Peacemaking and Hierarchy at Pope Francis’s Funeral

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

The full essay is at "Peacemaking and Hierarchy."

Pope Francis: Urbi et Orbi Against War

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

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

The Vatican on the Brink of Bankruptcy: The Missing Piece

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

The full essay is at "The Vatican on the Brink of Bankruptcy."

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1. See my books, Godliness and Greed, and God’s Gold, the latter text reflecting my further thought on the topic, especially on how Christianity can be held off from the increasing susceptibility to greed theologically.

Church of the Peripheries

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

The full essay is at "Church of the Peripheries."

Pope Francis on Families and the Environment

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

The full essay is at "Pope Francis on Families and the Environment."

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

The Pope on AI: On the Ethical (Rather than Religious) Dimension

In June, 2024 at the international political meeting of the G7, a group of seven industrial nations, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, spoke on the ethical dimension of artificial intelligence, or machine-learning. Regarding what the Pope called the “techno-human condition,” machines capable of AI are yet another manifestation of human propensity, which our species has had since its inception, to use tools to mediate with the environment. Although tools can be thought of as an extension of our arms ad legs, it is important to distinguish the human from the machine, even as we posit human characteristics onto some advanced machines, such as computers. In the film, 2001, the computer Hal sounds human, and may even seem to have human motivations, but any such attributions come to an abrupt end when Hal is shut down. To say that Hal dies is to commit a basic category mistake. It would be absurd, for example, to claim that Hal has an after-life. So too, I submit, is there a category mistake in taking the Pope’s talk on the ethics of AI as being religious in nature. Just as it is easy to imprint the human mind on a machine-learning computer, it can be tempting to superimpose the religious domain onto another. The Pope overreached in arbitrarily bringing in religious garb on what is actually an ethical matter in the “techno-human” world.

The full essay is at "The Pope on AI."

An E.U. Political Party Mischaracterizes the Union as an Alliance: Suicide by Mis-Identity

Two weeks before the E.U. election in 2024, far-right parties were projected to do well and thus have more seats in the E.U.’s lower legislative chamber, the European Parliament. Immigration was a key issue in the rising popularities of those parties. Although immigration in both the E.U. and U.S. was in dire need of governmental fixes, the rise of the right in the E.U. came at the expense of the union itself due to the underlying category mistake evinced at least in the European Conservatives and Reformists party.

The full essay is at "An E.U. Political Party."

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.  

The full essay is at "Pope Francis on Blessing Gay Couples."

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1. Christopher Lamb, “Pope Francis Authorizes Blessings for Same-Sex Couples,” CNN.com, December 18, 2023.

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.

The full essay is at "Pope Francis and the Traditionalist Opposition."

Pope Francis: Religious and Secular Arguments for Governments Subordinating Markets to Social Norms

The documentary, Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (2018) chiefly lays out the pope’s critique of economic Man. The film begins with references to climate change too loosely linked to the global population figure of 8 million humans, 1 billion of whom are unnecessarily living in poverty. The viewer is left to fill in the gaps, such as that because as biological organisms we must consume and use energy, the hyperextended overpopulation of the species is the root cause of climate- and ecosystem-changing CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans. Arguably, the salvific Son of God or the means into the Kingdom of God enjoy pride of place in the gospels, but compassion for the poor as well as outcasts and the sick is indeed a message that Jesus stresses in the faith narratives. Rather than being a sign of sin, poverty, especially if voluntary,  can permit the sort of humility that is much superior to the pride of the Pharisees. In the documentary, Jorge Bergoglio, who took the name Francis in becoming pope of the Roman Catholic Church in 2013, is a practical man who points to the sickness or temptation of greed that keeps humanity from riding itself of poverty, unnecessarily. Moreover, the hegemony of the market, with its culture of consumerism and commoditization, comes at the cost of the common good, which to Francis has a spiritual basis. Abstractly speaking, harmony, which inherently respects its own limitations, should have priority over greed and markets. Both of these can go to excess without enough built-in constraints as occurred before and during the financial crisis of 2008, with poverty plaguing humanity more rather than less as a result.

The full essay is at "Pope Francis."

