The Church: Always Spiritual, Sometimes Corporal, Never Political, by Dr. Jeff Mirus

By Dr. Jeff Mirus, Catholic Culture, Jan 31, 2025

Jeffrey Mirus holds a Ph.D. in intellectual history from Princeton University. A co-founder of Christendom College, he also pioneered Catholic Internet services. He is the founder of Trinity Communications and CatholicCulture.org.

I enjoyed and benefited from Phil Lawler’s outstanding three-part analysis of the conflict between The Trump Administration and the US Catholic Bishops on immigration. The details of the situation in Part I and Part II were extraordinarily valuable, but (as my own readers know) I’m big on theory, so I considered Part III a triumph. That’s because Phil made two critical points, the first distinguishing Catholic charity arising from Catholic generosity from Catholic contract work arising from government funding; and the second explaining how little credibility the Church has today when she advocates for particular government policies.

The plain truth is that we have heard far more from the Catholic Church over the last fifty years about which prudential governmental policies to support than about which version of Catholic faith and morals to support. Or at least this has been predominately true throughout the West. We have even sometimes heard more about the right choice among political candidates than about the right choice between Satan and Christ. And if news reporting is any guide, there has been more episcopal criticism of Donald Trump recently than of Satan himself. (On the other hand, I grant that most news reporters are not interested in harming Satan’s reputation.) …

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