His personal life will not be discussed, as that is covered in an article elsewhere in this issue. The formatting of the argument is based on St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.
Article 1: Is Donald Trump the Catholic choice for President in 2020?
Objection 1: Pro-life advocates are quick to point out the President’s record on abortion as evidence that he is a pro-life President. However, his other views are inconsistent. He supports and has used the death penalty on multiple occassions, which is a violation of the dignity of the human person.
Objection 2: His immigration policy is inconsistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church. His proposal to “Build a Wall!” across the Southern border is not only senseless, but is divisive and closes out a friendly country, and goes against the Roman Pontiff’s desire to build bridges with each other.
Objection 3: Continuing with immigration, the President’s policy of separating migrant families from their children was perhaps the cruelest policy in decades. Children were ripped from their parent’s arms, and many of them still have not been reunited with their parents.
Objection 4: The President, through leaving the Paris Agreement and repealing essential environmental regulations, has significantly damaged God’s creation, and if men like him continue to govern, the results to our environment will be catastrophic.
Objection 5: Even if Joe Biden’s beliefs contradict the Church's teaching in such a way that it would be sinful to vote for him, that does not automatically mean one ought to vote for President Trump. There are third party candidates to choose from who are more in line with the teachings of the Catholic Church.
On the contrary, “It must in any case be clearly understood that a Christian can never conform to a law which is in itself immoral, and such is the case of a law which would admit in principle the licitness of abortion. Nor can a Christian take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it.”
I answer that, abortion is the single greatest human rights violation in the American justice system. Nothing comes close to this abomination in either nature or extent. In its nature, it is the direct murder of the most helpless person on earth: an unborn infant. It destroys the very object of the sexual act and the main purpose of the marriage bond: the upbringing of children. It has its roots in the eugenics movement and has impacted African American populations the hardest. In its extent, it has contributed to over 61 million innocent people being killed, all of whom were made in the image and likeness of God. U.S. Bishops, many of whom have been critical of some of the President’s actions, stated in a letter accompanying their 2020 voters guide that “the threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself, because it takes place within the sanctuary of the family, and because of the number of lives destroyed.”
It is clear where the candidates stand on this most important issue. Biden has stated that he will, if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court, “pass legislation making Roe the law of the land”. Further, the “public option” in his healthcare plan would cover abortion. The President on the other hand has been a consistent champion of the pro-life movement. After taking office, he reinstated and expanded the “Mexico City Policy”, which prevents about nine billion dollars of foreign aid from being used to “fund abortions internationally”. He has prevented funding for the “United Nations Population Fund” and has declared to the UN, along with other countries, that there is “no international right to abortion”. Two of his Supreme Court Justices dissented in the Louisiana abortion case of June 2020, and according to Planned Parenthood have long histories of “‘opposing abortion’”. Justice Barrett will likely be just as good, if not better, for the pro-life cause, as evidenced by the reactions of the Democratic Party throughout her appointment and confirmation. All of this being said, it is unlikely that the President’s Catholic critics doubt the President’s sincerity on this issue, but instead are focused on other aspects in criticism. He has done about as much as any President can do to end abortion.
Reply to Objection 1: Throughout most of its history, the Catholic Church has consistenly supported the death penalty as a just means of punishment by the State. The death penalty is allowed and even commanded within the Bible, was supported by Doctors of the Church St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, by Popes Innocent I and Pius XII (among others), and is allowed within the Catechism of the Council of Trent. At the very least, the question of its modern applicability is debatable and reasonable people can disagree on it.
Reply to Objection 2: While mentioning a right to immigration, the Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms that the State “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”. States are to let in immigrants “to the extent they are able”, which means that States can put just limits on immigration. Additionally, it states that immigrants must “obey [the State’s] laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.” The United States accepts over 1 million legal immigrants a year, the most out of any country in the world. This means that the United States, perhaps more than any other country, has the right to limit the number of immigrants it takes in and to have just vetting procedures to keep its citizens safe. Tighter border security, including in the form of a wall, is a just way of accomplishing this end assuming it is effective. Whether it is effective falls into the sphere of practical policy.
Reply to Objection 3: In 2018, the Trump administration ordered the prosecution of all adults who crossed the border illegally, with or without children. Crossing the border illegally is a federal crime, and when one is arrested by federal marshals, they are separated from their children, as when an American citizen is pulled over and arrested for an expired license while their children are in the car. When this person simply wants to be deported back to their country, the criminal proceeding is quick, the family is reunited, and they are deported back to their home country. The trouble comes when the individual claims that they have a right to asylum in the United States. Asylum claims take much longer to process, and because of the Flores Consent Decree of 1997, the government can only hold immigrant children for 20 days before having to release them. This leaves the government with two options: either release the whole family until the proceedings are done, or only release the children, preferably with a relative who is legally in the country. The problem with the first alternative is that the families are released with ankle monitors, many of which are cut. In fact, according to statistics from the Executive Office of Immigration Review, 39 percent of “‘non-detained aliens’” failed to show up for their court hearings in 2016. This led many bad people to use children as a commodity to get them into the United States — many times not their own children; if these children were girls, they were very likely to be sexually assaulted during the trip. The Trump administration's brief solution was to separate the children from the adults after 20 days, hoping to remove the incentive to use children as a means of entering the United States. Many would argue that this policy was worse than the problem itself, and perhaps that is true: but that does not make it the policy of a Nazi, but a flawed solution to a real problem. The best solution would be for Congress to make modifications to current immigration laws so that the whole family could be legally held, which would both remove the incentive and avoid the separation. In any case the policy was quickly rescinded and is unlikely to make any reappearance, allowing the status quo to continue. It is a flaw of this generation that people view complicated gray areas such as immigration policy as absolute, while viewing actual black and white issues such as abortion as relativistic and open to debate. As for the 540 kids who have failed to be reunited, for 485 of those children, the parents have been found and none of the parents have agreed to take their children back, as the children have made it to the United States.
Reply to Objection 4: Unlike abortion, which is a moral question and falls within the Church’s authority, the existence and extent of climate change is a purely scientific question. That being said, the earth is a gift that we are meant to be good stewards of, which means that we are neither to undervalue it, or to overvalue it, viewing ourselves neither as conquerors or as parasites. When it comes to the Trump administration, one should look at the regulations that were actually rolled back: for instance, the Obama-era methane-emissions rule had little environmental impact and was very harmful to the fossil-fuels industry. With regards to the Paris Agreement, the Agreement includes a clause to promote “gender equality” and the “empowerment of women”, which when cross-referenced with other UN documents, most certainly includes the advancement of abortion and contraception, both intrinsic moral evils.
Reply to Objection 5: As shown above, from a policy perspective, the President is in line with the Church’s teaching on the most crucial issues, especially abortion. Additionally, most of the criticism of him revolving around secondary issues (immigration, the environment, etc.) is exaggerated or even downright false. That being said, while it is immoral to vote for a pro-choice candidate like Joe Biden, it is not immoral to vote for a third party candidate, especially if you are in a state like Massachusetts that is likely to vote Joe Biden in the Electoral College anyway. However, if you are in a swing-state, while it is not immoral, it seems very imprudent to vote for a third party, as President Trump is the greatest hope the pro-life movement has had in a long time, and his reelection could very well mean the end of Roe v. Wade. For a Catholic that ought to outweigh any other consideration.