This article was originally published in GPR’s Spring 2017 Magazine
Pope Francis is one of the most popular pontiffs in history, boasting approval ratings upwards of 85 percent among U.S. Catholics in December 2016 according to the Catholic News Service. Living in a small apartment and preferring simple garb, he is an international icon of humility and generosity. But beneath the surface of Francis’ reinvigoration of the Catholic Church lurks a major conflict that is polarizing Catholics in the United States and worldwide.
The divisions in the American Catholic Church fall along two loosely related categories: response to modernization and race. The reforms of the Second Vatican Council, as well as Pope John Paul II’s outspoken opposition to abortion and birth control, provided the first two fault lines among the American faithful. A Huffington Post survey found that American Catholics today frequently hold views that dissent from official teachings – only 36 percent agree with the prohibition on female priests, only 40 percent agree with the Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage, 79 percent support the use of contraception, and more than 70 percent believe abortion should be allowed in some cases.
Parishes tend to be racially segregated, some predominantly white and others Hispanic, with integration obstructed by the language barrier. As large-scale immigration from Latin America continues, the proportion of U.S. Catholics who are Hispanic continues to rise, currently standing around 34 percent. There are major divisions among white Catholics on political issues but this is less true of Hispanic Catholics, who overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic Party. However, according to Catherine Brekus of Slate, they tend to have more conservative views on abortion and homosexuality than white Catholics – putting them more in line with the Vatican than white Catholics are. The political divide between white and Hispanic Catholics was especially evident during the racially charged 2016 election, as Hispanic Catholics provided a crucial part of Hillary Clinton’s base and white Catholics narrowly favored Donald Trump.
The parishioners aren’t the only ones divided – the episcopacy is extremely political as well. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, the most prominent bishop in the U.S., has maintained a large degree of authority over the rhetoric of the American church for years. He was an outspoken opponent of the Obama administration on “religious liberty” issues related to birth control requirements under the Affordable Care Act. He has a close alliance with an advocacy organization called the Catholic League, which regularly challenges the ACLU on cases involving the separation of church and state. Dolan and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were also notably critical of the “Nuns on the Bus” movement – a pressure group of U.S. nuns, founded in 2012, that sought to draw attention to poverty and social justice through bus trips across the country.
Dolan has provided religious backing for the administration of President Trump, treating him notably better than he treated President Barack Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast and praising his reinstatement of the “Mexico City Policy,” a ban on federal funding to any NGO that provides abortion counseling or advocates for its legalization. According to Emily Crockett of Vox, analysts anticipate that this ban will have the effect of killing thousands of poor women and removing birth control access for millions of others.
Pope Benedict XVI was a close ally of Cardinal Dolan. Pope Francis, on the other hand, has made significant changes in the direction of the Catholic Church’s top leadership. From the very beginning, he has emphasized openness and compassion over purity or adherence to rules. Pope Francis has made tolerant statements about homosexuals and atheists, softened the Church’s rules on divorce and remarriage, lessened the Church’s public emphasis on divisive cultural issues like abortion, and served as an outspoken advocate for refugees during the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis, even taking refugee families into the Vatican.
Alongside his rhetoric, Francis has made transparent institutional moves to change the direction of the American church. In October 2016, he elevated the progressive-leaning bishops Blase Cupich of Chicago and William Tobin of Indianapolis to the rank of cardinal. Traditionalists consider Cupich an “extremely liberal bishop” who belongs, in the words of Claire Chretien and Steve Jalsevac of Life Site News, to the “centrist, non-cultural warrior wing of the country’s hierarchy.” Earlier in 2016, Francis had promoted Cupich to the crucial Congregation for Bishops, which oversees the selection of new bishops. Later he would promote Tobin to the Archdiocese of Newark to provide a counterweight to Dolan in the New York metropolitan area.
While it may seem that the tide is in favor of a more progressive church, Francis’ allies received a shock in the victory of Donald Trump. As the New York Times has reported in detail, President Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon has ties to several “traditionalists” within the Vatican and the American Church, including Cardinal Raymond Burke, a prominent critic of Pope Francis. Bannon is an anti-feminist, anti-secularist, and harsh critic of Islam whose worldview is oriented around an ideological battle between civilizations. Naturally, he sees the Catholic Church as a key western institution that needs to be “militant,” not opened up. His staunch opposition to immigration and the admission of refugees has led him to reach out to numerous opponents of Francis within the Catholic world.
It may be difficult for the Church of Pope Francis, emphasizing inclusion and social justice, to remain under the same roof as the more moralizing and sectarian Church of Dolan and Bannon.
In December 2016, Cardinal Burke warned, “There is a very serious division in the Church which has to be mended…if it’s not clarified soon, it could develop into a formal schism.” While insisting that he respected the papacy, he suggested that a Pope who preached heresy would forfeit his position and necessitate the election of a new Pope. However, other traditionalist bishops such as Cardinal Daniel DiNardo – Dolan’s successor as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops – have vigorously denied their opposition to Francis and asserted that one can be a traditionalist while following him.
Which side will triumph in the battle for the future of the Church? As in politics generally, progressives tend to pin their future hopes on demographic change, specifically the growth of the Hispanic population. However, a wrench may be thrown into these demographic assumptions by the major evangelical revival currently pulling large numbers of people away from the Catholic Church throughout Latin America.
A different demographic factor bodes poorly for progressives – progressive young people tend to reject organized religion entirely rather than attempting to reform it from within. This leaves a rump community of older conservatives who then dominate all levels of Church organization. The result is a Catholic community considerably more conservative than the median person born into the faith.
Or perhaps demographics are less important than most people think. The Catholic Church is a hierarchy that somewhat reflects but is ultimately not accountable to its members, so it remains entirely possible that the direction of the Church will be determined by high Vatican politics and the development of the massive issues the globe is facing. Perhaps the divisions exacerbated by the crises of the last decade will be eased by the events of the next.