Edward Feser's Blog, page 8

Pro-lifers must resist Trump on abortion and IVF

Pro-lifersshould rejoice in the defeat of Kamala Harris, and of the Democratic Party, whichremains the greatest threat to the unborn in American politics.  But they cannot rest, because their job isonly half done.  The second greatestthreat has yet to be dealt with, and that is Donald Trump.

Manypro-life Trump supporters will be shocked and angered at such a statement.  But I urge them to resist this emotionalreaction and dispassionately consider the cold, hard facts.  Trump supportspreserving access to the abortion pill, which is responsible for themajority of abortions in the United States. Since these pills can be sent by mail into states where abortion isrestricted or banned, preserving such access largely undermines recent state-levelpro-life measures.  Trump also actively opposesthose measures in any event, insisting that they are “too tough” and need to be“redone.”  He has repeatedlysaid that, even at the state level, abortion must remain legal beyondsix weeks.  And he wants the federalgovernment to pay for, or to force insurance companies to pay for,in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments – a practice that results in thedestruction of more human embryos than even abortion does.  The only threat to the unborn Trump hasclearly and consistently opposed is late-term abortion, which accounts for amere 1% of abortions.  Inshort, the policies Trump favors would prevent very few abortions and encouragethe discarding of millions of embryos.  True,Trump is muchbetter than Harris in supporting the rights of pro-lifers.  But he is now onlya little better in upholding the rights of the unborn.

To be sure,the enthusiasm of many pro-lifers for Trump is understandable.  The Supreme Court Justices he appointed werecrucial to overturning Roe v. Wade.  He took other pro-life stepsduring his first term, such as reinstating the Mexico City Policy, whichprevents taxpayer dollars from being used to fund abortions overseas.  Pro-lifers are desperate for a champion, and Trump’sgrit and victories over pro-choice extremists like Harris and Hillary Clinton canmake him seem to fill the bill.  But noneof that changes the unhappy facts summarized in the previous paragraph.  None of it changes the fact that Trump riggedthe GOP party platform process so as to exclude pro-lifers and ramthrough a removal of the pro-life plank. None of it conflicts with the clearevidence that Trump pushed a pro-life agenda during his first term onlyout of political expediency rather than conviction, and has reverted to themoderate pro-choice position that he held for decades because he judges that that is now the politically moreexpedient course.

When I andothers raisedthe alarm about these problems during the campaign, there were many pro-lifeTrump supporters who quietly acknowledged them but urged that criticism ofTrump be muted until after the election, lest it help Harris.  But the election is now over and Trump wonhandily.  There is no longer any excusefor keeping silent.  And pro-lifers must not keep silent, because Trump’spolicies on these matters are gravely immoral. Let’s look more closely at both the IVF issue and Trump’s current stanceon abortion to see just how grave the situation is.

The gravity of the IVF issue

The CatholicChurch is the best-known critic of IVF, but it is crucial to emphasize that themoral problems with IVF have nothing essentially to do with specificallyCatholic premises, or indeed with religious premises of any other kind.  As with abortion, even an atheist couldobject to IVF on completely secular moral grounds (even if in fact most atheistsno doubt don’t object to it).  There aremany moral problems with IVF, but for present purposes I will focus only onthose that anyone who already agrees that abortion is wrong should be able tosee.  This is by no means a trivialexercise, because in recent months, a number of people often thought of asstaunchly pro-life have endorsed IVF. Trump himself is an example, as are TedCruz, Marco Rubio,and other Republican U.S. Senators.  Itis important for pro-lifers tempted to accept IVF to see that they cannot do soconsistently with their opposition to abortion.

Now, invitro fertilization itself simply involves bringing sperm and egg togetheroutside the normal context of the womb, so as to yield a new human embryo.  While there are moral grounds for objectingto this practice, this much does not amount to homicide, as abortion does.  But it is by no means the end of thestory.  For the IVF procedure to yieldthe results desired, producing a single embryo is not sufficient.  Usually several embryos are generated, evenas many as a dozen.  From them, thoseconsidered the best candidates are chosen for implantation in the mother’swomb.  The rest are discarded, used forresearch, or frozen for possible future use. Among those implanted, one is often judged the healthiest and brought toterm, and the others aborted if the mother does not want more than onechild. 

Destroyingunused embryos is morally on a par with abortion, and killing unwanted embryosafter implantation just is a kind ofabortion.  To speak harshly buttruthfully, the destruction of embryos that is typically involved in IVF ismurder, no less than abortion is.  A recentestimate puts the number of embryos lost in in the IVF process every year inthe United States at over a million and ahalf – twice the number of abortionsthat occur in the U.S. every year.  Nor,again, is this an evil that can realistically be avoided if IVF is to have theresults desired from it.  Experts judge that“discarding embryos is inherent to the IVF process.”

Freezingembryos indefinitely is also gravely evil. Most of those frozen are simply abandoned.  But even those that are not are done a graveinjustice.  A child has a right to beprovided for by his parents, with food, shelter, instruction, and thelike.  Any parent who would deprive achild of these things would be considered wicked.  But how much more does a child have a rightto be nurtured in the womb and brought into the world, which is a preconditionof these other goods?  A parent who leavesan embryo frozen in the expectation that it might eventually be taken by othersis comparable to someone who abandons a child on a doorstep.  A parent who allows a frozen embryo to beabandoned altogether, eventually to die, is comparable to the pagans of old whowould abandon unwanted babies on garbage heaps.

Tocharacterize a presidential administration that actively promotes IVF as“pro-life” would be ludicrous, indeed obscene. Yet Trump intends for his administration to do just this.  Again, he wants the federal government eitherto pay for all the costs of IVF procedures, or to force insurance companies todo so.  If Catholic institutions areforced to participate, this would be an assault on religious freedom no lessgrave than Obama’s attempted contraception mandate.  To be sure, Trump hasindicated that he might be open to a religious exemption.  But that is nowhere near good enough.  The fundamental problem is not that Catholicswould be forced to participate in the murder of embryos, bad as that wouldbe.  The fundamental problem is themurder of embryos. 

Some mightsuggest that Trump’s call for an IVF mandate was just campaign rhetoric thatwill quickly be forgotten.  But while wecan hope this is true, we cannotcomplacently assume that it is, andin fact the evidence points in the opposite direction.  Trump has not merely made a perfunctorystatement or two on the issue.  On thecontrary, he repeatedly and enthusiastically promoted the IVF mandate duringthe campaign, goingso far as to characterize himself as “the father of IVF” and topledge that the GOP will now be “the party for IVF” even more than theDemocrats.  Other Republicans withpro-life reputations have also in recent months takenpositive action to promote IVF. Even JD Vance, despite his reputation as a faithful pro-life Catholic, hasenthusiastically spoken in favor of it.  Elon Musk, a major Trump ally and advisor, isan especially vigorous proponent of IVF, several of his children having beenconceived via the procedure.

As onecommentator has concluded,“if Trump makes good on his promise of federally-funded IVF, it will be one ofthe most objectively anti-life acts in US government history.”  But even this is only the half of the problem.

Trump is now pro-choice

In the yearssince Roe was overturned, Trump hasrepeatedly said that the abortion issue should now be left to the states ratherthan the federal government.  Yet he hasduring the same period also repeatedly criticized state-level restrictions onabortion.  When the Arizona Supreme Courtruled in favor of enforcing an abortion ban, Trumpcomplained that it “went too far.”  When Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed alaw banning abortion after six weeks, Trumpcondemned the ban as “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.”  The reason, he explained, isthat he thinks “the six week is too short, there has to be more time” – moretime, that is to say, for the mother to decide whether to have anabortion.  And again, hesays that the restrictive measures some state Republicans havepushed for are “too tough, too tough” and “are going to be redone.” 

During thecampaign, Trump repeatedly obfuscated on Florida’s Amendment 4, which wouldhave expanded abortion access even to late term.  At one point, when asked whether he wouldvote against it, heresponded that he would “be voting that we need more than six weeks”– thereby giving the impression that he would vote for the amendment.  After an outcry from pro-lifers, Trump thensaid that he would vote against it, but reiterated that he stillthought a six week ban was too restrictive. But then, on Election Day, herefused to say whether he had in fact voted against the amendment.

At onepoint, Trump saidthat a fifteen-week ban on abortion at the federal level might be“reasonable” and reflected “the number of weeks” he was “thinking in termsof.”  He laterchanged course and declared that he would veto any federal ban.  But when you consider his initial view that afifteen-week federal ban would reflect a “reasonable” time frame, together withhis repeated criticism of six-week bans at the state level, the naturalconclusion to draw is that the most Trump would support in defense of theunborn is a fifteen-week ban on abortion at the state level.  In other words, Trump’s position seems to bethat abortion should be legal, even atthe state level, before fifteen weeks.

That ismanifestly an example of what every pro-lifer before twenty minutes ago wouldcall a pro-choice position.  It is whatno pro-lifer would have tolerated in a Republican presidential candidate beforeTrump.  True, it is not as extreme a pro-choice position as theone that Kamala Harris and other Democrats now routinely take.  But it is still manifestly pro-choice, andnot pro-life.

Now, 93% ofabortions in the U.S. occurat thirteen weeks or earlier – that is to say, precisely during theperiod that Trump apparently wants abortion to be legal even at the statelevel.  And again, he has also statedthat he “will not block” access to abortion pills, whichaccount for the majority of abortions and can be mailed across statelines into states with restrictive abortion laws.  In short, Trump’scurrent position on abortion would permit well over 90% of abortions even atthe state level.  As with his IVFpolicy, it would be ludicrous and indeed obscene to characterize this asremotely close to a “pro-life” position.

Here too it wouldbe naïve to think that Trump’s recent statements are mere campaign rhetoricthat will be forgotten now that he has been elected.  Trump has not merely refrained fromadvocating pro-life policy when running for a second term.  He has activelyfought against such policies when Republicans have pushed them even at thestate level, and took positive action toremove from the GOP platform its commitment to defending the lives of theunborn.  He hasemphasized that his new administration “will be great for women andtheir reproductive rights,” standard code for pro-choice policies.  Late in his campaign, Trump’s wife Melaniareleased a memoir which was loudlymarketed as, of all things, an expression of her commitment toabortion rights.  It would be absurd tosuppose that the Trump campaign would permit this if it were not trying to senda reassuring message to those worried that Trump would return to pro-lifeadvocacy once elected.  And far fromdistancing himself from this message, Trump has effusively praisedthe book (and at the Catholic Al Smith dinner, of all places).  He has also now surrounded himself withpro-choice advisors like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, and gotteneven the once staunchly pro-life Vance to temporize on the issue.

