Catholic Leaders Express Concerns On Trump

Following is a message from Brian Burch, President of catholicvote.org: I am proud to be a co-signatory to the following letter authored by George Weigel and Professor Robert George that was released moments ago. The letter is an appeal to our fellow Catholics to reject the candidacy of Donald Trump and choose one of the qualified alternatives. The letter does not dismiss or deny many of the genuine concerns that have animated Trump supporters. Rather, it affirms that their frustrations are real and legitimate. Please share our message today with your family and friends, especially those living in key primary states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Florida. -Brian  An Open Letter to Catholics, and all People of Good Will  In recent decades, the Republican party has been a vehicle — imperfect, like all human institutions, but serviceable — for promoting causes at the center of Catholic social concern in the United States:  (1) providing legal protection for unborn children, the physically disabled and cognitively handicapped, the frail elderly, and other victims of what Saint John Paul II branded “the culture of death”;  (2) defending religious freedom in the face of unprecedented assaults by officials at every level of government who have made themselves the enemies of conscience;  (3) rebuilding our marriage culture, based on a sound understanding of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife; and  (4) re-establishing constitutional and limited government, according to the core Catholic social-ethical principle of subsidiarity.  There have been frustrations along the way, to be sure; no political party perfectly embodies Catholic social doctrine. But there have also been successes, and at the beginning of the current presidential electoral cycle, it seemed possible that further progress in defending and advancing these noble causes was possible through the instrument of the Republican party.  That possibility is now in grave danger. And so are those causes.  Donald Trump is manifestly unfit to be president of the United States. His campaign has already driven our politics down to new levels of vulgarity. His appeals to racial and ethnic fears and prejudice are offensive to any genuinely Catholic sensibility. He promised to order U.S. military personnel to torture terrorist suspects and to kill terrorists’ families — actions condemned by the Church and policies that would bring shame upon our country.  And there is nothing in his campaign or his previous record that gives us grounds for confidence that he genuinely shares our commitments to the right to life, to religious freedom and the rights of conscience, to rebuilding the marriage culture, or to subsidiarity and the principle of limited constitutional government.  We understand that many good people, including Catholics, have been attracted to the Trump campaign because the candidate speaks to issues of legitimate and genuine concern: wage stagnation, grossly incompetent governance, profligate governmental spending, the breakdown of immigration law, inept foreign policy, stifling “political correctness” — for starters.  There are indeed many reasons to be concerned about the future of our country, and to be angry at political leaders and other elites. We urge our fellow Catholics and all our fellow citizens to consider, however, that there are candidates for the Republican nomination who are far more likely than Mr. Trump to address these concerns, and who do not exhibit his vulgarity, oafishness, shocking ignorance, and — we do not hesitate to use the word — demagoguery.  Mr. Trump’s record and his campaign show us no promise of greatness; they promise only the further degradation of our politics and our culture. We urge our fellow Catholics and all our fellow citizens to reject his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination by supporting a genuinely reformist candidate.  Robert P. George  McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence  Princeton University  George Weigel  Distinguished Senior Fellow and  William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies  Ethics and Public Policy Center and Ryan T. Anderson  William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow  The Heritage Foundation  Stephen M. Barr  University of Delaware  Francis J. Beckwith  Professor of Philosophy and Church–State Studies  Baylor University  Mary Ellen Bork  Ethics and Public Policy Center  Board  Gerard V. Bradley  Professor of Law  University of Notre Dame  Don J. Briel  John Henry Newman Chair of Liberal Arts  University of Mary  Brian Burch  President CatholicVote.org James C. Capretta  Senior Fellow  Ethics and Public Policy Center  Joseph Cella  Founder  National Catholic Prayer Breakfast  Grazie Pozo Christie, M.D.  The Catholic Association  Ann Corkery  Founder Catholic Voices USA  Neil Corkery  Sudan Relief Fund  David Paul Deavel  Interim Editor Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture  Mary Eberstadt  Senior Fellow Ethics and Public Policy Center Eduardo Echeverria  Professor of Philosophy and Systematic Theology  Sacred Heart Major Seminary  Thomas F. Farr  Director Religious Freedom Project  Georgetown University  Matthew J. Franck  Director William E. and Carol G. Simon Center  on Religion and the Constitution Witherspoon Institute  Anna Halpine  Founder World Youth Alliance  Mary Rice Hasson  Director Catholic Women’s Forum Ethics and Public Policy Center  Stephen J. Heaney  Associate Professor of Philosophy University of St. Thomas  John P. Hittinger  Pope John Paul II Forum Center for Thomistic Studies  University of St. Thomas  Elizabeth M. Kelly  Managing Editor Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture  Rachel Lu  Senior Contributor The Federalist  Bruce D. Marshall Lehman Professor of Christian Doctrine  Perkins School of Theology  Southern Methodist University  Robert T. Miller  Professor of Law and  F. Arnold Daum Fellow in Corporate Law  University of Iowa College of Law  Kate O’Beirne  Former Washington Editor National Review  C. C. Pecknold  The Catholic University of America  Robert Royal  Faith and Reason Institute  Deborah Savage  Professor of Philosophy and Theology  University of St. Thomas  Timothy Samuel Shah  Religious Freedom Project  Georgetown University  Nina Shea  Director Center for Religious Freedom  Hudson Institute  Hilary Towers  Developmental psychologist and author  David R. Upham  Associate Professor of Politics  University of Dallas  Edward Whelan  Ethics and Public Policy Center  Stephen P. White  Fellow Ethics and Public Policy Center  Titles and affiliations of each individual are provided for identification purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individual signatories and do not necessarily represent the views of any organization or entity.