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January 30, 2025
By James Hankins, First Things, January 30, 2025
The appointment of Cardinal Robert W. McElroy as Archbishop of Washington, D.C., has been widely interpreted in the press as an answer to the election of Donald Trump. Predictably, Cardinal McElroy is hailed in the New York Times as a Good Catholic because he has been known to speak out “on the inclusion of migrants, women and L.G.B.T.Q. people in the Catholic church.” The Bad Catholics include JD Vance, who has “advanced a hard-line anti-immigrant agenda,” and Brian Burch, whom President Trump nominated as ambassador to the Holy See, rewarding him for his help in harvesting the conservative Catholic vote.
I’m congenitally skeptical of characterizations such as these. Past experience suggests that news reports commonly exaggerate or massage statements from Catholic authorities so as to fit preferred political narratives. Many journalists seem to operate on the assumption that Catholic social teachings align comfortably with the soft, welfare-state liberalism they tend to prefer. …