By Mathias Risse
The views expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy or Harvard Kennedy School. These perspectives have been presented to encourage debate on important public policy challenges.
This is my most personal commentary so far, so please bear with me. Pope Francis, whose successor will soon be elected, advocated for the downtrodden, the rejected, the poor. His was to Lampedusa, known for large numbers of destitute arrivals from across the Mediterranean. Days before he died, Francis . For his papacy, which would last twelve years, Jorge Manuel Bergoglio elected the name “Francis” to follow St. Francis of Assisi. The earlier Francis too embodied love for the vulnerable, and in this regard both are recognizable human rights figures, important differences notwithstanding. I grew up Catholic, was born in one of Germany’s most Catholic cities (Paderborn), and in fact, before my debatably lackluster career in academia I had an undebatably stellar and only mildly less competitive career as an altar boy in , Westphalia, Germany. (Yes, really, all parts of it.) So on the occasion of this important transition for the Catholic Church I would like to articulate some questions that I have both as a human rights person and as someone with a decent understanding of Catholic doctrine. These are questions about how Catholics feel about certain policies of this administration, which stands for cruelty against the vulnerable and for a gaslighting approach to political messaging. These questions, I believe, track some of what Pope Francis, an , stood for, for reasons that would register both from a human rights standpoint and from the standpoint of Catholic doctrine.
Let’s start with the Old Testament, specifically the Ten Commandments. Let’s pick one that is easy to interpret: the ninth, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” Why not? First of all, it means wronging this person. Secondly, it is bad for you since it undermines your integrity, the essence of your personhood. Thirdly, it sows discord: “Every city or house divided against itself will not stand” (Matthew 12: 25). It has been known for thousands of years that such behavior corrodes societies: that is why this is in the Ten Commandments. Trump has filed or inspired hundreds of around “election fraud,” ascribing multifarious versions of dishonesty to his political opponents, and getting many followers so agitated that they stormed the Capitol. In his second administration, he surrounds himself with people echoing this theme. He reiterated the by talking about “all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected.” Biden received 81,284,666 votes to Trump’s 74,224,319. Biden received 51.3%. It seems to me that continuing to suggest against all evidence that Biden won because of cheating means to bear false witness against both Biden and the American electorate.
Among the ongoing developments from claims of election fraud are federal efforts to , a state responsibility – while declining requests for , arguing that that is no federal responsibility. Solidarity at the national level is no longer an American thing. We the people do not stand up for each other, not even when storms bring devastation. (For how that wasn’t meant to be this way, see my discussion of Patriots’ Day.) These are priorities a government would have that is based on bearing false witness – and if one believes in the wisdom captured by the Ten Commandment, would this not be profoundly worrying?
On Judgement Day, they can see right through you, they have all the facts, and I suppose they do not want to hear everything blamed on ominous “Marxists” or “lunatics.”
If you take Catholicism seriously, you know it is a metaphysical doctrine. It offers a view of what is in the world. There is this world in which we live, and there is this other, next world that is more important and lasting. This next world includes a good place, paradise, and a bad place, hell. It’s on Judgement Day that it gets sorted who goes where. Much Christian art depicts just how that is going to unfold. In the Sistine Chapel, where the next pope will be elected, cover the back wall and dominates the space. Michelangelo died centuries ago, but Judgement Day is a Catholic thing. On Judgement Day, they can see right through you, they have all the facts, and I suppose they do not want to hear everything blamed on ominous “Marxists” or “lunatics.” Judgment Day is when reality ultimately catches up. Might this not be a reminder that certain acts in this world should be straightened out before it comes to that? Might this not be a reminder that the truth matters?
If you take Catholicism seriously, you also know it is an ethical doctrine. The Ninth Commandment is an ethical commandment, and once we get to the New Testament, the big theme is love. You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39). Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:44). Mark 12:31 reminds us that the one about loving your neighbor as yourself is the most important commandment God wishes us to follow. Matthew 6:24 points out that nobody can serve two masters: for instance, you cannot serve both God and money. You have to prioritize either moral and spiritual ambitions or worldly success, but you must make a choice. John 14:15 states that love of God involves keeping these commandments. Love is the opposite of cruelty. Pope Francis’s love of all humanity was unbounded and he emphatically reached out to the most marginalized in society. Isn’t that an inspiration?
