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Different Ways of Doing Theology with Matthew Shadle · Tomorrow's American Catholic Podcast

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SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Tomorrow's American Catholic.
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SPEAKER_03: This is the official podcast of Tomorrow's American Catholic,
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SPEAKER_03: a journal and publishing platform animated by a central question.
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SPEAKER_03: In each episode,
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SPEAKER_03: And now on to today's conversation.
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SPEAKER_03: Matthew Shadle is a Catholic theologian, author, speaker, and educator.
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SPEAKER_03: For 17 years, he has been a professor of theology, most recently at Marymount University.
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SPEAKER_03: He's the author of Interrupting Capitalism,
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SPEAKER_03: Catholic Social Thought and the Economy from Oxford Press in 2018,
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SPEAKER_03: and The Origins of War,
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SPEAKER_03: a Catholic Perspective from Georgetown in 2011,
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SPEAKER_03: as well as numerous essays and articles that have appeared in America Magazine,
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SPEAKER_03: Church Life Journal, Commonweal and Public Discourse, among other outlets.
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SPEAKER_03: Matthew currently serves as a volunteer representative for the USCCB at the Faith
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SPEAKER_03: and Order Convening Tables,
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SPEAKER_03: the Ecumenical Theological Dialogue of the National Council of Churches.
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SPEAKER_03: And Matt is also the creator of the Window Light Newsletter,
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SPEAKER_03: a publication that provides commentary and reportage on issues pertinent to
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SPEAKER_03: the church and offers a Catholic theological perspective on current events.
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SPEAKER_03: And I'll say it's a wonderfully thoughtful newsletter that I'd encourage all
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SPEAKER_03: of our listeners to subscribe.
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SPEAKER_03: So Matthew Shadle, thanks so much and welcome to Tomorrow's American Catholic.
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SPEAKER_03: Yeah, thank you very much for having me.
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SPEAKER_03: Of course.
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SPEAKER_03: No,
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SPEAKER_03: we're delighted to have you here and Learn a bit more about the newsletter and some
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SPEAKER_03: of your background.
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SPEAKER_03: We like to start with our guest's spiritual biography.
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SPEAKER_03: So if you could maybe give us just a brief summary of your background
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SPEAKER_03: and what got you interested in theology,
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SPEAKER_03: any influences,
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SPEAKER_03: mentors or teachers,
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SPEAKER_03: just anything you'd like to share about your spiritual background.
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SPEAKER_01: Of course.
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SPEAKER_01: So the way I would start is that I grew up Methodist.
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SPEAKER_01: So I'm from Arkansas and I grew up Methodist.
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SPEAKER_01: And I think,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: what stuck with me about that is a love for the Bible,
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SPEAKER_01: a love for scriptures and studying the Bible.
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SPEAKER_01: And then also maybe I didn't know the term at the time,
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SPEAKER_01: but what they call the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.
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SPEAKER_01: Which is the idea that it's not unlike some other Protestant denominations,
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SPEAKER_01: not just looking at the Bible alone,
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SPEAKER_01: but scripture,
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SPEAKER_01: tradition, reason, and experience, all those things that inform our faith.
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SPEAKER_01: So kind of a more well-rounded approach to thinking about the faith.
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SPEAKER_01: And so I went through a period of searching right before college and into college.
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SPEAKER_01: Even, you know,
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SPEAKER_01: tried out the Unitarian Universalist Church for a while and,
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SPEAKER_01: you know, things like that, but kind of stuck with Methodism.
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SPEAKER_01: But then in college, I took a two semester course series on the history of Christianity.
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SPEAKER_01: And it was really there that I made the decision to convert to Catholicism.
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SPEAKER_01: It was partly Catholicism.
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SPEAKER_01: Learning about the long tradition of the Catholic Church in those courses,
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SPEAKER_01: and then also kind of the sense of the rich body of spirituality
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SPEAKER_01: and devotional practice that are just part of Catholicism.
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SPEAKER_01: That I didn't really find anywhere else.
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SPEAKER_01: And those are the things that first appealed to me,
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SPEAKER_01: that kind of drew me in to the Catholic Church.
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SPEAKER_01: And then kind of the intellectual aspects grew with time as I continued to study theology.
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SPEAKER_01: It was really those classes that got me started studying theology as well.
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SPEAKER_01: So I ended up being what they called a religion major at
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SPEAKER_02: the college I was attending.
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SPEAKER_01: And I think I would also say, I mean,
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SPEAKER_01: you could probably already tell from the way I described it,
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SPEAKER_01: that my conversion was not a repudiation of what had come before.
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SPEAKER_01: I know for a lot of people who convert to Catholicism,
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SPEAKER_01: it is, you know, it's more like a rejection of what came before.
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SPEAKER_01: But for me, it was not really a repudiation, but more of a completion, right?
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SPEAKER_01: That in some ways,
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SPEAKER_01: what I found in the Methodist Church, I took with me into the Catholic Church.
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SPEAKER_01: And I think that's one reason why.
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SPEAKER_01: My ecumenism has always been important to me in that, like,
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SPEAKER_01: for example,
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SPEAKER_01: recognizing the presence of the Spirit,
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SPEAKER_01: the gifts of the Spirit in all Christian denominations because I've experienced
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SPEAKER_01: that, right?
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SPEAKER_01: Like I know God is present and working in those other churches
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SPEAKER_01: because I've experienced that, but also our need for unity, right?
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SPEAKER_01: The tragedy that Christians are divided.
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SPEAKER_01: And so that's always been important to me.
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SPEAKER_01: And like you said,
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SPEAKER_01: I represent the U.S.
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SPEAKER_01: Catholic bishops at the National Council of Churches Faith
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SPEAKER_01: and Order Convening Table, which,
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SPEAKER_01: as the name suggests,
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SPEAKER_01: was originally the part of the National Council of Churches that dealt with dialogue
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SPEAKER_01: over doctrinal issues and ecclesiological issues.
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SPEAKER_01: But interestingly enough,
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SPEAKER_01: over the past several years,
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SPEAKER_01: they've actually shifted to dialogue about, I guess, what we call social ethics.
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SPEAKER_01: So in recent years,
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SPEAKER_01: we had several years of studying racism together and studying how the churches in
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SPEAKER_01: the United States have contributed to racism and they're part of that,
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SPEAKER_01: but then also how the churches should respond to racism.
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SPEAKER_01: And so it's a different kind of dialogue, but it's actually really interesting and important.
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SPEAKER_01: And then just to continue the spiritual biography,
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SPEAKER_01: I think it was my last year of college,
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SPEAKER_01: I went on a mission trip to Honduras that was actually connected with
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SPEAKER_01: the Franciscans.
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SPEAKER_01: That experience is really what What oriented me towards Catholic social teaching
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SPEAKER_01: and liberation theology and other Catholic approaches to social issues that kind
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SPEAKER_01: of put me in that direction.
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SPEAKER_01: And then I followed up on as I continued to study theology in graduate school and everything.
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SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, that's kind of how I got formed as a Catholic heading into my study of theology.
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SPEAKER_01: And I think we can go from there.
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SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Matt.
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SPEAKER_03: I like hearing your conversion stories, not a reputation of the past, but a continuity.
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SPEAKER_03: You kept that ecumenical spirit, and that's just really nice to hear.
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SPEAKER_03: You didn't entrench yourself or have to cut something off.
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SPEAKER_03: You opened yourself into this deeper fullness.
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SPEAKER_02: One of our previous guests, you might probably know John Pavlik.
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SPEAKER_02: John converted from Catholicism to becoming a Methodist.
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SPEAKER_02: So I guess that's a fair trade there.
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SPEAKER_00: Holy shriek.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, although John's a dear friend and I tell him,
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SPEAKER_02: you know, once you're a Catholic, you're always a Catholic.
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SPEAKER_02: His response always is.
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SPEAKER_02: My mother tells me that all the time.
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SPEAKER_02: So I read your article about preaching on a plane.
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SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: I thought it's really interesting.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm wondering if you could sort of comment on it a little bit.
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SPEAKER_02: We as Catholics were sometimes taught that,
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SPEAKER_02: well, we're supposed to be out there preaching the Word of God.
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SPEAKER_02: But then, you know, sometimes that can be very offensive to preach the Word of God.
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SPEAKER_02: My background is I'm part of the Franciscan family and I worked for the Franciscans
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SPEAKER_02: for 10 years.
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SPEAKER_02: So I always believe we should just live the word of God.
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SPEAKER_02: We shouldn't be out preaching the word of God,
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SPEAKER_02: or as is credited with Francis,
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SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure he actually ever said this,
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SPEAKER_02: but preach the gospel and use words only when necessary.
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SPEAKER_02: So share a little bit about that article,
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SPEAKER_02: because I thought it was really fascinating and interesting.
