That was apparent during Biden’s campaign against Donald Trump. It was not just an obligatory invocation of a benign Supreme Being, the kind of bromide that has often accompanied our civic rituals. The answers Biden gave-a somewhat perfunctory list that included “opportunity” and “security”-were less striking than the question he posed, which stood out for its unembarrassed particularity. “What are the common objects we love that define us as Americans?” Augustine, a saint of my church, wrote that a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love,” he said. When Biden took the oath of office, he placed his left hand on a century-old family Bible emblazoned with a Celtic cross, and, after he was sworn in, he gave an address that borrowed from both Scripture and Catholic tradition. Then, at the Capitol, a Jesuit priest and former president of Georgetown University, Father Leo O’Donovan, used an otherwise ecumenical prayer to remind the audience that a Catholic had asked for God’s blessing for George Washington’s inauguration. Matthew the Apostle, named for the patron saint of civil servants. Before the day’s public ceremonies, he attended a private Mass at the Cathedral of St. No one who watched the inauguration of Joe Biden could have missed that he was a Roman Catholic.
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