DOMRADIO.DE: Donald Trump now has been elected twice, both times Catholics were on his side. What does that tell you about the catholic Church in America?
Massimo Faggioli: A recent poll showed that a clear majority of 56% of Catholics voted for Trump, compared to 41% for Harris. In 2020, Biden carried the Catholic vote, albeit narrowly (52% to 47%).
Catholicism in the USA is a reflection of current American culture. The key question for all Catholics, not just in the USA, is what American Catholicism has in common with Catholicism as believed and practiced elsewhere. Or if it has it become a phenomenon driven by “slash-and-burn” conservatism. It’s not just a Catholic problem . Trump’s coalition means that very few religious communities and demographics are not somehow implicated in this. But Trump and Vance instrumentalized successfully the religious and Catholic vote in ways that compels the Christian community to respond accordingly.
What we have seen in the last few decades is an intellectual collapse which retraces the steps of Evangelical Protestantism from the 1970s-80s onwards. It is part of the post-Europeanization of American religion which is making it less and less able to deal with Enlightenment values, secularization, and multiculturalism.
The 2024 election cements a shift that has been visible in US Catholicism for a while: fewer Catholics in the USA look like Kennedy, Biden, and Pelosi. It’s a generational rupture signaling a deeper interruption in the tradition of Catholics in American politics. But it’s also a cultural rupture. Biden becomes the last Catholic leader in a US Church shaped by World War II and Vatican II. Trump and Vance are the first of a new era, also of a new era in US Catholicism.
DOMRADIO.DE: How do you think the USCCB will feel and react to the election results? The bishops have been very public in their criticism of Joe Biden, as we know.
Faggioli: Trump’s comeback exposes the captivity of many US bishops to the partisan political narratives of the “culture wars”. It emboldens the great financiers who are assimilating institutional Catholicism to the oligarchic system that governs the USA. Vance, who has been Trump’s megaphone in spreading nativist propaganda lies (in a particularly despicable way about Haitian immigrants, but it’s just one example). We will see how the Catholic bishops will react, after they tried to deprive Biden of the Eucharistic communion between 2020 and 2021 (before being stopped by the Vatican) because of his pro-choice position.
DOMRADIO.DE: Do you expect any reaction from the Pope or the Vatican?
Faggioli: Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See Secretary of State, wishes President Trump “much wisdom” following his election victory, although urges Trump to be a “president for the whole country, [and] so overcome the polarization that has occurred.” He is hopeful about Trump’s pledge to end wars but cautions: “he doesn’t have a magic wand.”
DOMRADIO.DE: Catholic faith does not only stand for conservatism and pro life issues, it should also stand for loving your neighbor, protecting God's creation (laudato si), helping the poor and disfortunate. Keeping all of this in mind, how do you feel about the election results today?
Faggioli: The fact is that the culture wars if focused on some issues, and leaves many others aside. The result of this election is dangerous because it promises or threatens to make steps back on what social Catholicism is about. Trump and Vance are not conservative, but a mix of nationalism, libertarianism and technocracy, and this puts them at odds with a Catholic idea of society.
Interview: Renardo Schlegelmilch