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SPEAKER_00: To piggyback on that, I also thought it was a great article.
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SPEAKER_00: And if you could include in your explanation,
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SPEAKER_00: the Pope Francis quote, time is greater than space.
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SPEAKER_00: I found that to be Really thought provoking and, and interesting.
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SPEAKER_00: So if you can include that in conversation, that'd be great.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: So this was, um, uh,
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SPEAKER_01: an episode that happened,
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SPEAKER_01: I think maybe last month or earlier this month, uh,
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SPEAKER_01: there was, um, this, uh, woman,
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SPEAKER_01: her name was Whitney Lynn, who's,
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SPEAKER_01: she's a evangelical Christian and kind of this mix of a evangelist
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SPEAKER_01: and social media personality type person.
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SPEAKER_01: And well,
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SPEAKER_01: apparently she has, uh,
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SPEAKER_01: She's done this before,
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SPEAKER_01: but her flight got delayed and they were sitting on the tarmac like all
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SPEAKER_01: the passengers were trapped on the plane.
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SPEAKER_01: And she got up and started preaching, like preaching the gospel.
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SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's like her message.
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SPEAKER_01: I mean, there was nothing wrong with her message because it was,
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SPEAKER_01: you know, like finding salvation in Jesus Christ.
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SPEAKER_01: But what, well,
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SPEAKER_01: and then what happened is after a couple of minutes or so,
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SPEAKER_01: the flight crew, you know, had her escorted off the plane, right?
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SPEAKER_01: Because of, you know, disturbing the other passengers.
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SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
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SPEAKER_01: and then she,
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SPEAKER_01: in the process, described it as persecution, that this was spiritual warfare.
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SPEAKER_01: And, and things like that.
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SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
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SPEAKER_01: in the grand scheme of things,
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SPEAKER_01: not really that important that this happened or anything,
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SPEAKER_01: but I thought it was really, well,
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SPEAKER_01: it generated a lot of conversation online and,
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SPEAKER_01: and I thought it was kind of emblematic of a certain.
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SPEAKER_01: And that gets to what Barbara was mentioning,
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SPEAKER_01: is that Pope Francis has this phrase that he introduces in Evangelii Gaudium,
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SPEAKER_01: one of the first documents that he published in 2013,
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SPEAKER_01: that time is greater than space.
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SPEAKER_01: And I'm really fascinated by his understanding of space, that what he's talking about is space.
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SPEAKER_01: A way of thinking or even an approach to the faith that thinks,
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SPEAKER_01: he says it's a focus on control,
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SPEAKER_01: on having control of the situation or even having control of the space, right?
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SPEAKER_01: Whether it's an airplane or your house or a country or whatever it is,
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SPEAKER_01: he kind of gets at that it's not necessarily bad intentions.
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SPEAKER_01: You may have good intentions.
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SPEAKER_01: You want You want to bring about good results.
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SPEAKER_01: But we all have this temptation to say that to get the results I want, I need to be in control.
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SPEAKER_01: I need to control the space and make this happen.
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SPEAKER_01: Right.
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SPEAKER_01: And so and what he means that time is greater than space is that in reality,
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SPEAKER_01: that's not the way things work.
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SPEAKER_01: We bring about change,
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SPEAKER_01: we bring about transformation by starting a process,
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SPEAKER_01: but with humility,
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SPEAKER_01: recognizing that we are not in control of the situation,
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SPEAKER_01: that we just have to let the process work.
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SPEAKER_01: And part of that is leaving it open to other people to respond,
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SPEAKER_01: to respond freely to the process that you've initiated.
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SPEAKER_01: And I just thought there was an immediate application of that to this process.
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SPEAKER_01: Kind of silly situation on the plane and that she was a very obvious illustration
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SPEAKER_01: of Francis's point about space and that,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: she's even said things like that she really likes preaching on planes
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SPEAKER_01: because she has a captive audience and that the people on
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SPEAKER_01: the plane can't go anywhere.
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SPEAKER_01: Like openly admitting that's why she likes it is that she's forcing them to listen to her.
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SPEAKER_01: And I was like,
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SPEAKER_01: that is so illustrative of what Francis is saying,
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SPEAKER_01: this idea that I'm going to convert people if I can control them.
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SPEAKER_01: If I can control them and have them captives and just preach at them,
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SPEAKER_01: then they're going to see the light and come to Jesus.
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SPEAKER_01: But in reality,
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SPEAKER_01: Patrick,
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SPEAKER_01: you were getting at this,
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SPEAKER_01: is that we have this long tradition that that's not really how evangelizing ought
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SPEAKER_01: to work.
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SPEAKER_01: That it's more like Pope Francis was saying,
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SPEAKER_01: you have to kind of initiate a process, but allow people to respond.
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SPEAKER_01: You have to allow people to walk away.
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SPEAKER_01: You can't just hold them captive.
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SPEAKER_01: True evangelizing gives people the freedom to walk away if they're not ready
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SPEAKER_01: to hear this or if they don't want to hear it right now,
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SPEAKER_01: but also their freedom to respond.
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SPEAKER_01: And then that's why we talk about dialogue as part of evangelization.
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SPEAKER_01: It has to be a dialogue and not a one-way monologue.
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SPEAKER_00: You know what occurred to me when I read that?
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SPEAKER_00: And also, I think you used the words power and self-assertion.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: Well, that's Francis's words, yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: And so I think that a lot of times it's not only in regard to other people,
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SPEAKER_00: but that can become your stance toward God.
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SPEAKER_00: Like when I hear people throwing around words like prayer warriors or I've got
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SPEAKER_00: to get my prayer posse together and,
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SPEAKER_00: you know, storm heaven, that we have a God that we have to approach in that way.
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SPEAKER_00: And that...
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SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes spiritual maturity is more about being able to say,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm going to do a little less here and I'm going to allow God to do the majority of
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SPEAKER_00: the work.
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SPEAKER_00: I think there was a corollary there that really struck me.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that because, I mean,
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SPEAKER_01: I've wrestled with that too, is that what is it exactly we're doing in prayer?
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SPEAKER_01: Is it, you know, like you said, is it that we're...
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SPEAKER_01: Trying to get God to do something for us,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: even to the point of,
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SPEAKER_01: like you said,
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SPEAKER_01: almost like,
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SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't want to say like forcing God,
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SPEAKER_01: but, you know, pressuring God to come to our aid.
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SPEAKER_01: Or is it,
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SPEAKER_01: is prayer about like Jesus teaches us to pray in the art further,
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SPEAKER_01: thy will be done, right?
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SPEAKER_01: Is it opening ourselves to God's will?
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SPEAKER_01: But the flip side of that,
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SPEAKER_01: and something I touched on in the same article,
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SPEAKER_01: is that it's also connected to Our understanding of God and like Pope Leo talks
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SPEAKER_01: about this recently in a Sunday Angelus address,
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SPEAKER_01: this view that God acts sort of forcefully that,
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SPEAKER_01: you know, when God acts, it's sort of this very powerful, you know.
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SPEAKER_01: Forceful activity when God also acts in that way of initiating a process
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SPEAKER_01: of slow transformation, right?
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SPEAKER_01: So he talks about all of these parables of Jesus,
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SPEAKER_01: like the mustard seed and the Sunday gospel reading about the wheat and the weeds,
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SPEAKER_01: you know, that God...
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SPEAKER_01: You know, doesn't just come in and take the wheat and throw out the weeds.
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SPEAKER_01: And he says, we got to wait, you know, we got to wait for the process to unfold.
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SPEAKER_01: Right.
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SPEAKER_01: And so, so this idea of,
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SPEAKER_01: of God acting through power and force versus God acting with humility or
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SPEAKER_01: with patience, you know what I mean?
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SPEAKER_01: So yeah, like the, our spiritual reaction is a reflection of our, our view of God as well.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm going to take us in a little tiny different direction because,
15:36
SPEAKER_02: um, It's my understanding that you're kind of an expert on Dunsgodis.
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SPEAKER_02: And so I want to ask you about that.
15:43
SPEAKER_02: And let me just say, I've read all of Dunsgodis' work, and I don't understand any of it.
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SPEAKER_02: Well, it's impressive that you read it.
15:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, you know, I feel the same way about Elia Delio.
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SPEAKER_02: And she's a dear friend, and I don't understand anything she writes about it.
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SPEAKER_02: But one of the things that Dunsgodis talked about,
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SPEAKER_02: and I'm going to paraphrase it, but he wrote about the Incarnation.
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SPEAKER_02: And the incarnation not being about sin,
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SPEAKER_02: the incarnation being about that the moment God conceived creation,
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SPEAKER_02: God knew the incarnation was going to happen.
