← The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J.
The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J.
Pete Buttigieg on Christianity, public life, and the spirituality of fatherhood
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Fr. Jim Martin
Welcome to the spiritual life. I'm Fr. Jim Martin. On this podcast, we reflect on how people experience God in their prayer and their daily lives. And I am joined by my wonderful producer, Maggie Van Dorn. Maggie, good to be back with you.
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Maggie Van Dorn
Good to be with you, Jim. So who are we talking to this week?
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Fr. Jim Martin
This time, we're speaking with Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
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Maggie Van Dorn
And how did you first become introduced or connected to Secretary Pete?
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Fr. Jim Martin
It's actually a funny story. A couple of years ago, I think, during COVID I was invited to receive an award from the Notre Dame LGBTQ Alumni Association. Right. And so it was virtual for me. And the other person who was receiving an award was the mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg. And I had to look him up and look up how to pronounce his name. So I tuned into this zoom thing and I gave my little talk and they gave me an award. And then this guy stepped onto the stage and gave one of the most brilliant off the cuff talks I've ever heard. And I thought, who is this guy? I thought, it's amazing. He's so articulate. And I sort of filed it in the back of my mind. And I think about just a few months later, he announced that he was running for president.
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Maggie Van Dorn
So incredible, that timing.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Yeah. Kind of an early fan. I mean, he really is, as you will see in this interview, very articulate and very smart. So that's how I met him. And we corresponded from time to time since then. But, Maggie, could you tell us a little bit more about Pete's background?
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Maggie Van Dorn
Yeah, I'd be glad to. So Pete Buttigieg served as the 19th US Secretary of Transportation from 2021 to 2025 under President Joe Biden. Prior to that, Pete served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. navy Reserve and was, as you mention, 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana, where he earned the popular nickname Mayor Pete. Now, I think his X Twitter handle is Secretary Pete. So this moniker followed Pete to the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, where he became the first openly gay person to win a U.S. presidential primary or caucus. Pete was born in South Bend, Indiana. He's the son of two Notre Dame.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Professors and one of those professors before meeting his mom. Pete's dad was a Jesuit, which is something we definitely will talk about later in the show.
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Maggie Van Dorn
Yeah. So Pete wasn't raised in a particularly religious home, but South Bend is a city that is steeped in Catholicism, and Pete really credits his high school, St. Joseph's for deepening his moral conscience. And we hear about the influence of an Old Testament professor in developing this robust conscience. So then Pete goes on to study history and literature at Harvard University and then philosophy, politics, and economics as a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford. And it was during that time in Oxford that Pete found himself drawn to the Anglican church. And in June 2018, Pete and his partner, Chastain Glesman, were married in the Episcopal Church of St. James in South Bend. Together, Pete and Chastain have adopted twins, Penelope and Gus.
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Fr. Jim Martin
It's a great interview, and we'll get to it shortly. But first, Maggie, what is our audience question this week?
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Maggie Van Dorn
Yeah, so this question comes from Jackie. And I thought it was especially fitting, given our guest Pete as a political leader. Jackie asks, how can we be leaders in our lives during dark times, drawing upon our spiritual relationship with God?
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Fr. Jim Martin
Well, first of all, thanks, Jackie. That's a great question. I really focused on the word leader leaders when I was thinking about this, what it means to be a leader during dark times. And I think leaders really have to be an example for people, obviously. And one of the ways to be an example for people during dark times is always to point them towards hope. I've talked about this in different places, but during the COVID pandemic, one of the shorthand expressions I had for people who asked was that hope is always coming from God and despair never is. And so even in dark times, we have to point them to hope. We have to point them to optimism, which is a little different. We have to point out where God is at work, you know, help them see where God is. And we also have to remind them that, you know, our faith is based in the resurrection. And the darkest times for the disciples were behind closed doors on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. But, you know, Jesus has other ideas. And really one of the messages of the resurrection is nothing is impossible with God. And so always pointing people towards that way of looking at things. And that perspective, it's a. It's a post resurrection perspective. So during dark times, I really think we have to be beacons of hope for people and ourselves, really believe that. Right. Really be grounded in that, because you can't point to something unless you know where it is.
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Maggie Van Dorn
Right. Right. And no one's going to follow you if they don't authentically see hope in you. Right.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Yeah. You can't just kind of put it on as like a facade, everybody be hopeful. Right. Exactly right. Even though I'm not. But no, it's. Yeah. You really have to cultiv that practice of hope, which again is different than optimism. Hope is in a person. Hope is in the person of Jesus Christ and in God. And really, again, I really based so much of my spiritual life on the resurrection, which is all about hope in the face of the disciples despair. So I want to thank Jackie for that wonderful question and stick around because Pete Buttigieg also offers his response to that question.
