“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” -Edmund Burke
On November 5, 2024, Americans will elect either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris as the country’s next president. For many Catholics, the election has become a source of dread, a choice “between the lesser of two evils,” as Pope Francis stated, in which neither candidate appears to adequately reflect the values of the faith.
Some plan to vote for a third-party candidate, while others say they will skip the election altogether. But both of these approaches are grave errors. Given the stakes, Catholics must support Donald Trump. The future of our nation depends on it.
Nowhere in modern American history has the country seen a candidate who has posed as much of a threat to the faith as Vice President Kamala Harris. Throughout her time in public office, she has used her power to vilify Catholics at every turn.
As a prosecutor in California, Harris weaponized her office to persecute pregnancy centers that refused to offer access to abortion. As a senator, she tried to sabotage the nomination of a federal judge because of his affiliation with the Knights of Columbus. Finally, in her current role, the Biden-Harris administration has launched domestic terrorism investigations into Latin Mass parishes, raided the homes of pro-life activists, and placed school board parents who have protested leftist sexual education curriculums on a DOJ watchlist.
Promoting abortion access has been a central part of Harris’ presidential campaign. If elected, Harris has promised to eliminate the filibuster to codify abortion until birth into law and force Catholic hospitals to provide abortions against their conscience. Such actions would not only condemn millions of unborn children to death, but they would likely also put a nail in the coffin of the pro-life movement for at least a generation.
More fundamentally, if Harris were to become president, it is no great hyperbole to say that Catholic politics in America would be relegated to total extinction.
The other candidate is former President Donald Trump. Trump himself is not a practicing Catholic, nor does he fully align with many doctrines of the Catholic Church. What Trump does offer, however, is a respect for the Church and a willingness to elevate Catholics to positions of power.
In his first term, Trump delivered on many important social conservative priorities; for example, he blocked funding for Planned Parenthood and repealed left-wing mandates that discriminated against Catholic organizations because of their opposition to homosexual adoption and contraception. He also appointed three Catholic Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, and this year selected J. D. Vance—a Catholic convert—as his running mate. A second Trump administration would build on this progress and include significant opportunities for Catholics to fill important positions in the judiciary and the bureaucracy, thereby advancing the faith incrementally.
In a second term, Trump has also promised to halt federal funding to school districts that promote transgenderism, protect Churches from abuses of the Johnson Amendment, and end the FBI’s political targeting of Catholic parishes.
Unlike with Harris, Catholics would also have considerable power to pressure a second Trump administration where it deviates from Church teaching. This is because Trump views Catholics as an important part of his political coalition.
After Trump appeared to waver on opposing Florida’s Amendment 4, which would legalize abortion in the state, outcry from religious conservatives caused him to clarify that he would vote against the amendment the next day. On IVF, he recently backed down on forcing insurance companies to cover the procedure after an EWTN journalist explained the teaching of the Church to him during an interview.
Finally, while some have labeled the recent Trump celebrations of Michaelmas and the Nativity of the Virgin Mary as “pandering,” they at least signal that Trump views Catholics as a group important enough to pander to. The fact that Trump views Catholics as a group worthy of his consideration is a significant difference between him and Harris.
Nevertheless, many Catholics have criticized Trump for “abandoning” the pro-life movement due to his position that abortion should be legislated at the state-level. Although this concern is understandable, the truth is that Trump is merely responding to a long-term cultural shift in an effort to remain electorally viable. Exit polls from 2022 showed that over 60 percent of voters favored legal access to abortion in all or most cases, and democratic referendums to restrict abortion have failed even in red states like Kansas or Kentucky.
Pope St. John Paul II is instructive here, writing that “when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law,” a candidate could support proposals aimed at “limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and morality.” Trump’s plan fits this description, as it would allow the pro-life movement to continue to work towards banning abortion on the state-level. Right now, this is the only way to keep the pro-life movement alive, since there is not enough support in Congress to pass federal restrictions.
Another criticism of Trump has been that his support of strict immigration policies make him as much of an evil as Harris. Pope Francis appeared to make this point when he qualified both candidates as “against life,” due to Trump’s plan for mass-deportations and Harris’ support of abortion until birth. Simply put, this is a false equivalency. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions,” which include the deportation of illegal aliens who have violated American sovereignty (CCC 2241).
Pope St. John Paul II has also affirmed the right of all nations “to preserve and develop one’s ethnic, cultural, and linguistic heritage,” contending that this is an essential part of upholding the common good. The Catholic case for border security is especially strengthened when the consequences of an open border have been the free flow of drugs and violent criminals that have claimed American lives. Thus, opposition to mass migration is in no way comparable to moral evils such as infanticide.
For some, the imperfection of both candidates has caused them to consider third-party candidates. Many Catholics have advocated for a vote for Peter Sonski of the American Solidarity Party, who appears more in line with Catholic teaching on certain subjects. Most concede that Sonski cannot win, but they believe a vote for him would mitigate their complicity in any moral evils that Trump promotes. They also contend that Trump’s defeat would force the GOP to take a stricter stance on issues such as abortion to win back the Catholic vote.
This is a miscalculation for several reasons: First, elections are a choice between two candidates and not a declaration of total support for every policy either one may espouse. The magisterium teaches that it is indeed licit to support a candidate who would do less harm than his or her opponent, even if they are not totally in line with Catholic teaching.
Second, polls consistently show that opposition to abortion is Trump’s weakest issue, whereas he leads by a wide margin on subjects such as immigration and the economy. Therefore, a Trump loss would actually cause abortion to be seen as a bigger liability for Republicans than previously imagined. Rather than shifting rightward on abortion, this means that the GOP would likely only moderate further in an effort to defuse the issue as they did after the 2022 midterms.
Third, accepting a Harris victory takes a serious gamble with the lives of millions of unborn children. Harris has already signaled support for ending the filibuster to pass nationwide protections for abortion until birth, which if realized would kill thousands of unborn children and likely be difficult to undo. Voting third-party in this election is simply too high-risk, with almost no reward.
The position in which Catholics find themselves politically is dire. Kamala Harris poses an existential threat to not only the teachings of the Faith in public life, but even to the Church as an institution. Former president Trump is not flawless, but in a society like ours, no presidential candidate with a reasonable chance of victory will ever be. However, a Trump victory would provide an excellent opportunity for Catholics to regain influence in the public square, preserve their religious freedom, and defeat the radically anti-Catholic political program of the left.
St. Thomas More, speaking of the hard choices of politics, once advised, “You must not abandon the ship in a storm because you cannot control the winds. What you cannot turn to good, you must at least make as little bad as you can.” Catholics must approach this election not as a wholehearted endorsement of everything Trump has said or done, but rather as a political decision aimed at maintaining and advancing our stature in public life. Where Trump fails, we will have the obligation to make our concerns heard.
The stakes of this election are simply too high to forbear. Catholics should vote for Donald Trump as if their faith depended on it, because this time, it does.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Irish Rover.
Shri Thakur is the Politics Editor for the Irish Rover. He can be reached at sthakur3@nd.edu.
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