Catholics: This Election Season, Don't Be A Sourpuss

Why manufactured moral outrage over the Al Smith Dinner is dumb and unproductive

Author’s note: Baby arrived safe and sound over Labor Day weekend, thanks be to God. Now that I am back to work and life has picked back up to its normal pace after a few months off, I look forward to doing some more writing here on Substack and, if all goes as planned, getting back into a regular publishing schedule by the new year. In the meantime, thank you for your prayers and for your support of independent writing at Recovering Catholic!

We are less than a week out from the 2024 presidential election. In the current political atmosphere, blood pressures are high and attention spans are short, so I will be brief.

I noticed some moral outrage among Catholics over off-color jokes told by former president Trump at the recent Al Smith Dinner—particularly this one:

@teamtrump“Their wives and their wives’ lovers are all voting for me.” 🤣 #fyp #trump2024

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

It is inappropriate, even scandalous—so the argument went—to countenance jokes about adultery at a Catholic event. And in the presence of a Cardinal!

Respectfully, and regardless of what you or I think of Trump, Cardinal Dolan, Jim Gaffigan, or any other public figure who appeared at the Al Smith Dinner, I find the indignation comes off as manufactured, for a few reasons. First, be honest: the joke was funny. If your friend said that behind closed doors, you’d probably laugh, so cool it. Second, if we are now going to try to police every comment at every event put on by a Catholic group or organization, strap in for a long and cranky life.

Third, the indelicacy of the jokes is the whole damn point of the Al Smith Dinner. Development professionals know that when you throw a fundraiser it helps to get everyone in the room loose and friendly; what better way, especially during an election cycle when everyone has such a huge stick up their butt, than to give everyone the chance to have a good laugh at their political rivals, and yes, even at their political allies?

My point is this: if you see footage from the Al Smith Dinner, with Chuck Schumer, RFK Jr., Mike Johnson, and Letitia James all snuggled up together on the same dais, laughing at the same jokes (mostly), eating from the same table, even sharing the occasional friendly aside, and all you can think to say about it is that Donald Trump told a yucky joke, forgive me, but I think you have lost the forest for the trees.

In the year 2024 in the United States of America, it is an amazing thing to see bipartisanship manifested in any way whatsoever. More often we are encouraged by politicians and pundits to hate everyone across the aisle from us, to believe they are Nazis or communists, that they are a threat to the very existence of our democracy or that they are destroying the American way of life—in short, to seek salvation in the political.

Photo credit: USA Today

But there, on the deis, as the room swells with laughter (at both “their” expense and “ours”), the veil is drawn back and we remember, if only for a blessed moment, that no matter what we feel is at stake on November 5, none of it is truly more important than our willingness to share a little life—a toast, a meal, a risqué joke—with our inconvenient brother or sister once in a while. “If we have no peace,” said Mother Teresa, “it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

With that, here are a few reminders that bear repeating in these final days before the election:

1. Anyone who argues that “you can’t be Catholic and vote for ________” is an ideologue.

2. Catholics who vote differently than you do (or who don’t vote at all) are not your enemy. You are on the same team, despite your differences in political persuasion. Your Christian faith is (or should be) a stronger bond than your party.

3. No matter who you vote for, you are guilty of remote participation in evil. As one writer put it,

   It is also essential that we get Church teaching on remote material cooperation with evil right. Because it teaches us that all our votes are compromised, we can be honest about what our own compromises with evil look like. Without this, the temptation is to imagine that only those who have made a different choice than we have have been compromised.

4. Whatever the outcome, it is not the end of the world. Remember: the United States is not the cosmic center of gravity. God’s Kingdom is.

5. When Inauguration Day is over, there will still be work to do.

So get out there, cast your vote, and please, for the literal love of God, don’t lose the ability to laugh at yourself in the process.

In anticipation of Election Day, I’ve removed the paywall on this piece: