Issue 4 – January 2026
No interviews in this issue of Solid for America (I’m hoping for some next time), but I did manage to write a few articles during Advent, the Christmas season, and shortly thereafter. Have a blessed New Year (or the closest near-equivalent, for those who don’t believe in blessings)!
Working on the Pro-Life Transcontinental Railroad
Is the Death Penalty Anti-Life?
And Is the Pope a Catholic?
One King–and Only One
Working on the Pro-Life
Transcontinental Railroad
You may recently have seen reports that the President and his minions were peeved about a pro-life promotion (see, e.g., Hawley Pro-Life Initiative Reportedly Sparks White House Anger). They said you need to focus on economic issues alone to try to win the next election, and it’s the “height of asinine stupidity” (vituperative White House language quoted verbatim) to “pick a fight on an issue like abortion” at this time.
Why? Because, in their opinion, too few voters care two hoots about abortion, while almost everyone cares about money, money, money.
If you know anything about a greater President than the one we have now–I mean Abraham Lincoln–you may recall that he favored putting “the man* above the dollar,” not “the dollar above the man.” [*As you will recall, in Lincoln’s time, the word “man” was used in the now-archaic inclusive sense including all human beings.] Today, alas, the presidential footprints don’t seem to be following Lincoln’s, but pointing in the opposite direction.
But you can’t be too surprised when a politician wants to get boatloads of votes. This politician and his minions may even be right in thinking too few people care two hoots about abortion.
If so, what can be done about that? Can there be a pro-life majority in the United States in the foreseeable future? I’d say yes, if we can succeed in building the “Pro-Life Transcontinental Railroad”–a worthy successor to the “Underground Railroad” of yesteryear, built when the “Slave Power” was destroying human liberty just as the “Death Power” today destroys human life.
What do I mean by that? Today there are many different pro-life groups, some of them as far distant from others as West from East, or Left from Right (whatever those words may mean in politics, if anything). Many pro-life people are faithful Christians and conservative Republicans–also known, to those who don’t agree with them, as right-wing Bible-bangers. But any human being who was once unborn–and who hasn’t succumbed to the death-grip of the “Death Power”–can see that it’s good to protect human life for everyone. So, we also have non-sectarian and even decidedly non-traditional pro-life groups.
The Pro-Life Transcontinental Railroad, if it can be built, will unite such far-distant groups, as the American transcontinental railroad united the East and the West in America. It’s not imaginable that they will agree about everything, but I’ll bet they can agree about more than you might expect. I’m only one steel-driving man working on the railroad, but I hope to do my small part in bringing these diverse groups closer together toward the “golden spike” of a united pro-life majority.
Me, I’m pretty sure I would be counted as a pro-life conservative Christian, and I thank God that I’m far from the only one. I don’t agree with such a prominent conservative Christian group as Family Research Council about everything, but I do agree with them about many things, and I think they’ve done a lot of good work for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What’s more, I don’t find that their affiliate in my state, Indiana Family Institute, displays some of the leading faults I find in the national organization–such as an unduly (though not uncritically) favorable attitude toward the President, his policies, and his minions; an excessive zeal to blame an undefined enemy known as “the Left” for almost every evil; and a too nearly exclusive focus on Christians as defenders of all that is good. I wouldn’t be surprised if their other state affiliates also don’t display those faults.
On the other hand, Christians (along with everyone else) need to face reality. There are huge numbers of non-Christians in this country and in the world; most of them are not likely to change their religion or irreligion any time soon, to say the least. In any event, it would be a terrible idea to create, or to maintain, needless divisions among pro-life people on the basis of religion.
Not too long ago, gazing into the distance from my side of today’s “Continental Divide” in religion and culture, I discovered one of the leading pro-life groups on the other side: Secular Pro-Life. I proceeded to publish a very interesting interview with Secular Pro-Life’s Chief Communications Director, Herb Geraghty, in the second issue of Solid for America. After looking into it some more, I actually decided to add Secular Pro-Life to my list of charitable organizations I donate to.
