Prophetic or foolish?

 

In the official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, there is a comment and a sort of warning regarding the election for US President.  While not entirely unprecedented, it represents the kind of intrusion into politics that both voters and candidates resent.  Worse, it comes at a time when Rome itself is in theological and moral disarray so it cannot speak from some high place but as a church in the midst of the same kind of turmoil and conflict as politics in America.  What is truly odd is that it represents a tacit endorsement of Harris (and Biden) even though they hold positions in direct conflict with Roman Catholic teaching.  But since when has that stopped anyone?

With Trump, this forced polarization would continue, transforming it into the domination of one America over the other. With Harris, there would be attempts to reduce it, as Biden did. The latter’s failure, however, explains the fact that there is not much room to recover a form of unity both at the political level and in the social and cultural self-perception of the country...

It is a unique election because it is quite clear that, if Trump wins, his political project would be an authoritarian remake of the State and the expulsion of the other part of the United States from the federal and state governments, as already done with the Supreme Court. It would be an unprecedented twisting of democracy.

As some of my readers recall, I am not favorably inclined by any of the current candidates but I am much more comfortable with the actual record of Trump as President over his rhetoric than I am the actual record and rhetoric of the Biden/Harris tenure.  Nobody votes for Trump because of his personality and hopefully no one would vote for Harris because of hers.  Neither should people vote by the directive of a Roman Catholic newspaper half a world a way.  The voters have a duty to know first hand what the candidates stand for, promote, intend, and promise.  Sadly, there is nary a mention in the article about the terrible state of abortion politics in America.  Here Trump and Vance seem to have waffled and there is no political party platform that stands strong on the cause of life from beginning to end.

It just goes to show you that politicians make bad theologians and theologians make bad politicians.  I wish that were not the case but it is.