The U.S. Catholic Church Should Embrace the Vision of Laudato Si’

This week, in one of my columns at the National Catholic Reporter, I looked at the role apocalyptic despair plays in preventing Catholics from embracing the kinds of societal and personal changes we need to counteract climate change. The situation is so dire, and so monumental, that there is a tendency to throw up our hands and think there isn’t much any one of us can do to avert disaster.

I have come to the conclusion that this is one of the reasons the U.S. bishops’ conference has not taken major steps to implement Laudato Si’. But it is not the only reason. There has been a sustained campaign to deny the reality of climate change and Pope Francis’ authority to treat the issue.

Aggressive denialism was far more prominent than apocalyptic despair when the encyclical was published. Even such a prominent academic as Princeton’s Robert P. George wrote a “prebuttal” to Laudato Si’ for First Things before Laudato Si’ was even published. “The Pope has no special knowledge, insight or teaching authority pertaining to matters of empirical fact of the sort investigated by, for example, physicists and biologists, nor do popes claim such knowledge, insight or wisdom,” George opined. “Pope Francis does not know whether, or to what extent, the climate changes (in various directions) of the past several decades are anthropogenic—and God is not going to tell him. Nor does he know what their long-term effects will be. If anything he teaches depends on views about these things, all he will have to go on is what everybody else has to go on, namely, the analyses offered by scientific specialists who have studied the matter.”

Such statements were technically accurate but insidious too, and have only grown more so. George doubled down on them at the time with a column that, among other things, cited prominent scientists who raised objections to the dominant view that climate change is real and much of it is caused by human beings. Nobody loves a contrarian more than me, but the scientists he cites, such as Freeman Dyson and Richard Lindzen are not just outliers, they are cranks.

So far as I can tell, Robert George has not modified his stance. He certainly has not stepped up and said, “Pope Francis was right and I was wrong.”

Another person all too willing to cast doubts about Laudato Si’ at the time it was published was EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo. He aired a segment featuring a representative from the Heartland Institute. “Heartland” sounds so wholesome, you can be forgiven for thinking they make apple pies and support mothers. In fact, the organization is a libertarian group, funded by individuals and groups with long track records of supporting libertarian positions on a variety of issues. Libertarianism is many things but no iteration of it is consistent with Catholic social teaching.

Arroyo has continued his drumbeat of climate denialism. His 2020 interview with then-President Donald Trump was a study in advanced sycophancy, and he set climate change against abortion as a life issue, allowing Trump to differentiate himself from Joe Biden saying, “I’m pro-life, he’s not.” There was no follow-up.

When Biden appointed John Kerry to be his point man on climate change, Arroyo went on Fox News to suggest Kerry is compromised because of his wife’s business dealings with China. Arroyo said Mrs. Kerry had as much as $5 million invested in a Chinese hedge fund. Her net worth is estimated to be about $750 million so $5 million is a rounding error. And, if Arroyo was concerned about grifters, that concern was never manifested during the Trump years.

For people who rely on Fox and ideologically related media for news, they really have been fed nonsense about climate change year after year, always dressed up in authoritative-sounding, pseudo-scientific, intellectual drag.

The Catholic Church in this country could take the lead in beating back this tide of misinformation. Many of the people in the pews are conservatives and they likely have been exposed to lies about climate change. But they also look outside and see that the temperature is above 110 degrees or their street is flooded or that the air is thick with unhealthy clouds of smoke from Canadian wildfires. A priest doesn’t have to be an expert on climate change to call his parishioner’s attention to the problem: All he needs to know about the science was set forth by Pope Francis in Laudato Si’.

Regrettably, as the U.S. bishops debate their new priorities and plans – they punted on the issue at their June meeting in Orlando—it seems unlikely that they will place a reboot of Laudato Si’ at the top of their list of priorities. But they should. As the daily weather report attests, the ill effects of climate change have already begun and they are only going to get worse.

At a deeper level, the vision of Laudato Si’ challenges the libertarianism that is at the heart of so much in American politics and culture, even though our Catholic teachings are allergic to it. Perhaps, just perhaps, the climate crisis will cause Americans to rethink their famous rugged individualism. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Catholic Church in the U.S. can be at the vanguard of shedding that selfishness which has always endangered the soul, and now endangers the planet. 

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Michael Sean Winters is a journalist and writer for the National Catholic Reporter.

Queering Synodality

Queer theology is not really concerned with LGBTQ+ “representation” in the Church. As a project, queer theology seeks to disrupt, to challenge, to transgress dominant oppressive norms. More than offering apologetics for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Church (which remain important), queer theology utilizes a different kind of method that posits a challenge to normativity—particularly oppressive ways of thinking.

Is there a place for such a destabilizing transgressive project in a synodal Church that, as Pope Francis envisions, emphasizes unity and togetherness in the journey as a People of God? Would queer theology present an antithesis to that synodal vision?

In response, I argue that queerness should be an essential component of the synodal journey.

Queerness presents a solution to an ecclesiological problem we encounter too often in our Church. While many in our Church have brought forth significant structural reforms and key developments, these advances are often thwarted or delayed by Church leaders who cling to outdated ways of thinking. The phrase “old wine in new wineskins” captures this trend.

