False Dichotomies

Prominent in the headlines this week was President Trump’s criticism of Pope Leo, in light of the latter’s insistent calls for peace amidst Trump’s bombardment of Iran. Lashing out on social media, Trump called the Pope “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy.” The Pope was far from flummoxed, noting simply that “God’s heart is torn apart by wars, violence, injustice and lies.”

Nonetheless, secular media hasn’t hesitated to exacerbate the sense of this being a major rift between these two American-born leaders. But this Pillar piece offers a useful word of caution against jumping too readily onto that sound-the-alarm bandwagon. Trump’s game is politics, the piece argues, and as its subtitle notes, “he doesn’t play in a vacuum, only in opposition to someone.” In other words, throughout his political career, he’s needed another politician to lambast and present himself as the alternative to. This has been his go-to move, as it’s been one that has forced constituents to choose between “us” and “them,” allowing Trump to shore up and solidify support. And, the piece goes on, right now “it is possible Trump has determined that the first American pope is the only figure of sufficient stature to define himself against.” Given the landscape of American religion and political conservativism and the complex relationship those intertwining camps have had with the Trump administration, it is possible that he’s chosen Pope Leo to serve as his political foil, despite Leo’s repeated reminders that he’s just not a politician, at all.

It’s worth noting that Trump’s playing into an old American bias here (whether intentionally or not), giving his move some good footholds, if the Pillar’s interpretation is right. The bias is this one: that a person can’t be a patriotic American and a good, faithful Catholic at the same time; that one has to choose between those two loyalties. Of course, this is untrue. To have a sense of filial piety to one’s country and to be a believing Catholic are not contradictory commitments. One can love both America and the Church.

But this also doesn’t mean those need to be entirely separate loves. At the same time as Trump’s been railing against Pope Leo, JD Vance – the preeminent Catholic in national politics and in the White House – has dropped in his thoughts on the matter. He’s commented that the Pope ought to be more careful when speaking about “theology,” suggesting that he’s moved beyond his domain in making the comments he has. The point plays into another bias: that the Church ought to stay out of politics and policymaking. That one ought to keep one’s religion to oneself. That what one believes in private shouldn’t be imposed upon the public.

The problem with that position is that theology doesn’t just happen on the level of theoretical ideas. It has something to say about human life. And it most certainly has something to say about the destruction of another people and Christ’s desire for peace. And, as Vicar of Christ, it is the place of a pope to articulate clear moral principles at a moment of not just political but also moral crisis.

All of which is to say that the political move playing out here, it seems, is to try to leverage biases and hot tempers to force dichotomies: Trump’s side or the Pope’s side; loyalty to American interests or to the Church’s; keep the Church out of politics or allow it to have its say; you can’t have it both ways. Dichotomies like this, though, are usually the fruit of rhetoric, more so than they are encapsulations of what’s true. And the best we can do is keep the temptation to these false dichotomies clear, maintaining, instead, a clear sense for who we are as both Americans and Catholics, a steady view of the Gospel and its demands upon the lived reality of human life, and a true, calm love for both Church and nation.