USA: a country divided

USA: a country divided 

THE TABLET

19 January 2017 | by Michael Sean Winters | Comments: 0 The world is waiting to see how much of the new US President’s rhetoric will be turned into action. There is concern in Catholic social justice circles about his stance on immigration, health care and climate change. Here, Tablet writers consider the prospects for the American economy, relations with Russia, and Donald Trump’s pledge to tighten the abortion laws. Firstly, how is the Church squaring up to the challenges ahead?
As Donald Trump takes his seat in the Oval Office, no one in Catholic advocacy circles knows exactly what to expect. Will he try and deliver on his promise to build a wall along the US border with Mexico? He pledged mass deportations, but has since walked back from that position. Will he cede control of the budget to Congress and what will that mean for anti-poverty programmes and health care? Will the man who tweeted that Pope Francis was “disgraceful” demonstrate any respect for the role of religion in society?


No issue looms larger for US Catholics than immigration. Sixty-one per cent of Catholics under the age of 18 here are Latino and no presidential candidate has been more consistently hostile to immigrants since the nineteenth century. At a packed service at the Cathedral of St Patrick in El Paso, Texas, last week, religious and civic leaders, led by Bishop Mark Seitz, mixed with so-called “Dreamers” – those brought to the US without documentation as children and previously shielded from deportation by Barack Obama’s administration – to witness to the dignity of immigrants.

“We just came out of an election season in which the demonisation of our border communities, migrants and our neighbours across the border was a core message of President-elect Trump’s campaign,” says Dylan Corbett, executive director of Hope Border Institute, which helped to organise the prayer service.

He goes on: “The real story is that border communities haven’t surrendered to the divisions created by walls, grandstanding and destructive policies. El Paso has been the safest city in the United States for years. Crime in border towns is lower than in Chicago or Detroit or New York.”

In Washington, at a conference co-sponsored by America’s largest federation of trade unions, the AFL-CIO, and the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies, Cardinal Sean O’Malley recounted his early work with the immigrant community as a young friar and called on the Church and the unions to continue to work together in defence of immigrants. He also reiterated the Church’s commitment to universal health care just as the incoming administration and the Republican-controlled Congress debate how to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

“Affordable health care is foundational for the well-being of individuals and families and lack of health care directly threatens human dignity,” the cardinal told the conference. “The technical details concerning health-care policies are many and complicated, but our moral obligation not to abandon people in their times of need is clear.”

Sr Simone Campbell, director of NETWORK, the Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, and famous for organising the “Nuns on the Bus” anti-poverty campaigns, agrees. She says: “More than 20 million people have gotten health care because of the Affordable Care Act. The Republican leadership wants to repeal the Act without offering an alternative. This irresponsible action is terrorising our people, undermining hospitals, doctors and other providers. The Act should be improved not repealed. We Catholics need to make sure that happens.” Congress did not heed the cardinal or the nun: last week, both the Senate and the House of Representatives moved to begin the repeal of the Affordable Care Act – without having agreed a replacement.

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago has written about the need to defend immigrants and the importance of universal health care in his weekly column since the election, but he harbours other concerns as well. “In the present debate, the Church can contribute mightily by recalling that economic health is measured by economic security and inclusion for all and that politics is about pursuing the common good, just as Pope Francis did in his speech to a joint session of Congress in 2015,” he tells me.

Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ placed concern for the environment at the top of Catholic issues in the field of social justice, but Trump has suggested the science of climate change is a hoax, and on the campaign trail he promised to revive the coal industry.

Tony Annett, of the Center for Sustainable Development, part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, says the Church across the world – especially in developing countries – is echoing Francis’ concerns for the environment.

“The US Church is sadly lagging too far behind on this, and it needs to catch up,” he explains. “This is especially important given that the US has an enormous carbon footprint on the world, the fossil fuel industry holds politicians in a financial chokehold, and a ruinous libertarian ideology that puts self-interest before the common good pooh-poohs any attempt to legislate change.”

The response of the US Bishops’ Conference (USCCB) to these concerns about Trump’s policies has been muted. The conference set up a task force on immigration at their November meeting but issued no public statement about its existence until Cardinal Cupich forced its hand by publishing an article about the task force and about the need to plan some advocacy work.

A subsequent statement from the president and vice president of the USCCB, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo and Archbishop José Gómez, placed border security ahead of welcoming the stranger and serving the most vulnerable in their list of “important work”. Previous statements from the conference usually reversed that order. The statement also did not even mention the “undocumented”. Since the election, the conference has been silent on the subjects of health care and the environment.

even Trump’s Catholic supporters are cautious, mindful of his unpredictable statements and tweets in the past. At a pre-inaugural dialogue at Georgetown University on “Faithful priorities in a time of Trump,” Francis Rooney, the Republican Congressman and former US ambassador to the Holy See, expressed hope for progress on issues such as pro-life, religious liberty and education. He spoke also of the need for workable approaches on immigration and poverty.

John Carr, who moderated the dialogue and directs the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University, points out: “Catholic leaders are in a very awkward position. We hope President-elect Trump meant what he said about abortion and religious liberty and didn’t mean what he said about immigration, health care, and the use of torture and nuclear weapons. It is a time for principled leadership and solidarity with the poor and the vulnerable.”

Michael Sean Winters writes for The Tablet from Washington DC. He is a visiting fellow at the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at the Catholic University
of America and a columnist at the National Catholic Reporter.