The National Catholic Register portal reports that high-ranking officials in the Trump administration—including Vice President JD Vance, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—have adopted a diet heavy in raw sauerkraut, allegedly inspired by Catholic Lenten penance and the counsel of a “Catholic physician,” Dr. Sean O’Mara. The article frames this dietary regimen as a “pungent revolution” and a “living diet,” celebrating weight loss, shrunken waistlines, and “glowing complexions” as the fruits of fermented cabbage. This trivialization of asceticism into a bio-hacking trend for the political elite exposes the total capitulation of the conciliar sect to naturalism and the cult of the body, wherein the Cross is replaced by the cabbage and eternal salvation by metabolic optimization.
The Neo-Church’s Liturgical Calendar: From the Fast to the Ferment
The cited article reveals the liturgical life of the neo-church: not the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, or the rigorous observance of the Quadragesima as codified by immemorial discipline, but a “Summer of Sauerkraut.” The Register informs us that Vice President Vance “originally embraced the bitter crunch as a devout Catholic Lenten penance.” Here the language of the neo-church betrays its apostasy: penance is no longer poenitentia—the interior conversion of heart, the mortification of the flesh for the remission of sin and the satisfaction of divine justice—but a culinary preference for “bitter crunch” and “probiotic-packed” vegetables. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that fasting is commanded “that we may satisfy God for our sins” and “bridle the concupiscence of the flesh.” The Register’s “Catholic politicians” have inverted this: they fast not to bridle concupiscence but to optimize the gut microbiome, treating the body as a machine to be tuned rather than a temple of the Holy Ghost to be purified.
The “Catholic Physician” as High Priest of Naturalism
Dr. Sean O’Mara, presented as a “Catholic physician” and veteran of the White House medical staff under George W. Bush, functions as the high priest of this naturalistic cult. He instructs his “high-profile clients” to treat their gut microbiome like an “inner bulletproof vest,” warning that “dietary failure is like a company heading toward bankruptcy.” The vocabulary is tellingly commercial, managerial, and utterly devoid of the supernatural. O’Mara “often citing the benefits of fasting” in “Catholic media”—a reference to the post-conciliar propaganda apparatus (EWTN, Register, etc.)—serves to baptize the religion of health. As Pope Pius XI teaches in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” Here, the authority of the “Catholic physician” derives not from the Magisterium but from full-body MRI scans and the metrics of “visceral fat.” The soul is absent; the state of grace is unmentioned; the Four Last Things—Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell—are replaced by the three metrics of the body: weight, waistline, complexion.
Political Catholicism: The Syllabus Error Incarnate
The article parades a gallery of “Catholic politicians”—Vance, Duffy, Kennedy Jr., Lutnick, McCarthy—as exemplars of the “Kraut-Compliant Diet.” This is the living embodiment of the errors condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX. Error 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.” Error 39: “The State, as being the origin and source of all rights, is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits.” These men, governing a secular state founded on liberal principles, are held up by the Register as Catholic models because they eat fermented cabbage. The Social Kingship of Christ, which Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King to proclaim—”His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ” (Quas Primas)—is wholly absent. The “reign” on display is the reign of dietary trends in the corridors of temporal power. The Register’s headline—”Summer of Sauerkraut in Trump’s Catholic Cabinet”—is a blasphemous parody of the Social Reign of Christ the King.
The Eucharist Replaced by the “Living Diet”
The most damning omission is the total silence on the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Blessed Sacrament. The article mentions “Catholic media,” “Catholic physician,” “Catholic Lenten penance,” but never the Holy Eucharist, Confession, the Rosary, or the Divine Office. The “living diet” of Dr. O’Mara has supplanted the Living Bread come down from Heaven. As St. Pius X condemns in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (prop. 26): “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief.” Here, the “practical function” of the “Catholic” identity is reduced to gut health. The “fermented greens” become the new species of the sacrament—a sacrament of the body only, a counterfeit eucharist for a counterfeit church. The “sulfurous odors” causing “domestic disputes” are the fumes of Gehenna masquerading as the odor of sanctity; the jar of homemade cabbage hidden in a designer purse is the tabernacle of the neo-church—profane, hidden, and refused by the world (Cheryl Hines “flatly refused”).
