Pope Francis’s social and political message has clear affinities with Joe Biden’s democratic Catholic vision, according to Massimo Faggioli in his book, Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States,[1] released on the day of Biden’s presidential inauguration.
This convergence is not coincidental. Francis’s encyclical on human fraternity, Fratelli Tutti, was published last year “so as to appear ahead of the American election.”[2] Francis was attempting to influence the American election in favour of Biden, the Catholic candidate with agreeable policies. Biden’s election was welcomed by the Vatican.[3] Biden’s policies on immigration/refugees and protection of the environment were also welcomed by the Vatican, as was the end of the “America first” agenda.[4]
Faggioli writes, “Francis and Biden have one task in common: in different ways, they must explore the meaning and consequences of a world no longer centered on a Western liberal model of civilisation.”[5] Both Biden and Francis are collectivists and it is not difficult to see what their affinities mean for America and the world—the loss of individualism and thus the loss of individual liberties. In my previous blog, Crossroads, I highlighted Francis’s fondness for coercion in Fratelli Tutti and his desire to see a radical overhaul of the international order.
Biden’s policies on immigration/refugees will help consolidate a demographic revolution in American politics in favour of the Democrats and strengthen the already powerful influence of Catholic thinking in America. The American Catholic bishops don’t always agree with Francis but they do on the question of immigration/refugees from Central America.[6] Immigrants and refugees are being given extraordinarily generous benefits, which is consistent with the Vatican’s embrace of Inclusive Capitalism and Biden’s repudiation of the “America First” agenda of his predecessor.
Redistribution of American wealth to serve political and religious goals is occurring at the time when America is expected to deindustrialize to contain climate change. On this trajectory, America is destined to become less wealthy and less influential in the world. But it serves Francis’s conception of the common good and enhances his international agenda. It also further undermines the influence of Protestantism in America. Faggioli writes, “Biden’s presidency arouses not only political expectations but also religious, even salvific ones.”[7] He concludes that the presidency is not only a political but also a moral and religious office.[8]
American presidents are important custodians of the civic religious principles, such as freedom, undergirding American public life but the presidential office does not encompass dogmatic religion. But that could change. Faggioli notes, “Biden’s election is the culmination of a rise of Catholics in American political life.”[9] He notes that Biden made his Catholic faith a central part of his campaign.[10] He also infers that the country has no problem with Biden being Catholic.[11]
Given that Catholics control the highest office in all three branches of the American government and dominate the Supreme Court, Faggioli anticipates that there will be concerns of a Catholic takeover in America but feels that such talk is misplaced because of the “clear division of Catholics into two different ideological and political camps.”[12] Conservative Catholics usually support the American Catholic bishops and clergy while liberal Catholics mainly support Francis. But as noted previously the divisions between the American Catholic bishops and Francis dissolved on the question of immigration/refugees, where the point of unity is enhancing Catholic power.
As the American polity continues to fracture, a more likely scenario than a Catholic takeover of America would be an invitation for Catholic principles to be fully implemented in America to save the Republic from dissolution. The cachet of Protestantism is now very low indeed across the world. Consider, for example, a letter sent recently to the editors of Vatican Magazin by the pastor of St. Marien in Wittenberg, Martin Luther’s church and mother church of the Reformation. It reads in part:
As a Protestant with a Catholic heart and as a pastor in the pulpit of Martin Luther, I would consider Protestantizing the Catholic Church to be a great disaster, because the world needs the Catholic profile of Catholic spirituality with fidelity to the pope, veneration of Mary, and the example of the saints of the church. And the Christian world needs the Catholic identity because it would be a huge loss for Christianity if the Catholic color of faith lost intensity.[13]
Francis is the ultimate beneficiary of the decline of Protestantism and the rise of Roman Catholicism in America. Faggioli suggests that six key issues remain for American Catholicism in the public square. But the evidence suggests that the issues are now almost completely resolved.
The first issue is about compatibility between papal Catholicism and Protestant America.[14] With the decline of Protestantism, suspicion of Catholicism has mostly evaporated. This occurred largely between World War II and the Second Vatican Council.
