Two prelates played prominent roles at the inauguration of President Trump. One seized the opportunity to speak truth to power; the other did not.
New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the most prominent Catholic leader in the country, gave the invocation on Monday in the Capitol Rotunda. The Right Rev. Marian Budde, who heads the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, led the inauguration prayer service the next day at the Washington National Cathedral.
Budde minced no words, speaking directly to the new president seated just a few feet away:
“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now, … on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands …”
But Budde’s courage stands in marked contrast to Dolan’s silence, even after Trump fulfilled his pledge to go after undocumented immigrants, even in churches and schools.
The silence is nothing unusual. As a Catholic feminist, I’m ashamed to say that the voices of Catholic leaders, whose flock includes about 30 million Catholic voters, have largely been missing in the struggle to save America’s soul.
That’s because for too many Catholic bishops, the marginalized and vulnerable have one key failing: they’ve already been born.
Why didn’t the bishops raise the alarm much sooner when Catholic voters might have paid attention? Because the bishops are focused on one issue — opposition to abortion.
In the 2016 campaign, Trump pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the nearly 50-year-old constitutional protection for legal abortion.
This was one promise he kept, an accomplishment not lost on strident Catholic abortion foes, and their biggest clerical cheerleaders.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) made that clear in its 2024 voters’ guide. Candidates’ positions on abortion should be the “pre-eminent priority” for Catholics.
In 2024, more than six out of 10 devout white Catholics — 64% — preferred Trump over Kamala Harris. Latino Catholics voted for Harris, but by much smaller margins than for Joe Biden in 2020. Overall, 53% of Catholics supported Trump. In 2020, Biden narrowly won the Catholic vote by 1%. Catholics make up about one-fifth of the electorate.
To be sure, if the bishops had spoken out earlier it might not have necessarily influenced enough voters to change the results. But they could have raised the alarm post-election.
The bishops said they were keeping their powder dry until the administration gave a stronger signal of its plans. “We are waiting to see what takes shape,” said El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, who chairs the bishops’ committee on migration. The bishops then would “raise our voice loudly” in opposition.
Now that Trump is putting his plans into action, where are those loud voices? Bishop Seitz ultimately did decry Trump’s decision to empower federal immigration agents to enter churches, schools, and possibly even hospitals to round up the undocumented. Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich raised similar concerns.
But Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the head of the USCCB, issued a statement on the Trump executive orders that was the bare minimum one would expect from the Catholic Church. He deemed the executive orders on immigrants and refugees, foreign aid and the death penalty, “deeply troubling,” but praised Trump’s order recognizing two biological sexes, male and female.
Indeed, the USCCB was promoting only one protest event on its website: a prayer vigil before yesterday’s annual March for Life, which the bishops have long supported, and which brings thousands of Catholic students and parishioners to the nation’s capital to lobby Congress to protect the unborn.
Fifty years ago, some Catholic leaders were wiser and bolder. Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, longtime president of Notre Dame University, was held in such high esteem that he served on a score of presidential commissions, including the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, whose hearings on racism led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Speaking in 1974, during the Vietnam War, Hesburgh maintained: “We cannot be loud in condemning abortion after being silent about napalmed Vietnamese or seemingly unconscious of the horrible present fact that 60% of the children already born in the poorest countries … die before the age of 5.”
But those days are gone. Most prelates will go to bat for the “pre-born.” Their passion for life declines dramatically after delivery.
Wexler is the author of “Catholic Women Confront Their Church: Stories of Hurt and Hope” (2016, Rowman & Littlefield.) She has written extensively about Catholic feminism and church politics.