Resistance Takes Many Forms

The purpose of the daily meditations, as promised when we launched six years ago, is to assist in “praying the news” and not just watching it.

This imperative has increased as we watch the terror of our own government play out in the streets.

Having lunch yesterday with a friend, the table next to us jumped into our conversation when it was mentioned that ICE operatives invaded an Oakland, CA school that day, and dragged away both children and parents on the spot. The ugliness decreed in Washington is playing out in cities around the country on a daily basis.

There are diverse and varied forms of resisting the authoritarian march of the current White House (what’s left of it), Republican Party, Supreme Court, and billionaire-driven media. 

Here is one welcome example:

Headline: “Pope Leo Torches Trump’s ‘Extremely Disrespectful’ Agenda.” Subtitle: “The Pope stepped up his criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.”* The first American pope “has launched a fresh volley at Donald Trump over his administration’s immigration policies,” begins the article. It seems that about 9 out of 10 persons rounded up in the anti-migrant drive are Catholics from Latin America.

Recently the American Catholic Bishops put out a rare “special message”—the last one they delivered was 12 years ago and such an announcement requires a 2/3 majority of the bishops. That kind of unanimity has been lacking for a long time, since a plurality of bishops, including the leaders of the conference, have been influenced by Opus Dei, and are more interested in controlling women’s bodies than in standing up to ecocide, matricide, democracide, out-of-control capitalism, or taming the super-wealthy.

But this “special message” from the bishops passed 216 to 5. It stated: “We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.”

This put them on board with Pope Leo who insisted that “we have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have. If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts. There’s a system of justice.”

Of course, these courts have to be funded with an increased number of judges to be at all effective—which is the opposite direction the current administration is taking. Says the pope: “When people have lived good lives—many of them for 10, 15, 20 years—treating them in a way that is, to say the least, extremely disrespectful, and with instances of violence, is troubling.”

I have not heard the vice president, who calls himself a Roman Catholic, respond to this papal critique of his administration. But the recent election and recent polls suggest that the Latino voters who voted for his ticket in 2024 are having serious regrets. Congressional elections next year may show very different results.

The No Kings resistance by 7 million marching Americans is having an effect.

Another form of resistance appeared this week in the form of a documentary on the American Revolution that played on PBS (recently stripped of all tax dollar support by the current administration). There, Ken Burns and team provided a great service in laying out the fuller story of the birth of America, the uniqueness of its vision in its day, and the extended eight-year war with multiple defeats for the Americans. This country was birthed at great cost of blood, in what was in fact a civil war and a global one.

In light of current efforts to dismiss democracy altogether — such as in the speeches of vice-presidential patron Peter Thiel ,whose company Palantir is making billions on the spy technology it sold to the Defense Department which is now being deployed against US citizens, immigrants, and wannabe citizens alike — that story needs telling in these times. Thank you, Ken Burns and team!

Thiel, like his billionaire buddy Elon Musk, are themselves immigrants who dismiss democracy as a path to the future. They want Silicon Valley billionaires like themselves to run the country, instead of voting citizens. The president, SCOTUS, and the Republican congress who are in bed with them, might learn something from the sacrifices of the earliest Americans.

Remembering the American Revolution and its purpose is part of resistance also. 

To be continued.

* Isabel Van Brugen, Pope Leo Torches Trump’s ‘Extremely Disrespectul’ Agenda, The Daily Beast, November 19, 2025.

** Thom Hartmann, Daily Take: The Epstein Affair Has Move From Sleaze to a Crisis for American Democracy Itself, The Hartmann Report, November 13, 2025.

See also George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796), which is quoted in the Hartmann article and in Matthew’s video meditation.  

To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.

Banner Image: “Resist,” a protest sign seen in Washington DC during Trump’s first inauguration on January 20, 2017. Photo by James McNellis. Wikimedia Commons. 

Queries for Contemplation

What forms of resistance are you engaged in, and do the ones mentioned above inspire you? Are you praying the news and not just watching it or running from it?

Related Readings by Matthew Fox

Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society, pp. 301-304.

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.

“Opus Dei,” in The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved, pp. 106-124.

Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, Jen Listug, Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action.

“Warriors for Ecological and Economic Justice,” in Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times.

Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation.