Didn’t someone once suggest that you shouldn’t ever discuss religion and politics?
Here we are, then. Talking about both things in the same sentence.
Pope Francis I decided to weigh in with remarks about Republican presidential frontrunner Donald J. Trump’s proposal to build a wall across our southern border to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States.
Anyone who’d propose such a thing, the pontiff, said isn’t a Christian.
Trump fired back. Trump calledĀ the pope’s view “disgraceful” and said, by golly, he’s a devout Christian.
Others on the right are criticizing the pope for engaging in this political discussion in the first place. Who is this guy? they wonder. What qualifies him to comment on the American political system?
Let’s take a breath.
Maybe the pope made his statement in Spanish, or Italian, or Latin and it got mistranslated.
Surely, too, he isn’t the first public figure — American or otherwise — to drag religion into a campaign for a secular political office. U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy faced intenseĀ suspicion over his Catholic faith in the 1960 campaign and he ended up dispelling much of it with a speech in Houston in which he said he’d follow the Constitution and would not — contrary to allegations — be a puppet for the Vatican.
And there have been others as well.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the pope — a renowned international public figure — to weigh in on a U.S. public policy discussion. He’s entitled to his view.
It’s that it has ignited a firestorm that makes meĀ uncomfortable when I hear politicians feeling forced to defend their religious beliefs while seeking an office to which they will take an oath to protect and defend a wholly secular document.
That would be the Constitution of the United States.