Mr. Vice President:
This evening, you were quoted as having said at a Turning Point rally in Atlanta: “I think it’s very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”
There is a familiar nostrum, applied to certain new converts to Catholicism – to wit, that they think that they’re more Catholic than the Pope. While such may not be a fair evaluation in most cases, let it be said that you have today, in this respect, set a new benchmark. You have, sir, raised (or lowered) the bar. The way in which the manner and content of your address to the Holy Father have combined disrespect and ignorance is breathtaking, to the point where it hardly seems fruitful to address you at all. Taking, however, at face value your words from last year’s National Prayer Breakfast describing yourself as a “baby Catholic,” it seems just possible enough that there might be some point to writing this communication.
It appears that you cited just war theory against the Holy Father. While there are in our time real questions about just war theory as a sufficient standard to support military action, it remains indisputably a necessary standard – that is to say, an action corresponding to just war standards may still not be just, but one failing to reach those standards cannot be just.
We doubt it would be fruitful to examine the conditions for jus ad bellum, for entering into war, considering how little information the American citizenry has been afforded about the reasons for this conflict. There are, however, two points. First, “legitimate authority” under the law of the United States would entail authorization from Congress – although no one seems to take that law at all seriously. Second, military action should be a last resort; we have little way to judge this without access to intelligence briefings. However, if reports in the press are to be believed, you, having presumably the same access to intelligence as the President (and to have examined it at least as carefully, if not more so) did not consider this to be the case.
With regard to jus in bello, we can entertain no ambiguity whatsoever. Last night on Fox, you stated:
The president has the prerogative to set American foreign policy, he’s got the prerogative to set American immigration policy. He has to look out for the interests of the United States of America, and that inevitably means that when the Vatican comments on issues of public policy, sometimes there’s going to be agreement, of course, and sometimes there’s going to be disagreement.
In some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on in the Catholic church. But when they’re in conflict, they’re in conflict. I don’t worry about it too much.
Excuse our directness, sir: This is disingenuous. No one – not you, nor the president, nor the Holy Father – would characterize Iran’s wholesale killing of protesters in January as “Iranian domestic policy.” Nor have either of our last two Popes called for a global vigil for peace over American immigration policy, or practically any other policy of any nation, for that matter. The Holy Father was clearly acting in response to the ultimatum from the president last Tuesday:
This is not “American foreign policy”; it is an unambiguously genocidal threat. The president has confirmed that he was serious, and he is spectacularly armed with nuclear weapons – which is what would be needed to inflict the level of destruction he was threatening to visit on a nation of over ninety million persons, with a geographic footprint approximately the size of Alaska. If genocide is not a “matter of morality,” then what is, pray tell? No one, neither Catholic nor Muslim, pagan nor atheist, has any prerogative to set any policy apart from the universal moral imperative to do good and avoid evil.
Through Lent, we read in the story of the Exodus how God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. It would be easy to treat that statement as reflecting the ultimate reducibility of all causality to the Deity on the part of a primitive mind. However, it is worth considering how Providence can constrict our choices from a spectrum to a binary, forcing us to expose our fundamental option, for good or for ill. A couple might spend years agonizing about adopting a child, but when a starving and injured orphan appears on their doorstep, they must act – or fail to act. Conversely, when someone’s heart is set on evil, the circumstantial luxury which strings others along through empty promises and plausible deniability serves only to delay the inevitable while damage accrues. Clarity is best. God made Pharaoh obstinate; he brought about the circumstances which would disclose his true intentions. We suggest fraternally to you, as a brother in Christ, that you may be facing such a moment yourself.
You prefaced your remark, cited in the first paragraph, with the phrase: “In the same way that it’s important for the vice president of the United States, to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy…”—do you seriously propose yourself as a model of prudence and care in expression to the Pope? Your prevarications are deceiving no one, not even you; it seems, we fear, that these are your true colors showing. A little over a year ago, you argued that institutional harshness and self-protection on the part of the least densely populated of the world’s ten wealthiest countries was of the order of charity. While that claim was bogus, we were willing at the time to offer grace; it is not always easy convincing people how many bad outcomes are virtually contained in a single deficient principle. The template for the ordo amoris was articulated by Paul, long before Thomas Aquinas: “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury.” In light of the current situation, it must be said bluntly: It is offensive to talk of charity while prioritizing particular national interests destructive to the world’s most vulnerable (or, in the present case, to the whole world) in the same breath, especially when done sophistically.
As a matter of fact, it’s simpler than that: love God and love neighbor. The one heart will treat the other, Divine or human, exactly the same: as a “thou” or as an “it.” Should we be shocked that you are so ready to shrug off your master’s mock depiction of Christ and his irrational insults to Christ’s vicar on earth, on Divine Mercy weekend no less, as cheap humor and policy discussion, respectively? No, but it’s no less lamentable for that. For all that, we wish you nothing less than we wish for ourselves: liberation and conversion from the heart.
Dr. Paul Chu is currently a philosophy instructor for CTState, the Connecticut Community College, and has previously taught philosophy in college, university, and seminary settings. He also served as a staff writer and editor for various national publications. He is co-founder of Sacred Beauty, a Private Association of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport dedicated to honoring the beauty and holiness of God through artistic and intellectual creativity founded in prayer, especially Eucharistic contemplation. He contributes regularly to https://questionsdisputedandotherwise.substack.com/.
V. J. Tarantino is co-founder of Sacred Beauty, a Private Association of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport. She has studied ancient and Medieval metaphysics and has devoted her adult life to the service of liturgy (study of liturgical texts and norms, the cultivation of sacred elocution, musical performance and composition, the beautification of sacred space, and the organization and direction of public Eucharistic Adoration) and to immersion in the writings of the Doctors of the Church and of recent Popes. Her writing can be found at https://questionsdisputedandotherwise.substack.com/
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