Melissa Harris-Perry: Good to have you back with us. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Last week, Mexico's Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision that ruled criminalizing abortion is unconstitutional. The decision does not make abortion legal in Mexico, but it means that thousands of people who have faced criminal charges for having the procedure will no longer be subjected to prosecution. The court decision brings into sharp relief the continuing rift in the 81% Catholic nation. Polls indicate that most Mexicans oppose abortion, and Mexican medical professionals have the right to refuse treatment to those seeking abortion.

Less than a quarter of Americans are Catholic, but Catholicism is an important aspect of the current battle over reproductive rights here in the US as well. President Joe Biden is a devout Catholic and only the second Catholic president in the United States. In addition, Catholics are overrepresented on the Supreme Court. Seven of the nine justices on the high court were raised Catholic, and of those justices, only one, Sonia Sotomayor, is among the court's liberal contingent. According to Pew polling from 2020, a majority of Catholics in the US agree that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, but the church disagrees.

In June, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted 168 to 55 to issue a new guidance which could deny Eucharist to elected officials who support abortion rights. Just how does Catholicism inform the politics and policy of the US government, and our neighbors in Mexico? Let's talk about that with Massimo Faggioli who is professor of historical theology at Villanova University, and author of Joe Biden and Catholicism in the US. Thanks for being here, Massimo.

Massimo Faggioli: Thank you very much.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Also with us is Matthew Wilson, associate professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and director of the Center of Faith and Learning. Nice to have you with us, Matthew.

Matthew Wilson: Oh, thank you for having me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Matthew, I actually want to start with you just to lay out the broadest possible strokes, and acknowledging that there is some diversity across leadership in the US church. How does the US Catholic church understand its role in influencing the political lives of its parishioners?

Matthew Wilson: The church does not seek to provide direct guidance with regard to specific candidates and parties. That is not its political role. However, the church does see a strong role in forming the conscience of its members that is giving them the principles of moral discernment to make moral judgments in the public square and to inform their values on questions ranging from the sanctity of life to human sexuality, to justice for the poor. A whole comprehensive range of the church's social doctrine. The church is really about forming conscience on issues and then allowing individual Catholics to bring that formed conscience to bear in evaluating candidates and parties.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Mathew, I want to stick with you for just one moment, because you did lay out a broad, agenda is the wrong word but that broad moral compass. All of these different issues. I think in many ways, under Pope Francis, we have seen really that very broad agenda of Catholic priorities foregrounding issues like immigration, poverty, climate change. I'm wondering if the US is welcoming this broad agenda, or if this is a time of emergent conservativism moving back maybe towards a more narrow set of social and political questions or maybe social and moral questions that then impact the political sphere.

Matthew Wilson: It's a tough balance and different members of the American church hierarchy have somewhat different priorities. The church's teaching is a constant that is all of the American Catholic bishops believe that abortion is morally wrong. All of the American Catholic bishops believe in the principle of economic justice and believe in treating immigrants humanely and fairly, and a whole range of other questions. The issue is how you prioritize those issues. Not every issue is of equal magnitude.

What the bishops have had to sort through is whether some questions are more morally fundamental than others and whether some questions permit more room for dissent among Catholics in practice than others do. Certainly, Pope Francis has sought to emphasize a very broad range of Catholic social teaching from teaching on immigration, teaching on the environment to including issues of abortion, including issues of marriage and sexuality.

Some in the American church they'll have pushed back and said," Look, we risk creating the illusion that every moral issue is of equal moment and import." They would disagree and say that abortion is a more fundamental and pressing evil than some of these other concerns. That's where you get the tension within the episcopate on what the social and political approach should be.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That's really helpful to think of it as that priority ranking or that priority emphasis. Massimo, let me come to you on this, and in some ways draw your attention in the same ways that I was trying to understand how the US Catholic church understands its role in influencing the social moral lives of its parishioners which is then meant to impact their political choices. In a similar way, how do you read or understand how church leadership sees its role in affecting political leadership in the US, particularly those political leaders who are themselves Catholic like President Biden?

Massimo Faggioli: This is a very complicated question, because on the background there's one fundamental difference between Catholicism, for example, in Europe, and in North America. For example, in Europe, the Catholic leaders have accepted the fundamental secular nature of the state. This is something that is still quite controversial for US Catholic leaders. That's number one. Number two, US Catholic bishops have had historically a complicated relationship with US Catholic politicians running for office especially for the presidency beginning with Al Smith in 1928 when back then the major issue was to keep a safe distance.

For John Kennedy in 1960, all these issues, abortion, bioethics, LGBT issues they did not exist simply. Issues become much more complicated in the early 2000s with John Kerry running in 2004, and with Joe Biden in 2020. There's a paradox that we can see that US Catholic bishops were much closer in the majority. Not all of them, but the vast majority of the West Catholic bishop conference was much, much closer to a born-again Christian like George W Bush, or even to President-elect Donald Trump than to a very devout Catholic like Joe Biden.