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Maggie Van Dorn
That's right. And if you would like to ask Father Jim a question, you can write to us@thedspirituallifericamedia.org and now a word from.
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Fr. Jim Martin
One of our sponsors. Looking for a simple way to deepen your own spiritual life? Give Us this Day is a great resource that helps Catholics stay rooted in scripture and in prayer wherever you are, no matter how busy you are. It features both reliable and relatable spiritual reflections and prayers to accompany you throughout the day. And I'm really honored to be an editorial advisor. I've been one since the very beginning. And I write a monthly essay called Teach Us to Pray about Prayer. And I use Give Us this Day every single day. It's a great resource and here's a great offer. Right now, listeners of the Spiritual Life can get 10% off their new print subscription. It's online, by the way, as well. Just visit giveusthisday.org spiritual life and join this community of Catholics praying together again. That's giveusthisday.org spiritual life. All right, now on to our conversation with Secretary Pete Buttigieg. So Secretary Pete Buttigieg, welcome to the Spiritual Life.
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Pete Buttigieg
Thank you. Thanks for having me on.
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Fr. Jim Martin
It's a real honor. I am a fan.
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Pete Buttigieg
Likewise.
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Fr. Jim Martin
So we're very happy to have you here. I want to dive in. You can probably figure out the first question I'm going to ask you. As a Jesuit, one of the very first things I learned about you was that your father was a Jesuit. Can you share a little bit about what you know about his experience as a Jesuit and you know, maybe what he shared with you growing up?
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Pete Buttigieg
Yeah. My father grew up in Malta, which is one of the smallest and I think one of the most religious countries in the world. And I think it was kind of understood in most middle class families that the eldest boy if he was up to it, would try to become a priest. So I think that's the kind of original pathway that led him toward becoming a Jesuit. He studied at the University of Malta and then he studied in the uk and then it's not exactly clear to me what happened. I think what happened was the 60s, but somewhere he kind of came out on the other end of that, not a Jesuit, and in the U.S. continuing his studies, came to America really to further pursue his studies. And not too long after that he met my mom, he became a citizen, and the rest is history.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Did he talk much about Jesuit spirituality? Or do you feel like that had much influence in your own spiritual life growing up?
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Pete Buttigieg
In a way, you know, by the time we were growing up in Indiana, he was not somebody who had a close day to day relationship with the church, except that he was teaching at the University of Notre Dame. But between the two of them, I think it's safe to say my mother was actually the more religious one, although she, for her own reasons had a lot of skepticism of organized religion. But she really cared about me having exposure to religion. And both of them wanted me to go to Catholic school. I went to St. Joseph's High School in South Bend. Not as a Catholic. Ultimately came to find myself at home in the Episcopal faith, although that was its own journey. I think the, the part of faith that did imprint most permanently in both my parents, certainly my father was a belief in justice, social justice, and, and that all of us have a calling, an obligation to do what we can when we encounter injustice anywhere in the world.
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Fr. Jim Martin
That emphasis on social justice, was that something that came through in high school?
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Pete Buttigieg
Absolutely. At the high school I attended, they made sure that we knew about that tradition. I, I remember Father Bly, who was this very intense, almost dominant figure at our school. He had been already teaching there for, I think more than 30 years when I had him. And he always taught freshman Old Testament. And he was somebody who, in Old Testament teacher fashion, resisted any changes. His classroom, he refused to have it renovated. So it was the exact way it had been built in the 1950s. And one of the things he would do is he would pass out on Fridays copies of National Geographic from this enormous, seemingly bottomless archive that he had of National Geographics. He had one for every student and would show us something somewhere in the world. Often it was an article about the Holy Land or some place that we'd also been studying in some of the Old Testament stor he was teaching us. But I remember one time, for reasons that didn't make sense at first. He showed us this spread on what was happening in Arizona and New Mexico, and, and it, it was the Colorado River Basin. And he's showing us this satellite imagery, which I think was very kind of new in this 1980s National Geographic he was having us all look at and showed us satellite images of golf courses in Arizona and then started explaining that they had diverted so much water from the river, at least in his telling, that there were entire communities downstream toward Mexico that didn't have access to water anymore. And then I remember him saying, you, you know, you're going to go to the mall this weekend and you're going to run into some atheists, probably at the, at the mall. He always hissed a little bit when he said atheists. Now they're going to say something like, there's no heaven, there's no hell, and there is no God. And you're going to be able to prove them otherwise. You're going to tell them there has to be a God, there has to be a heaven, and there certainly has to be a hell, because where else would you put the man who built this golf course? And I remember just being taken aback, but also impressed by this account of morality that was pretty novel for me as a 14 year old in northern Indiana, and it's stuck with me to this day.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Yeah, it's a very vivid way of actualizing the Old Testament. I read something, I think it was in a 2019 article where you talked also about seeing a film about Archbishop Oscar Romero.
