SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hello everyone. This has been quite the exciting worry gig of a week or two with uh the pontifical and presidential bust-up, the like of which we haven't uh seen in uh centuries, uh if at all, in the North American context. I've been in England and Ireland only recently, returned on Monday, and I have to tell you, it's been uh front coverage and all the media in both jurisdictions, and some of it um scorching, and some of it insightful, and some of it just funny. Let me quote briefly what Brendan O'Connor said in the Sunday Independent of Ireland. He observed that Trump can come up with all kinds of things, but accusing the Pope of being soft on crime seems particularly ludicrous. Because that's what people really want is a Pope who is tough on crime. No doubt Trump feels the Pope should have Swiss guards on the streets of the Vatican rounding up foreigners. Well, there are even funnier passages, Stephen Colbert and many other people having great, taking great delight in what is as much absurd as it is insightful. We know that in great measure it was recently precipitated by comments by the Secretary of War, Peter Hexitz, whose uh blasphemous appropriation of particular biblical passages still leaves uh scholars and the general public reeling, and then moved on to uh various comments made by the Pope, of course, and then the broadsides coming from the president directly naming the Pope, accusing him of being weak, terrible on foreign policy, and a few other things as well. So this debate has gone on, if it's a debate at all, because the Pope refuses to engage along uh Trump's terms, but this media dust up certainly does highlight many and several things. Well, I have a few questions to ask you that are particular, but I want to start off by asking you your initial reaction to what we have seen transpired and perhaps still transpiring. So we'll start with you this time, uh Dan.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Sure. So um uh, as you say, kind of uh where to even begin here. Um I would say this was not really surprising, at least in terms of thinking about Pope Leo's reaction. Uh, for anybody who's paid attention, uh, both to some of his kind of uh pre-papal interest in these matters um and to the way he's conducted himself um in the papal office uh with regard to this kind of thing. Um, he has been generally um somewhat surprisingly frank um all along relative to what people may have expected of him, particularly in some of his kind of press scrums going to Castell Gondolfo, uh, right, but in a way that is um slightly more reined in uh than his predecessor. Um, and in this case, right, he was given a challenging assignment, which it was an uh sometimes absurd but um highly provocative rant from the president of the United States. Um, and what he chose to do was to respond uh in a way in keeping with his mission and with the gospel, um, and in a way that frankly reminded me of um Oscar Romero, um, who he quoted on Holy Thursday in one of his homilies when he said, I am not afraid of the Trump administration. And he says, All I'm doing is preaching the gospel. That is very much uh what Romero was doing in El Salvador uh in the years leading up to his assassination, right? It's a very parallel approach of not wanting to get into the mud with secular authorities who have a lot to gain by uh doing that, but also uh wanting to make clear that he is not going to back down and stop condemning the war uh because the president uh threw a hissy fit. Uh, furthermore, and the I'll end with this. I think the other dynamic going on here uh that's fascinating, right, is uh Pope Leo in public opinion polling um is the most popular American. Uh and Trump is at an all-time low for his popularity, right? He has uh, because of the war and related economic shocks, um, he has breached his previous low of polling around 35% and is now in the low 30s of approval rating, um, without a lot of options to move upward. So um the president's actions are a desperation move. The Pope's words are uh someone who is confident and serene about his role and the position that he's taking.

SPEAKER_03 5:02

Good. We're gonna get uh uh further into uh the the weeds in a few moments, but still dealing with initial reactions right now, Michelle.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

