Religion and Justice

Holy Troublemaker: The Jesuit Pope Who Challenged the Status Quo with Fr. Bruce Morrill

Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice Season 3 Episode 1

This episode was recorded in May 2025. We'll have Fr. Bruce back on the pod to discuss our new pope in the coming months! 

What makes a pope "Marxist"? Is challenging capitalism equivalent to embracing communism? Father Bruce Morrill, Jesuit priest and theological scholar, joins us for a fascinating exploration of Pope Francis's complex legacy and the radical vision that defined his papacy.

We begin with the surprising history of the Jesuits—known as the "Pope's Marines" and sometimes even associated with the devil in certain regions—and how this religious order's commitment to serving at the margins shaped Francis's worldview. Father Morrill illuminates Vatican II's transformative impact, explaining how this pivotal church council set the stage for liberation theology's emergence in Latin America amid military dictatorships and economic exploitation.

At the heart of our conversation is Pope Francis's critique of modern economics. While critics like Rush Limbaugh labeled him the "Marxist Pope," Francis's actual teachings reveal a more nuanced perspective. Rather than condemning capitalism by name, Francis focused on the consequences of what he called "an economy that kills"—a system that treats both people and the planet as disposable. His groundbreaking encyclicals Laudato Si' and Fratelli Tutti connected environmental degradation with social injustice and challenged fundamental assumptions about private property and the common good.

Father Morrill shares personal stories that illustrate how Pope Francis's teachings were received (and sometimes rejected) by American Catholics, revealing the tensions between papal teaching and cultural politics. For those seeking to understand how faith can inform responses to today's most pressing challenges—from climate change to economic inequality—this episode offers profound insights into a spiritual leader whose vision transcended traditional political categories.

What might it mean to hear "both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor"? Join us as we explore the enduring legacy of a pope who challenged us to reimagine our relationship with each other and with creation itself.

Welcome to "Religion and Justice," a podcast brought to you by the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt Divinity School.

We explore the intersections of class, religion, labor, and ecology, which bring together diverse populations and publics uncovering their implications for justice and solidarity

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Speaker 1:

You have to reach out to your friends who think they are making it good and get them to understand that they, as well as you and I, cannot be free in America or anywhere else where there is capitalism and imperialism, until we can get people to recognize that they themselves have to make the struggle and have to make the fight for freedom every day, in the year, every year, until they win it.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Welcome everyone to an incredibly special episode of Religion and Justice. This episode, in particular, goes out to Sherry Ann Wilson who is maybe the only Catholic, I think, that listens to the podcast, at least in terms of Gabby's metrics and we're going to be talking about today, someone that Rush Limbaugh referred to as the Marxist Pope, and we're going to be speaking about the Marxist Pope with our one and only Father, bruce Morrill. Welcome, thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, george and Gabby, and I think it's Mrs Wilson, so I'm just very grateful to have a conversation with you about our recently deceased Holy Father Pope.

Speaker 2:

Francis, thank you so much. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? You're a Jesuit priest, but you also have a bunch of other lovely titles behind your name.

Speaker 3:

Right, thank you, yes. So yeah, I'm a Jesuit priest. I joined the Society of Jesus our official name way back in olden times, 1982, a year after college Did the typical 10 years of formation. We go through philosophy, teaching theology, and on to the PhD at Emory. So I'm a Roman Catholic priest and, as well, I am a member of this religious order and we vow poverty, chastity and obedience into a communal life and with my final vows, even a special fourth vow, unique to us Jesuits, of obedience to the Pope for the purposes of mission. Ok, so, in other words, we'll go where nobody else wants to go, we'll go.

Speaker 3:

And in that spirit, I ended up in Tennessee, where there are no Jesuits, or were no Jesuits, or we're no Jesuits, and I was previously on the faculty of Boston College for 15 years, their theology department that's a Jesuit university. So you know, right in Jebel land and you know, with lots of Jesuits and all but, pope Benedict had been exhorting us back then in 2010, to not be complacent, and you Jesuits need to. You know, go out to the margins and the frontiers and don't be complacent. So when the possibility of taking the Catholic Studies chair at Vanderbilt University Divinity School came up, I asked my provincial like would you mission me to this? And he's like yep, that's what we're talking about and the rest is history, or at least a 14, coming up on a 14-year history.

Speaker 3:

So I teach at Vanderbilt University Divinity School in theology, constructive theology. My specialty is sacramental and liturgical theology, but as George knows from having taken a course with me, I also do my best to keep one oar in the water of political and liberation theologies and indeed my doctoral dissertation, 30 something 30 years ago, was at the intersection of political and liturgical theologies. Yeah, so that might do it. You know, pastoral ministry in greater Nashville. I serve three prisons, one each weekend, three of them kind of rotating. Yeah, that's about it.

Speaker 2:

Speaking of liberation theology, that's I mean well, taking a step back. Your background is always amazing to me. You served in Alaska too, right yeah?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I was right. After I graduated from Holy Cross. It's a Jesuit liberal arts college in Massachusetts.

Speaker 4:

Wow, that's such a soft spot for Holy Cross. I'm so sorry.

Speaker 3:

Oh, that's great. Yeah, I do too. Uh, but there is where I met the Jesuits. That's a Jesuit liberal arts college, uh, and I went. I joined the Jesuit volunteer corps in 1981, graduated.

Speaker 2:

Hey, I was going to do JVC for a while. I was signed up, I was getting ready to go, but then I fell in love with a woman and I left and followed her to North Carolina. I don't know if you know that story about me. I don't.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I still respect you, so the.

Speaker 2:

thing is I. That's what this episode is going to be like. That's what it's going to be like for the rest of the time. I've already feel it.

Speaker 4:

Just get comfortable, George.

Speaker 3:

So here's the story. So when I graduated from Holy Cross in 1981, I ended up taking the assignment in a Yupik Eskimo village at the mouth of the Yukon on the Bering Sea in Alaska with a classmate. It was an unusual placement of just two of us, a village of 650 people and I yeah, I did a very long winter there, october to June, and did my work, but also at that point discerned, applied and was accepted to the Jesuits. But from 19, excuse me, from shoot, I'll lose track around the year 2000 till 2019, I used to be able to go back out there for Christmas or Holy Week times to help out, as there aren't many priests left out in that very remote region. So quite a bit of experience with the Yupik people.

Speaker 2:

Now the longer name for the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus. But you also, you all, go by some other names and I was wondering if you could explain these George, Soldiers of Christ and foot soldiers of the church.

Speaker 4:

Come on, the church is big. Do you want to add a little bit?

Speaker 2:

more.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, those are kind of I don't think we're quite into that militaristic imagery anymore, yeah, but it was often called, yeah, the Pope's Marines, americans would say, or whatever. But it basically is because of that fourth vow. Like, if you just settle down and listen, I said we have a fourth vow of obedience to the Pope for purposes of mission, and so what gave us that title or that nickname was that we were willing to go where needed, and the great example of that there were seven founding Jesuits. Ignatius of Loyola was certainly the most famous and really the father at the center of it all, the mystic and a soldier. Yes, he was a soldier of fortune from the Basque country who in the early 1500s got his left knee shattered in a battle and in his long recuperation ended up having this I don't know, conversion is a tricky word but he opened up to and was reading a life of Christ and the saints and stuff and went in a whole different direction in life. So, yeah, maybe that feeds that old canard as well.

Speaker 3:

Soldiers of Christ or whatever, or the Pope, but the thing is Francis Xavier, for example, another guy from a different part of what's now Spain. He ended up spending once the Jesuits were established by Pope Paul III, spending the rest of his life in India, south Asia, over on the edge of Japan, but died off the coast of China hoping to get into China. Now, that's an example of this vow of obedience that that Pope said I really want us to start reaching into the whole Asiatic world, and I got nobody. And you guys got to send somebody, and the one that they thought would be better wasn't as in as good a help, and so Francis Xavier ended up being the one to go, and it's a touching story because he and Ignatius were very close friends, they were super duper best friends, and it was the letters that membership in the Society of Jesus exploded from seven to over a thousand within you know, seven or eight years.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, anyway. So it's that. Yeah, the Pope's shock troops, the whatever. But the key thing now we were also very involved in the Catholic Reformation, or you could call it the Counter-Reformation in the later 1500s, early 1600s, and were super papist loyalists. So that also probably fed that reputation, not only in what we now would call Central and Western Europe, but also in Eastern Europe, the Eastern countries. So can I?

Speaker 2:

give you a fun fact. I would damn it. I would love a fun fact.

Speaker 3:

All right, got to keep you happy.

Speaker 4:

Here's the thing, so he can beat you down again.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, I'll, yeah, just setting them up. You got my way. I work now, gabby, so it's so easy with George. Anyway, the thing is, my mother's parents were from the Carpathian Mountains, my grandmother's natal village Now in western Ukraine, my grandfather's southern Poland. They met in the States as immigrant teenagers. The rest is, you know, here I am who.

Speaker 3:

Really, she didn't know how to read the whole life. Anyway, she was very upset that I was becoming a Jesuit. In fact, at one point she said to me when my grandfather was out of earshot because he wouldn't have agreed. She leaned into me and said your grandfather and I never thought you'd come to this. Now, they were Orthodox, russian Orthodox. I only learned when I was doing my doctoral studies in at emory not that I was a history major right, but learned through a colleague who specialized in that whole thing, the whole reformations in the carpathian region, austria-hungary that the word, one of the words for devil in Carpatho-Rus is Jesuit. So then it all kind of made sense, you know. So I'm throwing shade all over my grandmother, who's long in the grave. May God bless her. I should do some respectful prayers now, not right now and uh, but I always kind of like the story. I got a kick out of it man, jesuit pr.

Speaker 2:

It's an uphill battle from though, because ed any like any movie with a catholic protagonist, or like you know what, like, it seems like they're always going to be a Jesuit, though.

Speaker 3:

We've got a certain cachet and the movie that came out when I was in junior high, I think the Exorcist, yeah, that might have also set the pace for that. I mean highly successful, kind of a groundbreaking movie in a lot of ways and what Hollywood was willing to do, right, but that's 50, geez, almost 55 years ago, I guess early 70s and anyway. But it was the Jesuit, is the figure, who's the exorcist. But also a certain Jesuit, now deceased, was the advisor throughout the process and they even slipped him in a cameo in the film. You know, not a big speaking part or anything.