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Pete Buttigieg
Yeah.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Which I'm assuming is that the Raoul Julia film that you saw.
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Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I remember being shown that at some point when I was in high school. And that made a deep impression on me as well. You know, this story of a figure in the church who, as I understand it, or at least as it's portrayed in the film, Romero is somebody who didn't really ask for any kind of political life, didn't want to be involved in politics, but because of the conflicts that were taking place and the oppression of poor communities in the name of fighting communism, and a level of oppression and violence that it turns out the United States was covertly implicated in, and then ultimately stood up to that and paid for it with his life when he was assassinated. Just this extraordinary moral example that, that helped connect for me at least one version of what it meant to live by your faith in a way that links together the examples that are in Scripture of people who show fidelity to Christian teachings, even when it cost them their lives and a Case of that happening within my lifetime, or almost within my lifetime in Central America.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Yeah. And it's also a great example of someone who undergoes a conversion experience. Right from being, you know, kind of on the side of the rich to, you know, eventually seeing where he's needed. So, just to get this straight, so you're in high school now, and you're. Would you say you're still kind of casting around between the Catholic Church and sort of exploring different traditions? Is that accurate around that time of your life?
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Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, I think that's a fair way to put it. You know, and the neighborhood I grew up in, so many people belong to so many different faith traditions. One of my best friends in the neighborhood was from a very conservative Baptist community. Went to the school that was linked with that church. Sometimes I'd go along when they had a school play or something going on there. Another of my closest friends was part of the South Bend's surprisingly large Jewish community. So a lot of exposure, but to be honest, at that age, none of it really felt exactly like home.
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Fr. Jim Martin
That's interesting. What does that mean? You didn't feel at home in any of those places?
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Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, I mean, maybe the nearest to the mark was the school that I went to, but that too, I was in a certain amount of tension with the community. In my high school, it leaned more conservative than I and my family did. And even though I was a long way from really coming to terms with the fact that I was gay, I think at some level, countless students in a Catholic school or religious school environment, I understood that there were some things about what it took to fit in in my school that didn't quite fit me.
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Fr. Jim Martin
So what about college? You go to college and is there more of a sort of interest in faith or. I mean, I read about your being interested in philosophy at different points. Was that an entree for you into kind of deepening your. Your faith journey?
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Pete Buttigieg
College itself, to be honest, it faded more into the background for me. There was a very charismatic influent in Reverend Peter Gomes, who I made a point of taking his class. He preached at the Memorial Church there. And I learned more about the Puritan tradition there, too. In fact, I studied it and wrote about it as a student. How much of an effect that had on American life. And it's part of how Harvard was formed, too. But actually, the student experiences that most drew me to faith came afterwards when I got to graduate school. And maybe, like a lot of people, I began to feel need for religious practice in my life more when I felt that I was not doing as well in a lot of ways. I thought I was at the top of my game. I was a newly minted Rhodes Scholar. I thought that I had been good at just about everything that I had attempted until I got there and found myself in an academic program that, at least at first was, was one that I was really no match for. As somebody who, you know, whose self image really largely depended on, on the idea of being an extremely capable student. I was far from home. And that mattered to me more than I thought as somebody who loved travel and had been looking forward to the escape, only to realize how much I missed so many things about, about life in America that I didn't know that I would miss. I was trying to figure out where I fit socially in an undergraduate program where, because the way it works there for a lot of Rhodes colleges, you take a second BA I didn't really relate to the 19 year old British undergrads that I surrounded with, but was kind of caught between them and the, the American graduate students who were there. And anyway, I think all of that kind of led me to realize there were things I needed that I wasn't finding on the strength of being academically capable. And meanwhile I was at this institution, Oxford in the UK that has such a, an extraordinary centuries long faith tradition connected to it. Every One of the 30 or 40 colleges there had its own chapel, many of them had their own choir and many of them had daily services. And I started kind of following my feet and walking me into the different chapels and the different evensong services. And it began for the first time to feel like there was a liturgical practice that connected up with my own inner search that was getting more and more complicated.
