Donald Trump and the Sovereign Rights of God

Many Catholics, on both sides of the political spectrum, continue to struggle with how to cast their votes in November. Some conservative Catholics struggle with the Republican Party’s changed platform and wonder if they can still vote for a Party that’s no longer pro-life. Some liberal Catholics struggle with the impact of excessive immigration on the urban poor and wonder if they can still vote for a Democratic Party that ignores it.

Several highly respected Catholic authors have written on the subject, and walking through their various perspectives provides us an opportunity to sort out and clarify the issues. In this article, I look at some of these perspectives, specifically ones by philosopher Edward Feser, theologian R.R. Reno, and commentator Kennedy Hall.

Let’s start with Dr. Feser. In his Catholic World Report piece titled “Donald Trump has put social conservatives in a dilemma,” he argues that the changes Trump made to the Republican Party’s platform constitute a complete betrayal of the pro-life cause and have turned it into what is now a moderate pro-choice Party. This creates a dilemma for social conservatives. 

If they vote for Trump and he wins, they send the message that the Party’s position on abortion is secondary to other issues and that the Party can take their votes for granted even without a commitment to life, something Feser argues “would likely do positive harm, indeed grave and lasting damage, to the pro-life cause going forward and to social conservatism in general.” But if they don’t vote for Trump, they make it easier for the far more extreme Democrats to win, thereby consciously contributing to a greater evil. So, what’s a Catholic to do?

Feser answers the question by first outlining the gravity of the betrayal by Trump, arguing against the theory that it’s nothing more than political expediency. Trump went far beyond what Feser believes was necessary to win the election, not just toning down the right to life of the unborn but positively embracing their murder by supporting the abortion pill and IVF. 

He also argues against the idea that Catholics can, in good conscience, vote for him based on his position on other issues. There is a hierarchy of issues in Catholic teaching: the sanctity of life and marriage take priority over issues like the economy and foreign policy. One cannot ignore the former because he approves of the latter.

Having demonstrated that, he then presents in the second half of his article teachings from then-Cardinal Ratzinger and then-Bishop Burke on what we must do when facing such a choice. In short, where our vote will make a difference in the outcome, we must vote for the lesser of two evils, but we must not do so without loudly voicing our opposition to the evil the Party stands for. Otherwise, we are complicit in that evil. Feser is adamant that voting for the lesser of two evils does not satisfy our moral duty: we must also make our protest of the evil known. To not do so would give scandal.

What does that mean then regarding how we should vote? It means, he concludes, that if you live in a swing state where your vote will affect the outcome of the election, you have a moral duty to vote for Donald Trump as the lesser of two evils, but if you live in a blue state where your vote doesn’t matter, your moral duty is to vote for a third-party candidate who is pro-life. This not only supports the pro-life cause, but it sends a message to the Republican Party.

For Feser, the key issue in the election is abortion and doing all we can to limit it, while also protecting the long-term political influence of the pro-life movement. Retaining this political power is essential, Feser argues; if it’s lost, social conservatives will “lose their ability to fight against the moral and cultural rot accelerating all around us.”

Reno, in his First Things article titled “The Republican Party Sidelines the Pro-Life Cause,” argues, as Feser does, that the Republican Party did not have to go as far as it did in the platform. He argues they failed to do the job of properly assessing what is possible. He gives a list of how the Party could have indicated continued support for the right to life of the unborn yet still defuse the Democrats’ ability to paint them as extreme on the abortion issue.

But unlike Feser, Reno argues that we need to be realistic in our demands from politicians. We are free to focus on principle and have an obligation to witness to the sanctity of human life, but they must deal with reality and have a duty to pursue realistic objectives. They must balance their principles with prudence.  

He argues that it is “counterproductive moralizing to denounce politicians who refuse to promise what cannot be done.” For example, he argues that “for pro-life advocates to denounce politicians who are otherwise supportive of the cause of life, because they refuse to commit to banning mifepristone [to which a supermajority of Americans support legal access], is simply unrealistic.” We, too, must learn to balance principle with prudence.

He notes that “this is a confusing moment for pro-life politics. For decades, overturning Roe received most of the attention.” But now the issue moves to the states and the movement faces a new danger: “that our politicians will abandon us if we are not prudent and/or that we in our outrage, will abandon them.” He calls everyone to instead “meet this challenging moment with clarity and wisdom.”

Thus, for both Feser and Reno, the focus is on preserving and protecting the future of the pro-life cause and of retaining the movement’s influence in the Republican Party. We should not abandon them when political realities require them to compromise to win elections. Rather, we must be prudent, giving them our support but being vocal in our continued defense of the unborn and opposition to the evil of abortion.

Assumed by both authors is the belief that the way we bring about an end to abortion in America is through political action, especially through political action designed ultimately to affect public policy at the national level to make abortion illegal. 

Kennedy Hall gives us an entirely different way of viewing the election in his Crisis article “How the Pro-Life Movement Has Been a Trojan Horse for a Greater Sin.”

Like Feser, he argues that there is a hierarchy of issues when it comes to casting our Catholic vote. But while Feser looks at the hierarchy in terms of specific human rights (the right to life, for example, takes priority over foreign policy), Hall looks at the hierarchy God gave us in the Ten Commandments. He emphasizes that the first three are devoted to the “rights of God”; and only then, once those rights are established and prioritized, does He give us the commandments regarding the “rights of man.” His rights take priority over our rights.

Hall then points out that America, along with all Western countries today, supports the sin of religious freedom—not religious freedom in the sense of all men being free to choose what to believe in, a right we all possess, but rather religious freedom in the sense in which it is meant and observed throughout the post-Christendom world today: religious indifference—the notion that all religions are equal—that gives the devil the “same rights as Christ.” 

He argues that while the pro-life movement is indeed a noble one, it is nonetheless a movement focused first and foremost on the rights of man. Abortion is a grave offense, no question; no one questions that murder is a grave sin, especially murder of the most vulnerable among us. But he stresses that the sins against God are infinitely graver: blasphemy, atheism, sacrilege, heresy are all sins that are far greater an offense to God than are any sins a man commits against another man, even murder—even murder in the womb.

He argues that the pro-life movement, focused as it has been on ending abortion, and doing so by changing national law, has ignored the greater sin of religious indifferentism. It has fought for the rights of man but has left unanswered the ongoing assault on the rights of God. 

He points out why this is so significant: 

I often hear from Christians that “God will not support a nation that has abortion,” but what is often missed is that God has demonstrated throughout the Scriptures, as well as history, that He will withdraw His hand from nations for a crime that is even greater, 

…that of allowing the worship of other gods.

He reminds us that 

the Davidic kingdom did not fall because David murdered his friend, or because sexual immorality reigned in Israel; the kingdom was overtaken as a result of Solomon allowing strange gods to enter the fold. Not even the hundreds of concubines in his court were as repugnant to God as the devils brought in by pagans and heretics.

In other words, as noble a cause as the pro-life movement is, and as necessary as it is for us to end abortion, there are consequences to focusing on our rights while letting blasphemers and heretics trample on God’s. 

We get a glimpse of these consequences in Feser’s and Reno’s articles. 

Feser, when explaining why it is so critical for the pro-life movement to retain its political influence, notes: 

Outside the churches, social conservatism has no significant institutional support beyond the Republican Party. The universities, corporations, and most of the mass media are extremely hostile to it. And those media outlets that are less hostile (such as Fox News) tolerate social conservatives largely because of their political influence within the GOP.  

He also notes, speaking of social conservatives: “They will gradually lose the remaining institutional support they have outside the churches (even as the churches themselves are becoming ever less friendly to them).” It bears repeating: “even as the churches themselves are becoming ever less friendly to them.”

Reno makes a similar point in his article when he notes that “ballot initiatives in deep-red states confirm that Americans regard abortion as essential.” He states, even more bluntly, “Dobbs exposed a terrible truth: The culture of death has made deep inroads into our society.”

And he notes further: “A supermajority of Americans support legal access to the abortion pill.”

So, over the decades during which the pro-life movement gained influence in the Republican Party (the influence both Feser and Reno believe so critical to retain), outside the Party it lost whatever influence it previously had everywhere else, not just in the nation at large but even in the churches. 

Victories were won for the rights of man: prayer was driven out of schools across America; more and more Americans accepted the “normalizing” of homosexuality and gay marriage; religion was driven out of the public square, social conservatism out of the churches; statues of Baphomet and Satan replaced the Ten Commandments in state capitols; transgenderism became all the rage among young prepubescent girls; men claiming to be women were given legal access to girls’ bathrooms; Satan clubs replaced Christian ones in one elementary school after another; and our country no longer even knows what a woman is.

And to cap it all off, Satanists felt confident enough in their ascendancy in the West to stage a despicable mockery of Christ’s Last Supper at a global event televised to the entire world. 

Feser calls us to consider the future long-term cost of losing political influence within the Republican Party, but perhaps the thing we really need to consider is what has been the long-term cost of gaining it? Of focusing on man’s rights rather than on God’s rights? Of focusing on changing public policy rather than protecting the Christian foundation of our nation?

