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In this episode Trent sits down with Emily Torres of Catholic Converts to talk American politics.
Check out Emily Torres on TikTok
Transcription:
Trent:
Last month I spoke at the Catholic Answers Conference and I had the chance to sit down with Emily Torres, the Catholic Convert to have a discussion about American politics. So check it out and be sure to check out her work at the link below.
Emily:
Alright, thank you so much, Trent, for meeting with me again a year later.
Trent:
Thank you for having me.
Emily:
Yes. So I want to talk about something that may be a little controversial, but I feel like over the past few years especially, it’s become increasingly louder, especially on social media. So that of course is American politics. And so I wanted your perspective on American politics and values in general. How Catholic are American values, particularly are American values on individuality and freedom?
Trent:
I think it really depends on what kind of language you use because people can use language in two different ways to either reinforce Catholic values or to denigrate them. So even just talking about freedom, right? So freedom is a fundamental American value and freedom is also an important element of the Catholic faith. But it depends what you mean by the word freedom. If by freedom you mean being able to do whatever you want, well then no, that’s not a Catholic value. But if by freedom you mean the ability to choose the good or to choose various goods, then that’s something that the Catholic church would support and has fought for people whose freedoms have been subjugated throughout history and various governments and supporting things like worker solidarity movements. I mean, you think about the work of Pope St. John Paul II in Poland to combat communism.
And so we think of American values of freedom in contrast to communist values where freedom only exists in so far as your role in preserving the state that the state does not. I think an American value to compare some more communist states would be that the state exists to serve the individual, not the individual, does not exist to serve the state. So that would be one example there. But I think one problem that comes up in political discussions though, is that a lot of questions we have about what should we do in a particular situation? How do we promote human flourishing, promote the common good of society, we’re going to disagree, and the church itself will not have a concrete specified answer. There’s various judgments we will make about what’s the best way to achieve the good, and here we’re going to be using the virtue of prudence.
So prudence is just figuring out, okay, how do I use reason to get to the good? And it’s not always easy. There’s many times in history where government will make a policy with the best of intentions and everything will just fall apart and there’ll be worse things that will happen. There’s an apocryphal story in India where there was a bunch of cobras and they want to get rid of the cobras. So what do you do? Oh, we’re just going to pay people 50 rupees for every cobra you catch. And that seems right, okay, then we’ll get rid of all the cobras. And that’s a good policy. Well, what happens? Oh, there’s more cobras now because people realize it’s cheaper to farm and breed cobras and turn them in for the money instead of catching wild ones. So then when they rescind the fine than the bread, cobras are released into the wild.
And there’s all on reason TV has a whole series of these called a history of unintended consequences. So that’s why we have to discern and discuss these things and be open to discussion even if someone has good intentions. I think a lot of people think, oh, that my political opponent, they’re just horrible and want to wreck things. I dunno, maybe. But I think a lot of times people have good intentions, but they have not fully thought through the consequences of their policies. And we have to discuss and debate that as Catholics and really as anybody in this. Yeah.
Emily:
Awesome. So clearly there’s a lot of things that America does very well compared to other countries. I mean throughout history and today, but there’s also
Trent:
Things I need to interrupt you here. You were consistently mispronouncing our country’s name. It is Meka. Meka does things very well.
Emily:
Yes. Thank you for that Meca greatest country in the world. So you threw me off my train of thought tr
Trent:
Well, there’s a lot of things that we do well.
Emily:
There’s a lot of things we do well, but there’s clearly things that we don’t do well or there’s things that
Trent:
One thing we do well, condiments and restaurants.
Emily:
True.
Trent:
You can grab all the ketchup, all the salt you want, and you can just go into the bathroom and nobody’s there with a turns style with a Euro coin in Europe. That’s what I hated paying to go to the bathroom. And you can’t get condiments and you can’t get
Emily:
Ice. I was about to ask for that.
Trent:
Yeah. And then when I get back to America, I’m just chugging ketchup, going to the self-serve, drinking ice.
Emily:
I’m surprised we haven’t found that secret footage of you in the McDonald’s.
Trent:
I’m sure it’s on TikTok somewhere and I got back from Europe. So there’s things you do well, and then there’s other things that I will admit
Emily:
When
Trent:
I go to other countries, I’m quite impressed by like, oh wow, it’s really clean and wonderful and organized here.
Emily:
Yes. Or even, I mean, I was more getting at the fact that we have a big movement towards female reproductive rights and pro-choice abilities and things like that
Trent:
We’re even worse than some European countries.