Why? Here are a few good reasons.
(1) Secular Pro-Life is run by pro-life atheists, but these are not your grandparents’ atheists. Who are your grandparents’ atheists? You know: Christian-crushing Communists, anti-human humans, loud-mouthed propagandists for disbelief in God as the only view worthy of a rational human being, and their ilk. In sharp contrast, here’s what Secular Pro-Life has to say about “Religion (or lack thereof)“:
Secular Pro-Life is run by three atheist women with significant help from atheist and agnostic volunteers. Part of our mission is to hold space in the pro-life movement for atheists, agnostics, and other non-religious people who are against abortion.
Another part of our mission is to strengthen the pro-life movement through interfaith coalition building. Among our followers and supporters are Catholics tired of having their arguments against abortion dismissed as merely “imposing religion,” Protestants interested in more diverse pro-life outreach, and members of a variety of religions who feel mismatched with overtly Christian pro-life organizations. You’re welcome here. Anyone interested in advancing secular arguments against abortion is welcome here. We want to see pro-lifers of any faith and no faith unite in defense of prenatal children.
They’re serious. They don’t, and they say they don’t, even use their website or their organization to promote disbelief in God. They are working, from their end, on the Pro-Life Transcontinental Railroad. We need to work toward meeting them at the golden spike. I’ve decided to give them a bit of help in trying to get there sooner.
(2) It appears that a great many atheists, agnostics, “nones,” “spiritual but not religious” people, and others of our non-monotheistic brethren have habitually favored the pro-abortion view, not because they’ve thought things through and arrived at a hard-core pro-abortion position, but because it’s presumed that only ignorant Bible-bangers, rosary-rattlers, and all that sort of traditional religionists oppose abortion. Well-reasoned, non-religious promotion of universal human rights, including the rights of humans who haven’t yet been born, has been shown to reach many of these people in ways that Christian pro-life evangelization has not. This is only to be expected, since God’s gift of natural reason is not withdrawn from people who don’t believe in God–even if they’ve temporarily failed or refused to use that gift rightly, or if they were raised in comparatively nonsensical religions, or if they dislike their Christian brethren for any other reason.
The promotion of universal human rights, above all the right to life, on non-religious grounds is consistent with, though not identical to, a Christian view of universal human rights. Pro-life Christians may, and should, reasonably regard it as a big step in the right direction for non-Christians. And you know what? It can be a big step in the right direction for Christians too. If you’ve read St. Thomas Aquinas, you may recall what he said: you can’t try to convince people who aren’t Christians or Jews on the basis of any part of the Bible, because they don’t accept it. All you’ve got left is natural reason, so that’s what you’ve got to use.
(3) Speaking of people who do or don’t use God’s gift of natural reason rightly: you’ll see a lot of both if you visit Secular Pro-Life’s Facebook page. This page attracts pro-abortion zealots like flies to honey. You can see pretty much every possible pro-abortion argument there, usually with pro-life responses, many of them well reasoned. If you’ve ever thought maybe you’re pro-life only because of your religion, I’d strongly recommend a visit to this page. You can see, usually in terms that anyone of ordinary intelligence can understand by natural reason alone, what’s wrong with all the pro-abortion arguments. Secular Pro-Life also has an “Abortion Debate Index” with pro-life responses to many arguments of the same kinds.
You may wonder if it’s worth it to dispute about the rights and wrongs of abortion with hard-core pro-abortion zealots who keep on saying the same old things and evading the same old hard questions. Secular Pro-Life explains that it is, because the main aim is not to try to convince the zealots, but to reach the many open-minded readers who are not zealots. This really happens, and you can see why it happens if you look at the discussions. (A note for readers who may be no more familiar with Facebook’s idiosyncrasies than I was when I started engaging in these discussions: To see the discussions, you click the link to see comments, and then immediately click “Most relevant” on the upper left and change it to “All comments.” Facebook has no idea what comments you will think are or are not most relevant, but falsely pretends it has.)