So uh yeah, I would agree you know with um what Dan just said. I think it since Leo stepped out on the balcony, he has said, peace be with you, a disarming and a disarmed peace. He has preached that all along. Um but he did um ratchet up his responses. You know, in January 9th, when he had that address to the um to the embassy representatives, he was really speaking to Trump. You know, war is now the more popular way of being. Um clearly throughout Holy Week, his responses, his homilies were, without mentioning Trump, responding to Trump's uh and Heggs' statements. And uh so um initially what we saw was, which is not unusual, it's not unusual to have a Pope, you know, preach peace, speak about the gospel, that you know, we've seen that historically. But I think the difference here was Trump. Trump can't tolerate somebody more popular than he is. He can't tolerate someone who's higher than he is, and who's higher than the Pope. And so I think, you know, between Leo's comments through Holy Week, having his three cardinals on 60 minutes, I think it just undid him. But Leo, let me just say this: he has been steadfast in his message of the gospel of peace. Uh, you know, uh in January 9th, he framed it with the city of God. His most recent commentary um in um Equatorial Uh Guinea was the same thing. He again referred to the city of God is the city of peace. He's been consistent in that. And um and that I think uh I mean his what he did undid uh Trump. You know, it just his steadfastness, his his uh focus, um, and his the truth that he brings. He said he's bringing the truth of the gospel. And I think that just undid Trump. And that is the different thing.

SPEAKER_03 7:42

And you don't want to undo that one. Charlie, would you want to respond?

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Yeah, I I think Dan and Michelle have opened up a lot of the issues we're gonna talk about today. Two things that I've been following in this bust up has been the first is this seems to be the writer's room giving us a perfect come together of every plot point we've been following. This one involves an AI-generated image. It involves the first major trip of Pope Leo to Africa, an area where the church is growing, and we're all against the backdrop of a hot war that involves the global economy. So I do think why is this rat-t-tat between the Pope and the President that interesting? It's because it's raising some of the questions we think are core to what it's going to mean to be a common home of the earth moving forward, to use some of Pope Francis's language from Lodato C. The one other thing that I've been following that I think is quite interesting about all of this is I hope the Pope is weak on crime, because I think it's a church of mercy.

SPEAKER_03 8:42

That's right. That's exactly right. Okay, let's follow up now, having given these initial reactions, by looking at who are the beneficiaries and who are the losers in this pontifical presidential dust up. Now, we've alighted, each one of you has alighted on some aspects of this already, but let's focus a little more directly. Who do you think are the primary beneficiaries of this, and who do you think are the losers? Okay, Dan, starting with you, because we'll go through that cycle.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Uh sure. I'm gonna start with a major loser, which is J.D. Vance. Um, so Vice President Vance, right, um, came out last week. He was giving a speech um at a somewhat poorly received uh turning point USA, a poorly attended turning point USA event in Georgia. Um, and he went on a rant in defense of the president, uh, and essentially saying the Pope ought to kind of keep his uh hands out of American foreign policy, right? Um, he should kind of you know pay attention to matters of theology. He kind of suggested the Pope needed to be more careful in paying attention to those matters of theology. Um, Vance has been a big loser in the entire war saga, um, in the sense that he's been clearly trying to um have it both ways because he has to perform for the cameras as a supporter of the president, while also trying to leak through people like Ross Dowthat and Tucker Carlson that he's been against the war the whole time, uh, so that he can try to run against it in 2028. Um, but the relationship he set up uh to uh the Pope, who is it's been clear since before he was Pope, uh does not think much of Mr. Bance, um is a real uh disaster for his uh political image, um, and for uh the way he tries to portray himself as a Catholic convert. Corollary to that, um, and again, I'm gonna stick to losers, um, are bishops, especially uh Bishop Robert Barron, um, who have decided to hew close uh to the Trump administration and have been reduced to increasingly desperate ways of trying to uh portray the war as a matter of prudential judgment. So uh Bishop Barron posted a very long tweet the other day, uh which was read like a caricature of someone like George Weigel circa 2003 trying to justify the war, um, in a situation where it's quite clear that the Pope uh does not agree with him, um, and where in fact many American bishops um who otherwise would have been seen as ideologically pretty similar to Baron um have broken ranks um or have kind of stuck with um the Pope and with um the cardinals who appeared on 60 Minutes, which let's not forget was what um caused Trump's rant and uh precipitated this entire thing. Um but the Trump supporters in the American Catholic Church on this issue are way out on a limp. Uh and they have exposed themselves in significant ways.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

Okay, so you identify the losers. Can you give us a beneficiary?

