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.

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.

Pope Francis and the Traditionalist Opposition: Transcending Ideological Sides

Certainly by the close of 2023, a group of American Roman Catholic clerics, informally headed by Cardinal Raymond Burke (a traditionalist and legalist), were actively opposing Pope Francis. The problem for the members of the opposition faction was that, as traditionalists, they would take seriously the specific oath of obedience they had made to the pope and his successors. Lest such oaths be construed as only binding when they are convenient, which would effectively dissolve any binding, the traditionalist were at risk of being caught by their own hypocrisy. How to deal with such people? The pope had doubtless asked himself this very question on multiple occasions. How does enforcing the oath square with loving one’s detractors, even enemies? The American president Abraham Lincoln put his political rivals on his cabinet; should Pope Francis follow suit, or should he expunge his disloyal opposition and risk Burke’s charge of dictatorship? Does such a charge even make sense, however, given the oath of obedience? I submit that a Christian organization—any Christian organization—ought to be run not by the world’s methods, but according to a radically different kingdom, possible here and now, in the transformation of one’s own heart by serving, and even caring for, one’s detractors. Otherwise, a Christian organization is so in name only, and thus inherently hypocritical.

On November 11, 2023, Pope Francis removed Bishop Strickland from the office of Bishop of Tyler, Texas. The bishop had “been an outspoken critic of Pope Francis, challenging his leadership over social media and even daring Francis to fire him during an interview in 2020.”[1] To challenge the legitimacy of Pope Francis as head of the Roman Catholic Church is in direct conflict with the oath of obedience to whomever is the Vicar of Christ (i.e., the pope). Clearly, having “accused Francis of undermining the central teachings of the church, including on politically charged issues like abortion and same sex marriage,”[2] Strickland didn’t believe that the pope, or at least Pope Francis, stands as the Vicar of Christ to the Church. The bishop’s hypocrisy doesn’t end there. Along with the other American traditionalists, Strickland didn’t like Francis’ “focus on migrants and the climate crisis.”[3] Yet Strickland himself had been very ideological in posting anti-vaccine messages during the Covid pandemic and calling President Joe Biden an “evil president” over his support of abortion rights.”[4] To be sure, Francis’ choice of issues, including economic inequality and the environment, reflect a certain ideology, but the pope war right in his criticism of the American traditionalist clerics as too preoccupied with (human) ideology.

Both sides, and indeed even there being sides in this fight, could transcend ideology itself by letting go of all of the political issues and instead focusing on putting into practice what Jesus says and demonstrates in the Gospel narratives about how people should treat each other. Beyond neighbor love, and much more difficult, caring for opponents is how the Kingdom of God grows within and thus in the world, changing it fundamentally in the process, for faith without love is for naught, Paul wrote.

Although Pope Francis had “frequently turned the other cheek, going so far as to say he does not seek to crack down on opponents,” even appointing “to Vatican departments” people “who held different views than his own,” he decided that Cardinal Burke would “lose some of his privileges, reportedly including a subsidy for his 4,488-square-foot apartment and monthly stipend.”[5] Austen Ivereigh, a papal biographer, told CNN that while meeting the pope on November 27, 2023, “Francis told me he was taking away the apartment and salary of Cardinal Burke because he was using these privileges ‘against the church.’”[6] In what sense? “For so long, Cardinal Burke had been calling into question Francis’ authority and his teaching. This would be shocking in any organization, but particularly shocking in the Catholic Church, given the special role the papacy has in upholding unity,” Ivereigh said.[7]

I contend, however, that the pope should not only have resisted the temptation to take away his detractor’s privileges, but also could have been personally serving and caring for Burke on both a personal and a professional level. This does not mean agreeing with the Cardinal, or even promoting him to a cushy Vatican office; rather, it means going beyond the natural tendency to retaliate, and even less convenient route of turning the other cheek to actively love the Cardinal by caring for him as a human being, and in that way being a servant leader as Jesus is in the Gospel narratives. Doing nice things on a human level, such as volunteering to do some of his errands, like picking up dry cleaning for the Cardinal when he is busy, does not signal ideological agreement or capitulation. Rather, strength of the sort that Jesus evinces in the Gospels is shown. Not that there would be any publicity; the caring must be selfless. To be sure, this may be difficult, as we’re talking about a pope here, but perhaps he could have less visible people care for the Cardinal to make his life easier. In theological jargon, going beyond turning the other cheek to reach out to detractors and even enemies enables us to go beyond Augustine’s notion of caritas to the relatively selfless notion of agape.

Cardinal Burke also could have been acting in compassion for his ideological opponent. That the Cardinal too was a leader in the Church means that his efforts to help the pope personally would count as servant leadership. The matter of the oath of obedience would be transcended by selfless love operationalized as helping the older man with life’s challenges. What use is jousting over which ideological issues get the microphone of the Church if its very leaders are resentful and angry at each other and thus evince not Jesus’ way but that of the Romans and the Sanhedrin? If an organization can be characterized as being hypocritical, then what’s the point? Hasn’t the institution already lost? 