The “Catholic Media” Apparatus: EWTN and the Register as Organs of Deception
Alyssa Murphy, the author, is identified as the Register’s “Managing Editor of Digital Assets” and a voice on “EWTN radio’s Morning Glory.” This is the propaganda machine of the conciliar sect, churning out human interest stories to distract the faithful from the abomination of desolation occupying the Vatican. The article’s tone—light, breezy, “inspiring and uplifting”—is the tone of the antichurch: no sin, no redemption, no Cross, no Crown. It is the spiritual anesthesia described by Pius XII: “The sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.” Here, the sense of sin is lost in a jar of sauerkraut. The Register does not warn that Vance, Duffy, Kennedy, and Lutnick are public figures operating within a Masonic-liberal framework (the U.S. government), bound by the constitution of the sect (religious liberty, separation of Church and State), and that their “Catholicism” is a private hobby—now a dietary hobby—compatible with the reign of Satan in the temporal order. As Leo XIII teaches in Immortale Dei: “The State… cannot, without becoming guilty of the greatest impiety, treat the various religions… as equal.” The Register treats the “Catholic Cabinet” as a healthy lifestyle club, not as a scandal of Catholics in power upholding anti-Catholic laws.
Theological Bankruptcy: Asceticism Without Grace
The article’s description of the diet’s progression—”Eventually they start colonizing, and eventually they tolerate it, and eventually they like it, and soon they start loving these microbes”—is a perfect parody of the spiritual life stripped of grace. In true Catholic asceticism, the soul progresses from purification to illumination to union through the infused virtues and the Gifts of the Holy Ghost. In the neo-church’s “living diet,” the microbes colonize the gut. The interior life is reduced to microbiology. The mortifications of the children of Fatima—fasting, self-harm—are dismissed in the provided context as “Jansenist rigorism,” yet the Register celebrates the mortifications of the powerful as “gut-healing.” The double standard is manifest: true supernatural penance is suspect; naturalistic bio-hacking is sanctified. This is the heresy of Modernism condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi: “The dogmas… are a certain interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind has worked out with great effort.” Here, the “religious fact” of Lenten penance is “interpreted” as a “probiotic regimen.”
The Ultimate Irony: Kennedy as “Kraut King”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the “ultimate kraut king,” crediting sauerkraut for “shedding 20 pounds in just 30 days,” is the perfect icon of the neo-church’s religion. A man who has publicly supported the intrinsic evil of abortion (despite recent rhetorical shifts), who embodies the Kennedy dynasty’s legacy of Catholic betrayal of the Faith in public life, is held up by the Register as a model of Catholic health. The article notes he asked his wife to hide a jar of cabbage in her “designer purse”—a detail that crystallizes the worldliness: the designer purse (luxury, vanity) and the jar of cabbage (the new sacrament). Vanitas vanitatum. The Register’s “keywords”—”catholic politicians keeping healthy”—sum the entire theology of the conciliar sect: Catholic is an adjective modifying politicians; the goal is keeping healthy. Salus animarum is nowhere to be found.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in the Kitchen
This article is not a trivial fluff piece; it is a theological manifesto of the antichurch. It declares that the Kingdom of Christ has been reduced to a kingdom of the gut; that the priesthood of the baptized is exercised in fermenting vegetables; that the communion of saints is a network of dieting politicians; that the Eucharistic fast is a microbiome transition. The Register, EWTN, the “Catholic physician,” the “Catholic Cabinet”—all are co-conspirators in the substitution of the supernatural order by the natural, of grace by probiotics, of Christ the King by the Kraut King. As Pius XI warned in Quas Primas: “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” But the state that derives its authority from men, not God, and whose “Catholic” officials seek health not holiness, is a state marching toward destruction. The “Summer of Sauerkraut” is the winter of the soul. Non in pane solo vivit homo, sed in omni verbo quod procedit de ore Dei (Man lives not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God). The Register feeds its readers fermented cabbage and calls it the Bread of Life. This is the mark of the beast: a counterfeit sustenance for a counterfeit church.
Source:
‘Summer of Sauerkraut’ in Trump’s Catholic Cabinet (ncregister.com)
Date: 18.07.2026