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Fr. Jim Martin
You've mentioned the liturgy a couple of times. Is there a way that the liturgy speaks to you on a deep level or you feel kind of consoled being there? What is it that happens when you're in a liturgy that, that you feel is inspiring for you? What's, what's going on inside?
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Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, something. And this, this again is something that I think really changed and evolved within me. I frankly did not really feel like the, as I said earlier at home in the all school masses when I was a teenager, but by the time I was in my 20s, something about the form and the formula, the repetition, everybody around you doing the same thing the same way. And the knowledge that that had been prescribed for centuries helped center me in ways I couldn't quite explain or understand. It came at just the moment that I was starting to acknowledge that many of the most important questions in life couldn't be solved by being smart. Maybe couldn't be solved through reason at all. And even now, I can't fully explain the relationship between the ones in the other. But there was something about that practice, that consistency, that. That form that allowed my. I don't know what to say. My mind, my heart. I guess spirit is the right word to use, or soul to settle a little bit and be heard a little more.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Well, not to. Not to be your spiritual director, but I'm wondering also if you think that sort of being in a vulnerable place enable God to break in a little bit more.
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Pete Buttigieg
I think so. I think there was more room for God because the things around me weren't quite adding up enough. And again, I know not everybody, but a lot of people find their way closer to faith when they're in that more vulnerable state.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Would you say you had any encounters that were memorable with God or experiences of God sort of breaking in that you recall during a liturgy or around that time?
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Pete Buttigieg
I can't describe a road to Damascus kind of moment where I fell off my horse and felt that God was shaking me by the shoulders. But I did feel this gradual dawning of the nearness of God in a way that was just different. And somehow also the darkness, just the physical darkness that you experience when you're that far north in an English winter. And the light that came, whether it was through stained glass or in candlelight services. I remember a lot of little moments, none of which is really cinematic or anything like that, but many of which pulled me more and more into a sense of a relationship with God that I just never had, Even in years of religious education.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Would you say, is that the time that you chose Anglicanism or Episcopalianism, when you've sort of made a sort of conscious decision to move to that community?
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Pete Buttigieg
I think by the time I finished my studies and came back to the US Then, yes. Although there was a period when I was living and working in Chicago that I visited a Lutheran church that felt, maybe because it was just so Midwestern, it felt like a place I was comfortable in. But even then I think I was ready enough that by the time I fully moved back to South Bend, Indiana, where I grew up, walking through the doors of St. James, the Episcopal Church there just felt like the most natural thing in the world to do.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Yeah. Like really coming home. Yeah. We're going to pause for a short break, but we'll be back in a minute. You'd mentioned it earlier, and I'm. I'm really curious about, about this. You're an out gay man and a model for so many people. How did your spirituality influence that decision? You had talked about not being at home, you know, at, at your high school, your Catholic high school. I'm just curious how spirituality influenced or helped or hurt the whole coming out process.
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Pete Buttigieg
Well, I think for. For a lot of people, it's one of the biggest challenges with coming out. You know, because my parents were not as kind of traditionally or formally religious, I don't think I encountered some of the same hesitations that some young people do when they're wrestling with coming out. But it did feel to me, at least, given the. The version of religion, the version of church that I'd been exposed to through high school, that I was setting myself up for another conflict. There was already going to be a lot of conflict in my life as a result of being gay. The conflict that, that you're just automatically in with the society that. Where that's not the norm. And the specific conflicts that I was courting as somebody who pretty soon after I came back home to South Bend, was both pursuing a life of public service in Indiana and pursuing a side career as a reservist in the military, which. Which at the time would fire anybody who was known not to be straight. So on top of that, there came this awareness that on one hand, I was feeling drawn to and welcomed in and nearer in religion and faith. And on the other hand, reckoning with coming out, knowing that it was just going to be one more, or feeling like it would be one more battleground when all I really wanted out of all of this was a little more harmony and peace and stability in my life.
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Fr. Jim Martin
That's really interesting. Did the sense of your coming closer to God enable you or invite you, in a sense, to be more honest about who you were? Was there a connection there?
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Pete Buttigieg
Yes. As a friend of mine put it when he was going through this process, he said, there's two things I'm really sure about. One is that God loves me. And another is that I'm gay. And there are things you can just put into context or put into perspective when you have put yourself in a position of being ready to accept God's love and the unconditional nature and the infinite nature of God's love that is taught in the best of the Christian tradition. And maybe that counts against or helped to work against some of the confusion and fear that I felt, because there is this thing that I knew I could grab hold of that was just bigger and deeper than what the world would think or what would happen to my career or any of the other things you think about when you think about something like this.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Well, I mean, it's great to hear you say that. I mean, I. As you know, I work with LGBTQ Catholics, and there are still so many people who. Those two things are inconsistent. You know, I'm gay, and God loves me, so thank you for being a. A model of freedom for so many people. Were there religious figures that helped you, maybe in your church at South Bend or anyone you knew who was welcoming to you?
