In more than a decade since taking over as head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis has left little doubt about his preferences in American politics
Even in the face of the Democratic Party’s unflinching dogma promoting abortion — a procedure Catholic theology considers equivalent to murder — he has made his distaste for conservatives clear.
But in cautiously weighing in on the U.S. presidential election Friday, the pope exercised a kind of ambiguity that’s unlikely to please either side, but might give millions of voters something to think about — especially those on the left.
According to CBS News, Francis was asked during an in-flight interview how he would advise American voters to choose between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris — an abortion rights extremist — and former President Donald Trump and his vows to deport illegal immigrants.
Francis drew a moral equivalency between the two — at least going by the CBS report.
“They are both against life — the one who throws away migrants and the one who kills children,” he said.
“One must choose the lesser of two evils,” he said. “Who is the lesser of two evils, that lady or that gentleman, I do not know.”
The words he used spoke to the importance of the issues.
“It should be clear that sending migrants away, denying migrants the capacity to work, to not welcome migrants, it is a sin. It is grave,” Francis said, according to CBS.
“Grave” in this case isn’t just another adjective. In Catholic terms, it’s a deliberate defiance of divine law. Coming from the pope, that’s a big, big deal.
But for many conservative Catholic Americans, the question is not the treatment of “migrants,” but the treatment of the country they’re entering.
And being in favor of upholding American immigration law — which includes deporting those who come to the country illegally and stay here illegally (not to mention committing horrendous crimes while being here illegally) — does not mean being “against life.”
It means being in favor of upholding the laws as they are enacted in the democratic republic of the United States of America.
The virulent opposition to illegal immigration among conservatives and the Republican Party is not based on opposition to the “immigration” part of that — it’s to the “illegal” part.
No country is, or should be, more welcoming to legal immigration than a country literally created by immigration.
For Democratic “Catholics,” though, including President Joe Biden and tens of millions of others, the pope’s comments about abortion should be a different matter.
“Whether you like the word or not, it is a killing,” he said, according to CBS. “It is an assassination, and on this we should be clear.”
There’s not a lot of wiggle room there. There are, no doubt, countless millions of American Catholics who have made their peace with the infanticide known as “abortion,” no matter what the church’s official position on the matter is.
(The ostensibly Catholic Biden’s obscene craven caving to the left wing of his party on the subject is only the most public example of sacrificing morality to political expedience. He’s far from alone.)
Since the judicial monstrosity of Roe v. Wade in 1973, American culture has been steeped in the idea that abortion is not only an acceptable option, it is an actual “right” guaranteed by the Constitution.
The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe didn’t change that — and it’s not going to change overnight.
The evil done by Justice Harry Blackmun and his six fellow justices will live long after them.
But the pope’s words about abortion can’t be fogged with a semantic dispute as they can when it comes to “migrants” and whether they’re “legal” or “illegal.”
There is no doubt there are times when “killing” and “assassination” are justified — the concept of a “just war” is part of the official Catholic catechism. But the pro-abortion side never tries to make the argument that the destruction of human beings in their mothers’ wombs is “justifiable” killing.
They pretend it’s not “killing” at all, just a medical procedure that removes an unwanted growth from a woman’s body.
Whether he wanted to or not, Francis drew a line in his comments on Friday — and it’s a line every reasoning human being understands, regardless of political preferences.
In Francis’ take, Americans who listen to him — which is, theoretically at least, all who consider themselves Catholic — have to decide which is the “lesser evil,” destroying an innocent human life for what amounts in almost all cases as a matter of convenience, or upholding the duly enacted laws of the oldest constitutional republic on earth.
“Grave sin” and “assassination” are damning words to describe political positions, but they’re the words of the leader of the Roman Catholic church.
That should give millions of Americans — even those who don’t consider themselves Catholic — a lot to think about.
But for the rational, honest ones, the decision won’t be hard at all.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.