Return of The Donald: blessing or curse for US-Vatican relations?

One consequence of information overload in a digital age is an epidemic of “presentism”, meaning the assumption that everything is happening for the first time. With so much data to process from today, who has time for something as remote as yesterday?

Thus for many observers, confronted with the return of Donald Trump, a cut-throat leader of the world’s most powerful nation and a man perceived as overtly hostile to the Pope on multiple fronts, the presentist assumption might be that sales of anti-anxiety drugs right now must be flying off the shelves of the Vatican pharmacy.

For those tempted to such thoughts, it’s worthwhile to recall that once upon a time (AD 452, to be exact), Leo the Great faced a leader of another great power, Attila the Hun. He didn’t just have policy differences with Rome – he wanted to destroy the city.

Much later, Pius VI and VII had to deal with Napoleon, who expressed his disagreement with papal priorities not in snarky soundbites, like Trump, but by arresting both pontiffs and carrying them off to France in chains.

Even later than that, Pius XI had to deal with the rise of both Joseph Stalin near the beginning of his papacy, in 1924, and of Adolf Hitler towards the end, in 1933.

Along the way, other popes have faced emperors, kings and autocrats of all sorts who threatened not only the interests of the Church but also their physical safety. Yet through it all, the papacy and the Vatican have endured.

To imagine that curial mandarins today are losing sleep over the spectre of Donald Trump, therefore, is simultaneously to give Trump too much credit and the Vatican too little. That said, it’s worth pressing back a bit against the presumption that Trump’s return necessarily portends a low ebb in relations with Rome.

Certainly, Trump and Francis have contrasting views on many issues, from immigration and climate change to China and the UN; they also embody clearly different backgrounds and instincts. However, what often gets lost in the shuffle is that this is nothing new: all US presidents are inexact fits for the Vatican, because America’s two-party system forever churns out commanders-in-chief who uphold Catholic teaching on some fronts but flagrantly reject it on others.

In the 1990s, for example, Bill Clinton and John Paul II saw eye to eye on debt relief for impoverished nations, but fought titanic battles over abortion during UN conferences in Cairo on population and in Beijing on women. A decade later, George W Bush and John Paul II came together over matters such as same-sex marriage and embryonic stem cell research, but differed mightily over the war in Iraq.

In 2008, the election of Barack Obama was hailed by Benedict XVI as a symbol of hope for the world, but the two men would later come to loggerheads over Obama’s insistence on contraception mandates as part of healthcare reform.

It’s also important to recall that had things gone the other way on 5 November, it’s not as if US-Vatican relations would have been smooth sailing under a Kamala Harris administration. Aside from obvious differences on matters such as abortion and gender, Harris comes off as a largely secularist leader who might have dealt the Vatican the cruellest cut of all by simply ignoring it.

One might paraphrase Lear about American presidents and the Vatican: “Change places and handy-dandy, which is the friend, which is the foe?”

In addition, there’s also the possibility that Trump and Francis might find some surprising areas of common ground. One such opportunity is Ukraine – both president and pontiff enjoy good relations with Vladimir Putin, both have suggested that Russia isn’t exclusively to blame for the war, and both have called for a negotiated settlement that may involve some territorial compromises by Kyiv.

Perhaps together, Trump and Francis can broker an end to the bloodiest European conflict since the Second World War.

If so, imagine the tsunami of cognitive dissonance that might be unleashed should this odd couple end up sharing the Nobel Peace Prize!

Finally, there’s another factor affecting US-Vatican relations under Trump, which is the basic truth that Republican administrations tend to take the Vatican more seriously than Democrats, so they’re often better at what one might call “customer service”. During the Clinton administration, it once took a full week just to engineer a phone call between president and pope; under George W Bush, the same request required only hours.

In that light, Vatican officials may look at Trump’s return to power as a mixed blessing – there will be disagreements, yes, but at least their phone calls and emails will be returned promptly.

As for the implications of a second Trump term for US Catholics, here too there are some assumptions that need to be dispelled.

First, much has been made of the fact that Trump won the Catholic vote fairly comfortably, buoyed by an especially strong performance with white Catholics, garnering 61 per cent to Harris’s 39. Yet the truth is that this result should hardly be a surprise; white Catholics have backed the Republican candidate in every race since 2000, by margins ranging from 52 to 64 per cent.

In other words, this was less a personal endorsement of Trump by white Catholic voters than a broad preference for Republicans over Democrats, regardless of who the candidate is.

Secondly, for all those convinced that conservative Catholics in the US, who stand closer to Trump than Francis on many matters, will enjoy a golden age, the same point applies, in reverse. Just because a president and a pope differ doesn’t mean they can’t do business. Similarly, just because a majority of US Catholics and a president are basically simpatico, doesn’t mean all will be sweetness and light.

For one thing, the US bishops made clear during their recent meeting in Baltimore that they intend to push back forcefully should Trump attempt to follow through with his campaign pledges regarding mass deportations of immigrants.

That’s not just a case of bishops falling in line with the Pope, by the way – the US bishops are in earnest about their pro-immigration stand, not just as a matter of justice but also for a hard demographic truth. Were it not for immigration, the Catholic Church would have been losing “market share” in the American population for decades. What keeps Catholicism at roughly 20-25 per cent is the arrival of Hispanic immigrants, who are disproportionately Catholic.

In other words, this is not an issue on which the US hierarchy is likely to bend, regardless of who’s in the White House.

In addition, candidate Trump this time around also suggested he would pursue a much softer line on abortion than during his first term. He vowed he would not sign a federal abortion ban, and he also supports preserving access to the so-called “abortion pill”. If he follows through as president, this may put him at odds with many of the conservative Catholics who voted for him.

It’s telling, for example, that a recent essay in Catholic World Report asserted that the second greatest threat right now to the prolife movement, after Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, is Trump.

All this suggests that church-state relations in America will have their ups and downs under a second Trump term, just as has always been the case.

Conservative American Catholics may now delight in the comeback of The Donald, but that doesn’t augur a problem-free term; and while Vatican officials and papal loyalists may not be turning cartwheels, that doesn’t mean the forecast is for disaster, either.

RELATED: Trump triumphs and returns to the White House with a Catholic vice president

Photo: President Donald Trump meets Pope Francis during a presidential visit to Vatican in May 2017 (Getty Images)

This article appears in the special Advent and Christmas 2024 double edition of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent, high-calibre, counter-cultural and orthodox Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click HERE.

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