 200 thousand hits per hour and e-mails were coming in at a rate of over 10,000 an hour — crashing servers. Staff phones rang persistently for days — cell phones and office phones — until voicemail boxes were full; calls from media seeking a state ment, or comments from individuals all over the world criticizing either the students for their behavior or the diocese for their lack of support.

“Soon, my brother bishops began to text me worrying about my welfare and yours. People care about you. People love and care and are concerned about the Church and they are concerned about you.”

Bishop Foys went on to summarize the situation that he, Mr. Rowe, the students, the Covington Catholic community and the diocese are now facing and about the investigation being done. “This is a no-win situation. We are not going to win. No matter what we say, one way or another, there are going to be people who are going to argue about it, people who will try to get into people’s heads and say, ‘This is what he meant. This is what they meant when they were doing this and doing that.’ The best we can do is, first of all, to find out the truth, to find out what really went on, what really happened. So we do have investigators who are here today, a third-party who are not associated with our diocese, not associated with me or with the school, who are working on this investigation to find out what happened.

“I am the shepherd of this Church. I have to present not only to the people of our diocese but also to the world the facts. Not the facts that someone has imagined or the facts that someone thinks or facts that people might determine from seeing a video. I encourage all of you, especially the students who were there at the march, to cooperate with the investigators. This is with the permission of your parents. We’re not going to have you do anything without the permission of your parents. And the teachers and chaperones who were there, I am asking you, too, to be cooperative with this.

“Father Michael Hennigen (school chaplain) has said that ‘The truth will set us free.’ That’s true. It is my fond hope, it is my prayer, that when the truth comes out you and I and the diocese will be exonerated. But I need something to present to God’s people and say, ‘Look! Here are the objective facts.’ This investigation isn’t going to be over overnight — it can’t be if it’s going to be thorough.

“Some people’s lives, as you know, have been affected for the rest of their lives and the honor of our school has been tainted. We have received, and probably you have received, horrible, vile e-mails. This brings out the worst in people.

“We have to ask ourselves, what are we going to learn from this? One of the things I hope we’ve learned, I hope you’ve learned, is that perception can become reality. A person can be doing something that is absolutely innocent but if he gives the slightest hint, the slightest perception, that this is something wrong that is what people are going to remember, and then for them that becomes their reality.

“I’m going to ask you, as your bishop, to stay off social media in regards to this situation at least until it is resolved. Because the more you say — pro or con — the more you exacerbate the situation. You have to help, especially yourself, by getting off social media.

Right now anything we say — you or I — anything we say is questioned. The devil is real; trust me. He has taken this good thing, this March for Life, and turned it into a media circus.”

Bishop Foys then talked to the students about the statements that have been released by the diocese and the school, which have been criticized. “Some people think our first statement was too strong, but in my mind with what we saw and what we heard at the time, we had to say what we said and we meant it. If that behavior is genuine then we have to condemn it.

“We issued a second statement yesterday. Regardless of what you heard or what you’ve read or what you think— I am on your side. I want you to come out of this in a positive light.

“In our second statement I asked people to pray that we will arrive at the truth. The only way we can do that in an objective way is through a thorough and in-depth investigation. It is my hope and my prayer that, in the end, it will show exactly what happened and that we will be able to stand tall and proud. People will still criticize us one way or the other — people will believe it or not believe it — but at least we can say we’ve taken the time to talk to all the parties involved and to get all the footage we can that was taken that day and say, ‘Here, this is not what we think happened or what we would like to believe happened, but this is what in fact happened. If there was some wrongdoing we have to own up to that, too. Father Michael is right, it is the truth that will set us free.”

In closing he reminded the students how much he supports Catholic education and CCHS in particular. “Anybody who knows me knows that I support Catholic education. Over the last 17 years I have come to Covington Catholic a number of times each year. I always open your school year with Mass and I celebrate with you your successes. It pains me, more than you can imagine, having to be here today; but we can get over this. I’m 73 years old, I have faced a lot of struggles and hardships — we will get over this, there will be time to heal, it will be all right. But in the meantime preserve the integrity of the school, be the best that you can be and lay off the social media for a while.

