Time Person of the Year covers for Rudy Giuliani, St. John Paul II, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, John F. Kennedy, Pope Francis and the astronauts of the Apollo 8.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are Time magazine’s Person of the Year! Disregarding Time’s terrible grammar (even Christians don’t call the Trinity one person, you philistines), it is a moment Catholics should be proud of, for it is only the 15th time in 108 years that a papist took the crown.
Who cares? Catholics do. We’re always looking for that little boost in U.S. society that makes us feel fully American, as true-red-white-and-blue as our Protestant brethren. A Catholic president is the tops, the Coliseum, the Louvre museum. But for him to be Person of the Year? Francis Albert himself was never Person of the Year. Nor Fulton Sheen! “But you had a Catholic president in 1960,” some might complain, “and the front-runner in 1968!” Yes, true. They were both murdered.