Perennial quadrennial errors about Catholicism and political commitment.

he Catholic Church has def­i­nite rules that pro­hib­it priests from becom­ing polit­i­cal activists. I haven’t seen much evi­dence that bish­ops actu­al­ly enforce these things, but the rules are there. Canon 285, for exam­ple, pro­hibits priests from hold­ing polit­i­cal office. Canon 288 goes fur­ther and says that priests must not “have an active part in polit­i­cal par­ties.” That might be inter­pret­ed nar­row­ly, such that a priest could not be a polit­i­cal strate­gist or chair­man of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. But the Cat­e­chism puts the stric­ture much more broad­ly; here’s CCC 2442:

It is not the role of the Pas­tors of the Church to inter­vene direct­ly in the polit­i­cal struc­tur­ing and orga­ni­za­tion of social life. This task is part of the voca­tion of the lay faith­ful, act­ing on their own ini­tia­tive with their fel­low cit­i­zens. Social action can assume var­i­ous con­crete forms. It should always have the com­mon good in view and be in con­for­mi­ty with the mes­sage of the Gospel and the teach­ing of the Church. It is the role of the laity “to ani­mate tem­po­ral real­i­ties with Chris­t­ian com­mit­ment, by which they show that they are wit­ness­es and agents of peace and jus­tice.”

But in a tweet on July 28 (since coura­geous­ly removed), Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life insists: “It is a moral oblig­a­tion for me and for all of us in the Church—cler­gy and laity alike—to point out the moral cor­rup­tion of the Demo­c­rat plat­form.” So who’s right? the Cat­e­chism or Fr. Pavone? Where in Church teach­ing does Pavone find this “moral oblig­a­tion” for priests to cas­ti­gate entire polit­i­cal par­ties?

Pavone was recent­ly forced to resign from offi­cial “advi­so­ry posi­tions” in Mr. Trump’s reelec­tion cam­paign, “at the direc­tion of Church author­i­ties.” No one seems to know who those author­i­ties are. Pavone’s last known ordi­nary was Bish­op Patrick Zurek of Arling­ton, and last year the dio­cese said that Pavone is not in good stand­ing. He is well-known for stunts like putting an abort­ed corpse on an altar and film­ing a cam­paign com­mer­cial for Mr. Trump. Over the past few months Pavone has insist­ed that, though he is tech­ni­cal­ly still incar­di­nat­ed in the dio­cese of Amar­il­lo, his trans­fer to anoth­er bish­op has been “canon­i­cal­ly com­plet­ed.” But he won’t tell us who that bish­op is and Amar­il­lo no longer answers any inquiries from Catholic media about Pavone’s sta­tus and polit­i­cal activ­i­ties. One can be excused for think­ing Pavone is lying and Zurek is per­mit­ting scan­dal. How is one to ver­i­fy Pavone’s claims? Should we trust him on his good word alone? Giv­en the abus­es that Catholic priests are wont to engage in, it’s a real wor­ry that Pavone runs around in broad day­light with no trans­paren­cy regard­ing who he’s account­able to. But the USCCB says it’s utter­ly mys­ti­fied that Catholics are leav­ing the Church in droves. Don’t they know we have the words of eter­nal life?

In one lim­it­ed sense, Fr. Pavone’s tweet is cor­rect. If he is refer­ring to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty’s posi­tion in favor of legal­ized abor­tion, then all Catholics—including priests—do have an oblig­a­tion to oppose it. Pope St. John Paul II tells us that in Evan­geli­um Vitae 73:

Abor­tion and euthana­sia are … crimes which no human law can claim to legit­imize. There is no oblig­a­tion in con­science to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear oblig­a­tion to oppose them by con­sci­en­tious objec­tion.

The prob­lem is that Pavone phras­es the issue much more broad­ly. For him, it’s the Demo­c­ra­t­ic plat­form itself that’s “moral­ly cor­rupt,” not just one part of it. But that sure­ly can’t be so. The plat­form includes items like sup­port for unions, expan­sion of paid sick leave, uni­ver­sal health care, a $15 min­i­mum wage, and so on. Far from being “moral­ly cor­rupt,” these posi­tions are in keep­ing with The Com­pendi­um of the Social Doc­trine of the Church. It’s true that a Catholic might dis­agree with cer­tain pol­i­cy pro­pos­als, but that’s dif­fer­ent than say­ing they’re “moral­ly cor­rupt.” If Pavone does have in mind sup­port for legal abor­tion, to reduce the whole of the plat­form to that one issue is inex­cus­ably dis­hon­est.