“Know that I stand with you, that I join with you in that ‘Spirit that will not die’ and that together we will work through this. Thank you and God bless you.” As Bishop Foys turned the podium over to Mr. Rowe, he expressed his confidence in the principal. “Mr. Rowe has done a wonderful job here in his leadership. I have full confidence in him and he will continue to lead you,” he said.

In his final remarks before dismissing the assembly Mr. Rowe said, “Bishop Foys supports us — now we need to support him.”

My first impression was that Foys comes across as a 73-year-old bumbler. After reflecting overnight, I'm struck by how much of this talk is about him. His brother bishops have e-mailed to ask if he's OK. (Actually, I think this would have been a polite attempt by his colleagues to ask why he seemed to be AWOL.) He couldn't sleep peacefully for days! And the phones just kept ringing! Ah, the humanity!

And his remarks come off as tired and defeatist. “This is a no-win situation. We are not going to win. No matter what we say, one way or another, there are going to be people who are going to argue about it, people who will try to get into people’s heads and say, ‘This is what he meant. This is what they meant when they were doing this and doing that.'" This is neither the leader nor the spokesman you want. Nick Sandmann the 16-year-old did a better job.

Both here and in the apology, he mentions that the principal, Mr Rowe, is under pressure to resign. I think he's going to have to go -- the perception is that, with Foys, he threw the school, the boys, and the families under the bus. As Foys himself says, perception can be reality. I would guess there's also a great deal of pressure on Foys to resign as well. We'll have to see what shakes out.

The lesson I'm beginning to learn from this is the power of a courageous and responsible laity. There are many more important issues the laity will need to address in coming weeks and months, though.

Bp Foys Issues Sudden Full Apology

Early this afternoon, Bp Foys finally issued an apology to the Covington Catholic School families:

Bishop Roger Foys of Covington issued an apology Friday for a Jan. 19 diocesan statement that condemned the actions of some Covington Catholic High School students, following a widely publicized incident after last week’s March for Life in Washington, DC.

“We apologize to anyone who has been offended in any way by either of our statements which were made with good will based on the information we had,” said Bishop Foys in the letter, which was addressed to the parents of Covington Catholic students.

“We should not have allowed ourselves to be bullied and pressured into making a statement prematurely, and we take full responsibility for it.”

Foys also singled out Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann, the student at the center of the controversy. A video emerged Jan. 19 of Sandmann standing in close proximity to Native American activist Nathan Phillips, who was, at the time, chanting and playing a ceremonial drum.

. . . “I especially apologize to Nicholas Sandmann and his family as well as to all CovCath families who have felt abandoned during this ordeal. Nicholas unfortunately has become the face of these allegations based on video clips,” said Foys. “This is not fair. This is not just.”

Meanwhile, Gateway Pundit reports,

L. Lin Wood, recently retained by the family of Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann issued a statement Friday afternoon promising a “multitude of civil lawsuits” against those who made “false accusations and threats” against Sandmann over the incident involving him and Native American activist Nathan Phillips last Friday in Washington, D.C.

. . . Wood came to prominence representing Richard Jewell, the security guard falsely accused by the media in the Atlanta Olympics bombing in 1996. From the Wood lawfirm about page:

. . . L. Lin Wood, P.C., focuses its practice on First Amendment and defamation litigation; media management in high profile matters; False Claims Act cases, or “whistleblower” actions; fiduciary, trust and estate litigation; complex business litigation; and cases of catastrophic personal injury.

Tomorrow I'll post the transcript of Bp Foys's talk to the Covington Catholic School students on Wednesday. It was remarkably flaccid and continued to deflect responsibility. My wife thinks the hiring of Mr Wood's firm and the sudden full apology from Bp Foys are not unrelated -- clearly someone slapped this stubborn old man upside the head, figuratively speaking.

We'll have to see what further apologies are forthcoming. It's worth reflecting that Church authorities have been completely unwilling to stand up to the bullying that Bp Foys now acknowledges took place. It's taken a courageous individual lay family to force these men to begin to act like shepherds.