Speaker 4:

But anyway, because each of the orders and the church have their own sort of like stereotypes as well, I'll I'll just show my hand. Jesuits are my favorite, but that's because I went to xavier university, where I was educated by jesuits. So, um, I drank, I drank the juice, I drank the jesuit juice, and I've never looked back.

Speaker 2:

Um, Jesuit Jews, and I've never looked back. We didn't just invite you here, though, for your expertise in Jesuit history or the ways in which Jesuits are akin to the devil in certain areas of the world, but it's also your expertise in liberation theology that I also kind of wanted to tease out just a little bit, because Pope Francis there's a kind of question, if he was, how much liberation theology had an influence with him, right, because there are some Marxist scholars who describe him, as you know, a non-Marxist, and he had a theology of the people rather than sort of the liberation theology, which is even sort of questionable, but he almost in some ways redeemed liberation theology in the Catholic Church a little bit. I mean, he met with Gustavo Gutierrez. In the research for the show I even found an image of Ivo Morales giving him a crucifix, and the crucifix is made out of a wooden hammer and then below it is a sickle, which I think is just spot on.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, francis's detractors, of whom there were many in the Roman Catholic Church itself, were very aware of that particular crucifix but would never mention it was you know he received it, as he received, just you know, endless gifts, right? But yeah, the relation with liberation theology, the story came through early, as he was named Pope and everyone was like like well, who's this? You know, francis uh had a challenging life as a young jesuit insofar as, not unlike myself, he was ordained a priest in his early 30s. Because if you enter in your early 20s and have to go through 10 to 14 years of formation, right, dot, dot, dot. But at that time, in the 1970s, uh uh, jesuit father, general Arrupe, was busy responding Vatican Council to the Great Council in the 1960s, which, among its many documents, was one that mandated all the religious orders and congregations to recover their primordial charisms, their original gifts like get radical, go to the roots. And so the way Arrupe led the Society of Jesus in of the middle 1970s is the promotion of faith, justice, and the promotion of justice which is inspired by the faith. To get this work, he had to appoint very young men to be provincial superiors. A province is a governing district of the Society of Jesus all around the world. There are loads of provinces right. So he taps someone. He taps Jose Mario Bergoglio, who's like at the time, 36, I think, or seven, to be the provincial superior of all the Jesuits in Argentina, and it's a six-year term, and Francis admits that it was pretty much a disaster. He was young, he was extremely defensive and insecure and it tapped into his way of being defensive and that was to be doctrinaire and rigid.

Speaker 3:

But part of that story is that liberation theology. We so often know of it here in the northern hemisphere, north America. We think of it in terms of you mentioned the author, gustavo Gutierrez, for example, from Peru. Think of it, I think, quite often in terms of those authors, right, those scholars. But liberation theology began from the grassroots right I don't speak Spanish, I'll butcher it, but la comunidad de base. So these grassroots communities that were being grown not only by Jesuit priests and brothers, but religious of many different congregations, franciscans and so forth, religious sisters, others, but religious of many different congregations, franciscans and so forth, religious sisters trying to help these people, as it were, peasants in all these Latin American, central and South American countries who are basically suffering extreme oppression and, as you may know and recall, the governments largely of Central and South America were military dictatorships, not all and not all the time right, but even in the cases where it was something more, openly elected and legitimately elected oligarchies, yes, and so liberation theology developed, you know, with this real idea of the gospel is for the freedom of people, liberation of people, and it was a grassroots thing.

Speaker 3:

Well, there were Jesuit priests who were working in these grassroots level ways in Argentina, and the Argentine government started arresting them and lots of other people involved. And you know, of course, argentina was infamous for the disappearing of people, and so there was a lot of controversy over whether or not young Bergoglio, the father provincial in Argentina, did as much as he could to protect his men, and especially in the case of two men, uh that were uh in prison for quite a while, they both survived that uh and um, he was exonerated. The press went after it. Of course, it's like great. You know, we've got a controversy that uh back in 2013, uh, about 40 years before um, but uh, he was cautious.

Speaker 3:

Well, I wanted to say and he was really exonerated about that that in fact, one of the men had already died an old age. The other was still alive and said no, no, no. He quietly did what he could, but people were very critical that he wasn't more vocal. And that's not an unusual problem in diplomacy. And that's about as much as I know about that, so I'll stop. But liberation theology. The other key thing is that I mentioned the Second Vatican Council and that ended.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, could you stop there for just a second? For those who don't know, when you say Vatican II, can you give like a Wikipedia like paragraph, like what, for those who don't know Vatican II? Can you give like a Wikipedia like paragraph like what, for those who don't know Vatican II, what that is?

Speaker 4:

Actually hold on. Before you do this, I have a quick anecdote from my time in seminary at Union Theological Seminary, wherein I was in my very first class, went straight from undergraduate to Union Theological Seminary Young, bright eyed undergraduate student. Basically, as you can see, I'm no longer that, but I was in union, first class interreligious engagement. It's time for the mid class break. Okay, first week meeting everyone in my cohort. I'm in a bathroom stall scrolling on my phone as one does, and I overhear, and this really defined my entire time at Union Theological Seminary I overhear. You know why do these professors keep bringing up Vatican II? It can't have been that important, right? And it was in that moment that I realized I was far more Catholic than I ever suspected, because the fire that lit inside of my body inside of that stall, I said that lit inside of my body, inside of that stall, I said how could you possibly undercut the importance of Vatican II? Even if you don't like it, it was very, very, very important. So I'm so sorry, but I had to get that out.

Speaker 2:

Aside from the digestive fire that was already erupting in you in that stall, you had a spiritual fire that was also Any Protestantism I was carrying into that stall left in the toilet and I walked out.

Speaker 4:

A Catholic once more, yeah.

Speaker 3:

There you go, Gabby. There is the great, you know evidence for how good it is for us to get out there and mix it up, you know, with all sorts of people Right, Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

In a bathroom stall, absolutely in a bathroom stall that right there all sorts of different people reminds me of that old joke, uh, in the south, where somebody walks in the bar and goes, what kind of music do you play here? And they go. Oh, we play all kinds of music. We play country and western, like all different kinds of people at Union Theological Seminary Christians, protestants and Christian Catholics. Oh very good. Oh, wow.

Speaker 3:

That's cute, Jordan. You got the joke now.

Speaker 4:

Thank you, I make some jokes, I just had to explain to my wife that who is cradle Catholic went to Catholic school from K all the way up through undergraduate, that Protestants often don't think that Catholics are Christian and that was news to her. I said what rock have you been living under? I said I got called fish eater in middle school. Come on.

Speaker 3:

Fish eater and to think that that stuff carries on. But it tells us a lot about religion. It tells us a lot that, you know, we highfalutin theologians, if we are, think that all this stuff's happening at the theoretical level and in fact it's what's passed on by word of mouth and so forth right, customs and of course anything that's controversial like that right, that's what people love, so that's a great lead-in to answer George's question about Vatican II.

Speaker 3:

That's a great lead in to answer George's question about Vatican II, because I mentioned, the answer I'm going to give is a little backwards. It would not get. It would get edited to the high heavens and Wikipedia. But I mentioned Vatican II a while ago and and mentioned that it had produced 16 documents. Documents, yes, those documents were to set the Roman Catholic Church on or reset the Roman Catholic Church on its journey. Call it a reset, okay.

Speaker 3:

And what it was was a meeting of all at the time, of all the bishops from around the globe, and it was convened by Pope John XXIII. It was a great surprise. Nobody expected this old guy they elected in 58 would do much of anything. They just wanted him to live a year or two while they get this other guy ready. And wow, he just goes for it. And so it met four autumns 62, 3, 4, and 5. And the bishops all would get in there in the St Peter's Basilica and they ultimately signed off on 16 documents, which is no small thing To do what John XXIII, the pope convening it, said we need to throw open the windows of the church and meet once again the world, and it's now a modern world?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, certainly by 1962. Hello, yes, good, good, better late than never, let's go. So the Holy Father called this. And the great thing about it, what was so radical, was that the officials in the Vatican like, ooh, I have a usual term for them, but I'm not going to do it. But these bishops and archbishops, cardinals and their cadres who run the Vatican said, oh gosh, ok, we'll make the old man happy, we'll do this. But Vatican I, which was a meeting in 1870, got cut off by a war. We need a constitution on the church. We'll do that and they'll all go home. And or they'll go home and we'll keep running everything here in Rome. And what happened was the bishop showed up and rejected everything that the Vatican cadre had prepared. They threw it all out. And that was this remarkable moment.

Speaker 3:

And now I was born in 59. So I wasn't aware of this in real time, right, but it was. It was really, george. I was a precocious kid, you know, at age three, I just wasn't up to speed. Ok, so anyway, the it was exciting. And reporting was constant. Leaking out of it was everywhere, it was a. And reporting was constant. Leaking out of it was everywhere, it was a big deal.

Speaker 3:

And so what Vatican II was? It's a long paragraph. You asked for one. We can call it, people call it a reforming council for the Roman Catholic Church. I'd rather translate the Latin words. That translated reform as restoring and renewing, and that's really how the fathers saw it.

Speaker 3:

And yeah, so among these 16 documents, they did a whole different constitution on the church, which is a high-level document of constitution. But they figured out very quickly they also wanted a pastoral constitution on the church. In other words, we're going to deal with these dogmatic questions, which has to do with really locked in and nailed down Catholic teaching. That's what dogma is. Doctrine is teaching in general, doctrina Latin teach. Dogma is like the ones that everybody's got to sign on to and it's not conditioned by time and culture. So there are levels of teachings in Roman Catholicism and a lot of them are precisely produced with the awareness that we humans may evolve and know more stuff, both historically and scientifically, such that there can be adjustments. Yes, but when it comes to dogmas, boom, you're locked in and there aren't a whole lot of them. So anyway, they said we need a pastoral constitution as well. We need to write a document that's going to inspire and set the course going forward in the conditions of the world, and it's called Gaudium et Spes, the joys and hopes Documents.

Speaker 3:

In the Roman system, the titles are the first couple words of the text. So the text begins the pastoral constitution on the church, the joys and hopes, the sorrows and griefs. There's a list of these contrasts the people of the world suffer and enjoy today. The church joins with them and it goes from there. And it included a lot of attention to things like war, the nuclear of course. The Cold War was raging, the nuclear threat of annihilation, so, and John XXIII actually issued an encyclical called pacham, and terrors, peace on earth, really taking on those things. But there was that. There was stuff about family life, the vocation of marriage. It was a real breakthrough that marriage is, um truly a vocation and that the couple, um are called and realize their salvation. That's how God's saving them.

Speaker 3:

That's how God is constructing Saving is such a weird word, right, but how God is making their life, the life God dreams for them. They do it with and for each other. And then so there was stuff on family, there was stuff on society, there was stuff on economics, there was all sorts of stuff in that document. And what happens? We go out of Vatican II. Four autumns, finishes in 65, 16 documents, really really tips out the apple cart. And kaboom, the dogmatic constitution on the church instituted that the bishops are not to be what they had been, what had devolved into their simply being branch managers of this multinational corporation in rome. And instead, um, to recover what a bishop was originally and remained to be an Eastern Orthodoxy hi, grandma. That bishops are the pastor with authority in their local church, their diocese, right? So Vatican II, the Constitution of the Church, said what we're going to do is we got the bishops reset up here. They should work in conferences, regional groups, so they can do better to help the church's mission in that distinct part of the world. So there's a bishop's conference, for example, of the US, because it's a big country, right. But in Latin America it's a bishop's conference for Central and South America, and then there are other ones, you know Asia Pacific, india, you name it.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so they hold their first meeting, the Latin American bishops, in the late 1960s. Council ends in 65. They hold their first meeting in 68. They produce a pretty radical document about this social justice that's needed and that the cry of the poor throughout Latin America is the cry of God's people and a cry to the church. And Gustavo Gutierrez was among the, as it were, ghost writers of the final document. Just as with Vatican II, so in these meetings bishops largely are administrators, politicians. I mean, they're more than that, but it's that type of personality usually who writes the documents.

Speaker 3:

Are there theologians? Yes, and so liberation theology was really getting I'm going to use this expression baked in to the mission of the official church by the late 1960s and was confirmed 10 years later. On a 10th anniversary of that groundbreaking meeting, they met in Pueblo, mexico, a second time and affirmed all of it and advanced it. And the last such meeting in relation to it was in a Paracita I think that's shoot. Parasita, I think that's shoot. I'm so ignorant I forget which country that is. But and that was in. So 78, that was more like toward the year 2000, the early 2000s. So liberation theology was not just some renegade thing on the margins of Latin American Christianity. It was now officially on the books, or a type of it. Now it wasn't called liberation theology, and here's your to call Francis or Bergoglio back then, a Marxist actually is not accurate right Now the people that hate him and the church and otherwise, you know, surprise name calling and stupidity.

Speaker 2:

Well, when Rush Limbaugh referred to Pope Francis as a Marxist pope, pope Francis said oh, I don't really see that as like a denigrating moniker. I find Marxists actually very lovely people.

Speaker 3:

Right, there we go and you're fixing up my story. Actually, I guess I tried to ignore that any of that happened, because I like to imagine, you know, rush limbaugh didn't exist or anything um, we all would like.

Speaker 3:

To imagine, I know, I know, but bless his heart, um so um. But the thing is, uh, right, it wasn't that bergoglio was a straight up like doctrinaire marxist, but the reason that the theology of liberation and the authors who wrote the books about it and so forth were branded as Marxist included that, indeed, a lot of the principles of Marxist philosophical analysis of the material conditions in Latin America and in the global picture, latin America really, as suffering, the larger global capitalist, you know, exploitation of the resources and so forth, right, um, certainly that's a part of it. And Gutierrez himself in his famous book, in his famous book the Theology of Liberation, addresses that. Yes, so, yeah, right, so Pope Francis once he was a bishop and later a cardinal by the early 2000s was really quite a leader among the Latin American bishops. He kind of emerged more and more and more, such that ultimately he became a pope, which was quite a surprise yeah, he was the first latino pope.

Speaker 2:

I mean he was, you know, first latino pope or first pope from the global south. I mean a lot of uh first jesuit pope.

Speaker 3:

Too might be the last, but first jesuit pope yeah, right, he was the first jesuit pope, oh yeah yeah, that actually reaches back to our earlier conversation about the jesuits being the, the shock troops of the Pope or whatever. Historically, such a meteoric rise for this group from the middle 1500s forward quest of upper class people in Europe, starting lots of schools and we ended up having a big influence through our alums and all that kind of stuff, a lot of power, not just ecclesial but social. Um, it actually got us suppressed for 50 something years from 1774 until do the math, 1820 something. Um, because especially the kings or the power figures of Spain and Portugal were furious that the Jesuits were protecting the indigenous people up above the Amazon into Paraguay to keep them from the slave trade. And that's another whole remarkable historical story of how they set up these entire separate settlements but also the influence in Europe. So the idea always was that there could never be a Jesuit Pope, that they already have too much influence anyway.

Speaker 3:

And the fact when I was driving in my car back from a meeting in Atlanta when the announcement came on NPR that white smoke had happened and all that and you know Sylvia Pagoli was telling what happened and said that he was an Argentinian cardinal archbishop and a Jesuit I said out loud in my car. That can't be right. Like you know, they're reporting on the fly, you know they'll get the facts straight. And I was like, oh, on the fly, you know they'll get the facts straight. And I was like oh, and my thought always in that moment and remained well, it's a sign that good, we aren't that powerful by worldly standards anymore. And they would elect a Jesuit, now one.

Speaker 3:

Here's a little trivia tidbit for you when a Jesuit accepts the direct request of the papacy to become a bishop, he must turn it down twice and only accept the request on the third try. And the idea is that we are to be humble In our constitution. We are never to ambition to any ecclesial office. You see, so it's this game. You know it's like no, and they're like, please, no, do it. Okay, yeah, but when a Jesuit becomes a bishop, technically, in a very, very technical canon law, which is to say Roman Catholic Church law way, he's not a Jesuit anymore, because his obedience, direct obedience, is no longer to the father general superior in Rome, it's to the bishop of Rome, the pope.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, go ahead. It just reminds me of, like the, the, the big class distinction in the military between enlisted and officers. Right, but like the jesuits are sort of like the enlist george, you're not helping us debunk the military myth.

Speaker 2:

I think it's incredibly accurate and I think you know it's uh, you know, but the enlisted, like they're not, they're not allowed to sort of be officers. Right, you have to like, you know you have to get out and then come back in commission, in as an officer, and even in the Marine Corps, right, if you speak within the Marine Corps, marine officers will describe themselves as officers. They won't describe themselves as Marinesines. They are officers of marines. But then the, the sort of general, like everybody else, will be like, oh, officers, enlisted, they're all marines, but they don't actually view themselves that way.

Speaker 2:

And it's similar to the jesuits again, like this sort of distinction between, like you're on the ground doing the work and then the leadership, sort of like you change or something changes. But but I also what I'm saying. But I want to get back to this, uh, this big shift that it seems like it happened between rat singer basically becoming the attack dog, like trying to basically squash liberation theology, if I'm understanding this right. And then you almost get this this person who is not liberation theology not technically, you know the moniker a Marxist pope is not accurate, but he's still like, like you said, sort of liberation theology is baked into his DNA in so much Like what the hell, how did?

Speaker 3:

that even happen, would you say, well, it was a great, great surprise. Right, and just to help people again with the context. Right, and just to help people again with the context. Joseph Ratzinger was a bishop, then archbishop and then cardinal, whom Pope John Paul II called from Munich to Rome in 1980. I think it's exactly 80, maybe 81, to run the doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Inquisition. But again, all those offices were revised in the wake of Vatican II.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I did not know that, by the way, so the doctrinal office, congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Speaker 3:

Ratzinger was a brilliant theologian young man who even helped to be an advisor at Vatican II fresh out of grad school I'll stop dropping other names who kind of mentored him, blah, blah, blah. But he was made a bishop eventually straight out of being a professor in Regensburg, et cetera. So John Paul II did not like liberation theology. Who's John Paul II? He's a Polish cardinal, archbishop Karol Wojtyla, who was elected Pope in 1978. And he was so I think it's fair to say.

Speaker 3:

The analysis is so he grew up in the whole bit behind the Iron Curtain. Yeah, so we have this very, very negative view of anything that had any tinges of Marxism or a kind of revolutionary, military revolutionary, which a lot of people on the ground level that were taken with and were practitioners, not theorists, of liberation theology in Latin America were also involved in guerrilla groups and other uprising groups trying to overthrow oligarchies and juntas and all that stuff. Right, and our tie to the military once more comes out that all that was going on in the 1970s and 80s, precisely in the last escalation of the Cold War.

Speaker 3:

Yeah so the Soviet Union was pouring tons of resources into little places like Nicaragua and El Salvador, wherever.

Speaker 2:

Well, actually, the United States, south Africa. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

I mean, actually the united states is who bankrolled the salvador and junta, um, um, so there's, but, but then the soviets did for the rebels, right. So, and that's the story actually. So it's the two superpowers really using these as oh shoot, I'm not gonna have the word, I want help me using them as actors or proxies, tools really of the conflict. So, john Paul II, this Polish guy, he sees it as in that term and he's also really concerned, unlike his predecessor, paul VI, who was elected during Vatican II because the old guy died, who was elected during Vatican II because the old guy died, who was more, who was very centrist and I don't want to, yeah, but John, not super heavy duty on stuff, but that it's so complicated. But John Paul II for sure is really into law and order, sees that the post-Vatican II church under Paul VI, whom he respected, but that Paul VI wasn't firm enough and far too much was getting out of hand in terms of order, government, doctrinal adherence, in other words, proper understanding. And so he gets a guy like this, joseph Ratzinger, who's brilliant and who became arch-conservative by the late 60s, to come mine the doctrinal shop. Part of that job for John Paul is, you know, basically police, if you will. It's a bit of a heavy bird.

Speaker 3:

But liberation theology and liberation theologians and they went after Ratzinger went after, for example, franciscan Leonardo Boff in Brazil and forced the Franciscans to not allow him to publish and teach and eventually even restrict his ministry, and so Boff left the Franciscans etc. That'd be an example. Gutierrez was under a cloud among some other guys but never really stomped out the way they did on Boff and a lot of that's political. He had done his grad studies up in France and it turned out one of Ratzinger's right-hand guys, next generation, younger like Gutierrez. They had been classmates studying. And here we go right, yeah, ratzinger was really hard on it. Pope John Paul II was pretty darn hard on liberation theology. It was only when Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI from 2005 through 2013. During those years, that right-hand man of his, a Cardinal Mueller from Germany, arranged for Gutierrez to come and have a visit with Ratzinger and Ratzinger of Pope Benedict XVI at that point.

Speaker 3:

And they did and had, you know, a very nice afternoon and dinner and you know the whole bit, a kind of rapprochement. I don't say rapprochement because it was never direct, but there you have it.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, that's this very strident history, that's this very strident history, yeah, and so this is where I'm kind of wanting to lead now, into Gabby's section, where we're going to get deeper into the sort of views of Pope Francis. But he had a deep aversion, it seems like, to capitalism, right, maybe not explicitly, but he would say things like you know a culture, you could say market logic. Yeah, he was not.

Speaker 4:

I think he would have probably been like well, I don't know if capitalism is the problem, I think it's the. I don't. He in my reading. And father, please you can just tell me if I'm an idiot, he would not. He didn't really like big, blanket statements. Like he wouldn't say, oh, capitalism is the evil. Like he wouldn't say, oh, capitalism is the evil.

Speaker 2:

He would say the way that the market uses and abuses human beings and larger creation is the evil, because anything can do that he wouldn't really like sort of. He wouldn't say capitalism per se right, but he would. But there are quotes where he would refer to things like the dung of the devil and he would be referring go ahead, sorry for other moral.

Speaker 3:

No, you're right, he loved to use those sharp phrases that would capture people Absolutely, which made him such a different Pope from his predecessor, who was a highly published academic theologian. Right A couple of things First of all, gabby, I could never call you an idiot.

Speaker 4:

You're a graduate of a Jesuit university, so thank you, I knew it was going to get me somewhere.

Speaker 3:

Just get your head square on your shoulders there and stop embarrassing us.

Speaker 2:

OK, gabby's getting some shit this time yes, so excited.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, but I'm catholic so I like it george, oh, you see.

Speaker 3:

Oh, you're supposed to say thank you, father. Thank you father, more please, um, so, um how many know how mary's father?

Speaker 3:

oh gosh, how many rosaries do you own? So the the thing is, um, the language you'll notice in his documents that he uses a lot has to do with globalism and has to do with what I think we would phrase more as the kind of the neoliberal paradigm that's basically undertaken Right. So there's one issue and he is very critical. He'll use the language economics or the market in a way in places, but the bigger issue for him is how that has taken the shape that it has in the global context and especially in oppressing the southern hemisphere. So in other words, the organs of power, which are financial power you know, I suppose that's a Marxist analysis.

Speaker 3:

I head for the base Right, like what's going on here, and then the governmental systems and everything that go with it in Europe and North America, especially the US right and certain wealthy countries in Europe. That's his big criticism. His criticism is this is in the language he used in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. He goes this is an economy that kills. Now, that's a strong statement and it's a sentence. It's like a six-word sentence and this economy kills, period.

Speaker 2:

Do you think he's just worried about using the word capitalism, Like you?

Speaker 3:

know, yeah, Gabby. What do you think?

Speaker 4:

I don't. I my reading of the pope and and I haven't read everything that he's written, because that's a lot, but of the ones that I have read, which are most of his encyclicals is that I think I read that there is a fear of him applying the cause to any just one thing, because if you just apply it to capitalism, there is an ability to reduce that to saying, oh well, the alternative to capitalism, let's say socialism, socialism must not kill, or socialism must be the better option or the less harmful option, and I think he would probably push back even against that and say actually any of it can kill what's, but what we're currently living in is killing.

Speaker 3:

That's exactly right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that he that last point he's trying to okay, you're exonerated that the particular circumstances in which the world finds itself. In his time and in his writing. You're exactly right, that's what he's addressing. And because a globalized, supposedly market-driven I mean, I'm not an economist, I try to read and be intelligent or informed, but, right, this is the framework in which we're existing. Right, we don't refer for multiple reasons, but among them we don't refer to the third world anymore, because the second world doesn't exist. That was the world behind the Iron Curtain, and what happened quickly, right, was markets and investors from the so-called West moved right into the Eastern European situation. Right, and then, what are you going to call the economic system operating in Russia? You got to help me. Actually, you guys are the ones who really know more than me. I mean, is it a capitalist system or is it like in China? Is it a state-controlled market system? Because that's certainly the thing right for China. But so, you see, I think you're right. You put it well, gabby that he's trying to describe something that, if you start to look at specific places and how the whole thing's working globally, he doesn't want to get it nailed into these either-or categories, and I did want to add just a quick point.

Speaker 3:

Historically, I mentioned Pope Paul VI. Okay, it's so hard. People should be taking notes and trying to keep track of all these popes. He was elected in the winter of 1963 or the spring when Pope John XXIII died between the first two sessions of Vatican II, and he's the guy they figured would be the next. Anyway, he issued a papal encyclical. An encyclical is the highest level of teaching authority from the papacy, so it's a big deal. Document he issued one in 1967, called first two words in Latin Populorum Progressio, the progress of people. In that document he severely criticized both the East and the West. He criticized both the Soviet bloc and China communist systems and he criticized the free market capitalism of the West, both and along um capitalism of the west, both and along, applying a lot of the same principles to both um. It's quite a sophisticated document. I'd be fascinated to who the who?

Speaker 3:

the authors were that, you know, worked it up for him. He immediately, as you might imagine, got no lack of from westerners, um, especially wealthy ones, and especially americans.

Speaker 4:

That'll be a theme.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, a whole mill of writing started coming out in their magazines of opinion and other places debunking what he'd written, branding him some kind of Marxist something or other. Again, that's not the language in the document. Again, he's criticizing both systems. As he sees, a lot of it is the economic and political fallout of the Enlightened. Let's read our Adorno, okay, and some other figures. So, paul VI, unfortunately his personality was one in which he would back down. There was a certain timidity, but that's enough of that story. But it's just to say that decades before Francis's Pope, a really bold document came out that in effect rejected the Soviet and Chinese communist systems and the Western systems, definitions of development and instead he wants development.

Speaker 2:

Was in scare quotes there with uh moral, sorry because there's a.

Speaker 3:

they each loaded it with certain meanings and purposes, practical agendas, right. But all that development, or saying we want to develop the undeveloped third world, was to really, I guess the language you want to use now it's popular to be colonized them more, or something like that, right, that's the language that tends to be used but basically to use and abuse continuously, right and so, or why have them develop into a system where you're always going to have a massive number of people at the bottom? And that was true, certainly in Maoist China at the bottom, and that was true certainly in Maoist China at the time. And we could do analysis with a Sino specialist right now about the current situation in China or in the Soviet bloc, right. So the criticism was across the board and I think there's something of that approach that we see carried out in Francis's own writing, approach that we see carried out in Francis's own writing. And in between, john Paul II, who had a 27-year papacy, issued not less than three encyclicals on human labor and human rights with regard to the economy and work.

Speaker 3:

And yeah, it's going to be people like we keep bringing back, you know the big mouth radio guy, rush Limbaugh and others who would say he's a Marxist pope and that kind of stuff. But there are also magazines like one called First Things. That's a Catholic arch conservative Catholic magazine of opinion. Some of whom were on it very early on would have been critics of Poplar and Progresso in the late 60s, though the magazine was established later. But who to this day? I mean a couple of really disheartening op-ed pieces written when the Pope died and then one by an American bishop on the day of the funeral.

Speaker 4:

It takes one's breath away. The Pope and the Vatican itself speak to the entire Catholic church and I think that often gets I mean, that's even the pushback. I think queer Catholics probably, like myself, probably have a little bit more understanding of the church structure, but I think queer people that exist outside of the framework of the church at this current time one of the critiques is that, you know, francis was friendly, but he wasn't progressive enough, he didn't push the church enough and, as a queer catholic myself, I I always say to them he was not just speaking to western catholics, he was speaking to all catholics, catholics that exist in countries where homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. To have the church extort certain things is to then potentially and likely place Catholics in a position of danger where the Pope is telling them that something is okay and the government that they're existing under is telling them that that is not okay.

Speaker 4:

And so I think that's often lost because Protestant denominations are not structured the same way the Catholic Church is, and they do have, I think, a little bit more freedom and flexibility in terms of how doctrine is developed and redeveloped and redeveloped, and they respond. The church itself does not. The big church does not respond quickly to societal change, which is, I guess, what brings me to Laudato Si, which I think was, honestly, from my recollection and I'm pretty young pretty well received considering. And so in Laudato Si, which is another encyclical that Pope Francis wrote for our audience who's not familiar, it's like the environmental encyclical, all about, uh, care and creation for the earth, he says what the hell is an encyclical okay, I already told you, george, you're not listening.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but I don't listen to you guys.

Speaker 3:

I need to be explicit, okay, um excuse me, gabby um, but you know, we gotta, we gotta have to help the protestants. Again, we do yeah, you know, bless his heart.

Speaker 2:

My pastor, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, he went to Union Theological. I mean, what do?

Speaker 3:

you want.

Speaker 3:

So, gabby, so love Union, theological Great scholars there and people. They even produce really good pastors and so forth. So yeah, and encyclical is a letter that is for the universal church, okay, it's going to be for the whole world round. So it's a letter or a document issued to the worldwide church by the pope that wants to lay out matters of belief or about belief, the doctrine, the teaching, okay, and it may address any number of types of things.

Speaker 3:

John Paul II, like I said, one of his earliest ones was Leiborne MacJerson's on human labor. The first one that had to do with labor was 1891, leo XIII, rerum Novarum, and really it was an encyclical written to support unionization and that was pretty radical in the late Gilded Industrial Age, right. So encyclicals are issued from the papacy at a level of everyone is to understand, learn, study and, as best they can, accept this teaching. But there are other things that come out, like an apostolic exhortation is another term, and those are usually written after a synod of bishops takes place and those are periodic and it's bishops from all over the world, but not all of them like a council, but select ones from all the parts of the earth, who address an issue.

Speaker 2:

It's just like a richer landscape for theological imagination and thinking than like a Protestant sola scriptura kind of world.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I think that's so fascinating to me. And the reason my Catholicism. Really. I don't know if I'm going over anytime soon, but I really appreciate it.

Speaker 3:

I think Shadi had a. I know lots of people do, yeah, so back to low-dose. See, I was just throwing for the people's knowledge 2015,. So it's, the 10th anniversary is next month.

Speaker 4:

I just wanted to. I actually went and got my copy. I wanted to read a brief quote. I always love encyclicals because, even if I don't like what they say, they're always really quotable, which I really appreciate from all the hands that have touched them.

Speaker 4:

He writes caring for ecosystems demands farsightedness, since no one is looking for quick and easy profit, is truly interested in their preservation, but the cost of the damage caused by such selfish lack of concern is much greater than the economic benefits to be obtained by such selfish lack of concern is much greater than the economic benefits to be obtained when certain species are destroyed or seriously harmed. The values involved are incalculable. We can be silent witnesses to terrible injustices if we think that we can obtain significant benefits by making the rest of humanity, present and future, pay the extremely high costs of environmental deterioration. And then he sort of goes into. I mean he just rips apart the concept of globalization and development, not because of those words themselves, but because of what they have done and what they are continuing to do.

Speaker 4:

He writes a few pages later. Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach. It must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. Obviously very uh. Embedded within that is that liberation theology base that he has from his oh, I kind of lost you there.

Speaker 2:

Gabby, for a second glitch. Yeah, hold on we'll. We'll wait for gabby to come back and then we'll.

Speaker 4:

Oh, gabby, there we are, yes when, when did, when did we, when did you?

Speaker 2:

lose, we lost uh did that come through?

Speaker 3:

oh sick, just about then you got okay, that's totally fine.

Speaker 4:

So my question is obviously you can see a lot of the tenets of the liberation theology in just those two sentences that I read to you all. What did Lodato see as a priest yourself, what did Lodato see mean for the church and what did it call the church to do in those, you know, in the moments immediately after it?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I would say. First of all, I just wanted to note Cry of the Earth and Cry of the Poor, just to tie back to something else, was the title of a very influential book by Leonardo Boff. A very influential book by Leonardo Boff. So the Pope is actually drawing on that in the. You know, without footnoting it, those of us in the game are like, oh cool. So the reception of it immediately in Roman Catholic diocese and parts of the world especially most threatened by the rising of seas and water levels and, more extreme, especially along the southern South Asian and Pacific Rim areas like that, but also sub-Saharan Africa which, as you know, has been undergoing severe droughts and so forth. So again in the parts of the world that are always getting their butt kicked by the global neoliberal economic system which, as don't you love his rhetoric, like he's just saying it's selfish sinfulness. You know that only looks for immediate gains. I mean, that's Pope Francis. You know his predecessors, like Paul VI and John Paul, would use much more elegant language. He just wants to like punch, right. He just wants to, wants it to catch. So it was very quickly adopted and significantly more broadly than just in Catholicism, right, and so it had a great influence over the ensuing years with regard to different world organizations dealing with climate change, and he did a follow up short, much, much, much shorter document called laudate deum, just before the paris climate summit, which was, uh, I think about two. How long ago was that? I lose track of time about two years ago, I don't know, 2022, maybe one, okay, but it had a huge influence, right, not just in Catholicism, but really across all sorts of people of goodwill and intention, already by 2015, been writing some of his own letters and statements concertedly about the crisis of global change, climate change and its human causes. So, yeah, now I have to tell you the encyclical was not popular among a lot of Catholics in the United States, shocker, no, yeah, and again, this really influences. Really influences, right, or? This helps us again, you'd mention gabby, rightly, and with your uh, queer, um, companions and friends and so forth that were disappointed with the pope not going as far as they thought he should. Um, he's. This document deals with the whole world. So it's it. It's very positively received by people that recognize and want to address human-caused factors for climate change and all of its perfidious results. You know, unbridled, uh, reneging on all sorts of commitments in that regard and environmental, you know, and and all of that right, drill, baby drill, and we shouldn't be trying to do electricity and all this kind of stuff. I can tell you. It's an anecdote, it's a story, it means a lot to me. I'm just going to own it.

Speaker 3:

But in 2015 I began helping, as it turned out, in a. I began helping, as it turned out, in a parish in Nashville. I don't have a parish, I'm a professor, but I help out if asked and they wanted help at this parish, which is one of the wealthiest in the Diocese of Nashville, and it was the first Sunday of Advent. So the beginning of the new church year in late November, early December, and the readings on the gospel of the first Sunday of Advent, whether from Matthew, mark or Luke, are the ones at the very end of the gospel, before the Passion, and they're about the end, and in Mark and Luke it's called the Lucan or the Markan Apocalypse.

Speaker 3:

Right, the teaching of Jesus is stars are falling from the sky, the earth is having earthquakes, there's upheaval, all this kind of stuff, right, sounds like the book of Revelation. It's a type of literature. That's the gospel passage I was to preach on in the lectionary that first Sunday of Advent in this posh parish, and so I've George knows I can't stand any romanticizing of any of this stuff and so I kind of just give the people a homily. You know probably a solid 12 minutes which they're pissed off at 10 minutes. You know it's gone long.

Speaker 4:

You lost him at 15.

Speaker 3:

But I gave him a homily in which I explained the literary form. I pointed out that Advent, for the first 17 days of Advent, is about the second coming of Christ, not sweet baby Jesus and all the ways we've made that a model, and you know what it is. And so these are. You know this is what we got, and so I explained that in Luke's gospel and in all the apocalyptic literature that is highly symbolic language. They don't mean literally what biblical fundamentalists think. It means, right, that for that literature, the stars are just what we mean by stars the important people, the beautiful people, the power people are falling from their heavens and people can start to understand that if you that's how I preached it, right, like you get people to understand, and as I went along and talked about this and that the horrible ecological stuff described I know from doing a lot of reading on scholarship on the book of Revelation isn't predicting the future. The people would have heard it as that's what's going on right now. Rome raped any place they went, raped the earth, and if that's a violent, I apologize, but I do think it's a good metaphor. You aren't going to find the cedars of Lebanon in Lebanon, much today, you know, because that's great wood for ships and they just deracinated, defoliated. Lebanon, for example, polluted the water. So all those descriptions aren't about stuff that's. It's stuff that's already happening.

Speaker 3:

Last step of the homily, I quoted two passages from Laudato Si. I said now the Holy Father's issued an encyclical on the ecology and so forth, and that's how I wrapped it up and, you know, exhorted everyone to read the encyclical and to see, as with the people 1950 years ago living in degradation, this is what we got. And now the gospel passage from luke isn't just some weird piece of shit. After the mass, I'm standing in the door. You know, very catholic american thing, you know. Stand on the door and people come out. You know, a lot of catholics don't even give you eye contact, they just walk by you. Um, other people thank you for anything. And then this guy I'm a little guy, I'm five, six this guy, who's like probably 5'11", looms over me, shakes my hand and he goes, father you know who are you.

Speaker 3:

I never knew you. And so I told him. I said, well, I think I've mentioned but, and he said and he wouldn't let go of my hand and he kept gripping it hard, he goes. I got a lot of problems with what you just did in there. I said, well, first of all, let go of my hand. And I just stopped there and stared at him. And so he told me he didn't appreciate my bringing my left-wing politics into the church. And I said what was left-wing politics about it? And he said when you started talking about the environment, I said I was quoting a papal encyclical, mr, I didn't say Mr Campbell, I said I was quoting the Pope of Rome in his encyclical, which is the highest level of teaching authority in the papacy for the church.

Speaker 3:

I might as well have said that to him. You know Slavic, nothing going in right. And I said to him and he had some rebuttal I said no, no. I said I need you to hear me. You have to acknowledge what I said. I said I'm not just bringing in my stuff. I said I worked hard on that and I was giving you stuff from the Bishop of Rome. And so he stormed away and he started coming at me with some other angle. I said look, I said there's no point in continuing. I said you're you're not hearing me and I'm. I really do not agree with you. Let's go Like thank you, good day. Of course all the other people just walking by, right, and as he walked away down the front steps, right out toward the curb, he turned over his shoulder and boomed out. I mean really yelled you're not welcome here and you better not come back American Catholics.

Speaker 2:

Ladies and gentlemen, oh that's.

Speaker 4:

I mean, the West itself is not good at taking critiques, period. I think, just our discussion of the Western response to encyclicals. But I do think that there's a larger threat of Catholics and this might just be me being optimistic, but I do think that there's a larger threat of Catholics and this might just be me being optimistic, but I do think there's a larger threat of Catholics that are pretty chill in terms of even listening to, maybe, beliefs that they may not agree with during a homily. I just sorry this has nothing to do with Laudato Si. I just really resonated with that because being able to say that Pope Francis said this, this and this, or for the past gosh 12 years, has been so empowering for so many groups.

Speaker 4:

I mean queer people, the eco-justice movement, for example, being able to rely on that in Catholic circles. I think it means more to us who understand the structure of the church. But then you have folks like that where if they don't like something they hear, they're just going to toss it out the window and not even really engage with it. But you mentioned earlier that Laudato Si' meant a lot to even areas outside of the Catholic church. I know there, I know a few churches and parishes that have, like they describe themselves as eco-parishes. Now they do like carbon audits. There's a big youth-led movement for Laudato Si and even, like parishes and dioceses, have organized action plans to align themselves better with the teachings of Laudato Si. Do you envision this sort of movement itself being carried forward, regardless of who the next pope is?

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much for describing all that, gabby. And to answer your question directly, yes, it has a momentum of its own Generation. Your generation, the generation younger than you, are especially engaged in this, but not exclusively people, even old people like me in their 60s and older, very, very concerned. So yeah, it was very self-indulgent to tell my story about that guy, but it was a representative story of a significant number of people who in our country do reject, and selectively reject, right? But yes, and you know, the National Catholic Reporter is an independent newspaper which now is like everything else, like a site that puts up new articles daily.

Speaker 3:

This week there's an article by a young man who graduated from Vanderbilt Divinity School about five, six years ago and the title of the article is Laudato Si made me a Catholic and he'd grown up Southern Baptist, went to William and Mary where he first encountered Catholicism a bit, but the way he encountered it was Laudato Si, and I forget the details in the article how he got his.

Speaker 3:

I guess he was involved in eco stuff at William and Mary and so forth and when he came to Vanderbilt Divinity he became more and more interested. A couple of years after graduating a few years ago he did become a Roman Catholic and he said it wasn't anything ever expected growing up in a super steep, small Georgia Baptist world. But I think it's some of what even George was saying briefly there a while ago. People that are thinking people and have a historical consciousness can recognize that these documents are not just off-the-cuff diatribes. Right, they're not op-eds. They typically can have 200 footnote and they're encyclopedic that way. But yes, the people being taken with Laudato Si, catholic parishes, as you mentioned I know of some who've gone and done solar panels, all sorts of stuff Loads of Catholic parishes have twinned ever since the 1970s and 80s with a parish in the US, twins with a parish in Haiti or some other Caribbean or Latin American country, not only to give financial help but to do exchanges, cultural exchanges and travel, and the eco thing has certainly become an integral part of it.

Speaker 2:

It reminds me too of, like you know, wendell and Cook. We describe it as the things that are extractive and oppressive to labor and humanity are the same forces that are extractive and oppressive to labor and humanity are the same forces that are extractive and oppressive to the earth. And you know, quoting Boff here again, like the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, like linking those two struggles together is fascinating to me. But I almost like want to double down a little bit on what Gabby said at the end of the question too, which was how much do you think this eco-Catholic kind of position is going to continue forward, regardless of who the next Pope is? Does this kind of American Catholicism that's sort of like I'm going to take a scalpel know scalpel to whatever I feel like when it comes to stuff coming out of the Vatican that cuts both ways too, right? So is there going to be? Do you think that is going to survive with whatever you know, whatever comes after the white smoke, right?

Speaker 3:

Yes, yes absolutely it will, and you did a good summary there of Laudato Si' itself. Thanks, george. That was a very good rehearsal of the point Gabby presented and you repeated, looping back around after all my words, what do you like to call is throw away society? So, just as we throw away people and that, I suppose, can sound very Marxist again that you use, you control the means of production and you treat people simply as tools in it and discard them. He said that's the same attitude that is pillaging the natural environment, and so, exactly right.

Speaker 3:

I can see evidence in all directions that people that are deeply committed to this Catholics, for example, are deeply committed to environmental justice is a phrase we like to use aren't going to let up. And just as under a much more, a much more pastoral and pastorally liberal papacy, the people that really there's no other word to use it if you read the stuff they write that hated this pope, were able to carry on their agendas. Likewise, folks committed to this, like that former Vanderbilt Divinity student who now teaches STEM in a high school uh, backup at Virginia. You know it's integral to how he teaches he says um, uh, in the school Uh, I forget if it's public or private school.

Speaker 4:

Uh, so yeah, no, I think it's just like, just like this BDS student who ended up converting to Catholicism because of something that um, as that parish member that you just spoke about would have described as left wing or leftist, or you that um, as that parish member that, uh, you just spoke about, would have described as left wing or leftist or you know whatever something he disagreed with. There's also been a large influx in um conversions from evangelical, far right Protestant, uh, coming into the church too, and that's also changing. Um, that's also changing the makeup of the church and how we interact with each other. Um, I know, as a cradle catholic, I've got a superiority complex that, on a good day, I should be cut off at the knees for, but that cradle catholicism also gives me an immense amount of guilt and shame that polices me every day, um, which I I enjoy, I like it, um, but I think the makeup of the catholic Church is changing so much, and a lot of the conversions came almost as a result of people rejecting Pope Francis and saying, you know, holding on to structure, holding on to order, holding on to what they knew, and started maybe saying things in plainer English and saying things in a much more, as Father Morrill said, just sort of hitting you with it.

Speaker 4:

Not, you know, he's going to cut to the chase, he's going to get to the heart of the matter, and so that's also changing the makeup of this too. So it's not always, and Pope Francis always used to say, the church has to be universal, which is a very nice way of saying you got to figure out how to get along, and also we have to do all of these things. And Catholic social teaching is also a big eco. Environmental justice in the church, I think, has primarily always been a really easy quotes, easy push because of Catholic social teaching and because of the churches. We want it, even historically speaking.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, it's true. Just to add a few details to your good description there. Francis, one of the criticisms from people that wanted a more progressive papacy said well, he didn't change any particular doctrines, teachings or polity, and that's it's true. His approach was much more. The key thing for him was, as I mentioned quite a while ago, the real life person in front of you, or the real life social circumstances in which you are, and that the teaching. There's a whole principle of subsidiarity in Roman Catholic doctrine and polity, and the principle of subsidiarity is whatever can be handled at the most local level should be handled there. Now, the recovery of that again post-Vatican II now everybody knows what that means when I say it again has been an uneven reception, right that for people, when they want, whether from one or other extreme of agendas, want this something to be imposed universally, in a certain way they get upset, whereas what Francis was up to was how does it work in a particular scene and circumstance? You attend to the actual, and if I give you an example, I think would be a good one.

Speaker 3:

Back to the issue of homosexuality. As you mentioned, gabby, there are numerous countries in the Southern Hemisphere I don't know how many but not insignificant, where to be caught in? Homosexual, they would say, activity is punishable even by death. Well, this Pope Francis explicitly, more than once, several times, condemned this in his writings. First of all, he was the one who took John Paul's very diplomatic language in an encyclical that said, under current circumstances, it's hard to imagine that the death penalty should be used by anybodyical. That said, under current circumstances, it's hard to imagine that the death penalty should be used by anybody. Francis simply said the death penalty is intrinsically evil and inexcusable.

Speaker 3:

Now, and the now meaning we have ways of protecting society from anybody who's a pathological killer or person that you know, person that would do great harm. The only justification for capital punishment was the protection of the social body. It's not to punish like that. You're going to punish by killing. The only justification was to protect society from someone. Well, the point John Paul made in the 1990s was look at the sophistication of our prisons. You don't you know, if people escape prison, usually they're not in a maximum security level, prison Right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Now with homosexuality. So he was condemning. He would even point out, francis, that, hey, this includes for homosexual people. You can't justify killing them and you should get those laws off your books. That's a pretty radical thing in some sub-Saharan African countries, right. On the other hand, he clearly was fine with the current director of the Doctrine of Faith office putting out a short instruction two Decembers ago saying that priests, deacons, bishops can impart individual blessings on spontaneous occasions to people in homosexual committed relationships. Right, there's a big blow up, you see People loving it, people saying it doesn't go far enough, and then people that are flipping out and hating it. People say it doesn't go far enough and then people are flipping out and hating it.

Speaker 3:

But the bishop cardinal in Congo, kinshasa, closest to Francis, one of his close advisors got back to him and said we want you to know publicly that we're not going to do that and that doesn't apply here. And Francis said to him fine, you're in a different set of circumstances there, him. Fine, you're in a different set of circumstances there. Work on it in whatever way you can. That doesn't cause a kind of social unrest that would cause more violence. That was the issue as I read about it. So that's an example of, well, there can be a universal kind of instruction. Now, that wasn't an encyclical, that wasn't you know what I'm saying. It wasn't even issued by the papacy, it was issued by another artist, local circumstances and conditions that, let's face it, that's the truest meaning of the word politics. You've got to figure out what is the doable in the Roman Catholic language, for the common good, here and now. That could change going forward. But right now, how do we do it? And that's the whole notion in Catholicism, also the development of doctrine. Why? Because bedrock belief, of course.

Speaker 3:

Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, brilliant theologian, wrote it up best that bedrock to Roman Catholic belief is that the God who's saving us, redeeming us, delivering us, is the same God who created us. This is a big deal actually. Therefore, god works through our humanness, which includes our politics and our interpersonal relationships, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and. So it's that whole. To put it pithily, that grace builds on nature. And Rahner, a great theologian of the 20th century, said let's even put it better than that that grace pervades nature. And then there are explicit ways that grace, grace just means gifts of God, gratia, god's graciousness towards humanity in the whole creation comes through and in creation and humanity and because we evolve, and John Paul II made that clear in one of his letters.

Speaker 3:

Believing in evolutionary theory about how creatures have evolved on the earth, he said, does not conflict with the mythology of the first book of Genesis. That didn't get a whole lot of press. I think it's a rather significant point against fundamentalists, right? He said those stories serve this purpose. Scientific theory serves this purpose and we don't. Biblical fundamentalism is bullshit, you heard it here first folks.

Speaker 2:

Biblical fundamentalism.

Speaker 4:

I want to pivot to for telling Tutti here, just because it is my favorite of Pope Francis's encyclicals. Before we wrap up here, I'm going to read another excerpt, because you can't stop me. Pope Francis writes there's a growing loss of the sense of history, which leads to even further breakup. And he's talking about just sort of the globe. A kind of deconstructionism whereby human freedom claims to create everything starting from zero, is making headway in today's culture. The one thing it leaves in its wake is the drive to limitless consumption and expressions of empty individualism. Then he continues on these are new forms of cultural colonization.

Speaker 4:

Let us not forget that peoples that abandon their tradition and, either from the craze to mimic others or to foment violence, or from unpardonable negligence or apathy, allow others to rob their very soul, end up losing not only their spiritual identity, but also their moral consistency and, in the end, their intellectual, economic and political. One effective way to weaken historical consciousness, critical thinking, the struggle for justice and the processes of integration is to empty great words of their meaning or to manipulate them. Nowadays, what do certain words like democracy, freedom, justice or unity really mean? They've been bent and shaped to serve as tools for domination, as meaningless tags that can be used to justify any action. And then, just as a final note, he then continues some parts of our human family, it appears, can be readily sacrificed for the sake of others considered worthy of a carefree existence.

Speaker 4:

I mean, geez wow, fratelli Tutti, huge, not as huge as Lodalto C. I think that's an injustice to Fratelli Tutti, but he really. I mean, the theme of the document is to emphasize this universal fraternity, to emphasize social friendship, to emphasize that we belong to one another and that I think at the beginning he uses the Cain and Abel. He eventually relies on Good Samaritan, primarily throughout it, but he also makes mention of Cain and Abel, which I love, but that we are each other's keepers and that we belong to each other just like we belong to the earth. How does this encyclical expand on traditional Catholic social teaching? And then, what theological foundations really supported the vision for him writing and releasing this encyclical? I know those are two really small questions, so have at it.

Speaker 3:

I'll try not to go too long on it. First of all, you've been helpful, gabby, in pointing out that Fratelli Tutti is an encyclical. I mentioned earlier Evangelii Gaudium, which was an apostolic exhortation or a lesser document in these gradations, but it really fed what you're describing there, that Fratelli Tutti. A few years later he's clearly been working and reworking and sharpening how to state this. It builds on I mentioned John Paul II, that fantasy from 78 to 2005, having done something like 16 encyclicals I forget the exact number, might be more, but when he uses the Canaan-Abel story, for example, john Paul made that the bedrock biblical story for one of his moral theology encyclicals, or moral theology slash, social ethics encyclicals. So very often there's going to be that kind of building Again and Fratelli Tutti has found a way to build on papalorum progressio and build on a hundred years plus of papal encyclicals dealing with social, what we'd say social justice, starting with that one in 1891 about human labor. Very often they're issued even on anniversaries of prior encyclicals. So I guess the short answer because that passage I don't know how it works in podcasts, I really don't but whether the reference can be given to people but that particular paragraph or article within the document. You've identified a key one that grasps it. But it builds on what we find in prior encyclicals and other documents as well, and he'll even quote the US Catholic bishops in 1986 issued a pastoral letter entitled Economic Justice for All, and other bishops' conferences in other parts of the world have done similar work, and so he'll draw on a lot of that wider if you go through all the footnotes world.

Speaker 3:

But there you have it right. I mean he names a kind of vapid individualism and imitantism, meaning the imminent, whatever satisfies me right now, or my immediate circle or whatever. But that individualism and that denial of history right, that's a very convenient thing to do and the denial of the social fabric, so to reduce Christianity, for example, just to individual moral failings, that that's what ethics and morality is about. And he's standing on the shoulders of his predecessors. No again, we've been created as social beings. We've been created as the way humans are are social, therefore political, therefore economic, therefore educational, therefore familial, and that all of these are of a piece. And that's why that's such a powerful encyclical, as you pointed out, pulling all those together and saying these things are not unrelated. But if we look at, he doesn't use the language. It's what I prefer.

Speaker 4:

If we look at how global neoliberalism is functioning, prioritizing and valorizing the individual consumer as a standard and answerable only to themselves, that's how we've gotten where we've gotten Exactly in me is saying well, there's a lack of discernment, there's no thought before, there's no reflection, there's no what is going to be? I would even probably wager against saying the greatest good, because that's already been weaponized against.

Speaker 3:

You're paraphrasing the very good, the very passage that you read where he's saying it. You've just described the kind of vapid or shallow or I don't know what individualism that, at the end of the day, doesn't really satisfy people, right? You move from one thrill to the next. That's what a consumer culture is based on, anyway. Right? As soon as you buy it, you have buyer's remorse and even the way the media operates.

Speaker 3:

It's always about predicting the future, what you need to know about, right? So they're all flipped out now about this conclave, right? You see how quickly it pivots from any consideration of what his papacy was. It's only considered to the extent that they want to predict who's going to buck it or who's going to continue it. The whole news cycle is based on instant stories that are salacious or exciting and otherwise predicting, predicting, predicting. And as soon as the event has passed, it's just forgotten. That's what I read when I read, you know, the denial of history. You just forget about it and it's all about what's the next thing.

Speaker 3:

Well, it's just like consuming and marketing. I mean, I have a four-year car, car, I love it, this little toyota corolla, and I get these constant emails from the dealership we want to buy your car because I don't use it much. I live two miles from my office. It's great, you know, but they see there's be a great car to resell, okay, with low mileage and everything, and it's a great. I think cor is a great car, um, but they want me to buy it.

Speaker 3:

I don't want another car, you know, last one lasted me 10 years. It's fine, but that's so countercultural, right, right. Why would you not want to just keep getting the latest, whatever? But it's always about this, this unanchored and ungrounded yeah, lurching forward all the time, more, more, more, rather than you like. When I think back to my Slavic grandmother and grandfather, who gardened into their 80s, right, like they had this whole way of living from the peasant life that they always had had, even in the States. But they didn't. In fact they weren't even interested. They were upset when my parents gave them a colored TV for Christmas one year.

Speaker 4:

Wow, I think we might have had the same grandparents.

Speaker 3:

There you go. Because my grandma was.

Speaker 4:

I mean, she refused to have a mobile phone, she had a landline. I had to call her on the landline once a month if I wanted to talk to Donna, which I did. She just, I mean, gardened well into her eighties, gardened until she died, but everything was slow, there was no rush, there was no. Oh, I have to know this. They would play Jeopardy every night on the TV while they, while they ate dinner.

Speaker 3:

They enforced no phones in the house.

Speaker 4:

They said no mobile phones in the house. You're going to be present with us, and it wasn't about selfishness. It was about teaching their kids and their grandkids to slow down and to connect with the people that were there, which I thought was archaic as a child, and as an adult, I still crave my grandmother's living room where there were no phones allowed, and she would shame you if you had it out.

Speaker 3:

But you know, even what you just described, that is a life also that has its own anticipations, but the anticipations are seasonal, and so life is shaped much more around the agricultural cycle, right, which is very Laudato Si stuff, quite frankly, but it's shaped by the agricultural cycle. Now, a lot of people can't live in that, given their, where they live, right, their urban life or whatever. But the point would be, it's a life that's shaped by holidays that aren't just you know the stupid ass. Christmas trees go up in the September, and I really am a horrible Grinch, and but it's because I love that stuff. But you know, for us this went up with the Oantiphons on the 18th of December and it stayed up till the 6th of January. You celebrated a full season of Christmas. Look at the difference Christmas is over, I discovered here in Tennessee, when you go to bed on the 24th.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And I didn't understand that. I was invited for Christmas dinner my first year by a nice young man and he said you haven't got anybody. I said great, what time. Two o'clock, great. And on the 24th at about 2.30, I geta call from like where are you going to come? I'm like yeah, tomorrow, no, it's right now.

Speaker 3:

I said but it's not Christmas tomorrow. No, this is it. But the point would be it's, you know, whereas your grandmother's life, my grandparents life, governed by the reason of the market and the reason of technology, is that time has flattened out and all time is, he says, this oppressive continuum that is only relieved by the next purchase, by the next excitement, which goes like a flash. And instead he says what we need to recover is the wisdom of time that's grounded in the past, hopes for a future, lives, a present, you see, and it's shaped by customs, etc. And so there was a lot of anticipating, but it wasn't market anticipation was oh great.

Speaker 3:

My grandparents, see, they were Orthodox, so Easter was the big deal, christmas was quite minor, but Easter, kaboom, right, and just the anticipation of it. And they went totally vegan during Lent and everything. As one of their great theologians, russian Orthodox, and everything. As one of their great theologians, russian Orthodox, american Orthodox theologian wrote you can only feast, well, if you've fasted. All we do is feast.

Speaker 3:

When I lived in the Jesuit community at Boston College, I mean the table was really wealthy every night. I mean it was a standard of living that some of us would have preferred a more simple. You know blah, blah, blah. But the thing was, when we get to what was called a first class feast, like Easter or St Ignatius Day, the food was. The food every day was so high level that what changed it was the white tablecloths and napkins came out. But you know what I'm saying, and it wasn't a whole lot of fasting in Lent and the point would would be I'm with you. Uh, that's the kind of stuff the pope's writing about for telly tutti in different ways, but he wrote it well that, such that we're riffing off it this way well, I think.

Speaker 4:

I think it's also about connection. Right like the market that's selling us things that they could call it, um, they try to sell a social connection. I think they've tried to make it into a data point or something for them to track, but, at the end of the day, they can't commodify what I had in my grandmother's living room or what you experienced with your, with your grandparents, um, that you can't commodify it. It's it's human beings connecting with each other and, through each other, connecting with the earth. I mean, her teaching me to garden is still her teaching me to sew, even. I mean that's. You know, my favorite place to hang out with her was in her sewing room, where she would work all day, and when she wasn't there, she was, you know, on a very old knee pad that definitely should have been replaced in the garden, and that was how she spent her day, and there was no rush to get anywhere. She drove the speed limit, not because she was safe, but because she said, I'm in no rush.

Speaker 2:

I'm in no rush. Can I jump in real quick? It's interesting. I can't believe that we've had two guests on already that just shit-talked Christmas I don't know how much, but it's like Jorg was on here and was like Christmas is more about hanging out than hanging out with your stupid family, or something like that. Do you remember, Gabby, what he said? Like something along those lines.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, he was. I think he also dogged on, like you, setting up your stupid nativities, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but he said something about family too. Yeah, yeah yeah, and now we have Father Moral going like your stupid ass Christmas tree that you set up I just in september.

Speaker 3:

I love christmas trees I I love christmas trees.

Speaker 4:

I'm, I'm, I'm a total lover I just saw that hate in your eyes I hate him in september for the christmas tree well, because think about it right, like they, I mean I hate, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're not gonna get.

Speaker 3:

Get me dude.

Speaker 2:

I'm not going to let you get Father okay, well, the real reason I wanted to jump in was so Pope Francis, it seems like, has this critique of consumption along this sort of line right and again, to sort of bring it to Wendell and Cook kind of questions. So there's the critique of consumption. That seems like it's pretty big there, but where is he on reimagining or reinvigorating or arguing for a different form of production? Again, this like anytime I hear things about consumption, while we can get it to like a sort of broader societal sort of questions, it usually sort of hits something about like the individual is fucking up in some way, right, but it doesn't really go back to those forces of production and market that are creating the conditions in which the individual is like operating and making decisions in in the first place. And so I'm wondering how much was Francis? Because I've never read any of these I mean amazing documents that you are all-.

Speaker 4:

Not religious.

Speaker 2:

But like I'm a Protestant I'm supposed to not read it. So where is his critique on the sort of production level?

Speaker 3:

Or is there Well, I'll speak. Gabby might want to speak from Fratelli Tutti, but for me, at Evangelii Gaudium he talks, he describes the structural problems and what needs to be changed is systems both of economic production and consumption, that he likes. This word excludes people. So he's saying that there have to be ways in which people are not just tools or consumers of the economy, but rather there has to be a change such that everyone well, you know, everyone. Again, it's a bit romantic sounding there, but there have to be a different way of the economy from the base up operating, such that the vast majority of people are not excluded from how things are determined to be operating and how things are determined to be produced. The other word he uses a lot there's exclusion and there's inequality and those two often pair up where they'll, paragraph by paragraph, play off each other.

Speaker 3:

In a certain chapter in that particular document that I'm referring to and I can't quote it off the top of my head sufficiently, but those are key points where he also describes this. This what I would like to hear in your statement something much more systemic than just individual. The problem is the individual consumer or that were manipulated by the consumer industry. On those again, the footnotes, a lot will rush to the several documents by John Paul II, the one by Paul VI, et cetera. Likewise, I used to teach the US Catholic bishops letter on economic justice for all when I taught at Boston College. They worked a lot with social ethicists. I know one of them, a Jesuit, who was one of the drafters of it you know helped write the thing. Who is a social ethicist and does a lot of stuff on the economy, david Hollenbeck. And there they try to they do they lay out what they think are issues about labor production etc.

Speaker 3:

But I would say it's fair to characterize that Francis. He doesn't go into to my reading. He doesn't go into such questions in the kind of detail and perhaps even more technical detail or language as one would find in some of those previous popes and cyclicals. Or, for example, the US Catholic bishops won on the economy, but it's helpful, thank you.

Speaker 4:

I will say so and I agree with that. The closest that he got from my own notes on fertility duty is and I'm going to read it again and I know we're pushing time here, so bear with me he writes in the section titled A Universal Love that Promotes Persons. Every human being has the right to live with dignity and to develop integrally. This fundamental right cannot be denied by any country. People have this right even if they are unproductive or were born with or developed limitations. This does not detract from their great dignity as human persons, a dignity based not on circumstances but on the intrinsic worth of their being. Then he continues some societies accept this principle in part. They agree that opportunity should be available to everyone, but then go on to say that everything depends on the individual. From the skewed perspective, it would be pointless to favor an investment in efforts to help the slow, the weak or the less talented to find opportunities in life. Investments in assistance to the vulnerable could prove unprofitable and they might make things less efficient. What we need, in fact, are states and civil institutions that are present and active, that look beyond the free and efficient working of certain economic, political or ideological systems and are primarily concerned with individuals and the common good. Then he continues bear with me everyone. If society is governed primarily by the criteria of market freedom and efficiency, there is no place for such persons, and fraternity will remain just another vague ideal. To claim economic freedom while real conditions bar many people from actual access to it and while possibilities for employment continue to shrink is to practice doublespeak. Words like freedom, democracy or fraternity prove meaningless for the fact that only when our economic and social system no longer produces even a single victim, a single person cast aside, will we be able to celebrate the feast of universal fraternity. A single person cast aside will we be able to celebrate the feast of universal fraternity. Truly human and fraternal society will be capable of ensuring an efficient and stable way that each of its members is accompanied at every stage of life, not only by providing for their basic needs, but by enabling them to give the best of themselves, even though their performance may be less than optimum, their pace slow or their efficiency limited.

Speaker 4:

And that, to me, was as close as he got to saying. The structure of production itself must change. But again, he's writing this in the context of COVID-19 as well. And so a lot of from Fratelli Tutti. A lot of it is about even his concern for the elderly, that in this throwaway culture, the elderly are being cast aside, cast aside, and that the structures, even our governmental and political structures that exist, that say that they are going to care for the sick, the poor, the needy, the elderly, they're not doing that in practice, precisely because of the economic. But he, yeah, he's not. I'm with Father Morrill on this. He does not go in to say we're overproducing outright. I think it's implied, but that's just, it's up to interpretation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, or like argue for, like worker ownership, like or like you know, economic democracy in a very explicit sense. He's sort of like yes. Sort of yeah, okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, what does he say? He says something in Fratelli Tutti the right to private property can only be considered as a secondary natural right, and that the common good takes precedent over the right to private property.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's. Even that's pretty radical right there. I mean, private property is kind of the.

Speaker 4:

Which I was shocked at, because I was like, oh, they're not going to be happy about that. That's the goal.

Speaker 3:

But there he's. He'd be footnoting precisely from John Paul II's encyclicals. But also this reaches back. My course in social ethics, way back doing my MDiv at the Jesuit School in Berkeley, was taught by a Latin American social moral theologian who was visiting us, ricardo Antoine Sitch, and but we used one of his books that that shows reaching back to the patristic era, early church fathers, how they're saying basically what John Paul says in one of his documents. He goes there is a social mortgage on private property.

Speaker 3:

Oh, the critique of usury also at like that early on were like, yeah, sorry, and so it's it's the stuff you read, john Chrysostom and stuff that whatever riches you have, actually belong to the poor. But this whole thing about private property Aquinas again wrote about it because he was so encyclopedic right, the church's social teaching on that is that the right to private property is to be respected. But there is in this language there. But it is socially conditioned and that, what the socially conditioning is, it's answerable to and this reaches from late Greek philosophy right through Christianity, in the Latin West at least. It's answerable to the common good. And what's meant by the common good? People often are like what do you mean by this common good? The common good, basically, is this the common good is social conditions so set up and maintained such that every individual can live a good life.

Speaker 2:

It's crazy that you had to define common good right. We live in such a fucking backward world where, like, even a conception of the common good is just like. I don't even know what the hell you're talking about.

Speaker 4:

Well, and George, you'll love this. He actually says at 123, the quote I did earlier, which was the right to private property, can only be considered a secondary natural right, is section 120. Right after he quotes St Paul VI, and in section 123, he says the right to private property is always accompanied by the primary and prior principle of the subordination of all private property to the universal destination of the earth's goods and thus the right of all to their use. And my god, I mean come, come on. And I mean because in the same section he's like oh, business abilities, the ability to make an increased wealth, is a gift of god and also that should be done for, uh, the development of don't butcher it, gab, don't do it. Business abilities, which are a gift from god, should always be clearly directed to the development of others and to eliminating poverty, especially through the diversified creation of work opportunities. You can, you can use the gifts from god to increase and develop your wealth. That, where that wealth goes, is what matters.

Speaker 2:

And like how, that is the common good, you know we need to finish up here, but I had, let's, let's do like one last question each. Does that sound good, gabby? There's a critique that I often have about a lot of like rhetoric within liberation theology, and it sounds like pope francis is kind of hitting this too, where the language of poverty is often used, and I find that when poverty is used while it forefronts the preferential option for the poor, it also in some ways obfuscates class analysis. Do you find that to be the case, like where the poor are there and we need to lift up the poor, but there's sort of like a? There's a way in which the working poor sort of disappeared, or the period are disappeared, and class becomes sort of pushed aside for sort of a blanket concept known as the poor?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I would challenge that interpretation with regard to Latin American liberation theology by making again insistence upon the context that the poor in Latin America largely are the working poor. To read some of the texts that we read in the course you did with me, like Rigoberto Manchu's account or the Romero biography, what you find? There are people who are forced into working on these large fincas, right, so they're the poor, but they're the working poor. But the only way they can survive is to go work on these coffee plantations or whatever, and then, like something in the US 125, 150 years ago, they're stuck in a situation they can't leave and they have to buy all their food from the company store which charges more than they earn. Right, that's a basic story in 1970s, 1980s.

Speaker 3:

Latin American liberation theology a type. So I may be wrong. Again, I don't know, I've never lived there, I've only lived in Guyana, which was English-speaking northern part of South America, briefly. But the description is I've been understanding it from specialists is that the language of the poor in Latin American liberation theology can be misguided or perhaps misread. But it could be misguided too in the case of some protagonists, but I want to be convinced by the argument that it's a misreading If we read it as the poor are people who are all sitting around on their hands and have nothing to do and no opportunity, like as can happen in the United States, that so much of the poor are the working poor.

Speaker 3:

Now the critique from Mujerista theology, of course, is then the further circumstances for women, oppression of women within that. So there are ways that this can be refined and better worked out, no doubt. But if it's a diminishment of the class, the need for identification of class stratification and the empowerment of the economically lower social classes, that would not be a strength of liberation theology. I think, something that, if the critique has come that that's the way it's been used in Latin America. Yeah, that's helpful. Something better needs to be done, gabby.

Speaker 4:

To wrap us up, if there's one piece or belief or document quote theme from Pope Francis's theological vision that you hope continues to shape the church, what would that be?

Speaker 2:

One thing Mine was good too, father Morrill. All right, mine was a good question.

Speaker 3:

It's not a zero sum game, but I'm sorry I didn't pat you on the head, but I would say I think the key thing going forward from his papacy is his chosen theme throughout, from the start, and that is the theme of mercy and compassion, which, if you read what he means by it and observe what he means by it, it is not patronizing, okay, but rather it's all about being with and for others. With, you know, not just for, not just you know hand out charity, but it's gotta be. He wants people to be cooperative with each other. He wants people to be in a genuine solidarity would be a political, economic language. The theological language is communion, or communio, because it's believed that this is also charged with the communion or the grace of the love of the triune God. Okay, but I'd say that's a big part of it, and even a quote from Evangelii Gaudium that I did have in front of me as you were speaking.

Speaker 3:

He's talking about the economic, the global system. That's not any good. He goes in this context. Some people continue to defend a trickle down theory which assumes that economic growth encouraged by a free market will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. The rest of the paragraph goes on. He says that's not at all of you, that the problem with the trickle down is it starts from again I get wealthy, or a certain cadre of the population, like one half of 1%, get wealthy, and then the trickle down, it's literally the crumbs off the table. Right, though they don't present it that way, what he's talking about, whether for a Wendland Cook podcast or writ large across his consistent theology, is you don't start from there, you always start from Fratelli Tutti, that we are all sisters and brothers and everything has to build from, be always answerable.

Speaker 2:

Thanks so much, father Moral. We'd like to end with asking our guests, along the lines of Augustine's language around hope, having two beautiful daughters, anger and courage. And we're wondering where do you find your anger? We're wondering where do you find your anger these days and where do you find courage these days? And thank you again for being with us.

Speaker 3:

Well, thank you for the opportunity. It's been really wonderful.

Speaker 2:

Really wonderful.

Speaker 3:

Well, anger is my fundamental emotion, so that's a touch I love that George knows that Yosemite Sam is my hero.

Speaker 2:

And deep personal like you're in basically.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and just as frustrated. But I would say the anger especially focuses on this very denial of social responsibility. Let's take the ecology, for example. But it can go to the economy, it can go to how we position on the world stage. Right that everything the anger I have is against a kind of neoliberal individualism that becomes the doctrinaire justification for denying climate science, for denying, uh, the science of vaccines, et cetera, that stuff. Really, it's like what? We're going back into, the freaking Stone Age. And there's the anger, the courage, off the top of my head, honest to goodness. The courage comes in this conversation today and every such experience that I have with the privilege of working with students and other people of goodwill and concern and I guess that's an homage, then, to the Pope, because again it's Fratelli Tutti. The courage comes from us together, and especially with bright people like yourselves, who today have often said things better than I ever could, who today have often said things better than I ever could.

Speaker 2:

We mentioned Boff several times during our talk and it reminds me. I think he said something like we do not simply live, we always live together.

Speaker 3:

And.

Speaker 2:

I think about that right now, from your last point, father Morrill, if people want to get in touch with you, how would you recommend they do that?

Speaker 3:

Well, it's just my email address, which they'll also find if they Google. My name, bruce, and the last name M-O-R-R-I-L-L, but that's it. It's brucemorrill at vanderbiltedu. That really is the best way to do it. But also, if you just Google that, and probably the first page they're going to list is that faculty page.

Speaker 2:

Well, as one American Catholic once said, you're not welcome here and you better not come back. Thanks, father, thanks Father, thank you both.

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