While we won political victories in Washington, D.C., we lost the hearts and minds of Americans as the country itself grew more and more enamored of the “right” and “necessity” of abortion and of the right and necessity of protecting other religions and the worship of other gods.

This should come as no surprise to traditional and conservative Catholics, for it mirrors precisely what we have witnessed inside the Church. United States bishops, throughout the 20th century, emptied pew after pew as they shifted their focus from preaching the Gospel to seeking to change public policy regarding a whole host of human rights issues, from poverty to racism, seeking to improve man’s condition not through the grace attained through the Sacraments but rather through bringing about legal and “systemic change” achieved through the secular State.

In his book Changing Witness, Michael Warner traced how the U.S. bishops shifted their focus from saving souls to saving society, from changing hearts to changing laws, from promoting the rights of God to promoting the rights of man. Looking at the pro-life movement from the perspective Hall suggests, we can see that it has followed the bishops down this same path. 

Its focus on ending abortion by ending the laws allowing it has made it just another wing of the Social Justice Movement in America. While liberal Catholics focused on defending the human rights of the “already born,” the pro-life movement focused on defending the human rights of the unborn—with neither side defending, first and foremost, the rights of God.

As happened within the Church when our focus shifted from God to Social Justice, so too has it happened outside the Church, as community after community fell away from believing in and trusting in—and most importantly fearing—God. We’ve seen the long-term effect that shift has had inside the Church, as more and more Catholics view their primary mission as saving the poor and oppressed (rather than saving souls) and viewing the means to attaining that as the secular State rather than the Sacraments.  As happened within the Church when our focus shifted from God to Social Justice, so too has it happened outside the Church, as community after community fell away from believing in and trusting in—and most importantly fearing—God.Tweet This

Whatever one might think of Hall’s point about religious freedom, and whether it is right for Catholics to tolerate it, his article highlights the difference between working for the Kingdom of God and working for worldly—and specifically political—success on earth. It gives us a very different way of looking at the election, clarifying the issues and determining how best to cast our votes.

Whereas Feser and Reno call for assessing parties and candidates on how they stand on the prioritized right to life of the unborn, Hall points us to the greater issue of assessing them on how they stand on the rights of God. When we look at the two Parties’ platforms in this way, we see a profound difference. 

Here’s what we read in the Republican Party Platform:

“Republicans will use existing Federal Law to keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America.”

“Republicans will champion the First Amendment Right to Pray and Read the Bible in school, and stand up to those who violate the Religious Freedoms of American students.”

“To protect Religious Liberty, Republicans support a new Federal Task Force on Fighting Anti-Christian Bias that will investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment, and persecution against Christians in America.”

It also protects the right of Christians to homeschool our children.

Here’s what we read in the Democratic Party Platform:

“Democrats condemn the decades-long campaign to demonize the Muslim community and will end policies that target American Muslims as security threats. We will combat hate crimes and white nationalist terrorism. We will prioritize the investigation of hate crimes against trans and non-binary people.”

“We will advocate for religious freedom across the world. And, we will continue to honor both religious freedom and other civil rights, not put them at war with one another. This critical work is led by Ambassador Rashad Hussain, the first Muslim to serve as Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom.”

The Democratic Party platform makes a point of stressing how Democrats will do all they can to prevent discrimination based on religion for every religion except Christianity, which it continually refers to in the veiled language of “white nationalist terrorism” and which it clearly means when referring to the bias and hatred that it claims has been the essence of America since its founding. 

It makes a point of stressing how it will especially protect the rights of Muslims in America.

The Republican Party platform, however, makes a point of stressing how the Party will do all it can to prevent both the influx of anti-Christians into America as well as protect Christians in America from continued discrimination and bias.

Though it is true that the Republican Party has betrayed us on the issue of abortion, the Party remains quite adamant about protecting our right to be Christians. It fails to defend the human rights of the unborn, but it does not fail to defend the greater rights of the One True God.

Hall noted in his article how the Jews during the exile were freed “only when they stopped compromising on religious matters,” at which time God then liberated them “from their yoke so they could rebuild the true City of God where all crimes, including abortion, would be unthinkable.” 

This election isn’t about the rights of man, be it (for conservative Catholics) the right to life of the unborn, or (for liberal Catholics) the rights of the poor and marginalized. This election is about the rights of God, and about whether we consider our rights or His rights to be sovereign. It’s about whether we will fight to keep our country one nation under one God.

When seen in this Light, it is clear that Catholics of all stripes have only one choice: to vote for Donald Trump and the sovereign rights of God.