New Book by Church Historian Explains Tensions Between Biden and U.S. Bishops
The cover of “Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States” by Massimo Faggioli, released in 2021.
(REVIEW) Just days before last Christmas, late night host Stephen Colbert sat down with then President-elect Joe Biden and the two men discussed one of their favorite shared topics: Pope Francis.
"I'm surprised more hasn't been made of the second Catholic president. It's significant certainly to me," Colbert said, commenting that 60 years ago John F. Kennedy had to defend himself against criticisms that there was a secret phone that the pope would use to tell the Catholic president how to govern.
"Is it emails now?" Colbert joked. "How is the pope going to tell you how to govern?"
"Well, the pope called me," Biden replied. This was no laughing matter for him.
Biden then went on to detail the personal ways in which Francis has cared for his family after the death of his son, Beau Biden, to brain cancer in 2015, the fact that the pope had just sent him a signed copy of his new book, and that the two had pledged to work together and collaborate whenever possible.
As is the Vatican's custom, the pope sent a congratulatory message to Biden just minutes after he was sworn into office on Jan. 20, and when the president took his seat at the Resolute desk in his newly outfitted Oval Office, a photo of Biden with Pope Francis could be seen behind him.
The leadership of the U.S. Catholic bishops took a decidedly different approach on Inauguration Day, with president of the bishops' conference, Archbishop Jose Gomez, issuing an unprecedented 1,250 word statement on Biden. While Gomez said that it was refreshing to have a president who talks openly about his own faith, he spent much more time enumerating areas of disagreement, specifically on abortion and LGBTQ rights.
The letter, which warned that Biden would pursue policies that "would advance moral evils," was the product of a working group Gomez had formed in November to deal with Biden and one that was also signaling that they were looking to draft a document that would imply that Biden should be denied communion due to those areas in which his policy positions did not align with official church teaching.
Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI personally administered communion to pro-choice politicians and never mind the fact that bishops all over Latin America and Europe have a long history of navigating Catholic heads of government at odds with church teaching, the leadership of the U.S. bishops believe that somehow they have landed in uncharted territory. Despite the fact that dialogue has been a central theme of Francis' papacy, when dealing with Biden, many U.S. bishops seem eager to instead choose a course of confrontation.
How to make sense of these tensions? Church historian Massimo Faggioli's new book, “Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States” (Bayard, 2021) is a perfect starting point. In this primer, Faggioli begins by offering background of the three previous times a Catholic candidate has been the nominee for the highest office in the land and why Biden's candidacy and now presidency comes at a particularly fraught moment for not just American Catholicism but the global church.
When Biden accepted the Democratic nomination last August, he outlined four "historic crises" facing the country: the COVID pandemic, an economic downturn, systemic racial injustices and the threat of climate change. He again returned to those themes in his inaugural address, and in confronting those issues, he has a ready partner in Rome.
Yet it is here in the United States where much of the resistance to Pope Francis has been mounted, organized and funded—and the election of Biden will only likely exacerbate that opposition, particularly as Biden will, at times, seem more eager to ally himself with the Holy See than the pope's own stateside bishops.
Since his election in 2013, Francis has repeatedly made it clear that he had no interest in tying Catholicism to the culture wars that had dominated the U.S. Church for the last 50 years, often finding ready support in Rome. His stinging criticisms of the excesses of free market capitalism have been a direct challenge to many of the individuals and institutions long associated with Catholicism in this country. This change in posture created an identity crisis for many American Catholics. Yet as Faggioli explains, this reorientation was welcome news for Catholics like Biden whose faith has been shaped by the church's social teaching that emphasizes the dignity of work and a preferential option for the poor.
As an Italian, Faggioli offers a penetrating analysis of the strained relations between the "Make America Great Again" president and a pope whose global gaze has unsettled many in the U.S. Church that had grown accustomed during the last two papacies of somehow seeing themselves as central, indeed essential, to Rome's operations.
"In the United States today, Roman Catholicism is still proposed as a form of internationalism, something on which the Trump administration displayed no interest," writes Faggioli. "It's a factor destined to change with the Biden presidency."
Yet despite seeing a potential reset for the working relationship between the pope and the president, Faggioli is not Pollyannish about the challenges ahead, including different approaches between the Biden administration and Rome on how to deal with China, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the long list of military interventions abroad that the Holy See has frowned upon. Nor will tensions over Biden's stance on questions of abortion or religious liberty disappear or the fact that the church's moral credibility both in the United States and abroad has been dealt a serious blow due to ongoing clergy abuse scandals.
Clocking in at only 161 pages, there are times in Faggioli's book where he pens a mere sentence that one wishes could be developed into a full chapter. He will no doubt have opportunities to further probe the dynamics of this pope and president over the next four years and we all stand to benefit.
As only the second Catholic president in U.S. history, Americans will now regularly see images of a commander-in-chief who heads to Mass each Sunday, wears a rosary and peppers his speeches with quotes from popes, saints and scripture. It is the very opposite of the "naked public square" stripped of religion that so many Catholics once warned of, but it is not the triumph of the Catholic moment that they once envisioned, setting up a likely showdown for both U.S. political and ecclesial life. To understand this coming clash, Faggioli's commentary should not be ignored.
Christopher White is the national correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter. Follow him on Twitter @CWWhite212.