Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States by Massimo Faggioli

Author:Massimo Faggioli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 23rd Publications
Published: 2020-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

5. The Biden Administration and the Vatican

In February 2019, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, delivered an important address at Rome’s Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the signing of the Lateran Pacts. Parolin affirmed that the “perpetual dialogue” that exists between the Holy See and various nations contributes to “ensuring humanity a worthy future.” Through “positive neutrality,” the Holy See does not limit itself to simply looking out the window but contributes to building a dialogue between various parties. Taking the case of Venezuela as an example, Cardinal Parolin described the Vatican’s position on international crises. “The attitude of the Holy See,” he said, “is that of positive neutrality. It is not the attitude of those who stand at the window and observe what happens almost indifferently. It is the attitude of those who try to be above the parties in order to overcome conflict.” This is part of a larger picture of Pope Francis’s pontificate. Francis has interpreted the neutrality and sovereignty of the Vatican in new ways; emphasis on the peripheries also means redefining borders in this age of new walls.

When it comes to relations between the Vatican and the new American administration, much will depend on the way the end of the convergence between the “parallel empires,” made evident by the crisis of globalization, is managed. In Pope Francis’s hands, the papacy is not an emanation of a Euro-Western Catholicism; it is equally concerned for the “global south” and Asia. An heir to the missionary tradition of the Jesuits, Francis is also aware of the post-colonial paradigm shift for the Church and the world. While the United States remains unavoidably central in defining the West, Francis realizes that the twenty-first century papacy is no longer the leader of a Church identified with the West. And it is a West in conflict with the rest of the world—with Shiite Islam (Iran) and Sunni Islam (starting with the new role of Turkey), with China and Russia. In Africa, from the Great Lakes region to West Africa and the Horn of Africa, areas of instability have widened. During the pontificate of the Argentine pope, the situation of democracy in many Latin American countries has also deteriorated. In this context, Biden’s election is one of the few and necessary bits of good news for Francis’s pontificate from the point of view of international politics. The second Catholic president exemplifies on a political level what the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas called “contrite modernity” and which also applies to Catholicism in the post-secular global world—contrition as a way beyond epochal defeats on a series of moral and social issues but also international ones.96

The appointments announced by Joe Biden during the initial weeks of the transition immediately sent a much-expected signal of change on international issues. The people named to the posts of Secretary of State (Antony Blinken, formerly a staff member of the Clinton White House and later Barack Obama’s Deputy National Security

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