The appointment of Cardinal Robert McElroy as the eighth archbishop of Washington, D.C., demonstrates the degree to which Pope Francis understands the situation of the church in the U.S. The pope found the man best suited to meet this moment both in the life of the church and the life of the nation.
To the capital of a deeply polarized nation, the pope has sent the only U.S. bishop who could be considered a scholar of American political history and its intersection with Catholic theology.
For a flavor of McElroy’s unique combination of intellectual and pastoral depth, consider this speech he gave at a migration conference held in the weeks after Trump’s victory in 2016. He said that “there is a profound sickness in the soul in American political life. This sickness tears at the fabric of our nation’s unity, undermining the core democratic consensus that is the foundation for our identity as Americans.”
The “profound sickness” was not Trumpism — or Clintonism for that matter. McElroy was keen to note in 2016 that Democrats could find no warrant in Catholic teaching for trying to make the new administration a failure, as some Republicans had done to President Barack Obama. The sickness was creeping, excessive partisanship: “Party choice has ceased to be merely a political category and instead has become a wider form of personal identity. This often has searing negative impacts within families, friendships and civic life, as citizens increasingly confine themselves within partisan media and culture silos, and are encouraged in their anger against those who disagree.”
On migration, McElroy was emphatic. “For us, as the Catholic community of the United States, it is unthinkable that we will stand by while more than ten percent of our flock is ripped from our midst and deported,” he said. “It is equally unthinkable that we as Church will witness the destruction of our historic national outreach to refugees at a time when the need to offer safe haven to refugees is growing throughout the world.”
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With thanks to National Catholic Reporter (NCR) and Michael Sean Winters, where this article originally appeared.