The zealots, of course, hardly ever admit that they’ve lost an argument. You can tell that they’ve lost if they fail or refuse to answer questions that open-minded readers can see are good ones. A few examples may be helpful to show how this happens.
Pro-abortion argument: “Yes, I know it’s human, but I’m entitled to kill it because it’s inside me and I don’t want it, period.” Pro-life response: Do you believe you’re entitled to kill anyone who’s outside you because you don’t want them? What, if anything, is supposed to give them human rights that an acknowledged human being inside you doesn’t have? No answer.
Pro-abortion argument: “No, this biologically human object is not a human person because it’s not sentient–it doesn’t have feelings. Therefore, it’s all right to kill it.” Pro-life response: Hogs and dogs have feelings too. Does that make them human persons? How can something that isn’t a human person become one merely by developing something that hogs and dogs also have? No answer.
Pro-abortion argument (extreme, but this is one of my favorites so far): “No, this biologically human object is not a human person because the ability to engage in reasoning is what defines a human person. Therefore, it’s all right to kill it–and, if you’re not a vegan or vegetarian, to eat it.” Pro-life response: Ever seen a newborn infant, or even a one-year-old, that can engage in reasoning? Neither have I. By that kind of reasoning, kids don’t typically become human persons until they’re several years old. Therefore, if you’re not a vegan or vegetarian, you should think it’s perfectly permissible to kill and eat them before that age, like in Swift’s “Modest Proposal.” True or false? No answer so far.
And then there are the proposed substitutes for rational argument, such as “You are so incredibly stupid and brainless that you can’t be considered human” (yes, some pro-aborts, among other people–surely we needn’t mention the President and his minions–actually say things like that). This provides an opportunity for an enjoyable and edifying response: “Thank you for admitting that your contempt for your fellow human beings as brainless is not limited to those who haven’t been born and may literally lack brains as yet; it also includes those who have existing brains but simply use them to disagree with you. You are, I suppose, among those who rejoice when someone you don’t agree with gets killed, as in a well-known recent incident–because of course the dead person was brainless when alive?” No answer except for a repeated imputation of brainlessness. Readers may safely be left to form their own conclusions about who does or does not have, or use, a brain–and about which view is or is not consistent with being a civilized, law-abiding human being who can respect the rights of others even while disagreeing with them.
I’m convinced. Every good pro-life question or argument that goes unanswered or poorly answered by the pro-aborts, and is seen by the many open-minded readers who visit Secular Pro-Life on their website or on social media, is another spike toward the completion of the Pro-Life Transcontinental Railroad. Steel-drivers from the Christian pro-life side should pitch in to complete the railroad, uniting all pro-life people in (we hope and pray) a pro-life majority. When we do, we’ll see the steel-drivers from Secular Pro-Life and other non-traditional pro-life groups approaching us from the other side, also working hard to complete the job–because they, like us (if we’re good Christians), are all in favor of universal human rights.
David McClamrock
David McClamrock is a convert to Christianity, a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College and Notre Dame Law School, a Hoosier lawyer, a father of four home-schooled children, and (last and least) the editor of Solid for America.
Is the Death Penalty Anti-Life?
And Is the Pope a Catholic?
Once upon a time, I seem to recall, Catholic Christians were taught that they shouldn’t publicly criticize the Pope. Those days are long gone. Pope Francis evoked a tumult of criticism–sometimes justified, sometimes not–from Catholics holding a wide variety of opinions. Pope Leo XIV has been much like a calm sea following a tempest, but it seems he has not satisfied certain tempestuous souls who fancy themselves defenders of Catholic tradition.
