Published July 3, 2024
Like a lot of people, I watched last week’s presidential debate and found it disturbing. Others have analyzed the event in granular detail. That’s not my purpose here. After a few early minutes of restraint, Trump lapsed into campaign stump mode, with a special guest appearance by his aggressive, exaggerating self. Biden’s performance was captured best by a London Daily Mail headline: “The leader of the free world is away with the fairies. Biden is toast.”
Both men accused each other of lying, which was a bit like two pots calling the kettle black. Trump did seem genuinely troubled by the idea of late-term abortions. Biden said the same. But Biden, now a vocal champion of Roe v. Wade, was clueless – in fact, flatly wrong – about what Roe actually permitted.
Simply put: For faithful Catholics, neither man is “our guy.” Neither is fully and convincingly pro-life in his convictions. So how should we think about the next four months of pre-election bickering? Three observations:
First, some context: If last week’s debate was disturbing, it was also “apocalyptic” in the original sense of the Greek word apokalyptein, meaning to uncover or reveal. The debate showed us an accurate portrait of our current leadership class in action. It’s a strange day when the Bill Clinton years start to look good. Despite his many flaws, Clinton had the prudence to compromise and tack to the center in the face of principled resistance. Those days are gone.
American politics has always been bruising, but our public life has usually proceeded within certain legal, or at least assumed and broadly shared, guidelines of propriety. Now it’s an ongoing cage fight driven by deep demographic, economic, moral, and technological changes – which then produce confusion and anxiety, which then result in a generalized virus of anger.
The top 10 percent of our country’s households, for example, command more than two-thirds of our national wealth. The bottom 50 percent of America’s households have a mere 2.5 percent of the wealth. And the gulf between the two is widening. Everyday people aren’t stupid, despite what the Boston-Washington corridor may think. They sense something is very wrong.
In effect, both Trump and Biden are creatures of the breakdown in a shared American identity. And the result is a version of late-stage Roman Republic turmoil. As the historian Edward Watts noted here:
When politicians working within the framework of the Republic failed to reach a consensus about how to respond to their citizens’ concerns, some of their rivals opportunistically exploited their inaction by pushing for radical policies in ways that breached the boundaries of acceptable political behavior. The quest for consensus that had made Rome’s republic so stable in previous centuries was quickly replaced by a winner-takes-all attitude toward political disputes.
Elsewhere Watts adds a vindictive misuse of the law and “constitutional trickery” to punish political opponents to his Roman list. And that might sound familiar. The unhinged malice directed at recent Supreme Court decisions by “progressive” elected officials and media outlets is a sign of just how irrational our political discourse has become.
Second, despite – or rather because of – the bitter antagonisms in our country’s public square, Catholics have a duty to be engaged in civic life and to work to improve society in whatever way we can. We can’t simply withdraw from the duties of citizenship. And we can’t abandon public life to those with destructive, radically opposed beliefs to our own. To do so betrays our baptismal call to witness Jesus Christ and serve as leaven in the world. But in an election year when both major candidates are very far from perfect, how do we do that? How should we vote?
There’s no easy answer. Each of us needs to follow his or her own conscience. But conscience isn’t a free-floating personal opinion machine. It needs to be formed in the truth of Church teaching and accumulated Christian wisdom. A good guide to pursuing that task of formation – clear, concise, and rich in content – is the U.S. bishops’ pastoral statement, Living the Gospel of Life, available on the USCCB website. Grounded in St. John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium vitae (“The Gospel of Life”), it’s well worth reading, praying over, and sharing widely. It’s not the only good resource this election cycle, but it’s among the very best.
Third, we need to remember that all nations are mortal. Our own is no exception. Our real citizenship, our true homeland as Christians, is Heaven, the City of God. And our first loyalty is to Jesus Christ and His Church – not to a political party, nor even to our country, as important as a healthy patriotism is.
We serve our country best by renewing and sustaining the Church as our culture’s soul and moral compass. She sanctifies the world through the witness of her people; and if she fails, it’s because we fail to live our vocation as Catholic laypeople with joy and conviction.
So our patron saint for this election year, and every such year, might profitably be Augustine of Hippo – who lived in a time of turmoil very like our own, and did it with exactly the right balance of skepticism about human affairs, and trust in a loving God. Augustine died 16 centuries ago. But his words and his life speak to the nature of our Christian mission in the world just as forcefully today. We need to listen and learn.
Here’s a final thought: Nations are mortal. We’re not. God made us for eternal life – where we end up, exactly, is another matter. As C.S. Lewis put it, our ability to “fit” in God’s eternity of light and joy is shaped by our choices here and now – choices that serve others or don’t; that ennoble our nation and world or degrade them. We each have just so many grains of sand in our hourglass. Eventually, they run out. In our public and our private lives, we need to act accordingly.
Francis X. Maier is a Senior Fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mr. Maier’s work focuses on the intersection of Christian faith, culture, and public life, with special attention to lay formation and action.
