Can the Pope Be Wrong? Catholic Authority and Human Dignity with Dr. Stephen Okey

Nearly 60% of Americans still believe the Pope speaks infallibly—but what does that actually mean?

In this illuminating episode, Dr. Stephen Okey, a Catholic theologian at Saint Leo University, helps us unpack the mysteries of the papacy—from apostolic succession and the theology of confession to why popes change their names and how AI may shape the next Catholic revolution. With humor and clarity, Okey demystifies concepts like papal infallibility and ex cathedra pronouncements, clarifying that only two infallible statements have ever been made—and both were about Mary.

As the Catholic Church wrestles with moral leadership in an age of automation, this episode also explores the social teachings of Pope Leo XIII, how they inspired the new Pope Leo XIV, and what all this means for the dignity of work, human agency, and religious liberty in 2025.
Subscribe, share, and join the conversation as we ask: How should theology engage public life in a digital world?

Guest Bio
Dr. Stephen Okey is a Catholic theologian and Associate Professor of Theology at Saint Leo University, where he specializes in theological anthropology, Catholic social teaching, and the intersection of faith, technology, and public life. He writes the Substack Okey Doxy and hosts a podcast where he interviews leading theologians.

🔗 Resource Links
Dr. Stephen Okey’s Substack: https://stephenokey.substack.com
Okey Doxy Podcast: https://stephenokey.substack.com/podcast

Transcript

0:17

Hey, welcome back, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. I am your political host, Will Wright, joined by my awesome co-host, Faithful host, Josh Bircham. He's a pastor. I'm having trouble with English today. Forming structure and sentences. I'll figure this out. dude. You might come under the ire of ice, I might, yeah, which anyways, I won't go into tangent on that. Joining us today is Dr. Stephen Oakey. He is a Catholic theologian and associate professor at St. Louis University where he teaches courses on theology, ethics and the intersection of faith and culture. He's got a PhD from Bolston College. His work explores theological anthropology, the role of church and public life, and how Catholicism engages with politics, pop culture and digital media. We are just so glad to have you with us here today. Can we call you Steven? You can call me Steve if you want. Steve, wow, I'm Steve. Have you seen a Minecraft? seen the Minecraft? I have been told I should. But my oldest child is five, and so we're not quite there yet. And also, I don't need her to have a new obsession. So yeah. It's funny. was telling, I was asking Josh actually the other day how many times he's heard the chicken lava song, which for those that watch Minecraft will understand that reference. But if you haven't seen it, then yeah, you're a much better person than I am. So. Also, well. Yeah, well, God bless you. Well, yeah, thanks so much for coming on our show. We wanted to bring you on to talk about all things Catholicism, all things Pope. uh It's an area that Josh and I don't really know a whole lot, right? Me less than than Josh. So, yeah, I really appreciate you coming on. But before we kind of dig into it, I'd love to hear about your journey. Like, how does one get into Catholic theology? That's a great question and you know, it's been a uh long and circuitous route for me I'll say briefly. I I grew up in the Midwest My family I would say was fair. It's fairly waspy and kind of like a cultural uh Protestant non-practicing kind of background So my my mom's parents were Presbyterian and my dad's mom was a Church of Christ And so we went to a Presbyterian church when I was a kid, but I don't think it was a, I think it was more a moral formation thing for my parents than anything else. uh But they sent my brother and I to the local Jesuit high school, cause it was, you know, a better school and they, I think they thought it would straighten us out a little bit. uh And from there I went on to Georgetown and I was a, I was actually a math major at Georgetown, which is uh a major that I share with the new Pope, which is nice. uh nice. But I also, just, you I was really into talking about religion and philosophy and I kind of fell in with a Catholic crowd and I started studying theology. One, we had to take theology courses anyway and the first theology course I took was just fascinating and I was like, I'm gonna stick with this. And I just love talking about it and by the time I graduated from Georgetown, I had gone through what was then called RCIA, the Right of Christian Initiation for Adults. and become Catholic, I got baptized. uh And then I continued studying uh for my masters after that. And then I got tired of it, ah as I think people do. I got tired of being in school and I had a corporate uh insurance job for a couple years as a sort of deliberate, uh almost like a, I don't know, sabbatical from study or my own rum spring or however you want to think about it. And then I went back for my PhD and Haven't looked back since. Wait, so working in the insurance industry is your idea of a rum spring? The thing is, I know, it's nuts. The office I worked in did computer modeling for uh natural disasters and terrorist events and these sorts of things. like I said, I was a math person and I love technology. And so that part was fascinating. But really, and this is the truth of it, was I did my master's degree in Chicago. And when I was finishing up, like I knew I didn't want to go back to school, but I also I really wanted to stay in Chicago. And so I was only looking for jobs in the city. And I think this is like 2005. I think I applied for every job in the city that could pay a decent wage. And I had two offers. And this one was it was like downtown, you know, near the loop. It was right by Millennium Park. And I was like, I'll do this. And, know, honestly, Like I wasn't a broker, I wasn't selling things. I was just trying to figure out problems. I got to do a lot of coding. uh It was great. I had a great time. Dude, you rum springing it up, And, And, you know, I mean, let's be honest, like I was, you know, a young man in my 20s in Chicago and I didn't have, you know, I didn't have any sort of like real responsibilities. I wasn't married yet or anything like that. But also, you know, it was the first time I was out of college. But I also like I had an income, you know, like and so one like work would finish, you know, done at five and I'd be done. I didn't have to take anything home. I didn't have to think about it at the evening. I think about it over the weekend. And so I could do, like I took classes. I learned cooking, I took fiddle. I did all sorts of things. It was great. So. That's awesome. It gets better and better the more details I hear. I love it. The good old days. yeah, you're going to get me all jelly here thinking about taking fiddle classes. oh good enough to enjoy it. dude, that's the only thing that matters. you know, I love hearing that about you and some of those personal details. It's cool to kind of fill in, you know, that character and to know a little bit more about what makes you tick. I think when it comes to theology, number one, most people are kind of like theology. Okay, like that sounds, I don't know, probably most... My guess is most people never think about it, although they probably think about God, but they don't think about theology, that term or that concept. So I would love for you to just kind of, I mean, I guess in one sense, help us get like an operational definition of theology here for our time together. And even like what is in the thing that kind of burns in my mind, And like the question is burning in my mind is what's the biggest difference if we're thinking theology between Catholic theology and like, I don't know, just Protestant theology, other theology. Like it seems like it's this word that's supposed to define all this stuff and yet there's so many different um directions under it and ways that it