One of the great tragedies of the Enlightenment and its aftermath was that Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular lost faith in their legitimacy and in the legitimacy of their mission. As a result, they surrendered that mission’s otherworldliness and agreed to fight only on temporal grounds. In other words, when the Church responded to its attackers, it did so not on its own terms but on the terms—and in the terms—of those attackers. Rather than focus on its mission and the eternal truths for which it had become the earthly vessel, the Church became distracted. The problem wasn’t that the Church failed to defend itself, but that it did so on the foreign turf of the rationalist philosophers, economists, sociologists, and politicians. And it continues to do so.
When Immanuel Kant insisted that God’s existence cannot be proved by philosophy, science, or reason, Christianity should have conceded and moved on. Christianity is not about proving those things to nonbelievers. It is about fostering the faith necessary to believe them without proof. In his classic novel Dr. Faustus, Thomas Mann described this grievous mistake as follows:
Orthodoxy itself committed the blunder of letting reason into the field of religion, in that she sought to prove the positions of faith by the test of reason. Under the pressure of the Enlightenment, theology had almost nothing to do but defend herself against the intolerable contradictions which were pointed out to her: and only in order to get round them she embraced so much of the anti-revelation spirit that it amounted to an abandonment of faith. . . . Since this went a little too far, there arose an accommodation theology . . . . In its conservative form, holding to revelation and the traditional exegesis, it sought to save what was to be saved of the elements of Bible religion; on the other hand it liberally accepted the historico-critical methods of the profane science of history and abandoned to scientific criticism its own most important contents: the belief in miracles, considerable portions of Christology, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and what not besides. . .
Among the more pernicious consequences of this “blunder” is the occasional (but all too frequent) forays by Church leaders into the realm of temporal politics. Some outwardly “political” matters are, in reality, spiritual matters, matters of faith. Abortion is one such issue. If one believes the words of the Book of Jeremiah, for example—“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you”—then one should also, as a matter of faith, believe that abortion is a heinous matter that takes the life of one of God’s beloved.
Such matters are, however, few and far between. Most of the time that the Church ventures into the political realm, it steps beyond the bounds of its authority; it compounds the blunder of fighting on the field of reason and human affairs and exacerbates its capitulation to the modern anti-revelation spirit. When the Church engages in purely political matters and thereby departs from its mission, the effects are both manifold and potentially severe.
The first thing that the Church does when it plays politics is that it erodes its own authority. This is, in part, what Mann was getting at above. Moral absolutes cannot and should not be proved by worldly measures, and attempting to do so only makes the former look foolish by comparison to the latter.
Recently, Pope Francis sent a letter to the American bishops, more or less telling them that they must resist President Trump’s immigration policy.
“I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” the Pope wrote, and “the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.”
This is an exceptionally political statement. It takes an exceptionally ideological position. It is also exceptionally foolish and potentially exceptionally destructive. As R.R. Reno noted at First Things, the Pope’s stance is a “recipe for ecclesiastical suicide,” meaning it forces Americans to choose between loving their country and doing what the Pope insists is the only truly acceptable thing to do in this situation. In short, the Pope is pitting the Church against the very idea of “America,” against the “shining city upon a hill” that has captured the spirit of freedom and the imagination of people worldwide for nearly a quarter of a millennium. The end result of this can only be that some people—many people, most people—will choose to ignore that which the Pope and his bishops insist is a moral necessity. That is a disastrous outcome and sets a disastrous precedent.
A second consequence of the Church’s involvement in politics is its distraction from its true mission. If the Church and its leaders are preoccupied with earthly matters, then it is quite probable that they will be diverted from their focus on spiritual matters, the matters of faith and morals that determine salvation.
Earlier this week, Pope Francis appointed Edward Weisenburger, the Bishop of Tucson, Arizona, to replace the retiring Allen Vigneron as the Archbishop of Detroit. Weisenburger—a favorite of the Pontiff’s—is a severe critic of President Trump’s, especially his immigration policies. Seven years ago, during the first Trump presidency, Weisenburger suggested that people who “are involved” in those policies should, perhaps, be subjected to “canonical penalties,” up to and including excommunication. Needless to say, it is difficult for one to imagine how such actions would accomplish the mission of the Church to save souls. In advocating for the excommunication of political opponents, Weisenburger—soon to be an archbishop—both undermines the seriousness of the Church and confuses the faithful about their actual moral responsibilities.
Finally, by getting involved in politics, the Church risks tipping the political scales to one side or the other. It is clear that Pope Francis reviles Donald Trump’s immigration policies. It is also clear that he is frustrated and annoyed by Vice President Vance for not stating Catholic theology in exactly the same terms as he would. But does he necessarily prefer the partisan alternative? Pope Francis should understand that American politics is, for all practical purposes, a binary calculation. He may think that he is simply stating what is right and just and encouraging all parties to accept his conclusions and practice his recommendation. In reality, however, he is picking sides. He may not intend to do so, but that is the practical effect of involving himself and the Church in American politics. By attacking Trump and Vance on political matters, he is effectively encouraging American Catholics to embrace the alternative—the party that aggressively supports abortion and the sexualization of children, funds atheism and transgender ideology in foreign countries, and has no serious answer to the immigration problem, only platitudes and falsehoods.
Certainly, the Pope is free to disagree with Donald Trump’s immigration policies—or any of his policies, for that matter. But when he takes that objection and tries to make it the official position of the Church, to turn it into an inarguable matter of conscience, then he is overstepping his authority and, in the process, diminishing his genuine authority. That’s not merely a mistake; it’s also a shame. In this era, when the Church’s authority has already been eroded by the misdeeds of its clergy, adding to the distrust will only make its true mission that much harder.