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SPEAKER_02: And from Scotus' perspective,
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SPEAKER_02: and Scotus got this from Francis, the incarnation was not about us going to heaven.
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SPEAKER_02: It was about creating heaven here on earth.
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SPEAKER_02: That's my interpretation of what Scotus said.
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SPEAKER_02: So I'm kind of wondering...
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
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SPEAKER_01: So the idea here,
16:36
SPEAKER_01: you got the basics right,
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SPEAKER_01: but it's that,
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SPEAKER_01: so the medieval scholastic theologians,
16:40
SPEAKER_01: they're kind of grappling with this question of why did God or why did
16:45
SPEAKER_01: the sun become incarnate?
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SPEAKER_01: And so...
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SPEAKER_01: The major figures that Scotus is kind of wrestling with here,
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SPEAKER_01: like St.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: Augustine,
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SPEAKER_01: who was a major authority for all the medieval theologians,
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SPEAKER_01: and then his predecessor,
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SPEAKER_01: Thomas Aquinas,
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SPEAKER_01: and then going further back,
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SPEAKER_01: Anselm of Canterbury, they all said that the incarnation was God's response to sin.
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SPEAKER_01: Right.
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SPEAKER_01: That because humankind fell into sin, then in response to that, God willed the incarnation.
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SPEAKER_01: God willed the second person of the Trinity to unite with humanity as a response to our sin.
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SPEAKER_01: Right.
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SPEAKER_01: And so Scotus doesn't deny that in the sense that he thinks that it's through
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SPEAKER_01: the incarnation,
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SPEAKER_01: through Christ's passion and resurrection that Christ overcomes our sin.
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SPEAKER_01: But like you were saying that Scotus puts forward the idea of That God willed
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SPEAKER_01: the incarnation even before sin entered the world, right?
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SPEAKER_01: And we're talking in human terms, in terms of time here, in God terms.
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SPEAKER_01: It's not really about like before and after,
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SPEAKER_01: but like God's intention for the incarnation is prior to sin.
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SPEAKER_01: In the sense that,
17:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean, another way to put it is that even if humankind had not fallen into sin...
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SPEAKER_01: The incarnations would have been the culmination of creation.
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SPEAKER_02: Right, which is exactly how it goes.
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SPEAKER_01: Right, it was the original purpose for there to be this union of creation of God
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SPEAKER_01: and creation in the incarnation.
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SPEAKER_01: And I think your point about heaven and heaven on earth is more like
18:19
SPEAKER_01: the way I would put that is it kind of gets away from the notion
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SPEAKER_01: that this life is like this veil of tears.
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SPEAKER_01: And so then our union with Christ then allows us to find union with God in heaven.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like an escape from the veil of tears that creation has become.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: And more like in the sense that for SCOTUS,
18:41
SPEAKER_01: the incarnation and our union with Christ and sharing in the beatific vision
18:45
SPEAKER_01: with Christ is like the culmination of creation.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: It's not like this rupture between creation and
18:55
SPEAKER_01: beatitude or union with Christ.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: And there, there's kind of an interesting...
19:02
SPEAKER_01: Continuity with a very early theologian,
19:04
SPEAKER_01: the church father Irenaeus,
19:05
SPEAKER_01: who also has that idea of union with Christ as like the culmination of creation.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: And then that kind of gets lost, at least in the West.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: And then kind of Scotus brings that back in his own way there.
19:18
SPEAKER_02: There's also a lot of what Scotus wrote,
19:20
SPEAKER_02: and particularly the univocity of being,
19:22
SPEAKER_02: which is another really interesting concept.
19:26
SPEAKER_02: But there was a Muslim scholar 50 years earlier who wrote the exact same thing.
19:31
SPEAKER_02: A Sufi mystic who wrote almost the exact same thing.
19:35
SPEAKER_02: So that's not something that's, you know, unique to SCOTUS or the Franciscans of Christianity.
19:40
SPEAKER_02: That's something that whole understanding of the oneness
19:44
SPEAKER_02: of all creation is something that goes back to, you know, before Jesus's time.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: You know, the ancient Hindus.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: And you brought it up,
19:52
SPEAKER_01: and this is definitely not my area of expertise,
19:54
SPEAKER_01: but like the early Franciscan scholar,
19:56
SPEAKER_01: Lydia Schumacher, she's in the United Kingdom.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: She's done some interesting writing on this kind of how
20:04
SPEAKER_01: the early Franciscan theologians,
20:05
SPEAKER_01: like before SCOTUS,
20:07
SPEAKER_01: are dialoguing with Muslim philosophers and their understanding of God that kind
20:13
SPEAKER_01: of contributes to some of their distinctive ideas is through this dialogue
20:17
SPEAKER_01: with Muslim philosophers.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we talk a lot about,
20:19
SPEAKER_01: of course, like, Matt,
20:27
SPEAKER_03: before we get to some of the themes we wanted to explore,
20:30
SPEAKER_03: that you explore on Wendellette,
20:31
SPEAKER_03: I'm wondering if you could just,
20:32
SPEAKER_03: because I think that last bit of conversation was a good segue,
20:35
SPEAKER_03: because what I really appreciate about your newsletter is
20:37
SPEAKER_03: that you bring this theological richness to contemporary issues,
20:41
SPEAKER_03: both political, church-related.
20:43
SPEAKER_03: So, I think it's a great example of how your style works.
20:47
SPEAKER_03: Could you tell us a little bit about how window light evolved and just how you see
20:51
SPEAKER_03: the idea of the, for lack of a better term, public theologian?
20:54
SPEAKER_01: Sure, and I appreciate that,
20:56
SPEAKER_01: because I did kind of cut off my spiritual biography there when I got
20:59
SPEAKER_01: to grad school,
21:00
SPEAKER_01: and so this kind of gives me a chance to finish,
21:02
SPEAKER_01: well, not finish, that's not over yet, but to continue the story.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so like you said in the introduction,
21:09
SPEAKER_01: I taught theology for 16,
21:11
SPEAKER_01: 17 years,
21:13
SPEAKER_01: first at Loris College in Iowa,
21:15
SPEAKER_01: and then at Marymount University in Arlington,
21:18
SPEAKER_01: Virginia,
21:19
SPEAKER_01: And then what happened is that Marymount closed their theology program.
21:23
SPEAKER_01: So this was kind of in the news a bit, and that was in 2023, the very beginning of that year.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: And so, and just given the family circumstances,
21:32
SPEAKER_01: you know, I couldn't just, you know, move wherever or anything like that.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: I realized that finding another job as a professor was going to be unlikely.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: And so now I've ended up working at the University of Iowa right now,
21:44
SPEAKER_01: but in administration, but, um,
21:47
SPEAKER_01: But that led me to wrestle with,
21:49
SPEAKER_01: well, what does it mean to be a theologian without being a professor?
21:52
SPEAKER_01: Because if you think about it, that is just what you think of, right?
21:55
SPEAKER_01: And that if someone's a theologian, then they're a college professor.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: And so I had to find a way, you know, that's just part of who I am is being a theologian, right?
22:05
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to give that up.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: And so, but what does that mean then if I'm not a college professor?
22:11
SPEAKER_01: And that's one reason why I started Window Light was a way
22:15
SPEAKER_01: to Fulfill my theological vocation even if I wasn't teaching and also just
22:21
SPEAKER_01: to stay connected with what's going on in the church
22:25
SPEAKER_01: and I'll be honest I feel more aware of what's going on in the church.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: Writing this newsletter, you know, twice a week than I did than I ever did as a professor.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: And so it's actually kind of fun that way.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: And so, so what I do with a window light is, is a mix of different things.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: So probably the main thing is,
22:44
SPEAKER_01: is I think what you mentioned,
22:45
SPEAKER_01: like commentary on what's going on in the Vatican or in the U S church,
22:49
SPEAKER_01: but also commentary on like political events or people preaching on planes
22:54
SPEAKER_01: or whatever in light of Catholic social teaching.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, uh, I also.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: Use the newsletter,
23:01
SPEAKER_01: I include theological reflections that aren't necessarily connected
23:04
SPEAKER_01: to anything that's going on in the world at that moment.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: Or I get really nerdy and just have little vignettes from the history of theology,
23:13
SPEAKER_01: like SCOTUS or whatever.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of how it got started.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: And I like your point that it's a form of public theology, because I think that's right.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: Even though a lot of the subscribers are academics, it's not written.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: For academics, it's written for just people, just for Catholics or interested people.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: And I think what I've found over time is really the niche for the newsletter is
23:42
SPEAKER_01: that I draw on my expertise as a theologian to provide some added depth
23:50
SPEAKER_01: to our understanding of what's going on.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: So there's a little more depth to it than journalism.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: Right.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, journalism is great.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: That's where I get,
23:59
SPEAKER_01: you know, that's where we get information, but I add that depth of expertise.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: But then it's not like academic writing where you have to write like you have
24:06
SPEAKER_01: to wait a year or more for something to be published.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: So it's not you could get that currency right to speak to what's going on right now.
