Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 17, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).-
In an interview Wednesday, the chairman of the Federal Election Commission accused Catholic bishops of “hiding” behind the Church’s tax exempt status instead of backing political candidates, and insisted that priests and lay Catholics have a “right” to conduct political activity on parish premises.
The Catholic Church has had long-standing policies against endorsing particular candidates for political office. Experts in civil and canon law explained to CNA why Catholic clerics do not endorse political candidates, and why that issue touches on the religious liberty of the Church.
James E. Trainor, a Catholic, was appointed to the bipartisan commission by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate earlier this year. He spoke Wednesday in an interview with the website Church Militant.
In his interview, Trainor questioned the legal and moral authority of bishops to limit the endorsement of candidates from the pulpit and in the pews.
“I don’t think a bishop has the right to tell a priest that he can’t come out and speak… When the priest takes the vow [sic] of obedience to the bishop, it is in the area of faith and morals, but they have a higher duty to our Lord, and if the bishop is putting something out there that is not right then the priest has an obligation to the faithful to correct it,” he said.
Fr. Pius Pietrzyk, OP, is a civil and canon lawyer who was nominated by President Barack Obama and unanimously confirmed by the Senate to the Board of Directors of the Congressionally-funded Legal Services Corporation, which provides funding for legal aid programs.
The priest, who serves as a professor of canon law at St. Patrick’s University and Seminary in California, told CNA it is not the function of clergy to instruct the laity on who they should choose in the voting booth.
“The primary end of the Church is not the ordering of civil society,” he told CNA. “The primary end of the Church is the sanctification of humanity,” he said. “While the Church is concerned that secular society be just and moral, the prudential decisions on carrying that out is properly the role of lay people in the world.”
“While it is true, as the Second Vatican Council said in Gaudium et Spes, ‘the Church and the political community in their own fields are autonomous and independent from each other,’ that autonomy of the secular world does not mean an autonomy from natural and divine law. The Church must grant to the secular government its legitimate autonomy, and the legitimate freedom of Catholics within a particular country to participate in that governance.”
“Nonetheless,” he said, “the Church has a right and duty to elucidate the moral precepts that guide a society in properly fostering the common good.”
Trainor also said bishops are too cautious about their ability to engage directly in partisan politics under civil law.
“The bishops are using their nonprofit status as a shield to hide behind,” he said, “from having to make a decision about who to support [in the elections].”
He charged that bishops choose to be silent on political matters out of concern they might lose grants received by Catholic institutions for refugee resettlement and other federal programs.
Eric Kniffin, an attorney specializing in First Amendment and religious freedom cases, told CNA that, in practice, bishops have little reason to be concerned about government ramifications from political speech.
“The Internal Revenue Code, on its face, bars tax-exempt organizations—including churches and other religious organizations—from saying anything ‘on behalf of’ or ‘in opposition to’ a political candidate,” Kniffen said. “This restriction, often referred to as the ‘Johnson Amendment,’ is still on the books, even though President Trump has directed the IRS to be lenient in its enforcement of the law.
“At a practical level, the federal government has not had much appetite to enforce this rule,” Kniffin, who has worked for the Department of Justice and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, told CNA.
During the interview, Trainor also said that in his view, civil law prevents bishops from prohibiting their priests from endorsing candidates.
“If you look at it just from a legal perspective, the priest to bishop is still an employer-employee relationship and that’s the employer telling the employee what they can and cannot do.”
“We don’t tolerate that anywhere else, in fact there has been this huge uproar over NFL owners not allowing players on the field to be able to protest.”
But Kniffin told CNA that the comparison to NFL franchises was inapt, and that the legal ability of churches to regulate the actions of clergy is well established.
“The Supreme Court recently affirmed that the First Amendment’s church autonomy doctrine guarantees churches ‘independence in matters of faith and doctrine and in closely linked matters of internal government,’” he told CNA. “This doctrine prevents government from interfering with the relationship between churches and their members and between churches and their ‘ministerial’ employees.”
Fr. Pietrzyk explained that in the mind and law of the Church, the relationship between a bishop and priest is much more than employer-employee.
“It is completely inappropriate, and a violation of the Church’s legitimate autonomy, an autonomy recognized in the First Amendment to the Constitution, for a federal official to opine, under the cloak of that office, on the duty of obedience owed by a priest to his bishop,” he said.
