The Pope and The President

These two old men meet the day after I write this and the day before you read it. Will it be old news for you? I expect that whatever media you consult will have reported “all the news that’s fit to print,” the old New York Times slogan, forever new in whatever media. But that’s the news these two politicians, struggling in their own spheres, want to project. What might they have really wanted to share?

They have met before, but did they establish a connection enough to feel like friends? They are both known for empathy, but real life has caught up with their images. Take Francis, unilaterally acting to organize canon law to establish penalties for ordaining women and placing severe restrictions on the Latin Mass. Take Biden, not really in control of ending American involvement in Afghanistan even though knowing that women, especially young women seeking education, will be harmed. 

In NCR’s “Francis, the Comic Strip,” Pat Marrin puts the words I want to hear in both their mouths: protecting and supporting women and children. 

Remember that Nancy Pelosi met the Pope in early October. Do you think women’s leadership came up? Pelosi’s statement is general and probably is similar to whatever Biden says: this Pope “is a source of joy and hope for Catholics and for all people, challenging each of us to be good stewards of God’s creation, to act on climate, to embrace the refugee, the immigrant and the poor, and to recognize the dignity and divinity in everyone.” “Everyone” does include women, I note.

Biden accompanied Francis during the 2015 papal visit to the United States, and Matt Vizer suggests that they are personally close. His article in the Washington Post reviewing Pope and President is the most fun, with gems like this from Biden: ‘‘The next Republican that tells me I’m not religious, I’m going to shove my rosary down their throat,’ he said in 2005.”

 Jesuit Thomas Reese for Religion News Service is more serious, concerned mostly about what matters of state should be discussed, like the climate conference in Glasgow and COVID-19, not the American bishops and communion. Reese goes on: “The White House sees in the pope an ally on the world stage, although the pope is probably closer to Bernie Sanders than Biden on economic issues. I am sure some in the White House would love to ask the pope to lobby Sen. Joe Manchin, a Catholic, on climate change, but that is not going to happen. Popes do not lobby legislators. Sadly, the U.S. bishops are mostly silent on global warming.” Reese notes that “Francis does not conceal his feelings” and suggests that you can tell how this meeting has gone by comparing the photo at the end with those from his previous presidential encounter.

That is made easier by NCR, though Reese probably has another photo of Trump and Francis in mind. Search “images: pope and Trump” to see what I mean. CNN’s Chris Cillizza wrote about “out of context” photos at the time. In NCR, Christopher White explores the meetings of Popes and Presidents, focusing on the proficient Vatican department of state and their predictable protocols.

“Heads Will Explode” is what Michael Sean Winters says in NCR. Whose heads? “For a certain kind of Catholic, Biden represents a repudiation of their understanding of their own Catholic identity, and that kind of Catholic tends to be less than enthusiastic about Francis!” The nuance in this sentence that I find admirable, not always my reaction to Winters, is “understanding of their own Catholic identity.” I recognize that for all of us, our Catholic identity is basic to our self-understanding and can be easily threatened. That’s what’s going on when there are culture wars in the church. 

The rest of the article is nuanced as well, even as Winters examines Biden, abortion, and the Catholic right’s personal attacks. “Almost always, Biden is clear that he accepts the church’s teaching on abortion but doesn’t think it right to legislate that teaching for the country. I think he is wrong and his argument is weak, but I have never seen contempt in Biden for this or any teaching of the church. Still less has Biden shown contempt for the church itself, and the church is always more than the sum total of its moral teachings.” 

Winters states his own position against abortion, but concludes this section with the following:

Biden seems to be a conflicted person, and conflictedness is usually a sign of moral seriousness. The abortion zealots, both pro- and con-, are the ones who really stand outside the Catholic moral and intellectual tradition, which recognizes complexity…We Catholics never fail to recognize the need to apply all moral principles to concrete circumstances with the use of prudential judgment.

All of that I would wish to see applied to women in the church: our moral seriousness, complexity, prudential judgment, but nobody is talking about women except in the way they disappear when abortion is discussed.

nd then Winters shifts to a discussion of the Vizer article in the Post which I found to be fun and Winters, not so much. He’d object to me calling Francis a politician as he objects to Vizer doing so. Winters thinks that Francis wants the church to stay out of politics. Having read and endlessly discussed Fratelli Tutti, I do not agree. Francis does not want to reinstate the temporal power of the papal states, lost in the 19^th century, but he does want the people of the church and the people of the world to take moral stands on the issues of the day, and to do that through the politics of their own countries and international organizations. This is Francis exercising his role as leader of the church. By the way, as I have said before, no one gets to be Pope who does not understand and play internal politics, either.

Finally, Winters recognizes these old men have in common that “They haven’t given up on the organizations they lead.” They bring the wisdom of age. Perhaps we can hope that Biden will share with the Pope that having women in leadership enhances the institution. 

And if not, maybe they’ll run across MyJoyOnline, the website of the Multimedia Group in Ghana. This week they repeated a CNN story: “A woman pope? Meet the feminists trying to save the Catholic Church.” Perfect for Halloween is the photo of the women of Maria 2.0 at a rally outside the German Bishops Conference. They make it really clear that they are not abandoning the church; they want to make it more equal, and have fun doing it. I think these two empathetic men will appreciate their spirit.