Audio only:
Many of the faithful in the West are probably wondering whether or not Pope Leo is a liberal pope, given several recent headlines and the release of his first papal document Dilexi Te. Joe gives a thoughtful analysis on why this is the wrong way to look at it.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and Pope Leo just released his first magisterial document, Dielexi Te, an exhortation on Christian Love for the poor. It’s beautiful, rich, filled with quotations from scripture and from the church fathers. And honestly, the 2000 year history of the church is really brought out in a bold way. It’s also spiritually challenging for those of us who live in comfort and in luxury, but unfortunately it seems that many Catholics have greeted his exploitation with skepticism or outright rejection based on the belief the Pope can’t be trusted because he’s a liberal pope.
CLIP:
Now, I know a lot of you had high hopes for the new Pope after the incessant leftist activism of his predecessor, but I tried to warn you, Pope Leo is cut from the same cloth.
Joe:
This reaction isn’t totally surprising. For one thing by every metric, Americans live in a politically partisan age, and I think this is true throughout the West, we’re more likely to regard people from other political parties as immoral, dishonest, and close-minded people than we used to be. And we’re less likely to do things like marry someone from an opposing political party. So naturally, we in the West are absolutely primed to put one of the most influential figures in the world into this political paradigm to see if we can trust him or not. Now I get that that’s our first inclination, particularly in an age where trust in institutions is at the lowest it’s been in recent memory and we’ve just come out of a pontificate in which the Pope regularly opined on political issues in ways that were often controversial. But I do think it’s worth pausing for a moment, reconsidering the evidence and recalling church teaching because Jesus Christ doesn’t call us to be Republicans or Democrats or some other political party.
He calls us to be faithful servant to the Father. And I think Leo is doing the same thing. I don’t think he’s trying to get us to attach to a specific party affiliation. I think he’s calling us to be better disciples. By the way, if you’ll permit me to call your attention over shameless joe.com, we’d be grateful for your support. For as little as $5 a month, you can get access to exclusive q and a live streams. This new thing we’ve got called Joe Notes, which is a PDF digest of each episode covering the major points including a sheet of resources. You don’t have to go searching through the episode again before you share the faith with your loved ones. And additionally, your support is really important for this channel’s growth. Particularly many of you may know we’ve had technical issues lately. My producer is right now driving to Kansas City to help upgrade the studio and that wouldn’t be financially possible without all of my amazing patrons. So if you feel called to do so, please join over@shamelessjoe.com and just know your support really does make all the difference. Okay, so this idea of trying to peg the Pope as liberal or conservative or traditionalist has grown to such an extent that at the press conference announcing the release of the new document to Lexie Te, a Washington Post reporter asked Cardinal Cherney about it, to which he said,
CLIP:
I think as soon as you say a liberal pope, then we’re pulling the Pope and the ministry of Peter and his successors onto a very partial platform. It’s true. You can interpret these things from a political science or sociological point of view, and God bless you if you want to do that, but we can’t answer in those same terms and we shouldn’t. I’m sure that Pope Francis would be unhappy to be called a liberal pope, and I’m sure that Pope Leo would not enjoy the label either. And it doesn’t help. I mean, is the gospel liberal? Is the gospel liberal? I guess that’s my answer.
Joe:
I think that’s the right answer. The Pope isn’t trying to be a Democrat or a Republican. He’s not trying to be a political liberal or conservative. He’s trying to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ and to share the gospel in his fullness in his own words. He said recently,
CLIP:
I don’t plan to get involved in partisan politics. That’s not what the church is about. But I’m not afraid to raise issues that I think are real gospel issues that hopefully people on both sides of the aisle, as we say, will be able to listen to.
Joe:
And just as he is not tying the church to one political party, he’s also not trying to side with a particular faction within the church. Said he’s been very clear that he sees his role as building bridges and depolarizing the camps within the church. And he announced to the church and his inaugural masses pope that he would like that our first great desire be for a united church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes 11 for a reconciled world. That attitude is quite possibly what got him elected in the enclave. And it’s no wonder after all the church has been through years of nasty infighting during the Francis pontificate, rightly or wrongly, Pope Francis was viewed as being very political and his actions sometimes fed into this view. He seemed very willing to opine on controversial hot button questions. By the end of his pontificate, it was clear that the major tribes of the church had become more entrenched and more radicalized.
So this past May the world and the church was eagerly awaiting to see if the new Pope would be Francis II or John Paul III or Benedict XVII. But instead we got Leo the XIV. He took the name in honor of Pope Leo XIII because of his work in Catholic social teaching during the Industrial Revolution. And our current Leo sees a similar paradigm shifting technology emerging with ai, but our politically polarized brains don’t know where to categorize that or what to make of Pope Leo. So people will analyze even little details as proof that Pope Leo has unmasked himself as a secret conservative or a secret liberal or a secret traditionalist. Did he say the Latin mass when he was bishop in Peru? And according to which missile did he smile more during his meeting with Father James Martin or with JD Vance? And it’s in this context that there have been recently a series of back-to-back events which have caused people to conclude, I think incorrectly that the Pope is secretly or not so secretly a liberal.
The biggest evidence and in my view, the most obvious stumble in the Pope’s part occurred about two weeks ago after Cardinal Blase Cupich, which of Chicago announced plans to bestow a lifetime achievement award on Senator Dick Durbin, a pro-abortion politician. Now, that was obviously scandalous. It violated the CB’s policy that while shouldn’t cut off dialogue with those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles, we also shouldn’t bestow awards or special honors upon them. In fact, super’s own diocese of Chicago has that same official policy. Now several other bishops beginning with Senator Durbin’s own Bishop, Bishop Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois. These bishops denounced the move publicly. So as Pop Leo speaking with a group of English speaking reporters at Castel Gandolfo, somebody asked Pop Leo about this. Now to my mind, the most important part of the exchange is actually the very beginning.
CLIP:
Can I ask a question in English? Just a quick
One question in English. Thank
You. Thank you for speaking with us. I just wanted to ask one thing that has become a bit of a divisive subject in the US right now with Cardinal Cupich giving an award to Senator Durbin. Some people of faith are having a hard time with understanding this because he is pro or rather he’s for legalized abortion. How would you help people of faith right now decipher that feel about that and how do you feel about that?
I’m not terribly familiar with the particular case.
Joe:
As you can see from the clip, he doesn’t appear to be eager to answer the question. He was about to walk away before he, he’s asked for one more question and then it turns out to be on this very contentious topic and given how much Leo seems to have intentionally avoided public fights with other bishops, you can imagine why he might be reticent to suddenly be asked to speak publicly. So he sort of fumbles through an off the cuff answer.
CLIP:
I understand the difficulty and the tensions, but I think as I myself have spoken in the past, it’s important to look at many issues that are related to what is the teaching of the church. Someone who says, I’m against abortion but says I’m in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life. So someone who says that I’m against abortion, but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants who are in the United States. I don’t know if that’s pro-life.
Joe:
I understand why people didn’t like that answer. I don’t think it’s a great response, but I personally have had plenty of times where somebody has called into Catholic Answers and asked an unexpected question and I’ve given an answer that came off more jumbled than I intended. For what it’s worth, when asked to opine on US domestic politics a week later, I think it’s extremely telling that this is how it went.
CLIP:
Holy Father, president Trump has sent 400 National Guard troops to your city Chicago
Against. Yes, I prefer not to comment at this time about choices made political choices within the United States. Thank you
Joe:
Very much. So I do think it’s only fair to try to steal man what our Holy Father was trying to express. First notice that Leo never actually defends Cardinal Cupich’s plan. In fact, I haven’t heard a single other bishop defending the idea. But Leo’s style seems to be to quietly address problems away from the spotlight rather than calling people on the carpet in front of the international press. I think this is because he pays closer heed to Matthew 18 than many of us online do. So I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the very same day Senator Durbin suddenly announced that he was no longer going to be accepting the award. Second Leo never suggested that the death penalty was on par with abortion. I mentioned this because I’ve seen people claim that the Pope equated abortion in the death penalty and he simply did not.
Rather, he pointed out that being good on abortion but not other issues isn’t enough. I think there’s a better way of formulating what I think he’s trying to say by looking to what St. John Paul II said in his encyclical evangelism vitae on the gospel of life. Now, there JP two stress that amongst all of the crimes which can be committed against life, abortion is particularly serious and deplorable. But while abortion may be the worst offense against life, it’s not the only offense against life. JP two warned against an attitude of indifference towards society’s weakest members such as the elderly, the infirm, immigrants, and children. After all, think about it like this. Our love for the unborn is really another species of our love for the weak, the downtrodden and the vulnerable. Those we believe are the nearest to the Lord’s heart. Now, that doesn’t mean a nation can’t have an enforced sound immigration policies, but it does mean that we need to do so in a way that still treats immigrants as made in the image of God.
And similarly, JP two suggested that a culture of life would be more hesitant to have recourse to war, even just war, and would limit or even abolish the death penalty. So of course, it is outrageous to offer a lifetime achievement award to somebody who helps ensure the legality of killing children just because they happen to be good on issues like immigration. But as Catholics, we also have to remember that the creation of a culture of life is something bigger than just being right on the issue of abortion. That was the Durban controversy. The very next day Pop Leo found himself embroiled in a different controversy. Now, this time it wasn’t really over something he’d said, but what he did or where he was, and I’m honestly not sure this would’ve been a major controversy had it not followed immediately on the heels of the Durban comments. But Pope Leo was at a preplanned event in Rome about climate change, and while he was there, he blessed a block of ice and people were outraged and claimed that this was somehow pagan.
CLIP:
When we got the new Pope, I was really, really hoping that we would have something much better than Pope Francis and his disastrous reign over the Catholic church. And yet what we see there with that blessing, a block of ice that is a nod to the paganism of the environmental movement a hundred percent.
Joe:
But blessing a block of ice isn’t Pagan Christians have been blessing the goods of the earth for as long as there’s been Christianity. This is particularly true at the blessing of water. We find tullian talking about the blessing of the waters to be used before baptism as far back as about the year 200. Now, this Christian gesture doesn’t suddenly become pagan if the water happens to be frozen. And in this case, the Frozenness is intentional. This was a 20,000 year old block of ice from Greenland, which they watched melt into holy water, which of course symbolized climate change. But that I suspect is really at the heart of the bigger issue in countries like the US climate change, a heavenly partisan issue. We can see the stats showing about three quarters of Democrats believe climate change is a serious crisis compared to only about a quarter of Republicans.
But outside of the us, climate change isn’t an issue tied to one political party or another. Most Europeans, for instance, agree that it’s a serious problem even though people obviously disagree about what can and should be done about it. Now, hopefully, whatever your own views are on the ins and outs of climate change, we can at least recognize this isn’t about supporting one political party. And we can also hopefully recognize that if humans are destroying the earth, that’s a moral problem that the church should help us address. Particularly given that all the way back in Genesis, we find that one of our first duties is to be good stewards of God’s creation. So if we’re failing to do that, whether it’s by climate change or pollution or some other way, those are moral concerns that the church should speak out about. That doesn’t mean the church is going to have all the scientific solutions, but the church clearly does have a role to play in getting people to take ecological stewardship seriously.
And so that’s something we’ve seen several of the last Popes doing from St. Paul VI to St. John Paul II to Benedict vii, to Pope Francis. And I think that these dual controversies both overshadowed the release of deluxe te and also colored how people read it. It’s easy to kind of write it off. We should care for the poor as liberal plum. But the reality is it’s gospel truth. Jesus promises and warns us in Matthew 25 that whatever we do to the least of our brothers, we do to him. So service of the poor is literally inseparable from service to Christ. As Pope Leo points out in the document. For us Christians, the problem of the poor leads to the very heart of our faith since it’s in the poor, that we find the flesh of Jesus Christ. So caring for the poor isn’t an issue of left and right, it’s an issue of right and wrong.
That’s the message Jesus shows us in Lazarus and the Good Samaritan and throughout the New Testament. So before you go writing off to Lexie Te as some kind of liberal social justice agenda, I hope you’ll read it with an eye towards the gospel and towards our own final judgment. Now this Thursday I’m going to be offering my own deep dive into Lexie Te, where we’ll examine how caring for the poor is one of the central calls of the Christian life, how the document harkens back to the apocalypse and a lot more if it’s already released, you can click here to watch. But if you’re watching this before Thursday, you’ll instead see a video that further explains why I think Leo will be an awesome bridge builder. Either way, for Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer, God bless you.