Somepro-life Trump supporters might suggest that while Trump’s current position isregrettable, it is irrelevant.  Byhelping to overturn Roe, they mightsay, he has opened the door to fighting abortion at the state level, andpro-lifers can now do this as effectively without Trump’s support as they couldwith it.  But this too is naïve.  Trump is clearly convinced that the pro-lifecause is now a liability for him and for the GOP in general.  That is the best explanation for why he hasfought even state-level restrictions rather than staying neutral.  With only thin majorities in Congress andworries about how the midterms might go, he is likely to continue to try to discourageRepublican governors and lawmakers from pressing for restrictions onabortion.  Presidents can exertconsiderable pressure, especially when they are popular with the party base andhave won decisive electoral victories.  Andas I have argued in aprevious article, Trump’s record shows that he is likely to bevindictive against those who resist him on this matter.  Pro-lifers will have their work cut out forthem.

Some common responses

I’ve foundthat while some pro-life Trump supporters are clear-eyed about these problems, othersare extremely reluctant to face up to them. There are several stock responses I’ve seen over and over, not onlythroughout the campaign but even after Trump won.  It is worthwhile to explain why, though emotionallyattractive to some, these responses completely miss the point or otherwise haveno force:

1. “How can you say Trump ispro-choice?  He got Roe overturned!  Have you nogratitude?”

Yes, Trumpwas instrumental in overturning Roe anddeserves thanks for that.  But gettingrid of Roe does not by itself saveany unborn lives.  It merely removes acertain obstacle to saving them.  One hasto take further positive steps in order actually to protect the unborn.  And the trouble is that Trump has bothopposed such steps (insofar as he has actively opposed both federal actionagainst abortion and the state-level measures Republicans have pushed for), andalso proposed a new policy that positively threatens the unborn (the IVFmandate).

Supposesomeone bought you a car but also both made it difficult or impossible for youto get any gasoline, and encouraged others to steal the car.  Obviously, it would be silly for someone todefend him by saying “Don’t be ungrateful! After all, he bought you the car!”  Buying someone a car is hardly much of a giftif you also make it impossible for the person to use or keep it.  The point of having a car, after all, is todrive it.  Similarly, for pro-lifers, thepoint of overturning Roe was to openthe door to protecting the unborn.  ForTrump to help overturn Roe but thengo on to oppose federal and state-level restrictions and promote IVF defeatsthis purpose.  Trump is taking back withhis left hand what he gave with his right.

2. “But it would be politically unrealisticto push for a national ban on abortion or IVF!”

This is nodoubt true, but it is beside the point, because no one is criticizing Trump forfailing to do that.  His critics realizethat current political circumstances make such bans politicallyunfeasible.  But it is one thing simplyto refrain from pushing for a federalabortion ban.  It is quite another thing actively to oppose such a ban, and actively to remove the pro-life plankfrom the GOP platform.  It is one thingsimply not to oppose IVF.  It is quite another actively to promote IVF and to push for federal funding of it.  Moreover, the problem is not just that Trumpactively opposes any federal action in this area.  It is that he has also actively opposed thesteps pro-lifers have been taking even at the state level to restrict abortion.

3. “After Dobbs, abortion is a state-level issue anyway, so Trump’s current views areirrelevant”

There arethree problems with this response. First, while Trump and his supporters often speak as if Dobbs permits the states alone to restrict abortion, that is nottrue.  After Dobbs, either the states orthe federal government may put restrictions on abortion.  It may currently be politically unfeasible topush for federal restrictions, but it is dishonest to insinuate that the Dobbs decision somehow rules out suchrestrictions.

Second, evenwhere state-level restrictions are concerned, Trump’s current views are not irrelevant.  Again, though out of one side of his mouth hesays that the states can do what they like, out of the other side he has beenactively opposing recent state-level restrictions.  He clearly thinks these restrictions arepolitically harmful to him and the GOP, and wants to discourage Republicanseven at the state level from pushing for them. A president has tremendous influence on what happens in his party at alllevels, especially when he has tight control over the party apparatus and haswon a decisive electoral victory.  Republicanpoliticians down-ballot who want the support of the president and the party arebound to feel strong pressure not to resist him on the abortion issue.

Third, whateverone says about abortion, Trump’s proposed IVF mandate would itself be a federal initiative.  It is he, not his critics, who is making ofIVF’s threat to the unborn a federal issue rather than a state issue.

(SomeCatholic Trump supporters have argued that the natural law principle ofsubsidiarity requires dealing with abortion only at the state level rather thanthe federal level.  But this is not true,as I have shown in anotherarticle.)

4. “No political candidate is goingto fit some imagined ideal.  Bycriticizing Trump, you are self-righteously making the perfect the enemy of thegood and encouraging a purity spiral that will only damage the pro-life cause!”

This is astraw man.  Trump’s pro-life critics arenot demanding perfection.  And again,they aren’t criticizing him for simply refraining from pushing a pro-lifeagenda in a hostile political climate. Rather, they are criticizing him for doing things that are positively gravely damaging to thepro-life cause.  As we have seen, Trump’scurrent position on abortion would effectively permit over 90% of abortions, and his IVF proposal would actively promotea procedure that entails even morekilling of the unborn than abortion does. That is not merely imperfect or less than ideal.  It not only permits but positivelyfacilitates the vast majority of killings of the unborn.  It does not merely fail to promote thepro-life cause, but is directly contraryto it.

5. “But Harris is worse!  It would have been insane for pro-lifers tohelp her defeat Trump!”

Yes, Harrisis even worse than Trump, which is why I consistently said for months that itwould be better for her to lose and that it was justifiable for pro-lifers inswing states to vote for Trump in order to ensure that she lost.  But asI also argued during the campaign, in no way did this entail thatTrump’s current position was not seriously problematic, or that pro-liferscould be excused from criticizing his betrayal of the unborn.  In any event, that is now moot.  Harris has lost, Trump has won, and there isno longer any excuse (if there ever was one) for pro-lifers to remainsilent. 

6. “This is all just TrumpDerangement Syndrome (TDS)!  You’re justa NeverTrumper!”

This is themost brain-dead response, and not really worthy of comment.  But because it is extremely common, I’lloffer a reply.

First, I amneither a “NeverTrumper” nor “deranged” in my criticisms of him.  Though I have always had serious reservationsabout Trump, I did vote for him in 2016 and 2020 because the alternatives wereworse.  To be sure, his behavior afterhis 2020 defeat, and especially what he tried to pressure Mike Pence to do,were in my opinion disgraceful and a graveassault on the rule of law. That alone should have prevented Republicans from ever nominating himagain.  All the same, had I lived in aswing state, I would have voted for him even in this election, just to keepHarris out.  I have also many timesexplicitly acknowledged that Trump has real strengths and has done some goodthings, and that many of the things his critics say about him are false.  My article “Trump:A buyer’s guide,” while very critical of him, also defends himagainst these excessive and unfair criticisms. No reasonable person who reads that article could accuse me of “TDS.”

If I reallywere suffering from “TDS,” I would have been writing critical things aboutTrump for years.  In fact, in the yearssince he took center stage in American politics, I have written very littleabout him.  The reason is that I find itvery unpleasant to do so, given that so many of his biggest critics and biggestfans alike are unable to discuss the subject in a reasonable and civilway.  Whenever I have said positivethings about Trump, I have been accused of being part of the “MAGA cult” or thelike.  Whenever I have said criticalthings about him, I have been accused of “TDS” etc.  So many people on both sides are so shrilland irrational on the subject of Trump that for a long time I judged it betterto avoid saying much about him.  Anyonewho has been paying attention will know that I started frequently commenting onTrump only after he began to sell out the pro-life cause.  The reason, as should be blindingly obviousto any rational person, is not that I have an animus against Trump, but becauseI have an animus against abortion. 

In anyevent, even if I did have an animus against Trump, that would be completelyirrelevant to the cogency of the arguments I have given here and in earlierarticles.  The arguments stand or fall ontheir own merits, whatever my motivations. To suppose otherwise is to commit a blatant ad hominem fallacy. 

But whilewe’re on the subject of motivation, it’s worth noting that the issue cuts bothways.  Pro-life Trump voters are oftenaccused of putting politics ahead of their pro-life principles.  The accusation is usually unfair, but notalways.  Any pro-life Trump voter who,even after he has been safely elected, would still refuse to criticize him for his betrayal of the unbornthereby proves the critics right.

Relatedposts:

Fight,yes, but for what?

Trumphas put social conservatives in a dilemma

Trump: Abuyer’s guide

Abortionand subsidiarity

Progressive Catholics and capital punishment

The debateover capital punishment between conservative and progressive Catholicstypically exhibits the following dialectic. The conservative will set out a case from natural law, scripture andtradition, and social science for the thesis that capital punishment is atleast in principle licit and in practice still needed in some circumstances –as Joseph Bessette and I do at length in our book ByMan Shall His Blood Be Shed . The progressive will reply with an impassioned but vague appeal to humandignity, a cherry-picked statement from the recent magisterium, and atendentious empirical claim (for example, that capital punishment does notdeter, or is implemented in a racist manner), and top things off with in an ad hominem attack (such as accusing theconservative of being bloodthirsty or having a political motive).  The conservative will then complain that theprogressive has attacked a straw man and simply ignored rather than answeredhis key points.  The progressive will atthis point either ignore the conservative or simply repeat his original,question-begging reply at higher volume.

The latestiteration of the progressive’s routine is Jack Hanson’s articleon Catholicism and capital punishment in The New York Review of Books. A recent execution provides the occasion for the article, but there isotherwise nothing new in it.  And thoughit cites me as the Exhibit A “hard-liner” among Catholic academics who defendcapital punishment, it offers no response to the key arguments Bessette and Idevelop in our book.

The conservative’s case

Because somany of our critics ignore rather than respond to those arguments, we’ve had toreiterate them many times in the seven years since our book appeared.  It is tiresome to have to do so yet again,but at least a brief summary is necessary for context.  There are three relevant sets ofconsiderations, deriving from natural law, scripture and tradition, and socialscience.

Thetraditional natural law rationale for the death penalty is straightforward.  Wrongdoers deserve punishment, and what theydeserve, specifically, is a punishment that is proportional to theoffense.  And governmental authoritieshave the right to inflict such punishments. Now, some offenses are so extremely grave that nothing less thanexecution would be a proportional punishment. So, such offenders deserve the death penalty, and the state has a rightto inflict it on them.

This is notto say that the state must inflictthe death penalty whenever it is deserved, only that it may do so, at least in principle. And there may in some cases be good reasons why it should not doso.  As Aquinas teaches, perfect justiceis not attainable in this life, and when inflicting punishments, governmentsneed to focus primarily on what is essential to preserving public order.  But though considerations of retributivejustice are not sufficient todetermine what punishments should be inflicted, they are necessary.  An offender candeserve death as a matter of retributive justice, so that if the state inflictsdeath on him, it does no injustice –even in cases where there are considerations other than justice that shouldlead it to refrain from inflicting this penalty.

