In our discussion about racism and "difference-ism", Anne asked the following, perhaps with the president in the back of her mind:
Is supporting a racist not racist - even if someone who supports those who preach hate isn't supporting them because of their expressed racism, and may wish they would "tone it down" (I see this in interviews with Trump supporters a lot), but in spite of it?Katherine responded, noting the similarity of that question with the question of whether a Catholic can, in good conscience, vote for a pro-choice candidate. I agree that the parallel is apt.
In attempting to provide an answer to the question of whether a Catholic can, in good conscience, vote for President Trump, I'd like to reference a brief memorandum from then-Cardinal Ratzinger to then-Cardinal McCarrick and then-Bishop Gregory in June of 2004.*
Before getting to the memorandum, we should explain its genesis. 2004 was a presidential election year. The incumbent, Republican George W Bush, was running against the presumptive Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry. Kerry was a pro-choice Catholic Democrat. Earlier that year, a handful of prominent Catholic bishops, including the Archbishop of Boston, Sean O'Malley, as well as Cardinal Raymond Burke and Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz, had implied, or flat-out stated, that Kerry should not be given communion, because of his long-held pro-choice views. These statements generated considerable controversy, with many Democrats suspecting that the statements were thinly veiled instructions to Catholics not to vote for Kerry. In June, 2004, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) met in Denver for their semi-annual national meeting. A closed-door session at that meeting, to discuss the issue of denying communion to pro-choice candidates, was the occasion of Ratzinger, then the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sending the memorandum to Gregory, who was president of the USCCB, and McCarrick, who headed an ad hoc working group of bishops convened to study the question and make recommendations.
The memorandum itself can be found here. It is quite brief and clearly written. If you take a few minutes to read through it, and substitute "racism" wherever it says "abortion or euthanasia", it comes out as a pretty clear statement without the need for much further revision. I won't reprint the entire letter here, but I will paste the very last paragraph, a sort of footnote to the main body of the letter, because it provides a rule of thumb about voting which I think can be extended to answer Anne's question. Here it is:
[N.B. A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favour of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.]This reasoning, following classic Catholic moral analysis, makes a distinction between formal cooperation and remote material cooperation in evil. In the words of one authority, "formal cooperation consists in consent to the evil of a deed performed." On the other hand, remote material cooperation "refers to a deed which someone does very far removed from an evil which is done or tolerated." [Italics mine]. The idea is: if you vote for a pro-choice politician because he is pro-choice (or, extending the principle, I would suggest, if you vote for a racist politician because he is racist), that constitutes formal cooperation.
Supposing that line of reasoning is correct (and I'm not eager to question Joseph Ratzinger's thinking, although see below), I would suggest that it points a damning finger at at least one subset of Trump's voters: those who voted for him because they hate Blacks, or Latinos, or Muslims, and consider Trump to be their guy for that very reason.
So, following Cardinal Ratzinger's line of reasoning, if those voters vote for a candidate like Trump for racist reasons, it seems at least possible that they've committed a serious sin. Whether or not the sin is serious would seem to hinge on how weighty a sin we consider racism to be. **
It also seems important to bear in mind the distinction, which is enormous, between voters and politicians (and other policymakers). Politicians such as presidents, governors and members of legislators have the power to commit moral or immoral acts (making and signing laws and regulations) that can have material and grave consequences, such as separating asylum-seeking parents from their children and housing the latter in substandard conditions; or enshrining abortion as a fundamental legal right. But an individual voter doesn't participate at that level of material cooperation in evil. In the American small-r republican system of government, voters vote for representatives and executives who are then free to use their best (or worst) judgment in making policy. Voters are at least one degree separated from policymaking. In addition, there are so many individual voters, even in a single state, that it seems difficult to argue that a single vote is materially more than remote cooperation in evil.
But it's worth noting that even when cooperation in evil isn't materially significant, it can be still be formal. For example: I live in Illinois. Any vote cast for Trump in a state as blue as Illinois is the proverbial throw-away vote, because in our electoral-college system, the electoral votes in Illinois will always be for the Democratic candidate. I can't think of a less material moral act than a racist's vote for Trump in Illinois; as a practical matter, such a vote does not contribute, at all, to evil (supposing, for the sake of discussion, that the very act of putting Trump in the White House constitutes evil). Yet that racist "throwaway vote" is still formal cooperation: it is done with the precise intent of consenting to the evil in question. And if we consider racism to be a sin whose gravity is roughly comparable with abortion or euthanasia, then, extending Cardinal Ratzinger's logic, it seems that such formal cooperation in evil as voting for a racist president for racist reasons constitutes a sin that is sufficiently serious that it separates the voter from communion with the church.
