When a revered church leader blesses cruelty as holiness, he’s not preaching Paul’s gospel. He’s sanctifying Sodom’s sin.
By Ben Jealous
When a revered church leader blesses cruelty as holiness, he’s not preaching Paul’s gospel. He’s sanctifying Sodom’s sin.
It’s been a month since Cardinal Timothy Dolan compared right-wing activist Charlie Kirk to Saint Paul, and I still can’t shake it. Maybe it lingers because of what else was happening that week in Chicagoland
The same week much of the city was still mourning Silverio Villegas González — an immigrant father from Michoacán who dropped his boys at school, was pulled over on the way to work, and was shot in the back by an ICE officer — the Cardinal praised a man who had urged “lethal force” to be used against people like Silverio. The contrast was too much to ignore: a father dying to stay with his children, and a prince of the Church invoking the name of Jesus while celebrating a man who called for such executions.
Yes, that Jesus — the one who told us to love our NEIGHBOR as ourselves, to welcome the stranger, to leave vengeance to the Lord. The same Jesus whose spirit is etched at the base of our Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” That Jesus.
It was in that Jesus’s name that Cardinal Dolan praised Charlie Kirk as “a modern-day St. Paul — a missionary, a hero who wasn’t afraid to say Jesus’s name.”
A man who evangelized about using lethal force against immigrants and preached that Michelle Obama and several other brilliant Black women “did not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously.”
Yes, Cardinal Dolan praised the man who said those terrible things as if he were the very apostle Jesus selected to spread the Gospel.
When I first heard it, the old wristband slogan came to mind: WWJD — What Would Jesus Do?
I’ll confess, another three-letter word popped into my head first. But let’s not go there. Father, please forgive me.
If the question is WWJD, then the answer in this case can only be: repent.
Catholicism is not just one faith among many; it is America’s largest Christian body and the predominant faith across much of the region where Cardinal Dolan spoke. In Chicago, Catholic churches anchor whole neighborhoods — Polish, Mexican, Irish, Filipino, Haitian, Brazilian. Nearly half of the area’s Catholics are Latino, the majority Mexican. For generations of immigrants, the Church has been more than ritual. It’s been refuge.
So, when Cardinal Dolan praised a man who urged violence against migrants, much of his own flock was still in mourning. They were grieving Silverio Villegas González, but they were also grieving something larger — a sense of decency under attack.
The Bible is clear about how God judges such moments. The prophet Ezekiel tells us that Sodom’s sin was not lust, but “arrogance, gluttony, and unconcern for the poor and needy.” It was their hardness of heart toward strangers that brought them down.
When a church leader blesses cruelty as holiness, he’s not preaching Paul’s gospel. He’s sanctifying Sodom’s sin.
Even the Gospel most cherished in conservative pulpits — Matthew — leaves no room for such cruelty. Its Jesus does not build walls; He breaks bread. He warns that all the law and prophecy rest on love of God and neighbor, and He defines that love in action: “For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.”
To preach that Gospel while excusing violence against the stranger is not fidelity — it’s hypocrisy in holy robes.
From Chicago to America, to the world, to Rome, — Cardinal Dolan owes a deep apology.
To the immigrants who have carried this nation’s labor and its faith.
To the children who will grow up knowing their father died trying not to be torn from them.
To the mothers who teach their sons that love is stronger than hate.
To the parishioners who still believe that “love your neighbor as yourself” means all neighbors.
Yes. Cardinal Dolan owes an apology to each of them and to every believer who, like Jesus himself, knows the words “Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me” are a commandment.
Because when cruelty is crowned as courage and violence is blessed as virtue, the Gospel itself is profaned.
We are all flesh and blood, all fallible and all beloved. I know I am. And when we fail, we must seek repentance — even from those who already love and respect us.
I worry this plea will fall on deaf ears.
Please, Cardinal Dolan — in our Lord and Savior’s name — prove me wrong.
Ben Jealous is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and a former National President and CEO of the NAACP. On his mother’s side, he descends from preachers born enslaved, and on his father’s side, from Puritans and a cheeky immigrant who came through Ellis Island with a surname inspired by a deadly sin.
