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Guest Post by Pro-life Leader Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life
Here’s something on which the Pope and the President clearly agree.
The Pope said to journalists that he is not a politician. And President Trump said on Truth Social that he doesn’t want the Pope to be a politician.
What’s the source of the problem, then?
Actually, it’s not hard to understand, and it’s a point that Catholic Church documents have made in the past: there’s a difference between asserting moral teaching and applying it.
The former requires doctrinal clarity and is a duty of church leaders.
The latter requires prudential judgments based on changing facts and circumstances, and is a duty of politicians.
So, for instance, on immigration, the Church’s teaching, articulated in the Catechism and elsewhere, is that nations should be generous to the extent that they can and under the limits they set.
So what is that “extent” and what are those limits? That’s for lawmakers and the President to decide, not the Pope, and we elect our President and legislators to evaluate the circumstances and craft public policy accordingly.
Said another way, there is no “church teaching” about how many deportations should occur, or when, or what the judicial process should be leading to an order of deportation.
Now if President Trump and his Administration were to say, “Immigration is wrong and America should no longer under any circumstance ever welcome anyone again, whether we can afford it or not,” that would violate Church teaching.
But he’s not saying that.
As we all know, he’s saying immigrants should come in legally and that our laws should be enforced. That is completely consistent with Church teaching.
So if the Pope or the US bishops have an opinion about ICE, for instance (as the DNC-loyal Cardinals on 60 Minutes did), they can express that opinion, but they should make it clear that it’s an opinion, not “church teaching.”
This is where the Pope and bishops fail, and it’s a disservice to Catholics, to Americans, and to the Trump Administration. When the Pope or bishops express an opinion on a prudential judgment made by public officials elected precisely to make those decisions, anyone is free to disagree with that opinion, and such disagreement is fully consistent both with respect for the Church and with being a faithful Catholic.
Let’s consider war.
The first moral principle is that nobody can target innocent people for destruction.
But that’s not what President Trump and his Administration do. If they did, it would clearly be a moral violation. But they don’t, and it’s insulting to imply otherwise.
The other principle is that sometimes force is justified to defend the innocent.
And here again is where prudential judgment enters in. We’ve elected the President to make these decisions and evaluations. We can agree or disagree, but disagreement with a prudential decision should not be characterized as some kind of moral or religious violation.
The Pope says we should not “wage war.”
Can we please get beyond the ambiguity? Tell us if you mean targeting the innocent or using force to defend the innocent!
Of course, the Catholic Democrat-sympathizing radical Left have used the distinction between Church teaching and prudential judgment when it suits them. On the matter of abortion, for instance, you’ll find some Catholic theologians opining that while abortion is wrong, crafting laws prohibiting it are not necessarily the right prudential judgment.
How convenient for them. “Oh yes, we’re prolife. We adhere to the teaching. But we vote for pro-abortion Democrats anyway.”
We have to get beyond magisterium by journalism and magisterium by soundbite. If the Pope wants to make a point, then teach thoroughly and clearly in a talk or document, making the necessary distinctions between Church teaching (which Church members are committed to believe) and prudential judgment (with which Church members – and, of course, everyone else – may disagree).
Moreover, reference the longstanding teaching of the Church expressed in countless documents throughout two millennia. Don’t give the impression that you are some kind of oracle from God, generating new teaching day by day.
And finally, we as believers and as loyal Americans have to keep our eyes on the prize. We are living in an unprecedented era of American leadership and progress.
President Trump has ended multiple wars all over the earth. Under the second Trump Administration the US murder rate has dropped to its lowest in America since 1900. The illegal border crossings are at zero. Real wages for families are significantly higher. Inflation has been tamed. Religious freedom is flourishing, as is freedom of speech. Woke bias in the traditional media, social media, universities and businesses is being reined in. Our nation is leaving harmful international alliances and organizations, and is decimating terrorism.
And that’s just scratching the surface of the long litany of the amazing results of a President who has an ability to solve so many problems that previous Presidents have wanted to solve if they only had the wisdom and courage.
And yet too often we are distracted by outrage at language, at a social media post, at a comment to reporter.
Every moment we spend caught up in rage about the “inappropriateness” of a social media post is a moment we could have gotten caught up instead in gratefulness for the lowest murder rate in over a century. Every statement warning people about foul language could instead have been a statement awakening them to the flourishing of religious freedom.
May all of us – citizens, voters, and religious leaders — keep our eyes on the prize, and let’s not miss the moment to both absorb, defend and build on the amazing progress of what is truly the dawn of America’s Golden Age.
Prolife Leader Frank Pavone (@frfrankpavone) is the National Director of Priests for Life, the President of the National Pro-life Religious Council, and the Pastoral Director of Rachel’s Vineyard and Silent No More. See www.ProLifeCentral.org.
For detailed information on the Bible’s teaching on abortion, see www.TheBibleAndAbortion.com, a website of the author and of Priests for Life.
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