‘We have been living under a lawless regime’: Catholics celebrate Trump overhauls

Ethics and Public Policy Center President Ryan Anderson. / Credit: “EWTN Pro-Life Weekly” screenshot

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 21, 2025 / 10:45 am (CNA).

As the newly-installed Trump administration hit the ground running, several high-profile Catholic intellectuals in the United States anticipated and celebrated a number of changes that are coming to the country.

For Trump’s second term in office, author and associate professor of history at the University of Dallas Susan Hanssen noted to CNA that Trump is now “better prepared than his first entry into federal government and unhampered by the need to seek reelection.”

“Trump’s base will be watching hopefully for deep structural changes that cannot be easily reversed or rolled back, particularly to the Department of Justice and FBI so that it cannot be so easily used to target political enemies,” she said.

Hanssen also predicted decisive measures at the Department of Education, with more control being turned back to the states “and ultimately, to the parents.”

“Parental rights over the education of their children is a fundamental issue of social justice, and this includes allowing parents the right to choose religious education for their children,” she indicated. 

An end to ‘lawfare’ and tyranny of gender ideology

“We have been living under a lawless regime for quite some time,” said political theorist and University of Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen in two Jan. 20 posts on X lambasting the outgoing Biden administration and praising the new president for emphasizing a “common sense” approach to public policy.

News that the country’s new president would kick off his administration by signing a tsunami of executive orders, including one that mandates adherence to the biological reality of two sexes, was particularly welcomed by Ethics and Public Policy Center President Ryan Anderson.

Responding to Trump’s inaugural address declaration that “as of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,’” the author of the book “When Harry Met Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment” posted “Thank you @realdonaldtrump” and added: “Does this mean Amazon will be selling my book again?”

Anderson underscored his point by also quoting Martin Luther King Jr., who said: “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with moral law. To put it in terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”

Chiming in, Catholic columnist and editor Sohrab Ahmari noted that the crowds gathered at the Capital One Arena to hear Trump’s inaugural address “roared loudest at the pledge to uphold two sexes.”