Lest it be concluded that such a response would only encourage more dissent, it might, but the things being fought over would be relativized—transcended as the Church goes from ideological agendas to focus on something deeper: ultimately, the spiritual feeling that God is present in a very curious way in interpersonal relations run contrary to egos. Hopefully, eventually such love that is not at all convenient, if earnest and sincere, would seep into the fabric of the institution and transform it into something that Jesus would recognize. Gradually, the focus would shift from political ideological agendas on both sides to behaving as Jesus advocates in the Gospel. This would be the focus. A spiritual experience in interpersonal relations would be increasingly felt and even valued and thus the movement would gain traction. The Kingdom of God would be growing as if from a mustard seed. Although hopefully not motivated to serve as a model, the pope’s change of course could rub off on local bishops and parish priests around the globe, as they start to help out those parishioners and employees who have been “pains in the ass.” It is easy to care for, and in this sense serve, friends; it is not easy to enter the Kingdom of God, as it is antithetical to the ways of the world. People who would view Francis as strong for caring for Burke are the authentic Christians, whereas even believers in Jesus who infer weakness and even capitulation on Francis’ part are not Christian. This is admittedly a different litmus test than the one that has enjoyed hegemony throughout the history of Christianity, and the two can lead to different verdicts concerning the same person.

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1, Raja Razek, “Pope Removes Outspoken Conservative Texas Bishop after Investigation,” CNN.com, November 11, 2023.
2, Christopher Lamb, “Pope Francis Takes on Unprecedented Attacks from American Opponents,” CNN.com, December 13, 2023.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.

Turning a Church into an Ideological Billboard

By lapsing headlong into partisan politics, especially on controversial matters such as “social issues,” otherwise known as “culture wars,” a congregation unwittingly, and, from a religious standpoint, arbitrarily (i.e., dogmatically) constrains (i.e., limits) its potential membership unnecessarily because people who would be open to and even relish the religious dimension but are opposed ideologically to the partisan stance on a political, or social, issue would not be likely to attend the ostensibly religious services. No one likes to feel ideologically uncomfortable or, even worse, despised. This is particularly likely when a congregation turns its building into an ideological billboard. I suspect that this is a distinctly American phenomenon (i.e., taking things too far). Behind the extravagance lies the sin of pride, wherein a person erroneously believes that he or she cannot be wrong ideologically. This presumption of ideological (or political) infallibility carries with it the erroneous perspective of one’s partisan stance representing a whole (i.e., truth) rather than being partial, as with respect certain values being privileged above others.

A Unitarian-Universalist "Church" wherein a few causes of political activism take pride of place, replacing religious faith and choking off tolerance. 

Perhaps it is only natural to prefer that other people line up with one’s own beliefs, whether religious or political/ideological. The presumptions of inerrancy and completeness, or truth, typically undergird this self-centered perspective. It is easy to conflate one’s own ideological stance on partisan “social issues,” such as abortion, gay marriage, and even stem-cell research, with religious truth even though the latter transcends human ideology. In other words, whereas truth has the property of wholeness, ideological positions are partial, hence partisan politically. Conflating the two, a congregation can even usurp its distinctly religious message by focusing on political issues of the so-called American “culture wars.” Beyond taking up space in sermons, ideological positions can become totalitarian, even in turning a church building into a billboard advertising the partisan stance on a privileged social issue.

A Methodist church smothered in ideological political causes that punctuate even the liturgy and constrain church membership. The photos below are of the same church.

In Christian churches, the emphasis on partisan stances can bring with it a certain intolerance, and even hostility if resentment of an opposing partisan position is fueling the importance being placed on the favored stance. Sometimes the hostility can be quite simple, as the partisans often are so fine-tuned to picking up on subtle cues on whether another person is in the same ideological camp. Even the words a person uses can be picked up by others who are bent on judging for themselves. By 2023, the politically-correct camp had been dubbed “woke,” and an “anti-woke” opposition had become more vocal in some American cultures. This in turn may have intensified efforts by “woke” congregations to go so far as to turn their church buildings into billboards.

In visiting one church, of the Methodist sect (or denomination) of Christianity, that had so many gay flags in the social hall that their sheer number seemed to imply an ideological vehemence: You had better agree with us! The excessiveness itself sent a message. The rainbow colors were literally wrapped around stone pillars on the exterior of the building, and during June several gay flags were flying on the church grounds. Again, the excessiveness itself sent a message, but at this level the message was as much psychological as it was ideological and partisan. The liturgy was not exempt, as the prospect of building up to a religious experience was broken up by commercials. One announced, “We are all in favor of reparations” going to a church of an unmentioned denomination whose members were Black Americans. How does the speaker know that everyone in the sanctuary agreed on that controversial, political issue? I was not surprised that most of the seats were empty. This is the true religious cost, which economists would call an opportunity cost: the benefit foregone by making a choice.