This is at the heart of this very complicated moment historically, and also the theological for the Catholic church which in its leaders in the US simply is incredibly divided not just within itself, but between the US and the Vatican because we know the Vatican wants to have a much more dialogical relationship with this administration. We'll still have to see how this will develop because it has just started.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Massimo, again, one more beat on this. Let's talk about the Eucharist or as Protestants may recognize it as communion because you hinted towards the theological here. What is the Eucharist meant to do relative to a parishioner, a Catholic, and their church, their body of faith? Is it routinely denied to others? I'm just trying to understand this possible guidance which we're expected to see this fall and the ways in which it might say that if you are a political leader who openly supports abortion rights, that you could be denied Eucharist. I'm trying to understand who are other Catholics to whom it is routinely denied.

Massimo Faggioli: If there is something distinctive of Catholicism within Christianity is something called sacramentality, which means that the access to the sacraments is central for the life of a Catholic. Among all sacraments, the Eucharist or communion is one of the sacraments that is to be received frequently contrary to baptism or confirmation and so on. That's why it is a politically culturally salient issue because it's not something that has happened once in the life of Joe Biden, but it's something that happens every Sunday. It is extremely exceptional for a Catholic to be denied access to the Eucharist.

What is even more complicated here is that usually, it is for all Catholics that are openly publicly in defiance of Catholic teaching it's up to their local bishop to issue a decision that is going to be applied by the local parish priest. In the case of Joe Biden, the problem is that there's no precedent for a national bishop conference to decide on this because national bishop conference legally in the law of the Catholic Church, they don't have head authority. There's one more layer that historically, if there is a Catholic head of state whose public life or public positions are controversial for the Catholic Church, historically, it is up to the papacy, to the Pope in the Vatican to make a decision on this.

We know that Pope Francis has said always that for him, Eucharist is nourishment for the sinful, faithful, all of us, and not a prize for those who think they're worthy. That's why it is so complicated. Here, we know that if the Catholic Church follows the laws and the religion of the Catholic Church, it's only up to the Archbishop of Washington, DC, and to the bishop in Delaware where Joe Biden goes to mass once in a while to make that decision and not to the US bishops conference. We know that the vast majority of bishops in the US are in favor of some sanction of Joe Biden access to the Eucharist.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Matthew, we've been talking a lot about the leadership, about the bishops, even about the papacy. Bring me down to American Catholics. What do you see when you look at the public opinion of American Catholics? Who are they? How are they distinct may be from the American Catholic population, say 50 years ago?

Matthew Wilson: The church in the United States is definitely changing. First of all, it is becoming more multi-ethnic. It's always been multi-ethnic in the sense of being an immigrant church but in previous eras, that was largely European immigrants; Irish, Italians, Polish, et cetera. In recent years, that has diversified significantly with an influx of Catholic populations from Latin America, from East Asia, from South Asia. The Catholic Church in the United States is extremely diverse ethnically and that certainly has been a demographic change.

The other thing is that public opinion polling consistently shows significant differences between actively practicing Catholics and more nominal Catholics. Big partisan differences, big differences in positions on major issues like abortion, sexuality issues, and other things as well. There are important divisions within the Catholic faithful, but we also have to realize that the nature of that Catholic faithful is changing from an ethnic standpoint.

The other thing that has happened since the time that Massimo referred to with John Kennedy is that the Catholic population has become much more diverse from a partisan standpoint. In the early 1960s, Catholics in the United States were very strongly Democratic. Now Catholics in the United States look a lot like the very divided partisan allegiances that we see among the broader public. In fact, Catholics who attend church regularly lean towards the Republican Party. Those have been some important shifts that we've seen in American Catholicism over the last 56 years.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Is abortion the key issue that leans the church-going Catholics maybe, or the mass-going Catholics towards the Republican Party, Matthew?

Matthew Wilson: It is the single most central and fundamental issue that draws conservative Catholics to the Republican Party. That doesn't mean that it's the only question on which church-going Catholics agree or align with the Republican Party. Issues of religious liberty, issues of sexuality also would incline them towards the Republican Party. They also over time have adopted more conservative positions on a range of other questions as well. Yes, abortion and human life issues are the linchpin that initially precipitated that realignment. Certainly, that will be the first thing that most devout Catholics who incline to the Republican Party will mention as the source of their allegiance.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Massimo, I'm wondering about the ways that the Trump years or the one term of the Trump presidency impacted this connection between US politics both the Vatican and Catholic churchgoers. President Trump was not even an Evangelical in the ways of, for example, President George W Bush was. I'm wondering if we saw any growing rift on all of these other issues that Catholics hold dear relative to those years with President Trump.

Massimo Faggioli: Yes. This is something that we could observe in these last few years. Very simply put, there is a very interesting overlap between a certain political faith in the project of Donald Trump and of Trumpism against liberal issues on LGBT, on abortion, and on the role of the church and religion in public life. There's this overlap with Trumpism with a certain opposition to the pontificate of Pope Francis. That can be tracked down in statements of bishops, of intellectual leaders, of lay leaders of the Catholic Church in this country.

