Yesterday, the USCCB and several other Catholic organizations presented a livestreamed dialogue entitled “Civilize It: Unifying a Divided Church.” Hosted by Gloria Purvis, three US bishops participated: Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego, Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, and Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville (perhaps in an attempt to represent the left, right, and center of US episcopal leadership). The result was a civil and thoughtful discussion about the real and often painful polarization in the US Church among four sincere, faithful, and intelligent Catholic leaders.

I enjoyed the discussion, which was thought-provoking, both practically and at a high level. All of the participants expressed awareness and concern about the divisions in the Church, not only across cultural and social lines but also within ethnic groups. They agreed that the politicization of the faith that commonly emerges in Anglophone Catholic communities is problematic, for example. They also spoke of the need to respect those with whom we disagree and seek areas of common ground and fraternity.

Even though there are surely serious differences of opinion among the three bishops, the discussion mostly centered on areas of agreement and building consensus. Notably, all three participated in the October 2023 synodal assembly in Rome, so each has personal experience with the synodal way of “being Church,” and that was evident in this dialogue.

Yet as fruitful as this dialogue was (and hopefully there will be many more in the future), the three bishops did not directly address the key reasons why there is such a deep rupture in the US Church, let alone the foundational rift between the US Catholic leadership and Pope Francis. Yes, we can and should exercise charity and do our best to get along with those who think and believe differently than ourselves, but addressing the underlying ideological and ecclesiological problem at the root of the divisions in the Church will not be that simple.

I thought about this when I read a May 14 editorial from the National Catholic Register, imploring Pope Francis to make a return trip to the United States this September. In it, the editors asked the pope not just to visit the United Nations, but to “venture further afield in our nation” and to encounter with “a sampling of the multitude of ways our local Church is living out your call for the creative and forward-looking evangelization of a hurting modern world that’s in desperate need of the salvific love and mercy of Jesus Christ.”

Ultimately, the editorial is one of the most patronizing and passive-aggressive missives I’ve seen in a long time. The editors suggest a papal visit will “provide a much-needed opportunity to dispel inaccuracies about the U.S. Church that have been propagated in Rome by some papal advisers.” The editors then decry the reputation that US conservative Catholics have earned, encapsulated in Pope Francis’s observation that the much of the US Church “has a very strong reactionary attitude.”

It is astounding to read in an EWTN-owned publication that the pope “will be delighted to discern if he is able to travel more extensively here, nothing could be further from the truth.” This is, after all, an outlet that has regularly promoted the opinions and initiatives of the dissident Cardinal Raymond Burke, who has worked ceaselessly to undermine the authority, teaching, and initiatives of Pope Francis. The Register also regularly promoted and supported the ideas of the disgraced former nuncio Carlo Maria Viganò until his rhetoric became too unhinged and conspiratorial to publish. The Register has published wall-to-wall criticism of magisterial documents like Fiducia Supplicans and Amoris Laetitia. Other examples abound. Simply put, nearly three years ago Pope Francis described EWTN, the parent company of the National Catholic Register, as doing “the work of the devil,” and based on their coverage of him, the feeling seems to be mutual.

This editorial, therefore, is difficult to see as anything other than a passive-aggressive attempt to suggest the pope doesn’t understand the Church in the US and to get in underhanded digs at his supporters. The editors assert that “a papal visit would represent an unparalleled spiritual doubleheader” along with the 2024 Eucharistic Congress. It touts FOCUS and the St. John Vianney seminary in Denver as particularly in line with Pope Francis’s vision.

Today on X, papal biographer Austen Ivereigh commented on this editorial, writing, “It is amusing how US conservative Catholics are convinced that the Pope is ignorant about the US Church because of prejudiced advisors or the liberal media. Fact: Francis is astonishingly well informed about the US Church. He knows whereof he speaks.”

In response, I posted my own bullet-point response on X. I’ve reproduced it here, with a few additions and edits:

A few scattered thoughts on the disconnect between Pope Francis and US conservative Catholicism…

1. I would love to see another US visit from Pope Francis, speaking personally and as an American.
2. If Francis is misinformed about the Church in the US, it’s that he doesn’t realize just how extreme, toxic, and committed our right-wing Catholic culture has become. (For example: Why did he take so long to remove Strickland? To sanction Burke? To condemn EWTN? Why does he continue to let Viganò and Schneider corrupt the faithful here?)
3. There is a disconnect between Pope Francis’ vision for the Church and the message that US conservative and traditionalist Catholics apparently want to send him.
4. The US hierarchy has, with a few exceptions, mostly ignored Pope Francis’s teachings and initiatives, especially the Synod on Synodality. The US Catholic media has attacked and undermined him every step of the way — with very little response from the hierarchy.
5. The USCCB (intentionally or not) launched its Eucharistic Revival in competition with the Synod and have given it significantly more attention. The lineup of speakers for the Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis features very few who are known for promoting the pope’s vision for the Church, whereas many (such as Patrick Madrid, Jason Evert, and Scott Hahn) who publicly oppose Pope Francis are on the roster.
6. There is a fundamental incongruence between the universal Church’s understanding of ecclesiology and orthodoxy (as the communion of the People of God with and under Peter, faithful to scripture and tradition, which are authentically interpreted and taught by the living Magisterium) and the predominant — and erroneous — US conservative Catholic view (adhering to a fixed and unchanging set of doctrinal precepts and liturgical priorities, according to a particular hierarchy of ‘non-negotiable’ values, against which the pope’s message is judged).
7. Pope Francis finally began to take this problem seriously in late 2019 after EWTN and other US Catholic media stoked a racist spiritual panic during the Synod on the Amazon.
8. Traditionis Custodes (July 2021) was the first meaningful act of Pope Francis to address this incongruence. He has been extremely tolerant of dissent and attacks from the Catholic right.
9. The attempts of many US bishops to ignore Traditionis Custodes and to sidestep its directives demonstrates their lack of alignment with the pope and the universal Church.

[Sidebar: This is far from the only example of the US bishops’ consistent failure to acknowledge or implement Pope Francis’s teachings. Very few US bishops have even mentioned the pope’s encyclical on care for creation, Laudato Si’, for example. Many of the bishops’ diocesan guidelines for his 2016 exhortation on marriage and the family, Amoris Laetitia, directly contradicted what he wrote in the pivotal eighth chapter of the document. A USCCB vote in June 2021 over an amendment to the proposed national guidelines for Amoris — to add a footnote that would be the document’s only mention of Chapter 8 — passed with ony 52% of the vote.

One only needs to compare the biannual back-to-back addresses of the papal nuncio, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, with those of the USCCB presidents through the years to see the contrast between the Vatican and US episcopal leadership.]

10. There will eventually have to be a reckoning over the ecclesiastical incongruence in the US Church, and it’d better happen soon, because most young priests and seminarians in the US are caught up in this ideology and warped understanding of ecclesiology.
11. Most devout Catholics in the US are not conscious of the war over ecclesiology that is being waged in the clergy and media, but they are strongly influenced by it, especially white Catholics.
12. That said, I think it may be true that Pope Francis and others in the Vatican may underestimate and underappreciate the sincerity and commitment of Catholics in the US. Millions of Catholics here try very hard to live their faith seriously, despite poor leadership and formation. Even if misguided in many ways, the situation in our Church isn’t as moribund as in much of Western Europe.
13. Even so, it seems we will be there soon. The great tragedy is that opposition to Pope Francis’s message in the US Church has resulted in a wasted opportunity for renewal in the Church.
14. It would be nice to see the National Catholic Register and those of like mind give a frank assessment of the very real disconnect between themselves and the pope, rather than grandstand with stuff like “U.S. Catholics will already be basking in the spiritual glow of the three-year National Eucharistic Revival.”
15. I could go on but I’ll stop…

Image: Interior of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. By Gryffindor – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10621707

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Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis is the founding managing editor of Where Peter Is. He and Jeannie Gaffigan co-host Field Hospital, a U.S. Catholic podcast.