Should the US Catholic Church speak out against Donald Trump?

In a recent post that touched on the quadrennial document "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship" from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, it was noted that the Faithful Citizenship document does not address the issue of the Donald Trump-led GOP's threats to democracy and the nation's Constitutional order.  At a time when many concerned candidates, public figures and citizens are speaking out against the attempts to overthrow the 2020 election and the risk that further attempts could be made in the wake of this year's presidential election, the US bishops' main teaching document is silent.

But other national bishops' conferences have not been so reticent about threats to democracy in their own countries.  In a New York Times article, Harvard political science professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt give examples of bishops speaking out against anti-democratic movements.  The article is entitled (perhaps provocatively), "There Are Four Anti-Trump Pathways We Failed to Take.  There Is a Fifth."  

As the authors explain,  

We have been studying democratic crisis and authoritarianism for 30 years. Between the two of us, we have written five books on those subjects. We can think of few major national candidates for office [besides Donald Trump] in any democracy since World War II who have been this openly authoritarian...

We spent the last year researching how democracies can protect themselves from authoritarian threats from within. We have found five strategies that pro-democratic forces around the world have employed. None offer foolproof protection (no democracy could enjoy foolproof protection and remain a democracy), and some of them come with important drawbacks. But our research suggests that in the face of imminent extremist threats, these strategies are the best available.

The authors then discuss the five strategies for protecting democracies from authoritarians.  For purposes of this post, I'll focus on the fifth strategy, but the other four are worth considering as well:

Strategies for democracies to protect themselves from authoritarians

1. Elections (the "laissez-faire" approach).  The authors characterize relying on elections to stop authoritarians as the "laissez-faire" approach, as elections don't rely on any extraordinary measures.  Each election presents us with the opportunity to choose candidates committed to staying within the laws, norms and customs of American public life, and to reject candidates who would break through those firewalls.  But the authors note several weaknesses with relying on laissez-faire: the structure of the American electoral college is not perfectly democratic, and its bias toward small-population states may tip the scales in favor of an iconoclastic party which dominates those states; and apart from the electoral college, there is no guarantee that citizens in a democracy will vote for respect-the-norms candidates.  The authors cite the examples of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Viktor Orban in Hungary among others who rose to power via elections and then wielded their power to weaken and undermine democratic safeguards.

2. Militant or defensive democracy.  This strategy uses the rule of law to prevent anti-democratic candidates and parties from participating in elections.  Earlier in our lifetimes, West Germany made it illegal for fascist and Communist parties to operate.  Today, South Korea and Brazil have laws which prevent individuals and parties inimical to democracy from running for office.  The authors note that, in the United States, Section III of the 14th Amendment can be used to bar candidates for president who have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion".  However, earlier this year, our Supreme Court declined to allow Colorado to ban Trump from its ballot on 14th-amendment grounds.  And more generally, the US tradition is not to ban candidates and parties, even those which are anti-democratic.

3. Partisan gatekeeping. Traditionally, political parties have curbed or banned extremist elements within their ranks.  As examples, the authors point to Henry Ford, who harbored some anti-democratic and anti-Semitic views, being kept out of Democratic Party politics; and Republican party leaders in the early 1970s agreeing to cooperate with impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, which quickly led to his resigning the presidency.  The authors pointedly note contemporary GOP leaders' failure to exert this same discipline during Donald Trump's second impeachment trial, in the wake of the January 6th, 2021 Capitol riots/insurrection.  FWIW, my own view is that GOP leaders' failure goes back considerably longer than that; I've thought since early 2016 that party leaders should have resisted Trump's hostile takeover of the party - even before his totalitarian tendencies were as manifest as they are now.  

4. Containment.  Containment occurs when opposition parties, or elements of opposition parties, unite against a common threat.  This happened just a few months ago in France's "snap elections", when Marine Le Pen's National Front party seemed poised to claim the largest plurality; opposition parties from both Left and Right-Center ganged together to form a "cordon sanitaire" that succeeded in preventing her from being able to form a government.  The authors cite a similar recent occurrence in Poland.  But they admit this isn't feasible in the US, which has only two mainstream parties and lacks a parliamentary style of government that allows combinations of parties to form a coalition government.   It is possible that individual Republicans could "cross over" to vote for Kamala Harris in an effort to keep Trump from winning the election; but the pattern during the Trump era has been that Republican rank and file, as much as its leaders, have remained loyal to the party.  It seems many of them would rather have (or settle for) Trump in the White House than any Democrat.  

The fifth strategy: societal mobilization

Having considered these four strategies and noting that, in the case of the United States and Donald Trump, those strategies haven't been effective (or at least not completely effective), the authors then describe the fifth strategy, which they call societal mobilization:

Democracy’s last bastion of defense is civil society. When the constitutional order is under threat, influential groups and societal leaders — chief executives, religious leaders, labor leaders and prominent retired public officials — must speak out, reminding citizens of the red lines that democratic societies must never cross. And when politicians cross those red lines, society’s most prominent voices must publicly and forcefully repudiate them.

