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When asked which of the two major U.S. presidential candidates — Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump — American Catholics should vote for, Pope Francis offered a bleak response.
“Both are against life,” Francis said in September while aboard the papal plane, “be it the one who kicks out migrants, or be it the one who kills babies.″
Trump, a Republican, has made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, while Harris, a Democrat, has anchored hers in expanding and codifying abortion access.
And yet, Francis continued, “one should vote, and choose the lesser evil.”
The counsel — delivered on the cusp of an election that, pundits agree, will almost certainly be decided by margins as slim as a Communion wafer — has touched on a central dilemma for many Catholics.
“I’ve always viewed this particular election,” said David Leo, 58, of the Murray-Holladay area, “as voting for the lesser of two evils.”
Neither does he believe he’s alone.
“As I’ve been a fly on the wall and listened to a lot of conversations,” he observed, “I think Pope Francis’ remarks hit home with a lot of Catholics” struggling to weigh Harris’ support of abortion access with Trump’s “vitriolic” approach to immigrants and immigration.
As Stephanie Hoggan, a 62-year-old Catholic living in Murray, summarized, “The Catholic Church does not allow abortion because it is akin to killing, and advocates for immigration policies based on human rights and dignity.”
Within this context, the pope’s remarks are, one could argue, unremarkable. Except for this: the fact that Francis weighed in at all. And also this: the apparent equal weight the Argentine Jesuit appeared to place on abortion and immigration.
Is abortion the bigger sin?
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Cathedral of Madeleine in the Salt Lake City in 2021. Utah Catholics are weighing the issues and whom to vote for in the 2024 presidential election.
Past popes have given U.S. presidential candidates a wide berth — even when, in the case of President Joe Biden, that individual is Catholic. Meanwhile, Catholic theology ranks abortion above the abuse of migrants in terms of sinfulness, said Steven Millies, professor of public theology at Catholic Theological Union.
“Then again, strictly speaking, in terms of moral theology neither candidate performs an abortion and neither does the voter,” Millies continued, explaining he did not see the statement as some kind of shift in Catholic belief.
Nevertheless, Sandy resident Patty Bradley was grateful for the framing, which she felt took into account the “big picture” of a policy’s ability to impact God’s children.
“Separating children from their parents at the border,” the 63-year-old Catholic mused, “is probably just as immoral as someone’s horrible and difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy.”
In the end, Millies was not convinced that the pope’s comments are likely to amount to much at the ballot box.
“The idea of a moral voice overcoming our polarized partisanship to swing an election outcome seems hopelessly out of date in 2024,” he said. “... Those who already agreed with him will agree with him. Those who already disagreed with him probably aren’t listening.”
Sure enough, Utah Catholics interviewed for this story agreed that the pope’s statement did not change their own thinking on the election.
Rather, its greatest significance may lie in reinforcing for many of the faith’s followers a political homelessness italicized by this election’s emphases and reflected in polls showing the Catholic vote almost evenly split between Harris and Trump.
“Most Catholics see life as a seamless fabric, one that stretches from the point of conception to the moment of death,” said attorney Michael O’Brien, a Catholic who represents The Salt Lake Tribune at times in legal matters and writes frequent guest columns. “Major political parties today struggle to address that full fabric, and politicians often seem to focus on one side of it to the exclusion of the other.”
The result, said 69-year-old Hector Mota, who lives in west Salt Lake City’s Poplar Grove, is “great division within the Catholic Church.”
Part (although by no means all) of this division falls along racial lines. According to the Pew Research Center, roughly 60% of white Catholics support Trump and 40% Harris. Those numbers are flipped for Hispanic Catholics.
Other important issues
(Doug Mills | The New York Times) Vice President Kamala Harris speaks as former President Donald Trump looks on during the presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia in September 2024. Utah Catholics are weighing whom to support for president this fall.
Salt Lake City’s Francis Lilly, 45, said “Utah Catholics are split,” with some prioritizing abortion and religious freedom above all else, while others view a wide range of issues — including democracy and climate change — as equally important.
“Our faith,” he said, “speaks to all these concerns.”
So what is a civic-minded Catholic to do?
Identifying the gravest moral issues and prioritizing those is a start, said Father John Evans, vicar general and moderator of the Curia for the Diocese of Salt Lake City.
“A well-formed conscience looks beyond itself to the greater good of society,” Evans said, “even to people outside of your religion because we are all God’s children.”
The priest also pointed to the emphasis some voters place on the Supreme Court and playing the long game, like so many did leading up to the overturning of Roe v. Wade (ending the constitutional right to an abortion), as a valid consideration when weighing one’s options.
Greg W., 67, a Holladay resident who asked that his full name be withheld due to concerns about online backlash, agreed that Trump has failed to “display many Christian traits like mercy and kindness to the immigration problem.” However, he said, the former president “gets credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which is a fundamental priority for me.”
For her part, Hoggan looks beyond the dichotomy of immigration versus abortion to make her choice. Factors she is weighing run the gamut from kitchen table issues like inflation and health care to the environment, gun control, even artificial intelligence — “to name a few.”
Same goes for Bradley, who also named gun control — plus her opposition to capital punishment — as reasons for supporting Harris, although she agreed with the pope that she was choosing between “the lesser of two evils.”
Mota said he looks to the Bible and, specifically, the definition of love found in 1 Corinthians 13 for guidance.
“I look for the person who doesn’t push their fellow man down,” he said, a test he believes Trump fails.
Regardless of one’s decision, Evans said, civic engagement shouldn’t end with voting.
“If my heart and soul is really in it, I’m going to try to change the part I don’t like,” he said. “I’m going to work for something better there.”
