Victor Penney:

All things work for the good of those who love God, for those who are called according to His purpose – even baseball and blasphemous drag performers who mock Catholic nuns.

What am I getting at? Well, in this case, it has to do with an undercover exposé by the O’Keefe Media Group, an organization founded by James O’Keefe, the polarizing activist best known for his controversial sting operations on political and corporate figures. This time around, the target was a front-office executive with the Washington Nationals from Major League Baseball.

On May 26, the O’Keefe Group posted a video on X featuring a hidden camera interview with a man identified as Sean Hudson, the Nationals’ director of community relations. In the footage, Hudson is speaking with an undercover reporter about a variety of topics, like his deep love of Communism, and eventually the conversation turns to one of the team’s starting right-handed pitchers, Trevor Williams. Specifically, Hudson claimed the Nationals routinely discriminated against Williams because he was outspoken about his Catholic faith back in 2023.

What happened way back then? As you may recall, that’s when the Los Angeles Dodgers invited a certain anti-Catholic group known as the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” – infamous drag queens dressed as nuns – to take part in their annual “Pride” Night celebrations. It was a blatant insult to the Catholic faith and Williams called it out, telling EWTN News at the time that “we cannot stand idly by while Our Lord gets mocked.”

In that same interview, Williams also had this mic-drop moment: “When I die and St. Peter greets me at the gates, he’s not going to ask what your win-loss record was in 2023. He’s going to ask, ‘How did you build the Kingdom of Heaven’?”

Well, it appears that Hudson and some of his comrades with the Nationals didn’t appreciate this principled stand, and they took it upon themselves to banish Williams into a kind of social media limbo. Here’s the claim Hudson made about this in the O’Keefe video: “He (Williams) went on social media like… ‘This is my religion. You all are mocking it…’ Because of that, we (the Nationals) don’t use him on social (media).”

I have some reservations about how the interview was obtained. James O’Keefe and his organization have a reputation for setting up their targets by arranging blind dates online and, as in this case, the individuals end up spilling the beans in hopes of impressing an attractive woman – a tale as old as sin. The strategy preys on a man’s fallen nature, playing into his vanity, lust, and pride to extract information from their source. I’m not a fan of this approach, but it can prove effective.

The Nationals went into damage-control mode after the story broke, denying the discrimination allegations and firing Hudson three days later. Ahead of their game against the San Diego Padres on May 29, the team’s president of business operations, Jason Sinnarajah, himself Catholic, went on camera to set the record straight.

“First off,” he said, “I want to say unequivocally we’re not anti-Catholic.” Sinnarajah then stated the Nationals were “horrified by the comments made on the video,” and apologized to their pitcher, saying the team feels “awful” that Williams was “dragged into this situation.”

Then we have our man Trevor Williams, who seems to have taken the story in stride, proving that following Christ sometimes means paying a high price, which is OK because that’s the natural cost of discipleship. We get the same message from Jesus in the Gospel of St. John:

“If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” (John 15:20) Our Blessed Lord reminds His followers to find joy in such trials. During the Sermon on the Mount, He tells us to “rejoice and be glad” because our reward will be great in Heaven.

In the end, the religious discrimination story went viral and Williams’ comments about defending the faith are inspiring a whole new audience, which is wonderful news. In the bigger picture, when you think about it, being left out of some trivial social media videos isn’t the worst fate someone can endure. As the late French novelist Léon Bloy once put it: “There is only one sadness, it is not to be saints.”