On Harris vs. Trump, Pope Francis is not infallible

Ever since it was declared as doctrine by the First Vatican Council, papal infallibility has proven to be a tricky business. As adopted, it says a pope “cannot err,” or can never say anything wrong. But only when he’s speaking on matters of established faith or morals. And only when he’s speaking “ex cathedra,” or invoking his specific authority as pope.  

Even so, many Catholic theologians today still don’t accept the broad, “can-do-no-wrong” papal theory. It’s been asserted only twice, to establish the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary in 1854 and the Assumption of Mary in 1950. Even the Vatican agreed it did not apply when Pope Paul VI condemned contraception in 1968. It’s never been invoked in the church’s opposition to abortion. And it definitely does not apply to whatever the pope said last week about Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. 

In fact, American Catholics and non-Catholics alike should simply ignore Pope Francis’s off-the-cuff, ignorant and irrelevant comments about the American presidential election. He should butt out of American politics. 

In one of his trademark free-wheeling, in-flight news conferences while on a visit to Indonesia, the 87-year-old pontiff responded to a question about the choice facing American Catholics in November between Trump and Harris by painting them both as bad. 

“One must choose the lesser of two evils,” he told reporters. “Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know.” Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’s support of abortion rights are both “anti-life,” the pope argued. “To send migrants away, to leave them wherever you want, to leave them … it’s something terrible, there is evil there. To send away a child from the womb of the mother is an assassination, because there is life. We must speak about these things clearly.” 

There are two things you can say about Pope Francis’s unusual foray into American politics. One, what he said is especially strange coming from him. After all, this is the same pope who earlier allowed priests to forgive abortions, publicly disagreed with American Catholic bishops who called abortion the “pre-eminent” political issue and scolded bishops for threatening to deny communion to prominent American Catholic supporters of abortion rights, like President Joe Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).  

In so doing, perhaps unwittingly, Pope Francis actually reflects the views of most American Catholics. Sixty-eight percent of American Catholics, tuning out the strident anti-abortion rhetoric of many of their priests and bishops, support reproductive rights and oppose the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 

My second response to Pope Francis’s comments? He’s just plain wrong. Dead wrong. From a strictly Christian point of view, there’s no way you can put Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on the same level. This is a choice between a woman who, as district attorney and state attorney general, fought to protect women from sexual predators and a man who’s been accused of sexual assault by over 20 women and found liable for sexual assault in a New York courtroom. This is a choice between a woman who champions a woman’s right to control her own body and a man who famously bragged about grabbing women by their private parts. This is a choice between a former prosecutor and a convicted felon. 

Pope Francis is wrong. Yes, the choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is clear. But it’s not a choice between the “lesser of two evils.” It’s a choice between good and evil. 

Press is host of “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”