goes that it can become confusing, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, that's a great question and a sort of good entree. would say, so the first thing I'd say to the first part of your question is, you know, one of the central go-tos or slogans, I think, that Catholics often will think about in terms of what theology is, is the statement from Saint Anselm in the 11th century, which is theology is faith seeking understanding. And the idea in that is people uh often already have, you core beliefs or an underlying view of the world, but that's often uh not something that is, you know, critically reflected on or developed or, and I think this happens for a lot of people, including today, they have sort of uh the experience of when they were young or when their parents took them to church or whatever else, but it's never really sort of mature, developed, progressed beyond that early stage. Even though the questions, you the big questions remain and in many respects as we get older they get uh you know harder or more demanding in some sense, especially as you know, we enter into relationships or have children or you know, that sort of thing. And so theology is about, you know, trying to understand and make sense of, you know, what one's faith, you know, says, what one's faith calls one to. So that's part of how I would describe it. The other thing I would say, and this is, know, like as someone who teaches theology, like I love to go to like the etymology, like where's the word come from? ah And just theology, know, theologos is just really simply it's words about God, you know, it's understanding of God. And so already to some extent when someone is say like when they're praying and they're saying words to God, they're already engaging in theology ah in a very visceral and sort of fundamental way. the work that I do, both in terms of my research, but especially in terms of my teaching, is to try to get people to think about, what does that mean? What are the implications of that? How does that connect to other parts of our lives? And what does it tell us about our view of reality and of the world? I think oh in making your second question about Catholic theology, Protestant theology, other theologies, things like that. uh I think that there's a couple generic ways of thinking about the differences and then I'll talk about at least one specific one. The generic thing is that every religious tradition, uh whether it's Christianity at large or it's Roman Catholicism or it's Presbyterianism uh or it's sort of a uh Orthodox Judaism, whatever it is, there's A central part of understanding the theology is understanding the history of that tradition as well. uh Because part of coming to understand God, and I think this is true for individuals and I think it's true for communities, is recognizing the work of God in our lives over time. And recognizing the sort of new situations and contexts in which we find ourselves and how to respond to that in a way that is still faithful. uh And so uh And so when I when I've taught, you know, courses with students, we look at different traditions. One of the things I will say is like, look at, know, the history of the people as well, you the things that happened to them and the choices that they made and how that might shape different responses to certain questions. So that's sort of the generic answer. I think the particular answer I would say is I think that Catholics are often sort of caricaturized as having a weak relationship with the Bible. And some of that is because the Catholic tradition has long uh emphasized and held the idea of tradition as on kind of the same level as scripture. The church is about both scripture and tradition. So what the church has said before, you in the past carries significant weight. It's not scripture alone. And that's sort of the default posture I think a lot of people have as an understanding of many but not necessarily all Protestant traditions. It's scripture alone. Scripture is the foundation, it's the fundamental source, it's the final arbiter of any kinds of questions. So that's one thing that I would say I think is sort of the main kind of distinction. uh The other one, and I think this probably goes a little bit to what we'll talk about today, is I think in practice the Catholic Church, because of the role of the Pope, uh has a sort of stronger sense of uh unity, sticking together, holding together as one very, very large, very diverse, sometimes very contentious community. uh But, but like there's a sort of general resistance among Catholics to uh going their own way. And at least in my own experience, uh the diversity of Protestant traditions to some extent speaks to I think often a strong sense and conscience that one has to go one's own way in order to like witness to their understanding the gospel. But because there's not that same sort of principle of unity holding them together, that breakaway is a little bit easier. You know, when I think about friends of mine that are Catholic or, you know, I hear about things going on in the Catholic Church, um I'm still kind of at a loss to find a place to put it because I've never read a book about Catholicism. ah So I don't really understand kind of the background or history or like why, excuse me, why the Catholic Church is just so huge. I mean, guess one could argue the Christian church is huge, too. it's just like the Christian church doesn't have a pope. know, so could you give us like some a bit of history of like, how did we get to a place where, you know, the Vatican is like this overwhelming like city that Dan Brown writes books and stuff about? uh I'll try and give an abbreviated answer because it's a I mean, there's some books I can recommend on this, but it's it's a long it's a long thing. uh I think one is and different Christian traditions will sort of dispute this claim. So I'm just going to sort of say it in a tentative way. uh But Catholics tend to understand like the original Christian church is the Catholic church, like we're we're coterminous with that. Right. And so one of the. Principles in Catholic teaching and you see this in Nicene Creed is the idea of the apostolic one Catholic apostolic church, right? One holy Catholic and apostolic church and the apostolic part of that is this belief that the the leaders of the church today Could trace, you know the the line of bishops all the way back to the Apostles So there's the sense of continuity throughout so that's one piece of it uh Obviously other Christian traditions will say like, you know, we trace ourselves back to the Apostles like so that's not a unique claim of the church, but The apostolic succession part is not unique to Catholicism, but it's a distinctive feature that not all traditions share. So the Orthodox share this, the Anglicans share this. I don't know that there are others who do off the top of my head. So that's one piece of it. And so the size of the Catholic Church in that respect is sort of tied to just the expansion of Christianity over its first millennium in particular. What happens ah in the 11th century is one, there's a split between the Eastern and Western churches, which become more or less the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, with some exceptions built into that. uh And the Western Church, the Catholic Church, ah is over the subsequent many hundreds of years, ah becomes involved in ah exploration, colonization, et cetera, et cetera. And so a lot of the areas that we think of as especially places where Catholicism is sort of booming or has been growing in the last several decades are in the global south, which were places that were colonized. And so you think of Latin America, you think of a lot of Africa, the Catholic and you think also of uh Asia in some areas, especially like uh Vietnam, right? uh the Catholic Church was behind a lot of missionary impulses and colonized and supported colonizing efforts. And so that's part of the expansion too. The third thing is one, I think that for better and for worse, the Catholic Church has a very organized structure to it, a hierarchical structure to it that gives it one, a certain sort of enduring institutional quality that helps it to stick around. but that also enables this kind of missionary and evangelical effort in a way that is sometimes, I think, harder for other churches to do. uh And then lastly, and I think this is the case with some communities, maybe not others, uh religious communities that are built around sort of particular figures or leaders or pastors or theologians or whatnot, if they have a kind of cult of personality, they often don't survive the death of that personality. ah And I think the Catholic Church, ah at least in perception, if not also in reality, has a certain sort of, uh it's not about any one pope, any one bishop, any one great thinker. It's this whole sort of large body of Christ. That's really helpful to hear that explained so concisely, but I think also pretty comprehensively. I appreciate that. em You know, I would love to dig into the Pope a little bit and kind of like, because I think this idea of the Pope is kind of like for a lot of Americans, like, I guess, you know, we were talking a little bit, Will and I, talking about Kennedy, you know, John F. Kennedy and how people were concerned, is he going to listen to the Pope or is he going to listen to the people or the Pope? You know this was a, that's not the first time right a Catholic was accused in history of uh the intention whether true or not to listen to the Pope or be the Pope's puppet essentially and do you know whatever it his bidding is and in their situation. Of course that's really an oversimplification grossly and inaccurate and yet it seems like this kind of stuff continues and I would love for you to kind of help demystify the Pope a little bit for us. Like what is the Pope's role, like is it that everything the pope says is this is what God is saying or is it you know when is he speaking kind of ex cathedra that kind of idea and even defining that for people. uh Just like help us understand the pope um so that we're not like almost demythologizing the pope and some sense for us. I want to if I can, I want to start with the first part of what you were saying about, you know, John F. Kennedy and so forth. uh Sort of an interesting background to that is so John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic U.S. president, but he was not the first Catholic major party candidate for president. And so the the first guy to get the nomination was Al Smith. And he was he was a Democrat. He was the governor of New York. He was an immensely popular governor. Um, really successful, generally very well regarded had been a very successful, like state assemblyman beforehand so forth. Um, and he, I want to say it's 1928. He's a democratic candidate. Um, and at this time, I mean, again, this is, you know, a hundred years ago now, um, he's a Democrat. He was expecting to do really, really well in a lot of areas of the country, especially in the South. Um, because the South in the, in the 1920s is, is just all, is all democratic, right? ah And he gets clobbered in the south. He only wins a handful of states and it is overwhelmingly clear the reason Al Smith lost is because he was Catholic and you can look at like the political cartoons of the time and it's very much a like Al Smith is a secret puppet of the Pope ah and he's gonna be a puppet of the bishops and you're already in a period of ah You know, there's been, you know, 50, 60 years of immigration into the US, especially from Catholic countries like Ireland and Italy. And so there's a lot of suspicion of Catholics in the US generally. ah And so he just, he gets absolutely clobbered. ah And so when JFK runs in 1960, he has to do this very deliberate thing about saying like, yes, I am Catholic, but that's not like a feature of me being president. I would be a president who happens to be Catholic. uh And so when he gives this speech to the Houston Baptist ministers conference, essentially saying like, I'm not a puppet of the pope. will do what I would do as a essentially as a Democrat, you know, not an American, not as a Catholic. And this seems to win people over. But remember, like, I mean, even Kennedy's election is a razor thin uh victory. uh And so, yeah, it's uh it's been a suspicion in many respects. So you have a question about sort of demystifying the pope. ah I'd say maybe three things for this. Number one, part of the Catholic tradition around the papacy and around the office of the pope is to see the pope as number one, the successor of Saint Peter. And so Saint Peter, one of the apostles, so one of the first followers of Jesus, there's this fisherman called by Jesus. And there's a part particularly in Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew chapter 16, where Jesus says to him, you know, you are Peter, and it's this Greek, Peter comes from the Greek word for rock. He says, you are Peter, the rock on which I'll build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And so Catholics have long seen this as a theological claim marking Peter as the leader of the church following the death of Jesus. And so whenever you get like a list of the popes, the first pope is always going to be Peter. And he's traditionally seen as serving around like 25 to 30 years as pope, et cetera, et cetera. There's a lot we can historically critique about that, but that's kind of the theological basis. And his role as pope is one, as leader of the church, but also he's the bishop of Rome. And so he's the leader of the religious community of Catholics in Rome. And so the Catholic Church, part of our hierarchical structure is we have bishops. Bishops are heads of diocese. Diocese are sort of administrative, you know, geographical territories. And so the bishop is the one responsible for teaching and pastoring that whole diocese. And that in effect means, you know, they're the supervisor, leader, whatever, for the priests and other religious organizations within that area. And so the Pope in particular is the bishop for the Diocese of Rome. So that's a part of the role. That's also a big part why in history so many of the popes have been Italians. People are always like, why is he always Italian? Well, part of it is he's the Bishop of Rome, historically. There are other reasons too, but that's one of them. uh In sort of further demystifying that, the reason the Bishop of Rome is so central is one, historically, Rome was so central to the Roman Empire and the sort of early period of the church. And so it is the eternal city. It is the imperial capital. It is the place to it. All roads lead to Rome, right? And so there's a certain uh eminence that comes with being the bishop there. You might imagine why isn't, say, the Bishop of Jerusalem the head, right? I mean, this is where Christ dies. Like, why is it not that? And Jerusalem has a sort of certain preeminence also as a diocese. This is, you know, noted early in the literature. But it really functionally becomes Rome as a sort of administrative center. But then further, uh in the early several hundred years of the church, you have bishops all over the Mediterranean and further. uh And they, when they have disputes with one another, because this also happens, right? Like Christians dispute with one another, who would have thought? But when bishops have disputes, they have to have ways of resolving this and figuring out what is the best interpretation? What is the right way for us to understand who Jesus is? What is the right date for us to celebrate Easter? Like these kinds of questions. And in some cases, bishops will meet together in what are sometimes called synods or sometimes called councils. and they'll discuss, they'll debate, they'll fight, and ultimately they'll vote and they'll make decisions that way. So that's one way of sort of resolving disputes. But one of the other ways is often appealing to other bishops. And what happened was there were many situations where bishops in the sort of Mediterranean basin