What Were They Thinking?

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), to be specific. Did their elected president, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, not anticipate that his statement would be seen as entirely inappropriate on an Inauguration Day that celebrated Catholics from the President to the Poet?

What were they thinking? I always go back to my experience of John Paul II’s proclamation that women’s ordination is impossible. It immediately opened a debate on the much larger issue of infallibility. Joshua McElwee explored the tortured rationales a couple of years ago in NCR. Similarly, Gomez writing for a small group in the USCCB might be undone by asserting their narrow view.

Certainly fellow bishops did find the statement inappropriate. That very day Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago criticized it on grounds of both process and content. Newark NJ Cardinal Joseph Tobin and Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield IL issued statements like San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy’s; he suggested that the USCCB should have responded more like Pope Francis, welcoming dialogue. Did Gomez not read Fratelli Tutti?

Certainly the Catholic press found it inappropriate; some of the early links are above. I’ll highlight two more.

Jesuit Thomas Reese’s column posits “a small but vocal minority [that] wants to punish the new president for his support of legalized abortion, gay rights and birth control.” Reese also identifies what some in that minority want to do and what many centrist bishops want to avoid: a confrontation over communion. Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory is not going to deny Biden at the altar rail; he was very visible at all the inaugural religious ceremonies.

While Michael Sean Winters has written voluminously on church politics, I find NCR editor Heidi Schlumpf’s blog an excellent review of the conservative climate in American Catholicism – and the survival of liberal Catholics within it. It made me want to cheer.

Finally, certainly the secular press found the statement inappropriate. The conclusions of two articles especially tickled me.

After a general review, E. J. Dionne in The Washington Post opines:

And this is why Gomez’s admonishment was a blunder. Not only did he galvanize the pro-Francis forces in the church willing to work with Biden on many issues. He also sent a message to the Biden administration that its formal dealings with the Catholic hierarchy should go not simply through the bishops conference, the traditional route, but also through the American cardinals, three of whom were named by Francis.

Biden did not run for president to transform the politics of the Catholic Church. But the devout kid from Scranton, Pa., is already having that effect.

And Paul Elie in The New Yorker didn’t focus very much on this controversy but rather on the whole trajectory of Catholic politics, speculating that Pope Francis might move Biden to the left. He makes the comment that ties this blog to the issue of women’s ordination:

As a side effect, joint efforts between the Biden Administration and the Vatican—on the climate, immigration, and human rights—might prompt the Vatican to be more progressive in its approach to laypeople, women and gay people among them, in leadership positions.

We are in for a new era in American politics that has a Catholic in the spotlight, after so much tragedy highlighted by spotlights on clergy sex abuse. Let us pray that the broader American and international communities start to see someone acting as we want the Church to act. All of Biden’s actions won’t perfectly satisfy all of us, but we will spotlight the ones that do, like his unprecedented leadership team, remarkable for its diversity and inclusiveness. When we see a Catholic dedicated to equality for all people, we will comment—appropriately.

What were they thinking? Not about the future of American Catholicism or the USCCB. They will not grab the spotlight from the Catholic President. New leadership is emerging. We will keep speaking out to ensure that all understand our call for justice.