Almost certainly, there are other Trump voters as well, who didn't vote for him for racial reasons, but for other reasons (e.g. because Clinton was avowedly pro-choice, whereas Trump promised to appoint pro-life judges). Following Ratzinger's line of thought, those voters didn't sin; those votes are not formal cooperation at all (as they didn't intend the evil); and they constitute, at worst, remote material cooperation.
* I prefixed "then-" to the ecclesiastic titles because they all have subsequently changed. Cardinal Ratzinger is now Pope Emeritus Benedict. Cardinal McCarrick is now Mr. McCarrick. Bishop Gregory is now Archbishop Gregory.
** In paragraph 3 of the memorandum, Ratzinger alludes to the importance of the seriousness of the sin in question in making these moral judgments:
3. Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.
I have to say, the reasoning in this paragraph seems a little muddled to me; it tries to contrast, on the one hand, the weight of one set of sins, with, on the other hand, the possibility of a diversity of opinion regarding another set of sins. But that seems to mix categories: the opposite of "weighty" isn't "diversity of opinion", but rather "light" or "trivial"; whereas the opposite of "diversity of opinion" would be "unanimity of opinion". There could be legitimate diversity of opinion on a relatively weighty moral matter (e.g. how many asylum seekers to admit into a country) or on a relatively trivial moral matter (whether the speed limit should be 55 or 70 on a stretch of interstate highway).
>>I would suggest that it serves as a damning pointing of the finger to at least one subset of Trump's voters: those who voted for him because they hate Blacks, or Latinos, or Muslims, and consider Trump to be their guy for that very reason.<<
ReplyDeleteThose who out-and-out admit that they "hate" non-whites or non-Christians are pretty rare. Most people with biases against people in these groups will protest that they only object to those who enter the country illegally, those who want to impose sharia, those who are unfairly taking American jobs, those who are bringing family members, those who won't learn English, those who apply for welfare, those who carry diseases, those who are criminals, and so on.
I don't think any Catholic Trump voter concerned about slicing and dicing sinfulness as you have outlined it would have any difficulty justifying his or her vote.
I think that's the reason institutionalized racism--rules and regs that favor WASPs over other groups--remains such an entrenched part of the culture; people find it too easy to cloak their prejudices with excuses that sound reasonable in their heads.I
Since the GOP nominated and spent lots of money to elect Trump and all his works, I might argue, just for the sake of arguing, that giving the party money or voting for any Republican who endorsed or is endorsed by Trump is a sin. Certainly this is the hard line many Catholics take on the Democratic Party's pro-choice platform and pro-choice candidates.
"Those who out-and-out admit that they "hate" non-whites or non-Christians are pretty rare. Most people with biases against people in these groups will protest that they only object to those who enter the country illegally, those who want to impose sharia, those who are unfairly taking American jobs, those who are bringing family members, those who won't learn English, those who apply for welfare, those who carry diseases, those who are criminals, and so on."
DeleteJean - but "admit" to whom that they hate non-whites et al? At least from the point of view of this traditional analysis I'm exercising in the post, it doesn't really matter what they publicly 'admit'; what matters, morally, are their genuine intentions. Most people who have reached high school age have learned to say (admit) things in public that cloak their true, unvarnished intentions.
To apply this to the matter at hand: it seems at least possible that there are some Trump voters who harbor racist motives or tendencies, but who don't admit to them publicly. How do they vote: according to the public persona they try to maintain, or according to the dark recesses of their hearts? I guess only they know. I am never sure how to judge voting: whether people vote from visceral motives, or according to the better angels of their natures. Perhaps it varies from person to person, or from election to election. Pollsters tell us that there are many, perhaps millions, of voters who voted for President Obama during is campaigns, and then turned around in 2016 and voted for President Trump. If there is a common thread to that sequence, I'm unable to locate it.
"I don't think any Catholic Trump voter concerned about slicing and dicing sinfulness as you have outlined it would have any difficulty justifying his or her vote. "
DeleteYou may be right, although it's a bit disappointing if that's the case, because lying to ourselves isn't really in the spirit of the lifestyle of penance and reconciliation we're urged to embrace.
Catholics are often accused of being overly scrupulous in analyzing their moral failings, but most likely, an in line with your comment, the opposite is true: most of us are more likely to forgive ourselves entirely too quickly.
