Edward Condon

Pope Francis met with Joe Biden on Friday. It’s always a boost for a world leader to be snapped smiling with the Pope. But for Biden, who flashes rosary beads during stump speeches and has a habit of crossing himself when talking about his political opponents, the visit may have involved a presidential fib. Since Inauguration Day, Biden has been locked in a dispute with America’s Catholic bishops over his public support for abortion — a position which developed in curious tandem with his rise up the Democratic ticket during the last election cycle, even while B-roll of him hugging nuns played in his campaign ads.

Last week, it emerged that the Chinese government has issued new rules for religious ministers in the country. Amid the regulations was a new official process for the appointment of Catholic bishops in the country, one which makes no reference to the Vatican or the deal the Catholic Church and China signed in 2018. The rules are the latest in a series of pointed humiliations inflicted on the Vatican since it handed over control of the country’s Catholics to the Communist party two years ago.

Religious faith may be declining in America but it is still a cultural force to be reckoned with, looming large in any general election cycle. Courting religious voters remains a factor in the calculus of any prospective presidential candidate, especially as neither party seems a natural home for many of them. Americans are actually losing their religion rather faster than their faith. A recent poll showed that ‘nones’ – those without a religious affiliation –  are now the country’s largest group for the first time: Americans are increasingly defining their own faith, and not asking a church to do it for them. In this landscape, what a ‘Christian’ believes as a core value is suddenly malleable and open to influences from all sides.

Today the Catholic bishops of the United States are in Baltimore to begin their three-day annual general assembly. Security is tight, and protesters are expected outside the conference hotel. Inside, few are making any attempt to pretend that it is business as usual for the Church. Months of scandals have reignited a sexual abuse crisis that many of the bishops hoped they had laid to rest a decade and a half ago. This time, it is the bishops themselves, rather than the rank and file priests, who are in the firing line.