What’s the 2nd Commandment? – Bob Barney
A 22-foot, gold-leafed Trump effigy at Doral, blessed by Pastor Mark Burns and a circle of evangelical and Jewish clergy. The Catholic Church has a name for what just happened — and a duty to stop it.
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A 22-foot effigy of Donald Trump, wrapped in gold leaf, now stands at his Doral golf course in Miami. The president boasted about it Thursday morning on Truth Social with the all-caps line: “The Real Deal — GOLD.”
Before the unveiling, the figure was blessed. Pastor Mark Burns — Trump’s longtime spiritual adviser and a candidate for Congress in South Carolina’s 3rd District — assembled a circle of evangelical and Jewish clergy at the foot of the gilded statue and consecrated it.
What happened at Doral is not unusual; in fact, it is ancient — the modern American repetition of the oldest act of unfaithfulness recorded in scripture.
The Catholic Church has spent two thousand years explaining exactly why a ceremony like the one Pastor Burns staged is a sin against the living God, and the moral content of the act is older than any of the men who participated in it.
In the thirty-second chapter of Exodus, while Moses was on Sinai receiving the law, Aaron took the people’s gold, cast it into the form of a calf, and presented it for worship. “These are your gods, O Israel,” the people cried, “who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” Moses came down, smashed the tablets, ground the idol to powder, and forced the people to drink it.
The first commandment that followed was unambiguous: “You shall not make for yourself an idol.”