I think Jean is correct that few people vote for out-and-out racism. I think most of us vote with a "who is the lesser of evils" calculation. Of course what we consider as the greater or lesser evil is revealing.
DeleteNo, it doesn't matter what people "admit" publicly, but what they admit to themselves. As we become more entrenched in our echo chambers, however, it becomes less easy to admit our shortcomings to ourselves.
DeleteYes, I think we are all too quick to absolve ourselves. I certainly am, and I know I will meet an angry God on the Other Side as a result.
And, yes, what we consider "the lesser evil" is revealing. Yesterday's WaPo article about Trump's strength among evangelical voters was summed up by this man:
“Do I enjoy his tweets? No,” Dudek said about the president. But he believes the agenda far outweighs that concern. “If Donald Trump will help save a couple million babies, that’s a good thing. My vote has to align with my view of God’s word — I should care for the baby in the womb.”
Ibram X. Kandi, in his brand new book "How to Fight Racism," points out that the Confederate officials said they weren't racists, the Ku Kluxers said they weren't racists, the enforcers of Jim Crow said they weren't racists, and if you are just not a racist you are in pretty racist company.
DeleteI screwed up. (Surprise?) The title of the book is "How to Be an Anti-racist." Sorry.
Delete“If Donald Trump will help save a couple million babies, that’s a good thing." I have no confidence that Donald Trump can do any such thing. The only thing he can do about it is appoint Supreme Court justices. He has appointed two conservative justices (with the possibility of a third if something happens to RBG). This court makeup may or may not reverse Roe v Wade. If Roe goes down, things will revert back to the states, some of whom are enacting no-holds-barred, anything goes, laws in anticipation. Others are enacting very strict laws which probably wouldn't withstand a court challenge. Bottom line, abortion will still be available to anyone who can travel. And the Trump administration will continue to rip holes in the social safety net and promote government sponsored child abuse at the border. And some Republicans will continue to believe that theirs is the party of life.
DeleteLet's say Trump CAN save a couple million fetal lives. Does that good cancel out any other evils? This is not a rhetorical question.
DeleteIn my view, Trump is unfit to be president. His policies are disruptive, dangerous, and unAmerican. He says irresponsible and purposely divisive things. He tells lies. He has trashed international agreements that make the world more politically, environmentally, and economically unstable.
However, it is true that Congress must bear a good part of the blame for Trump's immigration policies by failing to act to address a) the issue of all-but citizens, those highly assimilated individuals brought without documentation as children and b) the pile-up of refugees and asylum seekers at the border. Congress has also failed to approve any kind of sensible budgetary reform. And Congress has failed to address emergency presidential powers, which give the president too much latitude to act on his own. The president used to have to persuade, bully, or curry favor with Congress to get things done. Emergency powers means that a president need not be a hard-core statesman a la LBJ, FDR, or even Nixon. All he has to do is sign his name in a big ugly scrawl with a Sharpie, and strut around like Yul Brenner in the Ten Commandments: So let it be written, so let it be done.
So Trump is, to a large extent, the creature Congress has created by its failures to act.
"So Trump is, to a large extent, the creature Congress has created by its failures to act." Jean, I think that is true.
DeleteAnd as to the one-issue hypothetical, "if" he could save two million lives, would it cancel out everything else? Short answer is no. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and true one-issue voting is not even possible. You are always voting for a package. If the package makes the world a less stable place for everyone, and is an existential threat to our democracy and the constitution, voters can't hide behind the faux pro-life rhetoric.
"If Donald Trump will help save a couple million babies, that’s a good thing."
DeleteA few thoughts on that:
1. Virtually any of the Republican primary candidates in 2016 would have pursued the same judicial-nominee philosophy that President Trump did. In my view, Trump's judicial nominees are one of the very few ways that he has actually behaved like a conventional Republican. And of course, virtually any of the other Republican primary candidates wouldn't have had Trump's flaws and baggage; Republicans in Congress wouldn't have been under the same pressure to co-opt their decency for the sake of the party and to placate voters; etc. The 2016 GOP primary was a disaster that continues to reverberate.
2. According to the moral reasoning I've tried to follow in this post, it wouldn't be morally wrong for a voter to vote for Trump for pro-life reasons. The intent in that act (voting for Trump) would be to choose a president who can realistically do something to reduce the number of abortions. That's reasonable. The unintended and undesirable consequence of that act is that the same candidate foments racial animosity. But a voter could make an argument that her intention (possibly reducing abortions) morally outweighs the unintended consequences (inflaming racial passions, mistreating undocumented immigrants, etc.)