Emily:
Yes,
Trent:
Exactly. Where they will outlaw abortion at 12 weeks or 20 weeks we’re on par with China and North Korea of having abortion basically on demand for all nine months of pregnancy.
Emily:
Yes, correct. And so given the fact that some of our policies are very anti-Catholic, how should that shape our view of patriotism and our patriotism towards America?
Trent:
Yeah, well, I, and this is interesting that I remember when not, I remember, remember reading about discussions about when John F. Kennedy wanted to become president of the United States, and that was very controversial because people thought, oh, if he’s Catholic, he’s going to be only taking orders from the Pope, not doing what’s best. But that was the reverse. There was, Al Smith was a Catholic nominee for president back in the 1920s. He was the first serious nominee to run for the presidency and be a Catholic. And he lost. And one of the big reasons was because he was Catholic. I mean, back in the early 20th century, the Ku Klux Klan, before they were a terrorist organization, focused primarily on disenfranchising and oppressing African-Americans. They went after Catholics. A lot of the Ku Klux Klan believed that Catholic churches had secret armaments of weapons in the church basement so they could take over the country. And so they would go and try to burn down churches. And so antique Catholicism, there was a great book I think Jenkins wrote a few years ago called Anti Catholicism, the Last Acceptable Prejudice that You Can Talk. You have Diane Feinstein during the nomination hearings for Amy Coney Barrett. And she says, I’m worried about you because the dogma lives loudly within you. If someone had said that about a Muslim juris saying the Dawa lives loudly within you, their career would be over.
But with Catholics it’s different. So I think that when it comes to, so there was a concern, okay, I’m not taking orders from the Pope doing what’s best for our country. Then you get politicians like the Cuomos, the Kennedys, Ted Kennedy used to be pro-life and a lot of Democrats used to be pro-life, but then saying, oh, well I’m personally pro-life, but I’m not going to impose my Catholic values on other people. So it’s about walking that line to see, look, as a Catholic politician, I want to serve the common good of society. And there are just some basic moral truths. All people of goodwill should be able to recognize that these are not strictly religious issues like life among them or marriage or the rights of parents to educate their children. These are things you can know through the natural law, the church has made evident to us, and so a Catholic politician should promote these values. Now, there might be things that a Catholic politician is not going to promote compulsory mass attendance because we don’t live in a Catholic country. Not yet. But there are values that are for the common good of all they absolutely should be promoting.
Emily:
And so on that note, if there was a Catholic politician running for office, would it be prudent for them to advocate for something like Overturning or Borg, Geel versus Hodges? What would you say about that?
Trent:
I think that it would depend. So once again, you used an interesting word there. Prudent. You could say, permissible, would it be wrong or sinful for them to do that? And the answer is no,
Emily:
Correct.
Trent:
Prudence deals with the question that this is even addressed in Evangelian vitae by Pope St. John Paul ii in paragraph 73, he talks about what do you do as a Catholic politician? You want to promote life, for example, you want to protect human life. So let’s say you’ve got legal abortion, and this would be in our country, could the Catholic members of Congress vote for a 20 week federal abortion ban because that allow for abortions before 20 weeks, but it will outlaw some abortions. And what Pope Saint Chambal II said was, if a Catholic politician’s record is clear on the matter and what they’re doing is they’re trying to restrict evil, not expand it, then the answer is yes. That here, it’s not like you’re not trying to make abortion legal for pre 20 week old children. It already is. You’re just trying to reduce the evil as much as you can. You’re not obligated to do the impossible. It’s not like saying, oh, well, Catholic politician can only say, I’m only going to pass bills that outlaw every single abortion where it’s not a place to get that done.
So prudence, you might say, okay, there’s a law that would be good, but if I attempt to pass that law or overturn this particular court case, I’m not going to succeed and the backlash will hinder what I’m doing. And so in the case of Revell versus Hodges, there are arguments for and against that principle. And so people just have to kind of debate this prudential question. Could we overturn it and achieve a lot of good in restoring marriage, what it was like overturning Roe v Wade, or is this a different animal altogether? And it will cause, it will set us back more in trying to do that. And once again, as I said, there’s not a lot of easy answers here on Prudential judgements. People of goodwill will reasonably disagree, and we have to be able to have those disagreements.
Emily:
Yeah. Do you think that it’s the policies that shape the culture or the culture that will change the policies?
Trent:
It’s both. Yeah, it, it’s a mutual feedback loop. I mean, abortions radically increased after 1973 or when Roe v Wade was passed. It’s not like people suddenly randomly like, oh, now I want to get more abortions. It’s being told, oh, this must not be that bad legal, so why not? I mean, Martin Luther King Jr. Said that laws cannot change hearts, but they can restrain the heartless. But I do think laws can change hearts some respect, maybe not everybody, but it shows there is a big change. But a lot of times to get the law changed, if you do not have the hearts and minds with it, you’re either not going to get it changed, or if you change it through a loophole, it’s going to spring right back.
Emily:
So
Trent:
I think that you need to, it’s both working in tandem.
Emily:
Perfect. Okay. There’s been a lot of talk lately, I would say from the Republican party, and I know you’ve made a lot of content kind of discussing how leftist ideology is not in line with Catholic teaching, and some of it’s pretty insane. And so I appreciate the criticism on that. But in terms of the Republican party, I think sometimes for Catholics and Christians in general, they can treat the Republican party as if it’s fully in line with Christian ideology and teaching. And so I guess my question to you is, how true is that? Is the Republican party fully in line with Christian conservative values? And then I have a few more specifics following up on that.
Trent:
Well, no, because the platform of the major political parties is not an explicitly Catholic or even an explicitly religious platform. It’s based on certain political philosophies. So it’s not fully in line. There’s hardly any, I mean, the closest one might be the American Solidarity Party, and there might be some people who will disagree with some aspects of their platform, but they might be the closest one. But among the major parties, no, there’s none that’s fully in line though. I do think a case can be made that among the major political parties, whether it’s in the United States or in other countries, there are some parties that will be closer to Catholic values than others. So on the one hand, I hate when people say, oh, well this is a Catholic party, or this isn’t. It’s a binary. But I don’t like when people pretend like, oh, well I’m not this party or that party, I’m a Catholic. As if all the political parties are equally non-Catholic in their respects. How could that even plausibly be true? Are you saying, especially if you look at all the political parties, there are some wild ones out there. Some are clearly going to be closer or further away
To Catholic values. So it’s important for us. So even when it comes to Republican values, well, I made episodes about this during the election when Donald Trump was arguing for expanding access to in vitro fertilization, saying like, oh, we want more babies, so we want to expand IVF, oh, you’re going to be killing more babies in their embryonic stage of life. Don’t do that. Why are we doing that when there’s many other things we could be doing to help married couples, bring children forth from the marital act, which children have a right to come into existence through. It doesn’t mean children who come into existence through another means, whether it’s IVF or prostitution or adultery, those children are always good. Children are always good, but it doesn’t follow the way they came into the world is always good or that we should be supporting it. So that’s just one example there. And there’s others that could be given.
Emily:
So more specifically, I kind of wanted to touch on the idea of free speech. So a lot of people in the Republican party, I mean, and in the Democratic party, so I don’t want to label it too strictly, but advocate for this American value of freedom of speech, how hate speech shouldn’t really necessarily be a thing, it’s just free speech in general. So as a Christian, do we believe in this inherent right to free speech? Why or why not?
Trent:
It depends what you mean by free speech.
Emily:
Yeah
Trent:
You have the freedom to be able to speak the truth, absolutely. But it doesn’t mean you have the freedom. People have often said in the past, looking at Catholic values and religious liberty and things like that, error does not have rights, but people have rights. So in the past there was more an emphasis on error does not have rights, but people have rights and people can find themselves in error. And so one should not violate their rights, but it doesn’t mean you have to always support the errors that they engage in. So when it comes to freedom of speech, the American principle of freedom of speech is not a strictly Catholic principle, and that’s just the first amendment. Congress shall make no law respecting establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or a bridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right to peaceably assemble.
And I’m grateful in America that we have more robust protections on speech than in other parts of the world where when you try to promote Catholic values in England and France and Canada, secular liberalism will quickly persecute you and make that illegal. And then of course, in Muslim bureaucracies or things like that, you have no freedom of speech at all. As a Christian, you can just, so in America, the idea is that you can basically say whatever you want as long as the restrictions would be. You can’t directly incite people to violence. You can’t engage in false statement knowingly false statements or reckless statements that hurt others. So defamation, slander, libel. So there are exceptions, but in general, obscenity. So you can’t put pornography to be publicly displayed in public, although I’m always surprised at what manages to get away out there in the world, what can be shown and what can’t. But in general, in America, you can really say a lot, but you just can’t threaten violence directly, threaten violence, I should say, because there’s people who obliquely threaten violence against Christians and somehow they get away with it.
