I waited to write. I needed to wait. I needed time for my dismay and then my palpable anger and fear to dissipate. I needed facts and I needed time to assimilate all the news. Then, I wrote. I know I’d make a lot more friends if I didn’t speak up like this, but that’s not who I am. I won’t stay quiet just because it’s popular, because it’s what some people want, or because I’d be “better off” if I stayed silent. I’m a human being with a conscience and I’m a priest. My conscience is not for sale. I have a moral duty to speak up. I’m willing to accept the consequences. Shouldn’t you?
Here is my response on behalf of my parish, diocese and greater Church.
The image used for this post is Renee Nicole Good, the woman shot and killed in cold blood by Trump’s ICE agents in Minneapolis in broad daylight and on video last week. By all accounts, after careful analysis by experts in law enforcement including the former Director of ICE, it was murder. Call it what it is: murder.
A federal agent shot her in the head through the window of her car, then by all accounts, he puffed his chest like a cock and blurted out, “Fuckin bitch.”
She was a woman. A mother. A widow since only 2023. A poet. She was only 37 years old. Not wanted by the police and not an immigrant nor refugee. There were no warrants for her arrest. Her last words were to the agent and not yelling or demeaning or even remotely threatening. Ms. Good was just being ‘good’ and supporting the people ‘sore afraid’. Now her six-year-old son is an orphan and her new spouse, a widow, too. Her final moments were spent in her maroon Honda Pilot, her son’s stuffed animals peeking out from the glove compartment. She had stopped in the middle of a tree-lined south Minneapolis street and motioned for unmarked government vehicles to drive past. One did, the other killed her.
On a snowy residential street Wednesday morning, Good crossed paths with a 10-year Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer and Iraq War veteran named Jonathan Ross. He shot her in the head three times.
But don’t let the facts get in the way of truth. Just read the comments on social media – mostly by males – who think she deserved to die. Yes. She deserved it. One even wrote, “Well, she won’t do that again!” He even placed a giggling emoji next to his nauseating commentary. If that isn’t enough, how about when a physician tried to get to the car after the three shots entered her skull to check her pulse and when he identified himself as a doctor wanting to help the agent said simply, “I don’t care!” That’s what power sounds like when it stops caring.
We are a lost people.
And, if that isn’t bad enough, so does our president. He and Kristi Noem immediately went to the defense of the agent. No remorse and no pressure for an investigation for truth, and no condolences to her family, and no support to her children or to the people in Minneapolis. None. Nothing. Instead, they piled on the lies and said that she was guilty of “domestic terrorism”. Trump went further and called her a “professional agitator” and that she “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense.” None of the available video is so unequivocal. Think of that; you one of the most important people if not the most important person in your life and the president of the United States calls your loved one evil and proclaimed that they deserved to death. It’s unimaginable, too, as someone who is sat with people in similar circumstances, sans the added grief and trauma that the president could bring into the equation. It’s beyond belief. It’s shameful.
Uncomfortable. Unconscionable. Unbelievable, but, alas, true. What we’ve become as human beings is almost unforgivable, and if you don’t believe me, just read the comments.
And you see that’s where this is all heading. It’s not just the original shock. It’s not just the original tragedy. It’s not the rhetoric that comes from the mouths of politicians trying to preserve their base, or to become better positioned to be reelected that makes this so dreadful. It’s the comments! It’s the comments from our fellow citizens, from our fellow parishioners, from fellow Catholics, from those who proclaim to follow Christ; it is their comments that are the most abhorrent because they have become desensitized to the most horrific of crimes. They have no ability to empathize or sympathize anymore because they no longer can see themselves in anyone else. It used to be what you see, it what you believed. Now, it is what you want to see, you believe and no set of facts can ever change your mind. And what of those who don’t believe like you? They are the enemy, of course, and deserve to be harmed. This is exactly how a president got elected who years ago would not have made it to the polls for dog catcher of a small county.
The tragedy in this entire administration, from the very beginning, is that they have created a world where others and their pain are no longer our concern. We can no longer see humanity in the eyes of others, and therefore, we can no longer feel their pain. Yes, we have become a people of hatred, racism, bigotry and division. It has given us the ability to continually inflict pain upon the weak and the vulnerable. It has given us the ability to capitalize on the pain of others, and to add to their trauma and their burden. We are no longer Christ followers. We are now Herod henchman.
As Catholics, The Jubilee Year of 2025 just closed – literally – with Pope Leo this past Tuesday. The Holy Father closed and locked the Holy Door at St Peter’s basilica, which will now be bricked up and not reopened until 2033 for the next, landmark, jubilee, celebrating the 2,000th anniversary of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ!
This past jubilee year called for us to walk as Pilgrims of Hope, especially alongside those wounded by others, by circumstance and even the misuse of social media. I think we failed. As a people, as citizens and especially as Catholics. Many in our church supported and voted for this administration. The rhetoric overrides the truth we all knew: Trump is not pro-life, he’s pro-Trump, and it has led to a society bent on being pro-death to anyone they dislike or abhor.
In recent years, falsehoods, half-truths, and harsh words have traveled faster than compassion, leaving behind broken trust, damaged reputations, and strained relationships. Many carry unseen wounds—anxiety, anger, loneliness, and confusion—caused not by distance, but by digital closeness without charity. No one is immune. Not even me.
This Jubilee invited us to pause, repent, and begin again. Hope does not deny harm; it faces it with truth and mercy. As pilgrims, we are asked to turn away from lies and misinformation, to speak with integrity, and to listen with humility. Repairing relationships—with God and with one another—means choosing reconciliation over outrage and love over winning arguments. I know of what I speak. I know how difficult of what I’m asking here today.
Almost four years ago I was the subject of such a relentless social media rage campaign by a person who twisted facts and made-up stories and accused me of everything from theft to assault. He ranted and raged and threatened and there were those who immediately believed him and left our parish. It’s always easiest to believe in the bad stuff. Oddly, not one person who left ever asked me for my side. Not one reached out to me to ask what happened to cause this person to rail such falsehoods against me. There wasn’t one person who offered to sit with me and to care for me, even though I had cared for so many of them in their time of need without judgment, and without condemnation. And, when our legal team did their job and protected our community, these same people accused us of a cover up! They knew nothing about protocol or corporate and church ethics or procedure or polity. You see, they didn’t need to know any of that because they decided that the sensationalism of the story was more important to them than their soul. And then came the comments!
I did what I needed to do. I took a leave, investigations happened by the church, and by the legal team, and by the local police. I retreated with my family and waited in pain. Nothing ever came of it because nothing ever happened. And here’s the rub: there was never an accuser, instead it was just the one person who threw everything he could to accuse me of to kill what we created, and he used social media as his weapon of choice. The irony is I trusted him. We trusted him. He betrayed all that we created in the most ruthless of ways. He betrayed everything solid and good, then he, too, retreated back to his own sad world of hatred and division propped up by the “friends” who convinced him through their vulgar comments that he was the righteous one.
In the end it cut like a sharp knife. It cost our parish literally tens of thousands of dollars in losses and legal fees, and he lost in court and later we found that the person he was so hell bent on objectifying against me, left town. Later we found this same ruse was done before to another trusting person. We should have guessed. Some say we should be pleased because we prevailed, but it took something more precious from me: my ability to be vulnerable and trusting. It robbed me of believing and belonging to the church I helped and sacrificed to create. I almost walked away. And, in many ways, it robbed me of my priesthood to this very day. No, not because of the person so bent on hatred. It was all the comments from those who never even knew me, or the cared to know the truth, and worse were those who did know me but believed the lies without pause even though I had been there for them in the worst of their days. They almost won. Almost. But then I realized that’s how the Devil works. This is how evil works. Perhaps it’s why the vilest of comments were from Christians.
Christ, the Truth, walks with us. In Him, healing is possible. I forgave each of them and moved on. My heart is still wounded but together with others we rebuilt and continued our good work. God’s grace allowed it because we were open to it. You cannot find it without being able to embrace it and change even within a storm of confusion, comments and grief.
May this Jubilee help us restore what has been fractured, use our voices to build rather than wound, and become signs of hope in a world longing for honesty, kindness, and peace—both online and in the heart. For a journey of faith is marked not by certainty, but by trust in God’s steadfast love. It is to be a time of renewal, reconciliation, and pilgrimage, calling the faithful to seek forgiveness, strengthen charity, and be ambassadors of hope in a world still healing from recent hardships and such gross injustices.
As pilgrims of hope still, we are encouraged to let our faith deepen through prayer, our charity grow through service, and our relationships be healed through forgiveness. Hope is not a passive waiting but an active trust in God who leads us forward, even when the path is uncertain. May this post-Jubilee world come to transform our hearts, heal our world, and inspire us to walk together toward peace and unity.
Facebook has power even greater than any one person. It can maim, destroy, make a president, and yes, even kill and destroy lives. So don’t read the comments, it shows the weakest minds and the least compassionate people all have one thing in common: a keyboard.
Monsignor +Jim