The point isthat the death penalty cannot be regarded as intrinsically wrong.  It doesnot amount to murder, any more than arresting and imprisoning a bank robberamounts to kidnapping, or any more than fining someone caught speeding amountsto stealing.  A murderer has forfeitedhis right to life, just as a robber has forfeited his freedom and someone whoviolates traffic laws has forfeited the money that goes to paying thefine.  If the death penalty is everwrong, it can only be wrong because of the circumstancesunder which it is inflicted, and in particular because there is insufficientreason under the circumstances to give the offender what he deserves.

What, then,of the circumstances that prevail in a country like the United States?  Is there sufficient reason to inflict on someoffenders the penalty of death?  Bessetteand I argue in our book that there is. We argue that some offenders remain so dangerous even when locked up forlife that governing authorities ought to retain the option of execution.  For example, without the prospect of capitalpunishment, some offenders facing life imprisonment have no incentive not tomurder fellow prisoners or prison guards. Or, if they escape, they will have no incentive not to murder innocentpeople in the course of trying to evade police, if the worst they face is areturn to life imprisonment.  In general,we argue, capital punishment does have significant deterrent effect.  It is necessary for governments to keep it onthe books and utilize it at least in the case of the very worst offenders, inorder to protect society from them.

This is justa summary in a few paragraphs of a natural law line of reasoning that Bessette andI develop and defend in detail in the book. As we argue, in order to deny that the death penalty can be licit atleast in principle, one would have to give up the principle that offendersdeserve punishments proportional to the offense.  One problem with doing so is that divorcingpunishment from desert has implications that by anyone’s lights would beunjust.  Another problem is that there isno way to give up the principles of desert and proportionality consistently withCatholic orthodoxy.  For these principlesare deeply embedded in scripture and tradition, informing both the Church’sunderstanding of punishment and her teaching on salvation and damnation. 

This bringsus to the second set of considerations in favor of capital punishment, whichhave to do with the teaching of scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of theChurch, the popes prior to Francis, and tradition in general.  As Bessette and I show in detail, there aremany passages in scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments, that sanctionthe death penalty, and that have always been understood by the Church (andindeed by everyone else, such as Jewish interpreters) to sanction the deathpenalty.  This includes the Fathers ofthe Church, some of whom pleaded for clemency and thought it better for thestate not to exercise its right to inflict the death penalty, but none of whomdenied that scripture did indeed give the state that right.  The Church teaches that neither the Fathersnor the tradition of the Church can be mistaken when they agree on some matterof scriptural interpretation.  Since theFathers and the Church have always agreed that scripture allows for capitalpunishment at least in principle, there is no way to interpret scripture anyother way consistent with orthodoxy.  ACatholic is free to hold (as some of the Fathers did) that it is better inpractice not to utilize capital punishment. But a Catholic is not free to deny that scripture teaches that the deathpenalty can at least in principle be just.

This has for2,000 years been the consistent teaching of the Church and of the popes whohave addressed the issue.  Popes such asSt. Innocent I, Innocent III, Leo X, St. Pius V, St. Pius X, and Pius XII notonly upheld the legitimacy of the death penalty, but in some cases (such asInnocent I, Innocent III, and Leo X) condemned as heterodox the view thatcapital punishment is always wrong.  St.John Paul II too explicitly taught that the death penalty can in some cases bejustifiable, and held only that it is the taking of innocent life that is inherentlywrong.  Here too, Bessette and I back upour claims with a detailed presentation and analysis of the relevant texts.

The mainreason Pope Francis’s change to the Catechism and his other many remarks on thedeath penalty have been so controversial is not because of his opposition toit, but because of the way he hasexpressed his opposition to it – namely, in a manner that seems to imply thatcapital punishment is intrinsicallyor of its very nature wrong.  The language of the change to the Catechism,which states flatly that the death penalty “is an attack on the inviolabilityand dignity of the person,” implies this, certainly on a natural reading.  The recent CDF document Dignitas Infinita condemns capital punishment ineven stronger terms, claiming that it “violates the inalienabledignity of every person, regardless ofthe circumstances” (emphasis added).  This clearly implies that it something aboutthe act of execution in itself, andnot just its circumstances, that makes it immoral. 

Thisposition flatly contradicts the consistent teaching of scripture andtradition.  If Pope Francis is right,every previous pope who has spoken on the matter is wrong – wrong about capitalpunishment, wrong about scriptural interpretation, wrong about the nature andimplications of human dignity.  On theother hand, if all those previous popes were right, then it is Pope Francis whois wrong.  Either way, we are in asituation where some pope or other haserred.  Catholic theology leaves open thepossibility that this can happen when a pope is not speaking ex cathedra.  And since, as the Church teaches, the mainjob of a pope is faithfully to hand on traditional teaching, the most obviousway this might happen is if he were to contradict traditional teaching.

Now, thevery idea that scripture could be mistaken about a matter of faith or morals,or that the Church could for two millennia have consistently beenmisinterpreting scripture and teaching a grave moral error, is flatlyincompatible with the Church’s claims about her own indefectibility.  But a single pope teaching error in some ofhis non-ex cathedra pronouncements itis not contrary to those claims –indeed, it has happened before, albeit only very rarely (as in the cases ofPope Honorius and Pope John XXII).  Thelogically unavoidable implication of this is that IF Pope Francis really doesmean to teach that the death penalty is intrinsicallywrong, then he is in error.  There issimply no other possible conclusion, consistent with the Catholic Church’sclaims about her own indefectibility.

The thirdset of considerations relevant to the debate about Catholicism and capitalpunishment derives from social science. Catholic opponents of the death penalty routinely make a series ofempirical claims, to the effect that modern prison systems suffice to protectsociety without ever having to resort to execution, that the death penalty hasno deterrence value, that it is applied in a racially discriminatory way, thatthere is a significant risk of innocent people being executed, and so on.  Usually these claims are just asserted, without supportingargument.  And usually, thecounterarguments are simply ignored rather than rebutted.

But in ourbook, Joseph Bessette and I address these arguments too, systematically and indepth.  We show that there is in factstrong evidence that the death penalty has deterrence value, that there arecases where life imprisonment is not sufficient to protect others from theoffender, that the death penalty is not in fact implemented in a racially discriminatoryway in the U.S., that there is not in fact a significant risk of innocentpeople being executed, and so on.  (As ithappens, the claim that there is such a risk of executing the innocent is onethat Bessette has rebutted also in a recent Public Discourse article.)

The keyquestions in the debate over Catholicism and capital punishment, then, arethese: Can the view that capital punishment is always and intrinsically immoralbe reconciled with a sound philosophical theory of punishment?  Can it be reconciled with scripture, theFathers and Doctors of the Church, and two thousand years of consistentmagisterial teaching?  Are there strongsocial scientific arguments for the judgment that capital punishment is nevernecessary today in order to protect society? In our book, Bessette and I present a detailed case that the correctanswer to each of these questions is No.

Hanson’s case

Now, Hanson,as I have said, cites me as representative of Catholic academics who defendcapital punishment.  So, what does hehave to say in response to the arguments Bessette and I develop in ourbook?  Nothing.  He tells his readers only that thosearguments have been “refuted by more capable theologians like David BentleyHart and Paul J. Griffiths.”  Hanson doesnot tell us what makes Hart and Griffiths more capable.  (One suspects that “agreeing with Jack Hanson”has something to do with it.)  He alsodoes not tell his readers that Ihave replied to Hart’s and Griffith’s objections, and demonstratedthat in fact those objections are intellectually dishonest and notable more fortheir vituperative excess than for scholarly rigor.

Hanson doeshave some arguments of his own.  First,he suggests that there is a significant risk of executing innocent people.  In fact there is not, as Bessette, who is asocial scientist with special expertise in these matters, shows in thePublic Discourse articlereferred to above (which addresses, among other cases, the specific one Hansonputs special emphasis on).

Second, Hansonsuggests that given “the notion of the ‘sanctity of life,’ which guides [theChurch’s] hard-line stance against abortion,” it is “hypocrisy” for a Catholicto oppose abortion but support capital punishment.  Though this sort of objection is common, theproblem with it is so obvious that I am continually amazed that death penaltyopponents need it pointed out to them. The problem is that there is (as everyone acknowledges in every othercontext) a crucial difference between the innocentand the guilty.  Is it hypocrisy or an assault on humanfreedom to condemn kidnapping while supporting the imprisonment ofkidnappers?  Is it hypocrisy or anassault on private property to condemn theft while supporting the imposition offines for certain offenses?  Of coursenot.  The reason is that the kidnappertakes away the freedom of an innocent person,whereas imprisonment is about taking away the freedom of a guilty person.  Similarly, thethief takes the property of an innocentperson, whereas an offender who is forced to pay a fine is a guilty person.  Punishments like imprisonment and fines uphold rather than undermine freedom andprivate property, because they protect the freedom and private property rightsof innocent people from those who would violate those rights.

For exactlythe same reason, there is no hypocrisy whatsoever in opposing abortion whilesupporting capital punishment, because abortion involves taking the lives ofthe innocent while capital punishmentinvolves taking the lives of the guilty.  And insofar as the death penalty protects societyfrom those who have murdered before, and deters others from committing murders,it upholds the sanctity of life.  This is a point the Church herself hasemphasized in the past.  The RomanCatechism promulgated by Pope St. Pius V teaches that for the state toimplement the death penalty is precisely for it to obey the commandment against murder:

Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civilauthorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal andjudicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent.The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an actof paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end ofthe Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now thepunishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avengerof crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life byrepressing outrage and violence.

Third, Hansonargues that “by sanctioning the taking of a life, we prevent any possibilitythat the condemned might someday reconcile with the world and with God.”  As Bessette and I discuss in our book, thisis an objection Aquinas considers in SummaContra Gentiles III.146, and he dismisses it as “frivolous,” for tworeasons.  For one thing, says Aquinas, wehave to balance the potential repentance of the offender against the very realharm the innocent may suffer if we do not protect them from evildoers by meansof capital punishment.  For another thing,the prospect of execution in fact often promptsevildoers to repent and get themselves right with God while there is stilltime.  If an offender is so hardened inevil that even knowledge of his imminent death will not lead him to repent, then,Aquinas argues, it is likely that he would never repent anyway.

In a fourthline of argument, commenting on Genesis 9:6 (which famously states that“whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed”), Hansonwrites:

For one thing, the Genesis passage stands in some tensionwith the Gospel’s teachings on sin and casting stones. For another, RomanCatholicism typically emphasizes allegorical, rational, and, above all,ecclesial interpretations of the Bible; direct appeals to the literal inerrancyof Biblical texts are rather a hallmark of Protestant theology in general andReformation polemics against the Roman Magisterium in particular.