SPEAKER_02 12:10

Um, I mean, again, I think I think the Pope himself and his uh authority and his distinctive voice um have very much uh been beneficiaries for this, right? Um he spent much of the first year of his papacy kind of easing into the role, um, dealing with a lot of kind of firsts as Pope, um, which can be telling or not, um, given um, as we talked about before, the need to kind of get to know the parish before making any changes um in a pastoral role like this. Um, but what you see here is Leo um taking advantage both of his own kind of forthrightness and plain spokenness as an American with a Midwestern accent, uh, but also his ability to modulate um and the fact that as somebody who everyone has regarded as kind of a soft-spoken guy, um, that when he speaks up like this, uh people pay attention uh in a way that has uh redounded to his benefit and to the benefit of the papal office as a moral authority. He sure has backbone, you're quite right.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

Michelle, you're losers and beneficiaries.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Yeah, oh, I mean, you know, I'm just gonna have to agree with Dan. Uh, you know, um one of the things I said in our last podcast is that uh a big loser is J.D. Vance, who's been critiqued as having no moral compass and being someone who cannot have a moral position. And then he showed that even more um in that ludicrous statement that he made when he said the Pope should stick to moral matters, not issues of immigration and war, right? I mean, so it just shows the ludicrousness of uh his thinking, really. But um and many Trump supporters, I mean, Tucker Carlson, right? Can't he's he's apologizing for having supported Trump. Um Heggsith's own minister said what Trump did was blasphemous. Um there the uh people who are heads of you know conservative Catholic groups, like Kelsey Reinhardt, um said, you know, Trump crossed the line of decorum. So these people uh, you know, who supported the cons Catholics who supported Trump, uh, like Bishop Barron, who said Trump should apologize, right? So I put them in the loser case, along with Trump having lost, as Dan pointed out, his popularity, especially against Leo, which I think Trump finds intolerable. The winner, yes, first and foremost is Pope Leo. His spiritual strength, it just magnifies itself over and over again in all throughout his trip in Africa, which I hope we'll talk more about, um, as well as his standing on, you know, his work, his homilies during Holy Week. Um, but the Catholic Church, he is the Catholic Church has been, you know, because of sexual abuse, et cetera, and for other reasons, is, you know, in many rightful ways uh been relegated to the junk heap. I think he's restoring some uh view of the strength of the Catholic Church. And there are uh young Catholics who are making comments about how proud they are to hear what Leo has been saying. Young Catholics who are saying, and I think um I know there's been a lot of media coverage about the increase of young Catholics, you know, con conversion to Catholicism. I won't attribute that to Leo per se, but I think these young people are also saying how proud they are to be Catholic and how pro and how proud they are of what Leo is saying. And so I think those are some of the winners.

SPEAKER_03 16:17

Yeah, but the beneficiary is good. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Um, Charlie, two big losers. The first is Viktor Orban. And the reason I want to choose Viktor Orban in Hungary is because it's showing that what this dust up has done is point out that there is actually a separation between Catholic doctrine and belief and the positions of the global conservative movements. And I think that separation that is amplified by the ways in which Michelle is reminding us that so many folks from across the Christian and non-Christian religious sphere identified that AI image as blasphemous and the language coming from Secretary of War Heggseth, implying that there is a kind of theological underpinning to US military action. That I think cracking open what has been a presumed alliance, that's a big loser in light of this exchange. One of the winners, in addition to the professoriate and commentariat who've been brought back to the fore, where usually only a papal conclave can get this much words about the Vatican in the public sphere. But I think another big win actually is ordinary Catholics, in a sense of recognizing that there's something to Michelle's point to be proud of the church's tradition for standing up for. And one of the retorts we've heard from a lot of communities is maybe the week on crime language was actually about the sexual abuse crisis. I think a big win right now is that when we say the word Catholic in public life, we're as much defending the tradition of just war and reflection on the least of these who are suffering because of bombs being dropped as we are describing the scourge of clericalism and how we address that in clerical sexual abuse and how we address that in our world today.

