Transcript

Welcome back to Shameless Popery.

I'm Joe Heschmeyer.

And like everyone else, I'm still waiting to see what Pope Leo XIV pontificate is going to be like.

Is he woke?

We still don't know.

The new pope is American, but we still don't know if he's woke.

Criticized JD Vance in a tweet, so maybe he's woke.

Or maybe he just doesn't like the guy who killed his boss.

But I am very excited about one thing that I'm hopeful and even confident that we're going to see, namely the restoration of greater unity amongst Catholics.

Now, it's no secret that Catholics have been very divided over the past few years.

Not only in squabbling factions of so-called liberals, conservatives, and traditionalists, but the internet is replete with examples of so-called conservative Catholics tearing one another apart, either for not loving Pope Francis enough or for loving him too much.

It seemed like every time Pope Francis would speak off the cuff or he'd say something a little ambiguous, it would lead to a new fight over what he meant and how you were meant to feel about it.

I think it's fair to say that this was one of the chief reasons that Pope Leo was chosen to restore unity to the Church, and that there are actually several positive signs that should give us hope that he'll succeed, at least somewhat, in that mission.

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All right.

So here are six reasons that I'm hopeful that Pope Leo is going to bring greater unity to the Church.

First, we've already seen some of this unity in action in his papal election.

I'd venture to say most Catholics had never heard of Cardinal Prevost when he became Pope Leo XIV, and so they didn't know how excited to be about his election.

And many Catholics who are more conservative-leaning, theologically and politically, were alarmed when they saw how excited liberal Catholics, like Cardinal Cupich or Father James Martin were when Pope Leo was announced to the world.

But since then, a very different picture has emerged.

The Washington Post reported this weekend that conservative cardinals, like Cardinal Mueller, were pleased with the choice of pontiff, and the Italian press is crediting, or in their case, maybe blaming Cardinal Dolan, calling him the kingmaker for organizing conservative and liberal cardinals alike to support now Pope Leo, drawing support from the US, from Africa, and from Asia.

Now, Cardinal Dolan himself hinted that there was actually a pretty quick consensus amongst cardinals of all stripes that Cardinal Prevost was the right choice.

You all, as seasoned journalists, would know, and you've done your background, this conclave was rather quick.

Yes.

Yes.

Right?

That would lead a savvy observer, like yourselves to say, There must have been some unanimity from the beginning.

Yes.

There was no shock here.

So Yeah.

So if that leads you to think that, Hey, there was a great sense of unity.

There was kind of appeal that this guy exerted right from the beginning.

So what would draw people of such varying viewpoints to rally around the same choice for pope?

Well, the attributes they point to.

Cardinal Cupich, for instance, praised him as a missionary pastor.

These are precisely the things that all Catholics should desire in a pope, someone who loves Jesus and loves the downtrodden.

In other words, the cardinals seem to have gone looking for, and may have actually found, someone who couples Pope Francis' most attractive qualities, but with some important differences.

So he was obviously close to Pope Francis.

Uh, we could already tell by the times he s- he, he loved him very much and listened to him.

But we'll, we'll see some changes as well and that's refreshing, don't you think?

Yeah.

So what are those differences between Pope Francis and Pope Leo?

That leads to the second reason I'm hopeful because I think we actually got a sense of some of those differences right away, ranging from what we might call his papal style to his papal motto, and even his name as pope.

Now, Pope Francis, from the beginning, seemed to have a desire to shake the Church up.

He was content to buck small T traditions that he found cumbersome.

He took a totally new papal name.

And from the very moment that he emerged on the balcony after his election, we see him in a bare white cassock without the traditional red mozzetta or stole, and we find out from him very quickly that he's not gonna live in the traditional papal apartments, but instead he's going to live in the Casa Santa Maria.

Well, Pope Leo has returned the papacy to more of a sense of normalcy, as it were.

He emerged in the traditional garb.

He took a surprisingly traditional name, more on which in a moment, and he's living in the same place that popes lived before Pope Francis.

Now liturgically, I'm gonna let the man speak for himself, whether it's by the reverent way in which he celebrates mass in crisp, clear Latin.

