Pope Leo on the Ethical Dangers of AI

Speaking on his first “social” encyclical, Pope Leo said the Roman Catholic Church, whose membership stood at 1.6 billion embodied souls around the world, was “called to interpret ‘new things’ of the age in the light of the Gospel and the dignity of the human person.”[1] He was on terre firma from a distinctly religious standpoint in being anchored in the Gospel stories, which include direct and parabolic preachments by Jesus of Nazareth. Regarding the dignity of the human person, which pertains as much to a humanist as a theist, that basis is not distinctly religious and thus can occasion or permit wandering into other domains such that virtually any topic relevant to mankind could be roped in and even subjected to supervening religious criteria even over criteria native to the topic’s own domain!

To be sure, we should all be for the dignity of the human person, especially as regard dangers from the state. Even so, the utopian vision of humans living free from virtually any threat goes too far in denying the human condition, which is Fallen due to original sin from a Biblical standpoint. Just because some threat or danger exists to people prior to death does not in itself justify an overriding religious interpretation at the expense of the criteria of the domain in which the danger exists. To apply God to automobile safety, for example, would seem contrived and artificial at best. Instead, government regulators ought to be consulted.

Similarly, that the Pope “said he had heard ‘very troubling voices’ regarding autonomous weapons systems and algorithms capable of denying access to healthcare, employment or security based on unjust and prejudiced data” may be better handled by high government officials, regulators, and even ethicists rather than a religious functionary whose knowledge lies in theology.[2] The pope’s statement that words were necessary that are capable of “awakening consciences and indicating paths forward for humanity” best fits the field of ethics, which, although related to religion, is nonetheless distinct.[3] In other words, the pope’s diction belies his implicit claim that the domain of theology is most fitting for a critique of AI. Indeed, the pope even “said every great technological power must be accompanied by moral discernment and public accountability.”[4] Ethics and public policy, not theology. In stating that AI should be “freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of dominion, exclusion or death”—a statement, to be sure, that reasonable people embrace—defense policy under democratic auspices is the native domain, with applied ethics also being highly relevant so it is not simply a matter for immoral or amoral government officials.[5]

Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling correctly distinguishes the ethical from the theological in that they can conflict without either one being thereby invalidated. From the standpoint of ethics, Abraham is guilty of attempted murder of his son, Isaac, while from a theological standpoint, he is legitimately subject to a divine command to sacrifice his son. The proper place for a theologian lies with the latter, whereas an ethicist should be confined to the former; overreaching invalidates. So, by quoting Paul’s exhortation to “keep awake” (1 Thess 5:6), the pope committed a category mistake in substituting “humanity’s critical sense and moral vigilance” for being on guard for Jesus Christ’s Second Coming.[6] Overreaching onto ethics can come at the expense of distinctly religious content. Discussing “the biblical figure of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem,” the pope presented “the image as a model for the ethical construction of the digital age.”[7] I doubt very much if the distinctly theological meaning of that figure is as an ethical model, so we may legitimately ask what of the textual meaning did the pope omit that is distinctly religious, and whether that is applicable to AI. Such overreaching onto even ethics stems from a greed of a certain sort that is also unbounded and based in self-love rather than self-regulation.

To claim as the pope did “that no one must be excluded from digital transformation and that human beings can never be reduced to ‘productivity,’ ‘cognitive performance,’ or ‘mere data’ is not to make a theological statement; a pope is not a business ethicist. John Rawls’ theory of justice applies to the design of economic systems with the priority going to the design itself being oriented to benefitting the least well-off economically. Such a theory is directly applicable to how everyone can actually be included in a digital economy rather than “a privileged few.”[8] So too is Kant’s categorical imperative that mandates that rational beings be treated not merely as means, but also as ends in themselves; human resource management could stand to take that imperative more seriously. In trying to invoke theology in stating, “The person bears within him—or herself—a freedom, an interiority, and a vocation to love and worship that no machine can replace or block,” the pope set up a red herring, for no appreciable danger from AI blocking worship existed even on the horizon in 2026, and certainly not in the workplace where productivity and performance are most relevant and where worship does not pertain. Even if AI were capable of worshipping God, presumably humans could still do so unimpeded, and people would not do it at work while getting paid for their labor.

The pope was on firmer ground in advocating a “civilization of love” as laid out by Pope Paul VI and John Paul II, yet in inviting all people to become “artisans of hope,” Pope Leo turned hope toward Augustine’s earthly city rather than to the heavenly city.[9] That is to say, the theological dimension transcends society and the workplace, government policy, and technology, rather than being oriented exclusively or primarily to them. It is precisely that dimension that was absent from the pope’s remarks that centered instead on the ethics of computer technology. Overstepping into other domains can be thought of as leaving one’s home unattended and thus undefended in its own right, under its own criteria, such that people may even misconstrue it as something else entirely.

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1. Linda Bordoni, “Pope Leo Presents ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ Calling for Disarmament of AI,” Vatican News, 25 May, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., italics added.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.

Magnifica Humanitas: On Leo the Lion-Hearted

Sometimes it pays to go behind a piece of writing to conduct a genealogy of the writer himself or herself, rather than to dive into the writing itself. On May 25, 2026, the fourteenth Pope Leo of the Roman Catholic Church spoke at the Vatican on his first “social” encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (magnificent humanity), which he had signed ten days earlier. An encyclical is known as a teaching (magisterium) instrument used by the papacy to communicate the Church’s position on a topic. In presenting his encyclical, the pope “described the current technological revolution as an ‘epochal turning point’ comparable to the upheaval confronted by Pope Leo XIII during the industrial Revolution.”[1] That pope’s emphasis on the ethical dimension of an economy, especially with regard to inequality and the related marginalization, was the reason why Robert Prevost chose the name Leo when he accepted the vote in favor of him becoming the next pope after Francis, another social-justice-oriented pope. Lions may indeed come late in the summer, or, sadly, not at all (for even willful, bullying Leos can actually be cowardly, as in Oz), but Leo XIV was already charging voraciously ahead in May, consummating his nomenclature-rationale in words that ensconced his Church firmly in the twenty-first century (in utter contrast to Joe Ratzinger’s antiquarian corrupt administration). All of the media buzz aside, however, if the previous Pope Leo (XIII) actually had had little or no normative influence on what would be harsh (even child!) labor conditions later in the first half of the twentieth century in Europe and North America, then a clear-eyed observer in 2026 could already be skeptical as to the practical significance of Magnifica Humanitas on managers and programmers in Silicon Valley going forward. Moreover, the foray of religion onto AI technology, and even ethics, the latter of which is distinct from albeit related to religion, can be criticized as an instance of dogmatic over-reaching.

Already, U.S. President Trump had dismissed that pope’s disavowal of war in the context of the U.S. and Israel bombing Iran, saying that that pope knew nothing about foreign policy (and thus should have kept his mouth shut). The same could be said of the pope’s (or any religious cleric’s) knowledge of AI. Even though applied ethics is one of my academic fields, for example, I have not written on medical ethics because I do not have a bachelor’s degree (i.e., the MD) from a school of medicine; instead, I have written on political ethics because historical political theory is one of my doctoral fields, on business ethics because I have the MBA (and BS) degree, and on philosophy (and ethics) of religion because I have graduate degrees in religious studies and theology.  Having taken only one course in computer programming in college, I assiduously avoid getting “into the weeds” in applying historical ethical theories to AI, for overreaching into any domain beyond a person’s ken would render one susceptible to the hypertrophy of one’s own ideological opinion primped up as knowledge, or worse, truth.

Moreover, the pope unwittingly opened himself up to the charge of having overstepped the domain of religion by pontificating on AI ethics. Implying that the human-God relation, which transcends even existentialism, somehow translates into a particular ethical stance on something as secular as computer technology is arguably dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary. In the thirst to be relevant on every contemporary issue, a religious functionary can easily lose sight of the big picture, and even his own ring.

It is significant that Pope Francis chastised bishops in the U.S. for their obsession on two social issues, as if religious faith were an ideological prejudice. The opportunity cost of such a normative orientation lies in the distinctly theological alternative focus on soteriology (and Christology). In the Gospels, Jesus is silent on abortion and homosexuality, so it is strange (at best) that some Roman Catholic bishops have made those issues definitive for church memberships being in good standing (e.g., receiving the Eucharist).

