As Biden swore the oath of office and made his first speech as President of the United States on Wednesday, half the country seemed to breath a sigh of relief whilst the other half let loose a howl of outrage. It was these divisions, revealed most starkly by the Capitol riot only days earlier, that Biden sought to begin to heal in an earnest speech to an anxious American public.
The most striking elements of the speech were the apocalyptic eyes with which it looked back to the Trump presidency, the conscious attempt to ape Lincoln’s post-civil war rhetoric, and the high religious overtone that permeated Biden’s words. This was an overtly theological speech in every sense, and typically of American public discourse it freely blended the “sacrality” of American democracy with a moralistic appeal to values that hovered ambiguously between republican and Christian virtues.
What set Biden’s speech especially apart was the vein of Catholicism that ran through it, most dramatically apparent in his quotation of St Augustine: “Many centuries ago, St Augustine – the saint of my church – wrote that a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love. Defined by the common objects of their love. What are the common objects we as Americans love, that define us as Americans? I think we know. Opportunity, security, liberty, dignity, respect, honour, and yes, the truth.”
Biden’s Catholicism has been a matter of controversy for some time, which recently arose in shocking fashion when the US bishops put out a statement denouncing the new President for his stances on social issues, especially abortion. It was condemned by the Archbishop of Chicago among others. Biden has made frequent allusions to his religion during the election, with nuns and Catholic imagery used in campaign videos, and clearly has a sincere personal faith.
So Biden represents a challenge to US Catholics. On the one hand he is America’s second Catholic president, a man who has endured personal tragedy and, despite the scandals, shown an utter fatherly devotion to his troubled son Hunter Biden. His positions and promises on ecology, migration and labour relations echo the priorities of Pope Francis himself. Despite his reputation as a moderate Democrat, some of Biden’s first actions upon taking office were to replace Churchill’s bust in the Oval Office with that of radical Catholic labour organiser Cesar Chavez and to fire the deeply unpopular general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board Peter Robb, an infamously anti-union official. His first executive orders were dominated by relief for migrants and refugees threatened by deportation, and to restore the US government’s commitment to fighting climate change.
And yet this is also likely to be one of the most challenging and extreme regimes from the perspective of Catholics wishing to uphold magisterial teachings on issues like sexuality, abortion and contraception, as well as religious conservatives in general. Whilst it would not have been realistic to expect a Democratic President to retain the Hyde amendment banning US aid from organisations that provide abortions, or to reverse his party’s pro-choice positions, Biden has committed to more substantially pro-choice positions than any previous president. He is committed to enshrining Roe v. Wade in federal law, which would overturn most state-level restrictions on abortion access.
The paradox of trying to achieve “unity” (a term that appears eight times in Biden’s address) is that in a country profoundly divided over irreconcilable differences about what represents a life, what makes a person male or female, and what constitutes a civil right, the only path to unity is one that involves a compromise either in belief or the bounds of tolerance. With the former unlikely to change outside of secular shifts of opinion, Biden can only be aiming to create an America in which conservatives and liberals can live together, and tolerate their differences in the cultural sphere.
But there is little sign that in practice Biden feels able to compromise on issues that are increasingly framed as matters of civil rights and thus outside of the realm of compromise and indeed political debate. Apart from his stance on abortion, he has declared that he will reverse the conscience and religious liberty exceptions to the so-called “contraceptive mandate”, meaning that the Little Sisters of the Poor, and similar Catholic organisations may find themselves in court yet again.
Concealed in Biden’s speech, however, is an implicit reflection on on this dilemma.
Consider this passage near the beginning of his speech: “Through civil war, the Great Depression, World War, 9/11, through struggle, sacrifice, and setback, our better angels have always prevailed. In each of our moments enough of us have come together to carry all of us forward and we can do that now. History, faith and reason show the way. The way of unity.”
American politics is born out of a heady blend of liberal humanism, revolutionary zeal, religious utopianism and commercial pragmatism. A central uniting theme is a progressive mythos whereby America is the pinnacle and fulcrum of history, guided by the forces of a mysterious providence. This quasi-Christian, almost Manichean account shines through Biden’s speech, that “better angels have prevailed” and “history” shows the way.
Yet two visions struggle with each other in Biden’s speech, and perhaps in his soul. On the one hand is the remorseless narrative of progress, whether technological, moral, social or economic which is destined to unite not just America but the world behind a truth evident to reason and developed over time by the forces of history. Its characteristic discourse is that of rights.
On the other hand we have a more classical, Catholic and Augustinian version of the Republic, which understands society as constituted by a shared contemplation of a timeless reality, and reliant upon the private and public virtues of its citizens. It dares, like Biden, to mention things like honour, truth and dignity alongside rights.
The rhetoric of American life – “restless, bold, optimistic” as Biden praises it – continues to be that of a frontier nation. More worryingly, it can be that of a frontier ideology, or even theology, in which rather than seeking an embodied and proportional justice, Americans seek to perpetually transcend their divisions by acts of strenuous progress within a limitless space.
Too often the price of that expansion is simply paid elsewhere; whether by the natural world, or those who are seen as a barrier to the aspirations of others: the unborn, the elderly, the poor, minorities, or indeed the inhabitants of the world beyond the shores of America.
Catholic thought has the potential to restore a politics of limit: of goods held in common rather than competed for; of a society driven by shared ambitions rather than individual whims. A hint of that very different politics gleamed in Biden’s speech: of a society defined by grandeur of soul rather than the hunger for worldly glory. It is an approach that potentially challenges the excesses of both cultural individualism on the left and of economic individualism and national selfishness on the right. Americans across the political spectrum must look to that very different theology, and very different politics, if they are to have even a chance of restoring the unity of their republic.
What do you think?
You can post as a subscriber user ...
User comments (0)