Article Image

IPFS News Link • Religion: Believers

Bashing liberals, Muslims and millennials: Has this pro-Trump priest gone too far?

• http://www.nj.com

Peter West, an avowed supporter of President Donald Trump, doesn't shrink from calling it as he sees it.

Posting on Facebook and Twitter up to a dozen times a day, he has repeatedly railed against Muslims, calling moderate Islam "a myth" and voicing strong support for the president's travel ban, which temporarily barred immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries before a judge issued a stay last week.

West has assailed millennials as "snowflakes" who attend "cry-ins" and described liberals as "smug and arrogant" people who find solace in puppies and Play-Doh.

He has called Hillary Clinton an "evil witch" and former President Barack Obama a "bum," at one point sharing a post that challenged Obama's authenticity as an African-American because he wasn't raised by a poor single mother in the inner city.

Were West some random internet flamethrower, his posts might garner a shrug in an age of intense political division and social media rancor.

But West, 57, is a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Newark, and some of his withering attacks, while popular with many of his 7,300 Facebook followers from around the country, run counter to the statements and philosophies of his own leader, Newark Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, and his ultimate boss, Pope Francis.

Perhaps more significant, West's online behavior breaks with the longstanding protocol that religious figures should refrain from political bomb-throwing or the disparagement of other faiths, experts say.

The reluctance to campaign from the pulpit is rooted in the broad notion of separation of church and state and, more specifically, in a 1954 federal law.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin installed as leader of Newark Archdiocese

Cardinal Joseph Tobin installed as leader of Newark Archdiocese

Tobin, who replaces Archbishop John J. Myers, is the first cardinal to preside over the archdiocese in its 163-year history

Known as the Johnson Amendment, after former President Lyndon Johnson, the measure explicitly bars tax-exempt agencies, including the church, from participating in political campaigns and from endorsing or attacking candidates. Failure to comply can result in the loss of an institution's tax-exempt status.

Trump, speaking before religious leaders at the National Prayer Breakfast last week, vowed to "totally destroy" the Johnson Amendment, saying he wanted to "allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution." Such a move, however, would require congressional action.

West is not accused of stumping for Trump or denigrating the president's critics during church services, but his public musings on the internet raise questions about how politically active clergymen can or should be in their private lives before running afoul of the federal law.

A pro-life activist who previously served as vice president for missions at the group Human Life International, West is an associate pastor at St. John's Catholic Church in Orange, an ethnically diverse community in Essex County.

He declined to comment on his social media postings when approached by a reporter at the rectory last week, referring questions to Jim Goodness, a spokesman for the archdiocese.


PirateBox.info