Pope Benedict and Pope Francis: Power and Papacy

Power is seductive, even within religious organizations. It is like a drug in that denial can accompany an instinctual urge for immediate power even at the expense of the person’s own credibility. Put another way, self-discipline can easily succumb to the urge for power, even if the person has previously foreswore acting on that urge. Warped discernment between minor and major issues can also occur from the gravity of the instinctual urge. For example, a cleric may choose to break his or her decision to disavow acting on the urge in part because he or she incorrectly views the issue at hand to be a major one, when in fact it is not, at least as far as the religion is concerned. As in the case of a drug, perception, judgment and cognition may be impaired, or warped, by the urge itself. The Roman Catholic ex-Pope Joe Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) is a case in point.

The full essay is at "Pope Benedict and Pope Francis: Power and Papacy."

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. 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.

The full essay is at "Political Ideology and Religious Doctrine."

Ethical Leadership in the Roman Catholic Church: The Case of the Chilean Abuse Scandal

Leaders taking an ethical stance, even en masse, may find themselves risking their very positions, including the associated perks. In May, 2018, “all Chile’s 34 [Roman Catholic] bishops offered to resign en masse . . . after attending a crisis meeting with [Pope Francis] over allegations of a cover-up of sexual abuse” in the South American state.[1] The pope could have accepted all of those resignations. Instead, he accepted the resignations of three Chilean bishops, including Juan Barros of Osorno, Cristian Cordero, and Gonzalo Garcia, a month later. The ethical leadership, I submit, was not evinced in the pope’s decision to get rid of the three sordid clerics, but, rather, in the other bishops who had been willing to take a stand even at great personal loss. Indeed, the pope admitted he had made “grave mistakes” in the Chilean sexual abuse scandal. Had he been guilty of protecting his friends?

The full essay is at "Christian Leadership." 

See: Christianized Ethical Leadership, available at Amazon

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[1] Reuters, “Pope Francis Accepts Resignation of 3 Chilean Bishops Following Sex Abuse Scandals,” The Huffington Post, June 11, 2018.

Differences between Two Living Popes White-Washed in Fake News

People in glass houses should not throw stones. Or, the person who is without sin casts the first stone. Lastly, a house divided cannot stand, at least in the long run. Yet houses are so rarely as fundamentally divided as the one in which I grew up. Regarding religious institutions, theological differences can be allowed to blow up into major, life-threatening disputes, or papered over by sins of omission pertaining to just how deep a fissure goes. Conflicts, in other words, can be exacerbated or mollified, depending on the temperaments.

On February 7, 2018, Joe Ratzinger, a former pope of the Roman Catholic Church, wrote a letter pertaining to a multi-volume book on the then-current pope’s theology. Reading from the letter at the book’s presentation the next month, Dario Vigano, the prefect of the Vatican’s communications office, said that Benedict, the  former pope, confirmed that Francis, the current pope, had a solid theological and philosophical training and that the book showed the “interior continuity” between the two papacies.[1] This “left the impression that the 91-year-old retired pope had read the [book] and l endorsed it, when in fact he hadn’t.” The retired pope had not read the book!

The full essay is at "Two Living Popes White-Washed."

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1. Nicole Winfield, “Vatican Bows to Pressure, Releases Retired Pope’s Letter,” Religion News Service, March 18, 2018.

Pope Francis: Possessing Nuclear Weapons is Indefensible

Pope Francis said late in 2017 that the nuclear arms race had become irrational and immoral. The irrationality itself rendered even just the possession of nuclear weapons as immoral, according to the pope. Whereas past popes had recognized deterrence as a legitimator, both irrationality and the extent and “upgrading” of such weapons were factors in Pope Francis’s admittedly personal view. Yet was his basis only moral, or religious in nature?

The full essay is at "The Pope on Nuclear Weapons."

Christian Leadership Navigating Geopolitics: Pope Francis in Myanmar amid Ethnic Cleansing

With the U.N. having “denounced the murder, rape and pillaging of the Rohingya in western Myanmar as ethnic cleansing,” Pope Francis had to “strike a careful balance” during his visit to the country in late 2017 “by maintaining his moral authority without endangering his tiny local flock.[1] Even the decision to meet first with Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the commander of the military that had “driven more than 620,000 Rohingya Muslims out of the country” could be taken as a compromise of the Pope’s moral authority because Francis would met with the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and de facto leader of the government, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the next day.[2] That the local Cardinal had urged the Pope not to even use the word Rohingya during the visit pointed in the direction away from the Pope acting as a moral compass and thus to a hit to his reputation as a leader of principle rather than expediency.

