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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everyone. I am jvl here with my old friend Ed Condon. We're going to do some Pope Leo talk, some JD Vance talk, some Vatican talk, some anti pope talk. And Ed is from my favorite Catholic news source, the Pillar. You can find them on substack@thepillarcatholic.com Is that right, Ed? Do I have that?
- [00:26]
B
That is right.
- [00:27]
A
The Pillar, Catholic.com I. I'm a founding member over there. God, I love the Pillar so much. So, Ed, we've had some things which are normal and some things which are not normal. The normal stuff is there is a war and the Pope is against it. This is a thing which is true, basically, in all times, in all places, with all popes, Correct?
- [00:47]
B
Certainly the last couple of centuries. Yeah.
- [00:50]
A
Yeah. Okay. So, you know, when. When there's a war, regardless of what we think about the war in America, the Pope is against it. This Pope, an American Pope is against the war in Iran. Pope Leo has been escalating his condemnations, and he got pretty specific after Donald Trump threatened genocide and said American Catholics should call their representatives, elected representatives, and say, we don't want genocide. That's pretty political for. For a Pope, I think. Right.
- [01:21]
B
It's certainly pretty pointed. Yeah. I think that if you ask the Pope, he'd probably say, listen, genocide isn't a political issue. It's a. It's a pretty basic human rights issue.
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A
I don't mean political in a bad way. I just meant, like, it's. I mean, that's a level of involvement that goes beyond. War is bad.
- [01:39]
B
Yes.
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A
And then we. We had word that there was a meeting at the Pentagon in which underlings from the Department of Defense is. Back in January after the Pope gave a speech, his state of the world speech, in which he talked about human rights, dignity, and talked about Venezuela. And it was a little more elliptical, but, you know, he was talking about Trump and the Pentagon people brought in a cardinal and sort of read him the riot act. Can you give me the readout on what this story is all about?
- [02:17]
B
So what seems to have happened is that the Pope gave his, as you say, state of the world speech, which is, you know, every January, the popes give a speech to the Vatican Diplomatic Corps because, you know, the Holy See's got ambassadors and receives ambassadors from hundreds of countries around the world and gives his sort of, here's how I see things. And, you know, war being bad is a common theme, as you say, all times and all popes. But apparently some people in the Trump administration took some of what the Pope said to be personally directed at the administration and specifically against what they're calling, I guess, the Donroe doctrine in sort of the resurrection hemispheric domination. Yeah, as you say, if that's what the Pope was saying, he was being especially elliptical. I've, I read the speech at the time. I've read it a couple of times since, and I think you have to really squint. Kind of hard to say this is all about America. It's, you know, there is a war still going on in Europe right now with hemispheric dominance being a sort of justifying rationale for the Russians. So I don't know that it's necessarily a correct read to say, well, this was all about America. But anyway, that apparently is how some people took it. Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who's the Apostolic Nuncio, or was the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States back then, which is just as far as the government's concerned. It's the accredited ambassador of the Holy See to the United States. I mean, he has a sort of dual function of being the Pope's sort of pastoral point man for the Church in the United States. But he's an accredited. An ambassador was asked to come into the Pentagon where the Under Secretary for Defense War are we calling it now? I guess Defense. It's Defense, not war.
- [03:51]
A
War is only a nickname. To change it to actually be department, they would have to pass a law. They haven't done it.
- [03:58]
B
And so I, you know, the Undersecretary of Defense for Strategy called him in. They had a meeting in.
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A
And this is Colby, is that.
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B
Yes, that who.
- [04:07]
A
This was Elbridge Colby, who should be noted Catholic convert. We'll get to that in a minute. So for, for you, for you Catholics who want some little intra Catholic stuff, we'll talk about converts versus cradle Catholics in a minute.