would appeal to and ask the Bishop of Rome, like, what do you think on this question? And whether by luck or by providence, the Bishop of Rome's positions on these questions are often the ones that carried the day. They were seen as the orthodox correct positions. And it created this sort of sense of trust and fidelity and like this is the guy we need to appeal to. uh And it comes to a head, sorry if this is more detailed than you want, but uh it comes to a head really in a particular way in the fifth century. There's this very famous council called the Council of Chalcedon. uh which is held in modern day Turkey. And it's uh this central debate about Christ and how do we understand Christ as a human but also as divine? Like what is the way that we understand these things? Because you have a real problem. Is there one person or are there two sort of separate people in some way? uh Does Christ have a human nature or a divine nature or both or some third? mixture of the two, like how do we reconcile all these kinds of questions? And uh the Pope at the time, Pope Leo the first, Pope Leo the great, uh writes this letter, uh it's called the Tome of Leo, but it's a letter to Flavian, uh and it's sent to this council. So Leo isn't even at this meeting, but he sends it, uh and it is read aloud, and he gives this sort of articulation for what it would mean for Christ to have both human nature and divine nature, to be completely, totally, fully human, but also completely, fully, totally divine. Not like a balance or a mix, but completely both, and still be one acting person. uh And he sends this letter, and it's read at this meeting, and there's just acclamation about how brilliant it is. And one of the bishops says the famous sort of quote, maybe it's apocryphal, but it's something like, uh Peter has spoken. And so it's just this real like cementing of the Bishop of Rome as this central figure. so from, yeah, so from there, you know, by this time you're already getting division between the Eastern Church and Western Church. You already have Constantinople, you know, as this major seat, which is, you know, today is the seat of the the Greek Orthodox Church. ah But but Rome really becomes the center. uh the Diocese of Rome, the Bishop of Rome really becomes the sort of central figure. And he's a bishop like other bishops, but he's seen as a like first among equals. And so there's a certain priority that comes with him. Now, lots of development over the next fifteen hundred years from there. ah But you have like not going to do all of it, but you have, you know, later events like, for example, when Charlemagne ah is crowned emperor. OK, he's crowned by the Pope. Right. He like so part of his legitimacy as a secular ruler derived from the Bishop of Rome has placed the crown on your head. uh And that as a sort of ritual is something that continues for centuries. So even 19th century, you know, uh revolutionary era France, when Napoleon declares himself emperor, he is also crowned by the pope in Paris. And so that kind of signal. Yeah. um And so I think it had a certain symbolic utility for Napoleon. I don't think it was a deeply felt thing. um significant moment when the Pope crowned Charlemagne, right? I mean, that was like, hey, he's the guy who's really in charge kind of thing, correct? it is. And so so the sort of symbolic importance and the hierarchical importance of the pope is pretty significant. eh And so, like I mentioned before, I think that it's helpful to see the pope as not the only, but as one of the sort of like principles of unity that helps hold the Catholic Church together. eh Some of that is theological and some of that, honestly, is also just practical. em There are lots of uh Not going back to the Reformation, just going back in the last like 150 years. There are lots of offshoots of the Catholic Church. uh And so there's a branch that after the first Vatican Council in 1870 uh rejected the idea of papal infallibility, which I know we'll talk about in a moment. And so it's called the Old Catholic Church. They're an offshoot. They're a tiny, tiny, tiny minority. They don't have a lot of adherents, a of followers. uh There's a community called the Society of St. Pius X who went into schism with the Roman Catholic Church after Vatican II, in part over questions of liturgy, but also especially over issues with uh the church's position on other religious traditions. uh And they're sort of better known in some respects, but they're still a tiny, tiny, tiny offshoot. uh And so there's, I think, uh sense often maybe implicit, you know, not fully realized uh that if you want to have a sort of stake in things, you want to have a role in things, uh you stay part of the Catholic Church even within the tensions within that rather than sort of break off and go your own way. Interest so uh since it really is. Yeah. like sitting here and I'm just like, you're just talking and I'm like, man, there's so many questions are coming up in my mind. So many, so many ideas and just, sorry, go ahead, Will. It's just, it's just amazing. about about pop, pap papal or papal papal that that too um are are popes infallible like can they make a mistake and if they do like what what do they get fired or something? Okay, so, uh... And who fires them? God. uh popes uh have infallibility. Popes also make mistakes. And it's important to recognize the sort of like the jurisdiction of those things. uh So part of the understanding of the Catholic Church around questions of teaching and so forth ah is that there are uh particular situations and ways in which the church can speak infallibly and that what the church says is in fact true and uh will be held as such. And the idea is that those kinds of interventions are, it's not just a bunch of people doing something, it's guided by the Holy Spirit. that going back to this idea that like the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, the Holy Spirit is not going to allow the church to err in you know, fundamentally important ways. Okay. So to go back like very far back, right. I just mentioned the Council of Chalcedon and the resolution of the Council of Chalcedon is to say that that uh in Christ, he is both fully human and fully divine and that that is true without any kind of separation or division, but also without any confusion or changing. Right. And so these two things are held together in the term for this is a hypostatic union. And so it's not a third thing. It's not like a human divine hybrid, you know, like the demigods of Greek myth. But it's both. When the council met, when the bishops voted, the belief is that this is an infallible act. And it's in this case, it's an example of speaking infallibly about faith, about the faith, about the beliefs of the church. There's been, I want to say, 21 councils of the church. from Nicaea in 325 to Vatican II that ended in 1965. And so the sort of faith, the particular faith claims and the particular morals claims of these are seen to be held as definitively true. The Pope also has the capacity to act infallibly or to speak infallibly. And in doing so, it's the same idea that one, the Holy Spirit is not going to allow the Pope to just get up and say infallibly, ah I don't know, the Pacers should have won the NBA finals, which I'll be honest, I believe it didn't happen. I was very, was very heartbreaking watching that game ah in the second half. ah So that kind of thing, like if Pope Leo really wanted to do it, the Holy Spirit would not allow it in some sense, I think is the sort of underlying belief. The reality of papal infallibility is, and it's often held as this sort of thing, the doctrine, the dogma, the teaching that the pope is infallible was declared by the First Vatican Council in 1869, 1870. And so the idea has some history beyond that. It's not like a new insight in 1870. There's a real debate about it. But it's actually declared then. And actual exercises, like moments where the pope has spoken ex cathedra, which means from the chair, like from the chair of St. Peter has