24:14
SPEAKER_03: I always love the tradition in the Orthodox world of the lay theologian,
24:17
SPEAKER_03: just someone who hungers for a knowledge of God is a theologian.
24:21
SPEAKER_03: So it's starting from that point,
24:23
SPEAKER_03: which kind of gets the idea of public theology, that it's not exclusive.
24:27
SPEAKER_03: It's something we all have a share in.
24:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: I think this whole approach to bringing your theological background
24:35
SPEAKER_00: to this newsletter that anybody could access is a really valuable one
24:40
SPEAKER_00: because I know even myself like to read the A lot
24:45
SPEAKER_00: of theological material becomes like an intellectual exercise more than it does
24:52
SPEAKER_00: a faith-filled heart exercise.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes that theology can stand by itself over here.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: How does theology move somehow from the head to the heart in the sense that it
25:07
SPEAKER_00: then changes the way we respond to the world?
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Or does it?
25:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and relating that to Michael's point,
25:13
SPEAKER_01: I think theologians are getting better at that coming from two directions.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: So one is that I think theologians who are in the academy,
25:23
SPEAKER_01: even when they're writing for the academy,
25:26
SPEAKER_01: are much more aware or much more intentional about being engaged
25:32
SPEAKER_01: in their scholarship.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: So they may be using theology as a way of reflecting on what's going on in the community, right?
25:39
SPEAKER_01: With immigration or poverty or things like that, right?
25:43
SPEAKER_01: So kind of influenced by liberation theology of the sort of engagement with
25:48
SPEAKER_01: the people, with the community as part of the theological reflection.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: And then on the other hand,
25:53
SPEAKER_01: I think There's these new avenues for public theology, like we were talking about.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: And I think the key there for what you're saying,
26:03
SPEAKER_01: Barbara,
26:04
SPEAKER_01: is that you kind of have to base the theological reflection
26:09
SPEAKER_01: on people's real spiritual concerns or their real concerns about what's going on in
26:14
SPEAKER_01: the world, right?
26:15
SPEAKER_01: And I think, I mean, I still think there's a place...
26:19
SPEAKER_01: For just kind of nerding out on an interesting intellectual issue
26:23
SPEAKER_01: that may not have any immediate relevance, right?
26:26
SPEAKER_01: And I think that term immediate relevance is important because in the end,
26:31
SPEAKER_01: you know, even these kind of out there issues end up being relevant.
26:35
SPEAKER_03: But I think it's that sort of intentionality
26:37
SPEAKER_01: about how do these ideas reflect
26:41
SPEAKER_01: to people's real spiritual lives or to social issues?
26:44
SPEAKER_01: And even like what we were just talking about a few minutes ago about our images of God, right?
26:50
SPEAKER_01: You know,
26:51
SPEAKER_01: as God is sort of this kind of patient,
26:54
SPEAKER_01: humble planter,
26:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:56
SPEAKER_01: planting seeds and allowing them to grow or,
26:58
SPEAKER_01: you know, well, we have the reading book.
27:00
SPEAKER_01: A few weeks ago about Elijah in the cave,
27:02
SPEAKER_01: you know,
27:03
SPEAKER_01: does God come in the fire and the earthquake or does God come in
27:06
SPEAKER_01: the still quiet voice, right?
27:09
SPEAKER_01: So our image of God,
27:10
SPEAKER_01: you know,
27:11
SPEAKER_01: you can get really deep into the theology of that,
27:13
SPEAKER_01: but that's really,
27:16
SPEAKER_01: you know,
27:16
SPEAKER_01: personal to people's spirituality too and shapes how they understand God,
27:20
SPEAKER_01: how they, you know, respond to the world.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: And so if theologians can kind of bring out that connection,
27:26
SPEAKER_01: I think that it becomes more relevant to people.
27:29
SPEAKER_02: I want to follow up on Barbara's question a little bit.
27:32
SPEAKER_02: Also, I thought it was an excellent question.
27:35
SPEAKER_02: I'm an activist.
27:36
SPEAKER_02: I'm more likely to be getting arrested than reading a book on theology.
27:42
SPEAKER_02: Although if I get arrested enough, maybe I should read a book on theology.
27:45
SPEAKER_02: But I'm also a writer and I write a lot on the spirituality of activism.
27:51
SPEAKER_02: So, but,
27:52
SPEAKER_02: you know,
27:52
SPEAKER_02: in my time as an activist,
27:54
SPEAKER_02: you know,
27:55
SPEAKER_02: I've had the joy of encountering a number of and becoming friends with a number
27:58
SPEAKER_02: of theologians,
27:59
SPEAKER_02: because I think it's critical that my activism is centered on sound theology.
28:05
SPEAKER_02: I sometimes got frustrated with the theologians,
28:07
SPEAKER_02: however,
28:08
SPEAKER_02: who just,
28:08
SPEAKER_02: you know,
28:09
SPEAKER_02: were writing for academia and didn't appear to me to be writing for, I mean,
28:14
SPEAKER_02: I would ask some of them, how can I take what you wrote and turn it into action?
28:18
SPEAKER_02: And so how do I take what you're writing and other theologians are writing and use
28:23
SPEAKER_02: that to change the world?
28:25
SPEAKER_02: Because we need to change the world.
28:26
SPEAKER_02: We can't keep going forward the way we're going.
28:28
SPEAKER_02: And we need to do it based on sound theology.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think as someone who probably most of my writing has been related
28:38
SPEAKER_01: to Catholic social teaching,
28:39
SPEAKER_01: I think it's relatively easy for me to talk about,
28:42
SPEAKER_01: okay, how could this translate into action?
28:45
SPEAKER_01: Because that's kind of what I do, right?
28:47
SPEAKER_01: And so like, you know, you mentioned my most recent book, Interrupting Capitalism.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: So a lot of it is just kind of a history story.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean,
28:56
SPEAKER_01: a lot of it is a history of how Catholics have been engaged in action in
29:00
SPEAKER_01: the economy, like labor activism and things like that.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: But then it's also tracing how Catholics over the 20th and into
29:09
SPEAKER_01: the 21st century think about the economy.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: But then I kind of end the book by saying,
29:13
SPEAKER_01: let's look at,
29:15
SPEAKER_01: you know,
29:15
SPEAKER_01: the contemporary economy and what are some...
29:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, one of the conclusions I have is that we've kind of...
29:22
SPEAKER_01: The age in which we can think of just coming in and implementing an ideology
29:27
SPEAKER_01: that just kind of changes the whole economic system, that age is over, right?
29:30
SPEAKER_01: That was kind of the 20th century mindset.
29:33
SPEAKER_01: And I think that was very historically contingent.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
29:35
SPEAKER_01: we had like violent revolutions that would overthrow the system and then come in
29:40
SPEAKER_01: and implement something or I think you had the experience of World War II
29:44
SPEAKER_01: where everything was just destroyed and they could kind of,
29:47
SPEAKER_01: not really, but kind of start from scratch and implement a lot of policies.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: But that's just not really the way things work.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: You can't just kind of say, okay, we have this ideology of how the economy will work.
29:56
SPEAKER_01: We're just going to like put it in place and run.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: Working within the ecosystem in the sense of,
30:02
SPEAKER_01: you know, let's try a business operating on these principles.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: Let's implement this policy and kind of change the economy in
30:10
SPEAKER_01: a direction that's more like what we would like to see,
30:12
SPEAKER_01: you know,
30:13
SPEAKER_01: kind of pieces here and there trying to kind of change the system gradually
30:18
SPEAKER_01: over time, you know, the way an ecosystem evolves.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: Because we're kind of at a down point in terms of labor activism,
30:25
SPEAKER_01: although there's been some movement in the past few years,
30:27
SPEAKER_01: like the fight for 15, for the living wage and things like that.
30:31
SPEAKER_01: And we're also at a down point in the Catholic Church's involvement in those sorts of things.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we have such a rich, amazing history of Catholic involvement in that.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: We're kind of at a down point.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: And so trying to think about why that is,
30:46
SPEAKER_01: what has happened that contributed to that,
30:48
SPEAKER_01: and then what are some things that The church could try to do or that parishes
30:53
SPEAKER_01: or dioceses could try to do that would fit the current reality.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: I loved what you said on the Window Light website.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: You started with the 14th century Franciscan theologian, quote, is it Peter Oriel?
31:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, Oriel, yeah.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: The sun spreads the brightness of its rays completely throughout the air.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: If then a chamber faces the sun and yet is not found radiant on the inside.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: The cause must be an impediment, like a wall or the closing of the windows.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: That was a great place to start, I thought.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: And then you go on to talk about basically,
31:31
SPEAKER_00: you can see very clearly why the name of your newsletter is Window Light,
31:39
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:39
SPEAKER_00: providing a way through that in some ways that's accessible to people, which I love.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: And you also talk about Destructive social institutions,
31:50
SPEAKER_00: cultural patterns, so sort of those bigger systemic kinds of issues.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: One thing that has always,
31:58
SPEAKER_00: as someone who was born and raised and is still at the heart a Catholic,
32:02
SPEAKER_00: but who's left the church,
32:04
SPEAKER_00: I guess a question I always have is what happens when aspects of the institution...
32:11
SPEAKER_00: Become that obstacle to people pursuing their faith.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes if within the church,
32:20
SPEAKER_00: if you're a bit of a dissident in any way, it's not appreciated very much.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: So can you comment on that at all?
32:29
SPEAKER_01: So before I get to that,
32:31
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:32
SPEAKER_01: that was such a strange segue in the sense we were talking
32:35
SPEAKER_01: about like 20th century Catholic labor activism and then we're getting
32:39
SPEAKER_01: into 14th century Franciscan theologians.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, that's me.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just kind of weird, weird combinations.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: Time is greater than space.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: We can do that.
32:55
SPEAKER_01: But just to explain something you said a little more,
32:58
SPEAKER_01: so what Peter Oriol is getting at there is he's talking about the way God works
33:04
SPEAKER_01: within us.
33:05
SPEAKER_01: And this is actually very much related to what we were saying before.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: So it's contrary to Augustine and Aquinas.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: It's not that...
33:14
SPEAKER_01: Not that God kind of picks and chooses who to give grace to, right?
33:19
SPEAKER_01: You know,
33:19
SPEAKER_01: the elect and the damned and whatever,
33:21
SPEAKER_01: but that God, like the Son, gives grace to everyone.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: And then it's a question of whether we,
33:28
SPEAKER_01: you know, receive it or like you said, create the impediment, right?
33:32
SPEAKER_01: And so what I was trying to do there is just kind of bring that into kind of
33:36
SPEAKER_01: a more contemporary consciousness of not just at the personal level,
33:40
SPEAKER_01: But we can become impediments to God's activity socially as well
33:44
SPEAKER_01: through our unjust structures, through injustice and so forth, right?
33:49
SPEAKER_01: That God is active in the world around us,
33:52
SPEAKER_01: but that we create these impediments that limit human flourishing.
33:56
SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
33:56
SPEAKER_01: so you raise a really interesting theological point is that
33:59
SPEAKER_01: the church itself can become that sort of impediment to grace,
34:04
SPEAKER_01: and which is really paradoxical in the sense that,
34:07
SPEAKER_01: of course,
34:08
SPEAKER_01: the church is also the sacrament of grace in the world,
34:10
SPEAKER_01: and that sometimes it's the opposite.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: Even the bishops at Vatican, too,
34:15
SPEAKER_01: kind of subtly acknowledge that there's,
34:19
SPEAKER_01: I believe it's in Gaudium et Spes,
34:21
SPEAKER_01: but I could be wrong,
34:21
SPEAKER_01: maybe it's in Lumen Gentium,
34:22
SPEAKER_01: but they talk about how It's in the section on atheism,
34:26
SPEAKER_01: so I think it must be God of its best,
34:27
SPEAKER_01: but they talk about how Christians are not free from blame for the rise of atheism.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: They're basically making the point that when Christians are a poor witness to
34:39
SPEAKER_01: the faith, they contribute to atheism, right?
34:42
SPEAKER_01: This is how people perceive God is through the behavior of Christians or through the church.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: And so if Christians are not reflecting who God is...
34:51
SPEAKER_01: Then people reject that, right?
34:52
SPEAKER_01: And so, but yeah, and that's just one example of what you're saying.
34:55
SPEAKER_01: And so obviously we have a much deeper sense of the ways the church becomes
35:00
SPEAKER_01: an impediment to grace.
35:01
SPEAKER_01: So like through obviously the sexual abuse crisis, through financial mismanagement.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: Honestly, for a lot of us, it's the patriarchy that is the impediment.
35:15
SPEAKER_01: And clericalism, yeah.
35:17
SPEAKER_03: I guess one theme that keeps coming up for me is we come to this time and space motif.
35:22
SPEAKER_03: I'd quote something back you wrote about the synod,
35:24
SPEAKER_03: which is that the process of recollecting is a time to look at the small things
35:28
SPEAKER_03: that are growing in our midst and may not be worthy of a feature article,
35:31
SPEAKER_03: but are slowly transforming the church.
35:33
SPEAKER_03: It's like this slow work of transformation.
35:36
SPEAKER_03: The synod is just one example.
35:38
SPEAKER_03: I guess I would just say you mentioned,
35:40
SPEAKER_03: you know,
35:40
SPEAKER_03: we're at down points in certain issues right now,
35:43
SPEAKER_03: but those down points can also be moments of transition and moments of opening.
35:47
SPEAKER_03: And it seems like the church right now is balancing the down point,
35:50
SPEAKER_03: but also the inflection point and the chance to change.
35:53
SPEAKER_03: And there's a lot of excitement around Leo.
35:55
SPEAKER_03: I was going to move us into some of your reactions on some of the current issues in our church.
36:00
SPEAKER_03: I suppose I would start with the Synod since you've done such great reporting on it.
36:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was kind of a fun experience because the I started Window Light around
36:10
SPEAKER_01: the same time that the synodal process really kind of kicked into high gear.
36:14
SPEAKER_01: So discussions at the local level had already happened.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: At that point,
36:20
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't really engaged in parish life because COVID had just happened and things.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: So I kind of missed out on all of that.
36:26
SPEAKER_01: But then once it got to the,
36:28
SPEAKER_01: I guess,
36:29
SPEAKER_01: the continental level,
36:30
SPEAKER_01: you know, where,
36:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:32
SPEAKER_01: representatives from the different continents are getting together,
36:34
SPEAKER_01: that's kind of where I jumped in and they were preparing for the
36:38
SPEAKER_01: The big worldwide meeting in the Vatican in 2023.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: That's really where I jumped in.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: And so I just started this whole series of articles on all of this.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: So I highlighted,
36:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:49
SPEAKER_01: I went through the list of,
36:52
SPEAKER_01: you know, they published that list of who all the participants were going to be.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: So I went, like,
36:55
SPEAKER_01: looked up every single one of them to see who they were,
36:58
SPEAKER_01: like anyone interesting and kind of wrote up these sort of biographies of the ones
37:02
SPEAKER_01: that sounded interesting.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: And And then also read through all the continental documents just because,
37:08
SPEAKER_01: you know, I'm a curious person.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: I was like,
37:09
SPEAKER_01: what are they identifying as the issues that came up in each of the continents
37:14
SPEAKER_01: that they're then sending this on to this worldwide conversation?
37:18
SPEAKER_01: And it just kind of continued, you know, when they met and all the documents and things.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: I've just kind of continued that.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: And I say that was fun because it not only, you know, gave me...
37:29
SPEAKER_01: Insight into what they mean by synodality and what's happening,
37:32
SPEAKER_01: but it just gave me insight into what's going on in the church around the world
37:37
SPEAKER_01: because that is part of what this synodal process is,
37:41
SPEAKER_01: is this sort of communication throughout the church to kind
37:45
SPEAKER_01: of inform our decision making.
37:47
SPEAKER_01: And so that was really interesting and I hope readers got something out of that too.
37:52
SPEAKER_03: I was just going to ask Matt if you could talk a bit
37:54
SPEAKER_03: about your own personal experience of the Synod,
37:56
SPEAKER_03: because I know one critique,
37:58
SPEAKER_03: there wasn't a lot done on the diocesan level to implement the Synod.
38:03
SPEAKER_03: We're now in this implementation phase.
38:06
SPEAKER_03: You've written some great pieces about Is this moving too quickly?
38:09
SPEAKER_03: This is, you know, this is not just a logistical exercise.
38:13
SPEAKER_03: This is a real spiritual process.
38:15
SPEAKER_03: Where do you see the synod in the lead up to the 2028, the assembly in Rome?
38:21
SPEAKER_03: How do you see this implementation going?
38:23
SPEAKER_03: Do you feel enough has been done?
38:24
SPEAKER_03: Just anything you'd like to share about your own experience of where this is at?
38:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: So like you said,
38:30
SPEAKER_01: so from the beginning,
38:32
SPEAKER_01: you know, they kind of mapped out where the synodal process was going to go.
38:36
SPEAKER_01: And from the beginning,
38:37
SPEAKER_01: this sort of culmination was this ecclesial assembly in 2028,
38:41
SPEAKER_01: where representatives of the churches from around the world would come and kind
38:46
SPEAKER_01: of share what they've been doing today.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: To kind of implement these ideas related to synodality.
