Angelus News | March 22, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 6

A TELLING TRANSITION
The changing relationship between the U.S. Church
and Rome isn’t just about Pope Francis.
BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Pope Francis arrives to
give a talk at St. Patrick
in the City Church in
Washington, D.C., Sept.
24 during his visit to the
United States in 2015. |
CNS/PAUL HARING
ROME — There’s a tendency in
journalism to over-interpret virtually
every development or trend
that comes down the pike, in order to
lend our stories sex appeal. “Nothing
really to see here” might well be the
truth of many situations, but it’s hardly
a prescription for drawing eyeballs or
selling papers.
So it is that over the past 11 years, reporters
and commentators on the Pope
Francis papacy have tended to play up
perceptions of a rift between the liberal
pope and a more conservative Church
in the United States, particularly as it
concerns the American bishops — and,
of course, there have been just enough
outspokenly dissident prelates in the
country to keep that narrative alive.
Reality, however, is a bit less dramatic
than these perceptions of fractures and
schisms would suggest.
The most recent Gallup survey,
released in mid-January, found that
Francis enjoys a 58% approval rating
among Americans generally. When you
consider that the two major party candidates
for president, Donald Trump and
Joe Biden, currently have approval ratings
of 42 and 38 percent respectively,
the pope’s comparatively robust support
can’t help but seem fairly impressive.
More remarkable still, Francis is seen
positively by 77% of American Catholics.
Given the notoriously fissiparous
state of American Catholic opinion on
most matters — let’s face it, it probably
would be tough to get 77% of American
Catholics to agree on what day of
the week it is today — that too seems
striking.
Granted, Gallup also found that
Francis’ negatives are now at all-time
highs, both among the general population
and with Catholics specifically.
Yet after 11 contentious years in office,
and in an extremely polarized era, the
fact that the pope still has such strong
overall backing probably should be the
biggest takeaway.
With that caveat, however, there’s
equally no denying the fact that the
Francis era has been a turbulent period
for the Church in the U.S. In both
substance and style, history’s first pope
from the developing world has sometimes
proven disorienting for many
American Catholics.
Ad extra, meaning in terms of the
Church’s engagement with the wider
world, Francis is reorienting Catholicism,
and the Vatican specifically, away
from being a predominantly Western
institution to a truly global one. His
policies on China, for instance, or on
Ukraine, or on Gaza, align far more
20 • ANGELUS • March 22, 2024