I believe that a genuine synodal journey needs to consider and challenge the operating norms underneath any potential structural reform. Queer theology functions in this realm of normative discourse (defined by Foucault as a powerful use of language to produce “knowledge” that generates particular norms). Queer theologizing is not limited to structural reforms, but rather seeks to examine and challenge the operating principles that lie underneath our efforts and the “so called” knowledge that sustains them. It asks: what religious norms do we subscribe to and how was the knowledge that sustains them produced? How does our theological discourse promote such norms? Who is oppressed by those norms? And, crucially, how can we use theological discourse destabilize oppressive norms?

These questions are key for a Church that wishes to usher in reform while also challenging the underlying currents of thought that sustain outdated structures. More importantly, queerness challenges norms in unexpected ways by making us aware of our blind spots. It highlights oppressive normativity in areas of our lives where we don’t suspect it exists. Since many of us walk in lockstep by blindly following norms socialized into our psyche from an early age, encountering queer transgressions may cause a necessary disruption that initiates a process of introspection and transformation.

A synodal Church, while conserving its hierarchical structure that may perpetuate “walking in lockstep” (e.g., the image of a pastor and a flock), should welcome in more queer disruption. I wish Church leaders would implore queer theologians to (1) challenge them in new and unexpected ways, (2) explain how Catholic theological norms discursively enable oppression inside and outside of the Church, and (3) teach them new liberatory forms of discourse.

To make my proposal more concrete—though well intentioned, synodality could fall prey to a bishop who, while singing praises for the synodal journey, continues to fiercely cling to “old wine” ideas of gender and sexuality that ultimately oppress the LGBTQ+ Catholics that synodality hopes to welcome (as evidenced in the majority of synod continental reports throughout the world). Thus, synodality becomes ineffective and self-defeating. Assuming that this bishop is rational and well intentioned (generous as that may be in some cases), it’s obvious that he may not have opened himself up to challenge on matters of sexual normativity. Perhaps he cannot even imagine that such norms can be credibly challenged. Therefore, a genuine spirit of synodality, for this bishop, would make use of a queer methodology that challenges any previously unnoticed oppressive norms still operating underneath the surface of his synodal path.

Crucially, I also argue that, in the same way that synodality needs queer theology, the queer theological project could also benefit from the spirit of synodality. Space does not allow me to develop this idea, so I will simply observe that synodality helps queerness stay close to the ground and connected to the historical experiences of people. Challenging norms for the sake of challenging norms is dangerous. There are many norms in our society (moral and cultural) that I would seek to preserve. A queer project that loses sight of human experiences, historical oppression, the importance of community and a justice-oriented vision of the future could cause serious harm. Synodality provides a potential for a Catholic queer theological project grounded in communal lived experience.

I conclude by reflecting on Pope Francis’ letter to the newly appointed prefect for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez, in which he states his hopes for a Church that increases its understanding of faith instead of focusing on condemning errors. I am cautiously optimistic that such vision would help the DDF open itself up to the movement of the Spirit manifested in queer transgressions rather than seek to rigidly preserve established norms that clearly threaten the dignity of many queer Catholics. Catholic leaders, and the Church as a whole, could significantly benefit from the insights and the challenges presented by queer Catholic theology.

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Ish Ruiz is the Provost-Candler Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Catholic Studies at Candler School of Theology, Emory University. 

Catholics, the Supreme Court and Theological Formation

I spent the last week of June waiting for the release of Supreme Court decisions and reading each day about rulings that continue the rightward trajectory of American legal and political life. These rulings are driven by white conservative backlash to the attempts to implement a more just society for historically oppressed and disempowered groups. Given the Court’s 6-3 conservative majority, these decisions did not come as a surprise to me or to the friends and colleagues with whom I spoke about the news over that week. But the felt inevitability did little to assuage the sense of anger and grief at the loss of affirmative action as an important tool for racial justice, the dashing of hopes for student debt relief and the opening of the door to further LGBTQ discrimination. One summer after the Dobbs decision, and with what we can assume will be a long tenure of this conservative-majority court, these cases continue to set a path for the American legal system that suggests more undoing of protections for marginalized groups to come.

In the midst of reading and reacting to these signs of the political times, I went to Mass on Sunday at a local parish. There, I heard nothing of these signs of the times, but rather about America’s story as one of “hospitality” accompanied by the singing of “America the Beautiful.” Being relatively new to the area, I have attended a variety of parishes seeking to understand the lay of the parochial land, and I do not expect that I would have experienced a vastly different liturgy at another local parish. Indeed, across various states around the country, I have encountered this kind of nationalism in the parish. But the contrast between the conversations of the preceding week and the Fourth of July-themed liturgy was particularly stark. That encounter left me reflecting, as I have many times over the past years, on the theological formation offered by U.S. Catholic parishes and its ability (or lack thereof) to meet the challenge of our political moment.

In her discussion of Catholics and the Supreme Court, Barbara Perry traces the history of Catholics on the bench, beginning with Chief Justice Taney who delivered the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, now considered the worst decision of the Court’s history. From there, the 19th and 20th centuries saw the development of the so-called “Catholic seat” on the Court, by which presidents aimed to attract voters through this symbolic representation. By the late 20th century, however, Perry argues, the “Catholic seat” began to carry less weight for attracting voters. When President Reagan appointed Justice Antonin Scalia, though the administration was aware that Scalia would be the first Italian American on the Court, Reagan was less interested in Scalia’s religious affiliation than his conservatism. Indeed, Perry argues, by the time the Court arrived at a Catholic majority in the 2000s, the presidents who appointed these Catholic justices were far less interested in their religion than in their willingness to serve conservative ideological priorities.

