Commentary: Joe Biden may unify the country Don t ask him to unify Catholics sltrib.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sltrib.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
(RNS) At 161 smallish pages, “Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States” has the brevity, bravado and binary thinking of a good political tract. Which, in fact, is what it is. The handsome cover photo of Biden is campaign quality, and the opening declaration is boldly over the top.
The election of Biden as the second Catholic president of the United States, writes Massimo Faggioli, “alone made the 2020 U.S. election historically notable, distinctive in both the political and religious history of the United States.”
That distinction may more properly belong to the 2004 election, when a majority of Catholic voters did not prefer the Catholic candidate for president. The rejection of John Kerry, the second Irish-Catholic senator from Massachusetts to run for the office, put a firm closing parenthesis around the time when politicos spoke assuredly about something called “the Catholic vote.”