- [04:20]
B
Well, anyway, so he, he apparently took a, took a pretty harsh tone with the Vatican's ambassador, Cardinal Pierre, pushed back pretty hard on the Pope's vision for, for world peace. And I, from what I gather, I mean, you know, I read the Free Press's report on this and I was, I was skeptical that such a thing could have happened because I was trying to remember any occasion when the Vatican's ambassadors asked to go to the Pentagon and, and then be sort of dressed down for something the Pope has said. You would have thought that this might go a different way. There are other diplomatic channels they might choose to choose to pursue for this, which raises, I think, a whole bunch of questions about, you Know, what was the, what was the thought process here? But the meeting did happen, from everything I can tell from people I've talked to. And it, it did go this the way that the free press appears to have reported it. They had some, they had some details in there that I, I haven't been able to confirm for myself about someone apparently raising the Avignon Papacy, which was a, a period of about 60 years where the French crown basically kidnapped the Pope and kept him in France. And the implication seems to have been get on sides or we're going to move Leo to Martha's Vineyard or something, I don't know.
- [05:33]
A
But, you know, install their own pope. Was there an anti Pope raised?
- [05:38]
B
Well, there's, I don't know that there was an anti Pope raised, but certainly there was the specter of the Avignon Papacy. And I, you know, it's, it's so bizarre. You, in any other time in history, you'd be like this, this can't be what happened. But again, I, I've been calling a lot of people and I haven't found anyone who said, no, this didn't happen. On the contrary, this seems to be what's gone on.
- [05:58]
A
That's amazing on so many levels, one of which being that, again, it's not actually called the Department of War, it is the Department of Defense, but they want to call themselves the Department of War. This is like a butch thing. And so it is a little weird for the people who are like, no, we're going to talk about our war. Lethality, lethal war, to then get upset when someone else is like, I don't know, all this war talk over there, I mean, Jesus seems to want us to not do the war, like, love, ixnay on the war talk. And then they get upset at that. It's a little weird, isn't it?
- [06:34]
B
It's very strange. And again, to have that be the response to that particular speech that the Pope gave, which, like we said, did not read to me, is especially pointed at any one administration anywhere in the world and could certainly be read across a couple of different regions. It's a very weird thing to have focused on, given some other stuff that, you know, popes occasionally say, including this one, that are far more specific.
- [06:56]
A
So Elbridge Colby does this. We then have JD Vance, who is currently in Hungary campaigning for, literally campaigning for the Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban, which is a whole other thing. And he is asked about this meeting and he gives the I have no idea who that cardinal is line. Right.
- [07:21]
C
Reporting by the Free press is that they told him that the American military has a lot of might and they can do whatever they want and the church should get on its side. Does that message sound correct to you? Is that something you would sign off on?
- [07:33]
D
So one. I. With no disrespect to the cardinal. I don't know who Cardinal Christophe Pierre is.
- [07:38]
C
He's the ambassador to the Holy see
- [07:40]
A
in the U.S. oh, okay. Okay.
- [07:41]
D
I do. I've met him before. Sorry, I just didn't remember the name. I've never seen this reporting. I'd like to actually talk to Cardinal Christophe Pierre and frankly to our people, to figure out what actually happened. I think it's always a bad idea to offer an opinion on stories that are unconfirmed and uncorroborated. So I'm not going to do that.
- [07:59]
B
He has met Cardinal Pierre a couple of times. I've been in the room when he met Cardinal Pierre for at least one event. So I, I guess. I guess Cardinal Pierre didn't leave much of an impression. Maybe. I don't know. But, you know, I. Maybe he did just have trouble placing the name. I. You. You could be forgiven for. For not necessarily recalling the name of the Vatican's ambassador when you're answering a question on the tarmac. I guess maybe.
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A
Jet lag. Who could say it becomes a little hard when you are Catholic and you're the vice president, you're defending, like the genocide stuff to know is that.