happened twice. It's happened two times. ah Yeah. And so this is not a regular occurrence. the two times that, yeah, the two times it has happened, ah I'm going to I'm not going to get the years right, but I'm going to get the decade right. ah So one is in I think it's the 1840s or 1850s. And it's when Pope Pius IX declares ex cathedra infallibly ah that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was immaculately conceived. And the idea of the immaculate conception, this comes up periodically, is not about Jesus being immaculately conceived, it's Mary. And so when Mary's parents, traditionally known as Joachim and Anne, uh conceive uh her, uh That is an act without sin. Mary is without sin and Mary throughout her life lives without sin. Okay. This is another place where I Catholics and Protestants sometimes want to go a different direction. We have a very high regard for Mary in this respect. So this is one. ah Mary is immaculately conceived. Now this is also an idea a teaching that goes back to the early centuries of the church. It wasn't a brand new idea and it was popularly held by you know, huge swaths of Catholics, particularly in Europe in the 19th century. And it was really in a certain sense, it wasn't like they all wrote letters to the pope saying, this. But there was this sense of sort of like more or less universal consensus on this idea. OK, so it wasn't the pope like pushing against the tides or anything else. It was sort of a recognition. That's one. The second one is in the 1950s and it's Pope Pius XII and he declares, infallibly from the chair of St. Peter, that Mary, again, same Mary, was assumed bodily into heaven. This is called the Assumption of Mary. Okay. And the idea of this, if you sort of track, you know, some of the theology is if Mary was without sin her entire life and the wages of sin is death, then it doesn't make sense for Mary to just die. right, unless she's, you know, murdered or killed in some sense, which the tradition has never held. And so the idea is that Mary doesn't die. Mary is assumed bodily into heaven. The end of her earthly life is not death. It's assumption. Again, widely held popular belief long for centuries and centuries discussed the sort of Eastern Orthodox version of this a little different. It's called the Dormition of Mary, which is essentially that Mary fell asleep. and remains asleep until I think the resurrection, until the eschaton. I'm not as solid on that one. Yeah, but doesn't have to die, right? Like doesn't, you know, doesn't experience the pain and separation of death, right? These are the two times, the two times the Pope has exercised papal infallibility are both uh dogmatic claims about the Virgin Mary. So it's, which are always in some sense are about Jesus. They're not like, there's always that piece of it theologically. But the Pope has not weighed in infallibly on any kind of like, you know, public policy issues, has never weighed in infallibly about wars, has never weighed in infallibly about liturgical practices, right? Those things have always really been done on the infallible part by the work of councils. ah And so, yeah, so this, like, there's this idea that like, oh, like, you know, so, well, this came up a lot. during the papacy of Pope Francis, uh who was the previous Pope. Yep, all his tweets are, he would do these press conferences on the plane when he was flying back from somewhere and people would ask him questions and there would always be uh wild things that would come out of this. ah And for people who are sort of like, the Pope must be infallible. Well, if he's making boo-boos on the plane, then that makes them question infallibility. But the key to understand is it's a very, One, it's a very narrowly exercised power. It's rare that it's done. ah Two, there's a real sense of like a formula almost to it where the Pope has to say like, I am speaking from the chair of St. Peter on faith and morals. I am very clearly explicitly making an infallible claim. There's no question about it, right? It should be pretty clear. uh And in the two cases it's been done, these were not uh controversies really within the church. There are absolutely Catholics who are, you know, don't believe these things or are suspicious of them. I mean, there's Catholics who have all sorts of issues with all sorts of things. But it wasn't like the Pope said either of these and the Catholic faithful were like, no, no, no. How could you do that? Like these were often already aspects of popular piety. That's so fascinating. am curious, just real quick question. I learned when the new pope was sworn in, I don't know if that's the right term, probably not. But when the new pope was chosen, ah that's not their real name. Like Pope Leo wasn't born Pope Leo. Can you tell? um Can you explain that? Like why are they not using their real names and who are these people that they're named after? Yeah, that's a great question with a lot of also fun history behind it. uh Most popes for centuries have taken a name when they were elected. OK, the first pope to do this, I don't remember exactly when it was like fourth or fifth century. It was a long time ago. uh And the reason he took a papal name, and I forget which name he took, but his birth name was like Mercurius. And so his birth name was a pagan god. ah And so he took a new name so that the leader of the church, know, the diet the bishop of Rome would not have a pagan name So that's the sort of first, you know story of that ah And so ah yeah, so the the current Pope Pope Leo the 14th his birth name is Robert Prevost You know from Chicago. So there's a you whole thing with him being the first American Pope to ah But he took the name Leo and he has specifically said in his case that he took to the name Leo, uh essentially an honor or kind of in line with Leo XIII. And Leo XIII was the Pope from 1878 to 1903. 25 year papacy, really influential, really important in a lot of respects. yeah. Pope Leo the 13th, was that his real name? Nope, his name, gosh, I've forgotten what his name is. uh Yeah, I don't remember. It was not Leo. I wanna say he was Giuseppe Pecci, but that might be someone after. It's okay. Any listeners who wanna know, just look on Wikipedia, it'll tell you. eh So I think it's probably been at least 500 years since there was a pope who did not take another name. em And typically what's happening when popes take other names and recent popes have been even more explicit about this is there's a particular prior pope that they're uh honoring or that whose tradition they want to continue in some respect em or in the case of Francis, who's really the sort of first unique name in centuries. He specifically took that name uh out of reference to St. Francis of Assisi. em And there was one of the when when when uh Cardinal Bergoglio, which was his name at the time when he was elected, one of the other cardinals nearby him essentially said, like, don't forget the poor. Like that was his sort of, you know, advice to the new pope. And that seemed to be what motivated him to take the name Francis. um But others, you know, for example, Benedict the 16th, who was the pope prior to Francis, took his name after Benedict the 15th and Benedict the 15th. Benedict 15th and also Benedict of Nersia. So I'll get to him in a second. Benedict the 15th was the pope during World War One and he was elected a few months into World War One. ah And so he's the leader of the Catholic Church in a period where like the church really still thinks of itself as very European. And he sees all these European nations lining up and killing each other. And Benedict the 15th calls Europe calls World War One like the civilizational suicide of Europe. Like that's how he sees it. And he tries desperately. to get them to negotiate and stop the war. He tries desperately to help out uh refugees and orphans of the war. He nearly bankrupts the Vatican spending money to make this possible. Benedictine was so committed to trying to stop that war and was often seen as a failure because he didn't, uh