The full essay is at "Pope Francis as a Christian Leader."

1. Jason Horowitz, “Pope Francis Arrives in a Myanmar Tarnished by Rohingya Crackdown,” The New York Times, November 27, 2017.

2. Ibid.

On the Vatican’s Conflict of Interest Regarding Accountability on Sex-Abuse

Integrity is arguably essential to the credibility of religious functionaries—even and especially those with considerable organizational power. So it was significant that Marie Collins, whom Pope Francis had appointed to the Vatican’s commission on sexual abuse by clergy and herself had been a victim of such abuse, resigned on March 1, 2017 due to “fine words in public and contrary actions behind closed doors.”[1] Notably, the commission suspended Peter Saunders a year before, “after he accused the panel of failing to deliver on its promises of reform and accountability” even including recommendations that the Pope had approved.[2] What is the basis of the problem? I submit that the conflict of interest that is inherent in having the clergy of a religious organization hold each other accountable is, much like industry self-regulation, culpable in this case.

The full essay is at "On the Vatican's Conflict of Interest."

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[1] Elisabetta Povoledo and Gaia Pianigiani, “Abuse Victim Quits Vatican Commission, Citing ‘Resistance’,” The New York Times, March 1, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

Christian Leadership in Pope Francis’s Naming of Cardinals

In naming 17 new cardinals in October, 2016, Pope Francis moved closer to putting his stamp on the sort of cleric who would follow him as pontiff. Similar to a U.S. president’s power to nominate justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, a pope’s power to appoint cardinals who presumably can vote in the next concave is decisive in terms of leaving a legacy. With the additional cardinals, Francis had appointed 40 percent of the cardinals who could vote in the next conclave. The fact that cardinals tend to be old suggests, however, that any lasting legacy would not be long lasting. I submit that the cardinals’ typical age and even other qualities suggest that the rubric a pope uses in selecting clerics for the red hat says a lot about how the pope approaches Christianity. 

The full essay is at "Christian Leadership."

Politics over Finance at the Vatican: The Status Quo Vanquishes a Reformer

Late in 2015, Cardinal Pell hired PricewaterhouseCoupers to conduct a comprehensive audit of the Vatican’s finances. Beforehand, he had hired McKinsey to do a review of assets; that company found a total of €1.4 billion (about $1.6 billion) “tucked away” off the books.[1] Other church officials, led by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State, let Pell know that the audit wouldn’t happen. This was a setback for the financial overhaul that Pope Francis had charged Pell with wide authority to do a thorough job. That pope had been given the mandate to clean up the Curia, as the last pope had resigned amid allegations of “cronyism, inefficiency and corruption.”[2] So why did Pope Francis take Parolin’s side in scrapping any audit even though that pope had given Pell the o.k. to have it done?

The full essay is at "Politics over Finance at the Vatican."

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[1] Francis Rocca, “Vatican Finance Chief Runs into Resistance,” The Wall Street Journal, September 8, 2016.

[2] Ibid.

Pope Francis Addresses the U.N.: A Religious Rationale for Reducing Carbon Emissions

Pope Francis declared to more than 100 world leaders and diplomats at the United Nations in late September 2015 that a "right of the environment" exists and that our species has no authority to abuse it or render it unfit for human habitation.[1]  In stressing that urgent action is needed to halt the destruction of God's creation, he made explicit reference to a religious basis for his moral claim. He said the universe is the result of a "loving decision by the creator, who permits man respectfully to use creation for the good of his fellow men and for the glory of the creator: He is not authorized to abuse it, much less destroy it."[2] This statement may overplay both the religious nature of the basis and the destruction. I turn now to parsing the statement in three parts, after which I will supply the basis of the pope’s religious rationale, which is narrower than he suggested in his speech.

The complete essay is at “Pope Francis at the U.N. on Climate Change.”

Pope Francis addressing the United Nations' General Assembly. (Bryan Thomas/Getty)

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[1] Nicole Winfield and Jennifer Peltz, “Pope Beseeches World Leaders to Protect the Environment,” Associated Press, September 25, 2015.

[2] Ibid.