Why not? Well, last September, the Pope told reporters, “Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion,’ but says, ‘I’m in favor of the death penalty,’ is not really pro-life.” (See, e.g., Pope Leo: ‘He Who Supports the Death Penalty Is Not Pro-Life’; Pope Leo’s Abortion Comment Sparks Backlash).
Self-styled defenders of tradition, perhaps harking back to the heyday of the Papal States when executions were far from rare, have gone so far as to suggest that the Pope is not a Catholic, at least when it comes to the death penalty. One Matt Walsh was quoted in Newsweek as saying, “Really terrible answer from Pope Leo. God Himself prescribes the death penalty in the Bible. Is the Pope saying that God is ‘not pro-life’?” On a somewhat higher intellectual level, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski opined that “Leo XIV has shown that he continues to hold the error he held as a cardinal, namely, that the death penalty is intrinsically immoral and to be put on the same level as abortion” (Dr. K’s Weekly Roundup October 3, 2025).
What is the truth? Return with me now to the days after the Flood, when (according to the Old Testament, Genesis 9:6) God did prescribe the death penalty in speaking to Noah: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man to his own image.”
Was this (as Matt Walsh seems to suggest) a law for all time, which even popes today would be wrong to defy? No.
Why not? St. Thomas Aquinas (a far greater defender of Catholic tradition than today’s complainers about the Pope) explains why not. Old Testament laws (“precepts”), he says, were of three different kinds: moral, judicial, and ceremonial (Summa Theologiae [S.T.] I-II, QQ. 99-105). Moral laws, like the Ten Commandments, can never expire. Ceremonial laws, like the requirement of circumcision given to Abraham and his descendants, have expired because their purpose was to point the way to the Messiah; they’re no good any more for Christians (except for informational purposes) now that the Messiah has come.
What about the judicial laws? What are they, and what good are they today?
The judicial laws (“judicial precepts”) of the Old Testament prescribe punishments for offenses, like the death penalty for murder (and for other offenses specified in the Old Testament’s law of Moses). Christians are not required to follow them, but (as a general rule) they can follow them if there’s a good reason to do so. So, if there’s a good reason for the death penalty, Christians presumably can impose it; otherwise not.
Is there, or has there ever been? Let’s fast-forward from the days of Noah and Moses to the times of St. Thomas himself (1225-1274) and the Council of Trent (1545-1563), which relied heavily on his teaching. St. Thomas taught (S.T. II-II, Q. 64, Arts. 2, 6) that there was one justification for the death penalty, and only one: to safeguard the common good against dangerous criminals. If not for the need to safeguard the common good, it would never be legitimate to execute criminals, no matter how bad their crimes.
Why not? “If we consider a man in himself, it is unlawful to kill any man, since in every man though he be sinful, we ought to love the nature which God has made, and which is destroyed by slaying him. Nevertheless, as stated above (A. 2) the slaying of a sinner becomes lawful in relation to the common good, which is corrupted by sin” (S.T. II-II, Q. 64, Art. 6).
The Council of Trent got a bit more specific about what was needed to justify the death penalty: The preservation and security of human life. The Catechism of the Council of Trent was the Catholic Church’s first universal catechism, and here’s what it says about that in relation to the commandment “thou shalt not kill”:
Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious 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 act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence. Hence these words of David: “In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord.”
>So, remarkably, the death penalty is actually pro-life, if (and only if) it’s needed to “give security to life by repressing outrage and violence”–by making violent criminals powerless to inflict harm. But what if it isn’t? Pope St. John Paul II said what, in Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life, 1995), ¶ 56: “If . . . bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person” (emphasis added).
Is there a lot of doubt today about whether bloodless means are sufficient to do the job, or not? In short, is that a big “if,” or a little one? It may have been a big one in the times of Noah and Moses, or even of St. Thomas and the Council of Trent; who knows, maybe even in the heyday of the Papal States. But in recent years, the popes beginning with St. John Paul II have been saying it’s vanishingly small.
