“Here is a memo to the clueless baptized Catholics out there: you cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat. Period … repent of your support of that party and its platform or face the fires of Hell.”
This was the message of Father James Altman, a priest of Wisconsin’s St. James the Less Catholic Church, in a YouTube video he posted shortly after the Democratic National Convention in August. In addition to rebuking Father James Martin SJ, a Jesuit priest who delivered a benediction at the DNC, Altman denounced critics of President Trump’s immigration rhetoric, broke ranks with Pope Francis by calling climate change a “hoax” and labeled the Southern Poverty Law Center one of the “most Godless, Communist, anti-American, left-wing radical organizations in the United States.”
As a Catholic, I wish I could say that Altman’s remarks surprised me. He, of course, is an anomaly, someone who does not speak for the vast majority of U.S. Catholics. But his mindless, wrathful ultimatum is indicative of a major problem that exists in American Catholicism: political dogmatism. At this time of great political divide, we need to look ourselves in the mirror and ask if our political actions reflect what Jesus meant when he said, “love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matthew 22:39).
Single-issue voting around abortion exemplifies this issue. Catholics have championed fighting for the unborn since the mid-1970s when Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton set the precedent for abortion legality in the U.S. But in recent years, overcommitment to this issue has led many to sell out the Catholic Church’s beliefs on a whole host of issues. According to the Pew Research Center, 45% of American Catholics voted for Trump in 2016 despite his xenophobic calls “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” his racist plans to “build a wall” and keep “rapist” Mexican immigrants out of the U.S., and his personal vulgarity and misogyny that was revealed in the Access Hollywood tapes. Trump’s bigotry is antithetical to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. But he claims to be anti-abortion, and it is this factor that so many of my friends and family looked to when voting in 2016.
But would not Trump’s behavior in office, which includes a sex scandal with the adult film actress Stormy Daniels, spreading misinformation about the novel coronavirus, and failing to condemn White supremacy during the first presidential debate, outweigh his shallow “pro-life” stance? Sadly, this is not the case for many. As of October 13, while 51% of registered Catholic voters backed Joe Biden, 44% of registered Catholic voters still supported Trump’s bid for the 2020 presidency.
In this way, abortion has become the “golden calf” of many anti-abortion Catholics (Exodus 32:4): the issue that they prioritize at the expense of everything else. This idolatry has been detrimental to their own movement: They have squandered any elements of a moral high ground by tolerating men like Trump, who support the right to life on paper but oppose it in every theater except abortion.
Can we really judge a poor, single mother for having an abortion while we sit in our safe homes, enjoy our private health insurance, ignore her dire circumstances and denounce those who try to give her a public health option? How can we ever hope to achieve a life-affirming culture in the United States if we do not first promote one of love and basic human decency? How can we even say that we are “pro-life” if we support or tolerate the rhetoric of those who devalue the lives of ethnic and religious minorities, immigrants, and LGBTQ people?
In this election, voters will have to choose between former Vice President Joe Biden and incumbent President Donald Trump. This is a political choice that conservative Catholic voters must confront — and it will be much more difficult to do so, given the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Trump’s subsequent nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. Trump has made his conservative judicial confirmations a cornerstone of his campaign, and his success in nominating another Catholic to the bench to potentially reverse the precedent of Roe v. Wade is almost a dream come true to many of my Catholic friends and family.
But I implore my Catholic brothers and sisters, especially those 44% who support President Trump, to truly discern their vote, remember “the other,” and, in the words of Pope Francis, never “tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion.” Do not let Christ’s words ring empty.
Image Credit: Photo by Thays Orrico on Unsplash is licensed under the Unsplash license.