Emily:
Exactly.
Trent:
But for Catholicism, no. I’ve talked about this in a recent episode, and I believe the question of freedom of speech is a prudential judgment living in a country where you have relatively free speech, I would say in the world we live in now in the United States, that tends to better serve the church to be able to speak that when you restrict unanimous speech, it tends not to protect the truth, but to suppress the truth. But you could live in a country where it’s an entirely Catholic country and you have laws that prohibit blasphemy. The church could, that would not be in contrary to what even the second Vatican Council taught about how you could have a state where Catholicism is the preferred religion, for example, and blasphemy laws could serve a purpose there as long as they’re enforce fairly and proportionately. But we are a very, very long way from having something like that in the United States of America. And honestly though, I do think the American church has really thrived in the United States because of the idea of separation of church and state. That is actually a phrase that’s not in the Constitution.
It’s first found in Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist. And then it appears in the 20th century Supreme Court ruling, sorry, Jefferson used the phrase a wall of separation because he’s letting the Danbury Baptist know, don’t worry, we’re not going to come after you or we’re going to have religious toleration here. Whereas in the original colonies, when the colonies were first founded, the only places you could have religious freedom were Rhode Island, AKA rogues island is what it was called. Or Mary land Catholics could be fined in Mary land, AKA Maryland, but otherwise you could get expelled from the other colonies for they had a poppish act of expelling popery from Massachusetts spay colon, I recall. So I think that when it comes to freedom of speech, it’s certainly not a Catholic value, but it can serve Catholic
Ends.
And I think that, as I said, so in Europe you have national churches in Germany, if you register as a Catholic part of your taxes, go to the Catholic church. Has that been great for the German Catholic church? I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
Emily:
Awesome. Okay. Last question very quickly, immigration. So to what extent do countries have the ability to defend their borders under Catholic teaching? And to what extent do people have the right to migrate?
Trent:
Both.
Emily:
Yeah,
Trent:
It’s both.
Emily:
Yeah.
Trent:
And there’s always an extreme on this issue. There is clearly a right to migrate that human God made the world for all human beings. That’s called the universal destination of goods. And so for example, if Aquinas would say that you can’t kill out of necessity. So if I need to live and I have to kill you to live, even if you’re not threatening me, if I need to kill you to get something, no, you can’t do that. You can’t murder out of necessity, sorry, not murder. You can’t kill out of necessity. You could take out of necessity and it wouldn’t be stealing. So if I’m lost in the woods and there’s a cabin and it’s snowing, I’m going to die. I can break into that cabin and find shelter, and it would not be sinful to do that. But if I’m just hiking and I think, oh, it’d be cool to stay here for the night and just break into this guy’s cabin and stay there with my two other bear friends and eat his porridge, that would be theft.
Not in a case of necessity for that. So for example, so fleeing ethnic cleansing, for example, or grave that’s threats to life or fleeing religious persecution. There are many reasons where someone would have a legitimate right to migrate to provide for the good of themselves and their family. Now that being said, the catechism does say that the more prosperous nations, to the extent they are able, should welcome the foreigner into their land. But the foreigner also has an obligation to respect that country, to assimilate, to preserve the order of society. So everybody has to, there’s clearly a right to have borders, otherwise you couldn’t have nations. But there is also a right to migrate. And I think in general there is, given the preferential option of the poor and Catholic social teaching, when looking at the scales, it will tip a bit in favor of the migrant. But there’s many policies today that are anti-Catholic and trying to say there’s no migrants have no duty to the host nation that brings them in. So they can bring with them dangerous ideology, for example, like Muslim Sharia law. That would be something that would be contrary to Catholic teaching. But when it comes to what particular policies one might have or how to enforce immigration rules, once again, that’s a prudential judgment people are going to disagree about.
Emily:
Awesome. So I think what we learned today is prudence is an important virtue.
Trent:
It is. It’s one of the cardinal ones. So we ought to pray to have the courage be prudent and always to be temperate with what we put forward. So pray for the cardinal virtues, always guided then by the theological virtues, and to make sure we live in a just society. There we go. I was like, I had the three of prudence. Yeah. Prudence, nce, courage, justice.
Emily:
Perfect.
Trent:
All guided under faith, hope and love.
Emily:
Amen. Alright, thank you so much Trent, for discussing this with me. I appreciate it.
Trent:
Of course.