In the eyes of many of his supporters, Donald Trump’s most compelling qualification heading into the 2016 presidential election was the fact that he was not Hillary Clinton. During the course of his presidency, though, many of us who reluctantly voted for him found many other reasons to support him. But one constant factor in his favor has been the reality that the worst villains in the world appear to want him dead or in jail. This fact does not of itself make Trump virtuous, or even fit for the presidency, but it should factor into our decisions about whether we want Kamala Harris to be the next president.
There is no such thing as neutrality at this phase of the battle over traditional morality and the rights of families.
Given the fact that many of the worst villains in the world want to prevent any chance of him regaining the presidency, it should come as no surprise that Trump’s enemies would use every tool at their disposal to undermine him. Two tools in particular are worth considering: the attempt to convince Catholic voters that they cannot vote for him; and the mainstream media’s efforts to downplay or hide the reality that Kamala Harris truly represents an anti-Christian candidate.
The basic (and fallacious) argument for why Catholics should not vote for Trump is that he has softened his opposition to abortion. The stated principle here is that a vote for Trump could be wrong because it is a vote in favor of abortion. The proponents of this position know that a Harris presidency would mean countless more abortions, and likely many more late-term abortions, but this does not matter to them — all that matters is that Trump does not oppose abortion in some instances.
The folly of this position should be self-evident, but we can see its true wickedness if we apply the reasoning to an extreme fact pattern. On the one hand, we approve of Trump’s positions on many issues that Christians care about, including that he: supports families; wants to protect our rights to freely practice our religion (Catholicism); opposes crime; opposes the weaponization of the government against the American people; opposes globalism; opposes woke indoctrination in our schools; and wants to keep men out of women’s locker rooms.
Suppose, on the other hand, that Trump’s opponent is so terrible on all of these positions that she actually wants to do the opposite. Not only that, but she makes a virtue out of abortion, such that she champions it rather than simply condoning it in limited circumstances. Even worse, her dedicated opposition to Christian values would make it almost certain that she would persecute Christians like they have never been persecuted in America. America could feasibly become one of the most anti-Christian nations in the world outside of Muslim and Communist nations.
In such a case, it would be absolutely preposterous and wicked to argue that a Catholic should not vote for the only candidate who has a chance to beat the anti-Christian candidate. If anti-Christian persecution comes, then we hope God will provide what we need to persevere; but it seems that we cannot effectively petition God’s mercy if we do not do our part to oppose one of the most anti-Christian presidential candidates in history.
Moreover, what are we telling God when we say (with our voting preference) that we would rather have an egregiously anti-Christian candidate than a candidate who generally supports Christianity (but is bad on certain issues)? How can we pray for our country to become better when we are not willing to do our part to prevent it from becoming incomparably worse? Do we really expect God to hear our prayers to protect us if we refuse to take ordinary steps to try to avoid the evils that threaten us?
How can we pray for our country to become better when we are not willing to do our part to prevent it from becoming incomparably worse? Do we really expect God to hear our prayers to protect us if we refuse to take ordinary steps to try to avoid the evils that threaten us?
Of course this fact pattern is not merely hypothetical. This is the precise situation in which we find ourselves today, as we can see if we consider why Harris represents a truly anti-Christian candidate even though the mainstream media would never characterize her in such a way. Despite the media lies, all of us could probably list at least a few facts that demonstrate that Harris is an anti-Christian candidate. Those who for some reason are unaware of Harris’s anti-Christian work can consider some points from a recent New York Post article on her faith-based discrimination, which begins as follows:
“Kamala Harris is a bigot. Forgive the blunt delivery, but there isn’t really any nuance to offer: The Democrats’ presidential nominee has long since stripped it away with her blatant discrimination against people of faith, particularly Catholics.”
One does not need to like the New York Post to agree with this — it is simply a reality that most objective observers have already discovered. Here are the indications of Harris’s anti-Christian positions cited in the New York Post’s article:
- “Witness her stunning attack on the venerable Knights of Columbus in 2018, during Brian Buescher’s nomination hearing for a federal judgeship. Then-Sen. Harris subtly criticized the charitable and fraternal organization for being an ‘all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men,’ then not-so-subtly slammed it for adhering to his faith’s core — or ‘extremist,’ to use her word — beliefs about life and family. She implied that Buescher’s membership in the group basically made him unfit for the bench . . .”
- “Harris is well-steeped in the left’s newfound understanding of religion, which is that it should stay within the four walls of a home or a house of worship and must be disavowed in order to participate in society. Look no further than her Senate sponsorship of the Orwellianly titled Do No Harm Act, which would have required health-care workers to perform procedures like abortion, even in violation of their deeply held religious beliefs. And it would have closed down charitable organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor, the left’s favorite punching bag, for refusing to violate Catholic teachings on human sexuality (of all things, for an order of celibate nuns).”
- “She was a supporter, for example, of the Equality Act — a bill that would require religious institutions of all stripes, including churches themselves, to violate their core beliefs in the name of ‘gender ideology.’ That measure would have stripped faith-based institutions like schools, charities and adoption agencies of their religious rights by enabling the government to prosecute them for discrimination for refusing to hire people who openly opposed their religious teachings.”
- “As California attorney general, Harris was an advocate of the FACT Act, which would have forced pregnancy centers — many of which are explicitly Catholic or Christian — to refer women to abortion clinics, undercutting their faith-based mission.”
To this list we could add two more key indications of her anti-Christian positions. In May, Harris became the first U.S. vice president to visit Planned Parenthood, reinforcing her public support for robust abortion rights. If she were to become president, we should fully expect her to do more both to promote abortion and to criminalize and punish opposition to it.
Of course we wish Trump would be more perfectly aligned with our interests, but his task at this moment is to try to win an election rather than try to be the ideal candidate for conservative Christians.
Also, as LifeSiteNews recently reported, Harris would be a staunch advocate of advancing the LGTBQ agenda:
“Vice President Kamala Harris is the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, and one of her very first moves was to appear on an LGBT reality show with drag queens. RuPaul himself is a radical LGBT activist who has accurately referred to drag queens as ‘the Marines of the queer movement.’ That Harris wished to begin her campaign by joining the Marines of the queer movement gives us a glimpse of the sort of president she plans to be. “
As we know, the LGBTQ agenda no longer needs to focus its attention on assuring “equal rights” for LGBTQ people, so the primary work consists of reshaping how society in general, and children in particular, think about sexual morality and gender issues. Because Christian morality is rightly seen as opposing these efforts, Harris cannot fulfill her promises to the LGTBQ community without opposing Christianity.
There is no such thing as neutrality at this phase of the battle over traditional morality and the rights of families. Those who oppose Trump are, as a matter of indisputable fact, making it more likely that Harris will be able to impose her anti-Christian views on America. Many of her supporters enthusiastically support this prospect of an anti-Christian president, and she has obviously not tried to do anything to meaningfully mitigate this reality. Those who detest Christianity should definitely support her; and those who do not want to increase the level of anti-Christian hostility in America should instead vote for her opponent. And even if we convinced ourselves that Trump would not win, we show God that we want to prevent a dramatic increase of anti-Christian evils in America if we vote for him as the only candidate who can defeat Harris.
With these considerations in mind, Catholics have a more compelling case to support Trump now than we did in 2016 or 2020. Of course we wish Trump would be more perfectly aligned with our interests, but his task at this moment is to try to win an election rather than try to be the ideal candidate for conservative Christians. Even so, he is arguably “more Catholic than the pope” and those who tell Catholics that we should not vote for him are either deluded or trying to manipulate us to serve Harris. Do we wish he would do more? Of course, which is reason to pray for him rather than oppose his efforts to save us from the most anti-Christian presidency in American history. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
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