There aremany problems with this, starting with the fact that Hanson does not explainexactly how Genesis is in “tension” with what the Gospel says about sin andcasting stones.  Is he saying that weshould never punish criminals, since none of us is without sin?  Presumably not.  But in that case, if we can punish them withfines or imprisonment, why not with execution, if that is necessary to protectsociety?  There is also the fact thatGenesis 9:6 is by no means the only scriptural passage that sanctions capitalpunishment.  Many other such texts can befound, not only in Old Testament books such as Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,Deuteronomy, and Psalms, but also in New Testament passages such as Romans13:4, which tells us that the governing authority “does not bear the sword invain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.”  Obviously, then, the New Testament writers,who were in the best position to know, did not regard capital punishment as atodds with the Gospel.

Theologian E.Christian Brugger, author of themost systematic Catholic critique of capital punishment, concedesthat Genesis 9:6 is a “problem” for his side, and that there was a “consensus” amongthe Fathers of the Church that scriptural passages like Romans 13:4 teach thatcivil authorities have the right to inflict capital punishment for sufficientlygrave crimes.  Now, the Council of Trentand the First Vatican Council teach that where the Fathers are united on somematter of scriptural interpretation, no Catholic is at liberty to disagree withthem.  Even if there were no otherproblems with attempts to reinterpret the relevant scriptural passages (and asBessette and I show in our book, there are in fact many such problems), the consensusof the Fathers would suffice to show that these reinterpretations cannot beaccepted.

Nor isHanson correct to dismiss scriptural inerrancy as somehow a Protestant ratherthan Catholic notion.  On the contrary, popessuch as Leo XIII and Pius XII emphasized that it is central to Catholicorthodoxy to hold that scripture is divinely inspired and thus free oferror.  The First Vatican Council teachesthat the scriptures “contain revelation without error…being written under theinspiration of the Holy Spirit,” and pronounces an anathema on anyone who woulddeny that they are divinely inspired. The Second Vatican Council teaches that since they are divinelyinspired, “the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly,faithfully and without error,” and the Catechismof the Catholic Church incorporates this passage into its own teaching onscriptural authority (107).

Hanson’sposition on scripture is also self-defeating. In order to get around scriptural teaching on capital punishment, hesuggests that such teaching is not free of error, or is incompatible with otherscriptural teaching, or has been misinterpreted.  Yet he also appeals to scripture when it suitshim, as when he refers to Christ’s remark about not casting the firststone.  But if we are free to rejectscriptural teaching and its traditional interpretation in the one case, thenwhy not also in the other?  How canHanson’s appeal to scripture carry any more weight than the appeals made bymore conservative Catholics?  Here we seea problem that, asPeter Geach pointed out, inevitably undermines modernisttheologies.  They claim to preserve thecore of divinely revealed teaching while jettisoning only what is inessential,but by means of arguments which if followed out consistently would make the whole of the purported revelationsuspect.

In whatseems intended as a separate, fifth line of argument, Hanson appeals to thestandard progressive Catholic narrative about how a purportedly arid andabstract Neo-Scholastic theology gave way, after Vatican II and under theinfluence of ressourcement thinkerslike Congar and de Lubac, to a more enlightened and humane moderntheology.  Neo-Scholasticism, hesuggests, is in some vague way linked to capitalism, Vichy France,fundamentalism, and other things sure to generate a Pavlovian response amongthe bien-pensant.  Exactly what all this has to do with whethercapital punishment is intrinsically wrong or still needed today is never madeclear.  The point, though, is obviouslyto insinuate that Catholic defenders of capital punishment derive theirarguments from suspect sources and are motivated by a suspect politicalagenda. 

Rhetorically, this will no doubt be effectivewith some readers, at least those who already agree with Hanson.  Logically,of course, it is completely worthless, being a crude deployment of fallaciessuch as Appeal to Motive and the Genetic Fallacy.  If someone is going to show that thearguments from natural law, scripture and tradition, and social science that Isummarized above are wrong, then he needs to demonstrate either that they reston false premises, or that the conclusions don’t follow from the premises.  The sourcesof and motivations behind thearguments are completely irrelevant, even if they were as Hanson claims theyare (which they are not, since there are, after all, lots of people who supportcapital punishment but have no sympathy with or even knowledge ofNeo-Scholasticism).

A sixth andfinal objection raised by Hanson is also of a fallaciously ad hominem nature.  Those whohave criticized Pope Francis’s statements on capital punishment, Hanson alleges,show “evident bad faith” and are really guided by “political preferences”rather than theological concerns.  Thefirst thing to say about this is that once again, Hanson is simply divertingattention from what matters, which is whether the arguments given by Catholicdefenders of capital punishment are cogent. The motives they may have forgiving these arguments are irrelevant, even if they were the motives Hansonattributes to them (which they are not).

The secondthing to say is that here again, Hanson’s position is self-defeating.  For the weapon he deploys againstconservatives can be turned against him. That is to say, conservatives could with no less justice (indeed, withgreater justice, I would argue) suggest that it is politics rather thantheology that fundamentally motivates the thinking of progressive Catholicslike Hanson.  In particular, they allowtheir progressive political preferences to trump what scripture, the Fathersand Doctors of the Church, and two thousand years of consistent magisterialteaching say about the topic of capital punishment.  They praise Pope Francis’s change to theCatechism, not out of any sincere respect for papal authority, but preciselybecause they think it finally undoes the teaching of earlier popes whom theydisliked and had no qualms about criticizing.

To be sure,I am not presenting this as an argumentagainst the progressive Catholic position on capital punishment.  That position is easily refutable on othergrounds, namely the arguments I summarized above.  And an Appeal to Motive would be a fallacywhoever deploys it, conservative or progressive.  The point is rather that if Hanson wants to raise this sort of objection, then it could withequal justice be flung back at him.  Andif he would object to having it flung at him, then to be consistent he oughtnot to fling it at conservatives.

The finalthing to say is that the pope’s critics have in fact been very clear andconsistent about their motives, and they have nothing to do with politics.  They have to do instead with the worry thatin appearing directly to contradict the teaching of scripture, tradition, andall of his predecessors, Pope Francis is doing grave harm to the credibility ofthe Church’s magisterial authority.  Thecritics are concerned that the pope is giving aid and comfort to Protestant,atheist, and other critics of the Church, who allege that her claim to preserveintact the deposit of faith has been falsified. They are concerned that he gives similar aid and comfort to hereticswithin the Church who would like to use the change in teaching on the deathpenalty as a stalking horse for other and even more radical doctrinal changes.

Hanson isfree to argue that these concerns are overblown, and to rebut the arguments ofthe pope’s critics.  But he has no rightto pretend that those concerns and arguments do not exist.  Catholic critics of capital punishment saythat they are moved by respect for human dignity.  But it does not respect the dignity of thoseone disagrees with to ignore what they actually say, or unjustly anduncharitably to attribute bad motives to them.

Augustine, liberalism, and political polarization

In mylatest article at Postliberal Order,I discuss the light that Augustine’s account of peace as “the tranquility oforder” sheds on the increasing political polarization that characterizesliberal democracies today.

Immortal Souls now available

After some frustratingdelays in distribution, my book ImmortalSouls: A Treatise on Human Nature is now in stock and available from Amazon and Barnesand Noble.  Here are the back covercopy, endorsements, and table of contents:

Immortal Souls provides as ambitious and complete adefense of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical anthropology as is currently inprint.  Among the many topics covered arethe reality and unity of the self, the immateriality of the intellect, thefreedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, the critique of artificialintelligence, and the refutation of both Cartesian and materialist conceptionsof human nature.  Along the way, the mainrival positions in contemporary philosophy and science are thoroughly engagedwith and rebutted.

“EdwardFeser's book is a Summa of the nature of the human person: it is, therefore,both a rather long – but brilliant – monograph, and a valuable work forconsultation.  Each of the humanfaculties discussed is treated comprehensively, with a broad range of theoriesconsidered for and against, and, although Feser's conclusions are firmlyThomistic, one can derive great benefit from his discussions even if one is nota convinced hylomorphist.  Everyphilosopher of mind would benefit from having this book within easy reach.” HowardRobinson, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Central European University

“Feserdefends the Aristotelian and Thomistic system, effectively bringing it intodialogue with recent debates and drawing on some of the best of both analytic(Kripke, Searle, BonJour, Fodor) and phenomenological (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty,Dreyfus) philosophy.  He deftly rebutsobjections to Thomism, both ancient and modern.  Anyone working today on personal identity, theunity of the self, the semantics of cognition, free will, or qualia will needto engage with the analysis and arguments presented here.” Robert C. Koons,Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin

CONTENTS

Preface                                                               

Part I: Whatis Mind?                                        

   1. The Short Answer                                 

   2. The Self                                                        

   3. The Intellect                                             

    4. The Will                                                       

Part II:What is Body?                                                           

   5. Matter                                                        

    6. Animality                                                   

Part III:What is a Human Being?                           

   7. Against Cartesianism                                

   8. Against Materialism                                   

    9. Neither Computers nor Brains                

Part IV:What is the Soul?                                          

   10. Immortality                                              

    11. The Form of the Body                            

Index              

Abortion and subsidiarity

Ever sincethe Dobbs decision permitted statesto set their own abortion policies, Donald Trump has taken the position thatthe issue should stay at the state level. Dobbs itself doesn’t requirethis, and leaves open the possibility of a federal ban.  But Trump nevertheless declines to pursuesuch a ban, and indeed is opposed to such a ban.  Now, a federal ban is in any event currentlypolitically unrealistic, and will likely remain so for the foreseeablefuture.  But some take the view that,even if abortion amounts to murder, it would be wrong to impose a federal baneven if it were politically possibleto do so.  They make their case onfederalist grounds, arguing that a national abortion ban would usurp power thatrightly belongs to the states.  Someargue on natural law grounds, specifically, suggesting that the principle ofsubsidiarity would rule out a federal ban. If this were true, then it would follow that even a pro-life Catholicshould oppose a federal abortion ban. What should we think of this argument?

I think itis a terrible argument, one that rests on a distortion of the principle ofsubsidiarity.  We can see this both fromwhat the principle of subsidiarity actually says, and from how the Church hastreated the issue of abortion.  A classicformulation of the principle is given by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical QuadragesimoAnno.  He famously saysthere that “it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil anddisturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association whatlesser and subordinate organizations can do.”  If this sentence were all there is to theprinciple of subsidiarity, it is easy to see why someone might think itlicenses leaving abortion to the states. But that is not all there isto the principle.  Let us look at thelarger context of this remark from Pius XI. Here is the relevant passage:

When we speak of the reform of institutions, the State comeschiefly to mind, not as if universal well-being were to be expected from itsactivity, but because things have come to such a pass through the evil of whatwe have termed “individualism” that, following upon the overthrow and nearextinction of that rich social life which was once highly developed throughassociations of various kinds, there remain virtually only individuals and theState.  This is to the great harm of theState itself; for, with a structure of social governance lost, and with thetaking over of all the burdens which the wrecked associations once bore, theState has been overwhelmed and crushed by almost infinite tasks and duties.