Why? St. John Paul II explains (Evangelium Vitae, ¶ 56): “the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today, however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”
Nowadays, according to Pope Francis, the “if” has vanished entirely. Here’s his revised version of section 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penalty:
Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.
Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.
Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.
Now, although the Catholic Church teaches that popes can issue infallible declarations under certain limited circumstances, Catholics don’t have to believe the pope is right about everything, even if he puts it into the Catechism. Pope Francis may well have been wrong about people today having an increasing awareness of the dignity of the person. St. Thomas Aquinas recognized more than 750 years ago that “the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes.” That’s why he said, “If we consider a man in himself, it is unlawful to kill any man, since in every man though he be sinful, we ought to love the nature which God has made, and which is destroyed by slaying him.” But many people today, lacking any “increasing awareness,” still don’t seem to grasp that basic point. Progress is not inevitable.
Catholics also don’t have to believe that everything the Pope says is understandable. What does it mean to say “a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state”? If you have any idea, you’re doing better than I am.
But “more effective systems of detention have been developed”–now, that’s understandable! It means we don’t need the death penalty, and we shouldn’t use it, because now we can more or less humanely put even the worst criminals in prison and keep them there for as long as necessary, even until they die in prison.
And that’s exactly what Pope Francis says. “Consequently”–“Quapropter” in Latin, or in English words of one syllable, “That is just why”–the Church teaches that the death penalty is inadmissible and works for its abolition: (1) we don’t need it any more, and (2) even the lives of the worst criminals are worth saving.
It has always been true, as St. Thomas noted, that the lives of even the worst criminals are worth saving if (and only if) they can safely be saved. Opinions may differ about whether their lives can always safely be saved, therefore about whether we still need the death penalty or not. That’s a matter of “prudential judgment” about the progress of human civilization toward greater ability to protect all human life.
The Church has made a prudential judgment that human life and the common good can now be protected without the death penalty, so it shouldn’t be used. Catholics don’t have to agree with that prudential judgment, but they do need to realize that disagreement with that prudential judgment is the only good reason for Catholics to reject what the Church is now saying about the death penalty.
What would not be good reasons? You’ll find a bunch of them, if you’re interested, in the leading work of professedly Catholic pro-death-penalty zealotry, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed by Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017). A bad reason would be the one put forth by Matt Walsh: that God prescribed the death penalty long ago, so it must still be all right. And yet another bad reason would be that of Dr. Kwasniewski: that the recent popes have been teaching error, i.e., teaching that the death penalty has always and everywhere been wrong. As we’ve seen, it’s simply false that the popes have been teaching that.
So, is the death penalty “intrinsically immoral and to be put on the same level as abortion”? Abortion, like any other direct and intentional killing of an innocent person, is wrong always and everywhere. The death penalty, direct and intentional killing of a guilty person, is wrong whenever it isn’t needed for the protection of human life and the common good. In other words, it’s wrong whenever both of two requirements are not fulfilled: (1) the offender’s guilt has to be serious enough to deserve death, and (2) execution of the offender has to be needed to protect human life and the common good. If only one (or neither) of those requirements are fulfilled, the death penalty is wrong.
And now, at last, let’s return to Pope Leo. “Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion,’ but says, ‘I’m in favor of the death penalty,’ is not really pro-life.” True or false?
False, if the person in question draws the necessary distinctions: “I’m against abortion, but I believe the death penalty is still necessary to protect human life and the common good in specified situations, and I’m in favor of the death penalty in those situations only.” This would be disagreement with the Pope about a matter of prudential judgment only, which is permissible even for the staunchest upholders of Catholic tradition.
But what about a person who says something like “I’m against abortion, but I’m in favor of the death penalty because I think there’s a strong moral presumption that offenders who deserve the death penalty should receive it”? (That’s straight out of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed, in case you were wondering.) In that case, the Pope would be right. Such a person is not really pro-life, because of a failure to recognize that even the lives of the worst offenders should be preserved, no matter how much they may deserve death, if it isn’t really necessary to execute them.
