On Jan. 20, 2025, the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., did what a member of the Christian clergy should do. She preached a message totally consistent with the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. It was a message of mercy and compassion.

The occasion was the interfaith prayer service that is traditionally held at the Washington National Cathedral on inauguration day. She urged the newly inaugurated president of the United States to show mercy. However, she was not urging mercy toward the approximately 1,500 convicted criminals who had stormed the U.S. Capitol, violently assaulted police officers, called for the killing of Vice President Pence and sent members of Congress — Republicans as well as Democrats — fleeing for their lives.

These individuals would indeed receive Donald Trump’s mercy, if mercy it was. More likely, Trump saw it as he sees most things, as a transaction. They tried to overthrow a duly elected presidential administration in order to keep him in the White House, so he would rescue them, even the most violent of offenders.

No, Bishop Budde pleaded for mercy to be shown to the millions of immigrants who President Trump is in the process of deporting, the overwhelming majority of whom are just decent people trying to make a better life for themselves and their children, as did the ancestors of all of us who are not Native Americans.

She also pleaded for mercy toward members of the LGBTQ community, whose rights now dangle over a frightening precipice, and for transgender individuals, who comprise the most recent group to be demonized, their very identity to be eliminated by federal fiat while they are isolated and humiliated. All of the members of these groups, of course, are as much children of God as are any of the rest of us and deserve to be treated with respect and compassion.

So did President Trump warm to this most Christian call for mercy, perhaps realizing that when he stands before God he indeed will want plenty of mercy directed toward him? No, instead he lashed out at this woman of God, labeling her a “so-called bishop,” referring to her as “nasty,” a favorite Trumpian insult for women who dare to oppose him.

Also, he claimed that she was “not compelling or smart.” He lamented that she failed “to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our country and killed people.” However, as Catholic Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico, has pointed out, immigrants have lower crime rates than people born in this country. Another Catholic leader, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas, has described the new immigration orders as raising “urgent moral and human concerns.” Perhaps they also are nasty and so-called bishops.

I wonder what would happen to Jesus if he were to reappear in human form today. Would the new president of the United States condemn him as “woke” as he preaches love, compassion, treating others as we would be treated? Perhaps he might be castigated as a so-called God pushing a socialist left-wing ideology.

Or perhaps Jesus would just be another refugee — as he, Mary, and Joseph once were when they fled to Egypt in order to escape King Herod — and be rushed in shackles onto a military plane to be deported.

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