As history abundantly proves, it is true that on account ofchanged conditions many things which were done by small associations in formertimes cannot be done now save by large associations.  Still, that most weighty principle, whichcannot be set aside or changed, remains fixed and unshaken in socialphilosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they canaccomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community,so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance ofright order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser andsubordinate organizations can do.  Forevery social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the membersof the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.

The supreme authority of the State ought, therefore, to letsubordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance, whichwould otherwise dissipate its efforts greatly.  Thereby the State will more freely,powerfully, and effectively do all those things that belong to it alone becauseit alone can do them: directing, watching, urging, restraining, as occasionrequires and necessity demands.

To forestallconfusion, note that “State” as Pius is using it refers to any more centralgovernment, and thus, in the American context, would apply first and foremostto the federal government rather merely to “state” governments, as that term iscommonly used in the U.S.

Now, whatPius is saying here is indeed, in part, that if some social problem can beadequately addressed by more local institutions (which would include families,municipal governments, and provincial governments), then central governments shouldleave things to them and not intervene. But by no means does Pius leave it at that.  He also says that there are some things thatcentral governments “alone” can do. Naturally, this includes things that are the proper function of anycentral government under normal conditions (such as national defense). 

But it alsoincludes things that more local institutions might in theory be able to handle, but in practice cannot, because of “changed conditions” or therequirements of some particular “occasion.” In particular, says Pius, because of the “individualism” of moderntimes, those intermediate institutions that traditionally came betweenindividuals and central governments have become so weakened that they are nowunable to perform some of the functions they were once able to.  And this has left these functions in thehands of central governments, as the only agencies left which can perform them.  In these ways, the principle of subsidiaritynotwithstanding, there remain many functions which “necessity demands” thatcentral governments perform, either always and in principle or at least undermodern contingent circumstances.

Accordingly,as Fr. Austin Fagothey’s well-known manual of ethics Right and Reason notes, after affirming the principle ofsubsidiarity:

On the other hand, the state should provide a favorableenvironment in which individuals, families, and voluntary associations canfulfill their functions properly.  It hasthe right and duty to intervene when they fail to function as they ought orcannot harmonize their activities for the common good. (p. 394)

Now, thiscan include measures necessary to uphold the institution of the familyitself.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in a passage that reaffirms that“following the principle of subsidiarity, larger communities should take carenot to usurp the family's prerogatives or interfere in its life,” also teaches:

The family must be helped and defended by appropriate socialmeasures.  Where families cannot fulfilltheir responsibilities, other social bodies have the duty of helping them and of supporting theinstitution of the family…

The importance of the family for the life and well-being ofsociety entails a particular responsibility for society to support andstrengthen marriage and the family.  Civilauthority should consider it a grave duty “to acknowledge the true nature ofmarriage and the family, to protect and foster them, to safeguard publicmorality, and promote domestic prosperity.” (2209-2210)

Naturally,there is no greater affront to the institution of the family than abortion,which involves the murder of the very human beings for whose sake the familyexists in the first place.  Andnaturally, the Catechism explicitly teachesthat the right to life of the unborn child must be enshrined in law:

The inalienable right to life of every innocent humanindividual is a constitutive element of acivil society and its legislation:

“The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized andrespected by civil society and the political authority… Among such fundamental rights oneshould mention in this regard every human being's right to life and physicalintegrity from the moment of conception until death.”

“The moment a positive law deprives a category of humanbeings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, thestate is denying the equality of all before the law.  When the state does not place its power at theservice of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the morevulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined... As aconsequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unbornchild from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penalsanctions for every deliberate violation of the child's rights.”

Since it must be treated from conception as a person, theembryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far aspossible, like any other human being. (2273-2274)

Note thatwhat the Catechism is saying is thatthe right to life of innocent human beings, including the unborn, must be affirmed by the state and itspositive law as such.  In no way does it indicate that it isspeaking only of more local governments but not of central governments.  And even if one wanted to argue that suchlaws needn’t be enacted by federal governments if the laws at more local levels sufficed, that would by no meansbe the end of the story.  For themanifest implications of the teaching of Pius XI and of the Catechism is that more centralgovernments not only may, but must take action to prevent abortion ifin practice there is no other way to secure the rights of the unborn.

Hence,suppose a number of states in the U.S. outlawed abortion, but others didnot.  And suppose that there was nopolitically realistic prospect of outlawing it at the state level in thosestates that failed to do so.  But supposealso that it was neverthelesspolitically feasible to impose a federal ban on abortion.  Would respect for the principle ofsubsidiarity require us to refrain from imposing such a ban?  Not at all; on the contrary, when all theconsiderations just spelled out are taken account of, it is clear that we wouldbe obligated to impose a federal banif we could.  For in this scenario, therewould be no other way to protect the right to life that is, as the Catechism says, “a constitutive elementof a civil society and its legislation.” Given what Pius XI calls “the evil of… ‘individualism’” that hasinfected modern Western society and informs “pro-choice” rhetoric, it may be thatcentral governments alone can effectively suppress the evil of abortion.

Here isanother consideration.  In the Church’scanon law, there are some sins so grave that the penalties associated with themcannot be lifted by one’s confessor.  Fora long time, that included the procurement of abortion, the penalty for whichcould, until recently, be lifted only by one’s bishop.  Indeed, at one time only the pope had theauthority to do so.  In his book The Soul of the Embryo, David AlbertJones writes:

In 1588, in a decree called Effraennatam, Pope Sixtus V invoked the power of excommunication inan attempt to restrain the growing practice of abortion during the Renaissance. As his model he took the Decretals V.I2.5 and imposed thesanction not only for abortion but also for administering contraceptive drugs.  He also reserved the ability to lift theexcommunication to the pope alone.  Thecondemnation of abortion as homicide was not in any way novel.  However, several aspects of theexcommunication were novel: it was promulgated to the whole Church (not just inone diocese or region); it was reserved to the pope to be able to lift theexcommunication (not to a local bishop); and it included contraception as wellas abortion.  This meant that anyabortion and any use of contraception anywhere in the Church had to bereconciled personally by the pope. (p. 71)

To be sure,as Jones goes on to recount, this proved unworkable, so that a later popelimited the excommunication to abortion alone and granted local bishops theauthority to lift it.  The point, though,is that the Church has not regarded abortion as something which of its natureought to be dealt with only at the local level. On the contrary, it takes it to be so grave an offense that at one timethe highest authority in the Church, the pope himself, alone could lift thepenalty associated with it.  Whetherlocal or central authorities ought to deal with abortion is a prudential matter.  The principle of subsidiarity does not byitself entail that only local authorities ought to deal with it.  And what is true of the Church is, mutatis mutandis, true also of thestate.

If theappeal to subsidiarity is intended to provide Trump with theological cover,then, it fails.  He and his supportersmay think his position is good politics, but no reasonable case can be made forit on grounds of natural law or Catholic moral theology.

Vinco on Feser in Philosophische Rundschau

German-speakingreaders might be interested in Roberto Vinco’s article “Neo-ScholasticMetaphysics in the 21st Century: An Examination of the Perspective of EdwardFeser,” in the latest issue of the journal PhilosophischeRundschau .

The latest on Immortal Souls

PhilosophersWilliam Vallicella and Christopher Kaczor weigh in on my new book ImmortalSouls: A Treatise on Human Nature . At his blog, Bill writes:“Like all of Feser's books, ImmortalSouls is a model of expository clarity and analytic precision informed byan extensive knowledge of the contemporary literature.”  At Wordon Fire, Chris writes:

Feser offers a tour deforce… The ambitions of Feser’s book are great.  He aims to explicate and defend a view of ahuman person as a unity of a material body and immaterial soul.  He does so with clarity of prose, a widereading of the relevant literature, and a systematic approach which groundsphilosophical anthropology in metaphysics.

Some earlierendorsements:

“EdwardFeser's book is a Summa of the nature of the human person: it is, therefore,both a rather long – but brilliant – monograph, and a valuable work forconsultation. Each of the human faculties discussed is treated comprehensively,with a broad range of theories considered for and against, and, although Feser'sconclusions are firmly Thomistic, one can derive great benefit from hisdiscussions even if one is not a convinced hylomorphist.  Every philosopher of mind would benefit fromhaving this book within easy reach.” Howard Robinson, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Central EuropeanUniversity

“Feserdefends the Aristotelian and Thomistic system, effectively bringing it intodialogue with recent debates and drawing on some of the best of both analytic(Kripke, Searle, BonJour, Fodor) and phenomenological (Heidegger,Merleau-Ponty, Dreyfus) philosophy. He deftly rebuts objections to Thomism,both ancient and modern. Anyone working today on personal identity, the unityof the self, the semantics of cognition, free will, or qualia will need toengage with the analysis and arguments presented here.”  Robert C. Koons, Professor of Philosophy,University of Texas at Austin

You canorder from Amazon,Barnesand Noble, or directlyfrom the publisher.

The new Aquinas 101

TheThomistic Institute has launched a new Aquinas 101 learning platform for itswell-known and excellent series of videos. Check it out here.  Press release and further information can befound here.

The popesplainer’s safety dance

Pope Francisrecently added yet another item to the long list of doctrinally problematicstatements he has issued through the course of his pontificate.  Commenting on the plurality of religionsduring a speech at the Catholic Junior College in Singapore, hesaid:

If you start arguing, “My religion is more important thanyours,” or “Mine is the true one, yours is not true,” where does this lead?  Somebody answer.  [A young person answers, “Destruction”.]  That is correct.  All religions are paths to God.  I will use an analogy, they are like differentlanguages that express the divine.  ButGod is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children.  “But my God is more important than yours!”  Is this true?  There is only one God, and religions are likelanguages, paths to reach God.  SomeSikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian.

As thearticle from which I quote this passage notes, while the Vatican’s initialEnglish translation of the pope’s words attempted to sanitize them, it waslater corrected to make it clear that this is indeed what the pope said.  And what he said flatly contradictstraditional Catholic teaching.  Franciscriticizes those who take one religion to be the true or most important one,and implies that Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, etc. are as equal asdifferent languages are. 

Doublingdown on this, several days later the pope said, in avideo message to a religiously diverse audience:

Contemplate the difference of your traditions like arichness, a richness God wants to be.  Unityis not uniformity, and the diversity of your cultural and religious identitiesis a gift of God.  Unity in diversity.  Let mutual esteem grow among you, followingthe witness of your forefathers.

Here Francisindicates that the fact that there are different religions is a “gift” that God“wants.”