38:54
SPEAKER_01: You know, we're kind of well into the implementation phase now at this point, right?
38:58
SPEAKER_01: That they've, you know, sent out some guidelines for how it dies.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: Well, we had the final document from the synod.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: And so now local dioceses are supposed to be, you know, finding ways.
39:08
SPEAKER_01: How can we incorporate this into our diocese and into our parishes?
39:13
SPEAKER_01: And then we're kind of.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: Getting close to the stage where now they're supposed to start reporting on that.
39:20
SPEAKER_01: And then that's similar to the earlier process.
39:22
SPEAKER_01: Then these reports are going to trickle up to the Vatican, to that ecclesial assembly.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: And you're right that when this was all on paper,
39:29
SPEAKER_01: that seemed like, okay, that's a good plan, right?
39:31
SPEAKER_01: You know,
39:31
SPEAKER_01: they've thought this all out,
39:32
SPEAKER_01: but now that we're in the middle of it,
39:34
SPEAKER_01: I just had this impression of, wow, this is moving really fast.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: Like has,
39:37
SPEAKER_01: has there been enough time to actually implement some of the things they discussed
39:42
SPEAKER_01: at the Senate,
39:43
SPEAKER_01: because I'm being one-sided here,
39:45
SPEAKER_01: but it does kind of seem like the people organizing the synodal process,
39:51
SPEAKER_01: that's kind of their full-time focus.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: But people in parishes, they've got a million things.
39:56
SPEAKER_01: They've got their regular ministries and families and whatever to deal with.
40:01
SPEAKER_01: And so implementing synodality is not their full-time preoccupation.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: And so how effective our diocese is going to have been so far at implementing this?
40:11
SPEAKER_01: But then I kind of set,
40:13
SPEAKER_01: you know,
40:13
SPEAKER_01: I kind of have this in my mind is like, okay,
40:15
SPEAKER_01: but on the other hand,
40:16
SPEAKER_01: I don't think they're expecting dioceses to have Done this,
40:21
SPEAKER_01: you know,
40:22
SPEAKER_01: extensive,
40:22
SPEAKER_01: like now,
40:23
SPEAKER_01: like we're this very different church,
40:25
SPEAKER_01: you know, we have all of these synodal things now.
40:28
SPEAKER_01: I think it's,
40:29
SPEAKER_01: it's like what we were saying before,
40:30
SPEAKER_01: this kind of slow process,
40:31
SPEAKER_01: let's report on,
40:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
40:32
SPEAKER_01: what's happening and share that,
40:34
SPEAKER_01: you know, it doesn't have to be this big groundbreaking thing, right?
40:37
SPEAKER_01: It could be some small steps we've taken, and that's what they want people to report on.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: So, so at the end, I'm like, okay, let's just kind of see how it goes, right?
40:45
SPEAKER_01: But I think we've got to factor into that as well,
40:48
SPEAKER_01: that it doesn't seem like there's been a lot of enthusiasm for the cenoto process in
40:53
SPEAKER_01: the United States,
40:54
SPEAKER_01: you know, even from the bishops themselves, you know, with some exceptions, right?
40:58
SPEAKER_01: Some of them have been very involved.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: And I've thought about why.
41:02
SPEAKER_01: And I think part of it is the one that I think has been mentioned the most is just
41:08
SPEAKER_01: for various historical reasons,
41:12
SPEAKER_01: the clergy in the United States,
41:13
SPEAKER_01: including the bishops,
41:14
SPEAKER_01: just kind of have a more conservative theological perspective than the Vatican,
41:20
SPEAKER_01: which is kind of an unusual situation to be in.
41:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: And from my perspective, much of the rest of the Catholic world, too.
41:29
SPEAKER_01: I guess the way I would put it is that the way synodality was discussed
41:34
SPEAKER_01: in conservative Catholic media was very negative.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: And so I think that has shaped people's perception of it.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: Right.
41:41
SPEAKER_01: People who may have been open if it had been presented a different way.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: But then I think there's a second thing
41:46
SPEAKER_01: that I don't think has gotten nearly enough attention, and I think it's important.
41:51
SPEAKER_01: And I think probably for many American church leaders,
41:55
SPEAKER_01: their reaction to all of this may have been something like,
41:59
SPEAKER_01: we already do a lot of this.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: Which is true, right?
42:02
SPEAKER_01: In the United States,
42:03
SPEAKER_01: we have like compared to the Catholic Church in other parts of the world,
42:08
SPEAKER_01: we have active parish councils and diocesan councils.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: We have,
42:13
SPEAKER_01: you know,
42:13
SPEAKER_01: compared to other parts of the world, we have a lot of women involved in ministry.
42:17
SPEAKER_01: We have a lot of lay involvement in ministry, relatively speaking.
42:22
SPEAKER_01: A lot of what synodality means, we do have that, right?
42:25
SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's a good thing,
42:27
SPEAKER_01: but I think it created a sense of complacency of like, eh,
42:31
SPEAKER_01: we don't need to really think too much about this because we're already doing a lot
42:34
SPEAKER_01: of this stuff, right?
42:35
SPEAKER_01: So I think those two things together dampened a lot of enthusiasm for this.
42:40
SPEAKER_01: The way I would respond to that second point is that...
42:43
SPEAKER_01: It is great.
42:44
SPEAKER_01: We've taken Vatican II seriously and have a lot of lay involvement and a lot
42:49
SPEAKER_01: of more consultative processes.
42:51
SPEAKER_01: But what the synodal process is asking us to do is to...
42:58
SPEAKER_01: I wrote something about this kind of tension between bureaucratization
43:04
SPEAKER_01: and personal experience.
43:06
SPEAKER_01: I forget the term I use, right?
43:07
SPEAKER_01: The synodality...
43:10
SPEAKER_01: Substack is meant to get people actively involved.
43:14
SPEAKER_01: In some places, they even describe it as counteracting over bureaucratization.
43:19
SPEAKER_01: I said, there's a tension here, though,
43:21
SPEAKER_01: because a lot of what they're recommending we do is going to create bureaucracy,
43:25
SPEAKER_01: because they talk about consultation and transparency,
43:28
SPEAKER_01: and you need bureaucracy to do those things.
43:31
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, so I think, you know, yes, we have parish councils.
43:35
SPEAKER_01: But one thing they talk about is a lot of times there's like a clique within
43:38
SPEAKER_01: the parish or the diocese that's kind of involved in these things.
43:41
SPEAKER_01: And like most people really have no idea who's on the council or what they're doing, you know.
43:45
SPEAKER_01: And so it needs to be much more of like an energy within the congregation or within
43:51
SPEAKER_01: the diocese and not just these sort of the small groups.
43:55
SPEAKER_01: Clique of people who kind of do these things that are closely connected to
43:59
SPEAKER_01: the chancery and, you know, things like that.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: So in the United States, I think we need to focus on generating this energy.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: And at the moment,
44:07
SPEAKER_01: I don't really have a better way to put that,
44:08
SPEAKER_01: but to like get this kind of effort in the congregation rather than,
44:13
SPEAKER_01: you know,
44:14
SPEAKER_01: we've got the people who do that and we just go to church on Sunday, you know, so...
44:17
SPEAKER_02: If we looked at the orders, I think they're much different and much better.
44:21
SPEAKER_02: I mean, having spent a lot of time with the Franciscans, they're very synodal.
44:25
SPEAKER_02: And the Jesuits, I assume, are the same and some of the other, I'm not as familiar with them.
44:29
SPEAKER_02: But, you know, the Franciscans elect their own leaders.
44:31
SPEAKER_02: They meet together.
44:32
SPEAKER_02: They make decisions together.
44:34
SPEAKER_02: Nobody gets assigned somewhere without his permission.
44:37
SPEAKER_02: So...
44:38
SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm not as optimistic and hopeful as you are that we're already in this process.
44:42
SPEAKER_02: And so we're maybe steps ahead of other countries,
44:45
SPEAKER_02: but I'm not sure about that either because I've done a lot of work
44:48
SPEAKER_02: with other countries on social justice work.
44:50
SPEAKER_02: I just think we've got a better game than that.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I didn't mean that to be optimism.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: I almost meant it as the opposite of in the sense of it's like a false sense of complacency.
45:00
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
45:00
SPEAKER_02: That's a yes.
45:02
SPEAKER_02: I was much long winded explaining that it's a false sense of complacency.
45:07
SPEAKER_02: You summed it up in one quick sentence.
45:09
SPEAKER_02: And I guess one of the things that we need to really look at as
45:12
SPEAKER_02: a Catholic church is one is we're all young people and why are
45:17
SPEAKER_02: the young people leaving?
45:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:18
SPEAKER_02: And why are the women leaving?
45:20
SPEAKER_02: Because there are an awful lot of women that are friends that I know,
45:24
SPEAKER_02: people that I'm close to, that have left the church.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: To that point,
45:29
SPEAKER_00: Patrick,
45:30
SPEAKER_00: my biggest criticism of the synodal process,
45:34
SPEAKER_00: which I think is a necessary and really valuable process,
45:38
SPEAKER_00: is that I think the church has missed a tremendous opportunity by not allowing those
45:44
SPEAKER_00: of us who have felt compelled to leave Not like dying to leave.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
45:50
SPEAKER_00: like we felt we sort of had no other choice and cared deeply about the church and
45:57
SPEAKER_00: about the faith to give us an opportunity to speak.
46:01
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
46:02
SPEAKER_00: I feel that it could be done in a number of ways,
46:05
SPEAKER_00: but I get the feeling that there's not all that much interest.
46:10
SPEAKER_01: And also, I agree with your point about learning from why people are leaving.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: I forget who did it or exactly what the scope was.
46:20
SPEAKER_01: I think it was limited to the Archdiocese of Chicago, but it could have been nationwide.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: But it was a survey of the people who are entering the Catholic Church,
46:27
SPEAKER_01: getting into the reasons why and how they informed themselves about Catholicism and
46:33
SPEAKER_01: so forth.
46:34
SPEAKER_01: What was really interesting about this study was that if your perception
46:40
SPEAKER_01: of Catholicism came from social media and like the culture wars,
46:43
SPEAKER_01: you wouldn't have understood because it had like the majority of people,
46:47
SPEAKER_01: the reasons they gave for why they were joining the church had very little to do
46:51
SPEAKER_01: with.
46:52
SPEAKER_01: These sort of culture war debates on either side or about
46:55
SPEAKER_01: the way Catholicism is presented by social media influencers.
46:58
SPEAKER_01: It was things like, you know, things that have been true for decades.
47:01
SPEAKER_01: It's like, I found a sense of meaning and purpose, right?
47:05
SPEAKER_01: It made me feel like something more to life, right?
47:08
SPEAKER_01: Like these deeply spiritual longings.
47:11
SPEAKER_01: And that's just not really the focus of a lot of the messaging that's out there
47:16
SPEAKER_01: that people hear from the Catholic Church.
47:18
SPEAKER_01: And so...
47:20
SPEAKER_01: If we had more of these conversations and listening to people,
47:24
SPEAKER_01: what they're actually looking for,
47:26
SPEAKER_01: or to Barbara's point of what they're not finding in the Catholic Church,
47:30
SPEAKER_01: then it would really kind of transform how we approach evangelization
47:35
SPEAKER_01: or approach how we do things.
47:37
SPEAKER_03: I think we're at this point,
47:39
SPEAKER_03: we're moving from kind of a national identity to a world church identity in
47:42
SPEAKER_03: a very kind of quick,
47:44
SPEAKER_03: it just seems like it's happening very fast that we're conscious of things
47:46
SPEAKER_03: that are happening in local churches all over the place.
47:48
SPEAKER_03: Is that your sense?
47:49
SPEAKER_03: How is that horizon broadening for people?
47:52
SPEAKER_03: And is the seminal process partially not responsible for it,
47:55
SPEAKER_03: but partially a player in that coming about?
47:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I think that's definitely, definitely true.
48:02
SPEAKER_01: And I mean,
48:04
SPEAKER_01: paradoxically,
48:04
SPEAKER_01: at a time when we have an American pope,
48:06
SPEAKER_01: you know, where we could be tempted to think very sort of insularly.
48:11
SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking about it, you know, in preparation for this.
48:14
SPEAKER_01: And even,
48:15
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:15
SPEAKER_01: there's some very small things,
48:16
SPEAKER_01: even in the United States that are contributing to this.
48:18
SPEAKER_01: So increasingly, you know, we have parishes that have priests that are from other countries.
48:23
SPEAKER_01: And so you kind of have that perspective mixing with People's American experience.
48:29
SPEAKER_01: And then we have a growing number of multi-ethnic parishes
48:33
SPEAKER_01: with immigrant communities with ties to other countries that just kind
48:36
SPEAKER_01: of have more exposure to the global aspect of the church.
48:40
SPEAKER_01: But I do think,
48:41
SPEAKER_01: and this relates to some of the things about Christian nationalism
48:45
SPEAKER_01: or just nationalism, American nationalism that I've written about.
48:48
SPEAKER_01: I do think there's a lot of resistance to this in the United States, though,
48:52
SPEAKER_01: because the way I would put it is I think A lot of Catholics in America and
48:56
SPEAKER_01: the United States, their ultimate horizon for things is the nation.
49:00
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we see this in these very prominent figures like Vice President J.D.
49:04
SPEAKER_01: Vance, who,
49:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
49:05
SPEAKER_01: critiquing the Pope,
49:07
SPEAKER_01: you know, critiquing the Pope's understanding of Catholic teaching.
49:10
SPEAKER_01: But it's all like based in this horizon of American interests
49:13
SPEAKER_01: or American cultural values that those are kind of the test,
49:17
SPEAKER_01: the test of the authenticity of your Catholicism.
49:21
SPEAKER_01: Even at a less kind of extreme level,
49:24
SPEAKER_01: a lot of American Catholics,
49:26
SPEAKER_01: that's sort of the horizon for their understanding of Catholicism is that it's
49:31
SPEAKER_01: within the horizon of being American, right?
49:36
SPEAKER_01: Right.
49:36
SPEAKER_01: Right.
49:36
SPEAKER_01: Right.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: Right.
49:58
SPEAKER_03: That real sense of solidarity across borders.
50:01
SPEAKER_03: They say, you know, the Catholic Church, we have the infrastructure for solidarity.
50:04
SPEAKER_03: It's like one of the few institutions that could do kind of global solidarity on that scale.
50:09
SPEAKER_03: Well, maybe just to follow on that, Matt, how do you see Pope Leo in all this?
50:14
SPEAKER_03: We mentioned him as an American pope,
50:16
SPEAKER_03: but also a man of the whole hemisphere,
50:18
SPEAKER_03: clearly got a very unique background and understands,
50:21
SPEAKER_03: I think, the full idea of an American culture, meaning both Americas.
50:25
SPEAKER_03: He's got a very unique perspective in that way.
50:27
SPEAKER_03: How do you see his leadership style,
50:29
SPEAKER_03: his perhaps ability to overcome American culture wars or His experience as
50:34
SPEAKER_03: a listener, as someone who seems still very hard to pigeonhole.
50:38
SPEAKER_03: What do you make of the pontificate so far?
50:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so my doctorate,
50:43
SPEAKER_01: the focus of the program was on U.S. Catholicism, and so this is just a very...
50:49
SPEAKER_01: Interesting time in the church's life to have an American pope because
50:53
SPEAKER_01: because you were you were kind of hinting at this, too.
50:54
SPEAKER_01: But there's there's almost like these paradoxes in that in the sense that on
50:58
SPEAKER_01: the one hand,
50:59
SPEAKER_01: we have the first American pope, the first pope from the United States.
51:03
SPEAKER_01: And yet his life experience is hemispheric, by which I mean, like he spent years.
51:10
SPEAKER_01: A good chunk of his adult life in Peru.
51:13
SPEAKER_01: Right.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: And so that's part of his identity.
51:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's even a Peruvian citizen.
51:18
SPEAKER_01: And so he has seen the world from the perspective of the global south,
51:24
SPEAKER_01: lived it, but also has that experience of growing up in the United States.
51:29
SPEAKER_01: Right.
51:29
SPEAKER_01: And so so he brings to the papacy an American perspective,
51:34
SPEAKER_01: but also a broader perspective because of his experience in South America.
51:39
SPEAKER_01: But then also he deeply understands US Catholic culture.
51:44
SPEAKER_01: Right.
51:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
51:44
SPEAKER_01: he's like he's aware of the cultural war aspects in the church and just kind of
51:49
SPEAKER_01: the cultural distinctiveness of U.S. Catholicism, Chicago Catholicism.
51:55
SPEAKER_01: But then also he as a church leader,
51:58
SPEAKER_01: he's I think it's pretty clear he's committed to the direction that was set
52:03
SPEAKER_01: by his predecessor, Francis.
52:05
SPEAKER_01: So he's not coming in and saying like, OK, let's let the Americans show you how this is done.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: Right.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: Like that.
52:10
SPEAKER_01: He sees himself as in continuity with Francis.
52:14
SPEAKER_01: But I like your point about his leadership style being really focused on listening.
52:19
SPEAKER_01: Like he seems very deliberate.