And is it not an equal moral oblig­a­tion to point out moral cor­rup­tion in the GOP plat­form and can­di­date? I’ve not seen those tweets from Fr. Pavone. I’ve not seen the tweets that con­demn the GOP for advo­cat­ing the death penal­ty, even though the Church says that it is “inad­miss­able” and an offense against the invi­o­la­bil­i­ty of human life. In the very same Evan­geli­um Vitae in which John Paul II tells us that Catholics have an oblig­a­tion to oppose legal abor­tion, he also writes this:

[Pun­ish­ment of crim­i­nals] ought not go to the extreme of exe­cut­ing the offend­er except in cas­es of absolute neces­si­ty: in oth­er words, when it would not be pos­si­ble oth­er­wise to defend soci­ety. Today how­ev­er, as a result of steady improve­ments in the orga­ni­za­tion of the penal sys­tem, such cas­es are very rare, if not prac­ti­cal­ly non-exis­tent.

In any event, the prin­ci­ple set forth in the new Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church remains valid: “If blood­less means are suf­fi­cient to defend human lives against an aggres­sor and to pro­tect pub­lic order and the safe­ty of per­sons, pub­lic author­i­ty must lim­it itself to such means, because they bet­ter cor­re­spond to the con­crete con­di­tions of the com­mon good and are more in con­for­mi­ty to the dig­ni­ty of the human per­son.” (56)

“Not even a mur­der­er los­es his per­son­al dig­ni­ty,” the pope says (EV 9). The Com­pendi­um goes fur­ther and says (§405) that “The grow­ing aver­sion of pub­lic opin­ion towards the death penal­ty and the var­i­ous pro­vi­sions aimed at abol­ish­ing it or sus­pend­ing its appli­ca­tion con­sti­tute vis­i­ble man­i­fes­ta­tions of a height­ened moral aware­ness.” One must ask the ques­tion: If Fr. Pavone is going to lec­ture us about the moral oblig­a­tion of Catholics, why does­n’t he have this “height­ened moral awareness”—particularly giv­en the Church’s recent devel­op­ment on the death penal­ty which now teach­es that it is “inad­mis­si­ble”? Why does his moral aware­ness begin and end with the errors of Democ­rats?

The GOP plat­form also calls for U.S. ter­ri­to­ries to be exempt from min­i­mum wage laws, on the ground that such laws “increase costs.” But I don’t read on Pavone’s Twit­ter feed that fail­ure to pay a just wage cries to Heav­en for vengeance just as sure­ly as abor­tion does. “Behold, the wages of the labor­ers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the har­vesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts” (James 5:4; RSV-CE). It’s not just the blood of Abel that cries out; one’s wage is how he sus­tains him­self in life, and those who depend upon him.

Nor does Pavone say any­thing about the old racist yarn—found in the GOP platform—about “for­eign nation­als” who are steal­ing jobs. He prais­es and even echoes Trump when he tells elect­ed Democ­rats (who hap­pen to be per­sons of col­or) to go back to their own coun­tries, though some were born here and all are cit­i­zens. He prais­es Trump’s depor­ta­tion raids. He turns a blind eye to the caging of chil­dren at the bor­der, the sep­a­ra­tion of fam­i­lies, the inhu­man con­di­tions, and instead engages in whataboutism by instruct­ing us that “the first immi­grant is the unborn child.” He engages in ser­i­al abu­sive behav­ior toward oth­ers on Twit­ter (e.g., one / two / three / four). When con­front­ed with the mur­der of a black man by a police offi­cer, he redi­rects from that prob­lem by inform­ing us that “unborn lives mat­ter,” as though that’s rel­e­vant to what has hap­pened and the prob­lem peo­ple are talk­ing about. Again and again he ele­vates the val­ue of the unborn over all oth­er human life.