“There is a tendency among U.S. government officials – whether federal bureaucracies or local judges – to try to fit the Church into a secular category,” he told CNA.
“Certainly there are aspects of the bishop-priest relationship that look like employment. The diocese usually pays the priest’s salary, provides him health insurance, etc. But it is an ongoing mistake on the part of secular authority, and indeed a violation of the freedom of religion, to force the employer-employee model as the primary or only way of understanding that relationship,” the priest added.
“The document Christus Dominus, a decree from the Second Vatican Council on the Pastoral Office of the Bishop, said that, ‘[Bishops] should regard the priests as sons and friends.’”
“At the same time,” Pietrzyk told CNA, “the bishop is the head of the diocese, as a father in a family. The ministry of the priest depends on his submission to the legitimate authority of his bishop. Thus, as Pope St. John Paul II wrote, ‘there can be no genuine priestly ministry except in communion with the one’s own Bishop, who deserves that filial respect and obedience.’”
“Every Catholic, and even more so a priest, has a duty to submit to the legitimate governance of their bishop,” he said.
George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told CNA that in his view Trainer’s comments reflected a serious misunderstanding of the relationship between priests and bishops in the Church.
“Mr. Trainor seems woefully ill-informed about the relationship between the bishop and priests of a diocese,” Weigel said.
“He also seems to think of his fellow-Catholics as dolts who require specific instructions on voting from their religious leaders.”
Weigel reflected on a longstanding American anti-Catholic stereotype that bishops and priests direct Catholics about how to cast their votes.
Trainor’s view “mirrors the false charge laid against Catholic immigrants for decades by anti-Catholic bigots, which suggests that Mr. Trainor is also not very well versed in U.S. Catholic history,” Weigel said.
Fr. Pietrzyk told CNA that as chairman of the FEC, Trainer “is certainly free to opine on the freedom, in American law, he is not competent, however, to evaluate the provisions of ecclesiastical law.”
“The ministry of a priest in a sacred place, like a church, may be legitimately directed by a bishop,” Pietrzyk said.
“In addition, preaching within a sacred place, even a parish church, may be regulated by the diocesan bishop. Absent that guidance, a pastor does exercise that authority within his own parish. However, simply because he is the pastor does not give him the right to act contrary to the directives of his own pastor, the bishop.”
“As Pope St. John Paul II emphasized, the ministry of the pastor is not genuine when it runs contrary to the legitimate direction of his local bishop.”
[…]
No Catholic in good standing can vote for any candidate who campaigns for the killing of unborn defenseless children.
Nor for a grossly immoral candidate who flaunts our constitutional form of government and has even waffled on pro life issues. A man who is dangerous and can’t be trusted. Friends we are in serious trouble!
It is sad and funny that Catholics criticize Trump on moral grounds. The most disgusting immoral President was the JFK and Biden is nor far behind in his lack of morals. JFK almost got us into WW3 and Biden has started 2 wars so far.
History credits JFK with getting us out of the cuban missile crisis with back door diplomacy through the work of Bobby Kennedy allowing Khrushchev to save face. I am no fan of the Kennedy family but this is a fact that we can’t ignore.
O my goodness, and how the bishops pandered to Hispanics by trashing Trump, having Mass at the wall with the press in tow, cozying up to Biden … only to find out Hispanics are as smart as most other Americans. Now, bishops, you’re out there on a limb. Hope you don’t land too hard and trash your miters. That’s right, you’ve squandered your teaching authority once again. And you wonder why regular Catholics no longer pay you any mind? And you’re going to find out soon enough the pay off for jumping on the BLM/George Floyd bandwagon last election cycle. You have it coming.
jpfhays, you put it so succinctly and accurately. Most of our bishops are feckless sycophants – followers of that Great Accommodationist, Francis I.
I’m guessing the US bishops are already aware of this but more & more Hispanics are Evangelical & Pentecostal & those are socially conservative folk.
Biden is a “Catholic president”?
Well then…
Hitler’s family was Catholic. So I guess that means Hitler was a Catholic fürher, eh?
I know, I know. It’s disrespectful — and not accurate — to compare Biden to Hitler.
You’re right. I’m sorry.
After all, Germany only murdered three or four dozens of millions of people during Hitler’s rule.
While Biden’s holocaust numbers in the many hundreds of millions around the world during his half century in office.
