American Cardinals Should Call Upon Trump to Resign

The six Cardinals who actively head American dioceses: Boston (Seán O'Malley), Chicago (Blase Cupich), Galveston-Houston (Daniel DiNardo), Newark (Joseph Tobin), New York (Timothy Dolan), and Washington (Wilton Daniel Gregory) should call upon President Trump to resign in the wake of the assault upon the Congress and the Capital.  They should also urge other religious leaders as well as political, civic and business leaders to join in their call for his resignation.

An orderly peaceful transition of power is essential to our democracy. While legal challenges to votes are an important part of that democratic process, once those were settled at the state level in December, it was clearly time for President and everyone to support the peaceful transition of power.

The states are in charge of voting.  Attempts to overturn the results in the states by appeal to the Supreme Court or to the Congress to overturn the results certified by the state are a threat to our democracy, and our national security. We must have a clear winner in December and not let this up in the air until January.

Furthermore locating the decision making in Washington, D.C., whether by the Supreme Court or by the Congress is an open invitation for supporters of a defeated candidate to rally in Washington, D.C. and thereby enable riotous possibilities upon the part of a minority of individuals as we saw happen on January 6^th.  As long as decision making remains at the state level, such rallies and their riotous possibilities will have far less consequences and be far easier to control.     

While it is unlikely that Trump will resign, a strong national consensus that events of January 6^th should never have occurred and should never occur again, and that also that a president who resists the will of the people once it becomes final in December should have no other alternative than to resign. This consensus is an important part of our healing.   

Care should be taken to not confuse this narrow but very important issue with broader issues such as impeachment, or the evaluation of Trump and the Trump presidency.  Congress may well impeach the President in order to levy the penalty of not being able to hold office again. Certainly everyone should evaluate how the Trump presidency has ended this way. There will be time for all that in the coming weeks or months. We should begin (but not necessarily end) with the call for Trump’s immediate resignation.

The American Cardinals are the perfect group to take this initiative. As Cardinals they represent not only the American Catholic Church but also as personal advisors to the Pope they hold a unique responsibility to the Universal Church and the world.  They far better than most bishops and most Americans are in a position to understand the events of January 6^th in global terms.  

How to get the American Cardinals to take this initiative?  I suggest that Commonweal, as the historic lay Catholic voice at the intersection of politics, culture, and religion call upon the Cardinals to do so. This will relieve them of the burden of being self appointed, and people asking why they are doing this. 

I am sure it would give great joy to Francis if the American Cardinals united to do this, especially at the initiative of a lay voice continuing the tradition of Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton

ADDENDUM

Rocco's Tweet: this morning

Note to Bench: despite your intent, this Church’s priority for the unborn has become instrumentalized, leading some Catholics to support suborning election fraud & a terrorist attack on our Capitol.

Before things get any worse, you have a unique mandate to begin to fix it.

Twitter said it feared Trump’s most recent tweets were being interpreted as supporting the rioters and that plans for future armed protests had already been proliferating both on and off the platform, including a proposed attack on the U.S. Capitol and state capitol buildings on Jan. 17.