Pope Leo XIV last week released his first apostolic
exhortation, Dilexi Te, and the message from the first
American-born pontiff seems certain to rile conservatives in the United States.
The first section, titled “A Few Essential Words,” declares, “Love for the
Lord, then, is one with love for the poor … contact with those who are lowly and
powerless is a fundamental way of encountering the Lord of history. In the
poor, he continues to speak to us.” The teaching document also shames those who
would blame the poor for their situations, saying those who do so reveal “their
own blindness and cruelty.” Finally, in its closing sections, the document
looks beyond economic poverty, stating, “By her very nature the Church is in
solidarity with the poor, the excluded, the marginalized and all those
considered the outcast of society.”
It is inarguable that in these theological and ethical
arguments, Pope Leo, who was naturalized as Peruvian
citizen in 2015, owes more to his Latin American ties than anything else. For
Dilexi Te (“I have loved you”) marks
the triumph of Liberation Theology, once derided and maligned by the
Western Catholic establishment, as now a central part of papal teaching. The
exhortation should also serve as a warning to politically conservative American
Catholics, including Vice President JD Vance, about how far out of step they are
with the global mood and direction of their church. In this sense, Dilexi Te is the most official reminder
yet of the growing divide within American
Catholicism,
a divide intensified by the moral and political pressures of President Trump’s
America. This outcome of this struggle has implications not only for the
Catholic faithful but American democracy itself.
Both Liberation Theology and American Catholicism’s central
role in American political life date to the turmoil of the mid-twentieth century.
The Catholic Church was in the midst of the progressive reforms of the Second Vatican Council, and the United States was embroiled in the
Civil Rights Movement and the massive social changes of the 1960s. South of the
Rio Grande river, economic inequality (some of the worst in the world) and
political strife deeply influenced the reaction to Vatican II in the
overwhelmingly Catholic region. And many came to see the potential of the
Catholic Church to improve the social and economic conditions of the most
vulnerable. Through a series of conferences and books out of various Latin
American countries throughout the 1970s, including Father Gustavo Gutiérrez’s A Theology of Liberation (1971),
Liberation Theology began to take shape, at its core the belief that there was
a “preferential option for the poor.”
Liberation Theology spread quickly, but it was not without
its opponents. In 1983, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as the head of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the Vatican office in charge of
Church discipline), wrote a scathing critique that chastised Liberation
Theology for its methods and denounced its Marxist influences. Ratzinger, who
would later become Pope Benedict XVI, was in many ways the leader of the
conservative backlash to Vatican II—and of a nascent traditionalist movement
that was growing increasingly popular, particularly in the U.S.
Vatican-approved reforms were not the only changes American
Catholics were experiencing. For generations, anti-Catholic sentiment had been a predominant and consistent part of
American culture, keeping Catholics out of America’s social and political
mainstream. During John F. Kennedy’s successful 1960 campaign to become the
first Catholic president, evangelical preacher Billy Graham declared that
should he be elected, Kennedy would be taking orders from
the pope
rather than the public. In the end, though, it was not Christian love but
political pragmatism that began to soften if not entirely erode this old
prejudice against Catholics.
With the end of legal segregation, white evangelical
Protestants reentered political life on the side of the segregationists—and
they needed allies. The Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which (temporarily, as it turned out)
established abortion as a constitutional right, provided one. Although
opposition to abortion had long been considered a “Catholic issue,” evangelicals seized on it as a moral
rallying point, transforming it into the defining cause of a new political
coalition. Out of that moment emerged the modern Religious Right, at its core
an alliance between white evangelicals and conservative white Catholics united
by a shared hostility to social liberalism and by a desire to preserve a moral
order they felt slipping away.
Fueled by this new alliance and the elections of two
conservative popes—John Paul II in 1978 and Benedict XVI in 2005—conservatives
came to dominate both the public image and institutional structures of American
Catholicism. They often, and quite cynically, used a play out of the evangelical handbook and used opposition to abortion as their trump card, a cudgel to pressure fellow
Catholics into political conformity, regardless of anyone’s personal
views on the issue. In this way, prominent American Catholics adopted
increasingly hardline positions on a host of social issues, which in turn has attracted
reactionary young men to the church.
Nonetheless, the Catholic Church in America
remained quite divided politically, and its demographics were
changing. American Catholicism is increasingly
ethnically diverse, and increasingly populated by immigrants and their children
(which
ironically is more how the Catholic Church in America looked at the turn of the
nineteenth century). Moreover, white conservative Catholics like those in the U.S.
are increasingly a minority in terms of the global Church. This is especially
evident when we consider the particular nature of their conservatism, which
mirrors the politics and rhetoric of American evangelicals. While it is true
Catholics in Africa and to a lesser extent Asia might overall share
conservative American Catholics views on issues of gender and sexuality, they
break with them on questions like foreign aid, the treatment of refugees and
migrants, and climate justice.
These divides, both at home and abroad, became increasingly
visible during the pontificate of the progressive Argentine Pope Francis. Yet
under Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born pope, the division has become
impossible to ignore. The anti-immigrant terror unleashed by the Trump administration
on America’s streets has clearly and disproportionately targeted Catholics,
because it has disproportionately targeted Latinos. Both the pope and many
American bishops and priests have spoken out strongly in defense of these
communities. Leo has even insisted that support for immigrants is an essential part of a truly
pro-life ethic. “Someone who says I’m against abortion but is in
favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life,” he said earlier this
month. “And someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement
with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if
that’s pro-life.”
Now, with Dilexi Te, Leo is making clear that the moral center of contemporary
global Catholicism is Latin America, where the theology of the poor and
marginalized first formed half a century ago. To reject it is to reject
official papal teaching. This puts conservative American Catholics, who for
that same half-century have been more influenced by American evangelicals than
any global Catholic force, in what might be delicately called an awkward
position. Long accustomed to seeing their church as a pillar of national
conservatism and now American nationalism, these Catholics now face a
reckoning. Dilexi Te is not only a
call to compassion but a reminder to them that the future of their faith—and
perhaps of their nation—demands a new humility from them.
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