Pinkerton: Pope Leo Reminds Europe Legal Is Not the Same as Moral – and Moral Matters More

The general point of Christianity is that it’s about the spiritual, not the material—or the political.  As Jesus said in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world.” 

Yet the worldly has a way of working itself in.  During Pope Leo XIV’s recent visit to France, he emphasized the Catholic Church’s teachings on such profound moral issues as abortion and “assisted” suicide (more like “compelled” in many cases).  And the visual tableau of the Pope comforting the afflicted but beloved Marie-Garance Nöel is more powerful and eloquent than a thousand-million-billion words. 

The Pope said in France, “The motto of the journey was that the world may have life, and these words characterize the Gospel-centered nature of my meetings throughout the visit.”  That doesn’t sound very political, and yet the word “life,” alone, nevertheless does send a jolt.  And the Pope knows it: “I came to preach the Gospel,” he said, “if that’s politics, I did that.”

Still, the Pope is no pol.  Refreshingly above the grubby world of backrooms and bureaucracies, he summons us to God’s higher purposes, not lowest-common-denominator compromises.   As he puts it, “What is legal is not necessarily moral.”

Hmm.  So what if that distinction—legal vs. moral—were to get around?  What would change?  And what elected officials might be un-elected?  

We can help answer those questions by benchmarking where we are today: The status quo of Western politics is constructed upon the idea of civic neutrality on values—and we need to think about what means today.  

The U.S. Constitution, for example, was written as a secular document, which is what the Framers intended: They wanted freedom of religion. 

But they didn’t want freedom from religion.  As John Adams, our second president, wrote from the White House in 1798: “We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion.” 

Adams and his colleagues figured that the small-government minimalism of the Constitution would be secure only so long as the citizenry’s personal behavior was guided by the morality of religion and related tradition.  If people comport themselves, there’s no need for fine-toothed statutes and lots of cops and judges and prisons. 

Yet if internalized self-discipline is absent, Adams continued, “Avarice, Ambition, Revenge… would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net.”  In other words, if people can’t manage themselves, government will have to be big enough to assert close control, because chaos is the worst outcome.  And if that happens, the experiment in limited government fails, and Americans lose their legitimate liberties. 

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People,” Adams concluded.

So we see that the explicit civic neutrality of the Constitution always relied upon the implicit morality of the population.  The constitutional system works only if citizens fulfill their positive civic duty.   

By contrast, a society with villains on the loose can’t have nice things, because the sidewalks, parks, and other public places will be a mess at best, and no-go zones at worst.  Everything else, too, goes haywire, from voting to volunteering.  

Sadly, in America today, the political class has seen to it that much villainy has been legalized.  Some U.S. cities actually fund drug use and provide free housing for sex criminals.  

Moreover, if any locality is spending money, it’s likely that the federal government is chipping in. The feds spend a trillion dollars a year on various welfare programs, many of which subsidize destructive behavior.  

Which reminds us of the Pope’s wisdom: Legality isn’t the same as morality.  Let’s add: A fully legal policy or program might be immoral. 

This distinction leaps to mind as we reflect on what happened just days after the Pope departed France—the country erupted in riots.  

Many will be point to unchecked immigration as a key problem, and yet the rampaging youth in France are actually far worse than their kinfolk back home—they’re not rioting in, say, Algeria.  

Which tells us that something is really, really, wrong with the way French politicians have fashioned their society.  All that secularism, welfarism, and libertinism might have been legally enacted, but it wasn’t morally right, or smart.  

The Pope, or any good cleric, could point out that the Bible provides many common sense rules about good social order.  And yet France today has neglected virtually all of them.

So when the Pope speaks of morality as the proper basis for personal conduct, he is offering a quiet rebuke to the political class in France, as well as in the U.S. and many other countries. 

Okay, so what if we were to listen more to the Pope?  Not to make him a political leader, but to let his teachings on morality have more influence?  How, then, might our politics and society be affected?  

We got a peek from the Pope’s careful encyclical on artificial intelligence, issued earlier this year.  

Unsurprisingly, Leo focused on God’s plan for humanity.   And so, much to the chagrin of the tech bros, the Pope wouldn’t give an inch on their AI-centric belief system: Sorry, dudes, but AI is not a person, it does not have a soul.  In fact, we are vastly more important than shrimp.  

And on another front, more from Leo – he declares that only humans can be true artists: “Algorithms lack the spark of humanity.  For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.” 

A pattern emerges here: Everything the Pope says or does is linked to his  mission of reconciling the Creator and His greatest creation – we ourselves, all of us people, of all sizes and colors, each of us made in His image. 

Many believe that this grand design points us all—Catholic or not—toward a better, nicer future in which, for instance, babies are welcomed and youths aren’t inclined to commit arson. 

In the meantime, we have to keep learning, the hard way, that the key to good things is solid morality, not just wispy legality.   

For his part, Leo is always on message, exalting holiness, deriding emptiness: 

Brothers and sisters, we must acknowledge that nothing in this world can ever fully satisfy us.  When we think that our work is finished at last and our efforts have been rewarded, that inner emptiness often returns, deeper than before.  And so, in an attempt to fill it, we may seek new pleasures, want to possess more and more things, or do everything we can to distract ourselves in order to numb that inner restlessness.

He continued, “Yes, you thirst for God, for life, for truth, for unity, for peace, for communion and for happiness.  You long to rediscover a horizon filled with light and to build a renewed nation upon roots nourished by faith.” 

Those words, by themselves, should speak to all believers; even non-believers should hearken to the vision of peace and unity in “a renewed nation.”  After all, we all have to live somewhere.  

It’s a simple but profound point: Legal is good, but moral is better.  If he happens to hold political office, any jackass can declare legality, but only a higher power can enunciate genuine morality. 

The truth about us humans is this: Most of us wish to be good, even if goodness is often a struggle.  Sociologists speak of a moral sense from within, while of course, theologists have their explanation—morality begins with commandments from above.  

No two human beings will every completely agree on everything, and yet the Pope and John Adams would concur, for sure, on this much: We can’t have a free and decent society based on mere politically contrived legality—we need divinely derived morality.  

If that’s true, then the predominant liberal-progressive paradigm has served us poorly. Therefore the Pope’s distinction, legal vs. moral, cuts like a knife.  The pols who have shaped things to immoral ends should be trembling at the thought that someone, or Someone, will be judging them on the harm they’ve caused.