It is impermissible to inflict wrongs to create certain outcomes on balance. The good must come about the right way.
Catholics might argue Trump’s overall record in terms of achieving Catholic positions makes it all worthwhile. Cruelty is bad, gaslighting is bad, violations of Old or New Testament prescriptions are bad, sure. Still, there is victory in the abortion domain, . I think this is a widespread Catholic approach to the situation. I understand how people would want to take this route, but I sincerely doubt that it is open to Catholics to think this way. Catholicism is no consequentialist doctrine. What matters is not that on balance most good is achieved regardless of costs. Rejecting consequentialist approaches is a way of honoring God’s presence in everything. It is impermissible to inflict wrongs to create certain outcomes on balance. The good must come about the right way. To be sure, life sometimes confronts us with hard choices, such as in clinical settings the choice between saving either the baby or the mother (an example often used in this context). Catholic doctrine advises that, for instance, you cannot kill the baby to save the mother. But you might take certain measures that lead to the death of the child and also save the mother. This is the , which goes back to Aquinas in the 13th century. You may do something that itself is neutral (measures with effects on the mother) but has unintended though foreseeable bad consequences (say, death of the baby) and also a good outcome (saving the mother). But you are not allowed to inflict evil to bring about something good (kill the baby to save the mother). This point also applies outside of narrow contexts like this medical scenario to which the Doctrine speaks most directly.
The philosophical merits of this stance are debatable. The point here is this: The Doctrine of Double Effect allows Catholics to respect divinely created value in various entities while offering advice on what to do when trade-offs must be made and actions might have morally mixed outcomes. What is not sanctioned – as far as I can see, though others might disagree at various levels, but surely the matter is tremendously important these days – by the broader outlook behind this Doctrine is to think of a cruel, false-witness-bearing, gaslighting presidency as means to reach a situation Catholics consider better vis-à-vis abortion.
Here is what I am thinking of when I think of how Catholics act, in inspiring ways. I think of my mother’s father, a Westphalian farmer and shepherd by the name of Kaspar Wieseler, who spent all his life in Kirchborchen. I only knew him as a distant, reticent man who died when I was 11, and whose love I felt for the first time when I saw him last and I held his hand on his hospital bed, a warm hand. What I learned about him later, and what everyone in my family knew, is this. During World War II, when prisoners of war and forced laborers were distributed across Germany to do work on farms that could not be done by German men fighting in Hitler’s wars, my grandparents – staunch Catholics who never would have voted for anything other than the Catholic Zentrum party – were also allocated a number of them: French prisoners of war and Polish forced laborers.
How prisoners were treated was at the discretion of their “hosts,” and treating them with common decency could incur high costs in Hitler’s Germany. During meals they were often seated separately to eat mediocre food. During the day, they were pushed to their limits. At my grandfather’s house, everyone sat at the same table and ate the same food. They were all treated the same as they worked in the fields. On one occasion, Kaspar Wieseler encountered an escaped prisoner in the fields and gave him his coat. Or so I heard. I cannot verify this, but Westphalians are not known for boasting. At the end of the war, when all authority broke down, some prisoners took revenge on those who mistreated them. They plundered and killed. Outside of my grandfather’s farm, some of them stood guard to tell others who came to loot that good people lived there. I never heard any of this as a matter of pride. I heard it in the spirit of what everyday decency demanded, and what it would lead to.
That’s what I grew up with, and I hang on to it in day-to-day life. I see it in the human rights movement. I see it among Catholics who are sincere in their efforts, and I definitely see in among Catholics across the political spectrum. But the questions I have articulated here will have to be real questions for them. Human decency has ways of being present across worldviews. My parents, both around 80, help out with charitable work every week, also to support refugees who have been allocated to the village. Matthew 25:40: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Isn’t this inspiring?
Mathias Risse, Faculty Director, Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights