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Pete Buttigieg
Absolutely. The priest at St. James, Father Brian Grantz, who would go on to officiate our wedding, was somebody that I talked to before I was ready to explain myself to the world, and somebody who just always put me in touch with that deep sense of love and grace. And I think in his company, I understood that the biggest thing that my faith required of me was a kind of wholeness, trying to be one person, which is already hard when you're involved in public or political life. You're being set up to be a lot of different cells if you're not careful. But I don't think that's unique to people involved in politics, and I don't think it's unique to people who are struggling with coming out. I mean, all of us have some version of the. The. The fracture that happens in our identities. We go about our days and are all the different people we're supposed to be for friends, for family, in the workplace, in the community. And he was somebody. Is somebody who, I think, really conducts his faith leadership partly by striving to see people as a whole and in their whole selves. He also put me in touch with somebody else who became an important influence, who was the retired bishop for Episcopal bishop for that same region. What he and I had in common was that he had served in the military as well. And so as I was grappling with everything that went with being deployed, he was somebody who I turned to often. And I think that, too, was stabilizing, as I thought, through everything that. And everything you think about when you're going through that stage of your life.
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Fr. Jim Martin
You'Re probably one of the most public gay Christians in the United States. Do you get a lot of pushback from people who say gay people can't be religious? You're, you know, you're an abomination, et cetera, et cetera? And how do you. I know you probably do. How do you deal with that? And what enables you to deal with that and with a sense of kind of calmness and centeredness?
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Pete Buttigieg
You know, partly, I just try to remember that if I lived and grew up and formed my values in different circumstances or had different experiences, then I could believe any number of things that other people believe. Although I also think that no matter what you believe, there's a certain way how to treat other people. Yeah, I definitely experienced some of this. Around the time that I came out, there was a whole press conference. People denounced me and many of them doing it on a religious basis. Although, interestingly, a couple years later, one of the pastors who hosted that press conference on the steps of a church approached me and apologized and had gone through whatever growth he went through to come to a different place in his own understanding of the relationship between who I was and what his faith taught. Of course, not everybody took that trajectory. And yet again, a lot of people were more welcoming than I expected. Much more welcoming than I expected. By the time I was running for president, I actually had a lot of people approach me saying that they were relieved or thankful just to see someone from my political party talking openly about their faith. I would say there were almost as many people who were struggling with coming out as a Christian among their progressive friends as there were coming out in the way you might expect in a Christian community. And that was really eye opening for me because to me, it was something I mentioned from time to time, something I cared about. My faith was certainly something I wanted to be transparent about. I didn't think of it as something that I was constantly pushing into the forefront of my political identity. And yet for so many people who had approached me when I was shaking hands on a fence line or at a town hall or in a backyard in Iowa or New Hampshire, it was actually the thing that they found most unique or most appealing about the campaign we built.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Now I have to double back because I. Someone had a press conference after you came out who was organizing an anti Pete Buttigieg is gay press conference.
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Pete Buttigieg
Well, there's a whole. You can. I'm sure you can still find it online. There was a pretty well known far, far, far right Catholic figure who, as chance would have it, actually lived on my block. I mean, we're all. It's all in the neighborhood in a place.
- [29:36]
Fr. Jim Martin
I think I know who you mean.
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Pete Buttigieg
Yeah. And he teamed up with some others. And, you know, you get a pretty thick skin when you're in politics. But obviously that was a new experience for me.
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Fr. Jim Martin
Yeah. How did you deal with that? I Mean, you get a pretty thick skin in politics, but that's so personal.
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Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, but everything's personal. That's one of the things local politics conditions you for. Matter of fact, a couple years later, that neighborhood, which, again, was my neighborhood, too, experienced a really serious flooding issue. And I wound up in one of those scenarios you can imagine where a mayor is in a living room of full of distressed neighbors who are asking a mayor a lot of tough questions. And he was as reasonable as anybody else, talking about it from a neighborhood perspective and constructive in that dialogue. So you just learn there's so many different sides to all of us. And just like I'm somebody who doesn't want to be judged or reduced to this or that side of who I am, try to remember that's got to be something you hold out for anybody and everybody who crosses your path, especially in a realm like politics, where we're all supposed to approach the public square and be citizens on an equal footing, at least in terms of, you know, we have an equal vote and we're equally protected by the Constitution. And I try also align that with. With some of the teachings of my faith that all of us are, you know, no matter how righteous any one of us likes to think they are, or famous or wealthy or the rest of it, that all of us are equal in the eyes of God.