There has been, I would say, a strengthening of the political alignment between conservative Catholic bishops and the Republican Party in these last few years. What has been shocking to see, honestly, is that when Joe Biden was elected and his election was clear a few days after Election Day, the Vatican issued a statement congratulating him a few days after at the same time when some Catholic bishops were vocally openly questioning the legitimacy of the election of Joe Biden.

That has been something that says something on how a certain extremism politically is taking roots among US Catholic bishops and has frankly damaged the relationship with the Vatican and with this pontificate that was difficult from the very beginning, 2013, but it has gone beyond, honestly, my imagination in terms of rifts and ruptures and a lack of consensus, but in many cases also lack of basic manners in relating to the Bishop of Rome, the Pope.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Matthew, I want to come to you to talk a bit about the Supreme Court here. As you were talking about being nominally Catholic versus those who might be more devout, regular attenders of mass, I am married to one of those so-called bad Catholics [laughs] or as I tease him. Catholicism ends up being almost more of a cultural or a social marker. Having been raised in Louisiana and growing up in a Catholic household, going to Catholic schools, that sort of thing.

When I look at the Supreme Court, I wonder a bit about those who were raised Catholic who are on that court and the ways that Catholicism might impact a wide variety of decisions, but most specifically around the question of human life, the question of abortion. What do you see as you're looking at those justices relative to their need to, even if they're not practicing at this time, really rectify their understandings of the church, of the good, of the moral with what is fairly settled precedent for about 50 years around the right of persons to choose an abortion?

Matthew Wilson: Certainly, their consciences would have been formed by their experience in the Catholic Church, whether it's ongoing or whether it's something that was in the past. Of course, it is not their job to bring their conscience to bear in and of itself in setting Supreme Court decision making. Their job is to interpret and apply the Constitution. As Justice Gorsuch famously said-- He's actually one of the few justices of the Supreme Court who's not Catholic. Justice Gorsuch famously said that a good justice will be someone who sometimes comes to decisions whose outcome he is not happy.

The question is not simply what do I think is right and just but what does the constitution say? That being said, there are distinctively Catholic legal traditions and modes of jurisprudential interpretation that exist in the background here that Supreme Court justices could bring to bear. Certainly, they are not going to simply say, “The church says abortion is wrong. Therefore, abortion must be unconstitutional.” Their reasoning is much more sophisticated than that. In fact, it's their job to have reasoning that is more sophisticated than that. The religious faith becomes a point of forming the conscience, but how that applies in the context of interpreting the constitution is much more an issue of legal philosophy.

Can I say one thing just you mentioned about Catholicism from Louisiana? That too serves as an interesting historical reference for our discussion today because one of the famous incidents in the 1960s was the Archbishop of New Orleans excommunicating or denying communion to local Catholic leaders who resisted integration. The parish leader Leander Perez is a famous example of that.

As Massimo suggested, that was something that was done on the local Episcopal level, but that's a definite historical precedent in American history for a Catholic public figure being denied communion because he refused to, in a public sense, go along with what the church was teaching to be morally correct, in this case, integration of the schools. That's a little bit of a digression but having changed New Orleans, I thought it was relevant to bring that into the discussion.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Absolutely. I was prodding you a little bit. I knew if I said Catholic in Louisiana, you'd have a good historical narrative or a story for me in some way. Massimo, let me also just hand this to you and ask how you see Catholicism potentially impacting our upcoming mid-term elections, or again these core Supreme Court decisions that will be made in the coming days.

Massimo Faggioli: I believe that the most important issue we'll have to consider in these next few weeks and months is if the Supreme Court will decide other cases that are related to Roe v Wade and to abortion. That could have a major, major impact on the way Catholics are divided politically. I have to say that in these first nine months of this administration, Joe Biden has not been willing to look too Catholic, I would say. This is something that we could see also in the presidency of John Kennedy when he decided not to help Catholic schools, for example, and so on.

In these first nine months, Joe Biden has not nominated yet the new US ambassador to the Holy See and there is, I believe, a growing distance between Joe Biden and the Vatican also because this radicalization of the debate in the US on abortion is making more difficult for Pope Francis to help Joe Biden, honestly. We will see how that will go. On one side, there is what the Supreme Court will do with abortion and what the US Catholic bishop conference will decide on this issue of the Eucharist.

At the fall meeting of November, they should discuss and vote on a document of the bishop conference on this particular issue. We will see probably another showdown among US bishops. I think there will be the usual majority of US bishops in favor of a hard line with this presidency and the minority that are willing to be more engaging, more dialogical, that will say something on what's next.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Massimo Faggioli is a professor of historical theology at Villanova University and author of Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States. Matthew Wilson is an associate professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and a director for the Center of Faith and Learning. Thank you both for joining us.

Massimo Faggioli: Thank you very much.

Matthew Wilson: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate being your guest today.

[00:23:37] [END OF AUDIO]

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