By contrast,stating the Catholic position on Judaism, Islam, and other religions in EcclesiamSuam, Pope St. Paul VI wrote:

Obviously we cannot agree with these various forms ofreligion, nor can we adopt an indifferent or uncritical attitude toward them onthe assumption that they are all to be regarded as on an equal footing, andthat there is no need for those who profess them to enquire whether or not Godhas Himself revealed definitively and infallibly how He wishes to be known,loved, and served.  Indeed, honestycompels us to declare openly our conviction that the Christian religion is theone and only true religion, and it is our hope that it will be acknowledged assuch by all who look for God and worship Him.

Similarly,in DominusIesus, issued during the pontificate of Pope St. John Paul II,we read:

It is clear that it would be contrary to the faith toconsider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by theother religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantiallyequivalent to her…  In treating thequestion of the true religion, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Counciltaught: “We believe that this one true religion continues to exist in theCatholic and Apostolic Church.”

Other textscould be cited, but these two suffice to make the point (and also to rebut anyprogressive defender of Pope Francis who might claim that Vatican II somehowsupports him). 

Many furtherexamples of doctrinally dubious statements issued by Pope Francis or under hisauthority could be given.  There is theambiguity of Amoris Laetitia, which mightbe interpreted to allow, in some cases, absolution and Holy Communion for thosein invalid and adulterous marriages who are sexually active and lack a firmpurpose of amendment.  There is Fiducia Supplicans, which permits theblessing of same-sex and adulterous couples (and not just the individuals whomake up the couples).  There is Dignitas Infinita, which states that “thedeath penalty… violates the inalienable dignity of every person, regardless ofthe circumstances,” contradicting scripture, tradition, and every previous popewho has addressed the matter.  And soon.  (I have discussed the problems withthese three documents here,here,and here,respectively.)

Now, it ispossible for popes to issue badly formulated or even erroneous doctrinalstatements whennot speaking ex cathedra.  It is extremely rare, but it canhappen and has happened with a handful of popes, such as Honoriusand John XXII.  It would at this point inhis pontificate be intellectually dishonest, and indeed frankly absurd, foranyone to continue to deny that Pope Francis is in this company.  In fact, the main difference between Francisand these other popes is that his doctrinally dubious statements are morenumerous and more obviously problematic than theirs.

Yet evenafter a decade of this sort of behavior, there are still some orthodoxCatholics who insist, every time Pope Francis makes one of these dubious remarks,that he has been misunderstood, and that the fault lies not with him but withthe media who report on his words or with critics who interpret himuncharitably.  These “popesplainers” (astheir critics have labeled them) sometimes appeal to what has been called the “infalliblesafety thesis.”  On this view,while popes can err when not speaking excathedra, they cannot make dangerouserrors, and in particular cannot say anything that might lead the faithful intoerror on some matter of faith or morals.

Hence,whenever Pope Francis says something that everyone else takes to be obviouslyhard to reconcile with traditional teaching, these popesplainers judge it a priori to be at least “safe,” so thatanyone who thinks otherwise simply mustbe misunderstanding it.  Into thebargain, they often accuse the critics of the error of private judgment, or of beingschismatic, or of hating the pope or otherwise having bad motives.  Fans of 80s pop music might call this nowroutine set of moves the popesplainer’s “safety dance.”

One problemwith the “safety” thesis is that it is not what the Church herself teaches, astheologian John Joy has shown. Another problem is that it is thelongstanding position of theologians recognized by the Church asorthodox that popes can indeed err onmatters of faith and morals when not speaking ex cathedra.  A third problemis that the Church herself has acknowledged that such errors are not onlypossible, but have in fact occurred.  Forthe notorious Pope Honorius was condemned by his successors and by threepapally-approved councils for giving aid and comfort to heresy, with thecouncils even flatly labeling Honorius himself a heretic.  (I discuss the case of Honorius in detail hereand here.)  Some have defended Honorius against thesecharges, but what is relevant is that popesand papally-approved councils judged Honorius to be guilty of them.  That means that either Honorius was wrong or theselater popes were wrong.  And in eithercase we would have a very serious theological error.  That suffices to show that non-ex cathedra papal teaching is not always “safe.”

What I wantto call attention to here, though, is another problem with the “safety” thesiswhich, as far as I know, no one else has pointed out.  And that is that on close inspection thethesis turns out to be not so much false as entirely vacuous or empty ofinteresting content.  To see what I havein mind, consider a specific case like Pope Francis’s remarks in Singaporeabout the diversity of religions.  Takenat face value, his words suggest that no religion, including Christianity, canbe said to be the one true religion.  Orconsider Dignitas Infinita’s teachingon the death penalty.  Taken at facevalue, the document is saying that the death penalty is always andintrinsically wrong.  Now, both of theseteachings would contradict previous irreformable doctrine.  How can this be reconciled with the Church’sclaim that popes teach infallibly?  Hereare the answers that the pope’s critics and the popesplainers, respectively,would give:

The pope’s critics’answer: Popes can make serious doctrinal errors when not speaking ex cathedra, and that is what hashappened in these cases.  Fortunately, wehave pre-existing teaching to consult in order to determine what the correctdoctrine is.

Thepopesplainers’ answer: Popes cannotmake serious doctrinal errors even when not speaking ex cathedra, so that this must not really be what has happened in these cases.  Those who say otherwise on the basispre-existing teaching put their own authority above the pope’s.

On thesurface, the popesplainers’ answer seems to differ radically from the pope’scritics’ answer.  But when we peer belowthe surface, we find that that is not really the case.  For one thing, the popesplainers typicallyagree with the critics about what the orthodox position would be.  For example, they would typically agree thatit would be heterodox to hold that the Catholic faith is not the one true religion,or to say that the death penalty is immoral intrinsically or of its verynature.  (To be sure, there may also besome among the “popesplainers” who would be happy to depart from orthodoxy onthese matters.  But my argument here isdirected at the orthodox popesplainers.)

How, then,do the popesplainers deal with problematic statements like the pope’s remarksabout the diversity of religions, or DignitasInfinita’s teaching on the death penalty? The answer is that they claim that such statements do not really say what they seem to besaying.  To know what Pope Francis reallymeans, they claim, we need to look at other things he has said, or at theChurch’s longstanding teaching, and read the pope’s more controversial claimsin light of these other sources.

But how dothe popesplainers know this?  After all, Pope Francis himself rarelyclarifies his problematic statements, even when asked to do so.  For example, he still has never responded tothe dubia issued by four cardinals requesting that he reaffirm traditionalirreformable teaching that AmorisLaetitia seems to conflict with.  Hehas for a decade repeatedly made ever more extreme statements against the deathpenalty, without once reaffirming the traditional teaching that capitalpunishment can at least under certain circumstances be licit.  In the case of the pope’s recent commentsabout the diversity of religions, not only did the Vatican remove the sanitizedversion of the pope’s comments and let the more problematic remarks stand, butthe pope doubled down on those problematic remarks just a few days later.

Moreover,the popesplainers do sometimes admit that Pope Francis’s statements can fostermisunderstandings if read in isolation. Consider, for example, Michael Lofton, whohas defended a version of the “safety” thesis.  To his credit, when commentingon Pope Francis’s remarks in Singapore, Lofton acknowledges that thepope sometimes speaks with “ambiguity” and apparent “inconsistency,” “could bemore clear,” “needs to kind of explain himself better,” and sometimes“unnecessarily confuses people.”  Commentingon the pope’s follow-up remarks, Lofton is even more frank,admitting that the pope is sometimes not an “effective communicator,” that hisrecent statement “causes problems, causes confusion,” and that “most people aregoing to come away with an error here” even if there is “some kind of orthodoxsense” in which the pope’s remarks can be interpreted.

Again,though, Pope Francis himselftypically does not explain, qualify, or walk back his controversial remarks in thisway.  For example, in the case of hisrecent comments on the diversity of religions, he hasn’t said that he wasspeaking imprecisely and that people need to go look at more traditional thingshe has said in the past, or at the Church’s longstanding teaching, in order tounderstand what he meant.  It is only defenders of Pope Francis, and not thepope himself, who have done this.  In hismany extreme remarks against the death penalty, the pope has never said that heis speaking with rhetorical flourish, and that his teaching must be interpretedin a way that would reconcile it with the traditional doctrine that the deathpenalty is not intrinsically immoral.  Itis only defenders of Pope Francis,and not the pope himself, who have done that. And so on.

The point isthis.  When we consider that popesplainers themselves acknowledgethat Pope Francis’s controversial remarks need explanation, and that the popehimself is typically not the one whoprovides such explanations but rather the popesplainerswho do so – relying on their own theologicalknowledge, and on their own judgmentsabout what he must have meant – the distance between them and the pope’s criticsturns out to be not as great as it seemed at first to be.  The difference in their positions boils downto this:

The pope’scritics: The pope’s non-ex cathedrastatements can be erroneous when taken at face value, but knowledgeableCatholics can consult previous teaching to determine what the correct doctrineactually is.

Thepopesplainers: The pope’s non-ex cathedrastatements can be misleading when taken at face value, but knowledgeableCatholics can consult previous teaching to determine what he really must havemeant or should have said.

The lineseparating these positions is pretty thin.  The second no less than the first admits thatnon-ex cathedra papal statements canbe problematic, and the second no less than the first admits that Catholics mayapply their knowledge of past teaching to determine what a pope shouldsay.  The critics say “The pope said X,so he is in error” and the popesplainers say “The pope couldn’t make such anerror, so he must not really have meant X.” But they agree that X would be wrong, they agree that the Church’s past teaching suffices to show that X iswrong, and they agree that Catholics’ knowledge of this past teaching justifies them in taking the stand they do toward acurrent pope’s teaching (whether criticizing it as the critics do, or giving ita sanitized interpretation as the popesplainers do).

And now wecan see how the “safety” thesis turns out to be vacuous.  For it amounts to saying that papal teachingis always “safe” insofar as somebody withthe requisite theological knowledge will always be able to come up with some sanitized interpretation of it thatreconciles it with past teaching.  And ifyou are going to say that, then youmight as well say that it is “safe” in the sense that even when it iserroneous, somebody with therequisite theological knowledge will always be able to explain what the correctdoctrine actually is.  The onlydifference is that where the latter approach is frank, the formerobfuscates. 

In short,when all the necessary qualifications are made to it, the popesplainers’“safety dance” becomes pointless, and they might as well just acknowledge that,though historically it happens only very rarely, it is possible for popes tomake serious doctrinal errors when not speaking ex cathedra.

Relatedposts:

Whendo popes speak ex cathedra?

Whendo popes teach infallibly?

Popes,heresy, and papal heresy

Whatcounts as magisterial teaching?

TheChurch permits criticism of popes under certain circumstances

Aquinason St. Paul’s correction of St. Peter

Papalfallibility

Theerror and condemnation of Pope Honorius

CanPope Honorius be defended?