Or in his reminder to the Church that

Moreover, the Church should resist the temptation to believe that it can compete with modern mass media by turning the sacred liturgy into spectacle.

Here again, Church fathers, such as Tertullian, remind us today that visual spectacle is the domain of the saeculum and that our proper mission is to introduce people to the nature of mystery as an anecdote to spectacle.

As a consequence, evangelization in the modern world must find the appropriate means for redirecting public attention away from spectacle and into mystery.

A third reason that I think Pope Leo's pontificate is going to be a mission of reuniting the Church is right there in his papal motto.

Now, Pope Leo's motto, which he first adopted when he became a bishop is, In Illo Uno Unum, which means, In the one, u- we are one.

It is a perfect motto for him for several reasons.

First of all, it's a quotation from St. Augustine, and Leo was the prior general of the Augustinian Order.

He is a son of Augustine, to use his own words from his introduction to the world.

Un figlio di sant'Agostino.

I'm a son of St. Augustine.

But second, Augustine is saying that although we Christians are many, in the one Christ, we are one.

Now, back in 2023, then-Cardinal Prevost explained that he chose this motto because unity and communion are truly part of the charism of the Order of St. Augustine, and also of my way of acting and thinking.

So he's stressing the need for unity, but also pointing out how it is that we get there.

We become unified precisely through our communion with Jesus Christ.

In the words of St. Paul, We are one body because we partake of the one bread.

The more we draw close to Jesus, the more we draw close to one another, and it's only in the one Christ that we can ever truly be one.

So this isn't a unity at the expense of the truth, but a unity in the truth Himself.

Biblically, this mission of unity in the truth is critical to the success of Christianity.

Remember, Jesus prayed for his future disciples that we would become perfectly one so that the world would know that the Father had sent him.

When we are divided as Christians and as a church, we don't just hinder Christian unity, we cripple our efforts of evangelization, we endanger even our own battles for holiness.

After all, one of the reasons that Christ gives us the Church is so that we can fight the spiritual battles together, and it's a great sign that Pope Leo seems to take this call to holy unity seriously.

This connection between unity and evangelization was one of the themes that Pope Leo hit in his first homily as pope, but with a fascinating twist.

He's preaching to the College of Cardinals, and the new pope reminded them that we preach Christ in a hostile world, and that we do this

First of all, in our personal relationship with the Lord, and our daily commitment to the journey of conversion.

But then, we have to do so as a church, experiencing together that our belonging to the Lord leads to our bringing the good needs- good news to all.

Now, the pope himself obviously plays a special role in bringing people together in this way, and so Leo quotes St. Ignatius of Antioch, who famously existed, and said that the Church in Rome presides in charity over the universal Church.

And one way that we're one is by being united to the pope, the successor of Peter.

That's been an important part of Christian theology for 2,000 years.

But Leo chose to focus on something else, something beautiful.

In his Letter to the Romans, this same St. Ignatius writes

Then I will truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ when the world no longer sees my body.

Now, in context, Leo meant this quite literally.

He was about to be martyred in Rome by being fed to wild beasts.

But Leo suggests that we can find in his words a reminder.

It's to move aside so that Christ remains, to make oneself small so that Christ may be known and glorified, to spend oneself even to the utmost so that all may have the opportunity to know him and to love him.

In other words, as John the Baptist said, He must increase, and I must decrease.

Now, those who know the new pope describe him as shy and less outgoing than Francis, but that profile might be perfect for someone trying to ensure that the eyes of the Church are on Jesus Christ rather than on the pope.

Pope Leo's papal name definitely matters.

Now, I love the fact that he didn't choose Paul VII or John Paul III or Francis II but instead, he reached back further into the Church's history to take his name after one of the most beloved popes in the modern era.

Much of the energy in the Church over the past few decades has been wasted in intra-Catholic fights over how best to properly interpret Vatican II, but Pope Leo XIV was only 10 years old at the close of Vatican II. He's simply too young to have been a partisan in many of these fights.

Instead, Cardinal Prevost wanted to identify his papacy with that of Pope Leo XIII, and he explained why.