The choice to privilege partisan political issues comes at a cost in religious terms. People who might otherwise visit or even regularly attend a church whose liturgy, rooms, and building are placed in the service of particular political stances on “social issues” will bypass the church if those stances are not ideologically palatable, especially if the sense is that they are being “shoved down their throats.”

Presumably a faith message is important at Christian churches, and it does not reach those people who happen to hold the contrary partisan stance on a privileged social issue. Congregations that succumb to the hegemony (i.e., dominance) of partisan political issues unwittingly self-weaken faith-outreach. To believe that people must have the “correct” partisan stance on ideological issues to be saved by Jesus Christ is to use an exogenous litmus test, or “gate,” to arbitrarily (i.e., dogmatically) limit the saving of souls because in the Gospels Jesus does not specify that people must have certain ideological stances to be saved. In fact, Jesus distances himself from the zealots, who incorrectly interpret Jesus’ version of the Kingdom of God as coming forth externally, through conflict, rather than in individual transformations of the heart.

Because an orientation to contentious ideological issues tends to involve hostility towards people who disagree, and even anger simply because some people do disagree, a congregation oriented to partisan positions may not be conducive to the spread of the Kingdom of God. At most, the kindness or compassion of a partisan is usually limited to ideological compatriots, whereas Jesus preaches that kindness, and even love, be extended to a person’s detractors and even enemies. This is the true cost when a Christian congregation becomes unduly and overwhelmingly partisan, whether on the “right” or “left” of the ideological political spectrum. Partisan “love” is partial, whereas neighbor love is wholistic, as is truth itself.

Sure enough, after a month of being in the choir of a very ideological Methodist church, I ceased my association with that church. I had found that there were too many bosses in that choir, one of which apparently didn’t like me, for he said before we were to sing on a Palm Sunday, “Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” I countered that perhaps someone should tell me that I don’t talk enough when something needs to be said. He then ordered me to “line up” even though the choir was not yet lining up at the back of the sanctuary. That that member of the choir literally had keys to the building—but not to the Kingdom!—meant that I would be facing an uphill battle, and are Christian churches really the place for battles anyway? So I kicked the “dirt off my sandals,” upzipped my robe, and went grocery shopping rather than sang that Sunday. I had previously picked up on hostility from some other members, including two in the choir who had scolded me for not standing on a certain step during a practice. “You stand there!” one pointed. It was barely a step. That congregation was not fertile ground for a mustard seed to take root—too much stone draped in ideological flags.

At least for the Methodists the claim can be made that matters of faith can be distinguished from a social ideology, so there is hope that the adoption of a transcendent reference point could be used from which to view the dominant ideology and the related political activism as partial, and even as human, all too human. The litmus test for inclusion could therefore be based in religious faith rather than on a position on a “social issue.” One of the benefits of a faith-perspective is that human artifacts cannot be placed that the center of our existence. Humility can thus replace arrogance. This is not possible where the transcendent nature of distinctly religious faith has been vacated and replaced with the ideological content of political activism.

The Unitarian Universalist “religion” accomplished such a transition in the twentieth century. Originally, Unitarianism, as preached by Emerson, was a rejection of the Christian Trinity from within that religion. By 1980, humanism had become the dominant strain in Unitarian-Universalist societies. My parents were such humanists, and my limited exposure to a UU congregation as a teenager left me with the perplexing question of how a religious organization could survive without being religious. My mother later told me that I used to protest the hypocrisy as a young teenager. Later in life, when visiting UU congregations, I found that the rejection of religion had taken hold, and in its place, the human ideology of political correctness (or “woke”) had pride of place. One UU minister insisted that religious Unitarianism was in vogue. Unfortunately, he mistook the term religious. For example, he insisted that egalitarian economic systems are sacred. He quickly closed himself off from being open-minded when I suggested that to regard a human construction as sacred is self-idolatrous. This is the message of Moses when in returning from the mount he discovers the worship of a golden calf. So too, a person who “knows” that one’s political ideology on social issues is nothing short of truth is essentially engaging in self-worship. The evisceration of a transcendent dimension cuts off a means by which such a person can be humble with respect to one’s own ideology and thus open to the possibility that a person can be wrong, and is at most partial and fallible. In succumbing to temptation, the UU organization closed down a place for Christians who believe in Jesus’ preaching yet do not accept that he is the Son of God.

By 2023, much had been written about the ideological polarization of the American people. That divide had reached congregations on the “right” and “left,” just as segregation had taken hold. Religious faith is not reduceable to an ideological position; rather, the former transcends the latter. To the extent that ideological advocacy is salient in religious congregations, especially spread across their respective buildings, a dearth of religious faith can be assumed. In the most extreme cases, the ideological positions masquerade as the proper content of religious faith. The “faithful” become like gods on Earth, and the societal bipolarity becomes even more difficult to smooth over in reconciliation. 

Behind the Prejudice Against Educated Clergy

Among Quakers (many congregations of which refuse to record ministers), some evangelical congregations, and other faiths such as Baha'i (which does not have a clergy), there seems to be an underlying anti-intellectual bias regarding ministers educated in theology and ministry. I think the prejudice is out of anger, whose root is the errant assumption that knowledge, even in faith seeking understanding, causes the educated person to think he or she is better than others. Relatedly, expertise is assumed, falsely again, to bring with it a more general elitism.These flawed assumptions give rise to the prejudice that being educated in theology and ministry are not of much value, as being uneducated or self-educated in the field are actually preferred qualities in cases in which ministers are used (e.g., many evangelical congregations). All this is a slap on the face to those of faith who have spent years of their lives in seminary or university, and such passive aggression goes against Jesus's message on how to treat others.

No one would suggest that the expertise of a physician from study at university is something to be spurned. No one would say that a lay healer has as much medical knowledge, at least when the person himself is ill, and yet once some people turn to the religious domain, expertise is out, even fair game for insults, in favor of the false notion of equality that affirms that it is at odds with the inequalities in expertise. I'm so used to deferring to the expertise of others whose knowledge I don't have that the refusal seems foreign to me. I do not of course deny that ministerial gifts can be outside the "faith seeking understanding" that takes place in a seminary or university. So I do not suffer from clerical exclusivity, but it is not true that the only alternative is throwing the rascals out, for their knowledge goes with them. A good cleric values his or her theological knowledge/education without being an elitist (yet while fully admitting that not everyone has such an education).

What I shake my head at in utter astonishment is how some Quakers, in refusing to record ministers even to Quakers who have studied for ministry, thereby limit the theological expertise available to Quakers. The assumption in Baha'iism is that every member is an expert; this assumption, however, does not follow from "the priesthood of all believers." Evangelical Christian congregations that prefer uneducated applicants (even those who can speak well) lose the benefits that would come from having educated ministers who can preach well.

People who have studied for years to be a minister should go elsewhere, where people would not only stand to benefit from their theological and ministerial knowledge, but would appreciate rather than feel threatened by the knowledge. Of course we are all the same relative to God, but this does not mean that we don't have different specialized knowledge areas and that some people have more knowledge than others within a field. In fact, to prefer uneducated clergy as a general preference risks a congregation being held captive by ignorance that cannot be wrong. The assumption that stifling accountability comes only from educated clergy is severely faulty; in fact, to the extent that seminarians and divinity students are taught negative theology, which holds that God is in essence unknowable, more not less humility is likely in speaking of God as well as in guiding people.

To say we all have the same expertise demands psychological rather than religious explanation, and to say that knowledge learned from scholars is not of value (in any field, even in religion) reflects a very prejudiced attitude that has all the disrespect and arrogance that is presumed to be in educated people. To be sure, theological and parish ministry knowledge is not the only beneficial ingredient; it does not guarantee good pastoral care even though the schooling includes this area too. To be more educated in religion does not mean that a person has a more compassionate heart. So, again, I am not claiming that only people educated in theology and ministry should be ministers. Rather, I am arguing that the preference, borne out of prejudice and resentment, for uneducated (or self-educated) clergy, all else equal, is unwise.

Religion as a Credible Academic Field of Study

What is religion? What does the domain of religion cover? What is excluded? Does opinion eclipse knowledge in marking the boundaries? Should we allow empirical self-identification claims from self-proclaimed religionists to veto any offending established knowledge of what the religion is? I contend that an atheist who claims he is nonetheless a practitioner of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam does not alter the fact that the three Abrahamic religions are monotheist. Atheist Judaism, for instance, is an oxymoron born of an arrogant subjectivity that offends reason itself and therefore cannot be valid. 

An opinion of a religious practitioner as to what core beliefs a religion should include does not mean that the knowledge we have of that religion is obliged to truncate itself or make room as if the opinion counts as much as the knowledge. For one thing, knowledge has more to back it up than does opinion. Knowledge of Christianity as a religion from Christian Scripture, for example, need not make room for a practitioner’s opinion that Christianity includes atheism, for that view is diametrically opposed to the existence of a deity in the scripture. An opinion seeking to remake or turn a religion against itself may insist on being recognized as valid, but this does not mean that the knowledge we have of Christianity (i.e., what it is as a religion) need be altered or contradicted.

Surely knowledge of something is not on par with opinions, for the basis of knowledge is not an aggregation of subjectivities. Rather, knowledge has a basis that is not so flimsy, so knowledge can serve as an anchor by which subjectivities can situate their respective opinions. For example, Christianity is classified as a monotheist religion. This theological classification does not come from subjectivity, but, rather, what the Old and New Testaments state, even if they are not considered to be the inerrant Word of God. That there is one god is a major theme rather than the offspring of an interpretation. Even though an interpretation can be said to be an opinion, even an informed one, the knowledge we have of Christianity is too certain to be a bunch of opinions shared by even many people. It follows that starting from the assumption that every opinion is valid with respect to knowledge is problematic. We are indeed an impious lot with regard to our religious opinions, supposing them to trump that which is known. Such arrogance belies any claim of being a monotheist.

I submit that knowledge in the religious-studies discipline is vulnerable to the presumptuous onslaught of religious ideologues who wrongly view knowledge of a religion to be subordinate to their individual self-identifications, ethnographically. Moreover, the problem is that some practitioners give ethnography a veto over other sources of knowledge of religions. They may even claim that the very term religion is up for grabs even though the fact that a discipline exists is predicated on there being some idea of what religion means (i.e., of what counts as religious).

Also, knowledge of a religion may be transmitted by biased scholars who allow their own respective religious opinions to overrun the duty to teach knowledge unfettered. We may even ask: Does knowledge of religion (and particular religions) exist, or have scholars of religion merely been spouting their own opinions through the lenses of reason? I submit that although scholarly subjectivity has played a role in the accumulated knowledge of religion, this pathogen can be constrained by the academic methodologies on how knowledge can legitimately be acquired.

For example, a scholar who is Christian may want a survey to show that a lot of a city’s residents are Christian, but that same scholar would be obliged to use random sampling and calculate  “N,” the sample size using a method that cannot be bent by the scholar’s own preferences. Such a survey could thus be replicated by other scholars. The scholar may be ideologically in favor of the self-identification of a respondent as an atheist Christian, but other scholars could invalidate that data-point because the knowledge we do have of the Christian religion includes that it is monotheist, and therefore a person who self-identifies as an atheist cannot be classified as a Christian. 

What about the teaching of religion? At seminaries and even some divinity schools, the study of Christian tends to be skewed in a sectarian direction. At Yale’s school of divinity, for example, an evangelical Christian assistant professor (who did not get tenure) told students who were asking questions that they professor deemed exogenous (i.e., outside the contours of the dogma) that only students with a good character receive the school’s masters of divinity degree. To be sure, that degree is chiefly though not exclusively ministry-oriented, but Yale itself was by that time not a Christian university. It was originally founded in 1703 by Congregational ministers who resented the Unitarian influence in Harvard’s divinity school (that influence has its own biases, often at the expense of religion itself). In fact, when I attended Yale, the president, Rick Levin, was Jewish. At one point, he attempted to move the divinity school closer to the main campus from being located on top of a hill—a city on a hill. One opposing divinity student said in a seminar, “But they are relativists” at the bottom of the hill, and “Hitler was a relativist!” Suffice it to say that the Divinity School was able to remain on the fringes of Yale’s campus. Perhaps this continued to thwart Yale’s administration from being able to act as a check on its divinity school’s academic bias. That the department of religious studies was located at the heart of the main campus meant that academic standards could be protected in the study of religion from non-sectarian standpoints.

Yet scholars in departments of religious studies are hardly objective; we are, after all, subjective beings, and we all have our biases, whether religious or political. Many years after I had graduated from Yale, a retired instructor from Arizona State University’s department of religious studies fraudulently misrepresented himself to me as a scholar even though he did not have a doctorate in the field. I became suspicious because he contended that how people “self-identify” themselves in religious terms trumps how a particular religion is classified theologically. According to the man with a masters in church history, ethnographic surveys decide the content and contours of a given religion even in regard to how it is classified theologically. “The theology doesn’t matter,” he told me. So if someone self-identifies as an agnostic practitioner of Judaism (i.e., a religious Jew), then scholars are obliged to consider agnostic Judaism to be a part of Judaism rather than as Jews with a weak religious faith.

I told the pretend-scholar that Judaism is classified as a monotheistic religion. “That’s just your opinion,” he relied dismissively. Just as he had dismissed the fact that scholars in the liberal arts have doctorates, he dismissed theology even as regards a theological classification! Why, I wondered, would he stoop to misrepresent himself as a scholar how little he respected actual scholars and knowledge itself. He was an ideologue who wanted to defend people who feel oppressed by religion. God forbid that a scholar might reply, “agnosticism is exogenous to Judaism rather than a type of it.” Like Socrates’ interlocutor Euthyphro, the modern-day interloper suddenly decided he no longer wanted to talk to me and said, “I’ve never approached you” in the café where we met. He had also said at the end of one of our conversations, “After the ten minutes I gave you, the rest was charity.” Such must be the arrogance of non-scholars at Arizona State University that even authentic scholars are considered lower.

That a university would allow an ideologue who relegates inconvenient knowledge as subservient to opinion even just to teach caught me by surprise, though admittedly Yale had been allowing Christian scholar-ministers to teach at that university’s divinity school in a way that delimited questions to those that fit within those professors’ own interpretations of Christian scripture. The difference is perhaps that those scholarly priests respected knowledge, for the pretended scholar from Arizona State University so obviously did not. “Some religious Jews self-identify as atheist Jews, so there is a type of Judaism that is not monotheist,” he told me once. He bristled at my reply that such Jews could be wrong. To the pretend scholar, it was the knowledge that would be wrong if confronted with a conflicting self-identification.

The knowledge we have of a religion should not bow to a convenient self-identification by a practitioner because knowledge trumps opinion. That is to say, we can legitimately have more confidence in knowledge within the academic field than in the opinions of non-academic practitioners. Scholars do not throw out knowledge simply because it runs against an ideology, especially if the ideologue is not a scholar in the field. The pretend-scholar I met had no problem misrepresenting himself as a scholar because he had no respect for the knowledge in the field. What mattered to him was that no one could refute a self-identification as incorrect from the standpoint of what we know of the religion based on itself rather than any other religion.

Were self-identifications permitted to set the contours of a religion, it could change beyond all recognition into another religion even as it retains its sacred texts, symbols, and rituals. A religion could be turned on its head. This has in fact occurred. The General Conference of Friends (Quakers), which covers the Northeast of the United States, has declared itself not to be Christian because enough Quakers there do not self-identify as Christians. From my visits at those Meetings while I studied at Yale, I suspect that the ideological opinion that Christianity has historically been dogmatic and oppressive to heretics and other religions was a factor in a significant number of the self-identifications at odds with Quakerism being a Christian denomination/sect.  In contrast, Quaker Meetings west of the Mississippi River tend to be evangelical Christian. Friends there doubtlessly do not recognize the faiths of the Friends in the General Conference. Indeed, Quakerism as paganism is not recognizable, for the reason that self-identifications of especially new practitioners have been allowed to be determinative for what Quakerism is.

What if enough religious Jews were to self-identify as atheists? Would there be such a thing as atheist Judaism—Judaism without God? An ideological stance wherein Yahweh is deemed to be oppressive and even cruel to people of other religions could prompt some religious Jews to self-identify as atheist observant Jews (i.e., practitioners of Judaism). Would scholars be obliged to reclassify Judaism from being monotheistic in spite of the Hebrew Scriptures? I submit that the answer is no because ideology, as highly subjective, is not sufficient to trump knowledge, especially if the latter is based on the religion itself rather than being from a comparative classification scheme that ignores the knowledge we have of the religions themselves.

This is not to say that scholars are objective founts of knowledge. Because the knowledge learned by scholars of religion does not reduce to opinions, those of the scholars themselves should not bias the knowledge, just as self-identifications by practitioners of a religion should not. Universities, whether Yale or Arizona State University, are responsible for seeing to it that scholars and especially non-doctoral instructors do not treat knowledge as mere opinion in order to privilege certain opinions that are not in keeping with the knowledge.

It may be that religious practitioners generally are vulnerable to this propensity to disvalue knowledge when it contradicts a religious belief or interpretation. For example, some evangelical Christians claim that Christianity is not a religion, whereas all other religions are. In the academic field of religious studies, Christianity is indeed classified as a religion nevertheless. It would be sad indeed were scholarship to serve the interests of the religious ideologues rather than serve existing knowledge and reason seeking greater understanding.

The man from ASU who misrepresented himself as a scholar (i.e., holding a doctorate in the field) reflected the culture in Arizona wherein "book" knowledge is not respected generally and especially when it runs afoul of ideological opinions. For instance, many riders of the light rail could be seen not wearing a mask as protection against the coronavirus in 2020. Also, the ideological claim that climate change does not really exist so the scientists are wrong has had considerable currency there. Scholarship can be easily dismissed if it is at odds with an ideological stance even when a theology is funneled to serve an ideology or as a defense-mechanism to protect the ego. 

Religion (including theology) can indeed be regarded as a credible field in academia, for the constraints in scientific methodology and logic can both be used to resist the encroachments of ideological bias and other exogenous agendas that can admittedly easily warp the pursuit of knowledge.  My only degree in the field is the Masters of Divinity, which is really a bachelors degree (just as the MD and JD are actually bachelors) because it is the first degree in a school (e.g., Divinity). So I cannot regard myself as a scholar of religion. Even so, I greatly value knowledge that has not been warped by ideologies or other vested interests even of scholars of religion, and I disvalue the intellectual dishonesty that is involved in claiming as knowledge that which is really an instinctual urge to promote one's own worldview. 

Preaching, for instance, should not be done under the explicit auspices of scholarly inquiry. Schools such as Yale's divinity school whose mission includes educating scholarly ministers and priests should take pains to distinguish the two pursuits while holding that both are of value. Professors of divinity who are themselves ministers or priests need to be especially self-aware so as not to yield to the temptations to 1) restrict academic discourse to the ideologically comfortable confines of their preachments, and 2) present those preachments as though they satisfy the criteria for academic knowledge. It is quite common, for example, for Christians to conflate the faith-belief that Jesus of the New Testament was a historical (empirical) person in the ancient Middle East with historical knowledge that comes from historical accounts rather than faith narratives. The latter prioritizes theological points, and thus can ethically adapt (rather than merely adopt) historical events to make such points. 

The synoptic gospels differ on which night of Passover the Last Supper was on; putting that event on the second night serves the theological metaphor of Jesus as the lamb to be slaughtered for the forgiveness of sins. The writer would not have been bothered in the least had he known that the event actually taken place on the first night because he would have known that he was not writing a historical account. This is not to say that the field of theology is not as credible as a field of knowledge than is history. It is to say that the two fields have different criteria (and source-types) and thus should not be conflated. A historian would look for historical accounts that are as objective as possible (e.g., not from the disciples) to answer the question of whether the Last Supper actually took place (and, if so, on which night), whereas a theologian would assess the fit of the metaphor to soteriology (i.e., Jesus Christ as Savior). 

Lay Christians and even many preachers may be surprised to learn that the only historical reference to Jesus, that which the Jewish historian Josephus made, is suspect as it regards Jesus as having preached the truth. Rather than being written by a Jewish person, the sentence was more likely inserted by a Christian copyist. Historians know to look at the credibility of a source that is presumably a historical account, for slyness is not a small part of human nature.

In conclusion, religious studies as an academic discipline can be distinguished from that of history and the ministerial profession of preaching.  Moreover, academic pursuits should not succumb to the lure of ideology or preaching. Given the omnipresent desire that others adopt one's ideology or religious faith, the towers of knowledge that we construct should be subject to critique on a regular basis and by people of different vantage-points. 

On the Rushed Sainthood of Pope John Paul II: Metaphysics and Ideology Triumphant

Just days after the death of Pope John Paul II, “cardinals eager to uphold his conservative policies had already begun discussing putting him on a fast track to sainthood.”[1] This alone could have alerted religionists as to the possible sanctification of an ideology within the Roman Catholic Church. The force of an ideology to its partisans can render them deaf to other considerations. The church ideologues clamoring for the ages-old process of canonization to be disregarded—hardly a conservative demand—chose not to hear the “notes of caution from survivors of sexual abuse and historians that John Paul had persistently turned a blind eye to the crimes in his church.”[2] Fifteen years later, the Vatican itself admitted that the former pope had known of the crimes of Archbishop (of New York) Theodore McCarrick yet refused to put a stop to them. “The investigation, commissioned by Pope Francis, who canonized John Paul in 2014, revealed how John Paul chose not to believe longstanding accusations of sexual abuse against [McCarrick], including pedophilia, allowing him to climb the hierarchy’s ladder.”[3] Rather than being a mere mistake in judgment, as some conservatives would argue, the decision to look the other way resulted in great evil. The foreseeable consequences meant that John Paul II allowed more rapes to happen. Besides the rather obvious point that a saint would not have done so, and thus the canonization of John Paul II was erroneous, this case suggests that the “two miracles” requirement for canonization is itself flawed. 
The claim for canonization was that in at least two cases, people prayed to John Paul II and subsequently were healed. The conclusion that the former pope intervened with God to cure the petitioners suffers from the fact that positive correlation does not in itself constitute causation. Moreover, the emphasis on a metaphysical requirement takes the attention off the real question: Was the candidate’s life saintly? To say that a cleric was a religious man is not sufficient, for that goes with the territory. In fact, the possibility of “insider trading” and “hierarchical favoritism” should trigger extra safeguards in cases in which the candidates were clerics in the hierarchy. Put another way, canonization has more credibility in cases in which the candidates were not bishops, cardinals, or popes.
The metaphysical/life distinction is relevant to the Catholic Church beyond the issue of canonization. If a lay person believes in transubstantiation and ingests the body and blood of Christ after the consecration in the Mass and yet does not reach out to help detractors and even enemies when they are in need, of what good is the metaphysical belief, practically speaking? Valuing Christ’s teachings and trying to live by his example must be met even if the liturgical consecration is revered. The faith is that the two go together, but if they don’t, the matter of valuing Christ’s teachings for how to get into the Kingdom of God by how others are treated must be decisive. Similarly in canonization proceedings, the matter of a candidate’s life is decisive.

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1. Jason Horowitz, “Sainted Too Soon? Vatican Report Cast John Paul II in Harsh New Light,” The New York Times, November 14, 2020.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Religion as an Academic Area of Study

What is religion? What does the domain of religion cover? What is excluded? Does opinion eclipse knowledge in marking the boundaries? Should we allow empirical self-identification claims from self-proclaimed religionists to veto any offending established knowledge of what the religion is? I contend that an atheist who claims he is nonetheless a practitioner of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam does not alter the fact that the three Abrahamic religions are monotheist. Atheist Judaism, for instance, is an oxymoron born of an arrogant subjectivity that offends reason itself and therefore cannot be valid.

The full essay is at "Religion as an Academic Area of Study." 

Political Ideology and Religious Doctrine: Pope Francis and His American Critics

Political ideology and religious doctrine are distinct, yet confusion can justifiably exist because ideology can seep into doctrine or be claimed to be such when it is not. This interlarding of political ideology into religious doctrine, or theology, is perhaps best demonstrated in Christian liberation theology, which includes political (e.g., justice) and economic (e.g., equality of income or wealth) prescriptions in the future Kingdom of God manifest on Earth. Generally speaking, political (and economic) ideology can legitimately be viewed as being human, all too human, and thus as fundamentally distinct from religious revelation and even doctrine (though even these may be influenced and even distorted on our end by the taint of human nature). Put another way, the source of revelation and even doctrine comes from “above,” whereas political (and economic) ideology are human artifacts. Therefore to infuse such artifacts into religious doctrine risks polluting it such that the religious or spiritual auspices are impaired. David Hume suggests in his Natural History of Religion that the human mind cannot long hold onto the divine idea manifesting purely as simplicity, so we attach other ideas—anthropomorphic ones—to our conceptions of the divine. Such ideas are of human traits or characteristics, hence “from below.” Sadly, we rarely recognize this human activity; rather, we take God to have such characteristics.[1] The criticism of Pope Francis by “ultraconservative” American Catholics, including some notable clergy, illustrates just how problematic the admixture of political ideology and religious doctrine can be.

“Faced with sustained opposition from Catholic conservatives in the United States who accuse him of driving traditionalists to break with the church, Pope Francis said on [September 9, 2019] that he hopes it doesn’t come to that, but isn’t afraid of it either.”[2] He said he was praying that there would not be any schisms, but he was not afraid. With the priorities of his papacy including “reaching out to the poor, advocating justice for migrants and other marginalized people and protecting the environment from capitalism run amok,” the pope had “alienated some conservatives—especially in the United States—who [were saying that he was] promoting an anti-American, anticapitalist agenda and drifting from the core teachings of the Church.”[3] Interestingly, both the papal priorities and the criticism contain both doctrine and ideology. Regarding the priorities, reaching out to the marginalized resonates with Jesus’ preaching and example, whereas protecting the environment from harmful economic externalities fits squarely with a political ideology. If religious doctrine is indeed distinct from the domain of political ideology, the pope had gone overstepped from his basis in the distinctly religious domain. Yet so too had his critics who criticized not just the pope’s handling of religious doctrine—especially the doctrines on marriage and homosexuality—but also his “anti-American, anticapitalist agenda.” The pope “lamented that politicized ideology had seeped into doctrine and driven some of the critiques in the American church and beyond.”[4] I wonder if the pope included his own doctrine! The plank is always bigger in the other person’s eye than one’s own.

Even so, the pope’s pastoral care of divorced and gay Catholics was part of his effort to emulate Jesus with regard to the marginalized; it was thus doctrinal rather than part of the pro-gay political agenda. In fact, the pope also emulated Jesus in helping enemies—a Commandment rarely seen in operation even in the religion of love founded by Jesus. In the interview on September 9, 2019, the pope “suggested that some of his most ardent critics were working out their own problems by lashing out. ‘We have to be gentle, gentle with the people tempted by these attacks, by these things,’ he said. ‘Because they are going through problems and we should accompany them with gentleness.”[5] This pastoral care extended even to enemies lies at the core of Jesus’ preaching and example—far more important than getting into the Kingdom of God than any immigration position or economic ideology. Francis’s critics in the American clergy could have responded by stepping into the religious domain by offering pastoral care to the pope. Instead, Cardinal Raymond Burke criticized the pope’s “emphasis on inclusiveness” for confusing Catholics on doctrine.[6] Carlo Vigano, a bishop, went so far as to blame Pope Francis for the child sex-abuse scandal because of the pope’s pastoral care of gays, even though the sainted Pope John Paul II ignored the problem and his fellow conservative Pope Benedict actually was part of the scandal.[7]

It is admittedly tempting to anthropomorphise religion by including political ideology; holding onto the idea of God as transcending what we can think of and perceive (and feel) is difficult.[8] It is easy, in other words, to craft the Kingdom of God on Earth as distinctly like they ways of our world, rather than turning those ways upside-down as in caring for a detractor or even enemy (without giving in). Both Pope Francis and his American detractors have treated political ideology and religious doctrine as if they were closely related and in the religious domain where the Church has a nativist legitimacy. I submit, therefore, that both sides would have done better by first willowing down the papal priorities and content of the criticism to religious doctrine. Besides realizing that the papacy sets the Church’s priorities, the critics could have followed their pope by emulating Jesus too.   

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[1] Pseudo-Dionysus, or St. Denis, of the 6^th century argued that because God transcends the limits of human cognition and perception, characteristics of this world, including human attributes, do not go far enough.

[2] Jason Horowitz, “Pope Francis: ‘I Pray There Are No Schisms,” The New York Times, September 10, 2019.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] As archbishop of Munich, that pope urged in a letter (published by the New York Times) that a pedophile priest be transferred to another parish (where he would work as a youth minister!) because the taint of defrocking that priest would harm the reputation of the universal Church. American conservative Catholic clergy and laity were silent in response. One volunteer at a Catholic church in Illinois told me she thought the newspaper had fabricated the letter.

[8] I suggest in Spiritual Leadership in Business that focusing on religious experience that transcends is something that we can hold onto, although the requisite intensity of concentration delimits the amount of time per session.