- [31:06]
Fr. Jim Martin
Yeah. And someone said we're not supposed to judge. Right. It wasn't just Pope Francis. So you're married now, as people know, and you have two kids. How has your experience of God or spirituality changed by or through being married and being a father?
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Pete Buttigieg
Well, I think most parents will tell you that it really just takes you all the way back to the basics as a human being, because you have this love you can't even explain for these two. In our case two, we had twins. Little humans who just challenge you in every possible way. I mean, first of all, it's just the physical challenge of the sleep deprivation, of being up every couple hours to feed them and get the bottles ready, and all the things that happen in those first weeks of bottle feeding and diaper changing 24 7, and then challenging you in different ways. Like when took him to the park and Chasten was out of town, and I was trying to keep him away from the parking lot where the cars were. And they're about 2 years old, and they're getting faster, and the two of them just look at each other, grin, and then take off running in opposite directions. I'm trying to figure, what am I supposed to do? Next. It's. It's so humbling. And the other thing that I think really makes you think about the same questions that you think about, or at least that I think about in church and in religious practices, that anything is possible. They have this openness to miracles that I love being back in touch with. The way I was thinking about it recently was if we were in the parking lot at Target shopping and somebody walking across the parking lot next to us just spontaneously turned into a moose and started walking off toward the highway, that would be impressive to them, but actually not any more impressive or miraculous as an umbrella. I just showed them how an umbrella works, and they're obsessed with it. Like, anything could be a miracle and anything could happen. And it's. I don't know, every day there's something new, some new unfolding of love, and also of just the sheer emotional and personal challenge of being a parent that I think for so many of us, moves us closer to God. And then, you know, more specifically in the Christian tradition, gives me a different and more, I guess, raw understanding of what is contained in the idea of the Trinity and the narrative of God giving up his son for the salvation of all of us.
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Fr. Jim Martin
That's interesting. Can we go a little deeper on that? Meaning that you and Chastain are sort of sacrificing yourselves for your children? Is that what you mean?
- [33:48]
Pete Buttigieg
No, I don't mean it that way. Although there's certainly a sense that you're preparing your replacement in this world. I just mean in terms of the. One of the most raw and challenging things, I think, in Christianity is this idea of God experiencing pain. And, you know, this goes back to the Old Testament tradition, and it's Jacob, right, who's wrestling with God. And the idea that God could be wrestling with anybody. There's God struggling, but then there's also the idea of God hurting like our son. Just the other day, he somehow got into the car while I wasn't looking, and by the time I got him back out of the backseat of the Jeep, he had done something to his finger. I still don't quite know what he did, but he smushed it and he tore some of the skin. And he didn't need stitches or anything, but we needed a Band Aid, a bunch of Band Aids, and he was in. He was just. It was awful. It was, like, traumatizing, obviously, for him, but also, like, kind of horrifying for me. And this was like a. You know, he hurt his finger, like, he'll be fine, but it just, like, Took over my entire psyche until I had him a little bit calmer and got the ice pack and got the little Neosporin on the band aids and figured out a way to wrap the one band aid around the other band aid so it wouldn't hurt the two different parts of his finger that he cut. And you know, the central story of the New Testament involves the grisly execution of the Son of God. And when you imagine the kind of pain and struggle that I think reflects more broadly the thought of a personal God who seeks the redemption and well being for all of us. Witnessing and experiencing everything that all of us go through and do, good, bad and ugly. I don't know, it just makes it so much more searing and so more visceral now that, now that I've got kids.
- [35:39]
Fr. Jim Martin
No. That's beautiful. So understanding the Father's pain for his son on the cross.
- [35:44]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah. Because I think most, at least most American liberal Christians, I think it's safe to say, to the extent that we have affinity or identity in the Holy Trinity, it's mostly the Son that we're relating to. Right. And that's kind of a, in a way, the point of the arrival of the incarnate figure of Jesus Christ, a little more relatable than the God, the Father of the Old Testament. Maybe this is just the way of the world, but now I'm in my 40s and I'm a father and I'm starting to better align maybe with the style that is presented, the style of love and the style of concern that we associate with God the Father.
- [36:24]
Fr. Jim Martin
That's beautiful. I mean, it really does. It's an entree into the Trinity, right into that relational aspect of the Trinity. I remember hearing one of my theology professors say that, you know, most Christians have a really impoverished view of the Trinity. We don't really think of the Trinity. And he described it as the, the old man, Jesus and the bird. And that that's, that's basically it. So to have that insight into the Father's love. How about marriage? Does marriage change your, your relationship with God or your understanding of God's love?
- [36:55]
Pete Buttigieg
Well, marriage, like faith, teaches you to be concerned about something, someone that isn't you, and not just to be concerned about, but to prioritize something, someone that isn't you. And again, that happens in a whole different way when you become a parent. But when you take and make that vow to somebody that you're going to be there for them and put them first, you, I think, express something that is also very important part of our relationship to God, or certainly in my faith tradition, something that's very central, which is setting yourself aside and importantly, that when you do that in this deep way, you're better off for it. There's sacrifices involved in marriage, and you are also better off when you have made those sacrifices. Each partner, by giving in marriage, at least as we hope marriage to be, comes out stronger and healthier. And the other thing is, you know, part of what made Christianity begin to make sense to me was when I started to move on from some of the versions that I was exposed to as a kid where Christianity was telling you you had to be perfect and if you weren't just like this, you weren't Christian and you weren't right for the world. And replaced it over time in my understanding of the faith with the fact that Christianity revolves around how broken and how imperfect we are. That in many ways faith is a response to a deep understanding of how broken and how imperfect we are, and something about marriage, too. And I say this as somebody who has the most wonderful, incredible husband that I'm so proud of, and 10 years after we've met, still so in love with. But each of us, of course, bears over time the fact that each of us has fallen in love with a imperfect human being. And we don't love each other less because of that, our love. If anything, there's more to it precisely because of that Beautiful.
- [38:53]
Fr. Jim Martin
What's your prayer life like or your spiritual practices day to day? What would you say? Is it reading scripture or prayer or meditation or how do you do all that?
- [39:03]
Pete Buttigieg
It's a little bit other than just going to church. It's a little bit seasonal. What else I do? Sometimes I find a more daily practice is right for me, and other times something a little less structured. During the time I was running for president, Bishop Gene Robinson, who was a very influential figure in the Episcopal Church and became a good friend, would send me a scripture and a commentary on it every day, and I would start my day reading it, or you just email it over. And it was one of the most, well, one of the only regular, stable, consistent things in my day as a candidate. Sometimes I turn to those now and return to them because just each one, it's like a little, I guess, sermon is one way to put it. It's just this wonderful meditation on something that we get in scripture that helped me in public life, still does.
- [39:57]
Fr. Jim Martin
Pete, we have one last question, and it's from our audience, from a woman named Jackie. Here's the question. How can we be leaders in our lives during dark times, drawing upon our spiritual relationship with God?
- [40:11]
Pete Buttigieg
There's a lot to that question.
- [40:14]
Fr. Jim Martin
Yeah, I know it's a toughie, but.
- [40:15]
Pete Buttigieg
I think the question itself is a really important answer, which is that all of us, you don't have to be in public office or have a big online following or a TV show to be a leader. That it is in our everyday lives that it matters most that we show leadership. And one thing I always remember is the thought, as I've heard, I'm not sure who originally said this, but the thought that you can't lead people where they already are. That leadership involves a kind of tension that when you're leading, it means trying to bring about some change between the way things are and the way things might be, including the way people look at themselves or the world and the way they might. And leading them to another place means approaching them with conviction and at the same time, humility, knowing that you don't have all the answers either. And part of what Christianity has done for me is it. It embodies all of that deep conviction and humility, profound faith with an understanding that doubt is part of the experience of faith. That happens in one set of ways, in how I think many of us feel that we relate to God. But it's also a huge part of citizenship. Just what it means to talk to people around you about what you believe is right and wrong and how we could be better off. And the truth is, and I say this as somebody who's run for president, held high political office, the truth is, the most important changes come from the ground up. They come from people having those kinds of conversations with their neighbors and loved ones. And look, frankly, it's harder emotionally harder to talk to someone you love across a political divide about what's going on in the world than it is for me to go on TV and do an interview with a. Some ideologically hostile interviewer and spar with them. It's. We feel it so much more deeply when we're talking with and engaging people we already know and love and care about. But, no, that's part of the idea of witness. And the Christian tradition certainly calls all of us to move through the world in a way that's consistent with what we have been taught about, about the love of God, about identifying with those who are the least among us, making ourselves useful to others. And again, the very question I think contains the most important answer, which is that it's up to everyone.
