A New US Presidential Election and a Changing America: The Dilemma of US Catholics
The following article was written for publication in Missione Oggi, a magazine for Xaverian missionaries in Italy. It is planned for publication in April/May 2025.
In the United States, we recall the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on January 20 of each year, just before Black History Month. It invites us to reflect deeply on the soul of our communities and the challenges we have yet to undertake.
Brian Massingale for America Magazine wrote: “King declared that the mission of the civil rights movement was “to redeem the soul of America.” This vision grounded his struggles against the interlocking evils of racial injustice, economic exploitation, and expansive militarism. Retrieving this mission provides a valuable orientation as we address the contemporary challenge of pursuing justice in a polarized society.”[i]
On that same day, a newly elected president began his new term. Like King, the inauguration of a newly elected president is also a time to ponder the “soul of America” as we move forward. However, this presidential election tapped deep into our fears: fears of immigrants and refugees, fears of a global world “encroaching” on American identity, fears of an evolving culture, and growing pluralism, religiously and psychologically. Many feel overwhelmed with the vestiges of globalization and the uncertainties that left many economically, culturally, and morally.[ii]
These fears ushered an unprecedented election cycle that millions of Americans, and many Catholics, were willing to overlook or disregard Mr. Trump’s criminal convictions and manifold legal charges, his denigration of the judicial system and other cultural institutions, his adjudged abuse of women, his refusal to accept his 2020 election loss, and his dangerous efforts to overturn the will of the voters and more. As Massingale states, considering King’s legacy, this presidential moment urged us to ask the following questions: Who are we? And for what does America really stand?
Pope Francis’ Letter to the US Bishops
Pope Francis recently wrote the Bishops of the United States at this crucial time, which he describes as a “delicate moment” in which the pastors of the Church live in the United States.[iii] His concern is the treatment of immigrants and refugees considering the latest actions of the new US administration, which paints in broad brushstrokes labels of criminality among immigrants without any distinction for the majority, who are often running from violence at home. Pope Francis reminds the bishops of the parable of the good Samaritan, which was so central to the call for politics rooted in compassion in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti. In the mass roundup of undocumented immigrants, the Pope decried the denial of due process and justified the roundup by lumping criminals with those who overstayed a visa.
He states: “One must recognize the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or before arrival. That said, the act of deporting people who, in many cases, have left their land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution, or serious deterioration of the environment damages the dignity of many men and women and of entire families, and places them in a state of vulnerability and defenselessness.”
Overall, the response of individual bishops varies dramatically. Despite the longstanding advocacy efforts by the Conference of US Bishops for a comprehensive reform of the entire immigration system to address current global realities, there remain significant divisions among Catholics and clergy regarding the treatment of immigrants and refugees.
Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas, who chairs the Committee on Migration, issued a statement condemning “several of the executive orders signed by President Trump this week [which] are specifically intended to eviscerate humanitarian protections enshrined in federal law and undermine due process, subjecting vulnerable families and children to grave danger.”
Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, on the other hand, wrote in his archdiocesan newspaper that repeated GOP talking points. “Allowing violent gangs, individuals with serious criminal histories, dealers of lethal illegal drugs, human traffickers, and those who pose threats to our national security to enter our country and harm U.S. citizens is a serious dereliction of duty by our elected leaders,” Naumann said. “I commend President Trump and those in his administration for addressing this serious, national threat.” [iv]
The divisions among Catholics, both lay and clergy, concern immigration and speak of a wider divergence in how we see ourselves in relation to the world around us. Many Catholics, along with Evangelical Christians, are vibrant contributors to “Christian nationalism.” Christian nationalism is a form of religious nationalism that promotes certain Christian views to achieve prominence or dominance in political and social life.
Post-Liberalism, or Integralism: A Catholic Struggle
Vice President JD Vance cited medieval Catholic theology in justifying the immigration crackdown under President Donald Trump. “Just google ‘ordo amoris,’” he posted on Jan. 30 on the social media platform X. He posted this in reply to criticism over statements he made in a Fox News interview: “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” He claimed that the “far left” has inverted that.[v]
In an unprecedented way, Pope Francis’s letter spoke directly to the Vice President’s remarks. He stated: “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words, the human person is not a mere, expansive individual with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true Ordo Amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’, that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception. (6)
Then in the next number, he adds: “But worrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth.” The Vice President, who converted to Roman Catholicism five years ago, called himself a “postliberal” Catholic in the past and has endorsed policies and tactics favored by adherents of the label, such as purging the administrative state and his rhetorical promotion of “pro-family” policy and a nationalistic approach to statecraft.
More conservative Catholics wanted to bring faith and even some control to public life because it would have a better family policy. When Trump was elected, though, it really divided Catholics because progressive Catholicism was less extreme on church/state issues, but they just thought Trump was as un-Catholic as a leader could be. Conservative integralists believed that Trump was a way of quelling liberal elites. They did not see much social progress unless there was a new elite.[vi]
In 1945, President Roosevelt defined the national interest in global terms—in preserving a multilateral order that made the world safe for capitalism and liberal democracy. For many Catholics, some aspects of liberal democracy, with its global view and equalitarian understanding of world relationships, are no longer relevant for the times we are in, and they are connecting tenants of faith with the political ideology that best helps them articulate that faith. As the world struggles with the rise of nationalism, Catholics of the United States reflect that the bishops have done little to mediate this tension, while some bishops have exasperated it. The leadership of Pope Francis in this dialectic of US Catholic culture needs to be repeated and evolve if US Catholics are going to have a meaningful impact together.
[i] Massingale, Brian. The Soul of America: From Martin Luther King to Trump. America Magazine, January 29, 2025.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops of the United States, From the Vatican, February 10, 2025. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2025/documents/20250210-lettera-vescovi-usa.html
[iv] Ibid.
[v] What is ‘ordo amoris?’ Vice President JD Vance invokes this medieval Catholic concept, Associated Press, February 6, 2025.
[vi] Jones, Sara. J.D. Vance and the Rise of the ‘Postliberal’ Catholics. The Intelligencer, September 22, 2024.
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