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B
I would think so. I. Well, it. For Vance, it seems like it's. It's problematic and uncomfortable in all kinds of ways. There's, there's, there's facing, you know, the Pope and the bishops in the United States saying. We really don't like the words coming out of the mouth or the social media feed of the president on this sort of stuff. As a Catholic, for Vance, but also, I mean, he is, as far as I can gather, you know, not on the side of, you know, military interventionism. He's already in a minority in the president's inner circle talking about this sort of stuff and seems to be having to go along with things that aren't his way of viewing the world.
- [09:14]
A
Stop talking about that on background.
- [09:18]
B
Well, I mean, what else can you do? I suppose if you're the vice president, you can't come right out and say, no, I think this is a terrible idea. If you want to. Well, you could.
- [09:26]
A
You can only not do that if you desperately want to be president more than anything else. You cannot say what you think only if you are not willing to Give up on your ambition.
- [09:37]
B
Well, why be vice president if you're willing to do that?
- [09:39]
A
Fair enough. Fair enough. Not all American bishops are super upset about the war. Robert Barron, a bishop, seems to have been at the White House with Paula White and a bunch of other pagan ish kind of people and not objected to it recently.
- [09:57]
B
Bishop Barron is an interesting figure in the American Catholic Church in as much as he is this giant media figure, as well as being a local bishop in Minnesota. And he's obviously a member of President Trump's Religious Freedom Commission. And you see this with the US Bishops across all kinds of administrations, where there's stuff that they oppose strenuously coming out of the mission, and at the same time, they don't want to say no to being given a chance to get in the door and make a case. And I think Bishop Baron ends up catching a lot more attention and pushback for trying to tread a middle line than any other bishop almost would, because he is so, so exposed in terms of the media. You know, he's cutting YouTube videos, he's doing interviews with people all the time. And so he attracts a lot more focus and criticism for that. And so I think he's finding it very hard to sort of follow what is a not unusual playbook for American bishops, which is, look, we want to say we don't like what we don't like. We still want to have the chance to talk when we can talk. And, I mean, if you look at what Pope Leo has said about everything coming out of the White House and the war in Iran and things like that, he's very targeted in what he condemns. He doesn't like war, he wants peace. He doesn't single out the US Administration necessarily and say, these people are terrible, I hate the way the country is going, or anything like that. When he does get specific, he gets specific for a reason. Like saying calling for predicting civilizational death is a red line. That's unacceptable.
- [11:29]
A
Does seem to be.
- [11:31]
B
But again, it's narrow in the criticism in a way that doesn't shut the door on being able to have conversations further on. You know, you don't see even the Pope, when he's being specific, boxing himself out of being able to engage later on. And he was the first one out of the gate to praise the. You know, are we. Do we have a ceasefire? Are we still calling it a ceasefire? I don't know. But when a ceasefire was announced, hate
- [11:55]
A
the sin, love the sinner, Right?
- [11:57]
B
There's a lot of that. And I think also, you Know, Leo was very clear in his, you know, being strongly encouraged and supportive when a ceasefire was announced on Tuesday. You know, he's, he's willing to go specific both to criticize and to praise when, when he thinks he can do either.
- [12:13]
A
So you wrote about one of the near term consequences of this is that the Pope, Leo is not coming to America this year. There had been some hope. Talk to me a little bit. I mean, how, how serious was the hope that he was going to make a trip to the, to the U.S. like, was it sure that he was going to or.
- [12:35]
B
It was never sure that he was going to. But in the first, you know, sort of weeks after he was elected, still less than a year ago now, you had Vance and Rubio go to the Vatican and they formally extended an invitation. You know, we'd love to have you. Every country wants their, their hometown Pope to come home. And, you know, if you've got a big anniversary like the 250th in the United States, you know, be great to have you all that. I think that since then you have seen what was a hope, not necessarily a well founded hope, but a real hope, disappear pretty quickly. And I think it's not so much the war in Iran, although that certainly put a nail in the coffin if needed it. But it was the immigration enforcement actions second half of last year, which, you know, again, the US Bishops, the Pope was not cool with that, was very specific in his criticisms of the immigration enforcement. And, you know, again, you can read a lot of headlines saying, oh, Leo blasted the administration's immigration policies and all this sort of stuff, but, you know, the Pope wasn't championing open borders. The Pope wasn't saying, you can't enforce immigration law. But what he was saying was, you know, family separation and detention, arbitrary detention, suspension of due process, these are the things that we can't be having. And the US Bishops were, if anything, even more strongly opposed to it and issued, you know, joint statements.