In the midst of the first Industrial Revolution, Pope Leo XIII wrote the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum.

In it, Leo XIII decried the greedy capitalists of his age, lamenting that, A small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.

But in that document, he also warned that, To remedy these wrongs, the socialists working on the poor man's envy of the rich are striving to do away with private property.

And the pope warned this goal must be utterly rejected since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit and is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind and would lead only to confusion and disorder.

Now, in explaining why he chose the name Leo, the new pope argued, I think correctly, that we find ourselves in the midst of a second Industrial Revolution, this time a digital one, in which artificial intelligence threatens to create new challenges to human dignity, to justice, and to labor.

And it might just be this, this external threat, that's precisely what we as Catholics need to come together.

And I, for one, am grateful that we have a pope who seems aware of the dangers and well-equipped to chart what are certain to be uncertain waters.

Now, like I said before, it's no secret that the Church is more divided than in times past.

It seems as though the culture wars that have been raging throughout America and the West have crept into church dialogue.

With increasing polarization, it would have seemed impossible, at least to me, even a week ago, to find a pope who both Patrick Coffin and Father James Martin seemed excited about, and yet here we are.

We'll see what happens.

I'm, uh, I'm generally optimistic, encouraged, and I was shocked.

But I was also shocked when they read out his name, Leo XIV. And-That was the name I wanted the pope to take, so I'm glad that he did.

That's a great sign.

It was a comfort to me.

What a rush this is, the first American pope.

Um, uh, Robert Prevost, who, you know, we followed for some years, uh, at American Magazine, um, this is truly historic.

It feels like a dream.

I'm gonna keep paying attention to what he does, because there are good things that he's done.

I'm gonna show you some of those today.

They're actually some pretty crazy good things.

And there's some signs that we need to be cautious, but it's day two.

As the kids say, Let the man cook.

Hey, everyone.

It's Jim Martin, and, uh, just sort of stunned by the news of the election of Pope Leo XIV, former Cardinal Prevost.

I got to know him a little bit at the synod.

He was at my table, and I know him to be a, uh, down-to-earth, kind, modest, reserved guy, hardworking, uh, decisive, uh, not afraid of speaking his mind.

It's a great choice.

I also think it's really important to note the choice of the name Leo XIV, a nod to Leo XIII, who was the father of Catholic social teaching, so just an amazing choice.

There's some signs afoot that this guy is not the, the neo-modernist activist's He just looks like someone in continuity with things that are traditional and things that are anchored in the past.

And I think the fact that he has signaled so many things that angle him in a, in a more traditional way gives me sign of hope.

Now, if this feels uncanny or almost surreal, then you're in good company, because as I say, I never would have predicted this.

And that's not to say that Pope Leo isn't gonna do something that's gonna upset one side or another or both sides of the theological and political aisles.

I suspect that'll happen.

But it is surprising and it is heartening to see so many Catholics of all stripes upbeat and encouraged by the new Holy Father.

Perhaps this will all turn out to be a honeymoon phase.

Perhaps we'll go back to the circular firing squad the minute Pope Leo says or does anything remotely controversial, but we don't have to.

Now, of course, as many of you know, right before becoming pope, Cardinal Prevost was in charge of the Dicastery for Bishops, meaning that he helped to advise Pope Francis on the selection of new bishops.

And so, one of the first tests of Leo's own pontificate is going to be who he chooses as his own replacement and the kinds of bishops that he begins to appoint now that he has a free hand.

It's an understandable concern, one that I'm sure the cardinals took into consideration when electing him as Roman pontiff, but I think that there's a very important angle to this that most people are missing.

You see, the face of the priesthood is rapidly changing, particularly here in the United States, and this critical sea change in the clergy is going to have a major impact on who Pope Leo chooses to elevate to the episcopate.

Now, what major trend is that?

You're gonna have to click here to find out.

In the meantime, through the intercession of Saint Augustine, let's pray that we shall become more fully one in Christ Jesus.

For Shamus Potpourri, I'm Joe Heschmeyer.

God bless you.