Moral Leadership
Only 1,348 days to go...
“Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.” ~John Adams
Since I was raised in a non-denominational protestant church, I’m unfamiliar with the ecclesiastical hierarchy of any religion. That said, I do know a tiny bit about the Catholic church since Chicago has a huge Roman Catholic population and many of my good friends were raised Catholic. At one time I lived down the street from the Archbishop of Chicago, John Cardinal Cody. The Cardinal’s house is on an amazing piece of real estate near the lake in a prime location next to Lincoln Park.
When John Paul II came to Chicago in 1979, I wandered up to the Cardinal’s house and there was so much excitement. Chicago is often referred to as the heart of the U.S. Polish-American community. With a Polish population of around 1.1 million, the Chicago metropolitan area has the largest concentration of Polish Americans. You can only imagine the crowds that gathered in the neighborhood to see a Polish pope!
So, last week I felt with tremendous pride as a Chicagoan — even though I’m a Cubs rather than Sox fan and not Catholic — that the very first American pope came from MY city! So exciting!
Even Cubs Fans Are Excited About Da Pope, a Sox Fan and Chicago’s Hometown Hero
Like I’m sure so many of you, I have been reading about the man, about his chosen name, Leo, and so many other articles about this remarkable event. I was told long ago, that there would probably never be an American pope since the US has less than 10% of the Catholic population in the world.
Leo XIV seems like a wonderful person - a moral leader. Ultimately all the institutions that make up a society only work well, when formal leaders have moral authority too. While formal authority can be seized, won, or bestowed, moral authority must be earned by who you are and how you lead. Only moral authority can build trust, inspire others, create meaning, and help people imagine a different and better future and enable them to contribute their fullest talent, realize their deepest humanity, and do the right things.
Moral leadership is precious and essentially absent in our current administration. Americans desperately need true moral leadership in these times when this insidious Christian Nationalist movement has permeated our politics and government at the highest levels.
I’ve already written about Christian Nationalism in the past (MAGA Theology).
Once again I’m taking another OLLI class on the topic and the instructor often brings video clips and shares books, etc. Have you heard of Paula White? I had not, but I learned about her in this class. Paula White serves as the Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office and even has an office in the White Wing.
Check out this video:
Oy veh… just what our country needs — another shameless grifter in the White House.
Every time I see one of these phony, bleached blonds wearing their crosses on national TV, I feel nauseated. Their hypocrisy is front and center when they talk about America First rather than …love your neighbor...
Just listen to their words and watch their actions, and you can see they have no sense of what it means to be a moral, kind or Christian leader.
Karoline Leavitt justifying a racially motivated firing:
The White House has come clean about the dismissal of Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress. Karoline Leavitt declared: "We felt that she did not fit the needs of the American people. There were quite concerning things she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children."
Pam Bondi on ignoring court orders:
Attorney General Pam Bondi doubled down on the Trump administration’s claim that it’s up to El Salvador whether Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an illegal immigrant in Maryland who was wrongfully deported last month, can return to the U.S. Speaking to reporters at a press briefing, Bondi reiterated her earlier claim that it is up to El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele whether his country opts to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S., even though officials acknowledged in court his deportation was an administrative error.
"He is not coming back to our country," Bondi told Fox News.
Kayleigh McEnany making a laughable statement:
“Democrats, for their part, have chosen to go the way of reckless obstruction, pursuing the first partisan impeachment in history.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s remarks are well-documented hate-filled speech. For example:
Greene called three of her fellow Republicans and the entire Democratic Party supporters of pedophilia because they favored confirming Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court.
What the United States needs more than anything right now is moral leadership. And yet what we have is just the opposite.
We have a president who questions whether he needs to even follow the Constitution — in complete disregard for the oath he took in January.
We have an Attorney General, who is utterly disregarding the rule of law and the judges, who are ruling against the egregiously cruel behavior of this administration.
In any other administration, Christian Nationalist Pete Hegseth (not withstanding his complete lack of experience or credentials for being Secretary of the Department of Defense) would have been eliminated based on his personal behavior of being accused of sexual assault, his documented excessive drinking, womanizing and misogyny.
Russell Vought has unabashedly advanced Christian nationalism leanings. Vought, one of architects of Project 2025, is the White House budget director in February. I tend to believe that many of the draconian policies that we are seeing with administration are coming from his direction. A few years ago Vought wrote that Christian nationalism was “a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society.” This is completely contrary to the words and spirit of the Constitution.
A recent article outlines How Trump Will Use “Anti-Christian Bias” to Entrench His Power
“On April 22, Attorney General Pam Bondi hosted the first meeting of the “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias in the Federal Government.” Attendees included the secretaries of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Health & Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Education, and Labor, as well as over a dozen high-ranking officials in the administration. Those attending didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that no evidence of such widespread bias exists. That’s because they weren’t there to solve a problem but to create one. The Task Force claimed to be standing up for “religious liberty,” but its real goal is to amplify the persecution complex of the Trump administration’s Christian nationalist allies and base—and then to use groundless claims of religious discrimination as the basis for the suppression of dissent…
The irony of “anti-Christian bias,” as the Trump administration defines it, is that it is not, in fact, directed at Christians per se. After all, the Reverend Barber, like many American Christians, appears to anchor a commitment to equality, social justice, and concern for the poor in his faith. Rather, the alleged victims of bias are those Christians who endorse reactionary positions in the culture wars and support Trump’s agenda unconditionally.”