- [13:51]
A
They were further out, right?
- [13:52]
B
Yeah, they were further out. And issuing joint statements as a, as a conference was with a level of unanimity you, you frankly just don't see from them hardly ever. And I think that's what really probably brought it in finally, as a. He's not going to be coming, at least not for the 250th.
- [14:09]
A
Yeah. So as we sort of look forward, I mean, it is a weird moment having an American Pope in the midst of America also having a kind of unprecedented authoritarian attempt ongoing and also like this, you know, President who Issues, genocide, threats, even if only as a means to make the best deals, because it's the art of the deals, and he's so strong with his things. Does it feel a little weird to you to have, like, we're navigating all this here at home and also the guy sitting in the throne, sitting on the throne of St. Peter is. Is American?
- [14:48]
B
It's weird, but I. I'm really glad of it. It's. You know, I hadn't anticipated this as what we'd be getting when Leo came out on the balcony last year, but I think it's. You could call it providential, you could call it calculated. Think about it how you like that we have a Pope who can hear and speak in an American cadence that no other pope has been able to. You know, Pope Francis got asked about American politics and Donald Trump all the time and said a whole bunch of different things. And, you know, John Paul II was no stranger to intervening in geopolitical discussions and, you know, was probably the most out there voice against the invasion of Iraq back in the day. But to have a Pope who understands and is able to speak about American politics and political life in a way that is, I think, more nuanced than any other pope could reflexively be is helpful. I think Leo's the first bipartisan Pope we've seen in a long time because he just has a more instinctive understanding for how Americans listen to stuff when they're thinking about politics.
- [15:55]
A
Last thing this is. I'm sure you've heard this joke, but this is. This is an old joke from back in 2022 on Twitter. And this. This goes to the cradle. Catholic versus convert Catholic divide. This will be utterly unintelligible to anybody who's not Catholic, um, from a gravy at a gravy in 2022. Every lifelong Catholic I've ever met is like, I think we're supposed to give this food to poor people. And every adult convert is like the archon of Constantinople's epistle on the Pentecostine rites of the Eucharist clearly states women shouldn't have driver's licenses. That's not. Like, this isn't actually true, like, universally, but it's true enough to be very funny.
- [16:41]
B
It's certainly reflective of something that we're seeing in American political life, which is that Catholicism has always had an outsized presence in American political discourse. You know, back in the day, you could see this. Guys like John Boehner, things like that. You know, Catholics have always punched above their weight in terms of their national numbers and also their presence in either of the two political parties. And you get cultural currents within that. And right now, we're seeing a lot of people in and around the Trump administration who have, I think it's fair to say, read their way into the faith to a large extent. And. Yes, but I mean, I think that's fair. Yeah, and. And sometimes that can be very interesting, and sometimes it can lead to. To strange cul de sacs and. And weird branches of thought. But, I mean, that's kind of the thing about the Catholic intellectual tradition is it's so vast, you can. You can get lost in some side streets fairly easily, and you can have conversations out of context, I think a lot more easily than you can if you're dealing with a smaller, more narrow intellectual tradition.
- [17:48]
A
All right, guys, hit, like, hit subscribe and follow the channel. And if you want more of this stuff, go follow Ed. Go over to pillarcatholic.com, go follow them. They've got the best reporting on all this stuff you'll find anywhere. Everybody else will be back soon with more, probably bad news, because it's always bad news. Good luck, America.