Trump: A buyer’s guide

In the weekssince Iwrote on the dilemma that Donald Trump has put social conservativesin, the problem has only become far more pronounced.  Trump hasstated that a second Trump administration “will be great for womenand their reproductive rights.”  Hisrunning mate J. D. Vance has saidthat if a national abortion ban were passed by Congress, Trump would vetoit.  Though claiming to support pro-lifemeasures at the state level, Trump says thatin Florida, abortion should be legal even past the first six weeks of pregnancy.  And he has saidthat in a second Trump administration, the government would either pay for, orrequire insurance companies to pay for, all costs associated with IVF treatment– even though IVF treatments killmore embryos every year than abortion does, so that an IVF mandatewould be even worse than Obama’s notorious contraception mandate.  Trump hasalso come out in support of legalizing marijuana for recreationaluse.

Meanwhile, newTrump advisor Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. informs usthat Trump has made it clear to him that he won’t be influenced by “right-wingassholes” anymore and will be “listening to more than just that kind of narrowright-wing band that people are terrified of” so that “people are going to seea very different President Trump than they did during the first term.”  He says that he and his fellow former Democrat(and still liberal) Tulsi Gabbard are “going to be on [Trump’s] transitioncommittee picking the people who are going to govern.”  Kennedy, it will be recalled, recently opinedthat abortion should be legal even at “full-term,” and allowedfor some vague restrictions only after the outcry his initialremarks generated.

Thesedevelopments massively reinforce the already ample evidence adduced in myprevious article that Trump is transforming the GOP into a second pro-choiceand socially liberal party.  To be sure,it remains true that KamalaHarris, her running mate TimWalz, and theDemocrats in general are even worse on these issues.  Hence it goes without saying that no socialconservative can justify voting for her. Nor have I changed my mind about the conclusion I drew in the previous article– that the least bad outcome would be Trump defeating Harris, albeit narrowlyenough that it is palpable to the GOP that it cannot in the future take socialconservatives for granted.

But “leastbad” does not entail “not bad.”  And itis imperative for social conservatives to face the hard truth that Trump is,from now on, bound to be very bad for the pro-life cause and for socialconservatism more generally, even if not quite as bad as Harris.  Certainly it would be delusional to supposethat the role he played in overturning Roev. Wade, and the conservative and Christian rhetoric he occasionallydeploys, give any good reason to judge otherwise.  Trump is not someone with sociallyconservative inclinations who is temporarily moving left for short-termpolitical gain.  Rather, he has alwaysbeen someone of socially liberal inclinations who temporarily moved right forshort-term political gain, but has now judged that this is no longer a viableposition and is reverting to type.  Ifthe evidence of his words and actions over the last couple of years left anydoubt about this, his record prior to seeking the GOP nomination eight yearsago should remove that doubt.  Manyconservatives and Christians have convinced themselves that Trump is, howeverimperfect, an instrument by which our decline might be reversed, or at leastpaused.  In reality, his rise is asymptom of our decline and has accelerated it, even if in a different mannerthan that by which the Left has accelerated it.

Trumpfamously prides himself on his skill at “the art of the deal.”  Before socially conservative voters close thedeal with him one last time, they should be clear-eyed about what they areactually getting, as opposed to what they would like to get or what Trump wouldlike them to think they are getting. What follows is a buyer’s guide.

Trump’s state of nature

Trump firstran for president in 2000, competing with Pat Buchanan for the nomination ofthe Reform Party.  He made a point ofcontrasting himself with the famously conservative Buchanan on socialissues.  In his campaign book TheAmerica We Deserve, Trump condemned Buchanan for “intolerance”toward homosexuals.  While he wrote thathe opposed partial-birth abortion, he otherwise characterized himself as“pro-choice” and said “I support a woman’s right to choose.”  These remarks followed upon commentsmade during an interview the previous year, to the effect that wewas “very pro-choice” and that gays serving in the military (then a majorissue) “would not disturb me.”  Heemphasized, in the same interview, that his views were the sort to be expectedof someone who has “lived in New York City and Manhattan all [his] life.”  In short, he was a typical social liberal,not the most extreme sort but certainly not conservative.  It was only when he considered seeking theRepublican nomination in 2012 that hefirst claimed that he had become pro-life. 

Now, whenyou want to know what a politician really thinks, it is especially useful toconsider what he has said when notseeking office, and when he is freely offering his considered opinion ratherthan being asked to formulate, on the spot, a position on some controversialissue of the moment.  Especially usefulin this connection are Trump’s 1990 interviewin Playboy, and his 2007book ThinkBig and Kick Ass in Business and Life, which, though a crassself-help volume, also contains autobiographical elements and an expression ofTrump’s personal life philosophy.  Sourceslike these give a good idea of how he sees the world, and the picture isremarkably consistent over time.

Interestingly,in the 1990 interview, Trump said he had no opinion on abortion.  But he did have much to say about matterssuch as trade, foreign policy, crime, and “the working man,” and his opinionsthen were very much like the opinions he has now.  This tends to confirm what any objectiveobserver would have guessed from the history of Trump’s political career, whichis that the latter issues (rather than “social issues” such as abortion) arethe ones he really cares about.

But what is mostimportant about the interview and the book is what they reveal about Trump’sfundamental values, what he takes life to be about.  In the interview, he says that it is notreally money or material things that drive him. This leads to the following exchange:

Interviewer: Then what does all this – the yacht, the bronzetower, the casinos – really mean to you?

Trump: Props for the show.

Interviewer: And what is the show?

Trump: The show is “Trump” and it is sold-out performances everywhere. I've had fun doing it and will continueto have fun, and I think most people enjoy it.

Later on inthe interview the theme is revisited:

Interviewer: How large a role does pure ego play in your dealmaking and enjoyment of publicity?

Trump: Every successful person has a very large ego.

Interviewer: Every successful person?  Mother Teresa?  Jesus Christ?

Trump: Far greater egos than you will ever understand.

Interviewer: And the Pope?

Trump: Absolutely.  Nothing wrong with ego.  People need ego, whole nations need ego. Ithink our country needs more ego,because it is being ripped off so badly by our so-called allies.

Later still,the interview addresses the question of the ultimate point of this ego satisfaction:

Interviewer: In the deep of the night, after the reportersall leave your conferences, are you ever satisfied with what you'veaccomplished?

Trump: I'm too superstitious to be satisfied.  I don't dwell on the past.  People who do that go right down the tubes.  I'm never self-satisfied.  Life is what you do while you're waiting todie.  You know, it is all a rather sadsituation.

Interviewer: Life?  Ordeath?

Trump: Both.  We'rehere and we live our sixty, seventy or eighty years and we're gone.  You win, you win, and in the end, it doesn'tmean a hell of a lot.  But it issomething to do – to keep you interested.

Now, it isimportant to point out – both in the interests of fairness to Trump, and toallow his critics to see that he is a more complex man than many of them givehim credit for – that in the interview and the book he also emphasizes theimportance of charitable giving.  I thinkhe is sincere about this, and it is a serious mistake to think that Trump is fundamentallymotivated by greed.  He has grave flaws,but that is not one of them.

What Trump is motivated by, as both the interviewand indeed his entire public life make manifest, is egotism, and the imperativeto “win.”  The depressing and indeed uglyconsequences of this view of life are spelled out in Think Big and Kick Ass.  Therehe divides the world into “winners” and “losers,” with the aim of the bookbeing to show how to secure a place in the first category (p. 15).  This is not a goal that can ever be realizedonce and for all, but requires a constant pursuit, so that “you can never rest,no matter how good things are going” (p. 30). And it requires egotism of the kind he evinced in the interview.  “Having a big ego is a good thing,” he writes(p. 279), advising that “everything you do in life, do with attitude” (p. 269)and “[do] not give a crap” what others think about it (p. 271).  Practicing what he preaches, he tells us that“I’m really smart” (p. 148) and “I always think of myself as the best-lookingguy” (p. 269) – though, comically, he pretends that humility too is somehowamong his virtues, writing that “I am not a conceited person and I do not liketo have conceited people around me” (p. 156).

In this“game of life,” says Trump, “money is how you score” (p. 43).  But it isn’t money in itself that givessatisfaction.  Rather, Trump says, it is the“deals” one makes in the course of pursuing success that does so (p. 41).  Quoting the opening lines of his famous firstbook TheArt of the Deal, he writes:

I don’t do it for the money. I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need.  I do it to do it.  Deals are my art form.  Other people paint beautifully on canvas orwrite beautiful poetry.  I like makingdeals, preferably big deals.  That’s howI get my kicks.

What is thebig deal about “deals”?  Trump makes itclear that it is the domination ofthe other person involved that gives deals their appeal.  In ThinkBig and Kick Ass, he writes:

I love to make the big score and to make the big deal.  I love to crush the other side and take the benefits.  Why?  Becausethere is nothing greater.  For me it iseven better than sex, and I love sex.  Butwhen you hit, when the deals are going your way, it is the greatest feeling!  You hear lots of people say that a great dealis when both sides win.  That is a bunchof crap.  In a great deal you win – notthe other side.  You crush the opponentand come away with something better for yourself. (p. 48)

On thematter of sex, Trump boasts of the many women he has “been able to date(screw)” because of his bold attitude (p. 270), and is frank that this includes“married” women (p. 271).  But the readersuspects that what Trump would do with other men’s wives he likely would nottolerate from his own. “Being in a marriage,” he says, is a “business” (p. 21),and as with every other business arrangement, one must make sure that one’s owninterests are protected.  He puts so muchemphasis on this that he devotes an entire chapter to the importance of alwaysgetting a prenuptial agreement whenever one marries (as he has three times).

“I valueloyalty above everything else,” Trump tells us (p. 160).  And evidently, that is precisely because hethinks it is not the normal course of things:

The world is a vicious, brutal place.  It’s a place where people are looking to killyou, if not physically, then mentally. In the world that we live in every day it is usually the mentalkill.  People are looking to put youdown, especially if you are on top… You have to know how to defendyourself.  People will be nasty and tryto kill you just for sport.  Even yourfriends are out to get you! (p. 139)

Crucial toprotecting your interests, Trump emphasizes, is revenge.  This is a majortheme of Think Big and Kick Ass, notonly repeated several times but elaborated upon in an entire chapter of itsown.  “I love getting even… Always geteven.  Go after people that go after you”(p. 29).  “When somebody screws you,screw them back in spades” (p. 183).  “Ifyou don’t get even, you are just a schmuck! I really mean it, too” (p. 190). “You need to screw them back fifteen times harder” (p. 194).  And so on. He relates the case of a former employee who failed to help him when heneeded it, but later faced hard times of her own, losing her business, herhome, and her husband.  This, he says,made him “really happy,” and “now I go out of my way to make her lifemiserable” (p. 180).  He also tells usabout an athlete friend of his who had been betrayed by his manager butdeclined to take Trump’s advice to get revenge. Trump broke off the friendship over this, refusing to associate anyfurther with a “loser,” “schmuck,” and “jerk” who would refuse to get even (p.192).

