By Anna Rahmanan
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The apostles took rather longer to repent.
Within three days of 12 Catholic bishops praying over President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the apologies had begun. Milwaukee Archbishop Jeffrey Grob regretted his participation and Des Moines Bishop William Joensen acknowledged that he should have anticipated the political uses to which the occasion might be put.
The bishops had apparently expected a private audience with the president. Instead, they emerged as supporting characters in a White House production, their outstretched hands preserved for posterity and, more immediately, for social media.
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One suspects the Vatican has encountered subtler exercises in the appropriation of ecclesiastical authority. All the more curious, then, that the bishops appeared so surprised to find themselves on the receiving end of one.
The episode highlights an intriguing inversion, a la Trump. The president, whose relationship with Christian doctrine has seldom been the principal attraction of his religious appeal, appears remarkably conversant with the political possibilities of Christian iconography. The bishops, whose vocation depends upon understanding the significance of ritual, seem to have underestimated what happens when the sacred enters the camera frame.
The Gospel According to Trump
The October 22 meeting was supposed to concern matters of considerable seriousness: immigration enforcement and the treatment of religious workers among them. The bishops had reason to seek the president's attention, then.
Instead, though, the enduring public artifact was a photograph of 12 prelates gathered around Trump, who sat at the Resolute Desk receiving their prayers.
The number 12 was presumably coincidental. The visual resemblance to a biblical tableau was nevertheless difficult to miss, although the question of who occupied the central role was rather more complicated.
Grob subsequently explained that the recording had been made without the bishops' knowledge. The meeting, he said, had never been intended as an endorsement.
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Unfortunately for the archbishop, photographs are notoriously indifferent to the intentions of their subjects. And, perhaps even more unfortunately for him, Trump has understood their utility for quite some time.
Who can forget the time he appeared outside St. John's Episcopal Church holding a Bible in June of 2020? The gesture required no particular familiarity with the contents of the book, which performed its own introduction. Trump had grasped that the Bible could be politically useful without ever having to open it.
Four years later came the God Bless the USA Bible, offered for $59.99 and accompanied by America's founding documents. The arrangement suggested that the distance between Sinai and Philadelphia might be bridged by a sufficiently patriotic binding.
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The recurring prayer circles in Trump's White House follow a similar visual logic: the president is surrounded by religious leaders, their hands extended toward him. Whatever is being asked of God, the earthly audience receives a readily intelligible image of spiritual solicitude.
The theological meaning of these encounters is almost incidental. Whether the bishops intended to bless Trump, whether he has read the Bible he holds or whether the prayers offered over him have any bearing on his conduct, the images have already accomplished their purpose: to those inclined to see a president in communion with Christianity, the sight is its own gospel.
The Republican Book of Common Prayer
Trump's Republican affiliation adds another layer to all this, for there is nothing especially novel about the party invoking Christianity. Ronald Reagan understood the electoral importance of the religious right, while George W. Bush spoke of his faith with the familiarity of a man for whom it was a perennial subject, for example.
Trump's contribution to the tradition, though, has been unusually pictorial.
Religious symbolism, he appears to have discovered, can communicate political affinity without requiring much in the way of theological exposition. A Bible held aloft before a church can accomplish what a sermon might struggle to do, just as a roomful of bishops can convey an impression of approval even when those present subsequently deny having offered it.
Within Catholicism, this becomes particularly interesting, since the Church's moral authority is understood to transcend party allegiance. Its bishops have an obligation to engage with political leaders, including those whose policies they oppose.
Yet the difference between praying for a president and appearing to bless his presidency is a distinction that survives rather better in canon law than on Instagram.
The Uses of Sanctity
The irony is that Catholicism has spent two millennia refining the language of signs. Its bishops understand that gestures carry meaning beyond words and that their very liturgy is built upon the proposition.
What they seem to have misjudged, though, is the existence of a rival liturgy, conducted through the White House communications operation of this particular president, in which the camera determines what the public is invited to see.
The bishops can explain their intentions and clarify the theological distinction between intercession and endorsement ad nauseum but the image remains.
The 12 bishops came to Washington hoping to make themselves heard. Alas, they discovered that, in the president's presence, being seen can matter considerably more.
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