Though Perry’s history ends in 2009, prior to the current makeup of the bench, her point about the ideological selection of justices seems to me to have merit, as well as resonances beyond the Court. Though interviews or profiles of the six Catholic justices (Gorsuch was also raised Catholic, though he is now an Episcopalian) make mention of their Mass attendance or self-descriptions of their faith, it is not possible for me to state the importance of Catholicism in informing the justice’s thinking. But with regard to Catholic teaching, the separation of church and state is most apparent in the justices’ rulings on issues like the death penalty and the recent ruling on affirmative action (which is contrasted by the positive recommendation of affirmative action policies in the USCCB’s 1979 Pastoral Letter “Brothers and Sisters to Us”). Last week’s 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis decision, on the other hand, stands in a line of decisions weakening that church and state division where it serves conservative political priorities.

The apparent conservative ideological motivation for these rulings finds comfortable resonances among U.S. Catholic voters, particularly white Catholics. As is by now well-known, a majority of white Catholics voted for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020, giving support to his choice of justices and the rulings they have made. More frequent Mass attendance made it more, not less, likely that a white Catholic would vote for Donald Trump. While there are plenty of parishes where this kind of political conservatism is openly preached, in others there is simply an anemia of preaching and teaching any alternatives. The result is that many white U.S. Catholics are largely ignorant of the Social Teaching of the Church and its implications for political life. I sympathize with pastors who do try to make some of this message known, aware that they see their parishioners on Sunday morning, while Fox News lulls them to bed every night. In our particular political moment, when even some bishops seem more informed by right-wing news than theological reflection, it is difficult to preach any social teaching or political theology that might challenge the political status quo. But silence resigns us to a political theology of Christian nationalism and temptations to fascism as described by my colleague Dan Rober.

The readings for last Sunday did indeed speak of hospitality—hospitality given to the prophets, the righteous and the “little ones” (Mt. 10:37-42). The current Supreme Court appears disinclined towards hospitality to any of these, welcoming with open arms instead the priorities of one political party and the kindness of billionaires. They are part of a larger moment of political crisis that calls out for prophetic critique and politics that center on the “little ones.” Both resources can be found within the Catholic tradition and need to be resurfaced and taught as central to U.S. Catholics’ theological formation.

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Callie Tabor is a lecturer in the Department of Catholic Studies at Sacred Heart University.

An Autopsy for Social Trust

As a religious sister, pediatrician and medical ethicist who has worked for almost 40 years to protect victims of clergy sexual abuse, there are days, weeks, months when I am overwhelmed by the challenges to healing and renewing the Church in our post-pandemic, post-Christendom world.

Faith and religion today are in decline, and democracy is in crisis. There has been a steady and steep loss of trust in North American institutions, documented since the early 1970s by Gallup and Harris polls, especially for the stock market, banks, television news and legal organizations. The root causes of this loss of trust include poor institutional performance and the global shocks of the pandemic, the 2008-2009 recession, rising economic and social inequity and bank failures.

We also live in an age where social media pundits question everything and cyber-criminals are willing and able to exploit the susceptible and vulnerable.

Embodied and embedded in communities and cultures, we depend on organizations and institutions: the police and military for protection, businesses for safe products at fair prices, schools for the promotion of knowledge, doctors for health care, government officials for justice and the common good and religious institutions for counsel on dealing with the moral issues of our time. Among others, the Pew Research Center has tracked the tragic and precipitous decline of trust in these institutions. This is dramatically so for the Church itself. How can we resuscitate it?

I know the Church as a living mystery of God’s love and presence among us. It has necessary institutions and an organizational structure and culture. Management studies exploring the life cycle of organizations and institutions recognize them as living entities with a founding by a charismatic leader, early growth, maturity and socio-cultural success, followed by an inevitable decline with the challenge of renewing the original vision and values of the sacred founding times or facing dissolution and death.

Important work on the wounded state of the Church has been written and ignored because of an ongoing denial of the depth of the issues, vicious in-fighting on the reasons for the wounds and appropriate responses, tragedy fatigue experienced from the ongoing clergy abuse crisis and pandemic loss of religious practice. We need to break through to the deep renewal so desperately needed.

In the evening, I turn to the television to debrief. I have become fascinated with television dramas about forensic scientists, forensic anthropologists and coroners. They engage my diagnostic heart in their captivating meld of science and detective mystery. They star passionate and dedicated individuals who literally get to the heart of the matter as they perform autopsies, crack open chests and go deep into vital organs and tissues to determine the cause of death and the extent of damage to vital organs and tissues.

Some autopsies are required by law, as in sudden and unexpected death; others determine culpability in a homicide; and others advance learning on the damaging effects of disease, trauma and environment.

My rambling reflections using the metaphor and method of autopsy help highlight the complexity of diagnosis and the need to reject simple answers. We begin with a careful visual examination of the entire body. Scars and skin changes from colonialism and the trauma of clergy abuse show the apparent health and vitality of the Church of western and white-privileged Christendom were false.

Diagnostic imaging investigations confirm old fractures, organ damage and obstructed blood vessels limiting the flow of life-giving nutrients. In the Church, these result from secrecy, denial, protection of institution and offender, avoidance of scandal (understood as loss of reputation) and inattention to a health status reflecting Gospel values.

Microscopic examination reveals an underlying moral theology that has been rule-bound and sin-centered, not focused on the promotion of personal virtues or the formation of conscience, which impairs judgment on the relational harms of sin that are powerful in our incarnational and trinitarian beliefs.

Microbiology documents the presence of endemic and syndemic infections. These are widespread and multi-generational. They produce persistent lethargy and weakness and result in the inability to know the vitality of good health and well-being.

Toxicology studies the harmful effects of chemicals, poisons, pollutants and environments. In the Church, they reveal a noxious culture of power and privilege in clericalism and James Keenan’s “hierarchalism” with its elitism and non-accountability, which are in complete contradiction to Jesus’ use of power and authority.

Because increasingly sophisticated genetic technologies reveal that trauma has multi-generational effects, it is urgent that we acknowledge the depth of pathology for the future of the Church and its youth.

My forensic mystery shows conclude with judgments, advice and the zippering of a body bag containing the corpse. For disciples of the risen Christ, we stand in hope at an empty tomb.

Pope Francis’ calls for a “new friendship” and real synodality can empower our response and resuscitate trust in the Church as a source of healing and hope.

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Sister Nuala Kenny, emerita professor at Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., is a pediatrician and physician ethicist.

Whither American Catholic Theology?

This past month, I had several opportunities to reflect in depth upon my own vocation as a theologian and its place. First, I attended an online meeting that took place as part of the Synod on Synodality, engaging theologians in dialogue about the continental phase document. Second, I attended two conventions of national theological organizations—the College Theology Society (CTS) and Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA)—both of which I engage actively with as a board member and ad hoc committee member, respectively.

The CTS and CTSA conventions were the first “normal” conventions of either society since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Within both organizations, there was joy at being back in person (or in the CTSA’s case, in a more comfortable version of such) but also an apprehension about the survival of the profession in coming years, particularly with the “demographic cliff” of college students looming. Indeed, both the presidential address at the CTS and a special session at the CTSA devoted significant space to this set of topics. These troubling realities occasion some reflection.

Theology is a hallmark of Christianity, particularly in the two halves of the “Great Church” (i.e., Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy) that emerged from the Council of Chalcedon. The great doctrines of Christianity on Christ and the Trinity are revealed in the New Testament but their form and definition came through the work of theologians. The compatibility of faith and reason lies at the heart of Christianity, and theology has periodically re-emerged from periods of relative quiet into playing a large ecclesial role. This was certainly true in the twentieth century leading up to the Second Vatican Council, when theologians such as Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac, Marie-Dominique Chenu and Yves Congar formulated insights that greatly influenced that gathering.

The era coming out of Vatican II thus witnessed a renaissance of theology, and in the United States, this meant a growing role for academic theology that went beyond the realm of clerics (such as those at Vatican II mentioned above) to include lay people and religious women, in particular. At its 1970s-1990s “peak,” Catholic academic theology in the United States pushed boundaries (not without controversy) with seminal works such as Elizabeth Johnson’s “She Who Is” Catherine Mowry LaCugna’s “God For Us” and Ada María Isasi-Díaz’s “En la Lucha.” Today’s theologians are no less insightful, but their works have seemingly had less relevance to the surrounding culture and even to the church.

My teacher David Tracy famously argued in “The Analogical Imagination” that theology has three publics: academy, society and the church. The place of theology in society has certainly faded since the days when John Courtney Murray, Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich could appear on the cover of Time magazine or be namedropped in the Peanuts comic strip. In the academy, secularization and the dominance of religious studies within the academic study of religion have also marginalized theology. Catholic institutions have been the drivers of what vitality there is in academic theology, and that is fading as many of them cut liberal arts core requirements or close altogether. As the timing of the synodal consultation I attended indicated—it might have been subtitled “better late than never”—the hierarchy of the church in the United States also seems to have relatively little interest in what theologians have to say.

There are versions of this narrative in which there is no great loss to lament here; American theology has largely been a white, bourgeois enterprise that has failed to adequately deal with the horrors of the sexual abuse crisis. For others, largely to be found at other conventions such as the Academy of Catholic Theology or Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, it is a comeuppance for a theological academy too focused on relevance and innovation at the expense of attention to orthodoxy. Some of these critiques make trenchant points, and there is a dire need for Catholics in the United States to engage more deeply with what it means to be members of a global church. Yet there would be a cost to theological knowledge as a Catholic value fading away in the United States.

Absent serious academic inquiry, the dialogue between faith and reason can tend in the direction of fideism. For younger people, their engagement with Catholicism will tend to be through influencers they encounter on social media. Some of these influencers, such as Bishop Robert Barron, are theologically trained yet now deal in simpler messages tending in a culture-warrior direction. Others, such as Father Michael Schmitz, have a similar focus with less intellectual weight (though no little attention to lifting weights); still others, like Taylor Marshall, flirt with outright schism. Pope Francis himself has sometimes appeared to downplay the importance of theology, owing both to his own concern that intellectuals not look down on ordinary people’s faith and also possibly in reaction to his two predecessors’ concerns with theological orthodoxy that sometimes took the form of censorship and investigation.

