President Donald Trump has wasted no time in putting his campaign promises into action — with mixed results from a Catholic perspective

Since his inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump has signed off on a flurry of executive orders, making big changes on everything from abortion funding to capital punishment, parental choice in education to care for creation. 

As of Feb. 5, the Republican has issued more than 50 presidential decrees, according to the White House’s website. That figure is nearly a quarter of the 220 executive orders he approved during his entire first four-year presidential term and is the most signed by a president in his first 100 days in office in 40 years, according to NBC News.

On Wednesday, he signed a measure barring biological males from participating in women’s sports.

Trump is likely to soon add more to the list, with an executive order cutting the U.S. Department of Education widely expected to be forthcoming. 

And while some of Trump’s moves have been applauded by the shepherds of the Church as promoting human dignity, others are being criticized for doing just the opposite.

Here’s how some of the most significant executive orders of Donald Trump’s second presidential term stack up against the Church’s teaching.

 

Abortion

Trump moved quickly to revoke two Biden-era orders that had expanded access to abortion, a practice that the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes as “gravely contrary to the moral law.”

The “Enforcing the Hyde Amendment” executive order, signed on Jan. 24, reestablished the long-standing federal prohibition of using taxpayer dollars to fund elective abortions. The measure also reversed a Biden executive order that sought to “protect and expand access to abortion care” after the 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Trump also issued a related memorandum, instructing foreign-policy officials to reinstate the so-called Mexico City Policy, which bars federal dollars from funding abortion in foreign countries.

The chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ pro-life committee praised Trump’s actions.

“I am grateful for the strengthening of policies that protect us from being compelled to participate in a culture of death and that help us to restore a culture of life at home and abroad,” said Bishop Daniel Thomas of Toledo, Ohio, in a Jan. 26 USCCB press release.

 

Immigration

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s actions related to immigration and refugee resettlement have been a source of ongoing tension with the USCCB and have raised serious concerns from a Catholic moral perspective.

The president has issued executive orders to secure the U.S. border and to reduce the number of refugees admitted in accordance with “the interests of the United States.” 

“The United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees,” the Jan. 20 executive order states.

The Catechism underscores the state’s responsibility to regulate immigration “for the sake of the common good,” adding that immigrants have a duty to respect the heritage of their receiving country and obey its laws. 

However, it also teaches the need for wealthier countries, “to the extent they are able,” to receive “the foreigner in search of the security and the means of the livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin” — a concern that is entirely absent from Trump’s executive order and immigration policy more generally.

Under Trump’s direction, the U.S. government has also ended a long-standing practice of limiting immigration arrests at “sensitive locations,” such as churches.

In response to these moves, USCCB president Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Archdiocese for the Military Services, said on Jan. 22 that Trump’s executive orders “on the treatment of immigrants and refugees,” among others, “are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us.”

 

Gender Ideology

In another area, however, the Trump administration has taken swift steps to protect vulnerable people from what Pope Francis has consistently called “gender ideology.”

A Jan. 20 executive order aimed at “restoring biological truth” defines man and woman in accordance with biological sex, not “gender identity,” and requires federal entities to follow suit in their enforcement of sex-based laws and protections.

“It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” the order states, in a profound shift from Biden-era policies.

The measure also calls for ending the federal government’s promotion and funding of gender ideology. An additional executive order, signed on Jan. 28, puts an end to federal funding of and support for so-called “sex transitions” of minors by either chemical or surgical means. And the Feb. 5 executive order similarly acknowledges biological sex.

The Catholic Church has consistently taught that human beings are created male and female, an inherent, bodily reality that is not alterable. 

Pope Francis has spoken out forcefully against gender ideology, which he has called “the ugliest danger” of our time. He has particularly lamented its promotion in the classroom, something Trump’s executive order against “radical indoctrination” in K-12 schools will address. 

 

 

The Death Penalty

In a clear area of divergence from Pope Francis and recent magisterium, however, Trump restored the use of capital punishment at the federal level on his first day back in office.

Citing the need to deter and punish those who “would commit the most heinous crimes,” Trump’s executive order criticized Biden’s moratorium on federal executions and the former president’s Dec. 23, 2024, commutation of 37 death sentences. 

The new order requires the federal government to pursue the death penalty in all cases involving the killing of a police officer or a capital crime committed by an immigrant illegally in the country. It also prioritizes ensuring that states where capital punishment is allowed have “a sufficient supply of drugs needed to carry out lethal injection,” and seeks to overrule Supreme Court precedents that restrict the practice.

In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Pope St. John Paul II taught that, given the contemporary state’s ability to protect a community from a dangerous offender without killing him or her, cases where capital punishment are needed are “very rare, if practically non-existent.” Pope Francis took things to another level in 2018, when, under his direction, the Catechism was revised to state that the death penalty was “inadmissible.”

 

Education

Trump’s education-related measures have focused on both expanding parental-choice opportunities and curtailing government promotion of problematic ideologies, which both accord with the Catholic Church’s vision of education.

The president’s “Ending Racial Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” executive order, signed Jan. 29, explicitly calls for an end to teaching practices that “usurp basic parental authority.” The order brings to a halt federal funding for and promotion of gender ideology in the classroom. 

The executive order treats similarly “critical race theory,” an approach to racial injustice that several Catholic leaders have criticized for undermining the importance of all people’s shared humanity.

In another order issued the same day, Trump made it official policy that the federal government should “support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children” and directed government agencies to promote school-choice initiatives.

The Catholic Church has long taught that parents are the primary educators of their children and that schools must partner with, not replace, parents to help them fulfill this responsibility. 

The USCCB’s education head, Bishop David O’Connell of the Diocese of Trenton, New Jersey, welcomed the executive order, noting that it “affirms families who seek to choose faith-based educational options,” including Catholic schools.

 

International Solidarity

In a host of other executive orders, Trump showed his desire to promote America’s bottom line, though sometimes without a corresponding concern for solidarity with other peoples of the world.

For instance, a Jan. 20 order put a 90-day freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid while programs are reviewed to make sure they are “aligned with American interests.” The measure has already had a negative impact on efforts abroad to care for the most vulnerable, like a U.S.-funded medical facility in Sudan that cares for severely malnourished children.

At the same time, however, the order calls for an end to the promotion of values that “serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.” Under the Biden administration, the promotion of LGBTQ ideology was a major foreign-policy objective, a clear instance of what Pope Francis has criticized as “ideological colonization.” 

With regards to care for creation, Trump ordered the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris agreement, an international climate treaty. Although the Jan. 20 executive order stated America’s commitment to pursuing “environmental objectives,” it underscored that the U.S. will not enter into any agreements deemed to have “the potential to damage or stifle the American economy.” The USCCB has previously expressed support for the Paris agreement “as an important international mechanism to promote environmental stewardship and encourage climate change mitigation.”

The Catechism teaches that solidarity, which can also be described as “social charity,” is “a direct demand of human and Christian brotherhood” and must also be practiced among nations.

“International solidarity is a requirement of the moral order; world peace depends in part upon this,” states the Catechism (1941), which John Paul II said was a “sure norm for teaching the faith.”

But like his slew of executive orders thus far, Trump’s track record on this issue is a mixed bag when considered in light of the Church’s teaching.