The Catholic Church is the Biggest Political Tent Around
Partisans of all stripes, liberals and conservatives, MAGA and anti-MAGA all have a home in the Church. The reverse is not true.
The late Pope Francis, God rest his soul, was the first Jesuit pontiff. Francis’s difficult to pin down politics often reflected this particular intellectual and social background and his primary spiritual commitment to faithfully serve the world’s poor and most marginalized in a humble and loving manner. Francis disdained the trappings of power and refused to toe the line on any political party’s specific policy agenda. This upset many people, particularly in America where the most partisan actors on the right and left tried in vain to bend Pope Francis to their will—and denounced him when he refused to do so.
In a political sense, Pope Francis excelled at staking out positions on public matters that were consistent with Church values and his Ignatian spiritual principles but often “annoyed conservatives and disappointed liberals.”
Instead of forcing the Church to align with liberal Democratic or MAGA Republican ideologies, as their most fervent American devotees desired, Francis chose to invert the political calculations by creating a truly big tent. Anyone of any political persuasion is welcome to be a Catholic if they are willing to live by the basic principles of the Gospels, adhere to the teachings of the Church, participate in the sacraments, and “obey the moral law.”
Conservative critics of the Pope frequently attacked him as a Marxist for his economic and social positions, to which Francis genially replied: “Marxist ideology is wrong. But in my life, I have known many Marxists who are good people, so I don't feel offended.” Likewise, cultural leftists often criticized the Pope for his theological stances on gender transitions and surrogacy calling them “affronts to human dignity,” while also continuing to uphold Church doctrine that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” The Pope stuck to these teachings consistently yet still welcomed all people into the Church (“Who am I to judge?”), pleaded for everyone to be treated with dignity and respect, argued against the criminalization of homosexuality, and even allowed LGBTQ Catholics to receive blessings and allowed transgender people to be baptized and act as godparents.
These positions confounded his cultural scolds, angering the right and getting little to no acknowledgement from the left. America’s hyper-partisans during Pope Francis’s tenure all wanted the pontiff to take different positions on economics, cultural matters, and foreign affairs—ones that were more consistent with their political viewpoints rather than his own moral principles and Church teachings.
MAGA restrictionists and Donald Trump thought it was clever to defend their immigration policies and attack Pope Francis on the issue by bringing up the Vatican’s supposed hypocrisy for having ancient fortification “walls” dating back to the ninth century. Of course, anyone in the world can just walk into St. Peter’s Square if they want, and the Catholic Church has been one of the world’s foremost advocates for displaced people and refugees of all kinds.
What was the point of the right attacking Francis like this? Anyone who grew up in the faith knows that the Catholic Church, across vastly different papacies, is not a defender of Trump-style immigration rhetoric and policies.
Francis repeatedly brushed off MAGA’s snarky rhetoric and attacks on Catholic institutions working with immigrants (including JD Vance’s attempted strong-arming of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops over ICE raids) and continued preaching about openness to others, dignity for all people, and a concern for refugees that dates to the life of Jesus himself. As the Pope wrote in response to Trump’s deportation efforts:
I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations. The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality. At the same time, one must recognize the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival. That said, the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.
Republicans don’t have to agree with the Pope’s immigration positions or his arguments on the morality of deportations, but they should accept that the Pope was just stating the practical manifestation of centuries of Church teachings on how to relate to displaced people, refugees, and the world’s poor. In the Catholic framework, sovereign nations have a responsibility to enforce immigration laws, but should consider the potential moral hazards associated with steps like breaking up families or returning people to dangerous home countries.
Democrats have also pulled, “I’m wounded, and you’ve betrayed the Church because you don’t support my politics” stunts over the years pretending as if their views on the family, abortion, and gay/trans rights should supersede the Church’s own positions on these matters. Democratic culture warriors, like Republicans on immigration, don’t have to agree with the Pope and Church teachings. But Francis’s cultural positions during his papacy were not an aberration or incoherent theological theorizing. Catholicism has been consistently pro-life “from conception to natural death” and supportive of traditional families for decades regardless of what American leftists think.
Pro-choice Democrats are, of course, welcome in the Catholic Church but increasingly the reverse is not true. Democrats over the years have made it a practical impossibility for any elected official in their party to be a pro-life member. And the cultural vanguard of the new party certainly doesn’t welcome voters and leaders with more traditional views on gender, sex, and the family.
The 2024 election brought the contrast between the big tent mentality of the Church under Francis and the constricted partisan views of Americans into clear focus. Pope Francis indicated to the faithful last year that both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were “against life”—Harris for being the “one who kills babies” and Trump for being “the one who kicks out migrants”—and counseled Americans to vote for the lesser of two evils. “Who is the lesser evil? That lady, or that gentleman? I don't know. Everyone, in conscience, (has to) think and do this."
In the November election, more Catholics chose Trump over Harris, either enthusiastically or as the lesser of two evils as the Pope counseled. Trump won Catholics in 2024 by a 55 percent to 44 percent margin, according to AP VoteCast. This marked a ten-point net shift in his direction from the previous election he lost in 2020 when Catholic voters were evenly split between Trump and Joe Biden, 50 percent to 49 percent.
Whether this electoral advantage for Republicans continues beyond Trump is an open question. For now, the Catholic vote, to the extent that one even exists, remains hotly contested which probably explains why leaders in both parties keep trying to bend the Church to its way of thinking.
However, there is no political party in America that fully represents the teachings and values of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has longstanding moral and theological positions on issues like immigration, abortion, the environment, war, and social policy that resolutely do not fit into the policy agenda of either U.S. political party.
The truth is that the Catholic Church remains a more welcoming big tent institution than either of America’s two political parties and their leaders. So it would behoove Democrats and Republicans to stop acting like they’re more Catholic than the Pope.
Catholic doctrine is not explicitly about politics. It’s about spiritual living and sacramental participation in a community of fellow believers. The essence of being Catholic is one’s relationship with God and how one lives their life and comports oneself—not what political views they hold or don’t hold.
I agree with this article. I once heard a priest who was asked if he was Democrat or Republican. He responded by saying “Neither, I am Catholic.” That is pretty much my attitude. Good for Pope Francis that he never let himself be pulled into political tribalism. He may have not been perfect but as a worldwide stage leader that was always pressured to fall into this tribalism he resisted this and constantly kept his focus on the poor he was a good role model.
I lost all respect for the Pope when he conflated Israel's self defense with the sadistic pogrom committed by Hamas. The Catholic church has a long bloody history of slaughtering and persecuting the Jewish people (I was raised Catholic) so his stance on the Israel/Hamas war made me sick. It was a blood libel.
HOWEVER, I do prefer the Catholic Church to other Christian churches because nobody really cares what the pope says. We attend mass for the candles and the stained glass and for Mother Mary. The mother of Jesus was a passionately loyal Jew who would have zero interest in coddling Hamas. Am Yisrael Chai.