There is thus reason for ordinary Catholics to be concerned at the peril of academic theology. Without sustained attention to the relationship between faith, reason and culture, space opens for ideologues and demagogues. It is important, then, both for theologians to engage clearly and positively with the church even as they critique it when necessary, and for Catholic institutions to live up to their mandate to continue to foster academic theology despite cross-pressure: to be, in the words of Notre Dame’s legendary Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., where the church does its thinking.

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Daniel A. Rober is a systematic theologian and Catholic studies professor at Sacred Heart University.

Succession Obsession

An orange haze of wildfire smoke blanketed the northeast last week and turned the sun red. The phenomenon, both beautiful and harrowing, is not new; folks on the West Coast have been dealing with it for years. But it brought a brand-new set of sights, smells and coughs for those of us who live near New York City. Driving home through the smoke conjured reminders about a world undergoing really big changes. Perhaps I am oversensitive to the latest round of climate and artificial intelligence apocalypticism because I am about to experience my first Father’s Day as a dad. Then again, one of my daughter’s favorite books to look at is titled “Climate Change for Babies.” I always knew that her future would be different from my past, but I am now starting to feel it.

What sort of world is going to come next? Some of that question gets tied up in the worries and anticipations of “succession.” (And, yes, this post eventually contains references to the finale of the HBO series of the same name. I won’t be offended if you decide to stop reading!) How will institutions and their leaders handle the massive and inevitable transitions around the corner? This is certainly the case for the Catholic Church. Any community or diocese awaiting the assignment of a new pastor knows a special brand of worry about change. With hope and God willing, Pope Francis will already be discharged from his latest visit to the hospital by the time anyone reads this blog post. According to all the reports I have seen, the Holy Father’s abdominal surgery went well and he will continue to make a steady recovery. Yet around the time he was hospitalized—on the same day wildfires in Canada choked my neighborhood—a good friend of mine raised a smart concern linking the future of the synod to the future of Francis. In a transnational and hierarchical organization like the Church, succession matters greatly. We need time in order for synodality to stick beyond the reign of Pope Francis. Given the fractured communication of our moment, we all still need more practice.

But I probably have “succession” on the brain thanks to the TV show. As I watched the series finale, I could not help but think about the show’s complexly Catholic sensibility, beyond the use of a church where I used to be a parishioner as a set piece. Let’s be clear: the über rich characters are not saintly heroes. But the finale displayed a gravitational pull of grace in a scene of raw, joyful and childlike play. I think it asks a hard question as to whether anyone stands fully outside the bounds of redemptive possibility, even those directly responsible for our world on fire. I’m not entirely sure the show’s creators or the show’s characters would agree with me. After each episode, there would be a behind the scenes piece with interviews and commentary that continually identified the genre of “Succession” as “tragedy.” Goals have been frustrated. Few get what they want.

As a scholar, I work on the intersection of drama and theology. The show’s absurdly dark and theatrical writing and scale are what drew me to like it so much. There are, of course, a number of interpretations of Jesus’ passion that see it as a tragedy redeemed with a happy ending: crucifixion leads to resurrection. As Dante understood so well, the genre of the Christian story is ultimately a comedy. “Succession’s” off-color humor does not, in and of itself, make its ending a happy one nor does it suggest resurrection. But I think “Succession” presents a terribly good understanding of the way grace sometimes surprises by delivering us from the evil we want to choose. That is, the loss of power might lead to something different. It might lead to more of the playful turning of expired detritus into a gross meal fit for a king. Such tragicomic communion is laughter rather than more consumption.

In the end, it’s not forgiving the wretchedness of the Roys and other billionaire sycophants (or the dispositions of a soul that enjoys such marvelously crass entertainment) that matters theologically. Atonement cannot pretend to be an erasure of wrongdoing or some hall pass to go and do wrong again. Succession means the project continues. The promise of reconciliation includes the commitment to go and sin no more. And if “Succession” succeeds in displaying something Catholic, it is in a relentless human freedom to change and play things otherwise than they have been, no matter how far gone the world seems to be or how entrenched our expectations.

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Charles A. Gillespie is an assistant professor in the department of Catholic Studies and director of Pioneer Journey at Sacred Heart University.

Is Pope Francis Pope John Redux?

It’s all in the name. When Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli chose the name John XXIII on his election in 1958, he did so in great part because he admired the previous John—the XXII—because he continued the papacy in France, and Roncalli, former Vatican ambassador to the “eldest daughter of the church,” was a devoted Francophile. And just think of the French periti who would shape the Ecumenical Council he would call: Congar, de Lubac, Chenu, Danielou, etc.

When Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope on March 13, 2013, he chose to be known as Francis. The first of many firsts that have come to define the Bergoglio papacy, he knew that by choosing a name foreign to the annals of papal names, he was breaking with convention, just as Albino Luciani and Karol Wojtyla had done when they chose the double-barrelled John Paul. He knew that he needed to explain why Francis and he did so at a large gathering of journalists three days after the conclave that elected him, demonstrating his own comfort level with the media, his preference for transparency over speculation, and his resolve to embrace the legacy, and not only the name, of Il Poverello, the Poor One of Assisi:  “For me, he is the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who protects creation. . . .How I would like a Church which is poor and for the poor.”