What is the soteriology of AI? Even were AI computers sentient (i.e., self-aware, as to themselves as entities, and with their own motives that involve beliefs and even feelings), what would that have to do with a human being’s salvation before God? That there are threats facing us in our lives in this world is just part of the human condition, even biologically. Even were war and poverty eliminated by enlightened public governance, soteriology would remain as an issue as long as an abyss separates us from God. Put another way, even were there no threats to us in life, it would still be difficult to follow in Christ’s footsteps in responding compassionately even (and especially!) to people we detest. A cowardly lion would have utter disdain for such “weakness,” and would thus remain adamant in refusing to forgive. But as Esther, Ben Hur’s eventual love-interest, remarks in the film, Ben-Hur (1959), when Ben Hur tells her of his thirst for revenge against Messala, a young rabbi has been preaching, “forgiveness is greater, and love is more powerful than hatred.” The opposite of love is not hate, but, rather, indifference, so the seemingly solid fortification of hatred can indeed be dissipated if there is the will, and love. Even without the threat of AI, letting go of one’s hatred as well as the default assumption that making the first move at reconciliation is humiliating rather than a manifestation of strength is difficult.

Although Nietzsche claims that forgetfulness in place of memory is essential in forgiving other people, I submit that even forgetting what a past argument was about is not sufficient for a person to overcome the instinctual assumption and habit of avoidance once that is well-grooved. A few months before writing this essay, I made the first move in restoring a friendship, and having forgotten what we had argued about two years earlier was not sufficient for me to use free-will to stop when passing him to say hello, to which he reciprocated, which led to subsequent socializing. We both subsequently related this to the forgiveness, and the related “peace be with you,” which are so very salient in the Gospels. Interestingly, the experience itself of reproachment led me to consider the guy a long-standing, good friend to whom I could open up about myself even though he and I had not been on speaking terms since arguing about who-knows-what.

In this essay winding up here, have you noticed that I have not analyzed, pro or con, the pope’s teachings on AI? Besides, I am not competent to pontificate on computer technology—which I both enjoy and am frustrated by (the compound, uneasy feeling of which may be what prompts exogenous pontificating on AI by some), and I am probably going to hell anyway to be devoured by angry lions for having criticized a pope Leo who pounced on a reticent Silicon Valley in May. Lions don’t come in late summer in California, after all.

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1, Linda Bordoni, “Pope Leo Presents ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ Calling for Disarmament of AI,” Vatican News, 25 May, 2026.

Distinguishing Theology from Ethics: A Critique of Waging War

Whereas an ethical critique of war appeals to an ethical principle, typically that is against humans being harmed, especially the innocent, a theological critique can be based on a divine degree or on the nature of the divine in contradistinction to human nature as anything but. That is, a distinctly theological critique of war itself or people who wage war is typically based on some obfuscation of the divine and human wherein the latter has sought to appropriate divine nature or attributes to what is in Nietzsche’s famous phrase, human, all too human. Although Kant’s “kingdom of ends” formulation of his categorial imperative looks a lot like Jesus’s Golden Rule, for example, offending rational beings by treating them only as means to one’s own goals is distinct from offending God by violating the divine command of universal benevolence, or “neighbor love,” which is Jesus’s second commandment, which is like unto the first (i.e., to love God). Having probably just now lost, or “blown away,” just about every normal reader, I want to illustrate my point of distinguishing the ethical from the theological by analyzing pertinent comments made by Pope Leo, the first Midwestern (Illinois) pope, in April, 2026.

Referring to the war inflicted on Iran by the U.S. and the state of Israel, the pope referred to the “delusion of omnipotence.”[1] The pope could have been referring to the hubris of power that had fueled Israel’s Netanyahu into the delusion that committing a holocaustic genocide against the people of Gaza was a just and proportional reaction to the attack by Hama in which only about 1,200 Israelis died. The prime minister even said that Israel’s deity had been good in helping Israel in being able to inflict a Nazi-level of atrocity on the Gazans. The ease with which a human is willing to hurt other humans is indeed troubling; to bring a deity into the equation in a favorable light, as the U.S. Secretary of Defense did on the U.S. attacks on Iran and Netanyahu did on Gaza surely must boggle the mind of any rational or genuinely religious person.

The pope’s deliberate use of the word, omnipotence, was no accident, for that word denotes a uniquely divine attribute that human beings do not have because none of us is all-powerful. Relative to a Creator, any creature is of relative power. It is not as though the vast majority of us are under the delusion; some people with low self-esteem even become sexually aroused by having their limited power showcased by a dominating sex-partner as if being intentionally harmed and even humiliated were deserved. People who set aside a room as a dungeon may even crave powerlessness relative to the power of another person, which is just as problematic in its own way because we are all made in the image of God and thus are worthy of some self-love. Even though we are far from omnipotent, we creatures are nonetheless worthy of being loved. It is out of love for the self-deprived dungeon-lovers that efforts can be made to help them out of their plight so they feel comfortable in their own limited, justified power and thus come to love themselves. Guiding a person into the light of healthy self-love and away from the darkness of selfishness and self-inflicted pain without any benefit to oneself evinces genuine love consistent with Christian agape. Our species is indeed capable of other-regarding, selfless love, which is antipodal and thus antithetical to self-centered love, which is actually selfish greed.  

Whereas the Jansenist Pierre Nicole wrote scathingly of self-love, Augustine had maintained that self-love of the image of God within is salubrious theologically. Such self-love is not that to which Pope Leo referred when he said of the warmongers waging war against Iran, “Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!”[2] The pope was trying to guide President Trump away from selfish self-love to love as benevolentia universalis. The idolatry of self is the placing of oneself above love directed to God. Such misordered concupiscence enables monetary and political greed and even war as a way of obtaining more, the love of which is the definition of greed.

Both “omnipotence” and “idolatry” are distinctively theological, or religious, words; they are not in the lexicon of ethics because the words are sourced or related back to the divine, which transcends the created realm, whereas ethical principles do not unless they are part of a divine command. This is precisely the decisive way in which the theological is distinct from the ethical. Put another way, God’s omnipotence (i.e., being all-powerful) means that God cannot be limited to one of our ethical theories or principles unless God itself has commanded them. As sure as we may be that our ethical principles are solid, they are not eternal in themselves. Rather, they are manmade. As such, they are of the created realm unless they are commanded by God. To insist nonetheless that religion reduces to ethical principles, as Unitarian Universalists typically have done since the 1970s, is thus to engage in self-idolatry.

In his remarks, the Roman Catholic pope was proffering a snapshot of the idolatry and the related delusion that distinguish warmongers far from the divine. A Nietzschean pathos of distance separates the bullies from a deity of compassion and self-giving, agape love. I’m sure the pope would appreciate being backed up by Nietzsche, the author of The Anti-Christian whose father and grandfather were Lutheran ministers, but the pope and I are fellow native Midwesterners from Northern Illinois so I’m sure he would forgive me in the very unlikely event that he reads this essay—though whereas he is a White Sox fan, I am an avid Cubs fan, but no one—not even a pope—is perfect.  Hence the distinction between the creature and the Creator! To obfuscate the two, or, even worse, to put ourselves above the condition of being and reality, is superbia writ large—nothing less than arrogance on stilts during a sell-deserved flood—in the bloated self-love of self-idolatry in contradistinction to selfless love even and especially for those who reject us, for even children of lesser gods share in being (God being perfect being) and thus, according to Leibniz, deserve to be loved in spite of themselves. If the pope was placing Trump and Netanyahu in their place, as situated relative to God rather than to their own hyper-egos, out of love rather than just anger (which would be justified), then the pope could get a sense of God’s perspective, albeit limited as per the perspective of a mere creature. I hope I have demonstrated why this is qualitatively different than the adoption of a distinctly ethical perspective, which in turn is human, all too human.

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1. Nicole Winfield, “Pope Leo XIV Denounces the ‘Delusion of Omnipotence’ He Says Fuels the US-Israeli War in Iran,” APnews.com, April 11, 2026.
2.Ibid.