which I don't think at all is fair to him. think he's, mean, he's, I think it was a phenomenal person. uh And so Benedictine 16th one really wanted to honor uh Benedict XIV's commitment to trying to sort of save Europe in a sense. But then also Benedict of Nursia, Saint Benedict, who's the founder of the Benedictine Order, writes the rule of Saint Benedict. And the Benedictine monks are really seen as sort of central carriers of the Catholic tradition throughout the early medieval period and the late medieval period, the formation of monasteries and abbeys and libraries and all sorts of things. So. know, real fast on the Benedictine monks. When I was in high school, I had a CD called the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo. Yeah, it was just like canteen or something. I loved it. It was great, yeah. Yeah, that's the Benedictines. And part of, ah you know, they don't invent Gregorian chant per se, but they're really associated with it. ah And so even, so my university is a historically Benedictine university and we have an, you know, an Abbey of monks and they still do Gregorian chant during their, you know, their daily prayers and during uh mass and so forth. Oh, so let me talk just briefly, I guess, about Leo. So Leo XIII, I think the fourth longest pope in history, right? So just really long reign. And actually, his predecessor Pius IX was the longest. So he was pope, I think, for 31 years, just this insane period of time, maybe 33, somewhere in there. And. One of the things that is really important for understanding Leo the 13th and that is really important for understanding why Leo the 14th took this name. ah If you think about sort of the late 19th century and you think about sort of especially what was going on in Europe at the time, ah you have the sort of like the fruits of the Industrial Revolution really coming to bear. So you have, you know, a lot of urbanization. You have a lot of people moving into cities. So you have all the sorts of housing and health issues that come with that kind of concentration. uh You have a lot of issues for families in terms of a change in the form of labor. You have children laboring, you know, not out on farms, but in factories. And you have for many people, you know, as much as there's the sort of general, you know, country making economic progress and all that sort of thing, for many of the people, it's just misery. And drudgery and you have all sorts of accidents. You have, you know, very few worker protections You have efforts that unionization are often stymied sometimes violently And amid all of this you also have in part because of the industrial revolution you have the rise of socialism as a sort of response to uh These you know economic and political problems and so Leo the 13th looks at this changing landscape this changing world And he writes this encyclical, uh the Latin title, is what everyone knows it by is rerum novarum. um And the English title is usually something like uh on uh the laboring classes in capital or something like that. what rerum novarum translates to is like of the new things, right? Talking about these new things that are going on. And in this encyclical, really emphasizes, Leo 13th really emphasizes uh the dignity of work. and the dignity of laborers uh and how uh work is. an important part of being a human being. It's part of how we participate in God's creation in the world. uh That private property is important for the flourishing of people in this life. And he rejects the sort of Marxist socialist idea that there should be conflict between the classes. that the capital classes who own the means of production and the labor and classes who work them should work harmoniously and not, you know, be at loggerheads with one another. And he puts a lot of the responsibility of this at the capital classes, like, you know, makes, has expectations of, you know, their solicitude towards their workers. And what happens in this encyclical is it's really this first significant instance of the Pope and of the Catholic Church. weighing in on a social question, an economic, political question uh in a way that is seen as supposed to be guiding for the rest of the world. uh And so we often talk about it as the first major text of Catholic social teaching, right? It's the one that sort of inaugurates this long tradition of especially popes uh weighing in when there's some kind of problem or challenge or even catastrophe that calls for guidance. But it's not just about individual persons need to make better choices. It's about concerns about the larger social systems that organize the choices that people make. And so when Leo the 14th, you know, speaks in the first couple of weeks of his papacy about why he chose his name, he always goes back to Leo the 13th. He always goes back to Rerum Novarum in particular, this encyclical, and then he always connects that to artificial intelligence. And for Leo the 14th, he really seems to see artificial intelligence as this kind of new industrial revolution, at least potentially so. He seems to see it as something that has a potentially great impact on the dignity of work, on the work that people do, the sort of regard and also the dignity of human persons in general. uh And so that seems to be a real top of mind issue for him. uh There's pretty wide expectation. that he will release an encyclical, so a big teaching letter about artificial intelligence. I think he very well might do it in the next year. It might be his first encyclical. But that seems to be the sort of, for him, the thing that really drives the choice of his name. And the idea is like, hey, we are on the cusp of and really into a very, like in a revolution of work and there are gonna be people that need advocacy because they're gonna lose their jobs kind of thing. there's just gonna need to be a lot of focus on this because of how much it is going to disrupt. the potential has to disrupt economies, things like that. a part of it. And so we can definitely anticipate major technological changes have impacts, people lose jobs, all those sorts of things. And so that's going to be, I think, a part of it. I think that there's also a lot of questions and concerns people have not just about will we lose jobs or things like that, which again, I I as someone who works in college. Like I have a lot of concerns about artificial intelligence and it's used by students, but also it's used by other faculty and administrators and what that means for the work that we do. So there's like that piece, right? like many others, I'm always a little worried about my job. em But I think that the deeper piece of it too is going to be around questions of human dignity. And one of the things, and I have a friend who says this a lot, whenever, if you're on, social media or whatever and people like to share, you know, AI generated images of things. And so if you want, ah you know, a picture of whatever, you can just ask chat GPT or someone else make this and can tweak and everything else. ah But there's concerns about like that's like maybe helpful if you need a logo quickly or something, but like it's not really art. Like there's not a human dimension to it in the same way. uh There's something kind of soulless about it. It's a similar thing with a lot of writing. uh And I think about with my students, like I don't need essays. Like I don't have like a lack of essays in my office. And so I'm like hiring them to make them. I want them to think like I want them to be critical. And this is one of the sort of, you know, efficient ways of doing that. And if they give me an AI generated paper, like there's no human effort on their part to think about it, right? It's just like checking a task off their to do list. ah And so I think that there's a lot of concern in AI about ah can it, will it, how will it contribute to a sort of like a less human, a dehumanization in society. And I think that that's one of the things that he'll also be probably sort of looking to and addressing. That makes a lot of sense. You know, when we're thinking about the Pope getting like chosen, you know, there's a lot of mystery around that, you know, and the smoke and it's black smoke, then it's white smoke or whatever. I, know, obviously I'm exposing my ignorance and like what's going on there? Like, is it like they're drawing and whoever draws like the short straw, they're the Pope. I know that's being silly, like what's kind of the process and why is it so mysterious? Sure. uh So process-wise, uh the people who get to vote on who the next pope will be, one, have to be cardinals. And so a cardinal is a particular position in the church. Cardinals are selected by popes, and they remain cardinals unless it's taken away from them, which rarely happened, but does happen. And uh in terms of the rules around conclave, so the conclave is the election of the new pope. They have to be under the age of 80 when the papal seat becomes vacant. So whether the pope dies or as in the case of mega 16th when he resigns, you have to be under the age of 80 when that happens. So if you turn 80 between the death of the pope and the conclave, you still get to participate. And the idea on that is in large part a sense that at a certain age, basically it's time to retire and sort of and let, you know, The younger 70-somethings make decisions at that point. The process then is they're sequestered. ah So their phones are taken away. They don't interact with anybody other than the other cardinals and the sort of people who are there to help with meals and all that sort of thing. They don't know what's going on in the outside world for. Honestly, generally the couple of days this takes. This is no longer a process that takes weeks, months, years. Historically, there were conclaves that lasted years. uh Part of why, in fact, they're locked in, and so the conclave with a key, it means with a key, they're locked into the Sistine Chapel for the votes, to, historically, was to force them to make a decision. It used to be that when conclaves went longer and longer and longer, they would be more restrictive about the quality of the food. There was one conclave 700 years ago where they literally removed the roof of the building they were in so they were not protected from the element as a way to pressure them in decision making. Not an issue anymore. was it kind of like vacation? They're getting pampered and they're like, you know, I kind of like this conclave thing. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get this up too early. I think that was probably a part of it, but also, you know, there were real sort of factions and difficulties and especially there were smaller, it was a smaller, often a smaller college of cardinals who were voting. And so there were conclaves where as few as like 12 or 15 cardinals were deciding. And in general, in most cases, with some exceptions, the person who becomes pope is someone who's in the room. It's very rare. It can be other people, but it's very rare that it's not one of the voting cardinals. And so even then it's like, you know, how are you, how are the sort of parties kind of working to one another? Can someone get past a certain number of votes? um The, the wit, the to win the papal election, you have to get two thirds of the voting cardinals who vote to vote for you. And so that's a fairly high bar. It's not a simple majority. um And so you have to sort of be able to get past any particular ceiling you might have. One of the things, especially like journalists do leading up to a conclave is they figure out like who are the candidates, who are the possibility, know, they might have a chance. They're called Papa Beely, which just translates to Popeable, which is adorable. Who are the people who have that chance? But also like what is their kind of like ceiling for support? know, can they get, are they going to like top out at 30, 40 votes. Could they get to 70? That kind of thing. then usually, and so then the voting process, you know, they come into this room, the first day they do one vote, everybody has like a little note card and on it, it says in Latin, I elect for the Supreme Pontiff, and then you put the name. And everybody has this card and they fill out their little card and one by one, they walk up to the front desk. They make an oath that like they genuinely believe this is the guy. They put it in the like ballot. What is it? It's not a ballot box, but it's effectively a ballot box. And then once all those are in, there are three cardinals selected at random to count them. they get the one, they say the name, everyone hears it, they keep track. They tie them all together with string. And at the end of that, if someone has two thirds, They go and ask him, do you accept? So at that point, Guy could say no. ah I don't know. It hasn't happened in hundreds of years. It's probably happened at least once in the past. More likely what happens is a cardinal who sees that they have a chance of winning and doesn't want to be pope will just tell everyone, I will say no, and they'll stop voting for him. They won't elect someone just to be cheeky about it. ah And once the guy says, I accept, they then ask, what name will you be called by? And that's when they give the papal name. ah If they don't get two thirds, the ballots are burned. This is where the smoke comes from. There's a special chimney that's installed in the Sistine Chapel just for this purpose. ah And it has, in addition to the ballots, there are chemicals that they pump into it so that it is clearly black or clearly white. And if it's black, it means no election. ah The second day they come back, they'll do up to two ballots in the morning. They'll do up to two ballots in the afternoon. They'll do that for however many days essentially it takes. This most recent election was the fourth ballot, which is fairly quick. So Pope Francis was elected on the fifth, Bank of the 16th was on the fourth, but John Paul II in 1878 was the eighth. Which again, eighth ballot is like day three. It's not, again, it's not, you know, months and years of this. um And yeah, so that's kind of the process for it. A lot of why it's secretive, um one is really to protect the freedom of the cardinals, um to try to limit any kind of external influence on them. uh And in fact, my understanding is even in canon law in the Catholic Church, a cardinal who is like clearly influenced by say like their, their, their king or their president or whatever, uh, can be excommunicated, can be punished by the church for that. Um, because I mean, long ago there was a sort of de facto veto that Catholic monarchs could exercise on the election of a Pope. Um, and so this happened, the last time this happened was actually 1903. ah and I don't remember the name of the Cardinal, but there was a Cardinal who was like on the way to winning. uh And I want to say it was the emperor of Austria, but I might be wrong about that, who essentially said no to one of his cardinals who communicated that to everybody else. And then that guy was done. That guy didn't get elected. uh And the cardinal who was elected, who became Pius X, uh immediately made that an excommunicable offense. Did not want that to ever happen again. And there was a moment in the 1914 conclave where it was where they thought it was possible. uh The man who became Bank of 15th would be vetoed, but that didn't happen. You know, last question for you, and to be honest, I can keep talking to you, because what... One thing the audience doesn't know is like Josh and I run off a list of questions we generally send all of our guests just to make sure that we're kind of in sync. And I sent you a list of, I don't know, probably 20 questions or something. ah And we've only gotten to like two. Because all the things you're saying, I'm like, but I wonder about this. We haven't even gotten into exorcisms or anything like that. We're going to have to bring you back. But I want to ask you just something just kind of more personal because we do cover Christian nationalism. We do cover church state separation quite a bit. Currently in Washington state, there is a bill about having to have clergy members report like child abuse cases, even in like confidential religious confessions or whatnot. My general view is I'm for religious liberty, so I'm kind of of the view, let churches be churches. uh But I don't know much about confessions or the confidential agreement, so I don't really necessarily have a good opinion about this particular uh case. So if you can maybe just talk a little bit about. uh Talk about as much as you feel comfortable. You don't necessarily have get into the legalese of the church state constitutional sort of aspect, but just about what it would mean for a clergy member should this bill pass um there in Washington state. Sure. ah I mean, it would be a disaster in a real way. uh And so part of the theology and the spirituality behind confession in the Catholic Church ah is that the penitent, right, like the person coming for confession and has something to unburden themselves and does so in good faith. Like this is a genuine effort at, you know, like confessing one's sins and, you know, making penance and all that sort of thing. um And that the the priest who hears that confession is essentially a mediator Right is acting on behalf of Christ, right? And so for example, and this is like a kind of a technical thing The priest does not forgive the person who is saying their confession They'll say like they can absolve them, right? But it's really Christ who forgives our sins. Okay, and the the idea is this practice of confession is is utterly private. um The priest is under an obligation to reveal nothing of the confession to the point that um you could ask a priest did so and so go to confession and the priest can't even tell you that right like that like they can't even say so and so came to confession. Okay. And uh this is true regardless of the sins that are being confessed. uh It is regardless of the sort of potential imminence of those sorts of things. uh Now, the priest can absolutely counsel uh the penitent to come forward, to go to the police, to do that sort of thing. uh But number one, you can't make a person's confession dependent upon some other person. Okay. So for example, like if you went to confession and you were confessing you had an affair. The priest cannot require you as a fact of penance to then uh tell your wife that you had an affair. He can tell you you should really do that, but he can't make your absolution dependent on that, dependent on the person. And so. Or tell your husband, I should say. Or whatever it might be, yeah. So uh like that's, so that's, and that's long been a feature of our understanding of confession is that that like there's this sanctuary idea to it. Okay. If a bill in Washington or any of else were to compel priests to reveal what was told in confession. uh What I expect would happen is uh the vast majority, if not all priests, would refuse to do so uh and would pay fines, go to jail, whatever it would be. But I think that they would just refuse. uh I think the bishops of the church in the US would uh absolutely weigh in and try to push against it. I assume the bishops in Washington are already in Washington state are already trying to do that. I don't know a lot about this particular case. uh But yeah, it would be. uh I fully understand the desire that if you have, like if there's someone who knows something and there's a way that you can get them to tell you, I can understand the desire for that. ah But it's just simply contrary to the history of Catholic practice and thinking on this to allow for that. Yeah, yeah. it's such a tough, it's a tough issue to take a stern side on because on one side you are, like, what about the children? You know, but then you're like, well, what about your state separation? And it's, yeah, it's very difficult. And I appreciate you trying to help us, you know, better understand kind of the way that we view about this. But um yeah, so. What else are you working on? You're like a treasure trove of Catholic information. Are you writing this down in what they call books and selling them? You know, I will say it's been kind of an interesting couple of months. uh The like the communications office at my university, you know, when Pope Francis first fell ill several months ago, had said to me essentially like, can you be ready, you know, to talk to, you know, the news and everything else if something happens? I think all right. And so, you know, like I when Pope Francis died, I was that, you know, on all the local TV stations and everything else I've been doing podcasts, you know, through the conclave of the election in this. And so It's been a lot of fun for me to be able to talk about a lot of the sort of extra trivia that I think, you know, especially in like a long form like this, which I really appreciate you can get into. I'm going to be honest, like Channel 8 here in Tampa did not want, you know, my long excursus on anything. They wanted... They want sound bites. They want sound bites, you know, which I like, fair enough, right? That's, what they need. ah But I... So I have thought a lot about, you know, is there... like a good short book on the papacy, that would be a helpful thing for especially non-Catholics, something like that. So I've thought a little bit about that. uh The other thing I work on, and this is part of why I'm so interested in Leo in particular is, and you mentioned this in the intro, I have a lot of uh interests in theology and technology and artificial intelligence. And some of those are. you know, very sort of practical questions about teaching or about environmental impacts, those kinds of things. But also a lot of it is, you know, for me, sort of like speculative, you know, questions about like agency or consciousness or that sort of thing. Because we have all these debates about, know, like what is an AI actually reasoning or can it do things or whatever else? ah And I think it's a fantastic opportunity really for people to think about, well, what does it mean when humans have consciousness or agency or when we think about ourselves as persons? How can this technology, ah in a sense, mirror back to us our big, deep questions about ourselves? And so that's what I've been working on a bit. ah And then also just this larger question about uh theological engagement with public life and reflection on public life. uh And how is that being affected by, I mean, AI, but a lot of other digital things. so, you know, questions about like digital surveillance and big data, those kinds of things. uh I have a lot of questions about about that as well that I'm working on. So. That's really, really cool. Well, thanks. Thank you so much for coming by and speaking with us. He really, really appreciate it. This is great. Yeah, yeah. And if uh gosh, yeah, I will put oh links. Do you have links? You have like stuff that you want to direct traffic to. And this is kind of the part of the show where like, hey, like sell yourself my clicks. Yeah, I write a substack. ah And so the substack is, I think the website is stevenokey.substack.com, whatever that is. uh The title of it is uh Oke Doxy. ah So Oke Doxy, yeah. Working on a logo for that currently. uh Yeah, I write about theology and technology. uh I have a podcast where I interview theologians, you know, kind of inconsistently. But yeah, that's really where the place to find me. So. really, really cool. Well, we will make sure we put all those links in our our show notes and to our audience. Hey, thanks again for stopping by. Make sure you like subscribe to all that fun stuff. As Josh likes to say to hack the algorithm, although I don't really sure if that hacks the algorithm. I mean, have to eat quantity really is what you need. And we don't really we don't have that, but it doesn't matter. We do this because we like it. So. like and subscribe, if nothing else just to make us feel good. ah But thanks again for stopping by and as always keep your conversations not right or left but up and we'll see you next time. Take care.