The bottom line: Yes, the death penalty is anti-life, if the recent popes’ prudential judgment that we don’t need it any more is right. And yes, the Pope is a Catholic, even when it comes to the death penalty–a better and more pro-life Catholic, I dare say, than self-proclaimed defenders of tradition who falsely accuse him of holding and teaching error.
David McClamrock
Thanks to Christopher Zehnder, General Editor of the Catholic Textbook Project, for some valuable suggestions for this article.
One King–and Only One
From Washington to Trump, presidents of the United States have been criticized for allegedly acting too much like kings. Such criticism is often good. Presidents and other government officials should exercise their power for the good of all the people, but too often they don’t.
But is “No Kings,” as the popular slogan puts it, an adequate solution to the problem? Surely not. People who are determined to have no kings often end up with rulers worse than the kings they wish to get rid of, as we can easily see from the history of revolutions in the past few centuries.
What if the majority of the people, right here in the United States, were ruled by one king, and only one–the Creator of the Universe? How would life be different for people who accept the Creator as their only king, and for those who don’t?
There’s been a fair amount of progress in recent decades toward greater understanding among Catholic and non-Catholic Christians, and even non-Christians who hold at least some essential truths in common with Christians. So, I think, even people who don’t think popes have any real authority may be interested in a few words on this topic written by Pope Pius XI about 100 years ago. Especially, they may want to know what these words have to do with people who don’t accept the authority of popes, or even of Jesus Christ. (In case you know little or nothing about Pope Pius XI, who was pope from 1922 to 1939, one of his great claims to fame is his strong opposition to all the leading forms of totalitarianism–Fascism (Non Abbiamo Bisogno), Nazism (Mit Brennender Sorge), and Communism (Divini Redemptoris).)
“Manifold evils,” Pius XI recalled, arose because “the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives” [Quas Primas (On the Feast of Christ the King), ¶ 1]. So, the cure proposed for these evils is for the majority of the people to allow Jesus Christ and his holy law into their lives. If you’re not a Christian (and much more if you are), you may wish to recall that Christians believe Jesus Christ was not just some random guy who lived long ago and far away; he was the Creator of the Universe incarnate, who became a man to help us out of the dreadful disasters that would doom us all without his help.
Would this be a cure-all for earthly ills? It may well seem that this pope is saying so. Rulers of nations will preserve their authority, and increase their countries’ prosperity, if they fulfill the “public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ” [¶ 18]. When Christ is recognized as King, both in private and in public life, “society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony” [¶ 19]. “If princes and magistrates duly elected are filled with the persuasion that they rule, not by their own right, but by the mandate and in the place of the Divine King, they will exercise their authority piously and wisely, and they will make laws and administer them, having in view the common good and also the human dignity of their subjects. The result will be a stable peace and tranquillity, for there will be no longer any cause of discontent” [¶ 19]. A remedy would be found for the “deplorable consequences” of the “rebellion of individuals and states against the authority of Christ,” like these: “the seeds of discord sown far and wide; enmities and rivalries between nations, hindering the cause of peace; insatiable greed; blind and immoderate selfishness; “no peace in the home, because men have forgotten or neglect their duty; the unity and stability of the family undermined; society in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin” [¶ 24].
Wait! You may well think on reading this. In centuries gone by, there were lots of Christian rulers of nations; why did those nations often not receive those blessings and not avoid those evils?
Wait again, you may think. What about people who don’t believe in the authority of Christ–are they supposed to cave in and agree to become second-class citizens?
The first question actually has a pretty quick and easy answer. If the doc prescribes some good medicine for you, and you pretend you took the medicine but you didn’t really, are you likely to get well? You tell me. Same goes for so-called Christian rulers who pretended to take their Christian medicine while actually spitting some or all of it out.