3. It's already abundantly clear that the 2020 general election will feature an incumbent with a formidable anti-abortion track record (Trump) against a Democratic nominee who is "all in" on the right to an abortion. Even the current Democratic favorite, Joe Biden, who had some modest pro-life credentials earlier in his long political career, has had to recant even those pro-life voting choices he made 30 years ago as the price to stay in the primary. If abortion continues to be an issue that sways how large numbers of people vote, then any voters who voted for Trump for pro-life reasons in 201 will feel compelled to do so again.
Jim, Trump's "formidable anti-abortion track record" consists of his judicial appointments. That's it. He has scored two SCOTUS justices and a bunch of down-ticket judge appointments. Realistically a second term might mean a third SCOTUS appointment. So for the single issue voters it boils down to who might get to appoint Ruth Bader Ginsberg's replacement. That's a pretty skimpy hook to hang their hopes on. And points to how out of balance the executive, judicial, and legislative branches have become.
Delete"If the package makes the world a less stable place for everyone, and is an existential threat to our democracy and the constitution"
DeleteDo you really think that's an accurate description of the situation, though? Those are ca.-2016 anti-Trump talking points/fears that haven't really panned out. I don't believe that Trump has been an existential threat to our democracy and the constitution. I don't even believe that the world is significantly less stable now than it was in, say, 2013. To be sure, that he hasn't precipitated a crisis yet may be, in part, because his flaws are so numerous that they start canceling each other out. He has proven easy to buffalo, and he is pretty risk-averse. Those traits, which aren't generally considered admirable in a leader, have kept him mostly within guardrails. Thus, he never managed to fire Mueller, his friendship with Kim hasn't amounted to any significant policy changes, etc. Even on immigration, there aren't many things that have happened on his watch that didn't also happen on President Obama's watch at some time or other (even though Obama is an incalculably more decent human being).
All the tweeting and the racial insensitivity cause a lot of churn in the media, but they rarely have much real impact on policy making.
Don't get me wrong: Jean is spot on in her assessment of Trump's character. He's a bad guy. He's not presidential timber. He doesn't belong in the White House. But a lot of conservatives fear a more competent liberal with malicious intentions toward policies and programs that are important to conservatives (with anti-abortion policies near the top of that list).
"He has scored two SCOTUS justices and a bunch of down-ticket judge appointments ... That's a pretty skimpy hook to hang their hopes on. "
DeleteFor pro-life-motivated voters, that track record is pure gold. From that point of view, arguably it's better than any of his predecessors from the time of Roe v Wade.
Considering that one of the justice appointments was stolen from his predecessor by Mitch McConnell, and that any of the Republicans who competed for the nomination in 2016 would likely have chosen the same appointees, or similar ones from the Federalist list, Trump is getting credit for "pure gold" that he fellinto and lucked out on. Kind of the story of his whole life.
DeleteJim, I don't buy your "pure gold." It could be iron pyrate. You may be too young to recall, but Reagan's appointment of Anthony Kennedy, Catholic corporation lawyer, was supposed to be game, set and match against Roe v Wade. NARAL folks bought gas stoves in anticipation. It didn't turn out that way. Now that something may actually happen (again!) Chief Roberts is rumored to be suffering from collywabbles.
DeleteTrump will only be able to save a couple million babies if a) he appoints a conservative to replace Ginsberg, b) a test case on Roe comes before the court, c) the court's majority rules against Roe, and d) all states adopt abortion bans in the wake of an overturn of Roe.
DeletePoint a) is likely. Points b) and c) may come to pass. Point d) isn't going to happen.
In truth, state legislatures have had far more impact on the number of abortions than any president or Supreme court justice. The obsession with the presidential candidated and court appointees strikes me as a bit misplaced. The president is, of course, and influencer, but I don't see Trump influencing people to change their mind on abortion. Clinton's citing his "legal, safe, and rare" mantra was the last time I heard Democrats in my circle have any kind of substantive discussion on abortion restrictions. Hardline prolifers have radicalized a lot of people--and vice versa.
"To be sure, that he hasn't precipitated a crisis yet may be, in part, because his flaws are so numerous that they start canceling each other out. He has proven easy to buffalo, and he is pretty risk-averse. Those traits, which aren't generally considered admirable in a leader, have kept him mostly within guardrails."