Pope Leo Denounces Warmongers

With Easter, 2026, taking place amid the holocaustic genocide in Gaza, Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, and the U.S./Israel attacks against Israel, Pope Leo used the occasion to speak out against war, and those who benefit politically and by profiting from war. The pope’s absolute rejection of war included excoriating Christians who had been using theological rationales to justify war. Although not in the pope’s field of vision at the time, such Christians have included the popes who had perpetuated four crusades—the last of which was waged against Constantinople (i.e., eastern Christians)—in Medieval European Christendom. The implication is that Jesus did not hear the prayers of those militarized Christians who thought they were defending Jesus and his Church.

The pope’s Easter message against war was unequivocal: “This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.”[1] Compassion towards detractors and even enemies is antipodal to war, and thus the pope’s condemnation was indeed on solid ground. What are we to make, therefore, of the Catholic just war rationales? If Jesus rejects war, then even a war that is just is included in the rejection. Besides being a problem for Catholic social-ethics theory, should Jesus’s preachment of compassion for the Nazis as they committed genocide against Slavs, Jews, Communists, and other societal undesirables stand up against the just-war rationale to invade Germany to stop the wholesale slaughter? Asked about how India should have reacted to a Nazi invasion, Gandhi answered in line with the pope’s condemnation by saying that people should stand in non-violent resistance on India’s borders. Would Jesus agree? His distancing of himself from the Zealots in the Gospels may suggest that he would not join the armed resistance to the Nazis. His kindness to the Roman soldiers suggests that he would have compassion for individual Nazis in spite of their atrocities.

So in the wake of the pope’s condemnation of war, Catholic just-war theory may need to be revised. The pope also claimed that Jesus ignores the prayers of Christians who support or wage war. This would include even the prayers of Christians who were supporting Israel because of its role as a precondition for Jesus’s Second Coming even as Israel was committing crimes against humanity against the people of Gaza with impunity. Whether taking back Jerusalem for Jesus in the Middle Ages or enabling a genocidal government in the twenty-first century so Jesus could return, such rationales are ignored by the Christian deity.

The presumption that even positions that are antithetical to Jesus’s preachments in the Gospels are in some way Christian nonetheless reveals the susceptibility of the human mind to going too far without any self-check mechanism in the domain of religion. Faced with Christians who were looking the other way as Israel was committing a genocide, Jesus would probably retort that his second coming is in the righteous suffering of the Gazan people who were not guilty of having attacked Israel in 2023. He would no doubt apply his condemnation of the Jewish religious leaders in the Gospels to Netanyahu and his government, with something like, They still don’t get it, but even such a guttural condemnation does not go far enough, for the principle of selfless love even and especially against people we don’t like (and even hate) is in need of loudspeakers in being pronounced to be the way into the Kingdom of God in this life. Defending Jesus and protecting the way for the Second Coming, especially if by violence, pale in comparison to that principle, which can stand on its own without any anthropomorphism.

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[1] Joshua McElwee, “Pope Leo Says God Rejects Prayers of Leaders Who Wage Wars,” Reuters.com, March 29, 2026.

Pope Leo: Poised against Plutocracy?

Poised as the “new Leonine era,” worded as if gilding the proverbial lily as if a golden ring, the installation of Pope Leo XIV reinvigorated Pope Francis’s preachments on the poor and economic inequality because Robert Prevost chose Leo in large part because of Pope Leo XIII of the late nineteenth century, whose “historic encyclical Rerum Novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”[1] Due to “his choice of pontifical name and his mathematical and legal training, Pope Leo XIV has awakened hope and curiosity among the faithful and the more secular world about the influence the Catholic Church could exert on the economic world during his pontificate.”[2] In the exuberance of a new pontificate, it is easy to get carried away with excitement as to possibilities. Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s crime against humanity in Gaza, no one could be blamed for seeking out hope wherever it could be found. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind just how marginal the calls of conscience can be, given the onslaught of greed not only in the present day represented by powerful corporate (and related) governmental interests, but also in greed’s institutional accretions built up over time that have a force of their own in protecting the economic (and political) status quo.

The practical impact of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, promulgated in 1891, should not be overstated. To be sure, it “laid the foundations of the social doctrine of the Church that inspired Catholic trade unionism, and, some 30 years later, the creation of the Christian Democratic parties that contributed decisively to the civil and material reconstruction of Europe after World War II.”[3] Calling “for workers’ rights without resorting to the class struggle promoted by Marxist doctrine” by instead focusing on “the balance of fair wages and equal economic relations,” Rerum Novarum can be said to have been prudent and eminently practical.[4] Even so, a focus on microeconomics can only do so much when the macro political-economy structure is left intact, and that structure, specifically in its huge concentrations of private capital in modern corporations and their economic-turned-political power in the halls of government amid elected representatives seeking campaign-reelection donations and lucrative jobs in the future, plays a crucial role in perpetuating and even aggravating huge economic disparities and the corruption of democracy by plutocracy.

“Pope Leo XIII questioned the concentrations of economic industrial power and was immediately attacked,” says Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, a banker and former president of the Institute for Religious Works, the corrupt Vatican financial institution.[5] Tedeschi attributed the anti-trust legislation in the United States to the encyclical, but he left out the ensuing fecklessness with which the U.S. Justice Department has used the Sherman Act to break up oligopolies and monopolies (e.g., Facebook, Amazon, General Motors, etc) undoubtedly because of “political pressure.” Even though the Sherman Act was passed “to curb the power of cartels that had created a near-monopoly regime with serious social repercussions” does not mean that much curbing actually took place.[6] Because “serious social repercussions” stem from anti-competitive economic industries, the staying power of the latter even decades into the twenty-first century means that even prior efforts to fortify labor unions fell short of the aims of Rerum Novarum. The proof, in order words, is in the pudding.

That Pope Leo XIV sought to build on established Catholic social teaching such as Rerum Novarum “to respond to another industrial revolution and to developments in artificial intelligence that bring new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and work” may have been putting the cart before the horse, given the social repercussions still occurring in 2025 from the gigantic economic and political power of the mega multinational corporations.[7] Indeed, “economic data” showed “growing crises and imbalances between average incomes and the cost of living” in the E.U. and U.S., which a focus on AI would not address.[8]

In the U.S., the pope’s home country, for example, the federal House of Representatives was in the midst of cutting the budget of Medicaid, which funds healthcare for the poor and disabled. Just days before the inaugural Mass of the new pope, a group of conservative Republican lawmakers blocked a bill with cuts to the program because they were not large enough, given the president’s proposed tax-cut (amid a federal budget debt at the time of $36.21 trillion). That any tax cut would even be proposed amid such a debt (with Moody’s recently having reduced the U.S.’s credit rating) defies fiscal logic and prudence. Cutting health-care for the poor without cutting military spending conjures up “social repercussions” in terms of values that presumably violate those of Rerum Novarum and thus Popes Leo XIII and XIV.

I submit that the Roman Catholic Church still had work to do on the question of human dignity, well-being, and justice in the context of human nature’s incompatibility with holding so much economic and political power in such concentrations that human nature itself may be warped as in the case of an addiction. The incarnation of billionaires who could not possibly spend such wealth in their respective lifetimes (and their survival from want is virtually assured) is something that Pope Leo XIII could not have dealt with, as businessmen such as JP Morgan and John D. Rockefeller were the millionaire “titans” of the Gilded Age. Having broken up Standard Oil in 1913 (without changing the ownership) does not mean much as the U.S. Justice Department stood by through the rest of the twentieth century as more and more American industries turned into oligopolies and even de facto monopolies. The practical impact of Rerum Novarum hardly justifies moving on the AI without taking another stab at the political-economic regime that has perpetuated and even extenuated massive economic inequality and price-setting “inflation” by companies.

Just days before Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate officially began, Walmart’s chief financial manager told the media that the company “had no choice” in raising prices due to new tariffs. Were Walmart’s industry competitive rather than oligopolistic, Walmart would be a price-taker, such that market discipline (i.e., choices by consumers) could mean that Walmart would “have no choice” but to accept lower profit by absorbing some of the supply-cost increases rather than passing them all on to the consumers. As U.S. President Trump said, Walmart had made billions of dollars in 2024, and thus could afford to absorb some of the impact of the tariffs. Put another way, we have no choice but pass on the increases onto the consumer is itself not only a lie, but also an indication of the company’s perception of its industry as less than subject to competitive forces wherein consumers can vote with their wallets and purses by buying elsewhere rather than being forced to pay more at Walmart.

If anything, the economic (and related political) regime that supports excessive economic rents being paid by consumers as large corporations continue to profit greatly has endured and even prospered as the status quo since Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum in 1891. Oligopolies came to populate even the high-tech industry, including social media, at the expense of competitive markets and thus consumers as well as workers. Restructuring the underlying political-economic regime lies beyond the purview of labor unions; even the voice of Catholic conscience may be insufficient, given how the regime is fed by and feeds greed. In shifting from a strict anti-wealth paradigm to a pro-wealth paradigm wherein wealth is decoupled from greed (i.e., liberality and munificence vindicating even fortunes as camels slip through narrow places), Christianity had arguably compromised itself with respect to being a normative obstacle to greed.[9]

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1. Sergio Cantone, “How the Pontificate of Pope Leo XIV Could Influence the World Economy,” Euronews.com, May 18, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. See Skip Worden, God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth, available at Amazon.

Bob Prevost as Pope Leo: The First American Pope

Referring to the former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as “Bob Provost” reflects my Midwestern roots, which Pope Leo XIV (or “Pope Leo” amongst friends) has as well, even though the media missed this vital point as to the new pope’s native culture. As if a knee-jerk reaction, the international media almost immediately sought to circumscribe the new pope’s “Americanness” by referring to “the Chicago-born Augustinian missionary” as “history’s first U.S.-born pope” as if he had left the U.S. as a young boy and had become just as South American as “American.”[1] Perhaps this is what prompted U.S. President Trump to jump on social media to so profusely congratulate the first American pope even though as Cardinal, Bob Prevost had publicly criticized Trump’s immigration policies. The contest was on to define the new pope! Of course, never to be outdone by anything American, the very British BBC referred to the “first North American pope,” just as the BBC had stated many years earlier that Prince Harry and Magen were moving to North America (rather than to California after a visit in Canada).[2] The games people play. I contend that the bias behind portraying Bob Prevost erroneously as only originally from the U.S. represents something more than mere political and ideological resentment of one of the most powerful countries on Earth.

To be clear, the new pope was from the United States—in fact, from its heartland—and thus he can indeed be said to be the first American pope, even though he spent two decades in South America serving the Church. That he gained citizenship in Peru and the Vatican does not mean that he revoked or renounced his American citizenship or that he can be relegated as having been merely born in Illinois. In fact, in 1999, when he was 44 years-old, he returned to Chicago for fourteen years to lead the Augustinian Order, so even being characterized as “born and raised” in the United States is misleading.

At 69 years-old when he was elected, Pope Leo had lived about 40 years in the United States, and all of those years but four were in Chicagoland, which covers 200 square miles and includes the city of Chicago as well as the suburbs. He lived there for fourteen years well after he had graduated from seminary there, so it is incorrect to say that he was merely born and raised in Chicago. He served the Church in Peru for only 20 years, with only eight of which being when he had dual citizenship.[3] His church service in Peru occasioned (but did not condition) his citizenship there, rather than vice versa. Therefore, it is as misleading to characterize him as “U.S.-born,” as it is to say that he is the first Peruvian pope, or even that he is the first pope from both Illinois and Peru. The false-equivalence narrative, especially in Europe, was no accident. There had been an unwritten rule in the Vatican hierarchy that no American could be elected pope.

Leading involves the use of symbol, and words are symbols. Upon being announced to the world, it was no accident that Pope Leo spoke in Spanish (as well as Latin and Italian) and gave a “shout out” to Peru and did not speak a word of English or refer to people in his homeland. Speculating, I submit that he may have been sending a message to the Church hierarchy that he would not be coddling up to the Trump Administration or, moreover, doing the bidding of the country with perhaps the most geopolitical power in the world. Both theologically and ethically, religion should act on a check on the earthly powerful. The days of the Borgia popes were long gone, and the Roman Catholic Church had shifted to a role of speaking truth to power. That speaking Spanish and explicitly mentioning Peru can be construed as misleading, the pope may have judged that this cost was worth establishing himself as independent of the United States in terms of power.

Secondly, Pope Leo may have been sending the message that he would not be in the corner of the arch-conservative American Catholic hierarchy. Even though a few American bishops held a press conference on the next morning, differences from that ideologically-oriented moralistic enclave and the moderate pope could be anticipated. Cardinal Prevost had been instrumental, for example, in Pope Francis’s addition of three women in the Vatican office that the cardinal ran from 2023 that vets prospective bishops. That Pope Leo had two women serve as lectionaries reading scripture during his first mass as pope can be read as yet another use of symbol to send a message. That is, his choice was “perhaps an indication of Leo’s intention to follow Francis’ priority to expand women’s role in the church.”[4] If Pope Francis had groomed Prevost, the former may have taught the latter how to use symbols effectively in leadership. If so, symbolic actions in social justice, especially for the poor, could be a part of Pope Leo’s pontificate. That as a Cardinal Prevost had been “critical of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration” could also rankle some American bishops.[5] Lastly, he reportedly had a role in Pope Francis’s push-back against the ideologically-conservative orientation of the American clerical hierarchy in vetting clergy for possible bishoprics in the United States. Therefore, the American expression, “Be careful what you wish for; you might get it,” could come around to bite the American Catholic hierarchy in the proverbial “behind.”

There is, however, a “but.” Revisiting the intentional use of symbol, that Pope Leo wore full papal regalia for his first address to the world after being elected whereas Francis had not done so for his first address may signal that Leo was coming into the job with some conservative leanings that would keep him from being a full-blown progressive pope, if indeed Francis could be said to have been progressive. Whereas Francis had famously said, “Who am I to judge?” regarding a gay couple who are monogamous and love each other and God, and added that it is no crime to be gay, Robert Prevost had previously said in 2012 that a “homosexual lifestyle” evinces “beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel.”[vi] As a Cardinal, Prevost abstained from assenting or dissenting from Francis’s optional blessing on gay civil unions. Bob’s brother back in Illinois told journalists after the papal election had been announced that his brother is a “middle of the road” kind of guy.

Even being a moderate could be enough to annoy the most conservative ideologues in the American church on occasion, and Pope Leo may have wanted to make clear that he would be independent of that hierarchy rather than rubber-stamping its obsession on homosexuality and abortion. He may also have been wanting to tell the European church-hierarchy by not using his native tongue in his first address that he would not be biased in favor of the United States. That he could speak Italian and that his father had significant Italian ancestry were probably more vital than we know in swinging E.U. cardinals in favor of voting for an American cardinal. Both of Pope Francis’s parents had emigrated from Italy.

In short, the bias against having an American as pope can be viewed as superficial. Just as Americans exist who oppose the values supporting the excesses of American capitalism and those undergirding the Trump Administration even in matters of foreign policy, so too have there been Catholic priests who were (or are) American and yet have resisted (or resist) the ideological reductionism of the American Council of Catholic Bishops. Superficial, prejudicial assumptions can enjoy sustained unfounded legitimacy and longevity.  Such assumptions gloss over significant cultural differences between Americans.

The most important influence on Bob Prevost, culturally speaking, was utterly missed by both American and international journalists because the intra-American culture of which I am referring does not easily fit into the E.U.-U.S. basis of comparison. Like Bob Prevost, I was born and raised in northern Illinois, though his hometown is closer to the city-proper of Chicago than mine is. Whereas he doubtlessly identifies himself as a Chicagoan, I grew up beyond the farthest suburbs. He is a Chicago Sox fan whereas I am a Cubs fan. Yet I submit that we both identify primarily as Midwesterners. The Midwest includes, roughly speaking, fifteen U.S. member-states whose combined population is around 80 million and for which Chicago is the de facto capital, at least as far as commerce is concerned. The Midwest spans from Ohio to Nebraska, and up around Lake Michigan (or, Lake Illinois, which, I say in jest, is far north of the Gulf of America). Illinois is so diverse economically and culturally, such that the southern region, Egypt, has attempted five times to “IL-exit” (which is European-speak for “secede”) from Illinois (really from Chicagoland), that were the pope and I to chat informally, we would quickly and easily nod affirmatively that we are both Midwesterners at heart even though he picked the wrong baseball team (can a layperson absolve a pope?). Such informality may seem strange or even scandalous outside of the Midwest, but I submit that the distinctive culture resonates well with Christ’s emphasis on neighbor-love as benevolentia universalis, including speaking to the poor and other marginalized people in public without talking down to them or as if they were a special case. I submit that a Midwesterner would make an excellent pope, and that the superficial bias has thus impeded the historically European-centered Church.  

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1. AP News, “Live Updates: Pope Leo XIV Calls His Election Both a Cross and a Blessing, Offers First Homily,” May 9, 2025.
2. Frances Mao, “Pope Leo XIV Calls Church ‘A Beacon to Illuminate Dark Nights’ in First Mass, BBC.com, May 9, 2025.
3. Stacy Meichtry et al, “First Pope from U.S. Elected,” The Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2025.
4. AP News, “Live Updates: Pope Leo XIV Calls His Election Both a Cross and a Blessing, Offers First Homily,” May 9, 2025.
5. Stacy Meichtry et al, “First Pope from U.S. Elected,” The Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2025.
6. Li Zhou, “The New Pope Faces Scrutiny on LGBTQ+ Rights,” The Huffington Post, May 8, 2025.

Peacemaking and Hierarchy at Pope Francis’s Funeral

Sitting hunched forward, facing an also-hunched-forwardUkand very intense President Zelensky of Ukraine, both men’s unadorned chairs being surrounded by bald yet beautiful marble-floor in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican just before the funeral of Pope Francis, U.S. President Trump sought to close a deal that would end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Pope Francis would have been proud. Perhaps the pope, who had tirelessly preached an end to the militarized aggression not only in Ukraine, but also in Gaza, would have been even more proud had Russian President Putin been there too, hunched forward with his rivals to make peace, but that president was wanted by the International Criminal Court on allegations of having committed war crimes in Ukraine. Enemies making peace, and even extending in acts of compassion are necessary to gaining access into the kingdom of God, as preached by Jesus Christ in the Gospel faith-narratives.

The fact that both Trump and Zelensky were staring eye-ball to eye-ball, finally getting down to real business rather than insults and even talking points, is itself progress. That U.S. President Trump subsequently formally shook hands with E.U. President Von der Leyen is also something the dead pope would have liked, though he would likely have preferred the E.U. leader to have been sitting with the two other presidents when they had been discussing a deal for 15 minutes just before the funeral.

That the E.U.’s president had deferred to the governors of some large states, such as France, to take the lead for the entire E.U. left the U.S. president without the balance that the E.U. president could have supplied concerning the value in holding onto the principle of territorial sovereignty applied to Ukraine, lest otherwise invading another country unprovoked could be rewarded de facto. Fortunately, Trump furnished some balance himself in observing on the trip back to Washington, D.C., “There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!”[1] To be sure, that Zelensky was willing to sign an exclusive mineral-rights contract with the United States was not lost on the business-oriented American president, mais sans doute, c’est la vie en les États-Unis. In spite of the American pecuniary interest, Pope Francis would have been pleased with President Trump for sticking up for Ukrainian civilians.

Ironically, the pope would perhaps have been less pleased with the way the Vatican arranged the viewing of his corpse and his funeral because of the extent of hierarchy terms of proximity of viewership. During the three days of public viewing in St. Peter’s Basilica, ushers wearing suits kept the ordinary people moving, while ushers wearing tuxedos greeted the line of people inside the temporary barrier as they passed through and maybe sat on chairs for a while. By the later folks, I am not referring to heads of state or Catholic clergy primarily, for most of the “very important persons” were rather ordinarily dressed, and this made the suit versus tuxedo distinction look pretentious and fake, and thus as an artifact from a desire to put some groups of people above others beyond what merit would legitimate. Were the deceased pope’s spirit watching and able to speak to the living there, the recommendation would likely have been that if there has to be a hierarchy, then give the poor parishioners of the Rome diocese the best view, and the most connected people the worst view, with the people who had known the pope being situated somewhere in the middle. So too at the funeral, sections spanned out from those seating the most important people—the Cardinals and visiting heads of state and prime ministers—to those sections seating priests and then finally the general public in the very back. I hope some of those people had binoculars.

During the funeral, the most important people sat in the two squares at far-right, while the general public sat in the eclipse at far-left, many of whom did not even have a direct view of the altar, which was under the small white square, far-right, between the Cardinals and the government dignataries. There is even a slight color difference between the two squares (center) opposite the two light-colored priest-squares. Visually, all this was hierarchy to the maximus, contra benevolentia universalis. 

That the value behind Jesus’s preachment that (most of) the first are last and the last are first, is worthy of being put into practice even by a pope was not lost on Pope Francis, who spoke truth to power and on behalf of the poor and marginalized. It is unfortunate, therefore, that power and prestige, connections and wealth, had the best seats at that pope’s funeral and the closest viewing of the open coffin during the three days of viewing. I think the pope would have been surprised and pleased were the most well-dressed ushers tasked with greeting the general public passing in front of the barricades, while other ushers, wearing mere suits, tasked with directing the insiders.

Perhaps the fact that that having the general public behind the smaller area of viewing better suits the larger number of people in the public group in terms of space. This in turn indicates that hierarchy is to some extent, absent the distinction of suits and tuxedos, natural, for fewer people could be accommodated inside of the barriers, whereas more people would not fit there. Also, perhaps people who had known the pope in person deserved a chair and a longer look than, say, a tourist passing through Rome. Nietzsche considered hierarchy to be natural for human beings. But it can also be argued that human organizations can take the matter of differential preferences too far. The tuxedo/suit dichotomy is a clear example of artificial rather than natural hierarchy.

That a small number of people representing marginalized groups, such as transsexuals, had been set up in front of the burial church to “greet” the arriving coffin is not enough to evince Jesus’s teaching. In fact, situating officially marginal groups at such a marginal part of the day’s events actually cements the groups’ marginal status in the public consciousness. Bringing marginalized groups, including victims of military aggression in Ukraine and Gaza, that had been particularly dear to Pope Francis to view the casket at the Vatican in front of the temporary barriers would have sent a very different message. In the case of transexuals, the Cardinal-in-charge could have practiced kindness to one's enemy and that the last are first. The combination of these two principles lies at the core of Jesus's preaching on the kingdom of God, which Jesus emphasizes in the Gospels. Faith in Jesus as God is for naught, Paul wrote, if there is not love, and he and Augustine insisted that God itself is love. I would add that agape (self-emptying) love is evinced not only metaphysically, but also in the practice of the two spiritual principles. Come on, guys, be bold; turn the world on its head; it may finally see itself for what it is, and even that an alternative paradigm is possible. In the Gospels, Jesus dies for that paradigm, and yet you still don't get it. The blind following the blind gets nowhere.

Perhaps it is to compensate for an innate human instinct to extenuate hierarchy that the Roman Catholic religious organization should attempt to apply Jesus’s teaching that recognizes the last, including the marginalized, as first, and the first as last. With compassion and peacemaking with one’s enemies, putting the last first can be said to be an excellent means to indwelling the spirit of the kingdom of God, which does not operate in the ways of the world, but as God would analogously would like to see the world. Reflecting the worldly excessiveness of hierarchy rather than instantiating a counter-example, the high-ranking Vatican clergy-officials can legitimately be accused of failing as disciples and even of hypocrisy. At least they were willing to give space for two political leaders to try to get to a deal that would end a long war that had already been so destructive of civilians in Ukraine. The deceased pope would have been proud.

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1. Darlene Superville and Aamer Madhani, “Trump Expresses Doubts Putin Is Willing to End the Ukraine War, A Day After Saying a Deal Was Close,” AP News.com, April 26, 2025.

Pope Francis: Urbi et Orbi against War

Although Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church could not amass a countervailing military force, he could use his pulpit to excoriate the world’s military aggressors in moral terms. Gone are the days when popes wielded military forces and whose threats of excommunication and damnation could be used with effect; modern-day popes speaking to a global audience, which includes non-Christians (not to mention non-Catholics), must resort to moral suasion. So it is ironic that as unprovoked military attacks on civilians have become more massive and increasingly against the norm expected of governments, the influence of popes has decreased, both militarily and theologically, in international affairs. Even so, Pope Francis was able to appeal to a theological belief and value in Christianity during his Christmas Day, 2024 public address at the Vatican. Although not in itself enough to thwart the invasions and related crimes against humanity in Gaza especially, but also in Ukraine, the main impact may be said to be in throwing some light on just how antipodal Russia’s President Putin and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu were from the distinctively Christian the kingdom of God, both as a concept and a spiritual reality fundamentally at odds with the ways of the world. In other words, there is value in the world being able to grasp that two degrees of separation exist between military invaders intent on harming and killing innocent civilians and the kingdom of God as described in the Gospels by Jesus.

The full essay is at "Pope Francis's Christmas Urbi et Orbi Message."

The Vatican on the Brink of Bankruptcy: The Missing Piece

During at least its first millennium, Christianity—with the notable exception of Clement of Alexandria—held that greed is tightly coupled to profit-seeking and wealth. Amid the increased trade, and profits, during the Commercial Revolution in the Middle Age in Europe, Aquinas began the trend severing the coupling to allow for greedless moderate profits, and thus wealth. Also in Medieval Europe, the Roman Catholic Church allowed monasteries to have collective wealth (including land) without being subject to having to go through the eye of a needle to enter the Kingdom of God.[1] With it supply of gold and real estate, the Vatican could be considered rich in the twenty-first century. When the exemption for collective wealth justifies those holdings from the stain of greed is one question; here I look at reports in 2024 that the Vatican was on the brink of bankruptcy, and why, for at least in one media report, one major reason is curiously left out even though that reason may have been making all the difference, and may even be considered just, whether in terms of divine or human justice.

Pope Francis admitted that the Vatican was in trouble financially. “The current system is unable to guarantee in the medium-term compliance with pension obligations for future generations.”[2] According to the Daily Express in late 2024, the Vatican’s “unprecedented financial crisis as of late . . . was caused by a decline in donations.”[3] In 2023, “the Vatican reported an operating deficit of $87 million,” and a larger deficit was the case in 2024 as of mid-December.[4] The question is why.

The Vatican had been “embroiled in debt after the European recession in 2012 and once again during the [coronavirus] pandemic in 2021.”[5] Also, the price of gold decreased in the early 2020s. Some conservative Catholics blamed Pope Francis’ “progressive” policies as “causing a decrease in donation.”[6] But on conservatives’ hot-button issues of abortion and homosexuality, the pope had reaffirmed the Church’s magisterium (i.e., teaching) that both are sins, and opposing climate change was not an unpopular position globally by 2024. As for emphasizing the poor, Jesus in the Gospel narratives does as much, so the pope was by no means an outlier in that respect. In fact, it could be counter-argued that the conservative, theologically excluding policies of the preceding pope, Joe Ratzinger, had caused church attendance, and thus donations, to decline. A church that views itself as more like a hospital than a club of saints will, everything else equal, enjoy larger attendance.

Entirely omitted, however, is the decreased attendance due to the Roman Catholic priests who had been molesting and even raping children for decades without being defrocked—Joe Ratzinger being among the many sordid bishops who reassigned rather than defrocked pedophile priests for the good of the reputation of the universal Church. The lack of accountability within the Vatican, such as in the ceremonial role in the Vatican being given to Cardinal Law by Pope John Paul II, who would be canonized as a saint by the Church he led, after news had surfaced of Archbishop Law having protected nearly 100 pedophile priests in Boston at the expense of 550 victims and with court judgments “that eventually topped $85 million.”[7] Even though the Boston Archdiocese was responsible for paying out the judgments, the hit to the credibility of the Roman Church from not only there being so many pedophile priests (and bishops), but also there being so little accountability—not even a resulting change at the top due to the serial unaccountability from Rome—led to a marked decline in church attendance. Besides this meaning less in donations, surely a significant number of the laity decided not to contribute financially to a religious organization in which employees thereof had been molesting and even raping children over decades. In any democratic state, a government covering up and even harboring so many rapists and their superiors would have faced a no-confidence vote, yet neither Pope John Paul II or Benedict XVI was pushed out or resigned for that reason, although it may be that the International Criminal Court made a deal with the latter pope, Joe Ratzinger, that would drop the charges pending against him in exchange for that conservative pope breaking with tradition and resigning, as well as being confined to Vatican City for the rest of his life. Even efforts inside the Vatican to hide this deal would be consistent with the efforts to cover-up cases of pedophile priests and their clerical protectors, such as Archbishop Law of Boston.

In short, no one should be surprised that the Vatican was on the brink of bankruptcy, though were the Vatican to sell some of its real-estate and gold the organization’s pensioners might not have had to fear being left high and dry in a worldly rather than heavenly sense. Although such fear would not be just for innocent priests and bishops, the extent of orchestrated covering up by the Vatican since at least 2002 and even the possible culpability psychologically of clerical celibacy as a church tradition from the Middle Age regarding the molestation and raping of children as a result of dysfunctional repression means that in addition to guilty priests and bishops being defrocked, the Roman Catholic Church was facing natural and perhaps even divine justice in being on the brink of bankruptcy. That is a powerful statement—much more so than one blaming the Vatican’s weak financial condition of Pope Francis, as if his policies were progressive, and if they really were so, blameworthy too.  

To be sure, religion does not reduce to morality; Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible is more concerned with being worshipped exclusively and thus in covenant, than in sticking to human ethical principles. But it is God, rather than Popes and other bishops (and priests), who has license to trump ethics when needed for theological purposes. When us mere mortals decide unilaterally to trump the dictates of justice by inflicting harm on other people and by enabling the perpetrators who are aggressive especially against the weak, then we can expect that our own suffering is just. Therefore, it is just that the Vatican was on the brink of bankruptcy at the end of 2024.

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1. See my books, Godliness and Greed, and God’s Gold, the latter text reflecting my further thought on the topic, especially on how Christianity can be held off from the increasing susceptibility to greed theologically.
2. Alana Loftus, “Vatican ‘On the Brink of Bankruptcy’ Due to Dramatic Decline in Global Donations Under Pope Francis’ Leadership,” MSN.com, December 17, 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Phillip Martin, “The Pope Promises Accountability to Victims Abused by the Church. Where is Cardinal Law?” The World, August 3, 2015.

Church of the Peripheries

One of the leitmotifs of the four Christian Gospels is the surprising value of peripheries even over people who are up front, whether politically, economically, socially, and even atop religious institutions. “The last are first, and (most of) the first are last” is a Biblical staple for Christians. In terms of compassion, the value being espoused here is consistent with Jesus’s preachment that compassion to one’s detractors and even sworn enemies is the way into the spiritual Kingdom of God, which, being within a person and between people in the spirit of inconvenient love/compassion, is at hand rather than pending Christ’s Second Coming. This point is dramatically made in the film, Mary Magdalene. It was also made in Pope Francis’s decision to skip the grand opening of Notre Dame in Paris and go instead to the French island of Corsica in December, 2024. In making this choice, the pope evinced distinctively Christian leadership, which can also be practiced by heads of governments and even CEOs.

Skipping an ornate state ceremony in Paris, Pope Francis went to a small Mediterranean island, “highlighting local traditions of popular piety on the one hand and migrant deaths and wars on the other.”[1] The symbolism of the trip thus goes beyond Corsica. “The Mediterranean is the backdrop of this trip, surrounded by situations of crisis and conflict,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, said.[2] The notion and value of compassion that is inconvenient is especially welcome in the context of suffering, and, indeed, a person who oneself has suffered greatly may be particularly inclined to redress hate in the world with compassion. This is much more valuable than meeting with the president of a country.

Hence, rather than meeting French President Macron at his palace, the pope was scheduled to “meet privately with Macron at the airport before departing . . . back to Rome.”[3] The first are last. “The pontiff pointedly did not make the trip to Paris . . . for the pomp surrounding the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral following the devastating 2019 fire.”[4] Rather than going to Paris, the pope went to an island whose population numbers only 340,000 people. As they had been embroiled in pro-independence violence, the context there was ripe for soothing, compassionate attention. Like a good shepherd who goes after a lost lamb so it would not be eaten by a wolf, a good pastor goes to the periphery where fear can be expected to eclipse happiness and contentment. A good pastor shirks the contentment of pomp and lavish display in order to go to a sparce periphery.

So too, Macron could have followed suit, assuming he values Jesus’s example, by not only venturing into the poor suburbs of Paris, but also giving Corsica its political independence instead of limited autonomy. The island is closer to Italy anyway. Lessening violence is worth more, I submit, than attending a highbrow grand opening of Notre Dame. Rather than worship the spurious crown of thorns that was returned to the cathedral just after its opening, a Christian following in the pope’s footsteps would be more inclined to evince inconvenient compassion not only to strangers, but, even more so, to people who have been rude, rejecting, and even hateful to oneself.

Benevolentia universalis is commonly thought to be the epitome of Jesus’s life and teaching on how to enter the Kingdom of God; I submit that something more—something even more difficult—is needed to usher in the Kingdom in the world, one person at a time.  Put another way, “the last are first” can be interpreted not only as going to the least rather than the first in society (and in a church!), but also as treating one’s detractors as the last in the sense of being the first in receiving one’s compassion and even love. This is in sync with self-sacrifice and the difficult exercise of free-will, and thus with agape, self-emptying love that is uniquely the epitome of divinity in Christianity, and thus the religion’s real presence. Even in ritual reality, which is qualitatively different than metaphysical reality, agape itself is the real-presence being ritually sought and received. Once ingested, it is for naught if it does not issue outward in compassion to the most difficult of people rather than just to compliant strangers.

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1. Daniel Bellamy, “Francis Becomes the First Pope to Visit the French Island of Corsica,” Euronews.com, December 15, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., italics added.

Pope Francis on Families and the Environment

On a trip to Indonesia in early September, 2024, Pope Francis signed a declaration on religious harmony and environmental protection at the Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta with the mosque’s grand imam. The Pope said that our species was facing a “serious crisis” bought about by war and the destruction of the environment.[1] Of war, the tremendous destruction of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and Gaza that had been taking place was doubtless on the cleric’s mind. Of the environment, climate change was undoubtedly on his mind. In addition to volcanoes and wild fires, human emissions of carbon into the atmosphere were poised to push the global temperature increase above the critical threshold of 2.5 degrees C above the pre-industrial level. What connects the two problems at the root—the source of the two problems—went unmentioned. In fact, the Pope made a statement that, if acted upon, stood to exacerbate the underlying problem: the exponential explosion of growth of the human population in the twentieth century.

In 1798, Thomas Malthus’ book, An Essay on the Principle of Population, was published. In demonstrating that it is possible for a species’ population to increase beyond the capacity of a species’ food supply, Malthus single-handedly dealt a blow to the “argument from design,” which maintains that the design in Nature implies a designer, and thus the existence of God as an intelligent being. An inherently flawed design found in nature would destroy this “proof” of God’s existence, for an omniscient, perfect being would not create a flawed design. As of the year of the Pope’s visit to Indonesia, the population of the human species, roughly 8.3 billion, had not (yet) outstripped the sprcies's food supply on a global level, but humanity's imprint was clearly already making more than a dent on the planet’s atmosphere and oceans. Malthus predicted not only the possibility of famine and disease from over-population, but also increased conflict, and the two world wars of the twentieth century could have been manifestations of growth pains. After all, Hitler wanted more land to the east for the Germans. 

With further increases in population in the twenty first century, not only even more conflict, but also famine and pandemics could occur. As of 2024, climate change was arguably the most dire consequence from the tremendous growth of humanity’s presence on the planet during the prior century. As biological organisms, we cannot help but consume energy. More people means more energy is needed, and other things equal, more pollution is one result. To be sure, pollution abatement technology has helped, but the sheer scale of population has eclipsed such incremental measures to reduce pollution.  In terms of “clean” energy, the increase in global energy consumption in 2023 was greater than the increased “clean” energy, so at the end of that year we were more, not less, dependent on fossil fuels. Clearly, technology’s salvific role would be in the long-term rather than right away. In the meantime, humanity could do worse than focus on the source of the environmental problem.

By worse, I have in mind the Pope’s praise of Indonesians “for having large families with up to five children. ‘Keep it up, you’re an example for everyone, for all the countries that maybe, and this might sound funny, (where) these families prefer to have a cat or a little dog instead of a child,’ he said.”[2] Perhaps if more families had one or two children and a dog, the population of our species would be more manageable and more in line with the natural constraints of our planet. Like technology’s role, managing the species’ population in a responsible way is a long-term project. Least of all should we hope for a massive pandemic or war that would decimate the population, as happened in the fourteenth century in Europe during the Black Death (and before then in China). Making sure there are enough workers to support the elderly is but one reason why quick, radical solutions are unwise. 

But it is also unwise to preach in favor of larger families. Indeed, such preachments stray from the domain of religion. Put another way, expertise in theology does not include expertise in human ecology. I submit that what makes religion distinct, or sui generis, is precisely its transcendent element, which goes beyond our earthly realm. Pseudo-Dionysius of the 6^th century describes religious transcendence as going beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility (emotion). Put another way, religious belief, faith, and experience includes a yearning for that which lies beyond. This core of religiosity should have been the Pope’s concern or focus, rather than family planning. He was on firmer ground during his trip in saying that people from different religions are “all brothers, all pilgrims, all on our way to God, beyond what differentiates us.”[3] The latter is what Augustine refers to as earthly matters, whereas being on our way to God intimates transcendence beyond our everyday world. The pope was right to emphasize the transcendence—the shared experience of unifies us all as creatures with an aptitude for transcendence in a distinctly religious sense. To put the matter crassly, if we all push out as many babies as we can, and with medical science exponentially increasing the human lifespan, chances will be greater that there won’t be a habitable planet for people to live in and thus be able to experience transcendence. To borrow a phrase from The Search for Excellence, a business book written in the 1980s, clerics would be wise to “stick to the knitting” rather than try to pontificate on other domains.

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1, Joel Guinto, “Pope and Top Indonesian Imam Make Joint Call for Peace,” BBC.com, September 5, 2024.
2, Ibid.
3, Ibid.

Pope Francis on Blessing Gay Couples

Pope Francis approved a document in 2023 that allows for “the possibility of blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex”[1] The inclusion of the word, possibility, is important because it gives priests (and their bishops) whose stances on morality are socially conservative an out. That irregular situations are included in the statement—although admittedly they are distinct from “couples of the same sex”—is a hint that the statement would likely be controversial and taken at least by some clergy negatively. So that the document gives the clergy discretion is no small matter. It also matters because of the emotional vulnerability that is entailed in requesting a blessing. At the time, the Church was still being impacted by having been recognized, and thus stigmatized, as the cause of the emotional damage that had been inflicted on children by pedophile clergy over decades. In fact, the resulting declining church attendance may have gone into the motivation for the statement. The document's overarching pastoral purpose in blessing gay couples over conducting a moral critique of homosexuality shows not only how much Pope Francis differed as of 2023 from his predecessor, but also how very much the atrocities against children had changed the orientation of the Vatican. To the extent that a significant number of the pedophile priests and bishops had molested (and were still molesting) boys, any moral critiques getting in the way of blessing loving gay relationships would suffer from a lack of credibility in the face of dripping irony and sordid hypocrisy. Even so, the document can be criticized for failing to distinguish moral from theological critiques of male homosexuality—an oversight mitigated by that fact that the pastoral purpose of the letter subordinates even a theological assessment, for, as Paul wrote, faith without love, especially love whose object is not convenient, is for naught.

It should be stated at the outset that no cleric should be forced, even by the Pope, to give a blessing against the dictates of  conscience, for surely intention matters both in the giving and the receiving of a blessing. Mitigating the likelihood of being forced, conservative clergy may actually not find the document, and thus giving such blessings, to be as objectionable as might be presumed from the immediate sensationalistic journalistic reports. For one thing, the blessings “must be non-liturgical in nature and should not be conferred at the same time as a civil union.”[2] Church was still maintaining that marriage is a sacrament between a man and a woman. Furthermore, homosexual conduct was still considered to be a sin.

The document is thus not revolutionary even within the Roman Catholic Church. The underlying motive is pastoral, based in the magisterium (teachings) of the Church, rather than doctrinal from scripture. In other words, the blessings on same-sex couples can be approached as a means of ministering to human beings in their hurt and yearning for God’s presence, rather than as giving religious legitimacy to homosexual conduct. A request for a blessing can be viewed as a response to the human condition that seeks to transcend itself, including all the concrete situations that we face. Sexual conduct is such a situation, and so it too can be transcended, including when requesting a blessing. Even the love that two people have for each other is deeper than the sexual relations, and yearning for God’s presence—God’s love—relativizes even interpersonal love.  

Nevertheless, a priest (or bishop) may view the document as giving permission to bless a sin. The document attempts to deal with this objection by stressing that no ideology should be an obstacle in the way of a person wanting to feel a connection with God via a blessing by a priest. That is to say, a priest’s ideology should not be an obstacle to a same-sex couple requesting blessing. There are, however, some problems.

Firstly, the document itself contains a contradiction that could give a moral critique from an ideological standpoint some legs. On the one hand, the document recognizes a role for “the prudent and fatherly discernment of ordained ministers.”[3] However, the document also states that “requests for such blessings for same-sex couples should not be denied.”[4] In the daylight between this language, same-sex couples requesting a blessing could be confronted with ideological prejudice. Priestly discernment, being expressly granted, can find an indirect way to justify denying a blessing. For example, a social-conservative priest could simply discern that a couple has not prayed enough to be ready to receive a blessing, even though prayer is not a precondition (but most lay Catholics wouldn’t know that).

Secondly, although the document does warn clergy against denials based on technicalities, including those based on ethical analysis, a theological, non-moral rationale exists that conservative clergy could use. “When people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it.”[5] The pastoral intent behind the document relativizes the moral dimension, but what about the theological dimension itself?

Religion, and thus theology, do not reduce to morality, though in Christianity (and Judaism) the relationship is complex. Divine decrees are not subject to moral constraints; otherwise, as Kierkegaard points out in Fear and Trembling, Abraham would be guilty of attempted murder in raising the knife above Isaac. So divine decrees trump countervailing ethical principles. Theology transcends morality because the anchor being sought transcends the limits of human cognition, perception, and sentiments.[6] Where divine decrees are consistent with, and indeed even have moral content, however, such as five do in the Ten Commandments, morality is given theological legitimacy rather than relegated as subordinate. None of ten commandments, and neither of the two given by Jesus in the Gospels, are on homosexual relations. In fact, Jesus doesn’t discuss homosexuality.

We have to go back to Deuteronomy to find a divine prohibition on male homosexuality, but even there, the point is theological rather than moral. Although this supports the document’s prohibition of moral critique, the document does not confront the theological point being made in Deuteronomy. Looking over the list that is given in that book of things that God dislikes (i.e., abominations), we find items that do not have moral (or immoral) content. Eating shell fish, for example, is included on the list as an abomination. Contrary to the popular view, an abomination is not necessary something that is very, very immoral. Rather, an abomination is simply something that God dislikes. That renders the list theological in nature. Male sodomy (but not lesbianism) is included on the list. On this basis, clergy have a theological rather than a moral basis to use their discretion to refuse to provide a blessing.

To be sure, a biblical hermeneutic (i.e., method for interpreting biblical passages) could be used to get behind the scripture. A cleric could conclude that male homosexuality was deemed culturally immoral when Deuteronomy was written, and that the social ethic was simply given divine credibility. Similarly, the military attack on Jerico could have been legitimated by writing that Yahweh ordered that even the women and children be killed. Without going “behind” scripture to speculate, a priest would be justified in concluding that a theological rather than an ethical reason exists for not blessing same-sex male couples. The document does not take on this point, but an effort is made to transcend it by emphasizing a pastoral goal in dealing with sinners.

The document emphasizes the fact that sinners generally have need of God. In the Gospels, Jesus says he came for the sinners. In fact, he puts them ahead of the self-righteous in getting into the Kingdom of God. Accordingly, the document states: “The grace of God works in the lives of those who do not claim to be righteous but who acknowledge themselves humbly as sinners, like everyone else.”[7] Were active sin a block to blessings, then nobody would be able to receive blessings. Clerical picking and choosing among sins, isolating abortion and homosexuality for special treatment, suggests the presence of human ideology. Ideological discernment is a very different thing than theological discernment. All too often, the two are conflated by clerics who would perhaps fit better running for a political office than saying Mass. God’s grace works even in sinners, regardless of the particular sin being committed. Doing something that God does not like does not cut oneself off from God’s grace. By analogy, friendships are not typically ended just because one person does something that the other person doesn’t like. Put another way, love is stronger than likes (and dislikes).

Similar to how love is not inconsistent with dislikes, wanting to be blessed, even if in a particular situation on the surface of life, is essentially a yearning to transcend. According to the document, “Ultimately, a blessing offers people a means to increase their trust in God. . . . The request for a blessing, thus, expresses and nurtures openness to the transcendence mercy, and closeness to God in a thousand concrete circumstances of life.”[8] Concrete circumstances are superficial relative to the yearning for experiential grounding to something that is solid rather than conditional. Such yearning is the seed of the Holy Spirit, which, according to the document, “must be nurtured, not hindered.”[9] Moral critique hinders. Ideology hinders. Even dislikes hinder. The Church’s clergy should themselves be oriented to transcendence where the reference point (i.e., God) lies beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotions.

It is therefore not by accident that the document states that the Church must castigate rather than perpetuate its own “doctrinal or disciplinary schemes, especially when they lead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying.”[10] With energies dissipated thusly, nothing is left with which to love the sinner. To be sure, sin snuffs out God, but sin does not fit so conveniently into a particular social ethic—as if humans were divine law-givers. Even amid sin, a person can be redeemed from its grasp. Even while within it, even “when a person’s relationship with God is clouded by sin, he can always ask for a blessing, stretching out his hand to God,” the document states.[11] In providing a blessing, a priest is merely pointing hands in a transcendental direction. This is hardly to sanction conduct on the surface.

Therefore, sin does not reduce to immorality as defined by any particular ideology. Even if conduct taken to be immoral is further taken as indicative of sin, as something that is disliked by God, the sinner can ask God for help. To stand in the way of such a request, in which a creature renders itself vulnerable in a fundamental, existential sense, is itself blameworthy both ethically (because harm is being caused) and as a sin because blocking someone’s yearning for God is ironically to push oneself away from God. Surely God dislikes that, but even such a priest is not cut off from God’s grace. In the end, we are all struggling creatures falling short and yet we all have the amazing ability to yearn for existential transcendence.

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1. Christopher Lamb, “Pope Francis Authorizes Blessings for Same-Sex Couples,” CNN.com, December 18, 2023.
2. Nicole Winfield and David Crary, “Pope Approves Blessings for Same-Sex Couples If the Rituals Don’t Resemble Marriage,” The Huffington Post, December 18, 2023.
3. Christopher Lamb, “Pope Francis Authorizes Blessings for Same-Sex Couples,” CNN.com, December 18, 2023.
4. Nicole Winfield and David Crary, “Pope Approves Blessings for Same-Sex Couples If the Rituals Don’t Resemble Marriage,” The Huffington Post, December 18, 2023.
5. Christopher Lamb, “Pope Francis Authorizes Blessings for Same-Sex Couples,” CNN.com, December 18, 2023.
6. Here I am borrowing from Pseudo-Dionysius on the transcendence of God.
7. Christopher Lamb, “Pope Francis Authorizes Blessings for Same-Sex Couples,” CNN.com, December 18, 2023.
8. Nicole Winfield and David Crary, “Pope Approves Blessings for Same-Sex Couples If the Rituals Don’t Resemble Marriage,” The Huffington Post, December 18, 2023.
9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.