The second question needs a slightly longer answer–except perhaps in the view of certain “rad-trad” (radical traditionalist) Catholics, or their non-Catholic counterparts, who would give the short answer “Yes.” And the answer, for everyone other than a few rad-trads and their ilk, needs to start with a question: Are you out to crush Christians, or to be at least minimally good neighbors with them?
Crushing Christians has been tried for 2,000 years. It hasn’t worked, and there are excellent reasons to believe it will never work. But some people in the time of Pius XI kept trying harder and harder to do it, and their ideological descendants haven’t given up today.
Christian-crushing is a crime, and should be treated as a crime, just like crushing anyone else merely because you don’t agree with them. (By “crushing” I mean not only literally crushing or killing them, but also imprisoning them, silencing them, making them lose their jobs for expressing their faith, and more.) But merely disagreeing with Christians, even vehemently disagreeing with them, should not be treated as a crime under human law, even when Christians form the great majority of the people.
Why not? Because it’s better for everyone–Christians and non-Christians–if we’re good neighbors, not bitter enemies.
Why should non-Christians believe that? Basically, not only will the “bitter enemies” approach ultimately get them nowhere, as it always has, but it’s stupid. Non-Christians of good will can actually agree with Christians about many things that are needed for human society to prosper and protect the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There are huge numbers of people of ill will in the world today, and probably in the foreseeable future. People of good will–Christians or not–need to stick together to change our country and the world for the better, now and in the future.
Now, why should Christians believe that? What room should there be for non-Christians when the majority of the people, and of their elected officials, acknowledge Christ as King?
The answer begins with the unalienable right to liberty, which our Creator gives to everyone whether they believe in him or not–and with the remarkable fact that all of us are born not believing in him. Babies, though made in the image and likeness of God, have no idea who made them. Even if they receive the gift of faith in baptism, they’ll still have to decide for themselves whether to accept or reject that gift when they’re old enough to decide. And if they don’t receive it, they’ll keep on not believing in their Creator–at least until they receive some insights that can lead them to believe in him, and maybe not even then.
Why? Because that’s how human free will is in this life: we can, we must, choose to believe or to disbelieve, just as we must choose to do good or to do evil. And why is that? It’s because, astoundingly, the universe is a much better place when people can choose to do either good or evil than it would be if they couldn’t choose evil. St. Thomas Aquinas explains [S.T. I, Q. 48, Art. 2]: The perfection of the universe requires that all different “grades of goodness” should exist; a high grade of goodness is unfailing, while a lower grade of goodness can fail, and sometimes does fail.
That means us–all human beings in this life. We’re in the grade of goodness that can fail, and sometimes does fail. We have to strive to do good and to know the truth, even when it would be a whole lot easier and perhaps more pleasant to do evil and believe lies, as so many people do. And when we do strive and win, we give glory to God in a way that no one else can do.
Even when we don’t–or when our non-Christian brethren don’t–our God-given right to liberty, and theirs, remains intact. It isn’t a right to harm other people, much less to crush them for disagreeing with us–but it is a right to think for ourselves and to act accordingly, so long as we don’t harm other people or the common good. This means that, even when the people and their elected officials acknowledge Christ as King, non-Christians must have equal rights. Our King himself has told us to be like our Father in heaven, who gives good things to good and bad alike (Matthew 5:45)–and that’s what we must do, especially if we’re elected officials responsible for the common good of all the people.
Perhaps some rad-trads and their ilk, fondly remembering the heyday of the Franco regime in Spain or some earlier supposed golden age, will wish to disagree. That’s their right. Better yet, their objections should help to clarify the true nature of liberty under Christ the King, just as the multitude of objections collected by St. Thomas Aquinas helped to clarify the many truths he taught.
But rad-trads today are a small minority. Christian-crushers, alas, are not. Christians and all people of good will must stand firm together against those on both of these extremes, until the Christian-crushers can do no more harm to people faithful to Christ the King than the rad-trads can do today.
David McClamrock
Solid For America