DeleteJim, what you are basically saying is that Trump's own ineptitude and dumb luck is what has kept us from an acute disaster (though we have a few slow moving, chronic ones). Afraid I don't find that very reassuring.
Katherine - correct, that is what I am saying. And we're perfectly in accord - there is nothing about Trump that I can think of that I find reassuring. He's a bad president and a bad guy. I can't vote for him in good conscience. I do understand, though, why some people may believe that they can - or even that they must. (Just think about that for a moment.)
DeleteI agree with Jean.
ReplyDeleteThis evening, I made a pass through the post, with a few supplementary thoughts to what was posted originally.
ReplyDeleteAnne, I also did a little bit of light editing to your comment which I had plucked from the previous thread - I hope you don't mind the touch-up. If you do, just let me know and I'll paste the original quote back in.
This post is about an ongoing side conversation we have been having on line down here. It pits me, agreeing with Aquinas and Ratzinger, against one of my deacon friends, agreeing with the preponderance of K of C material. I say that if you can't morally vote FOR either party, you still have the responsibility to vote AGAINST the party in the most proximate position to do harm.
ReplyDeleteKatherine will be interested to know the eruption of that discussion happened after we got home from the August Luncheon 4 Life, a coalition get-together of right-to-life/abortion recovery groups. I sat next to a lovely lady from a denomination so small it meets in a public school, although it turns out that when she stopped home schooling her kids and sent them to a public high school, she insisted on them getting their psychology and literature credits from a nearby Christian university. Because psychology is how they make perverts out of the kids in public schools and literature is where they preach socialism. She also mentioned that San Francisco used to be beautiful, but now it is full of blacks, and the Muslims working at her hotel wished her Merry Christmas, but they were told to do so and didn't mean it. She is all in for Trump because he is pro-life and the Democrats push abortion. I was tempted to tell her Trump will get rid of the lyin' Muslims when America is great again. But I was with my wife and on good behavior.
Even if a racist supported a complete war on climate change, I could not vote for it. There are people who marry climate change and racism. It starts with talk of breeding and continues from there. A real GND will include social justice.
ReplyDeleteStanley, yeah, I have read some of the climate change/population control commentary. It always boils down to just enough of me, way too much of thee.
DeleteNo sooner I speak of it, Katherine, I see this. Big money behind it, too.
Deletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/anti-immigration-cordelia-scaife-may.html
Yikes! I don't know how anyone can square this with pro-life views: "She believed that the United States was “being invaded on all fronts” by foreigners, who “breed like hamsters” and exhaust natural resources. She thought that the border with Mexico should be sealed and that abortions on demand would contain the swelling masses in developing countries."
DeleteThat diagram with the article was interesting. I wasn't surprised to see Stephen Miller's name pop up on a lot of the circles. Or Jeff Sessions. Birds of a feather flock together.
Which brings me to "merit-based immigration", which Trump touts. Do they ever stop to think that bringing in professional people from other countries fills the higher paying jobs in this country? It can be said that they bring needed skills and won't be on public assistance. But it seems like they would be needed in their own country. I know families like that here. Nice peoole, I'm glad they're here. They don't have to worry about ICE raids, and they can go home and visit their relatives any time they want, and no one hassles them when they come back. That's a good thing. Just wish we could extend the same courtesy to the ones who came because they were afraid for their lives.
I gleaned one lesson from the article, Katherine. Anybody who climbs into bed with Trump (ugh enough) is not under the covers only with Trump.
DeleteWe live (or maybe used to live) in a republic not a parliamentary democracy. We should be voting on people for their competency in making very complex decisions.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately we are beginning to function more and more like a parliamentary democracy in which people are voting for their party or their candidate regardless of competency.
In the case of Trump many people appear to be voting for him precisely because he upsets establishments of both political parties. A vote for him is a vote against various establishments. A lot of Trump voters seem to hate various (mostly white) establishments and wish to do them harm far more than they are concerned about people of other races and ethnicities. Most of these people have very little understanding for the complexities of life, and what government decisons might make a difference in their own lives.
I am not a sports fans so I have little understanding of what motivates people to cheer for their team. But politics seems increasing to be like sports in which there is little rationality other than being for the team where you live or where you grew up.
I think all these bishops moral guides to voting seem more based on the parliamentary democracy model, than the republic model, or the sports team model. Praying for God to be on the side of one's nation, party or team makes little sense. I think it was someone like Lincoln who said we should all be praying that we are on God's side.