SPEAKER_03 17:58

Good. I want to just raise a point here too. Um I several of you have noted that um that there's been wonderful interest in uh Poplio at the moment. It's taken quite a while to actually do this, but he um he was on a collision course for a while. Now he's out in the open, high drama, um, really fairly muted pontificate up until the present moment. The international media is taking interest again. This is wonderful. But uh let's let's let's put a bit of a check on this, too. Um what he says is wonderful, but it's not all that startlingly new. I mean, Francis was already engaged in some serious revisioning of how the just war theory. When Francis was Pope and Lodato C came out, Catholics and non-Catholics all over the world talked about them, about him as their pope. So they have these particular moments in which they shine. But how do you sustain this? What's the future on this uh particular imbrolio? You have an American president in contest with an American Pope. The Pope does not wish to engage on Trump's terms. That's prudential and it's wise. Trump is not accustomed to apologizing to anyone. And as uh Michelle was indicated earlier, he's always seeking ever higher power, usually congregated in himself. So, how do you think this story is going to play out? Has it been exhausted? Has this been a one-off media event? Is it usually evanescent? A week from now we won't even remember it, or is this going to be an historic moment? Dan, what do you think?

SPEAKER_02 19:35

I mean, so I was asked something like this uh yesterday by a by a reporter about whether this would define Leo's pontificate. Um, and I said then, and I I still agree with this, right, that Leo is likely to be Pope for 15 or so years. Um, and Trump does not have that law. Um, you know, he's running out of juice as a politician, and he's also clearly not in the best health. Um, right. But on this issue, what you're seeing is Leo, um, and this is where the Africa trip has been significant, because there, um, you know, I've also been commenting that I might write a biography of Leo called Two Things Can Be True at Once, right? Um, because he's been saying a lot of things that apply to African situations that are that are also kind of subtweeting the United States in various ways. Um, what he's also doing is carving out a specific language, right? So yesterday in Africa, he said, um, in in Guinea, he said, God's holy name must not be profaned by the will to dominate, by arrogance, or by discrimination. Above all, it must never be invoked to justify choices and actions of death, right? That is echoing the language that he used on Palm Sunday, right? Talking about justifying war using God's name. He's also speaking to Africans where this has happened in their recent history. Um, so the and there there is something happening here. The other thing that I would say is, and this is something that came up in um a by a pair of uh American journalists uh at the pillar who were turning out to be kind of antagonists of Leo in a subtle way, uh, but they published a piece on um Friday um saying essentially that Pope Leo was going out in a limb of doctrinal development on just war, that essentially he is um he is developing the doctrine of just war in a way that the way they said it was, a lot of Catholics are asking questions about it, right? It's the classic bad faith just asking questions style of journalism, right? But I think what that points to, um, and the the pillar had been useful uh in pointing to things about Leo since they published a hit piece on him the two days before the cockflate, um, right? But what it points to is Something that I have raised before in these conversations and connects back to Leo naming John Henry Newman a doctor of the church, right? Which is that I think the doctrinal development is going to be a major theme of Leo's pontificate and the style of reform that he is going to take to the church. So the fact that people who clearly don't like him are already using this as a stick to hit him with is indicative of the longer term, both in terms of this issue of uh just war, where it is a smaller doctrinal development, because as you pointed out, both Francis and John Paul II have already moved the chains quite a bit on just war, right? But that's also going to turn around to intra-church issues, where an approach based on doctrinal development um and on living into realities that are going to change the church is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. Um, right. Much in the same, and you're already seeing the same language that was used against Francis, but it's going to be a bit more like the pot in the frog in the pot uh starting to heat up, right?

