The Catholic Church distinguishes between “venial” and “mortal” sins. The latter are, as the name indicates, “deadly” and with serious consequences. They are like the door that Lakota teacher Buck Ghosthorse calls fear: “The door in the heart that lets evil spirits in.”
Such sins are not only deadly to soul and society, they also let “evil spirits” in. Spirits of hatred and what Hildegard calls, when speaking of the antichrist, “the darkness that stretches out many injustices” and undoes the ropes of order keeping societies and the cosmos itself together. Chaos therefore.
In “Charlotte’s Web Thoughts,” Charlotte Clymer recently summarized the choice voters face this election in one long sentence:
On the Republican side, you have a political party led by a sociopathic pedophile who has dismantled critical federal agencies, gutted health care for tens of millions of American working class families, engaged in widespread corruption that would make Richard Nixon blush with secondhand embarrassment, hobbles our economy with deeply asinine and self-serving financial incompetence, alienated all of our longstanding diplomatic relationship with other countries, involved us in an array of irresponsible and dangerous and unnecessary military actions, lost a stupid and pointless war with the theocratic, inhumane rights quagmire that is the Iranian government, made it clear he’s oblivious to the consequence of data centers and other unaccountable bulls**t carried out by AI companies, raised our gas prices and raised our food prices, raised our housing costs, raised our child care costs, raised our health costs, and continues to cover-up his role in a massive child sex trafficking operation by keeping millions of files hidden from the public.*
A long sentence, but a pretty good summary of the choices people face, when going to the polls or mailing in their ballots for this election.
However, Charlotte has left out the following. The same MAGA idol has appointed the least qualified cabinet ever to head the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Justice, Budget, Homeland Security, and DOGE, which murdered USAID thus causing the death of tens of thousands of poor Africans in the process. He has waged war on our cities, set up concentration camps in many parts of the nation which house over 70,000 people (about one half of whom have no prison record whatsoever) without any trial or promise of a trial, has fast-tracked still more global warming, killed EPA, rewarded fossil fuel corporations making billions of dollars by destroying the Earth, caused a first-ever invasion of the National Capitol that maimed over 200 police officers and killed seven and has freed all those serving prison for their violent misdeeds (about 1900 people) and made America the laughing stock of the World while cozying up to the most blatant dictators in the world including Putin, Orbán, Bolsonaro, Kim Jong Un.
He has also appointed three supreme court justices that have guaranteed that corporations, not the people, have the final word in our most consequential legal decisions, while throwing comedians off the air for satirizing his presidency, buddied-up with the billionaire class (and one trillionaire) to gut free speech and make Americans ever dumber, and spread a field of hatred, despair, misogyny and lies that are undemocratic to the core, while spreading anti-Islamic rhetoric, and shutting down the nation’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and public news media (PBS and NPR), and countenanced the expelling of more books from school libraries than anyone in American history.
He has turned the Republican congress into a moral wasteland of cultic hero-worshippers who have surrendered their constitutional oath to protect the country and its constitution, and who have happily voted for his wars, tariffs and masked ICE operators invading American cities and killing American citizens.
Evil spirits are afoot. Time to vote and work hard at getting out the vote.
* Charlotte Clymer, “The Question I Keep Getting About the Election,” Charlotte’s Web Thoughts, October 23, 2026. Used with permission.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.
Banner Image: “Avarice” (Greed), one of the seven capital sins. Engraving by Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1558. From the National Gallery of Art. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
It is said, “hope is a verb with the sleeves rolled up.” Are you spreading hope by voting and urging others to vote in this critical election of 2026?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Trump and the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: Recognizing the Archetype of Evil in Our Time.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet.
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality.
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation.
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