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A weekly podcast about Christianity and leftist politics. The Magnificast is hosted by Dean Dettloff and Matt Bernico. Each week's episode focuses on a unique or under-realized aspect of territory between Christianity and politics that no one taught you about in sunday school.
Welcome to the magnificent guest. And a happy year anniversary to our big winner, this Marxist Peronist Communist lowercase C uppercase M Marxist Pope Pope Francis. I'm your co-host for the Week dean Dettloff I'm going to give host Matt Bernico Usually our intro has the voices of previous guests and this is has a really diabolical energy to it. I got to say, I agree, but kudos to you for actually listening to those clips enough to pair them down in such a way that it's not 8 minutes of Rush Limbaugh trying to explain Gramsci to you. Here's the thing I pick three quotes from three stupid pundits and I could have found 50. This is such a stupid thing. I can't stand it. But they're out there. They love calling Pope Francis a marxist. It's their favorite pastime of the past ten years. Yeah. You know, as you can tell already, dear listener, this is going to be an upset about Pope Francis's big decade or ten years of having the big guy in the big hat be a guy from Argentina. And there's lots to say about it. Lots of interesting things to say. But, you know, when we are thinking about this episode, we were remembering these kinds of clips. I think the Rush Limbaugh one is the one that always sticks out for me. But that was 2014, I think, or 13 pretty fresh anyway. And it's kind of wild to like transport myself back to that world where people were like, Yeah, the pope, he's a marxist, he's from Latin America. Some pretty racist insinuations in there for sure. Right. Yeah. But anyway, just a wild to be like Pope Francis really came out of the gates getting called a marxist already. Yeah, that's the thing. If you're even a little bit to the left, people are going to call you a marxist. And the thing is, if they're going to call you that, you might as well just be one. You know, there's worse things to be called. That's all I have to say. That's true. Pope Francis, though, not taking that route. Unfortunately, he's not now. He's not playing some seeds, maybe, as you heard. You know, Francis has been a polarizing figure, to say the least. And even before the kind of latest rounds of accusations of polarization have been flying at him right in the beginning, he was accused of dividing the church or putting this really radical energy into it. And the right people say he's a marxist. On the left, though, on the other hand, people say that he hasn't been the reformer that he seemed to be or could have done more or hasn't been moving at the pace that people want or the marginalized people need is maybe even a better way of putting it. And there's a lot of things to say about both of those sides of the debate around Pope Francis. So we thought what could you possibly say on a podcast about Christianity and leftist politics, about Pope Francis ten years down the line? We're not exactly sure, but we are going to find out together what the official Magnificast take I guess Pope Francis might be. I can't wait to see what it is. I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure some other people have said it better, and we're even going to include a few of them in the episode. We went and we found out what Leonardo Boff had to say. We looked at some of the reporting. There's tons of articles if you're on the Internet at all. And like me, you have an extremely broken Twitter feed full of like very niche Catholic outlets. Basically, everybody put together sort of ten years of Pope Francis collection of articles either like recent stuff of people reflecting on the decade or reporting from the past decade that reflects what's been going on with Pope Francis. So you can read all that. I think the best stuff is at Common weal and National Catholic Reporter. There's some good stuff in America and you kind of have to sift through. You know, every outlet has its ups and downs, so the quality of takes may vary. To put it lightly, the NCR to get Nancy Pelosi to write an essay about Pope Francis. I think that was a misstep, but not for me to say. Anyway, I just did it though. Just the same. Well, it's not for me, but I did say it. That's true. yeah, I mean, there's lots of people talking about it. There's a lot of buzz. And I think it is going to be interesting to see what else happens. But we've talked about Pope Francis a bunch of times. This is like the mega pope news episode, I guess, on the podcast. Let's see, I have a lot of thoughts about it because I'm a Catholic and I have to think about it a lot. But I'm actually curious to hear what you think about Pope Francis being a guy, you know, in the broader Catholic tradition and not the Roman Catholic tradition. What is what does this big pope mean to you? Yeah, you know, to me, this big pope and big hat and he's in the big chair. I don't know what he is. To me. He's just a guy. I mean, being Anglican means that the bishop of Rome has no authority here. in many areas. I think that he still has a lot of wisdom and has a lot of nice things to say. And I think activate a lot of parts of the Christian tradition that, you know, might not get activated so often in the Anglican world. So I think it's good, you know, other places. He's definitely, defficient in talked about this too the things have really stuck with me the most Are the encyclicals and the way that he's worked out some of the like broad Christian logics around social issues and climate change. I think those have been really important to me and hopefully important other people too. I mean, whatever. if you are like me and you're Protestant, maybe this episode will be like kind of the wash for you. But still, I think it's kind of worth talking about because, isn't just going to be like reflecting on Pope Francis and whether or not we think he's good. But this is also, I think, kind of about the ways that people talk about Pope Francis as well, like the rhetoric surrounding him. I think that's actually pretty interesting because you can see the ways that people on the right have their underwear in a bunch about this guy. And that's exciting. I love seeing people on the right with their underwear in a bunch. That's very fun. Yeah, they're always picking at it and it looks pretty uncomfortable. That is, I think, good to hear at least that Pope Francis, I think, is resonating outside of the Catholic Church. I think that's true. You know, the one thing that we do have going for us in the Catholic Church is we have, for better and for worse, a kind of like moral center of gravity, maybe in ways that other Christians don't or it's not as recognizable like the pope is there and he speaks on behalf of the rest of us in ways that are sometimes extremely frustrating and other times very helpful and cool. So when the Pope says something like Out of Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, you can be like, Yeah, he did it. And that's what we are going to say. And when he says something that you don't like, like gender ideology is like a nuclear bomb or whatever, it's like, okay, please don't do that. So all let's say, though, it has been ten years of a lot of extremely headline grabbing things and what you were just saying mad about, like the way people talk about Pope Francis, I think that is even more interesting than Pope Francis himself. He is like a media pope in a lot of ways. I mean, John Paul, too, was also a media pope. But Pope Francis, is that even more so? I think. And I think that he kind of knows that, too. Like he almost feels like he's aware of the sound bite nature of the things that he says. Yeah. And, you know, he's the he's the postmodern pope. The Pope for the 21st century. The Internet pope. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And, you know, there's a lot to consider with that as like as a form in the world of, of media and discourse and stuff. But also I think that, there's a way that Pope Francis has a sort of moral voice in the world that I don't think anyone from any other Christian denomination has If Justin Welby came out and said something about climate change or about Africa, I wouldn't care. It would not make a difference to me. And if anybody reported on it, I would keep scrolling, because who cares? But if Pope Francis does, I think it carries more weight for people. Maybe because of just the media machine, maybe because Pope Francis has some kind of, like, moral legitimacy in ways that Justin Welby doesn't. I don't know. I don't know exactly why that is. Maybe I'll figure it out by the end this episode. But who knows? Well, Dean, as a as a papist, can you tell me maybe, like, what are the high points of Pope Francis's. reign. Is that it? Is that what he's doing? Is he in office? I don't know how to talk about this exactly, but. Yeah. What's it look like? Yep. I think it works pretty good. That will be my my basic judgment. Lots of things that we can talk about more later to complicate that statement. But I think it's really important to try to understand the ways that Pope Francis has intervened in global Catholicism. And I think some of us understand that some of us being like Catholics, some of us understand that it's harder to see maybe in the global north, like you have to sort of work to figure it out. And some journalists, I think, are good at pulling it out. But, you know, it's not as present in the media, like the headline grabbing stuff, the stuff that's going to get Rush Limbaugh talking or would get him talking if he wasn't there now, maybe Glenn Beck or whomever. That kind of stuff is actually kind of secondary to some of the more interesting things Pope Francis has been doing . And maybe you all talk a little bit about that to get us started. You know, Pope Francis inherited a pretty complicated situation. John Paul two and Benedict the 16th, both had a pretty particular vision for the church and it was a disciplinary And, you know, we talked about it on the show all the time. They they did a lot to provoke and discipline people in the Global South, especially. So having Pope Francis be the first pope from the global south I think has been a pretty massive thing in and of itself. He has rehabilitated liberation theology in a lot of ways. You know, our fave on this podcast, Ernesto Cardinal, for example, he was restored. His priesthood was restored before he died. The same with Miguel d'Escoto, another Sandinista priest. And I think Pope Francis has been like actively seeking chances to rebuild some bridges that the previous two papacies had , like almost intentionally burned. You know, and that's like a really big deal. We can talk about some of the like writings and things like that in a minute, too, because there's an ideological piece of it. But I think almost at like a managerial level or a diplomatic Pope Francis has been, I think, trying to create just like more space in the church. And that's why I say it's it's good. Like, Pope Francis is not the radical Marxist pope that some people want him to be, but he is like making it more. He's creating some more pockets for people to be like, well, maybe we could talk about Marxism and also still be Catholics, you know, and not like feel the need to sort of close those kind of doors of conversation. So I think, you know, the word that characterizes Francis's episcopate or papacy is is dialog. That's what it comes down to with all the advantages and disadvantages that that term implies. So I think coming from, you know, the Global South, inheriting the situation of two popes that were not very interested in dialog and sort of turning those two things around has really been the kind of like maybe for me the biggest like broad strokes, general takeaways and it's from that out of which like everything else kind of follows the encyclicals, the reforms that he's made in the church, the waves that he's made in the church. They all kind of stem from those two things. Cool. That's great. if you had to if you had to pick, a handful of things that you think that Pope Francis has done that are good and interesting and like kind of worthy of people's attention for people who don't know anything about this guy, what would they be like? What are the what are the noteworthy slam dunks from this guy from pope francis Right. All right. That's a great question. I think infrastructure, Pope Francis is really doing something different in the way that the church understands itself globally and even is like managed in a material way. So for example, pretty recently in the last well, the last year actually, but kind of there's been some events leading up to it. Pope Francis has changed what's called the Curia, which is kind of like the big administrative apparatus that surrounds the pope that the Curia kind of took on intentionally, like a very bureaucratic structure. It was very medieval intentionally. And that was a kind of John Paul two thing that he really relied on the Curia and empowered it. And it was a sort of sprawling, giant, monolithic beast. There's like if you read like crabby priests, you talk to crabby priests still have a lot to say about the Curia. Pope Francis has changed that in a big way. In fact, he completely renamed all these offices, changed how they're distributed, their authority is different and now they're de castries, which is like, I don't know, a more chilled term, I guess, for lack of a better word. So that's like a big infrastructural change. He's also trying to push this vision in the church around Synod ality, which is always framed as like working together. But the idea is that it's a more participatory understanding of Catholicism and it tries to affirm a more mutual relationship between, for example, bishops and laypeople or men and women. He's trying to build like a more democratic space in the church, and he wants that to be a kind of, you know, managerial change as well, which is pretty significant. And maybe the third and final thing is that in a kind of longevity stance, he has now appointed, I think more than 60% of the voting cardinals who would vote in the next papal conclave if Pope Francis doesn't. But if he died or resigned very suddenly, it would be his electors who would be the majority people. So at this stage, like the Francis vision of the church, I think people sort of maybe don't don't understand how big of a deal all that very boring stuff is, you know, like the Game of Thrones style stuff that's happening behind the scenes. Like Pope Francis, I think is like trying at least to set up a change that is going to outlast his papacy, which whether or not that is true, is pretty up in the air. I mean, Vatican two had a hard time and that was an even bigger deal. But anyway, all that to say, I think if you don't know anything about Pope Francis, that is something to to kind of understand that probably wouldn't be obvious if he weren't on the inside, that he is like actively sort of, you know, upending some pretty established stuff in ways that are also making some people very upset and welcoming certain people into the conversation who've been like pushed out of it for a long time. Yeah, that makes sense. So again, as an outsider to this conversation, something that does strike me about Pope Francis in the in the long run rate as like on his report card for the last ten years or so. That seems significant to me. Is that within his encyclicals, it's not like theology or philosophy. I mean, it's both of those things for sure. Right. But it's like not just that he pays a lot of attention to questions about economics and like pretty rigorous ways, I think, when it comes to like, morality. To me, that seems significant and I think maybe it would be significant to other people as I was putting together those stupid clips at the very beginning of this episode. I cut this piece out, but there was a comment from the last person. The last the last clip is from Andrew Napolitano, who is like a Fox News commentator. Anyways, he said that, the previous two popes, they've really stuck to philosophy and theology and they're encyclicals. But this pope, he is he's wild now. He's got all kinds of things to say about economics. What's significant about that and in your professional Catholic opinion? Yeah, I mean, I think that's actually true to an extent. I think it's true and it's not true. So maybe I'll I'll say both. It's true insofar as like. So when Pope Francis first became pope, there was an encyclical that Pope Benedict had not finished. And so Francis, like finished it and put his name on it. And how much of it is Francis and how much of it is Benedict? Who really knows? But if you read that and then you read Laudato Si, like you'll see a world of difference. And the thing that I always point to is if you just look at the citations alone, like all the way to the bottom and look at all the footnotes, Benedict is constantly quoting like nature and hölderlin, you know, like German philosophers and poets. You get this real sense. I mean, he was a theology professor, right? So you get a sense that he's trying to like engage at that level in John Paul to not as academic as Benedict for sure, but certainly drawing from like a particular Thomas sticking Catholic tradition intentionally. Pope Francis, all of his citations, footnotes for the most part are like other bishops conferences. He's like, Yeah, the Latin Americans like they said this about the environment. And anyway, like people in the Philippines, they do say this about it. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, they said this about what's going on. And what you get, I think, was that kind of like citation arrangement is a real affirmation that the whole church is like speaking or kind of pointing in a certain direction. So already from his first encyclical, he's affirming, I guess, that, like, it's not just his vision that is going to cast, you know, the church's teaching on ecology. He wants to like bring in other stuff. So that's true. At the same time, it's not like he's illiterate or like uninterested in philosophy, which is the way that sometimes people characterize Pope Francis. And I think that is also racist. Like, people will be like, oh, these, you know, these illustrious Europeans. Like, they're so good at thinking about philosophy. And here's this guy from Argentina who like, oh, he's the people's pope. He doesn't know anything about philosophy, but he's like pastoral. And I think that is not true. Like, it's just that his philosophical touchstones are different. So he cites like Michele de Soto, he said Paul Ricoeur, maybe tellingly, he cites more French people than Germans. I don't know what that has to say or means. He cites a lot of Jesuit theologians, unsurprising since he is a Jesuit. So, you know, it's just like a matter of maybe trying to figure out why Francis is doing this or that, rather than like making a hard distinction between, you know, he's an academic one as opposed to these other ones who are like more into the tradition or stuff here, you know? So people on the right will be like they were more grounded in the tradition and people on the left will be like, Oh, they were out of touch. And I think that's just kind of like probably not the distinction actually that's going on in either case.
Unknown: Okay, cool. So we have some of the big like strokes, the broad strokes of Pope Francis papacy. Right. But now we're ten years out. All that stuff, it's happened. It's great. Some of it's not great and that's okay. But I guess. How are people talking about it, Dean? I read a few articles about this, but what's what's your take? Or I guess what was your go to to figure out what what's up with Pope Francis at ten years? Yeah. I mean, for me, the first person I always look at is Leonardo Boff above a Brazilian liberation theologian. One of the best. One of the original ones. He has a pretty active blog. He also wrote a book about Pope Francis pretty early on and Francis of Assisi, which is cool because Boff was a Franciscan priest for a long time. So he's like into it. He's into the Francis vision, and he's the first person that I looked at. And then, you know, you read, whatever, a handful of journalists and reporters. Was there anything that you were seeing that was kind of like coming across your feet or people that maybe you were like, oh, I'll figure out what that person has to say. Nobody good I was not even really aware of this particular discourse until I saw the Ross Douthat article from The New York Times. And I read that one and we'll talk about it in a minute. I don't like it. It's very silly. But let's talk about Leonard about first. Let's get off on the right foot and then get off on the wrong foot. Great. So let me read this couple of paragraphs quickly from both blog his tenure post. It's a very detailed you could probably if you know a thing or two about bias, like there's nothing new in it, you'll have read every sentence, probably somewhere else. But it does maybe summarize what he thinks about it in a way that is handy. So this is this March 13, the church celebrated the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis's pontificate. It's the first time in the history of the church that a pope has been elected outside the galaxy of European Christianity, and rightly so, because of the vitality of the gospel, message has taken root in the extra European cultures in which the numerical majority of Catholics live. The most important characteristic of his pontificate was the new atmosphere created within the Christian community worldwide. We're coming out of a long winter of the last popes. And as spring has begun. Doctrine no longer predominates, but a concrete life of faith. There's no more fear and condemnations, but great freedom of expression and participation, especially for women who occupy important positions within the Vatican. That point, by the way, contestable by other women, as you can guess. But it is true that Pope Francis has appointed a lot of women to prominent Vatican positions, which is like a market departure from his predecessors. So giving us some credit to. Yeah. So what's more, the buff says but I think that these two things are pretty important, actually. So the the bit about the majority of Catholics living in the global south is true. Christianity is actually like exploding in the global south, especially Africa, and it is declining in the global north. So, you know, one thing that Buffet said all throughout Francis's papacy is like it just makes sense that you should have a pope from a place where most people are Catholic as opposed to like the place where people are just not interested anymore. And also the sense that now there's this period of dialog, I think, that really matters. For Boff to say specifically because Boff had been silenced for a year by the Vatican under John Paul two, with Ratzinger as his right hand person. Ratzinger being Pope Benedict eventually. So I think, you know, for Boff to at least feel like there's a springtime in the church, some fresh air. That is a pretty encouraging thing. Like from a guy who, you know, was on the wrong end of the Vatican, like, several decades ago. Mm hmm. Yeah, well, that's cool. That makes a lot of sense, and I think kind of is a clarifying note. Well, stuck with some bad stuff for a minute. Dean, have you read this Ross Douthat article? I assume I must bring it to you. I'm sad to admit that I have. Okay, great. Okay, so if you haven't read it, that's fine. Ross Douthat is a weird conservative guy who's Catholic and writes for The New York Times. And he wrote an article called Pope Francis Decade of Division, which you can already kind of sense where it's going. The thing that Ross Douthat does in this article is mostly just trying to blame Pope Francis for like the culture war that's going on. And I think that's weird. We had moved to make but I kind of like laid out here in this article because I think it's actually a really interesting thing to see how people on the right are thinking about Pope Francis. So I'll start here with like, what is the thesis of this piece? And we can kind of just walk through it, I guess. And I've I've got a few high points or low points, depending on your perspective. So Douthit says the problem is just resistance from conservative Catholics, right? That's what everyone thinks. The problem with Francis is really just, you know, it's on the conservative and the spectrum. Right. And he says especially American conservative Catholics, those are the people who are always grumpy about Pope Francis. But what Ross, you think kind of comes to opposite is what if the problem is actually that Pope Francis is like ineffectual overall and he himself is like stoking the culture war? And I think that's a pretty wild thing to think because, I mean, like we've been saying, I think the Pope Francis has like is kind of a media pope and he's got sort of a renewed moral vision that I think a lot more people than previous might be paying attention to. Right. I think like Pope Francis has a lot more weight with non-Catholics than than maybe Ratzinger Mm hmm. That that's my that's my assumption. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's. That's how it feels to me, at least. Anyway, it's just a weird thing to think that, like, Pope Francis is the one that's doing it. Not like the larger media apparatus of, like, right wing outrage, but. Okay. So anyways, do you think goes on to say that see now at its ten year milestone, this pontificate hasn't just faced inevitable resistance because of its zeal or reform is needlessly multiplied controversies and exacerbated divisions. So Ross Douthat, he argues that Pope Francis is like framed as a reformer, but he has mostly spent his time like taking shots at the right or not giving the left anything at all. And, you know, there's maybe something to that. I guess, like Francis is not giving like a lot of sweeping reforms, like around a few topics. But the topics that Ross Douthat picks to just to demonstrate Pope Francis is failure as a reformer, I think is pretty weird, some pretty weird stuff. So Douthat says that Francis has come hard for the Latin mass and he's you know, I mean, where that speaks to that more than I can. But, you know, outlying the Latin mass in a lot of places and cracking down on that traditionalism that people on the right love so very much, I guess. And in doing so made room for Catholics who have gotten a divorce. Right. That's another big piece of the puzzle that Ross Douthat wants to pull out here. That's like the concession that he's made for people on the left. But he's also not dealing the left like all of the things that they want, like ending the rule of celibacy for priests. Again, like he's picking all of these like extremely niche things and leaving a lot of things on the table and not even mentioning like Pope Francis is sort of position on on senility or on on being a Latin American pope, a pope that includes the entire church or that has something to say about colonialism. You know, none of that comes out in this article because I think that's beyond do that's perspective and horizon. That's not something he even considers as like a left or right issue because he's, you know, at the end of the day, just like a very weird conservative. So I think all of this is like a pretty out there claim for a lot of reasons because I don't know how you can really blame like the ongoing culture war on Francis himself, He's like a media figure. And that's something the larger political discourse in the U.S., like, is going on regardless of the pope. And I think that's just bizarre, But like I said, it also ignores a lot of like the actual leftist ish stuff that Francis has done, especially with regard to capitalism, climate change, imperialism, colonialism. I mean, we talked not too long ago about Pope Francis's whole position on Africa, right? The hands off Africa episode in and that is completely, like I said, outside of death criticism, which I think is really strange. Right. Because if you're if your whole point is to say that Pope Francis is like he's taking pot shots at the right and he's not really giving the left anything. But you ignore all of the things that he's done and said that are like legitimately serving sort of like the leftist branch of Catholics and Christians. it just seems like a decent could have written a better article had he actually included that stuff. But you just didn't because I don't know, he's just a weirdo. It's such a hard, a hard thing to parse out because of his weird, selective ignorance. Yeah. I mean, so much of this is, I think, projection and like pretty classical sort of writing and stuff going on here. But I agree. I mean, it is endlessly frustrating for so many reasons. There's a passage actually that I wanted to read in it where he says this. Consider a counterfactual scenario where the pope's early months played out identically the gestures of inclusivity and welcome the famous Who am I to judge? But thereafter, his approach was focused, strategic, designed to seek change, but also to maintain unity. This could have meant, for instance, pushing through the changes sought by liberal Catholics that are easiest to square with existing doctrine, like relaxing the rule of celibacy for priests, or even allowing female deacons while simultaneously making strong efforts to reassure conservatives that the church wasn't just surrendering, surrendering its commitments or dissolving its teachings about sex and marriage. It is the weirdest passage ever because like that is what happened. That was like basically what Francis did, except that he didn't even give in those left points. Like, you know, the criticism that you could make of Francis is that actually he was too focused on preserving unity, didn't push through these other reforms early on, and he coddled the right, quite frankly, in the beginning of his papacy. And it's only pretty recently that he's been like using a harder stick. And I think that's also because Francis has rightly come to understand that, like, the right is just not going to meet his sort of gestures of charity with like an equal reaction, you know. So I think like in an. Rusty Fitz counterfactual example. Pope Francis is actually more radical than he was in the beginning of his papacy, and like Dwight still would have written the same thing in the show. Yeah, I think that makes sense and is is kind of illustrative of the point, though, right? That like it's not that Pope Francis is waging a culture war. It's like that the people on the right are raging culture war. And there's nothing anyone that can say there's nothing anyone can say that will, like, stop them from doing that. Right. Because it's not yeah. It's not really about any person or anything. It's just like it's about having grievances and being able to air them and like feeling good about that. I mean, the other day, it's nothing, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. And I mean, in terms of popes who are guilty of decisions like I'm sorry, but JP too and Benedict have done more to divide the church. John Paul from the guy who literally waved his finger in the face of the cardinal. Yeah, that's not a divisive pope, I don't think. Exactly. Or like Benedict, who actively waded into culture war problems as pope and even as pope emeritus was like saying all kinds of honestly pretty bonkers stuff about like sexuality and like the essential Christian roots of Europe and all this like pretty messed up, you know, like basic sort of culture war stuff that actually drove a ton of people out of the church was a huge problem. And I think that is pretty telling, right, that like this is the division is coming from inside the house. Ross Like, I'm sorry. Yeah. Pope Francis Yeah, I think it's good. I guess that's why I like that article so much. Ah, I don't like it. I think that's why I wanted to talk about it on this podcast because it is really illustrative of the brain worms of conservativism and the way that, like you said, the, the divisions coming from inside the house and that they can't quite figure that out because if they did, they would recognize that they're that they are like whiny babies who can't be sated by anything. Yeah, you know, that's funny, too. So, you know, I was reading this and then I was thinking to myself, like, so this is a pundit perceiving Catholicism through pundit brain, which is never true. Just like to be fair, neither is like the academic understanding of it or even podcast or brain or whatever. And Catholicism is a big, weird religion full of, you know, millions and millions of millions of people who think very differently from you and everybody else. And so trying to say anything about Catholicism is pretty hard. So I was like, All right, I'm going to find some data and like figure out, I don't know, how is Pope Francis divisive? And I did find two great Pew Research pieces about it. So one from early into Francis's papacy in 2014, it was a global poll. So, you know, trying to take data from a variety of continents. And they found that in 2014, 60% of people around the world had a favorable view of Pope Francis. 28% had no rating. They just didn't rate it favorable or unfavorable. And only 11% in the whole world had an unfavorable rating in 2014. So that's a global thing from the beginning of the papacy. And I was like, okay, well, you know, to be fair, like ten years is a long time. Maybe it's dipped. I couldn't find any more global data, but I did find that in the United States, the data from 2021 Pew still puts Pope Francis at an 82% favorable rating. Makes sense. So, like, of course, I'm sorry, but it's just not divided. Ross, you're the one who's divided. That's it. You're in the minority, my guy. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a really important piece, though, for being a conservative in the United States at this point. I mean, I'm sure it's partly the case for Canada as well. But I hear it from from people all the time, though, that like, you know, the left is so divisive, media is dividing us and so on. But like when it comes to the right, it is literally like that's what's driving people is the sort of grievance culture of, of being on the right of finding like these weird things to pick at people about. a great example of someone who got paid a lot of money to write an article to do just that. Exactly. Exactly. Would that we all had such an opportunity for real. Okay, that's enough. That's enough of that for now. Let's put that away and let's talk of something different.
Unknown: So the National Catholic Reporter, a great publication, someone who I'm sure is paying people far less than Ross Douthat to review the articles. But that's not because they want to write, to be clear. No, exactly. Exactly right. Anyways, there's an article that Dean, they were both kind of like people in a bit before this episode called Injustice in Crime Reviewing Pope Francis. Apologies for Church's role in colonialism, which is, I think actually a really enlightening piece because, I mean, colonialism is a big topic. You might be aware, expansive, multifaceted. It can mean a lot of different things. And what I like about this article and to. The is that it does lay out like all of the different things that colonialism can mean, like from like, you know, the actual act of colonialism to extractivism to gender and sexuality. I think it's great. So anyways, a great piece from the National Catholic Reporter and I think it's worth kind of talking through to maybe demonstrate the ways that all of those things that that Ross Douthat is missing. Right. All the things that he's left on the table because he doesn't even, like think about them as like political ideas or problems or whatever. yeah. We should also mention sorry, just by way of framing who wrote it. I don't know exactly how to pronounce your name, so don't take my word for it. But allegedly, huh? Hurdler McCain is her last name. She is great. It's a great article. You should all read it. And also, she interviews this extremely cool person, Valentina Napolitano, who is on my dissertation doctoral committee. So, you know, it's a great article because she likes me, so I like her. Yeah, that's great. It is. It's good reporting. It's important work and a really it's like clearly written by somebody who actually understands politics and religion and not Ross Douthat. So there you go. To illustrate this point even further, she starts off with an interview with the Congolese Jesuit father, Jacques Natsume Bu, who we've talked about in previous episodes before when we've talked about Extractivism in Africa. Also, if you read my soldier's piece from a few months ago about extractivism and cobalt in the Congo, this is the person that I also interviewed. So it's great. So she writes. Congolese Jesuit father Jack Mizuno, who told national Catholic Reporter that Francis is the first pope who is facing seriously the problems of colonialism. Throughout his ten years as Pope, Francis has denounced continuing forms of colonialism. And again, we're talking about this phrase expansively To get more into it, she writes. Most recently, when he arrived at the Democratic Republic of Congo in February, Francis said, Stop choking Africa. It's not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered. Referring to the exploitation of Congo's natural and mineral resources by countries such as China and the United States. So so there you go. I think this is an important piece because this is the evidence of France is doing things that are, you know, beyond the culture, war beyond. not delivering on celibacy for priests or something. This is actually the work that Francis is taking up. And I think it's important to kind of like get the scope and texture of what he's doing here. Out there. Mm hmm. Yeah, I agree. I mean, we'll say more about the colonialism piece in a minute, too, but it is so complicated, right? Like Pope Francis has, I think, been like a strong voice about colonialism in some places and a weaker voice in others. And just, for example, like when he went to Bolivia pretty early on, he had a an apology for the church's role in colonialism in the Americas that I thought was pretty good. Like it can be improved. They can all be improved. But as far as what you're going to get from the pope, it was like better than I would have expected. And you hear a lot of commentary about his opposition to colonialism from the global south. Like people in Latin America are always talking about it. People in Africa, I think even more, it seems to me, are also always talking about it. It's getting play in the Philippines and other places, too. So, you know, like he's being recognized in the Global South, I think, as a voice who is trying to empower that stance and anti-colonial stance. But I think he also is still maybe struggling to to bring the church on board. And there was a really telling comment from Laurel Potter, who we've had on this podcast in the past. She's also interviewed in here and has a lot of interesting things to say. She says for the church to really assumed coloniality, the whole people of God have to assume equal. And what she was trying to sort of say is, you know, like the Amazon document, the document that came out of the Amazon synod really didn't have like, I don't know, maybe everything that people would have expected in it. And I think that world is pointing to a real a real limitation of Pope Francis, which is that he can't just like, I don't know, unilaterally decide all kinds of things. And, you know, I live in Canada and I feel like that was especially on display when he was here in Canada. His apology for residential schools, which he tried like three or four different times, never really seemed to like take on the gravity and depth of the culpability of the church in Canada, which is something that the bishops conference in Canada has been very resistant to affirm, as opposed to like the bishops conference in Latin America, which has been talking about Coloniality for a long time. Right. So I think it's kind of also really interesting to sort of plot Pope Francis that way, that, as Father Jacques says. Right. He is the pope who is really facing seriously the problem of colonialism, but is also like getting like thwarted by his own church, unsurprisingly, and in some cases doesn't have the ability or courage or however we might judge it to, you know, to overcome that obstacle. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And that what Laurel says in that article is really helpful, I think, too, for people like outside of Catholicism because. I mean, I have no idea what is happening in the cultural imagination of like Protestants when they think about the pope. But like the pope is not like the king of the Catholic Church or something. Like you can make unilateral decisions. I mean, the Catholic Church is an incredibly complex organism that has all kinds of different constituencies, like pushing and pulling in different directions. So I think that I mean, what Lowell says makes a lot of sense that right. That like if Francis is like, you know, doing some things but in some other areas, like waiting for the rest of the church. And that makes sense. Well, lots of other great voices in this article, too, that kind of speak to this too. For example, there's some good Quotes from Tania Avila. Men essays. A catcher, a theologian from a rural Bolivia who praises Francis teachings on Extractivism as a form of colonialism and points to the current Amazonia, the Synodal document that is really cool. Good to point out lots of, as I said, other great commentary on the colonialism bit in this. But also there's a really cool angle, an important angle on LGBT issues and how those even relate to the colonization piece of Francis in a more troubling way. Do you want to walk us through that piece? That was something off mic. You were like, We got to pull this in. I agree. Yeah. I mean, I think it's important because what's it like? We can go on all day and, like, pull out all these great, quotes or examples where Pope Francis does something cool around, you know, development or colonialism or extractivism. And that's great and important stuff. But there are also places where Pope Francis definitely does not do does not do a slam dunk. In fact, he drops the ball completely. And I don't love that. That's not great. He should just not do it. So anyways, this article from National Catholic Reporter interviews this person named Day Dempsey, who is an associate professor of religious studies at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada. All kinds of great Canadians. In this article, Dan Dempsey studied Francis's use Of this particular phrase that comes up in some of Francis's writings on LGBTQ issues, in that phrase is ideological colonization, which he uses to refer to feminism, trans inclusion and queer and same sex attraction inclusion which you don't love to see. That's not a win for. Like I said, he just used it a few days ago, I guess after reading a Rusty Thoughts column, feeling like I need to make some overtures to the right. Yeah, that's right. Finally is giving in to race. So the article goes on to say that given Francis understanding of colonialism, his well-publicized statements of outreach and welcome to LGBTQ people don't sit well with Dempsey because the academic says Francis has not changed official church policy with regard to gender identity and non-heterosexual relationships. And then a bit more here to what I think is worth reading. This is a quote that queer and trans people and women and other gender minorities haven't suffered enough to warrant. The intention of institutional, social, doctrinal change, to me, suggests a level insincerity, at least in fact, if not in theory, said Dempsey. I think a pretty good way to put it, actually. Dempsey hopes to see the church frame these issues as a, quote, preferential option for the marginalized And the church will begin to take seriously the suffering of some of these humans. Catholic women and scholars also critiqued Francis position on gender and sexuality as confusing or inconsistent given the pope's other anti-colonial work. However, other women said that Francis is limited by the vigorous opposition that he faces. I mean, probably all of the things are true, but I guess the thing that I think is really interesting is that, Francis is like this, this opponent of colonialism. Right. And so that makes sense on the one hand, right? Extractivism like actual sort of like colonial relationships in terms of like political economy. He is like savvy about those kinds of things. But then like when it comes to other things, he like categorizes them as colonization, like feminism or like the inclusion of trans people, which is bad. I've got to say, I don't like that at all. This is good to kind of pull this out here because it does show the limits of Francis as a pope and like where his, I think, moral voice maybe ends or becomes extremely complicated. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that like some of his thoughts on colonization and like political economy are really, I think, inspiring and interesting and good and other places extremely confused and bad. Mm hmm. And that and there you go. That's my that's my article for The New York Times. I'll read it and I'll pay you a lot of money to write it. I agree. You know, the other irony is, like in some ways, Pope Francis, in some places, like he even understands the ideological colonization of the Catholic Church and will call it out like there are some great passages of inquiry to Amazonia. Some other places too, where he'll talk about like, you know, the difference between the Christian faith and cultural forms. Like there's no reason that church has to look like Europe everywhere. Like people have their own thing, their own tradition, their own music, their own instruments and so on, right? Like really embracing that there can be a plurality and wanting to. Yeah. To to recognize a name that there's a colonial force that tries to cover that up. But the irony is, like when it comes to sexuality or gender, like those are largely colonial impositions in the first place. Right. Like like to spirit people. Right. In indigenous communities in, in Canada, in the U.S., for instance. Like those are gender expressions that try to be stamped out by European colonization. You see the same thing all over the place with Christian engagements in the Pacific and in Latin America, in Africa. You know, like surprise. Not everybody is like an English Victorian in the way that they think about their sex and gender. And I think like the irony of Pope Francis saying it's ideological colonization to start talking about sex and gender minorities is. So I think it's annoying not only because it's like a bad phrase, but it's annoying because it is like literally the opposite is the case. Right? Like, it's it's ideological colonization that people have reduced everything down to these extremely small buckets of like ways you can be a person in sex. Yeah, exactly. I guess that's why it's so weird, because it's just like. Sociologically not true or anthropologically not true. I just think don't really understand the choice of language. It just seems. Wrong on purpose and I don't quite get it. Yeah. And it is, I mean it's wrong on purpose I think because he maybe is following the desired advice despite the thoughts, inability to see that that he's like trying to sort of give a little bit to the right here and there, you know, like I think that is unfortunate and I think it's a sort of hazard or liability of Francis approach, the diplomatic kind of dialog approach that it sort of forces you into those compromises in ways that have like real consequences for actual human beings. You know, like on the one hand, it's all kind of like courtly games and trying to sort out like how to, you know, keep the family together or whatever. But like some people are going to be thrown under the bus so that like some bishops can feel more comfortable. And I think that sucks. Yeah. I mean, especially in 2023 when we're seeing All kinds of other crackdowns on LGBTQ people, and especially trans people you can't do this, you know, yeah, well, there's just like and also it's skin in the game that you can't ignore or you can't just, walk away from and say, like, well, sorry, I'm just I'm just the pope. I can't I can't say those things or whatever. That's not okay. Totally. And not only in the US, but even before that. Like, you know, I mean, oh, it's always trans people have been targeted and LGBT people have been targeted and so on. But like it being a pope from the Global South, I mean, in like Africa, it is like literally a death sentence, you know, to be gay in certain places. And like those are things that Pope Francis is acquainted with. And I mean, he is obviously trying to, like, say something that denounces that kind of violence toward LGBT people and also in a way that is markedly different from his predecessors who were like too afraid to say anything positive. But at the same time, like he's reproducing certain homophobic and transphobic attitudes nevertheless that do give oxygen to those very kinds of things. So, you know, it's one of these kind of two steps forward. One steps back is the optimistic way to put it, but it's like who gets crushed under the boot when the steps are moving , you know, like that's a pretty big problem. It is a huge problem. I mean, this kind of thing comes up in the Anglican Church, people will always kind like carry water for anti LGBTQ ideas, language, rhetoric, policies, because in the end they'll do it on the behalf of the Church of the Global South, right? Because in Africa, this type of thing is unacceptable. So if we were to be completely open and affirming, that would alienate the church in in Africa or wherever else in the Global South. And that is such a frustrating way to think about it, because there are reasons why LGBTQ politics are so tense in Africa. And it's because of the structures of, all of these churches who make it so right. Like it's not like these things are immovable or just matter of fact, they can be changed and they have been changed, right? the attitudes towards LGBTQ people in the Global South have been like adjusted in a great part by the church, not just the Catholic Church, but, you know, the Protestant churches as well. So just it's just frustrating. The whole thing is very frustrating. Don't do this. Don't be like this. Definitely don't give any any quarter to people on the right because they don't care. Even if you do say these things, it's not like you're going to like satiate their need to complain about cultural Marxism or whatever. You know, it's just it's a losing battle either way. Yeah, exactly. Well, as we're getting to the end here, I think one thing we do have to mention to you is the opposition to Francis, which is more than the thought. I think that has been a pretty interesting piece of Francis's papacy that the right is really coming out of the woodwork, I think, against Pope Francis. There are some major historical touchstones. There have been times, for example, when like a handful of bishops have presented a dubia to Pope Francis, a list of things that make them mad and just don't expect Pope Francis to be like, okay, you're right. Like, who knows, I guess, why he didn't say that. And the right has, I think, started to metastasize into some pretty disgusting and like in some cases, outright fascist forms of Catholic opposition to Pope Francis. During the Amazon synod, there was a ton of racism, especially against indigenous peoples who were at the Vatican for that synod. You saw the same thing even when Francis gave a pretty weak apology here in Canada, just a huge sort of frothing kind of right wing response to that sort of thing. And I think that, like, it's really important to track that as well. The, you know, like Pope Francis, I do think that he has made some pretty radical overtures. Right. Like he has said things about, ah, the Catholic tradition of private property being not inviolable at any point in history. Right. Like that's a pretty radical thing to say, those kinds of things. But at the same time, like I think there is this sort of like the right has been given so much power funding energy by the previous two papacies and by also a certain Catholic establishment in general. The Pope Francis is now like starting to unplug and undo and sort of, you know, he's actively removing certain people from positions of power. And the right is starting to like also organize a bit of an offensive against Pope Francis. They have their own media networks. They have their own like popular figures and so on. And so I think, like, you know, none of that excuses. Pope Francis is like, you know, failure to be a prophetic voice for LGBT people. But I do think that like it. Is important to recognize that Francis is like his job is absurd, like trying to hold together everyone from like Leonardo Boff writing something in Brazil to Ross Douthat writing like something bizarre in The New York Times to like, you know, a fascist like Catholic in Italy who loves going to Lord of the Rings camp or whatever. Like, there's a lot going on in the church. And I think like that, at least for me, that ten years that Francis has had, has been pretty remarkable that he's actually been able to pull it off as far as he's gotten without any like major, I don't know, schism one way or the other. Like that's pretty it's a testament maybe to his diplomatic efforts and again, for for better and for worse, but pretty interesting as kind of like an inside baseball like institutional watcher. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I think that's good. I think we've done it right. We've accomplished the goal. We've talked about the way that people are talking about Pope Francis this in years and we've kind of given our own take. Pope Francis has some interesting and prophetic things to say about economics and about colonialism. But also he could be a lot better on all kinds of the things like all of this very bad language about gender ideology. I'm not a fan of that. So. Pope Francis is a positive force, but also could be even positive. Or if you just listen to us and that's something considered Pope Francis, I'm sure he's going to be listening to this on his next jog to get a pizza in the Vatican. Yeah. Is he a jogger? Is that. Is that true? I don't think he's a jogger, but he does like pizza, so I'm just trying to imagine what would really get him out there in the streets of Rome. He's just like me. Exactly. People don't know if I'm in drug or not, but they do know that I like pizza. It's a great brand and of is.
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