SPEAKER_03 23:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

In terms of, right, it's a slow boil of doctrinal development, but I think that is going to emerge as the key theme of the pontificate over the course of it.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

Well, that's really illuminating and rather refreshing, but not entirely persuasive. I've written a book on Duman, believes strongly in doctrinal development, and can't find any indication of it in Leo. But I'm gonna go, I'm going to go back to Leo to look at it, uh, Dan, because I think you may well be right. And if that is the case, that uh off augers well for the for the pontificate, because I think on the ad intra issues we have some significant challenges, particularly on the women's issue or the women's issues. But that's a little different from what we're talking about today. But I would I'm I'm rather um gratified to hear your comment about uh uh doctrinal development and what you think he may well do. Now, indeed, that Newman has been elevated to the rank of doctor of the church. You've got to remember from pretty well 1845 when he entered the Catholic Church right up to 1878, when Leo's predecessor finally made him a cardinal. Uh Leo um Newman existed under the dark shadow of Rome's disapproval. So it would be lovely to see another Leo do more than just simply elevate him to the rank of doctor of the church, but actually incorporate or assimilate some of his theory around the development of doctrine. Quite hopeful. Thank you. Michelle.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Um well remember, Leo is a canon lawyer. He works methodically, cautiously, carefully, and slowly. So it would not surprise me that he would um slowly develop doctrine, but in that way. But I think um, you know, uh his his address in uh Equatorial Guinea, yes, I guess it was yesterday, I think again, he f his language is the language he's been using all along. He uses the city of God to frame what he's talking about. He said the city of God is a city of peace. The earthly city, you know, um caters to uh those leaders who want to dominate and who want to inflate their ego. He referred to um Gaudium et Spes, the joys and hopes. He referred to Aurerum Novarum and talked about um the need for uh the exclusivity today being the 1% who are economically and politically in control. He referred back to Francis. Um and and that's the language he has used consistently. He is he said, I come here to proclaim the gospel of love, justice, mercy, peace. He's talked about that over and over again. He said it in a lot of different ways. The comments he made to civil leaders in Africa, as Dan pointed out, could very well be remarks that would apply to American politics. But his language, his vision is framed by um those pieces that he mentions over and over again. He mentioned the City of God in the January 9th address. He mentioned Rerum Novarum in the January 9th address. He br that's that's the framework, the apparatus that I think the will continue to define, deepen, extend his um papacy.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

I mean, well, there is there is conversation right now, or anticipation that is encyclical, uh, will be on the May 15th. Yeah, and that that may well incorporate many of the things you're you're talking about right now, Michelle. I agree. There was an interesting, excoriating article by a very combative uh Times of London journalist or columnist, Melanie Phillips, and she was uh unrelenting in her attack on Poplio um because of his uh selectivity, um, ignoring the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria and other places of Africa. Of course, he did not do that, but also saying that he was aligning himself with um with the larger tyrants of the world, uh President Z, um Putin, of course, who don't fall under his castigating fury. Uh Phillips' response is disproportionate, of course, but it does indicate that not everybody is going to be in alignment with uh Pope Francis, or I'm sorry, with Pope Leo, who's necessarily sympathetic to um uh Donald Trump. It's perhaps more nuanced than that. Uh Charlie, what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Well, I think that Times of London peace is an interesting thing to think about because one of the moves that Pope Leo has made is to invite us to think about doctrinal development. And for the record and our listeners, I think Dan is exactly right to see the development of doctrine as a central theme of Pope Leo's pontificate. But it's gonna be in a different style, inflected as Michelle keeps bringing up the City of God, a text by St. Augustine, and another phrase from Augustine's Confessions, Oh, beauty, ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you. And I think what we're seeing from Pope Leo's bringing to the fore certain selected issues on the world stage right now, is it's because these are the ones that are of the most consequence right now for hasty action. And while it might be right to say that Pope Leo is not giving press conferences to excoriate every global dictator for the evils that they have done, and he certainly has not been loud enough about the ordinary sufferings of people around the world from the military-industrial complex on its industrial side, as opposed to kinetic military action. Nonetheless, I do think that what we're seeing from Pope Leo is a statement that there's an ancient belief that war making for benefit is never just. There might be justifications for actions in defense and to certainly combat profound evil, but there's never a justification for preemptive strikes against civilians. And I think the clarity in naming this truth of the gospel is in some ways similar to the clarity in Pope Francis's elevation of the church's teaching about creation that never got the limelight and the focus. I think it's interesting to say that since the Second World War, where the advent of atomic weapons and the change to the ways in which we imagine proportionality under just war theory hasn't received sustained attention from the church in the way that this moment is getting from Pope Leo. When is the last time ordinary Catholics have gone to nitpicking just war theory in public? Not the general statement of Gaudia Metzpez around the dangers of weaponry, but a specific question of how do we think about war making in light of the fact that we can all destroy the planet at any moment? I do think that's genuinely new because of the stakes of this moment. And well, we might also need just culture war, because that attack on Popaloo, I don't think, hit the criteria of proportionality, but that's beside the point.

