The world holds its breath, while voters across the United States make a momentous choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. On their decision depends the direction that the US takes not just in the next four years but for the conceivable future. Their decision will affect the lives of everyone on the planet, as the President of the United States leads the one remaining superpower whose military and economic clout dwarfs all others. Does it use that power only for its own interests, as in the Trump slogan “America First”, or does it seek to serve the common good worldwide, protecting the sustainability of life on this planet, as previous presidents have done and as Mr Biden promises to do?
Mr Trump’s opponents have rightly made his character a central issue in the election. The key text here is from the eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke, who addressed the question in his speech to the electors of Bristol. An elected representative owes it to his constituents to exercise “his unbiased opinion, his mature judgement, his enlightened conscience”, which are “a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable”, he said.
The Catholic tradition offers insights to help judge these issues. As well as the teachings of the Gospel, it harbours ethical principles that go back to Aristotle and Plato as mediated by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. In this tradition, mature judgements are made by an enlightened conscience exercising the classic virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. A Christian, furthermore, will give pre-eminence to the virtues of faith, hope and charity in such a discernment. As well as the virtue of solidarity, described by Pope John Paul II as a profound commitment to the common good, the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount express an ideal that all Christians must aim for.
29 October 2020, The Tablet
Praying for a wise choice
US presidential election 2020
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