This does not mean the unborn are any less impor­tant. The point I’m mak­ing here is about selec­tive moral­i­ty. It’s true that no one will find a per­fect polit­i­cal can­di­date or per­fect polit­i­cal par­ty. But it is the job of lay Catholics, not the cler­gy, to try to sort through the rel­a­tive imper­fec­tion and become polit­i­cal­ly engaged in a way that will, with hope, best advance Catholic moral teach­ing. That is not to say that priests should not have polit­i­cal opin­ions or that they should not vote. But in their capac­i­ty as priests, their role is lim­it­ed to admin­is­ter­ing the sacra­ments and telling us what the moral law is: not advo­cat­ing par­tic­u­lar par­ties or can­di­dates. Still less is their role to advance a part of the moral law at the expense of the rest of it.

That is why John Paul II, in a cat­e­ch­esis enti­tled “Priests Do Not Have a Polit­i­cal Mis­sion,” says that the Catholic priest

must renounce involve­ment in polit­i­cal activ­i­ty, espe­cial­ly by not tak­ing sides (which almost inevitably hap­pens). … In par­tic­u­lar, he will keep in mind that a polit­i­cal par­ty can nev­er be iden­ti­fied with the truth of the Gospel, and there­fore, unlike the Gospel, it can nev­er become an object of absolute loy­al­ty.

And here’s the key part:

In their gen­er­ous ser­vice to the gospel ide­al, some priests feel drawn to polit­i­cal involve­ment in order to help more effec­tive­ly in reform­ing polit­i­cal life and in elim­i­nat­ing injus­tices, exploita­tion, and every type of oppres­sion. The Church reminds them that on this road it is easy to be caught in par­ti­san strife, with the risk of help­ing not to bring about the just world for which they long, but new and worse ways of exploit­ing poor peo­ple. In any case they must know that they have nei­ther the mis­sion nor the charism from above for this polit­i­cal involve­ment and activism.

Fr. Pavone makes a huge mis­take in con­nect­ing the pro-life cause to the cause of Don­ald Trump, because in doing so he shack­les it to every­thing that’s true about Trump. As a result, pro-lif­ers spend a large part of their time defend­ing, not the unborn, but Trump­ism itself. The cause of GOP pol­i­tics gets mixed up with defense of unborn life and becomes the real end.

It’s worth not­ing that, while the GOP plat­form does advo­cate a few restric­tions on abor­tion and the elim­i­na­tion of pub­lic fund­ing for abor­tion, it does not once say any­thing about end­ing abor­tion, reduc­ing abor­tions, over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade, or mak­ing abor­tion ille­gal. I con­clude from this that the GOP is inter­est­ed in token ges­tures that keep abor­tion legal and thus per­mit them to promise more token ges­tures.

•••

A sec­ond error is made by those who say every elec­tion year that Catholics are not per­mit­ted to vote for Democ­rats. Some don’t put it so crude­ly. Some will say “can­not in good con­science vote for Democ­rats,” or words like that. But oth­ers, includ­ing priests, go as far as to say that a vote for a Demo­c­rat means that you have “blood on your hands”—as though the Church teach­es that a Catholic who votes for a Demo­c­rat incurs the guilt of abor­tion. (The Church does­n’t.) Fr. Pavone says that if you vote Demo­c­rat you’re not Chris­t­ian, you’re not Amer­i­can, you’re not even a decent human being.

All this is not even a near approx­i­ma­tion of what the Church says. In the first place, the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil, in Gaudi­um et Spes 27, includes manip­u­la­tion of con­science in a long list of offens­es against “the integri­ty of the human per­son”:

Fur­ther­more, what­ev­er is opposed to life itself, such as any type of mur­der, geno­cide, abor­tion, euthana­sia or wil­ful self-destruc­tion, what­ev­er vio­lates the integri­ty of the human per­son, such as muti­la­tion, tor­ments inflict­ed on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; what­ev­er insults human dig­ni­ty, such as sub­hu­man liv­ing con­di­tions, arbi­trary impris­on­ment, depor­ta­tion, slav­ery, pros­ti­tu­tion, the sell­ing of women and chil­dren; as well as dis­grace­ful work­ing con­di­tions, where men are treat­ed as mere tools for prof­it, rather than as free and respon­si­ble per­sons; all these things and oth­ers of their like are infamies indeed. They poi­son human soci­ety, but they do more harm to those who prac­tice them than those who suf­fer from the injury. More­over, they are supreme dis­hon­or to the Cre­ator.