SPEAKER_03 30:27

Yeah, I think the uh the question of just war um makes perfect sense because um Leo has entered in here on a global concern, right? This is not an ad intra matter. The world at large doesn't give a hoot, actually, uh about the city of God, doesn't know about it, isn't interested. That's the Catholic concern. They are concerned about being annihilated, they are concerned about the destructive powers that are being unleashed, and you're quite right. He talked about the tyrants that are ravaging the planet, right? So he he it's not just unifocused in the sense that it it highlights uh Trump's perfidies and doesn't go anywhere else. He he does go other places, and Melanie Phillips was wrong in her judgment in the London Times. But I want to end our conversation today uh by just looking at what you think. And I think, Michelle, before we went to air, you were mentioning a couple of these concerns to me. What you think is going to happen next. Trump is known as not a particularly forgiving individual, right? He often engages in retaliatory behavior. He reacts to people who oppose him, he chips away at their credibility, and he withdraws funds. We've seen it, well, you've seen it right across the United States, everything from the national humanities, public broadcasting, university research, healthcare, everything, right? There is talk that he's already moving on some Catholic charities and other things in the United States as his way of retaliation. Do you think this is a probable direction, or do you think this is just a little, as Dan calls it, hissy fit? Dan, you want to start?

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Oh, yeah. I mean, the the Catholic Charities thing is real, and um I I think there there will be vindictiveness. Um I think what you're gonna see here um is right, you you you've you've seen a situation where kind of the lines have shifted a little bit in terms of some of the culture wars within the church, as Charlie pointed out, right? Where um again, Pope Leo, um, one of the things that he's been very effective at in the American church is gaining a lot of support from people who were skeptical about Pope Francis, right? Even though um, again, you and I might disagree on this, I don't think they're substantively um all that different, even if they're stylistically um quite different on the surface. But again, we'll we'll talk more about this with Chris Lamb when he's on here, because um I tend to agree quite a bit with his uh book um and his characterization of Leo. Um, but I think what you're going to be seeing here is Americans experiencing in a slightly more acute way uh the countercultural message of the gospel, right? One of the things that we've seen in the US, right, is American Catholics becoming less distinctive uh from uh the rest of the American community in many ways for good reasons, right? Because um they feel more comfortable and uh the church has a more ecumenical uh kind of outreach and all this. But what you're seeing here is right, um, you know, the is the tension between the two cities, right? To use the imagery that uh Michelle and Charlie have been drawing upon, quite rightly. So um again, I think there's gonna be tensions, but what this really does is make people like Vance and Barron uh really kind of transparent in what they're doing, right? Uh, that the message they're selling is only going to be bought by the true believers at this juncture, uh, because they've gotten a clear indication of where the Pope stands and of what it looks like to stand with the Pope on these things. Um and their kind of mealy-mouthed attempts to talk their way around it, um, are being exposed for what they are. And in the end, that's a good thing in the sense of you know the the charade being over there. Uh for them, it's you know, it would be better if they were to um repent, right? If they were to uh move off those positions, but it's good for the rest of us to see uh exactly who they are and where they stand. Yes, and what they are.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

They shout. So um I think that you will see uh uh uh Trump being vindictive. I think that that that's part of his style. Um, I think you're gonna also see he won't take the the grandiose religiosity, but I think he's gonna instill a little bit more religiousness because that's what he sees as his contest, right, with the Pope. Um but I think perhaps American Catholics, based on some of the things I'm reading, are going to be uh more perhaps attentive to what Leo's saying, what Leo's doing, and think about applying that to what's going on in the United States. Um and so some of those Catholics who were behind Trump may reposition themselves a little bit. Some of the Catholics who I think were not attentive at all are uh again, based on some of the things I'm reading, are going to become a little more attentive to um. I I just even heard that in casual conversation. I I don't want to be too anecdotal, but just people on the street saying things like, Well, gee, did you hear what the Pope said? And I wonder how that applies to. So I think you'll you perhaps will see an a growing, that growing, and maybe even among our youth. I'm hoping that that will be the case. Um I I I just want to say one of the things that Leo did while he was in Africa, he m he made an address to the Catholic University. And um, I think it's an address that Catholic universities in America should look at, should read, because he talks about he he's talking about the Catholic University renewing its quest for truth and its goal for the formation of young people in the gospel. And um, I, you know, he he uh quotes from the heart of the church. And I I know that that's a little more on the perhaps conservative side, but I think still it's his address is something that uh universities in the United States should look at.

SPEAKER_03 37:16

Yes, many of his speeches in in Africa we should be looking at. They've been quite uh arresting in in a number of different respects. Charlie, to time to wrap up with you.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

Yeah, as I think about what this exchange bodes for the future, I think Michelle's exactly right to say that I hope that it invites more ordinary reflection on things. Right now in the life of the church during this Easter season, we're hearing the story of the Acts of the Apostles and the resurrection narratives of the Lord. And these bring to mind a moment that it's really easy to reach for martyr language, to say, I have it right like Saint Stephen, and I am gonna lay down my life for the church. But I don't think that's actually the right spot in scripture to look for this moment. I think the right spot is a story that's recounted in all four Gospels, which is of a rich young man who goes up to Jesus and says, I have followed all the rules. What do I need to do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says, Sell everything you have and follow me. And we get that great moment about an eye and a needle and a camel that everyone knows. And we make that story almost exclusively about material possessions, because that's the example. I think right now we're all being called to recognize that it's not always easy to put down the things in our lives that are comfortable in order to follow the Lord. And I think that's what Pope Leo is calling us to do around peace. Sometimes we're gonna feel a little despondent that we think we have all the right answers, whether we're a conservative Catholic who's upset at an implied development of doctrine with just war, or whether we're a Catholic that's more liberal and ecumenically minded and are concerned about what it means for a church to have public division and how we love one another before the Eucharist if we disagree politically. I think that's what we're being called to in this moment. And I hope the conversations don't end, even if I do hope that tweets with hilarious AI images do. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 39:03

Yeah, in the interest of aesthetics, if nothing else. Uh, we're going to be dealing with a lot of this, of course, when we gather on our next uh event, May the 6th, I believe it is, when we're going to be having a conversation with Christopher Lamb. Um, Dan has already referred to his book. It's called American Hope. Here it is what Pope Leo XIV means for the church and the world. The book appeared before the uh presidential pontifical imbroglio, but I'm sure it it uh will go a great way when Christopher is joining us in helping to explain how Leo is not only dealing with this, maneuvering his way adroitly through uh global politics, but what we can expect for the future coming from this first American Pope. Thank you. Join us in two weeks with Christopher Lamb. Okay.