Recently, I heard a statement I found interesting: Democrats have not carried a majority of male voters (all males – white, black, Hispanic) since LBJ in 1964. My very limited research tends to support this as accurate. I’m willing to be corrected by the really smart CWR readers.
No REAL Catholic would choose to vote in the ’24 election.
Any Catholic who decides to vote this year is announcing to the world that their faith means less than nothing to them and politics are more important than Jesus. 😡
This message was brought to you by the Biden/Harris Campaign Committee.
🙂
“All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do NOTHING.” If you fail to vote, you effectively join the crowd with blood on their hands.
Its like voting for a third party candidate who you know CANNOT win as away of virtue signaling. It steal votes from the better candidate, and effectively allows the side that lies and cheats to win.
Some choice. Most Americans do not want this choice, but here we are. Again and again, we are faced with the “lesser of two evils.”
the last person i want in the white house is that no good loser trump
hmmm…so i guess its ok for trump to fool around with porn stars and support abortion???
you people drive me crazy. trump belongs in prison, not the white house!
So, I guess it’s ok for Bill Clinton to harass multiple women and for Hillary to help him cover that up? I guess it’s ok for Andrew Cuomo to harass 14 women and counting? I guess it’s ok for Barack Obama to sow racial divisions in the country and support partial birth abortions? Is voting for a democrat really any type of morally sound alternative when you look at the facts?
Ideally, I prefer my politicians without porn stars. But I have yet to meet a person who is perfect and without weakness. In the final analysis, I am MORE concerned about how their POLICIES affect our country and our people. We are voting for a President, not a saint. Only the dimmest cant see that stirring up accusations about a persons sexual activity is simply a way to damage them politically. I would not vote for a political party like that with a gun to my head.
Answer honestly. What does more damage to more people? An open border, a refusal to enforce criminal laws, and a two tiered justice system, or a politician dating a porn star?
I prefer my presidents without porn stars too, LJ.
😁
But we take what we can get and there are only two viable options at the moment. One’s associated with porn stars, the other with cognitive decline.
Not that very long ago, Democratic elected officials like Joseph Biden DID vote for pro-life bills, and the Democratic Party was considered “the party of the little man (and what is littler than an embryo or fetus?!). But now the few pro-life Democrats who are strong enough in their soul to remain prolife, e.g., Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois, are basically hounded and hated out of office. The problem is that the basic concept of the “Republican” party is individual freedom–which means that there will still be plenty of pro-choice” Republicans. The only hope is to pray for more private citizens to recognize the scientific and spiritual reasons to be “pro-life” and demand that their elected officials of ANY political party support the right of the unborn to live! Voting Republican is no guarantee that pro-life laws will be passed and upheld. I do plan to vote for Pres. Trump at this time (not only because of pro-life issues but because he has a better grasp of what is necessary for a strong economy, and he is respected (or perhaps feared?!) by other world leaders. However, we still have a few more months for God to work a miracle!
Alex, for 500 points. Question: Who wrote the following:
“… it is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life.”
Answer “Who is Ted Kennedy” (1971)
Hard to believe but true: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-story-behind-kennedy-s-pro-life-letter
Thank you for sharing that article, Ron.
What a sad example of how we betray our faith for worldly success. I’d say betrayal of our convictions also, but that assumes a sincere conviction in the first place.
For every Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden there’s a lifetime of Catholic clergy who have enabled them to get to that place of moral error. At Judgement the shepherds will be held to a higher accountability than the sheep.
Happy Mothers (Mary and own mother) Month . Catholics who vote for Trump did not comprehend, imbibe and get well the Catholic values taught by their mothers. How could one vote for a narcissist, liar, cheat, misogynist, sexist, racist, rapist, insurrectionist, criminal defendant, who has no God but himself.
My mother had commonsense Deacon Dom & she taught me to make practical choices.
Based upon the performance of either candidate while they were in office, I’m choosing Trump. I base my vote on previous performance , not campaign hype.
Well, you supported the Clinton’s and B. Hussein Obama. What does that say about your own faith and values?
