On November 8, 60% of voters identifying themselves as Catholic cast their votes for the now president-elect, Donald J. Trump. White born-again or Evangelical Christians supported Trump even more strongly, with 81% of their vote. It has been a long, contentious campaign, with historically low levels of trust and personal likability for both major party candidates. Nevertheless, enough people of faith were willing to take a chance on the Republican candidate and the party’s platform to help swing an electoral-college victory. Now, as the nation moves into what at present feels like an equally contentious transition process, Catholics who voted for Trump are hoping their trust was well-placed.
For reasons unique to this campaign and this president-elect, there is not a lot of certainty at this point what policies will be in place in the new administration. Campaign promises are campaign promises, of course, and no candidate signs a solemn oath to fulfill each and every one of them. For President-elect Trump, the usual autumn prognostications are more difficult to make than usual, both because of his personal penchant for not signalling policy decisions too far in advance and because his campaign-trail positions have changed many times, occasionally contradicting those of his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence, the Republican party leadership, and even Trump himself.
What then, can Catholics — both those who supported the Trump-Pence team and those who did not — look for from a Trump administration when it comes to key issues of public policy? Here Aleteia presents an overview of these issues drawn from a summary of key social doctrine by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (passages reproduced in italics) with notes on what we know so far and what we can and should watch for.
Life and Dignity of the Human Person
The Catholic Church proclaims that human life is sacred and that the dignity of the human person is the foundation of a moral vision for society. This belief is the foundation of all the principles of our social teaching. In our society, human life is under direct attack from abortion and euthanasia. The value of human life is being threatened by cloning, embryonic stem cell research, and the use of the death penalty. The intentional targeting of civilians in war or terrorist attacks is always wrong. Catholic teaching also calls on us to work to avoid war. Nations must protect the right to life by finding increasingly effective ways to prevent conflicts and resolve them by peaceful means. We believe that every person is precious, that people are more important than things, and that the measure of every institution is whether it threatens or enhances the life and dignity of the human person.
President-elect Trump has expressed support for the pro-life movement and for religious liberty. During the campaign, he spoke of appointing pro-life justices to the Supreme Court. In primary and candidate debates, Trump — who once held pro-choice views — expressed an evolution in his personal attitude toward abortion. He has spoken of limiting legal abortion to the three “Reagan exceptions” (incest, rape, and health of the mother) and has expressed abhorrence with late-term, partial-birth abortion on demand. In an interview for “60 Minutes” Sunday night, Trump repeated his promise to name a Supreme Court justice who opposes legal abortion and would help overturn Roe v. Wade. He has expressed preference for abortion law to be set at the state level.
The president-elect favors retaining the Hyde amendment, which bans federal funding of abortion. His party platform calls for defunding Planned Parenthood, although Trump has said he believes the organization’s non-abortion services provide important health care. Trump’s pledge to repeal and replace the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) includes removing the HHS mandate for insurers to provide free contraceptive and sterilization coverage for women. He has made no public statements on euthanasia.
In other aspects of pro-life concern, Trump has publicly supported the death penalty, unilateral military action, and expanded use of enemy-interrogation techniques categorized by the international community and the Church as torture. He has suggested that nuclear proliferation might be acceptable as a defense strategy. However, he is in favor of disengaging from US military involvement in foreign conflicts.
Call to Family, Community, and Participation
The person is not only sacred but also social. How we organize our society — in economics and politics, in law and policy — directly affects human dignity and the capacity of individuals to grow in community. Marriage and the family are the central social institutions that must be supported and strengthened, not undermined. We believe people have a right and a duty to participate in society, seeking together the common good and well-being of all, especially the poor and vulnerable.
In contrast to his running mate, Trump has not called for an end to legalized same-sex marriage. He has reached out to some degree to the LGBTQ electorate, in particular vowing to defeat terrorists and challenge allies who practice repressive anti-homosexual policies. This outreach would align with Catholic teaching that all people are to be respected and protected from discrimination and oppression. In terms of the freedom of Christians to practice their faith when it comes into conflict with societal pressure or government legislation, the Trump-Pence team has vowed to end federal interference into the practice of religion and the imposition of federal mandates that prohibit believers from exercising their conscience.
Because freedom of religion is a human right, Catholics and other Christians will need to monitor whether this right is extended to people of all faiths, especially — given some of the president-elect’s other policy suggestions — Muslims.
Another way the Trump administration may support families is in the enacting of programs that provide jobs with a living wage, opportunities for education, adequate and affordable health care for all ages and stages of life, tax strategies that promote marriage and family, and other incentives for family growth and stability. The president-elect’s priorities, once set, should be evaluated for their effectiveness in this area.
Rights and Responsibilities
The Catholic tradition teaches that human dignity can be protected and a healthy community can be achieved only if human rights are protected and responsibilities are met. Therefore, every person has a fundamental right to life and a right to those things required for human decency. Corresponding to these rights are duties and responsibilities—to one another, to our families, and to the larger society.
Trump promises to nominate federal judges and Supreme Court justices who are pro-life and “committed to interpreting the Constitution and laws according to their original public meaning.” On his presidential transition website, Trump says he will “defend Americans’ fundamental rights to free speech, religious liberty, keeping and bearing arms, and all other rights guaranteed to them in the Bill of Rights and other constitutional provisions.”
In promising a streamlining of the federal government and a return to local control of issues such as abortion law and educational standards, the Republican strategy supports the Church’s teaching of the importance of subsidiarity in public life.
During the campaign, Trump and his followers often displayed an unprecedented level of outspoken disrespect for many individuals and groups that make up American society, including women, people with disabilities, Mexican Americans, Muslims, African Americans, the press, elected officials and institutions, and opponents or critics of any kind. Though heralded by many as refreshing candor and a rejection of false political correctness, this rhetoric occasionally descended into slurs and edged on, if it did not degenerate into, violations against human dignity. It will be important to note how the Trump administration as well as those who lost the election (who weren’t immune from this deplorable tone themselves) take up the responsibility of healing the very great divisions caused by this campaign behavior.
Option for the Poor and Vulnerable
A basic moral test is how our most vulnerable members are faring. In a society marred by deepening divisions between rich and poor, our tradition recalls the story of the Last Judgment (Mt 25:31-46) and instructs us to put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first.
In his acceptance speech after Tuesday’s election, the first group Trump pledged to help were people in the greatest economic need. “The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” he said. “We are going to fix our inner cities [a term Mr. Trump uses to describe areas of urban poverty. infrastructure decay, and lack of opportunity for education and employment].”
The Republican plan to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, which as of this week Trump has softened to a more gradual plan that retains the ACA’s most popular provisions — coverage of preexisting conditions and family coverage up to age 26 for children living at home — still raises issues for those 20 million Americans now covered under the ACA, including the low-income families covered by Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid.
The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers
The economy must serve people, not the other way around. Work is more than a way to make a living; it is a form of continuing participation in God’s creation. If the dignity of work is to be protected, then the basic rights of workers must be respected—the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to the organization and joining of unions, to private property, and to economic initiative.
Trump favors a cut in taxes and a tax code that he describes as “simpler, fairer, and pro-growth.” He wants to reform government regulation to favor small businesses, which he calls “the driver of job creation.” He has promised to keep untouched the social safety nets of Social Security and Medicare. His tax proposals include offering refundable deductions for the average cost of child care, which Trump suggested would also apply to parents staying home with children and to child care provided by family members. These provisions, plus a proposal to increase the standard deduction, may be offset by other proposals to remove the Head of Household filing status for single parents and single adults who provide support for family members, as well as to eliminate deductions for dependents and for certain disabilities. No proposals have yet been set in stone, however.
Solidarity
We are one human family whatever our national, racial, ethnic, economic, and ideological differences. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, wherever they may be. Loving our neighbor has global dimensions in a shrinking world. At the core of the virtue of solidarity is the pursuit of justice and peace. Pope Paul VI taught that if you want peace, work for justice. The Gospel calls us to be peacemakers. Our love for all our sisters and brothers demands that we promote peace in a world surrounded by violence and conflict.
From the beginning, Trump’s campaign has been centered on putting an end to illegal immigration. To his promise to build “a great wall” (recently softened to include fencing where topologically appropriate) across the southern border of the United States, Trump added other plans for strengthening US borders both physically and in terms of international trade and cooperation. These positions found support among Americans suffering from the effects of rapid economic globalization, as similar policies have found favor in Britain and in some European countries. The Trump administration will need to walk a careful balance to secure US safety and economic recovery without succumbing to exaggerated nationalist, isolationist, or protectionist policies.
While the Church shares Trump’s call for immigration reform, his proposed policies to achieve reform and those supported by the US Catholic Conference of Bishops differ significantly. The USCCB supports comprehensive immigration reform, including options involving so-called “amnesty” or “grandfathering-in” undocumented immigrants who are in the United States illegally but living peaceful and productive lives. The bishops strenuously object to the idea of separating families due to migration questions centering on legal status. Trump’s references to wholesale deportation (recently stated as the intent to deport or incarcerate 2 to 3 million criminal aliens) would seem to run counter to Catholic teaching, so it is to be hoped that Church leaders and a Trump administration more open to dialogue with faith leaders can work together toward this common goal.
Another area in which the Church and the president-elect are at odds has to do with the resettlement in the United States of refugees, especially those fleeing the civil wars and ISIS terrorism in the Middle East. Trump’s proposals would significantly reduce or even ban this flow of refugees, as well as tighten immigration restrictions to exclude persons from countries where ISIS is established. These proposals have focused overwhelmingly on Muslims, which poses the issue of a religious challenge to those wishing to seek refuge in or immigrate to the United States, a stance the Church strongly opposes. The Church in the United States and Catholic Charities and other organizations around the world play an enormous role in migrant and refugee resettlement, and Catholic leaders should offer their experience and support in this area to strike a balance between safety and compassion.
In terms of working for peace, while Trump’s campaign rhetoric has at times been heavily militaristic, as president he promises to seek diplomatic solutions first. “Events may require the use of military force, but it’s also a philosophical struggle,” he said, particularly in regards to defeating ISIS. “Our goal is peace and prosperity, not war and destruction. The best way to achieve those goals is through a disciplined, deliberate and consistent foreign policy.”
Care for God’s Creation
We show our respect for the Creator by our stewardship of creation. Care for the earth is not just an Earth Day slogan, it is a requirement of our faith. We are called to protect people and the planet, living our faith in relationship with all of God’s creation. This environmental challenge has fundamental moral and ethical dimensions that cannot be ignored.
“The Trump Administration is firmly committed to conserving our wonderful natural resources and beautiful natural habitats,” according to the transition website. “America’s environmental agenda will be guided by true specialists in conservation, not those with radical political agendas. We will refocus the EPA on its core mission of ensuring clean air, and clean, safe drinking water for all Americans. It will be a future of conservation, of prosperity, and of great success.”
This statement is in keeping with Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’, in which the pontiff writes: “Some forms of pollution are part of people’s daily experience. Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths. […] Technology, which, linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others.”
However, some Trump administration proposals — such as cancelling payments to international efforts to manage the effects of climate change, removing environmental protection and safety regulations, and recommitting to fossil fuel production and transportation (including coal mining, offshore oil drilling, and fracking for natural gas) that have environmental and public health consequences — are in contradiction to both Laudato Si’ and the Church’s long tradition of stewardship of creation.
Going forward, Catholics — like all Americans — are called to hold the Trump administration — like any other administration — accountable for its representation of all Americans and its commitment to the common good. No administration’s policies are ever fully in line with Catholic teaching, but we are privileged to exercise our commitment to living that teaching as much as possible. As Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, the outgoing president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, put it in his statement on Trump’s election:
We, as citizens and our elected representatives, would do well to remember the words of Pope Francis when he addressed the United States Congress last year, “all political activity must serve and promote the good of the human person and be based on respect for his or her dignity.” Yesterday, millions of Americans who are struggling to find economic opportunity for their families voted to be heard. Our response should be simple: we hear you. The responsibility to help strengthen families belongs to each of us.The Bishops Conference looks forward to working with President-elect Trump to protect human life from its most vulnerable beginning to its natural end. We will advocate for policies that offer opportunity to all people, of all faiths, in all walks of life. We are firm in our resolve that our brothers and sisters who are migrants and refugees can be humanely welcomed without sacrificing our security. We will call attention to the violent persecution threatening our fellow Christians and people of other faiths around the world, especially in the Middle East. And we will look for the new administration’s commitment to domestic religious liberty, ensuring people of faith remain free to proclaim and shape our lives around the truth about man and woman, and the unique bond of marriage that they can form. Every election brings a new beginning. Some may wonder whether the country can reconcile, work together and fulfill the promise of a more perfect union. Through the hope Christ offers, I believe God will give us the strength to heal and unite.Let us pray for leaders in public life that they may rise to the responsibilities entrusted to them with grace and courage. And may all of us as Catholics help each other be faithful and joyful witnesses to the healing love of Jesus.
And today we celebrate...