Like the rest of the United States, the Catholic Church bishops have had to deal with Barack Obama. His election was a political challenge to many of them. But his presidency also poses a deeper spiritual challenge.
During his campaigns for the Democratic nomination and then for the Presidency, the standard by which the most vocal Catholic Bishops judged Obama and the Democratic party was his position on issues of personal morality: on abortion, same sex marriages, and on the use of embryos for research.
Some bishops dramatised their focus on these issues by threatening to refuse communion to Catholic candidates who supported liberalising abortion. The majority were more circumspect.
The electoral support for Obama, including by Catholic voters, left the more aggressive bishops exposed. It also marginalised the Catholic Church in its capacity to influence the policies of the new administration, including on issues of personal morality.
The bishops responded by addressing a letter to Obama. In it they offered qualified cooperation and set out the criteria by which they would judge his policies. They reasserted the Catholic position on issues of personal morality, but also included issues of public morality, like war, poverty, and access to welfare and medical care.
But the deeper challenge that Obama would pose to the Catholic Bishops, and indeed to all church leaders, was adumbrated in his speech after being sworn in. His speech suggested that he may be more effective in appealing to deep spiritual themes than church leaders have been.
The content of his speech was properly public. He spoke of a nation in crisis that faced domestic and international problems. He called for a concerted effort to meet the difficulties. The virtues to which he called people were civic virtues.
But his powerful rhetoric was based in religious imagery. He described the journey of the nation, echoing the journey of the Israelites from Egypt into the Promised Land. He spoke of the trials of the journey, the virtue and faith of earlier generations of the American people, the present crisis, the opportunity for a new beginning, and the promise of the future. It was a powerful vision saturated in Biblical allusions.
His central point was to insist on the urgency of the times. He emphasised that 'this day' called for a change of heart, for setting aside old and tired attitudes and embracing the new.
He dismissed those who have forgotten 'what free men and women can