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Anthony Trollope, the Victorian novelist, was an amateur classicist of some competency and a man whose sympathies were capable of crossing centuries. He wrote a two-volume Life of Cicero that was really a defense of the Roman author. Too many of his contemporaries were critical of Cicero, holding him to a standard of perfect consistency they never applied to his enemies Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Octavian.
He saw Cicero as a politician pursuing goals and accepting compromises, even sometimes despite his devoutly held convictions. He admitted that Cicero was not consistent when he seemed to curry favor with Pompey or Caesar. The impossible standard applied to the writer was unreasonable, thought Trollope. Cicero was not always completely honest, but that was to be expected of a man playing the game he did:
At one moment the rule of simple honesty will prevail with him. “Fiat Justitia, ruat coelum.” “Si fractus illabatur orbis Impavidum ferient ruinae.” At another he will see the necessity of a compromise for the good of the many. He will tell himself that if the best cannot be done, he must content himself with the next best. He must shake hands with the imperfect, as the best way of lifting himself up from a bad way toward a better. In obedience to his very conscience he will temporize, and, finding no other way of achieving good, will do even evil that good may come of it.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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The observation came to mind when reading about the backpedaling the 2024 campaign Trump platform has demonstrated about abortion. Mr. Trump will not rather be right than president. He sees the pure pro-life position, as apparently his vice-presidential nominee agrees, as a debility. Of course this is disappointing, but who is surprised?
While I will not go along with those who say, “He owes pro-lifers nothing,” because that seems like lapdog sycophancy, reminiscent of Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth, called to David’s presence, who says, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me” (2 Samuel 9:8). Trump doesn’t owe me anything, he owes God and the Truth something.
Nevertheless, I don’t believe we should decline to vote because the candidates are not perfect. Voltaire quoted an unknown Italian as saying, “The best is the enemy of the good.” There are tremendous reasons pro-lifers ought to be supportive of the Republican ticket. Hiding away in the caves of perfection, our moral purity can be counterproductive. We need to shake hands with the imperfect or bear the consequences. Twisting Trollope, I would say that the imperfect hand is the only one that will lift us out of the ditch we have fallen into. Voltaire quoted an unknown Italian as saying, “The best is the enemy of the good.” There are tremendous reasons pro-lifers ought to be supportive of the Republican ticket. Tweet This
Mark Lilla, in The New York Review of Books, has a long piece about “post liberalism” titled “The Tower and the Sewer.” The article begins with the author visiting a Lefebvrite parish in Paris and then continues with a gander at a French right-wing bookstore (with no sign outside the place for fear of reprisals). He then extends the panorama to the United States and right-wing conferences in which it is possible to hear speakers, “enamored of the Peace of Westphalia, secular populists enamored of Andrew Jackson, Protestant evangelicals enamored of the Wailing Wall, etc.” There is a lot more where that came from; Mr. Lilla gets around.
He likes and even admires young conservative Catholics. He writes of his concern for “the young people drawn to the movement today.” Their problem is an attraction to “historical fairy tales” and their engagement in “partisan political sect[s] promising redemption from the present” because it is easier “than to reconcile oneself to never being wholly reconciled with life or the historical moment, and to turn within.”
I agree that there are extreme options that some are taking or are attracted to taking. One of those would be to tell both parties that you will not participate in the political forum. However, the best part of Lilla is his advice to the young conservatives, whom he sees, he says, on Ivy League campuses organizing themselves like the radicals of the sixties in some ways.
In fact, Lilla is so caring about these Young Turks that he is inspired to preach them a sermon:
If I were a believer and were called to preach a sermon to them, I would tell them to continue cultivating their minds and (why not) their souls together, and to leave Washington to the Caesars of this world. And warn them that the political waters surrounding their conservative Mont-Saint-Michels are starting to smell distinctly like a sewer.
I am grateful for the “why not” about their souls, which must be a concession from one who does not believe in the soul. The message might be justified in a situation where the government is not “by the people.” He is telling good young boys—he seems to ignore that there are young women conservatives—“Don’t bother your earnest little heads about all this stuff, we got it, we will take care of it.”
But what about “government by the people?” In a democracy, the citizens are responsible, at least remotely, for the laws. Obviously, the manipulation of our system by corporations and plutocrats, along with the lack of leaders truly formed in the Common Good and ethics, hampers us to a frustration that is almost metaphysical. However, we are responsible for the government.
I have not appreciated the “get out and vote” mantras coming from the bishops because although they insist on informed voting, that gets lost in the “I voted today” stickers. People whose last contact with theology was when they made their Communion or Confirmation should be a little more circumspect about their duty to God about their community and country. I wish less people would vote than the amadans (Irish for “fool”) who boast of their loyalty to some of the most disreputable politicians going. I doubt that many amadans read Crisis. I hope the non-amadans will take into consideration these thoughts.
My diocese has informed us that whenever we speak about politics, we must insist that what we say is our own opinion and not the official position of the parish, diocese, or the Church in America. My sincere sympathy to anyone who thought I was an official spokesman. I am not.