The US election has turned out to be not quite as close-run as the pundits and the pollsters predicted. The results are in, and they are decisive. In January Donald Trump will return to the White House as the next president; JD Vance, a Catholic convert, will be his vice president.
This is a momentous result, not least for Catholics and indeed for all who hold dear the protection of life in the womb. Kamala Harris’s only clear policy – there really were not many – was that she was pro-abortion in all circumstances, although this was usually expressed euphemistically in terms of her support for “women’s health” and “women’s reproductive rights”.
To paraphrase Ms Harris herself in her questioning of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, what other form of healthcare entails the destruction of another human being? What was also troubling was the plain suggestion that she would pack the Supreme Court in order to override the existing majority which did away with Roe v Wade and returned the abortion issue to individual US states. This would have been constitutionally wrong and disastrous for the protection of the unborn. Now this vexed issue will be decided in individual states, one way or another.
There are other matters where Ms Harris’s views ran counter to those of the Church, including her undiscriminating support for trans rights. Some Catholics also took offence at her failure to make an appearance at the annual Al Smith dinner in New York, which presidential candidates would normally be expected to attend, something for which Cardinal Timothy Dolan took her to task. This suggested a certain cowardice on her part, as well as the desire to establish a calculated distance from the Church – though she did send a friendly video message.
In the event, the Catholic vote, as predicted by the Pew Report, seems to have been mostly for Trump in roughly the proportion of the electorate as a whole. Catholics may indeed have voted on economic grounds, as they are perfectly entitled to do, but some will have been prompted to vote Republican by the distance between the Catholic take on moral issues and that of the Democrat nominee. Once, Catholics could have been assumed to be Democrat; it is healthy that they now feel free to vote for other parties as their consciences dictate.
Read the rest: https://catholicherald.co.uk/trump-triumphs-and-returns-to-the-white-house-with-a-catholic-vice-president/
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