Perspectives on Church and Culture

Abstract

Perspectives on Church and Culture Frank P. Desiano CSP Faggioli, Massimo. Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States. Translated by Barry Huddock. New London, CT: Bayard, 2021. 176 pages. Paperback. $22.95. ISBN: 9781627856164. Roy, Olivier. Is Europe Christian? Translated by Cynthia Schoch. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020. 112 pages. Hardcover. $19.95. ISBN: 9780190099930. Although Faggioli’s book has over 160 pages, it reads like one very long article. Faggioli, of Villanova University, writes frequently about things political and ecclesiastical, an extension of his skills as a historian and expert on the Second Vatican Council. He is able to see patterns and contrast them with other patterns, as a doctor would look at a symptom and ponder what the real issue actually is. Along the way, Faggioli shows an ability to capture whole movement in a word or simple phrase using expressions that point to larger patterns in church or public life. Among these are: neo-conservative Catholics (39); evangelicalization of Catholicism (40); rewesternization of Catholicism (60); Romanization of US Catholicism (61); Constantinianism (108); neo-Constantinian; deinstitutionalization of Catholicism (137); and sedevacantism (142). All of these “ism” and “ation” kinds of words reveal the way Faggioli tries to unveil the processes he sees at work. The title of the book shows the two areas of Faggioli’s concern, Catholicism and contemporary America. Within Catholicism, he sees divisions that have played themselves out since the election of Pope Francis in 2013. Francis represents a new approach to modernity, one that diminishes an emphasis on cultural wars and also on Europe (112). As a result, he sees resistance to Francis within the Church, a resistance he centers mostly around Archbishop Viganó, the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States who urged the resignation of Francis. Within America Faggioli also sees divisions, obviously between politics of the left and right, but also, and more disturbingly, between the very visions Americans have of themselves. The central figure in this division is the former president, Donald J. Trump. He refers to “Trumpism” as a “pathogen” (69), an attitude which some Americans were trying to bring into the Catholic Church. The program of Donald Trump, summarized in the phrase “Make America Great Again,” was not only a repudiation of what Pope Francis stands for; it was also an attempt to delegitimate results of the Civil War and civil rights won in the 1960s (114). [End Page 291] Biden brings the divisions in Catholicism and in America into sharp relief because, on the one hand, he is a sincere practicing Catholic whom many U.S. bishops want to question because of his acceptance of Roe v Wade; and who, on the other hand, represents a vision of government that builds international partnerships and strives for greater domestic justice. Biden, the non-Trump, has a vision of the world very close to that of Pope Francis, one based on the common good and the bondedness of all humans. Faggioli does not try to prognosticate Biden’s presidency. Rather, he uses Biden to point out the unresolved tensions in contemporary Catholicism and in America’s view of itself. The crucial issue of evangelization which this book raises is this: how can the Church situate itself in modern, pluralistic democracies? At the Second Vatican Council, the Church opened itself up—particularly in its Constitution, The Church in the Modern World, and its decree on religious freedom—to theologies and directions it had long resisted. Both these documents implicitly recognized a new (!) situation for the Church: we no longer have religion and governments aligned with each other. The American experiment of separating church and state has become a major direction in governing across the world. As a result, church has to live with decisions of state which can become enormously complicated in pluralistic democracies. Faggioli considers reactionary Church attitudes toward modernity to be throwbacks to a world that no longer exists, ones that pretend that state would always protect church or that church could somehow dictate to the state. Romantic images of Medieval relations between emperors and popes, or nations that presumed a Catholic majority, simply cannot be imposed in the modern world. “Culture wars,” whether undertaken...