Does Archbishop Gregory’s Objection to Trump Break New Ground?
National Catholic Register, 05 June 2020
It is possible that Catholic rhetoric regarding Trump is influenced by the high-octane and low-civility rhetoric that is found all over Washington, beginning with the White House.
The controversy over President Donald Trump’s visit to the St. John Paul II National Shrine highlighted a potential new development in the Catholic Church’s relationship with the presidency in the United States. Prominent voices, led by the local ordinary, Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C., thought that the visit should have been canceled; moreover, that it was a betrayal of Catholic values not to have canceled it.
No presidential visit to a Catholic institution has roused such controversy since the University of Notre Dame conferred an honorary doctorate on President Barack Obama in 2009. The circumstances are both similar and different: similar, in that critics thought the president should not have been invited; different, in that Obama was being honored by Notre Dame, while the Trump visit was (ostensibly) to honor Pope St. John Paul II.
The visit to the St. John Paul II National Shrine, operated by the Knights of Columbus, had been planned some time ago specifically for June 2, the date in 1979 when John Paul arrived for the first time in Poland as pope. That visit marked the beginning of the end for the Soviet empire.
Trump has honored that papal pilgrimage before; on a trip to Warsaw in 2017 he spoke at length about St. John Paul II’s homily on June 2, 1979, in Warsaw’s Victory Square.
Trump’s visit was intended to be an homage to John Paul and the occasion for signing a new executive order elevating the importance of religious liberty in U.S. foreign policy. The order mandates training in religious liberty for all State Department employees.
The visit followed less than 24 hours after Trump visited St. John’s Episcopal Church across the street from the White House. Protesters were forcibly dispersed to clear the area for the president, who stood outside the church holding a Bible. There was no visit inside the church or meeting with parishioners. Trump intended to convey symbolically that his administration would defend churches against violence; St. John’s had been vandalized in the rioting, part of it set on fire.
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