52:22
SPEAKER_01: He takes this idea of synodality very seriously,
52:25
SPEAKER_01: but also then you see that in his temperament as well as being,
52:28
SPEAKER_01: he's more, I mean,
52:29
SPEAKER_01: it's almost a cliche, but he's more introverted, whereas Francis was an extrovert.
52:34
SPEAKER_01: And that really reinforces this sense of listening and patience and not jumping to
52:40
SPEAKER_01: a decision, right?
52:41
SPEAKER_01: Those are kind of the things that I...
52:43
SPEAKER_01: Identify as part of his leadership style.
52:45
SPEAKER_01: But I think we've got to balance that in that he's bold and firm.
52:48
SPEAKER_01: I mean, think about the things he said about the war in Iran or about immigration.
52:52
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't mince words when there's principles at stake, right?
52:56
SPEAKER_01: He's willing to take a stand and receive the blowback and has that in common with Francis too.
53:04
SPEAKER_01: But But even then,
53:05
SPEAKER_01: you can tell that he's been very,
53:08
SPEAKER_01: very deliberate about the things he says,
53:10
SPEAKER_01: you know,
53:11
SPEAKER_01: choosing his words carefully,
53:12
SPEAKER_01: as opposed to,
53:13
SPEAKER_01: you know,
53:14
SPEAKER_01: comments on an interview on the plane,
53:16
SPEAKER_01: you know, with Francis, you know, and I love Francis.
53:19
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, there's that difference.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:22
SPEAKER_03: Christopher Hill had a great line in a piece.
53:23
SPEAKER_03: He said,
53:24
SPEAKER_03: Leo is prophetic with great precision,
53:27
SPEAKER_03: choosing the ground where his voice will change something and refusing
53:30
SPEAKER_03: the fights engineered to waste it.
53:32
SPEAKER_03: I like this idea of prophecy with precision.
53:35
SPEAKER_03: He seems but also has that prophetic tone about him.
53:38
SPEAKER_01: I would like someone to talk more about maybe how they see his background
53:42
SPEAKER_01: in canon law shaping his leadership,
53:44
SPEAKER_01: because that's kind of a distinctive part of his background.
53:47
SPEAKER_01: And so maybe kind of shapes how he deals with the institutions of the church
53:51
SPEAKER_01: or how he deals with certain questions.
53:54
SPEAKER_01: I think that's like his one
53:55
SPEAKER_03: published book, right,
53:56
SPEAKER_03: is like his oral dissertation on,
53:59
SPEAKER_03: yeah, which is interesting that he was a true pastor.
54:01
SPEAKER_03: He didn't leave like a great written record, but he left a record of experience with his flock.
54:07
SPEAKER_03: Well, that might be a good place to ask you, Matt.
54:09
SPEAKER_03: Our way we like to bring the threads of our conversation together is the name
54:13
SPEAKER_03: of our journal is Tomorrow's American Catholic.
54:15
SPEAKER_03: And this is an open-ended one,
54:16
SPEAKER_03: but we'd just like to hear from our guests what that conjures for you,
54:20
SPEAKER_03: your hopes for Tomorrow's American Catholic,
54:22
SPEAKER_03: anything that comes to mind when you hear that phrase or conceive of the horizon of
54:27
SPEAKER_03: who Tomorrow's American Catholic is or might be.
54:30
SPEAKER_01: So I'll preface this by saying I'm terrible at predicting the future.
54:34
SPEAKER_01: So...
54:38
SPEAKER_01: But I guess maybe I could focus on three brief things based on our conversation.
54:45
SPEAKER_01: So I think at least my hope for Tomorrow's American Catholic is,
54:49
SPEAKER_01: like we were saying,
54:50
SPEAKER_01: having a greater consciousness that being a member of the church means that you're
54:55
SPEAKER_01: a part of a broader global community.
54:58
SPEAKER_01: So kind of, you know, the Catholic Church is Catholic.
55:00
SPEAKER_01: It's universal church.
55:01
SPEAKER_01: Because we all bring our identities with us, not that we have to give them up to be Catholic.
55:07
SPEAKER_01: So American Catholics,
55:08
SPEAKER_01: we're going to be American,
55:10
SPEAKER_01: but we have a broader horizon,
55:11
SPEAKER_01: that we understand that there is this mission that's bigger
55:15
SPEAKER_01: than our national identity and that we are part of that.
55:18
SPEAKER_01: And that our job as American Catholics is to implement that in our home rather than
55:24
SPEAKER_01: to place limits on the church if it doesn't match up with how we think
55:29
SPEAKER_01: about being American.
55:30
SPEAKER_01: And the second I would say,
55:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
55:32
SPEAKER_01: my hope is that,
55:34
SPEAKER_01: you know, we were talking about the challenges of implementing synodality.
55:37
SPEAKER_01: And I think what we really need at this point is maybe just a handful,
55:42
SPEAKER_01: a small handful of dioceses and parishes that could be role models.
55:47
SPEAKER_01: You know,
55:47
SPEAKER_01: just try some creative things for what synodality can look like in
55:51
SPEAKER_01: the United States context.
55:53
SPEAKER_01: And then other dioceses and parishes can look at that and say, hey, we could do that.
55:58
SPEAKER_01: You know, or,
56:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
56:00
SPEAKER_01: we kind of like that,
56:01
SPEAKER_01: but we'll try it a little different and see, you know, we'll see how that works.
56:04
SPEAKER_01: I think all it takes is a few to kind of really go out on a limb and be creative
56:09
SPEAKER_01: and try some new things and then things that work or things
56:13
SPEAKER_01: that have some staying power.
56:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, other other people will imitate that.
56:18
SPEAKER_01: So it's that and that's related to what I was saying about the economy earlier
56:21
SPEAKER_01: to like this idea that,
56:22
SPEAKER_01: you know,
56:22
SPEAKER_01: all these changes,
56:23
SPEAKER_01: we can kind of do it from the top down isn't really going to work.
56:26
SPEAKER_01: And I think that is the paradox with synodality is that it's a bottom up concept,
56:31
SPEAKER_01: but we live in a top down church.
56:34
SPEAKER_01: Right.
56:35
SPEAKER_01: And so how do you you know,
56:36
SPEAKER_01: how can we have bottom up experimentation with While respecting that there is value
56:42
SPEAKER_01: in the top-down structure of the Catholic Church.
56:45
SPEAKER_01: And then third, I mean,
56:46
SPEAKER_01: just going back to my own personal narrative,
56:49
SPEAKER_01: I think In the American church,
56:51
SPEAKER_01: we'll see a growing number of theologians working outside of academia,
56:55
SPEAKER_01: and there already are.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: And I think they'll be serving populations who are hungry for theology,
57:02
SPEAKER_01: but not necessarily interested in theology degrees, right?
57:06
SPEAKER_01: And so we'll develop new structures for reaching those people,
57:10
SPEAKER_01: whether it's a Substack newsletter or if you go online,
57:14
SPEAKER_01: you can see there's various certificates in theology of varying...
57:19
SPEAKER_01: Quality or so forth, but those sorts of things.
57:23
SPEAKER_01: But I think also having theologians who are in these different contexts outside
57:28
SPEAKER_01: the university is then also going to transform theology,
57:32
SPEAKER_01: different areas of focus, different ways of doing theology.
57:36
SPEAKER_01: And so I think in a couple of decades,
57:39
SPEAKER_01: theology is going to look somewhat different than it does today because
57:42
SPEAKER_01: of people doing theology outside of academia.
57:46
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
57:47
SPEAKER_02: I like that expression, doing theology.
57:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's very rich.
57:50
SPEAKER_03: It feels like we're almost at this, like in a pre-Renaissance moment, like in history.
57:55
SPEAKER_03: There's all this interdisciplinary things that are happening kind of underground,
57:59
SPEAKER_03: and there's these cross-pollinations of disciplines.
58:01
SPEAKER_03: I think it's probably an exciting time for these new connections to be made in space
58:05
SPEAKER_03: and time, and we'll see where it goes.
58:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a beautiful note to conclude on.
58:09
SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you so much, Matt, for your time and your insight.
58:12
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot we covered, a lot we didn't cover.
58:13
SPEAKER_03: We might have to have you back in the future.
58:15
SPEAKER_03: You know,
58:16
SPEAKER_03: as we maybe move along the synodal process,
58:18
SPEAKER_03: you can give us another briefing on where you see things moving.
58:21
SPEAKER_03: But thank you for your time today.
58:22
SPEAKER_03: And we look forward to sharing this with our listeners.
58:25
SPEAKER_01: And thanks for having me.
58:25
SPEAKER_01: And thanks for all the work you all are doing.
58:27
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
58:28
SPEAKER_00: Pleasure to have you and have this conversation.
58:30
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
58:47
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58:50
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58:54
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