In interview with Catholic journalist, Trump chafes at forgiving enemies
In a Nov. 8 interview with Catholic journalist Ross Douthat, President Donald Trump said he could not forgive some political enemies and would continue to hate them. Douthat asked Trump whether he could forgive his opponents if forgiveness were necessary to enter paradise. New York priest Father Gerald Murray warned that dying in hatred risks losing the invitation to heaven and urged Trump to follow Christ’s command to love and forgive enemies. The article notes that Catholic teaching treats forgiveness as a Christian duty, citing Jesus’ command to love enemies and pray for persecutors.
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President Donald Trump said in a “60 Minutes” interview that he probably could not forgive some political enemies, prompting Catholic clergy and commentators to discuss Christian teaching on forgiveness and the interview’s propriety. Reactions ranged from warnings about the spiritual stakes of persistent hatred to criticism that such intimate questions should not have been asked on national television.
Catholic journalist Ross Douthat asked Trump whether he could forgive figures including former FBI Director James Comey and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi if forgiveness were necessary to enter paradise. Trump said he still hated some enemies because he believed they had weaponized the law against him, adding, “I probably cannot do that now because I do hate some of my enemies and I always will.”
Asked what he believed would happen after death, Trump said that, as a religious person, he would “in theory” go to heaven. He later said, “I hope so. I don’t want to go to hell.”
Father Gerald Murray, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in New York, said he was praying Trump would recognize that dying while hating one’s enemies risks losing the invitation to heaven. Murray pointed to Christ’s command to love enemies and forgive persecutors, and said hatred harms the person who holds it while forgiveness draws that person closer to Christ.
The article describes Catholic teaching as treating forgiveness as a Christian obligation, citing Jesus’ command in Matthew 5:44 and the Catechism’s teaching on mercy, grace, and reconciliation with God. Father Gabriel Mosher said that suffering and lacking the power to retaliate can help people develop a greater capacity to forgive, and suggested that Trump’s lifestyle might not encourage the vulnerability forgiveness requires.
Some Catholic commentators objected to the interview’s approach. Hillsdale College scholar Matt Mehan said Douthat’s intentions may have been loving and honorable, but argued that asking the president such deeply personal questions on television was inhumane; Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow Luma Simms likewise criticized probing someone’s soul on air.
Other responses emphasized the difficulty and importance of the teaching itself. Cultural commentator Laura Stalberg Gigliotti called loving one’s enemies one of Christianity’s hardest teachings, while Pillar editor JD Flynn suggested the exchange might prompt Trump—and viewers—to reconsider the consequences of holding onto bitterness.
The relationship between enemy-love, forgiveness, and salvation in Christian ethics
Enemy-love, forgiveness, and salvation are closely connected in Christian ethics, but they are not interchangeable. Enemy-love is the active desire and effort to do good even to someone who harms you; forgiveness releases resentment and the claim to personal vengeance. Both express a life being shaped by Christ. The supplied writers treat forgiveness as especially serious for anyone who seeks God’s forgiveness, while also presenting enemy-love as a demanding goal toward which believers must grow—not a feeling they can instantly manufacture.
In the Sermon on the Mount, loving enemies means more than refraining from retaliation: Augustine describes it as wishing good to an enemy, doing good when possible, and praying for those who persecute you. He calls this a mark of those becoming children of God, because it imitates God’s generosity.
John Chrysostom grounds that imitation in Christ. Jesus loved those who opposed and injured him, and prayed for those who crucified him; Christians are called to follow that example. Enemy-love therefore does not mean approving of wrongdoing or pretending that hostility is harmless. It means refusing to let another person’s evil dictate your own response, and seeking that person’s good rather than their destruction.
Nor does the command depend on whether the enemy deserves affection. Chrysostom argues that the command itself—and the opportunity to become more like God through obedience—gives a reason to love. In this sense, Christian love is not simply a warm emotion. It is a moral commitment that can include prayer, restraint, beneficence, and a desire for the other person’s conversion and good.
Forgiveness is a central expression of enemy-love, and Augustine gives it particular weight:
There is nothing greater than that whereby we forgive from the heart what any one has done against us.
For Augustine, forgiving from the heart is inseparable from praying, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” He warns that a person who refuses forgiveness to someone who repents should not presume that God forgives that person’s sins. This is not a minor virtue added to an otherwise complete spiritual life: a settled refusal to forgive conflicts with the very mercy one asks God to show.
Augustine nevertheless distinguishes the highest form of enemy-love from a more immediate obligation. Loving an enemy with active goodwill may be a difficult attainment; believers must strive and pray for it. But even someone who has not yet reached that maturity must forgive from the heart when the person who wronged them asks forgiveness. This guards against two opposite mistakes: treating enemy-love as optional because it is difficult, or assuming that a person must first feel affection before they can forgive.
Forgiveness also need not mean denying that a wrong occurred. The passages emphasize repentance, mercy, and reconciliation; they do not say that the injured person must call evil good. Augustine speaks especially of forgiving someone who “entreats and repents,” while Chrysostom urges people not to wait passively for the other party to make the first move toward reconciliation. These texts call for a generous readiness to forgive, while recognizing that reconciliation involves a relationship between persons, not merely an inward decision by one of them.
The connection to salvation is both a warning and an invitation. It is a warning because a person cannot coherently ask God for mercy while deliberately refusing mercy to others. Augustine takes the Gospel’s warning about forgiveness literally: refusal to forgive a repentant offender puts one’s own appeal for forgiveness in question. His point is not that human forgiveness purchases God’s mercy, but that receiving mercy and refusing to extend it are morally incompatible.
At the same time, enemy-love is presented as a life of growing conformity to God, not as a payment by which a person earns salvation. Chrysostom describes loving the enemy as becoming like God and speaks of attaining the promised good through Christ’s grace. Anselm likewise frames Christian hope in salvation through faith “which operates through love,” alongside turning from wickedness and doing what is right. He also argues that obedience is already owed to God, not an extra payment that puts God in one’s debt. Taken together, these passages present enemy-love as part of the shape of a life of faith: it is a response to God and a sign of transformation, not a transaction that obliges God to save.
The excerpts do not provide a full account of Catholic teaching on grace, judgment, or the conditions of salvation. They do, however, support a clear ethical conclusion: forgiveness is not an optional supplement to the Christian life, and persistent, unrepentant hatred cannot be treated as harmless while one claims to seek divine mercy.
Enemy-love should also not be confused with the destruction of law or justice. A study of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew argues that the command addresses personal ethics—especially self-mastery and resistance to selfish passions—rather than abolishing the legal order. It presents that inner discipline as necessary for genuine social morality. Anselm similarly warns against taking personal vengeance as though one possessed the authority of the ultimate Judge.
Thus, forgiveness does not require denying harm, abandoning every legitimate means of protection, or claiming that wrongdoing has no consequences. The supplied passages do not spell out the full practical boundaries of justice in particular cases, but they do distinguish Christian mercy from retaliation and vindictiveness. The Christian aim is to resist evil without becoming its imitator, to seek reconciliation where possible, and to entrust final judgment to God.