- [42:36]
Fr. Jim Martin
Well, thank you, Secretary Pete. Thank you for being a witness, not just for, as you us sort of characterized, a witness for LGBT people, but also for public Christians. You're a very profound witness and a very articulate one. So I want to thank you for being on the spiritual life. Wish you and Chastain the best, and good luck picking up your kids at swim practice. I hope it all goes well.
- [42:58]
Pete Buttigieg
Thanks very much.
- [43:14]
Fr. Jim Martin
So, Maggie, thanks for accompanying us. What did you think?
- [43:17]
Maggie Van Dorn
I was spellbound so much of the time. He, as we know, is very smart and articulate and has many interesting things to say about all manner of things which I just found so impressive.
- [43:32]
Fr. Jim Martin
Yeah, he really is articulate. And I have to say, that insight about the Trinity and the Father's love for the Son and the Father's pain for, you know, the Son's crucifixion, you know, related to his son, you know, banging his finger in the car. And that was. I thought that was really, you know, sometimes I feel as a Jesuit, I've heard it all when it comes to, you know, theological reflections on the Trinity or the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit. And that that was a new one for me. And I think I really found that powerful just listening to him.
- [44:02]
Maggie Van Dorn
Yeah. And I wanted to ask you, you mentioned during the course of the conversation the trinitarian richness that we have in the faith tradition. And of course, it's beyond just old man, son, Dove, you know, that caricature. But what would you tease out as a spiritual director, as a theologian, from that notion of the Trinity that the rest of us might savor a bit further?
- [44:30]
Fr. Jim Martin
Yeah, I think the thing that I remember the most from theology school, from graduate theology studies, is this idea that God is relational. And in fact, a little study group I had said that you could sort of summarize all of Catholic and Christian theology into that one term. So God's relational, obviously, in terms of us. God wants to relate to us. But God in God's self is a relationship. The Trinity is a relationship of love between the Father and the Son and the Spirit. And so that has a lot to say to us about community, about the value of relationships. And that's why I love that insight that he had, that he understood the relationship between the Father and the Son better or more fully, you know, based on his own life. And, of course, isn't that great? I mean, that's what spirituality is all about. I mean, not only having direct encounters with God, but having, you know, in a sense, analogical encounters with God. Like, I understand this, and therefore I Understand a little bit about God.
- [45:30]
Maggie Van Dorn
Yeah, I hear you. And I think, you know, having these deepened relationships, be it with a father or son or mother, daughter or friendship, and all of these analogical symbols of God, it's like a portal into the deeper reality and the mystery of God, that somehow our human relationships give us greater access to that divine mystery.
- [45:56]
Fr. Jim Martin
Yeah. And I also really appreciate his taking us through the progression of his life. I know we talked, you and I talked about not wanting to just have this sort of slavish, biographical. Then you did this. Then you did this. But I found that really helpful is, you know, hearing the progression from having a Jesuit father to feeling not at home in school because you're gay, to Harvard, to Oxford. I found that. But just the way he described coming into his own, finding a home, finding a place where he could feel comfortable as a gay man, really powerful. It's just sometimes I just find those stories, those, you know, in a sense, conversion stories, you can say, or vocation stories, quite powerful. And so I was really. And I'd never heard him speak about that in person, so that was really very gratifying for me just to hear his story.
- [46:46]
Maggie Van Dorn
Right. It helped assemble the pieces and make sense of them in a way that we're not always privy to.
- [46:52]
Fr. Jim Martin
Exactly. Well, thanks, Maggie. And thanks to all of you listening for joining us. Thanks, of course, to Pete Buttigieg for sharing his life with us. The Spiritual Life with Father James Martin is a production of America Media. It's produced by Maggie Van Dorn and our example executive producer Sebastian Gomes. We recorded in the William J. Loshert Studio in New York City with the production assistance of Grace Lenahan, Leilani Fuentes and Kevin Christopher Robles. Our audio engineer is Noah Levinson. Adam Buckmuller edited the video of this episode which will be made available on America Media's YouTube channel. The theme score is courtesy of of Teddy Abrams and Nate Farrington. You can follow me across social media amesmartinsj. Also, please help us to grow the show by leaving a five star review on your favorite podcast platform. If you love the spiritual life, then we have even more to offer you on America magazine's website. Keep informed and inspired about our Catholic faith. Become a subscriber today@american magazine.org subscribe or click the link in the show notes. Thanks so much and God bless you.
- [48:29]
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