The authors then offer two recent examples of leaders of civil society speaking up to prevent authoritarian candidates or parties from gaining traction.  The first is Germany:

A recent example of societal mobilization is the German public reaction to the revelation of a secret November 2023 gathering in which leaders of the far-right AfD met with neo-Nazi groups and discussed a plan for the mass deportation of immigrants, including foreign-born German citizens.

In response, German business leaders of large corporations and small businesses, as well as union leaders, spoke up publicly to defend democracy, human dignity, diversity and tolerance.  There were public demonstrations, in which millions of Germans took part.  And the German Catholic bishops did not remain on the sidelines:

The Catholic Church also responded forcefully. Representatives from all 27 German bishoprics released a statement condemning right-wing nationalism and declaring:

"Right-wing extremist parties and those that place themselves close to such ideologies can be no place of political engagement for Christians. These parties are not electable . … We call on all fellow citizens … to clearly reject political offers from the far-right."

The authors also offer the example of Brazil:

When President Bolsonaro began to threaten democratic institutions in the run-up to the 2022 election, Brazilian civil society mobilized in a similar manner. Mr. Bolsonaro threatened the Supreme Court, attacked the legitimacy of the electoral system, and sought to dismantle Brazil’s electronic voting system. This spurred business, religious and civic groups to mobilize, which produced a series of high-profile public letters in defense of democracy.

Brazilian business, financial and government leaders responded by speaking out in favor of democracy.  And as in Germany, the Brazilian bishops found their voice:

Finally, in October 2022, as Brazil headed into a second-round runoff between Mr. Bolsonaro and ex-President Lula da Silva, Catholic bishops from across Brazil published a “Letter to the People of God,” which called on Catholics to reject Mr. Bolsonaro. The letter declared that “staying neutral is not an option when it comes to choosing between two visions for Brazil — one democratic and the other authoritarian …. The Church does not have a political party, nor will it ever, but it does take a stand.”

Mr. Bolsonaro narrowly lost the runoff, and his effort to overturn the election results met overwhelming public rejection.

Clearly, these authors see the Catholic church as possessing moral authority, and believe the church's voice can make a difference in times of crisis.

Are the American bishops speaking out about threats to our democracy?

The short answer is, "No".  At the time this post is being composed, the USCCB website features no statements or documents on its landing page regarding the importance of defending and sustaining democratic norms in the face of internal threats.  The following featured content currently is rotating at the landing page:

• Respect Life Month
• The Synod on Synodality
• Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship
• Jubilee 2025 - Pilgrims of Hope
• Pope pleads for military restraint in the Middle East

There is nothing wrong with these topics.  But taken as a whole, they paint the picture of an American church promoting "normal" things during "normal" times.  

The USCCB site also has a section on Issues & Action.  It includes a directory of topics with links to further information.  Of the 70 or so topics listed, one doesn't find an entry for "Democracy" or "Elections" or "Voting".  There is an entry for "Faithful Citizenship"; that link takes one to a landing page with links to the "Forming Consciences" document, and some other resources, but it appears none of them focus on defending democratic norms and institutions from those who would weaken or overturn them.  There is also an entry for "Public Policy"; that link takes one to a page with links to information about Catholic schools and other topics of interest to church leaders.   

The site also has a virtual Newsroom, with recent public statements and press releases.  Currently, nearly all of the items listed are about the synod or recent documents and statements from the Holy Father.

The site also reports that the US bishops will have their Fall Plenary meeting in Baltimore on November 11-14.  That is the week after the election.  As is usually the case, the bishops have a packed (albeit not yet finalized) agenda, including reports from committees, consideration of liturgical texts, a report on the Eucharistic Revival, and choosing new officers.  Again, all of this is important; it is also a business-as-usual agenda.  To be sure: electoral events may transpire which cause the bishops to set aside this agenda.  

But one might note that there is no need for the bishops to await additional events to speak out.  There already have been quite a few events which warrant raising one's voice in public, including the attack on the Capitol in 2021 (which did elicit three paragraphs from the USCCB president), the other activities from the 2020 election that constituted attempts to nullify the election results; and various indications that history may be preparing to repeat itself during this election cycle.  

To be sure: we may assume the bishops hope (and are praying) as fervently as us that nothing transpires this time around: that the election proceeds peacefully, smoothly and in an orderly fashion, as was the American custom until 2020.  My respectful message to the bishops is that their collective voice carries moral authority, when they use it.  These are not normal times; they don't call for proceeding as usual.  They call for speaking up.  Now, before the election, would be an excellent time to forthrightly defend American norms and the rule of law during our upcoming election.