The second issue “involves the relationship between Roman Catholicism and American democracy.”[15] As one would expect from a clash of contradictory principles, there has been tension in the past. From Pius IX’s 1864 Syllabus of Errors, with its rejection of democracy and the separation of church and state and Leo XIII’s 1899 condemnation of Americanism in Testem Benevolentiae, to the middle of the twentieth century, Catholicism was viewed with suspicion. The Second Vatican Council largely closed that chapter of the relationship.
The relationship between the Catholic Church and racism is the third issue.[16] The church has a chequered history in relation to slavery and segregation, stretching even to the era of the civil rights movement. An internal division remains within Catholicism, with many Catholics being seen to favour “white supremacy.”
White supremacy is code for Trump supporters or Republican voters. Republican voters, not all of whom are Catholic by any means, are Biden’s political issue. Where Catholics are genuinely racist, it is an issue for the bishops and clergy. While a heated issue, racism is not a defining issue for Catholics in the public square.
Immigration is the fourth issue.[17] Immigration has made Catholicism the largest religion in America. As previously noted, it is an area of convergence between the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and Pope Francis. Even when immigration is connected with social justice, as Faggioli suggests it now is, it is not an issue for Catholics alone. Meanwhile, American Catholicism continues to benefit from the porous southern border with Mexico.
Faggioli suggests that the issue of racial justice, touching on “the role of government and the state,” is the fifth problem for Catholics. With Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum “Catholics rejected the laissez-faire doctrine of the liberal system.”[18] But Americans of the left are coming around to papal thinking on this issue, becoming more interventionist in matters of race, the economy and climate change. State intervention is no longer a defining issue for Catholics in America.
Sexual morality and abortion are the sixth issue discussed by Faggioli.[19] But even on these hottest of internal Catholic issues, Catholics are not alone. On a religious level, these are questions for the Vatican and the American bishops. Politically, it is a problem for Biden to solve.
What does this all mean for America? Earlier this year, an article in the Spectator included this attention-grabbing statement, “The age of the democratic republic is over, the age of the American oligarchy beginning.”[20] The Spectator article is a reminder that the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few in the Roman republic did not work out well. Significantly, most of the new oligarchs in America, the tech and social media titans, are being exposed as collectivists and interventionists, having affinities with both Biden and Francis.
I drew attention to evidence in It’s Sunday in America that “the assumed right to coerce on religious grounds has never been renounced by the Roman Catholic Church.”[21] Much of the suspicion against the Catholic Church in America declined precisely because Protestants felt that the Second Vatican Council had renounced religious coercion. The collectivist and interventionist affinities between Biden and Francis should cause Protestants to question whether their country is best served by embedding Roman Catholic principles and policies in their national life.
This is a critical time for America and its institutions. No country can afford to lose constitutional democracy, the rule of law, freedom of speech and religion and individual rights to serve papal ambitions. But this is particularly so of America which has been so important in preserving and promoting freedom in the world. The loss of the Western liberal model will be catastrophic for America and the world.
[1] Faggioli, Massimo. Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States. Bayard, New London, 2021, Kindle edition, 102.
[2] De Souza, Raymond J. “Centesimus Annus in 2021.” First Things, May 6, 2021.
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/05/centesimus-annus-in-2021 (accessed May 9, 2021).
[3] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 86.
[4] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 85.
[5] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 116.
[6] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 22.
[7] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 14.
[8] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 14.
[9] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 15.
[10] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 18.
[11] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 16.
[12] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 15.
[13] Garth, Alexander. “A Warning Against the Synodal Path.” First Things, May 13, 2021. Translated from the German by Msgr. Hans Feichtinger and with the author’s permission.
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/05/a-warning-against-the-synodal-path (accessed May 16, 2021).
[14] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 18.
[15] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 19.
[16] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 21.
[17] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 21.
[18] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 22.
[19] Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, 23.
[20] Green, Dominic. “Oligarchy in America.” Spectator, January 28, 2021.
https://spectator.com.au/2021/01/oligarchy-in-america (accessed January 28, 2021).
[21] It’s Sunday in America, 141, 13.