Now, Isubmit that the view of human life all of this reflects is like nothing so muchas Hobbes’s state of nature.  For Hobbes,human beings in their natural condition are nothing more than self-interestedbundles of appetites, each of whom pursues his own desire-satisfaction andglory in a way that is bound to be at odds with others’ pursuit of their owndesire-satisfaction and glory.  This inevitablymakes social life nasty and dangerous, and the only remedy is to agree by“contract” to follow rules that are in each party’s self-interest, and onlyinsofar as they are in one’s self-interest. There is, for Hobbes, nothing in our nature that can provide any highermotivation, nor can we have knowledge of an afterlife or of any religiousdoctrine that might afford us any higher motivation.

This view ofhuman life is fundamentally at odds both with the tradition of moral andpolitical philosophy deriving from Plato and Aristotle, and with Christiandoctrine.  But again, Trump’s vision isdisturbingly reminiscent of it.  Hisegotism evokes the Hobbesian agent selfishly seeking his own glory and desire-satisfaction;his emphasis on demanding loyalty, while simultaneously getting the better ofothers and taking revenge on enemies as the key to navigating a hostile socialworld, calls to mind the relationship between human beings in a Hobbesian stateof nature; and his obsession with “deals” echoes the Hobbesian view thatcontract alone can yield anything close to beneficial social relationships.  And Trump’s vision of life, like Hobbes’s, isfundamentally at odds with Christianity. Certainly it is hard to think of an ethos that more manifestlycontradicts Christ’s Sermon on the Mount than Trump’s celebration of egotismand revenge (not to mention adultery and divorce). 

The Trumpification of conservatism

Naturally,one can push such an analysis only so far. No actual human being is strictly reducible to a Hobbesian agent,because Hobbes’s conception of human nature is simply wrong (certainly from thepoint of view of the natural law and Christian anthropology I woulddefend).  Nor is Trump without his virtues.  Again, I believe his charitable impulses aresincere, reflecting something like what Aristotle would call the virtue ofliberality.  I think his patriotism issincere, as is his love for his family, all of which reflects the virtue ofpiety.  I think his concern for workingpeople is sincere, and reflects something like the virtue of magnanimity.  His determination in the face of setbacks isimpressive, and reflects a kind of courage. And he can be very funny, which is no small thing in a leader.

The troubleis that Trump’s egotism and obsessive desire to “win” seem more fundamental tohis character than these virtues, and can distort or even overwhelm them – somuch so that he at least approximatesa Hobbesian agent.  And this accounts forthe words and actions that have made him such a controversial figure.

To be sure, thereis an enormous amount of nonsense said and written about Trump.  It is true that too many of his admirers areunwilling to listen to any criticism of him, but it is also true that many ofhis critics are too willing to believeany criticism of him.  And overreactionto this excessive hostility to him is a major reason why the devotion of hisadmirers is often excessive. 

To note someexamples of the nonsense in question, the constantly repeated claim that Trumpsaid after the Charlottesville incident that there are “very fine people” amongneo-Nazis and white supremacists is a myth.  The truth is that he explicitly said that hewas not talking about such people,who, he agreed, should be “condemned.” Trump’s remark about a “bloodbath” if he loses the 2024 election was not(contrary to what is often asserted) a prediction of political violence, butrather about direeffects on the auto industry. Despite what is often alleged, Trump neveradvised people to inject bleach as a treatment for Covid.  Some of the recent prosecutions of Trump areindeed legallyflimsy and manifestly politically motivated.  And so on.

It is alsoquite preposterous to characterize Trump as a “fascist.”  He is nothing as ideological as that.  To be sure, what he wanted Mike Pence to doon January 6, 2021 would have been a very grave offense against the rule oflaw, as my friend and sometimes co-author Joseph Bessette showed in a Claremont Review of Books essay.  That alone should have prevented Republicansfrom ever again nominating him for president. But there is no reason whatsoever to attribute it to a fascistagenda.  It reflects instead the pique ofa man for whom the prospect of losing to Joe Biden was so painful a blow to hisego that he was too willing to believe the theories of those who assured himthe election was stolen, and that the Eastman memos afforded a solution.

But that isbad enough, and Trump does deserve criticism for the disgrace of January6.  Other common criticisms of him are alsoperfectly just.  Take, for example, hispredilection for exaggeration and falsehood. It is not so much that Trump is a liar as that he is a bullshitter, in HarryFrankfurt’s famous sense of the term.  The liar, as Frankfurt points out, cares verymuch about the truth, if only to hide it. The bullshitter, by contrast, is not primarily interested in truth orfalsity so much as in saying whatever is useful for furthering some goal hehas.  That may involve speaking afalsehood, but it might instead require speaking the truth.  The bullshitter doesn’t care so long as it works. 

This is whyTrump will both say things that are true but which other politicians lack thecourage to say (for example, that illegal immigration is a serious problem thatneither party has been willing to deal with) while mixing them with arrestingbut absurd falsehoods that no one else would dare peddle (such as that Mexicowould pay for a border wall).  The formerlend credibility to the latter, and together such remarks function to createthe impression that Trump alone has the boldness and vision to see and do whatneeds to be done.  Sometimes he willpersist for quite a while with some particular bit of bullshit (as with the“birther” narrative about Barack Obama), other times he will deploy it onlybriefly (as when he repeatedthe ludicrous rumor that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in theKennedy assassination).  What determineswhat he says and how long he says it is whatever is necessary in order to “win”and close the “deal.”

Trump isalso rightly criticized for the ugly and utterly disgraceful things he oftensays about people who stand in his way, as when he ridiculed the looks of afemale political rival, and mocked Senator John McCain’s suffering as aprisoner of war.  Trump’s defenderssometimes try to minimize such behavior as mere New York brashness or the like.  But to any objective observer these are clearand grave examples of what moral theologians call the sin of contumely.  They are sinful because they unjustly deprivepeople of the respect they are owed. They are grave because the humiliation they inflict is public, andbecause they greatly exacerbate the bitterness of contemporary social andpolitical life. 

There areother manifestly immoral things Trump has done, such as his proposalto kill the families of terrorists, and his boastingof attempting to seduce a married woman and of taking advantage sexually ofwomen attracted to him because of his fame. And I have cited only some of the words and actions of his that arepublicly verifiable – there are, of course, other grave accusations againsthim, which I leave out only because I do not know whether they are true.  Yet, though when running for president in2015 Trump claimed to be a religious Christian, he alsosaid that he doesn’t ask God for forgiveness for anything he’s done.

All of thesethings are intelligible given that Trump’s personality approximates that of theHobbesian ego seeking to advance its own glory and self-interest (to “win”) inwhatever way seems fitting to it, bound only by whatever terms it hascontracted with others to follow (the “deal”). Except that, unlike those who contract to leave Hobbes’s state of nature,Trump explicitly tells us that when he makes a deal he hopes to “crush” theother side and make sure that he alone truly benefits.

This alsomakes it intelligible why the same man who appointed the justices crucial tooverturning Roe would now endorsepolicies diametrically opposed to the pro-life cause and to social conservatismgenerally.  Given the view of the worldthat Trump has consistently expressed and lived for decades, it would be absurdto suppose he personally cares about or even sees the point of the thingssocial conservatives care about.  Theobvious explanation for why he catered to them for as long as he did is that itwas in his political interests to make such a “deal,” and now that he sees themas mostly a liability, the deal is off.

But that isnot the worst of it.  Again, Trumpexplicitly tells us that he does not enter into a deal with a genuine concern tobenefit the other side.  The aim of adeal, he writes, is to “crush theopponent and come away with something better for yourself.”  If the otherside benefits, that is incidental, a byproduct of Trump benefiting.  Trump’sdefenders often accuse his pro-life critics of insufficient “gratitude” for hisrole in overturning Roe.  This is like saying that a buyer owes a usedauto dealer “gratitude” for selling him a decent car, and that this gratitudeshould keep him from complaining or taking his business elsewhere if the dealerlater tries to sell him a lemon.

In any event,Trump himself is bound to interpret criticism from social conservatives as ingratitude,and here his explicit policy of revenge comes into play – in such a way thatthe situation for social conservatives in a second Trump administration islikely to be even worse than I described in my previous article.  For it’s not just that Trump will no longerpromote their agenda, and it’s not just that he will even advocate policiesthat are positively contrary to that agenda. It’s that, if social conservatives protest or resist this, Trump’svindictive nature is likely to lead him to seek retaliation.  He may well, as he puts it, “get even,” “goafter” them, “screw them back in spades,” “screw them back fifteen timesharder.”

In this way,along with the other ways I’ve described in this article and my previous one,Trump is putting social conservatives in a very perilous position.  And in other respects too, he has done grave damageto the conservative movement.  His egotismconstantly leads him into foolish and sometimes even dangerous behavior, suchas his attempt to pressure Pence into unconstitutional action on January 6, andhis unjust demonization of Republican officials in Georgia who would not do hisbidding.  Such actions have sown divisionwithin the Republican Party and greatly damaged its reputation. 

Trump’s badexample has also rubbed off on too many of his followers.  Aping his predilection for bullshit, too manyof them are prone to crackpotconspiracy theories and woolly “narrative thinking.”  Aping his aggressive boorishness, too many ofthem have become excessively bellicose and more interested in “own the libs” stuntsthan in serious and effective policy proposals. Aping his imperative to “win” and make “deals” above all else, too manyof them have become willing to compromise their principles for electoralvictory.  Awed by the force of hispersonality, too many have become cult-like in their devotion, and intolerantof dissent.  Understandably frustrated bythe fecklessness and cowardice of so many conservatives, they have embracedwhat they wrongly judge to be Trump’s masculine alternative.  Yet being an egotist and a bully is notmasculinity, but rather a cartoonish distortion of masculinity.  If too many conservatives exhibit whatAquinas calls thevice of effeminacy, Trump represents an opposite extreme vice, not thesober, genuinely masculine middle ground.

Trump’sdefenders will respond that the greatest danger nevertheless comes from theLeft.  I agree, as I have made clear overand overand overagain.  But it simply doesn’t follow thatTrump is the remedy.  His essentiallyHobbesian individualist ethos is simply another variation on the liberaldisease that afflictsthe modern body politic, rather than its cure.  Even then, it is less an ideology than merelythe personality type of one man, who is unlikely to leave behind him even acoherent movement, much less a political philosophy, after he is gone.  His legacy will likely be a social conservatismthat is greatly diminished in influence, and a larger conservative movement thatwill be less serious intellectually and remain internally divided indefinitely.

But thoughTrump is far from the instrument conservatives need, he is the instrument theyare for the moment stuck with.  It iscrucial that they be absolutely clear-eyed about what they are getting.  It is reasonable for them to hope that hemight prevent or mitigate some of the damage done by the Left.  But they will have to be constantly on guardto prevent him from inflicting further damage of his own.