Campaign signs were posted Nov. 5 outside Pittsburgh Manchester School as people arrived to vote. (Quinn Glabicki / Reuters / OSV News)
OSV Editorial Board
OSV News
Former President Donald J. Trump, defeated after his first term in November 2020, is once again President-elect Donald J. Trump — a feat only one other man has pulled off in the history of the United States.
Even though many of the 67 million Americans who voted for Kamala Harris were shocked, Trump’s political resurrection at the hands of his 72 million voters was hardly surprising. Neither his Republican primary opponents nor Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Harris have ever figured out how to counter his frenetic, splenetic campaign style. Biden’s election in 2020 had everything to do with Trump’s self-inflicted wounds rather than with an effective campaign on Biden’s part.
In 2024, thankfully, the country will not suffer its own wounds from a drawn-out tallying of the vote. Trump won, decisively, both in the Electoral College and the popular vote. In any election up until 2016, such a decisive victory would have provided an opportunity for the country to heal from a brutal campaign.
That Trump should re-enter the Oval Office as a uniter, not a divider, is almost certainly too much to ask. But he will enter as a second-term president, which means that, if he so chooses, he can spend four years governing rather than campaigning. And that would allow the public at large to dial down the amped-up political rhetoric of the last nine years and, perhaps, to set the stage for a more peaceful campaign and election in 2028.
Healing wounds
As Catholics, we can and should lead the way in healing the wounds of the last decade. Our approach to politics should not and cannot be one defined by allegiance to a particular political party, much less allegiance to a man — other than Jesus Christ. Political life, the Catholic Church teaches, must be oriented toward the common good, and we build up the common good by conforming society to the truth.
When Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance take office in January 2025, Catholics, in particular, must do as the Our Sunday Visitor editorial board urged us to do in 2021: hold the new administration accountable for its policies and actions.
To the extent that a second Trump administration puts forward pro-life and pro-family policies like those proposed during the campaign by Vance (for instance, increasing the per-child tax credit to $5,000), we should support those actions.
To the extent that the administration follows through on Trump’s campaign promise to mandate coverage of in vitro fertilization, a procedure that the Catholic Church teaches is immoral because it separates the unitive and procreative aspects of the sexual act and creates millions of “excess” embryos every year, we should and must oppose it.
As the new administration’s foreign policy becomes clear, we must judge it in light of the church’s teachings on just war, and not simply declare “my country (or my president), right or wrong.”
As Trump’s overheated and un-Christian campaign rhetoric on immigrants takes the form of concrete proposals to address the decades-long immigration crisis, we must judge those proposals in light of the church’s teaching on the inherent dignity of every human being, the inviolability of the family, the right of people to migrate in search of a better life, and the right of countries to control their borders.
We must be vigilant, too, regarding any actions by the administration that would translate Trump’s calls during the campaign to violate the Constitution (for instance, by locking up or deporting political opponents) into reality.
There is nothing sacrosanct about the Constitution, but it has proved, over the past 235 years, mostly to safeguard the common good. In Trump’s first term, Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr courageously stood in the way of various efforts by Trump to use the power of the federal government to pursue his personal vendettas. We are unlikely to have such men in that office during Trump’s second term.
Most of all, we must remember and remind our friends and family and colleagues and neighbors that Trump and Vance — like Harris and Biden — are neither demons nor gods but humans, and our hope lies not in humans but in Christ. They need our prayers.
We do not know what the next four years hold in store, but God does, and he is always true.
The members of the OSV Editorial Board include Father Patrick Briscoe, OP; Gretchen R. Crowe; Paulina Guzik; Matthew Kirby; Peter Jesserer Smith and Scott P. Richert.
