This coming January will see the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States for the second time. Although it should be an occasion for Americans to unite under a new presidency, the truth is likely to be bleaker.
The US was profoundly divided by the election and is unlikely to be any more unified under President Trump, at least in the short term. It would be pleasant if the inauguration sees him seeking to bring the nation together and to heal some of its divisions. Nonetheless, many Americans will feel a renewed sense of optimism at this fresh start.
Many Catholics in the US and elsewhere will have mixed feelings about a Trump presidency, though as John Allen has <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/return-of-the-donald-what-now-for-us-vatican-relations/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">pointed out</mark></a>, Catholics have voted Republican more than Democrat since the turn of the century. As we <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/trump-triumphs-and-returns-to-the-white-house-with-a-catholic-vice-president/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">observed</mark></a> in November, it is all to the good that the Catholic vote is not the preserve of just one party.
The US bishops will feel apprehension at the prospect that Mr Trump will fulfil his campaign promise to return millions of illegal migrants to their countries of origin; many of these migrants are Catholics and some will be by now part of the American Catholic family.
The Church cannot simply legitimise illegal immigration in the US or indeed to Europe; what it can do is urge governments not to forget that the migrants are not a bloc, but individual human beings whose dignity must be respected. It should also urge the Trump administration to engage with the challenging conditions in the countries from which the migrants are arriving, chiefly in Latin America. Addressing the causes of mass migration in these countries would be a formidable, probably insuperable, challenge but would be a necessary concomitant to a policy of deportation.
As for the Holy Land, Catholics may feel real concern at the likely effects of a Trump administration. Mr Trump has a longstanding relationship with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his appointment as ambassador to Israel of Mike Huckabee, an Evangelical who has flatly repudiated the prospect of a two-state solution should trouble us all. It is absolutely legitimate for the US administration to uphold the security of the state of Israel; it would be absolutely illegitimate for it to disregard the rights of Palestinians.
The atrocities committed against Israelis during the Hamas attacks just over a year ago cannot be forgotten, and the return of the hostages taken during the attack should be a priority for all governments – including the Arab ones which influence Hamas. But an administration that emboldens indiscriminate attacks on civilians in order to root out Hamas militants, and denies civilians places of safety and adequate sustenance and medical care as the government of Israel has done, does not merit support.
Undoubtedly Pope Francis will make a forceful case for the US to put pressure on the Israeli government to change its approach to the conflict, which now includes Lebanon as well as Israel and the occupied territories. We hope that Mr Trump listens to him. Perhaps the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pizzaballa, should visit the US president with the authority of His Holiness to present a sane perspective on the conflict, based on intimate knowledge of the region. Such a visit could only do good.
The US bishops will welcome President Trump in at least one respect; he will not seek to advance a radical pro-abortion programme as Kamala Harris would have done. The Supreme Court has returned this issue to individual states where it is being decided in very different ways. That is all to the good.
One of the most interesting elements in the new administration will be the influence that is exercised by the vice president, JD Vance, a Catholic convert. One reason for his conversion was that he was dissatisfied by the prescriptions of liberals and conservatives for human flourishing; he recognised that there is a larger dimension to political questions which is spiritual as well as material.
We must hope that this intelligent and thoughtful man will inject a moral element into the administration’s thinking, and that he will seek to focus in particular on the condition of families in the poorest areas of the country with which the elites of the big parties are increasingly out of touch.
The reality is, of course, that no recent US president has been wholly satisfactory from a Catholic perspective – perhaps that is inevitable. What the American bishops can do is to encourage Catholics to keep those in authority in their prayers. The inauguration is an opportunity for a fresh start, a new beginning. We must hope for the best – and pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
<em>Photo: Park Service employee David Campbell cleans the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, USA, 3 November 2003. Twice a year the National Park Service uses a pressure washer to clean the statue. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.)</em>
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