Christ says, “You have heard that it was said, do not kill, but I tell you who­ev­er is angry with his broth­er is guilty of mur­der” (Matt. 5:21). And the Church says, “You have heard that it was said, do not vio­late the right to life by abor­tion. But I tell you, who­ev­er manip­u­lates a per­son­’s con­science com­mits an offense against the human per­son.”

This does not mean that you can’t make an effort at per­sua­sion. But when you raise the specter of “blood on your hands,” or when you say “may not in con­science,” or “not even Amer­i­can,” or “not a decent human being,” you have aban­doned per­sua­sion for manip­u­la­tion and coer­cion. And though it is true that the con­science must be right­ly formed, a per­son­’s con­science is so intrin­sic to his per­son that the Church right­ly tells us it is invi­o­lable: Any effort to manip­u­late it, or coerce it, or make assump­tions about it, is an offense against life. A per­son­’s con­science is between him­self and God.

The oth­er point to be made here is that the Church does not tells us that vot­ing for a Demo­c­rat, of itself, is for­bid­den. What it does pro­hib­it are cer­tain rea­sons one may vote for a pro-choice can­di­date. I have writ­ten about that here, but I’ll reit­er­ate.

In a doc­u­ment enti­tled “Wor­thi­ness to Receive Holy Com­mu­nion, Gen­er­al Prin­ci­ples,” the Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith restricts Catholics from advo­cat­ing either abor­tion itself or laws that per­mit it. But in terms of vot­ing, the CDF says this:

A Catholic would be guilty of for­mal coop­er­a­tion in evil, and so unwor­thy to present him­self for Holy Com­mu­nion, if he were to delib­er­ate­ly vote for a can­di­date pre­cise­ly because of the candidate’s per­mis­sive stand on abor­tion and/or euthana­sia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favour of abor­tion and/or euthana­sia, but votes for that can­di­date for oth­er rea­sons, it is con­sid­ered remote mate­r­i­al coop­er­a­tion, which can be per­mit­ted in the pres­ence of pro­por­tion­ate rea­sons.

Some Catholic com­men­ta­tors try to give the phrase “pro­por­tion­ate rea­sons” so nar­row a con­struc­tion that it’s effec­tu­al­ly mean­ing­less; we’ve scoured the earth for pro­por­tion­ate rea­sons and can’t find any. You may believe that the Repub­li­can can­di­date has no inten­tion at all to end abor­tion and makes emp­ty promis­es; you may be per­suad­ed that the Democ­ra­t’s policies—for exam­ple, a high­er min­i­mum wage, or a more effi­cient social safe­ty net—would lead few­er women to choose abor­tion, though it remains legal: None of that would con­sti­tute a “pro­por­tion­ate rea­son.” You may observe the sep­a­ra­tion of migrant chil­dren from their par­ents and their impris­on­ment in con­cen­tra­tion camps; or a pres­i­dent whose cal­lous­ness and inep­ti­tude and neglect have exac­er­bat­ed a pan­dem­ic that has killed more than 150,000 Amer­i­can cit­i­zens; or a pres­i­dent employ­ing rogue police to rough up and arrest unof­fend­ing cit­i­zens; or a pres­i­dent spec­u­lat­ing that he might not accept the results of a nation­al elec­tion: None of those things would con­sti­tute “pro­por­tion­ate rea­sons.” Maybe a pro­por­tion­ate rea­son might emerge in the year 2525, if man is still alive and woman can sur­vive.

But no. It’s not as though the CDF lists no exam­ples of “pro­por­tion­ate rea­sons” because none exist. If the CDF thought that, why men­tion pro­por­tion­ate rea­sons at all? It would be like say­ing, “You may vote for a Demo­c­rat if a uni­corn appears in the sky.” But if it had list­ed a few, Catholics might feel that the Church was restrict­ing us to what was on the list, even though no one could pos­si­bly list every con­ceiv­able “pro­por­tion­ate rea­son” that might come up. The CDF means for us to dis­cern for our­selves whether we are faced with a pro­por­tion­ate rea­son; that’s why it does­n’t give exam­ples.

It is par­tic­u­lar­ly mali­cious to ques­tion the con­science or good stand­ing of a Catholic who decides that he must vote for a pro-choice can­di­date. It hap­pens with­out fail every elec­tion year, and Catholics must repeat­ed­ly stand up and say, “No, I am not going to let you get away with that.”