SOUTH BEND, Indiana — In a time when many Americans feel torn by political conflict, Washington Cardinal Robert W. McElroy told a University of Notre Dame audience that healing the nation’s divisions will require a moral reset rooted in gratitude, compassion, and shared purpose.
The archbishop of Washington joined Holy Cross Father Robert A. Dowd, Notre Dame’s president, on Oct. 17 for a conversation titled “Healing Our National Dialogue and Political Life.” The discussion was part of the 2025–26 Notre Dame Forum, whose theme, “Cultivating Hope,” echoes the Catholic Church’s Jubilee Year call for the faithful to live as “Pilgrims of Hope.”
Cardinal McElroy, appointed by Pope Francis to lead the Archdiocese of Washington in January and installed as the archbishop in March, reflected on the unique responsibilities that come with serving in the U.S. capital.
He said his first priority remains pastoral, visiting parishes and schools and listening to the people he shepherds through small-group synodal conversations. But, he added, Washington’s national prominence brings additional duties.
“Because it is the capital, many Catholic institutions have their headquarters or ministries there,” he said. “And whenever I speak on the moral dimensions of public policy, it carries a resonance that it would not have elsewhere.”
The archbishop said his visits throughout the archdiocese, which includes Washington, D.C., and the five surrounding counties of Maryland, revealed “a breadth of diversity” that surprised him. From urban neighborhoods to rural parishes rooted in Maryland’s Catholic history, he said, “they have a wonderful sense of history.”
Cardinal McElroy said the Church’s mission is moral, not political. “The Church has no specifically political role,” he said. “The Church has a moral role within the political and public order, to speak to the morality of issues.”
He reminded the audience that the founders of the American republic viewed religion as vital to sustaining civic virtue.
“They believed that only religion could bring from the human heart a willingness to look past self-interest to a wider sense of the common good,” he said. “For that reason, they thought religion was essential, not as a direct force in politics, but in shaping the human heart.”
Three transitions toward renewal
Cardinal McElroy proposed three “transitions” he believes are essential for healing the nation’s public life: from grievance to gratitude, from warfare to shared purpose, and from insularity to compassion.
He said gratitude reminds citizens that American unity rests not on blood or ancestry but on ideals such as freedom, dignity and justice, even as the country continues to confront its failures. “We have become a nation of grievance,” he said, urging a rediscovery of “the beauty of that which binds us together.”
The “politics of warfare,” he said, took root in the 1990s when partisan strategies became permanent fixtures of political life. “The mentality of warfare on both sides has done terrible damage,” he said. “We have to recover a sense of shared purpose.”
The cardinal called compassion the key to bridging divides, noting that Catholic social teaching spans issues claimed by both major parties. “When people come at questions with the starting point of compassion, when they can see the suffering involved on various sides, they can bridge together,” he said.
When Father Dowd asked Cardinal McElroy what the U.S. political system could learn from the Church, the cardinal pointed to Pope Francis’s 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti, which calls believers to love of neighbor that extends even to political adversaries.
Cardinal McElroy pointed to the synodal process. He said parishes, as diverse communities of faith, can model dialogue that unites rather than divides.
In San Diego, he said, small synodal sessions helped people who “diametrically disagreed” leave “feeling bonded, because they were encountering each other as people of faith.”
The cardinal outlined the synodal method of prayer, listening, reflection, and discernment as a framework that could strengthen civic dialogue as well. “We have to get back to discussions across lines in which we can talk about public policy issues without going to our corners,” he said.
He also praised synodal dialogue as a model for civil society as a process that “engages hard questions where people disagree, but holds them together in understanding.”
Turning the question around, he said the Church has also learned from the American experience, particularly the development of modern Catholic teaching on religious liberty that grew out of U.S. history.
He also said the growing participation of women in synodal assemblies “tremendously changed the conversation,” calling it an area where “the Church still has much to learn.”
Reflecting on the Jubilee Year theme, “Pilgrims of Hope,” Cardinal McElroy said he remains optimistic. A diocesan survey in San Diego found less than 20 percent of respondents at either ideological extreme, with nearly 60 percent describing themselves as “in the middle.”
“To me, that gives great hope,” he said. “We have to empower the middle, those who have openness to get beyond strident identification with either side.”
He added that his greatest source of hope remains the quiet faith of ordinary Catholics. “You see people of tremendous heroism,” he said. “The way they carry on their lives, often with enormous challenges, in ways that are truly heroic. That’s God working in the human heart.”
As the discussion drew to a close, Cardinal McElroy acknowledged that the nation faces deep challenges but insisted it is not beyond repair. “We’re in a tough time on these questions,” he said. “But it’s not an irredeemable time, and there are ways that can bring us together.” He urged Catholics and citizens alike to reclaim the courage to engage one another with honesty and compassion. “We have to get back to discussions where we can talk about the hard questions without going to our corners,” he said. That effort, he added, begins with mercy. “When people start with compassion, they can bridge together. It’s compassion that lets us see one another again.”
Looking ahead, the cardinal said the Church’s witness must remain rooted in hope — a hope both humble and determined. “We are all part of a society with a great dream, a great history, and a great potential,” he said. “We still have a lot to learn, and a lot to do.” And even amid division, he said, faith reminds believers that grace endures. “I’m very hopeful in the long run,” he said. “We’re in a difficult moment, but we’re not without grace.”
The discussion between Cardinal McElroy and Notre Dame president Father Dowd, is linked below.