The MAGA Hat Issue

In something of a late hit against the poor Covington schoolboys, and as part of a liberal pushback against the exposure of the hoaxer Nathan Phillips and his enablers, Bp John Stowe of Lexington, KY, wrote an op-ed in which he implied that the kids sorta-kinda brought it on themselves for wearing MAGA hats, which meant they weren't good Catholics anyhow:

Without engaging the discussion about the context of the viral video or placing the blame entirely on these adolescents, it astonishes me that any students participating in a pro-life activity on behalf of their school and their Catholic faith could be wearing apparel sporting the slogans of a president who denigrates the lives of immigrants, refugees and people from countries that he describes with indecent words and haphazardly endangers with life-threatening policies.

This echoes the earlier views of Fr Edward Beck of CNN:

Lastly, I don't think the boys should have been permitted to wear MAGA hats to the March for Life event they attended. The "Make America Great Again" slogan has become political code for an agenda that is often in opposition with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

. . . The Catholic Church's pro-life teaching encompasses a panoply of issues such as: abortion, immigration, capital punishment, the environment and climate change, sex trafficking, and the inequitable distribution of the world's resources.

This seems to be a variant of the "seamless garment" theory promoted by Cardinal Bernardin. The teachings of the Catholic Church actually support many of the agenda items on which President Trump won the 2016 election. For instance, CCC 2241 says

Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants' duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.

As far as I'm aware, the Catechism makes no reference to climate change, and there is no entry for "climate" in its index. Offhand remarks by Pope Francis on the subject carry no particular teaching authority. As far as I'm aware, President Trump did not run on a platform in favor of sex trafficking. In fact, his position is that uncontrolled immigration fosters sex trafficking, which is common sense. The Church's position on capital punishment has changed since the 2016 election, and I don't believe President Trump has expressed any position on this pro or con.

But a recent article at LifeSite News raises questions about Bp Stowe's position on other Church teachings:

Stowe is famously a voice for progressive causes within the Catholic Church – even those which go against Catholic teaching.

He is one of five bishops who endorsed pro-gay Fr. James Martin, S.J.’s book, “Building a Bridge,” and was also a featured speaker in 2017 at a conference for the dissident group New Ways Ministry. The gathering was titled “Justice and Mercy Shall Kiss: LGBT Catholics in the Age of Pope Francis.”

New Ways Ministry was condemned in 2010 by then-president of the USCCB, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, and in 2011 by Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl, USCCB chairman of the Committee on Doctrine. In 1999 the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “permanently prohibited” the group’s co-founders “from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons,” after ruling that their teaching was “erroneous and dangerous” and “doctrinally unacceptable.”

In July 2018, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Lexington said it was “up to each parish” whether to promote homosexuality.

Michael Voris in today's Vortex addresses a broader question about the liberal bishops' acceptance of Church teaching on abortion:

See, a large number of U.S. bishops are still stuck in the 1970s and earlier, when most Catholics were Democrats — before the Democrats morphed into the Party of Death.

. . . Few bishops anywhere in the United States during those years from 1964 to 1984 said much about the direction the Democratic Party was heading. Right smack in the middle of that 20 years, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its immoral ruling in Roe v. Wade.

. . . As you know, the boys were wearing MAGA hats, which for most of the U.S. bishops is like kryptonite, so closely are they allied with their Democratic Party buds.

Actually, it isn't completely clear when the boys put the MAGA hats on. They were wearing the hats after the March, and so far, nobody has shown them wearing them during the March itself. They were waiting for the bus after a period of free sightseeing time between the end of the March and their departure. As such, they were representing only themselves. And as a self-identified never-Trump commentator puts it:

If you attend a march in Washington, D.C., while wearing a cheap red hat that can be purchased at any gift shop or souvenir stand in the city, there's every chance you'll be branded a racist for maintaining your composure while complete strangers scream at you and pound drums in your face. And even when irrefutable video evidence proves you've done nothing wrong, a pack of bigots with press passes will still blame you for angering them.

But it's worth repeating that Trump won the 2016 election with a majority of the Catholic vote. Catholics are getting smarter.