Working toward creating a church of and for the poor has proven to be a titanic task for Francis.  Bishops and cardinals accustomed to fine living, sumptuous housing, and the perks and privileges ratified by centuries of convention, were stunned to discover that the newly elected pope from Argentina preferred a stripped-down papacy: not for him the Apostolic Palace but the comparatively simple digs of the Casa Santa Marta. Protocol was streamlined, the princely dignities of office much modified.

By taking the name of Francis, Bergoglio signaled his intention to direct the church in new ways and to do so from the very beginning of his Petrine ministry. This first Jesuit pope elected to travel to Lampedusa, an island off the southwest coast of Italy, to visit the migrants from north Africa who had braved unsteady seas to escape tyranny, war and poverty. These are the ones he is called to serve. This was a first. Previous popes on their inaugural trips outside the Vatican went to their homeland—Poland and Germany—but Francis, to the dismay of his officials, opted for Lampedusa and sent a message to the world.

This trip wasn’t a photo op, a media ploy, or a dramatic papal visit to territory distant from Vatican concerns. On the contrary, the gesture was a visually arresting pilgrimage to the peripheries and therefore a key component of the Francis agenda. Throughout his papacy, Francis repeatedly underscores the role of the peripheries—geographical, political, economic, cultural and theological—that must be the focus of the center. For too long those on the margins have been made to feel either alienated or of secondary concern. No longer. The peripheries have moved to the center of the pope’s priorities.

From the outset, many in head office—the Roman Curia—sensed that their new boss was not going to follow established ways, would opt for spontaneity over script, would shuffle things around and make, as he urged Catholic youth to do, a mess.

Think again of John XXIII: he was a great shuffler of curial staff, astonished his aides and attendant cardinals with his smiles, wit, unpredictability and sweet, if startling, spontaneity. He often appeared to the suave and sophisticated members of his court as a bit of a bumpkin. He was anything but: he was a serious church historian; philosemitic when many others were the opposite; a polyglot; a seasoned diplomat negotiating in dangerous and complex circumstances; and a man of great tenacity. He brought about the Council in the face of stiff, if undemonstrative, resistance from the Roman Curia.

When Bergoglio’s old friend Rabbi Abraham Skorka, a fellow Argentine, scientist and the leading Jewish figure in the country, was asked about the growing perception in conservative Catholic circles that Francis was out of his depth in the Vatican, that he would be sidelined by the Curia, that his ambitions for change would be squandered by internal disputes, and that he would be dismissed as a lightweight by the old guard keen on securing a deferential continuity with the John Paul II and Benedict XVI papacies, the rabbi thundered, “They don’t know my Jorge.”

But they have come to know Jorge very quickly. When Benedict XVI resigned as pope, it was clear to the cardinal-electors that his successor would need to reign in a Curia out of control, handle the spiraling morale issue around the many scandals—venal and venereal—swirling about the Vatican’s many offices and deal with a Catholic hierarchy unhappy with decades of centralized management. No easy feat, but Bergoglio’s candidacy provided a light at the end of the tunnel. He was not implicated in any Vatican dysfunction, was unfamiliar with the Roman manner of doing things and was disinclined by temperament to adjust to it. He was a fresh face, and he would unsettle the status quo.

Just like Roncalli, he was seriously underestimated. The peasant pope would alter the face of the church in the modern world, and no one saw it coming, apart from his trusted confidant Loris Capovilla, and the Argentine pope would bring the contemporary church to a new, if unsettling, threshold of reform in and by the Spirit.

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Michael W. Higgins is a senior fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto. Next year, his book on the Bergoglio papacy, “The Jesuit Disruptor: Francis Takes on His Church” and his book on the upcoming Synod, “The 30 Days that Shook the Church: The Synod on Synodality”, will both be published.

Vatican’s Communications Letter Needs Teeth

Two weeks ago on this blog, Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb analyzed the latest instance of Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, using his sizable Twitter account (now more than 117,000 followers) to undermine Pope Francis. “I believe Pope Francis is the Pope,” Bishop Strickland tweeted, in an effort to distance himself from the sedevacantist podcaster Patrick Coffin, “but it is time for me to say that I reject his program of undermining the Deposit of Faith.”

The tweet was, of course, only the latest in a decade-long series of attacks on Francis. As Lamb, Massimo Borghesi and Mary Jo McConahay all document in their most recent books, this effort to discredit the Latin American pope is well funded, particularly in the United States—the consequence of decades of work by the religious right in this country to wed Catholicism to unfettered capitalism and a brand of social conservatism that takes its cues more from Fox News than from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Such a movement is directly threatened by Pope Francis’ advocacy for an “integral ecology” that combines care for the environment with a “preferential option for the poor,” his criticisms of the arms trade and exploitative industry and his advocacy for migrants and refugees to be welcomed and integrated into their adoptive countries.

This brand of neoconservatism has unfortunately also become entangled with liturgical traditionalism within the Catholic Church and even a tendency toward schism.

That a sitting U.S. bishop would need to clarify that he recognizes the legitimacy of the pope is an all-too-predictable consequence; that he paired that clarification with a public rejection of the pope in the same sentence would be laughable were it not so sad.

Bishop Strickland’s tweets prompted speculation (I was not immune) about how the Vatican might respond, and again sparked discussions of whether a faction of the American church is in schism. It was into this mix that the Vatican dropped a new document, “Towards Full Presence: A Pastoral Reflection on Engagement with Social Media,” on May 28.

The document, issued by the Dicastery for Communication and signed by its prefect, Paolo Ruffini (though surely approved by the pope before release), lays out a vision of social media that, for the first time in my 10 years of studying church documents on communications, struck me with its honesty about both the opportunities and ugly realities of the websites where we live part of our lives.

“Towards Full Presence” states clearly that there is a profit motive behind the majority of social media services that people use, and that we, as users, are the product (10); our attention and data are sold to advertisers, and the sites have a vested interest in keeping us engaged. They have found that the best way to do that is by showing us only what others like us engaged with, thus siloing us (15); more often than not, the most engaging content is that which sparks outrage.

The document even calls out bishops who have fallen prey to the outrage cycle and use social media to foment division:

We must be mindful of posting and sharing content that can cause misunderstanding, exacerbate division, incite conflict, and deepen prejudices. Unfortunately, the tendency to get carried away in heated and sometimes disrespectful discussions is common with online exchanges. We can all fall into the temptation of looking for the “speck in the eye” of our brothers and sisters (Mt 7:3) by making public accusations on social media, stirring up divisions within the Church community or arguing about who among us is the greatest, as the first disciples did (Lk 9:46). The problem of polemical and superficial, and thus divisive, communication is particularly worrying when it comes from Church leadership: bishops, pastors and prominent lay leaders. These not only cause division in the community but also give permission and legitimacy for others likewise to promote similar type[s] of communication (75, emphasis added).

The document is both honest and incredibly hopeful, particularly compared with some of Pope Francis’ more recent criticisms of social media that may make readers question whether such platforms are salvageable at all (cf. Fratelli Tutti 42-50). “Towards Full Presence” frames the question for believers not as whether to engage with social media, but how to do so conscientiously, with active listening and discernment, fostering genuine encounters and relationships with those who are different, using social media to galvanize positive action both online and off and ultimately using social media creatively to push back against division and to witness to the Gospel.

Although “Towards Full Presence” is well aware of the high stakes of the currently polarized ecclesial and social media landscapes, it also seems to be inhibiting its own message. The document states explicitly that it is “a pastoral reflection” and not “precise ‘guidelines’ for pastoral ministry”; it adopts what has jokingly been called a “pretty sketchy” naming convention; and it was signed by a prefect rather than the pope.

The document appears squarely aimed at the social media discourse in developed, Western nations. While it briefly mentions that communications technology is not available in some places due to a lack of resources, it omits any reference to nations like Russia and China, for example, that are well-developed but where the state represses access to social media. If this is an intentional positioning rather than an oversight, then it is clear that the problem the Vatican hopes to address is the one unfolding in Western, democratic states.

If the Vatican’s message is to make a dent in the seemingly impenetrable outrage machine or the phalanx of media outlets resisting Catholic social teaching, though, it will need to take steps that are stronger and more authoritative than issuing a “pastoral reflection.”

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Colleen Dulle is a writer and producer at America Media, where she hosts the weekly news podcast “Inside the Vatican.” 

A Person of Hope

“Is your father a person of faith?” I have been asked that question several times since my father, Daniel Ellsberg, announced in February that he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. I think of the answer he himself provided many years ago: “No, but I am a person of hope.”

My dad, a former defense analyst, is of course best remembered for copying a 7,000-page top-secret history of the Vietnam War, later known as the Pentagon Papers, and providing it to the press and public in 1971. For this action he was charged with 12 felony counts under the espionage act, facing 115 years in prison. At his arraignment, a reporter asked him, “Are you concerned about going to jail?” He replied, “Wouldn’t you go to jail if it would help end this war?”

It is characteristic of many people who perform extraordinary actions to believe that what they did is what “anyone would do.” But that does not make it less extraordinary. His memoir, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, could well be read as a conversion story, from his work as a nuclear war planner to his time in the Pentagon working full-time on “the problem” of Vietnam, then two years in Vietnam itself, where the sufferings of the Vietnamese people “became as real to me as my own hands.” This experience shifted his perception of the war from a “problem to be solved” to a “mistake to be ended.” But it was in his later work on the Pentagon Papers project itself and learning of the secret origins and history of the war that he came to see it as a “crime to be resisted.” By this time he had met young draft resisters, inspired by Gandhian nonviolence, who were going to prison in opposition to the war. It inspired him to ask, “What could I do to end the war if I were willing to go to jail?”

Where do faith and hope come into this? My father does not believe in “God.” I put that word in quotes because, as I once told him, “I do not believe in the God you don’t believe in.” We had many conversations or debates about religion over the years. He never could comprehend my conversion to Catholicism—though as he once told me, “Because of my respect for you, I have to think there is more to it than I can understand.” And yet over the many decades of his tireless protests against nuclear war, he was glad to welcome close allies among Catholics and other “people of faith.” And he appreciated my writing about saints and prophets, knowing well how much his own life had been affected by the power of living witness.

He is a “person of hope”—who believes that hope is not a feeling of optimism, but a way of engagement, a way of living that opened the way to transformation. You never know the possible consequences of your actions. His actions were in the spirit of a prophet, warning the nations that they were on the road to perdition, yet never despairing that conversion was possible and that we might choose life.