You are basing a lot of your accusations of Pres. Trump on a corrupt and ultra-liberal media’s slant. These folks lie through their teeth. I’m sure some of it is true, but…if you want an indication of how Pres. Trump lives in his private life, just take a look at his children, including his youngest son, Barron. These kids are amazing–they started working in their dad’s company when they were 16 and were required to work at every “job” to be able to understand what the employees do. After Pres. Trump was elected, Barron came under an attack by the “media”_-and Melania (his mom) promptly left the White House with her son and took him to a private place in NYC where the media couldn’t get at him. Pres. Trump had no objection. I would suggest that you read VP Mike Pence’s biography in which he discusses Pres. Trump in detail and for the most part, until the Jan. 6 debacle, is quite complimentary about Pres. Trump. Pence has been a devout Christian from his childhood–he grew up Catholic and converted to Evangelical Protestantism later in life–so he’s not one to stretch the truth or tell lies. And be wary about believing the media. One “story” about Pres. Trump that they haven’t reported is all the “small charities” that he has funded, including an amazing organization in NYC called Figure Skating In Harlem. In the beginning, the coach spent all her own money funding this excellent organization, which has a 99.9% high school graduation rate among the mainly minority girls who are members. Donald Trump heard about the organization (he was involved with re-building a NYC figure skating rink) and stepped in with a large donation. I don’t know if he is still involved, but at this point, Figure Skating in Harlem is supported by many A-list celebrities who also serve on the board (e.g., Al Roker). But it was Donald Trump who kept it alive in the beginning. You’ve never heard that, have you? Maybe Pres. Trump isn’t as bad as you think.
“criminal defendant”
I’m going to ignore the rest of what you spewed and focus on this.
You do dealize that being a defendant in a criminal case doesn’t mean that a person is a criminal, right? There’s a little thing called “presumption of innocence.”
And even in the cases of people convicted, there are also some who are wrongly convicted, and prosecutors who abuse the law to promote their own political agendas.
Happy Mother’s Day/Month. Those Catholics who vote for Trump must have failed to comprehend or imbibe the Catholic values taught by their mothers. How could they vote for a narcissist, liar, cheat, misogynist, racist, rapist, insurrectionist, criminal defendant, and who has no God but himself.
Most German voters in the early 1930’s didn’t think the Nazis were serious about all that extremist stuff, either. History has a way of repeating itself.
It seems to be doing that on our college campuses today, Marlene. Plus ca change…
To Deacon Dom, and some others in this comment section – even if she were alive, we are never going to have a Mother Theresa running for president. Trump gave us Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe and sent it back to the states. All of the national and state pro-life groups that I saw praised this at the time. So, going back to the states wasn’t as good as many of us hoped. Hardly Trump’s fault.
Given the choices that we have, I don’t see how anyone cannot see the difference between Trump and Biden, who is not only for abortion but wants to increase it with a national pro-abortion law. Biden, and his campaign manager have said that their key campaign issue is going to be a stand as the pro-abortion candidate.
If Trump does win, I believe that we will then be hearing from the bishops, calling out Trump by name, for trying to close the border to illegals.
The democrat party is the pro death party as evidenced by their platform which calls for the killing of unborn babies anytime, anyplace, for any reason, paid for by the government.
I get the impression that so many Catholics are so tied to the democrat party that they refuse to see moral realty, and that goes also for bishops, half of whom in my state are registered members of the party of death.
Bravo, Crusader!
The Democratic Party is indeed a death cult. They are in favor of:
Abortion, to the tune of a third of the children conceived in America for the past half century; open borders, over which deadly drugs are allowed to pour in unimpeded; the mutilation and sterilization of “trans” children without the consent of the parents; drug legalization; foreign aid for the nation that is the biggest supporter of terrorism in the world; some ten million illegal aliens, totally unvetted, being allowed into the country and receiving welfare and services while U.S. families struggle to survive; euthanasia — and so much more.
Catholics who vote for Democrats should look to their souls.
A Catholic would make a big mistake voting for the figre head in the White House or not voting at all. That Catholic would be contributing to the victory of a clear pro abortion candidate and party (I leave out the many other anti Christian and anti national positions they hold). With all his folds, DT is on our side; the other is not. DT has appointed more pro life judges than any president. He is pro life. The other is not. DT tries to save as many children as possible with his leaving abortion to the states, not the Feds. The other wants the Feds to control and push abortion. DT is against all the anti children policies the other holds from transgender to lgbtq plus, etc. Catholics, this is a no brainer decision. And by the way, with all his faults, see what a good bunch of boys DT has raised, who love his father. Compare with the present figure head and his children, one of whom he used to take showers with when she was a girl, as she has recollected in her diary, found in a house for drug addicts (she has drug and sexual promiscuity problems). Once more, folks, this is a no brainer at election time. Go and vote for the much better candidate.