Christian Nationalism and the Dignity of Work
This Catholic dogma underpins Project 2025's Department of Labor section (Scroll to the end to listen)
Yesterday, we covered the mission statement for a Christo-Fascist Republican Department of Labor, where men work and women mother.
Today, we expand upon that theme by returning to a portion of yesterday’s P2025 excerpt.
Project 2025, page 581
While it is primarily the culture’s responsibility to affirm the dignity of work, our federal labor and employment agencies have an important role to play by protecting workers, setting boundaries for the healthy functioning of labor markets, and ultimately encouraging wages and conditions for jobs that can support a family.
The dignity of work is a teaching of the Catholic Church. It derives from the verses in Genesis 1 and 2 referenced in yesterday’s newsletter. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops devotes an entire webpage to expound on what they believe is the Biblical basis for the dignity of work. I include an outtake below from John Paul II, who was pope during most of my years in Christian Nationalism.
"Work is, as has been said, an obligation, that is to say, a duty, on the part of man. . . Man must work, both because the Creator has commanded it and because of his own humanity, which requires work in order to be maintained and developed. Man must work out of regard for others, especially his own family, but also for the society he belongs to, the country of which he is a child, and the whole human family of which he is a member, since he is the heir to the work of generations and at the same time a sharer in building the future of those who will come after him in the succession of history." (St. John Paul II, On Human Work [Laborem Exercens], no. 16)
It isn’t surprising that a former clerk of Christian Nationalist Catholic Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito would use Catholic dogma to define labor.
Also not surprising? Republican Vice-Presidential Nominee J D Vance parrots what underpins this patriarchal Catholicism. He’s saying the quiet part of Project 2025, page 581 out loud: Men work; women mother.
"You have women who think that truly the liberationist path is to spend 90 hours a week working in a cubicle...instead of starting a family and having children," Vance told American Moment's president and founder Saurabh Sharma and its COO Nick Solheim.
This view was also echoed recently in the much vilified speech of Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, another devout Catholic:
Butker addressed "the women" graduates directly in an attempt to counter the "most diabolical lies" they have been told. More than professional achievements, he said they should be excited to take on the "vocation" of homemaker, using his own wife, Isabelle Butker, as an example. He shared that his wife’s life “really started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother."
We have North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson claiming feminism was “created by Satan.” We have a Missouri Republican state representative saying “forced birth can be the greatest healing agent.” (Because shouldn’t we force women into their “vocations” as wives and moms? The concept of “vocation” is also Catholic Christian Nationalist dogma.)
Or this from The American Conservative:
In reality, the most conservative answer to social decay is to create incentives for the kind of society we would like to see. Virtue is not meaningless, but man, we might say, does not live on virtue alone. Fifty years of bashing feminism and glorifying motherhood has not made for more stay-at-home mothers, but a useful childcare subsidy or stipend to cover exorbitant costs might.
Fascist Republicans truly expose this “men work; women mother” viewpoint in the Health and Human Services section, authored by Roger Severino, another devout Catholic, which calls for the childcare subsidy touted by The American Conservative above.
Project 2025, page 486
Prioritize funding for home-based childcare, not universal day care. As HRSA’s Early Childhood Health page outlines, “Currently, only about half of U.S. preschoolers are on-track with their development and ready for school. And more than one in four of children (28%) who experience abuse or neglect are under 3 years old.” Concurrently, children who spend significant time in day care experience higher rates of anxiety, depression, and neglect as well as poor educational and developmental outcomes. Instead of providing universal day care, funding should go to parents either to offset the cost of staying home with a child or to pay for familial, in-home childcare.
While the framers of Project 2025 don’t write “mothers,” we have enough extant quotes from Republicans vilifying women who choose careers over motherhood to assume that “familial, in-home childcare” would be provided by mothers. Also, it isn’t a stretch for anyone to say the “society [Fascist Republicans] would like to see” is one where men work outside the home; women mother in the home.
I fully support taxpayer-funded parental leave for both parents for a year. I also support taxpayer-funded childcare to make it more affordable and accessible for everyone. But Project 2025’s pivot toward religious indoctrination for all types of assistance means both fathers AND mothers could be required to undergo Christian Nationalist religious indoctrination for this funding. Fascist Republicans clearly prioritize caring for children at home versus outside of it.
Which means even more unhealthy societal standards for women. Because if women must live up to Christian Nationalist standards of female perfection to qualify for this familial, in-home childcare subsidy, NO ONE will qualify.
Since I prepared this newsletter, I got a fundraising email from Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. Headline: I’m just a guy driving a union-made Jeep and fighting for the Dignity of Work. If this Lutheran and his team read this Substack, they might not use such loaded religious dogma in a fundraising headline. Sigh.
"Cubicle," my, uh, foot. Women are doctors, lawyers, college professors, engineers.... Society needs them, and it needs men to enter insufficiently peopled professions (but coded "feminine" ) such as nursing and teaching. Not only is this position anti-woman, it is societally stupid, impractical and wasteful. Lastly, many people serve societal needs from their cubicle, e.g. social workers, government workers, writers, just to name a few. There aren't enough qualified men to meet the demand.
Quality, affordable childcare has been an issue long before raising my children 40 some years ago. Is needs to be addressed sanely and not by patriarchal, religious men.