Dorothy Day often spoke of the need for “saint-revolutionaries,” among whom she included characters in novels by Ignacio Silone and Arthur Koestler—secular figures, who set an example of moral engagement and were prepared to sacrifice themselves for others. I think also of those honored by the “non-believer” Albert Camus, who, without the consolation of belief in an afterlife, still committed themselves to join with others in the struggle against the forces of death. In that struggle he welcomed the commitment of Christians who would avoid abstractions and confront “the blood-stained face history has taken on today”: a grouping of men and women “resolved to speak out clearly and pay up personally.”

My father spent the past fifty years struggling to warn the world of the perils of the nuclear “Doomsday Machine.” Approaching the end of his life, he wonders whether his actions had had any effect. Yet to his last breath, he continues to direct all his intentions toward the possibility of a great awakening or moral conversion. It would take a miracle, he acknowledged in his secular terms. It would require a wholesale commitment to “the others, those not of our immediate tribe, to future generations, to the earth, to our fellow creatures.” The fact that this was not only the moral choice but an imperative for our own survival underlined the urgency of this intention.  

“Is your father a person of faith?” I reflect on this question as Dad enters his final days.

“Yes. He is a person of hope.”

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Robert Ellsberg publisher of Orbis Books and the author of many books, most recently, Dearest Sister Wendy … A Surprising Story of Faith and Friendship (with Sister Wendy Beckett).

Strickland, U.S. Bishop's Social Media Sows Division

The German church’s synodal path has sparked plenty of talk about a possible schism or even a second Reformation. But while plenty of criticisms can be made of Der Synodale Weg, a potentially more severe threat to unity is looming in Texas. 

Joseph Strickland, the Bishop of Tyler, in Texas, recently told his almost 116,000 followers on Twitter that although he believes "Pope Francis is the Pope," he rejects Francis' “program of undermining the Deposit of Faith.” He added: "follow Jesus," with the implication being that somehow the Pope isn't. 

Bishop Strickland’s tweet was an attempt to distance himself from Patrick Coffin, a hard-right podcaster who rejects Francis’ election as the Successor of St. Peter. Coffin had arranged for Bishop Strickland to send a message to an online summit, and the bishop wanted to clarify his position.  

The Texan prelate has in the past endorsed social media content attacking the Pope and has tweeted that Cardinal Arthur Roche, the Holy See’s top liturgy official, should “return to the Catholic faith.” For a bishop—or any Catholic—this is dangerous territory. The Church’s catechism makes it plain that the Pope is “the visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful” and defines schism as “the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” 

This case points to the dangers posed by social media to the Church’s communion and begs the question of why certain bishops in the United States have taken strong public stances against the German synod while staying silent about what is going on in their homeland. 

Yes, the German synod has pushed ahead with reforms on women’s ordination and the blessing of same-sex couples in ways that could be detrimental to unity. Senior officials in the Roman Curia have vocalized their concerns and held an extensive dialogue with German church leaders. Francis has also warned that the German process risks becoming “elitist” and “ideological,” focusing on outcomes rather than process. But no German bishop has publicly rejected Francis in the way that Strickland has just done.

Last year, the Archbishop of Denver, Samuel Aquila, wrote an open letter claiming the German synodal path challenges and “in some instances” repudiates the deposit of faith. Bishop Strickland has also issued a statement on “The German Bishops’ Error.” Yet the same Archbishop Aquila has described Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal nuncio who released a dossier of accusations against Francis and called on him to resign, as “a man of deep faith and integrity.” Archbishop Viganò’s accusations against Francis were later found to be full of inaccuracies and falsehoods, and the former diplomat is supportive of several conspiracy theories. Several other U.S. prelates, including Bishop Strickland, also made declarations of support for Viganò after his 2018 dossier was released and have never corrected the record. Siding with Archbishop Vigano when he was calling on the Pope to resign also has serious implications for unity. 

So far, the Holy See has not made any official moves to rein in Bishop Strickland. In previous pontificates, bishops who stepped out of line could expect a swift response from Rome. 

Nevertheless, Archbishop Robert Prevost, the newly appointed prefect of the Holy See’s office for bishops, has talked about the risks of bishops using social media, saying it can do “damage to the communion of the Church.” Archbishop Prevost has insisted that a bishop must be “a pastor, capable of being close to the members of the community.” The main concern in Rome will be whether the bishop serves his flock or pushes an ideological agenda. 

In the past, Francis has said he’s “not afraid” of schisms, although he prays it won’t happen. “When you see Christians, bishops, priests, who are rigid, behind that there are problems and an unhealthy way of looking at the Gospel,” he says. 

The synodal process, with its emphasis on listening and dialogue, offers an antidote to the polarization in politics and the wider culture which has infected the church. Father Timothy Radcliffe, the Dominican friar who Pope Francis asked to lead a retreat for the October synod assembly members, has talked about the synod as “daring to open yourself to people who’ve got views other than your own.” It’s a process, he says, that can help break people out of their “bubbles” and “sterile culture wars.” The invitation is there for anyone who wishes to take part. 

But the concern with Bishop Strickland is that he will continue to use his large social media following to sow division and promote his public rejection of the Francis pontificate. At some point, Rome may need to act.  

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Christopher Lamb is Vatican Correspondent for The Tablet and author of The Outsider: Pope Francis and His Battle to Reform the Church.