We can see the blatant misrepresentation of the words and actions of Christ into an insidious power grab dominated by prejudice, racism and misogyny. It’s pretty scary stuff.
Fortunately, there are moral leaders pushing back. We first saw it during this administration in January, when, before dozens of attendees at a national prayer service in Washington, D.C., Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington directly addressed Trump in her sermon, urging him to reconsider his attacks on marginalized communities.
James Talarico is a former teacher and was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 2018. He is a member of the Democratic party and pushed back eloquently in the Texas legislature about a bill that would require public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.
Amanda R. Tyler is the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC) in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit whose focus is defending religious freedom for all people. Under her leadership, BJC has opposed the Muslim travel ban and Christian nationalism. You can read her powerful testimony before Congress, Hearing on Confronting White Supremacy: The Evolution of Anti-Democratic Extremist Groups and the Ongoing Threat to Democracy
This was another video shown in that class of a conversation between Amanda Tyler and James Talarico, which I thought was quite excellent, so I wanted to share. It’s well worth your time to watch.
Check out this website: Christians Against Christian Nationalism
At Christians Against Christian Nationalism, we believe Christians bear a special responsibility both to draw awareness to Christian nationalism’s gross distortion of the Christian faith and to work to explain its threat to democracy. But this job belongs to all of us, Christians and non-Christians. You do not have to be a Christian to combat Christian nationalism or to work with us, but we as Christians know that we have an important duty to root it out of our country, our congregations and ourselves.
Until recently the two most prominent American Catholics were (ironically) Joe Biden and JD Vance. We have now someone entering the discussion with an American accent, who is the antithesis of this perverse MAGA Theology.
Is Leo XIV going to be the needed moral authority for the moment? I hope so.
By taking the name Leo, “Father Bob” is clearly signaling an intention to highlight modern Catholic social teaching, a tradition that began with Leo XIII, whose term was between 1878 to 1903. (I find it interesting that Leo XIII was pope during the Gilded Age, which is clearly where Trump wants to take the United States.)
Leo XIII was well known for his attempts to define the Catholic Church in context with modern thinking. He outlined the rights of workers to a fair wage, safe working conditions, and the formation of trade unions, while affirming the rights to property and free enterprise, opposing both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism. He became popularly called the "Social Pope" and the "Pope of the Workers.” Leo XIII is also remembered for his belief that pastoral activity in political sociology is also a vital mission of the church as a vehicle of social justice and maintaining the rights and dignities of mankind.
There seems to be a message that Leo XIV is sending by choosing his name.
One can hope that his ascension to this role is providing the American Christians with an alternate and more authentic view of what it means to be Christian. In our 250 year history I’m not sure we have ever needed moral leaders more than we do today.
“What moment is the Church meeting with this choice?
We can’t know everything that went into their deliberations, but it seems as if — in this moment — they decided that the Americas were the epicenter of the world’s moral crisis. Surveying the spiritual, social, economic, and political challenges facing the world, they decided that this was the moment to select an American pope, who could confront the humanitarian and moral challenges posed by the United States and its president.”
~Charlie Sykes
Thought for the day in honor of his birthday…
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
~Witold Pilecki
Must Read Articles:
Trump Is No Longer the Most Important American
…when you believe the success of your religion depends on the success of any politician, it’s only a matter of time before politics becomes your religion. That means that too many Christians will evaluate even the pope through a partisan political lens. And that’s exactly what happened last week, as people found the new pope’s social media feeds and began devouring his old posts. Is the new pope MAGA? Is he woke? How does he fit into the American culture war?
…As one American steps onto the world stage as a man of malice, another American answers, leading with love and compassion. They represent two starkly different visions of American character. And, if all goes well, Leo will command the world stage long after Trump is gone from public life.
I don’t know what kind of pope Leo will ultimately become. But on Thursday, I felt the cultural wind shift just a tiny bit. An American man who confounds political categories now leads the world’s largest church. As a friend texted me right after the pope’s selection was announced, that shift “almost feels like … hope.”
The Conclave Just Did the Unthinkable
And yet, the conclave that concluded today in Rome has chosen the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church: Robert Francis Prevost. Making the milestone even more remarkable is that Prevost was chosen on just the second day of voting by the most geographically diverse body of papal electors in history. Perhaps most surprising of all is that the Church’s first-ever American pope was selected during Donald Trump’s presidency, as Washington assumes a more contentious stance toward the rest of the world.
Quote of the day:
“Christ goes before us, and the world needs his light. Humanity needs him like a bridge to reach God and his love. You help us to build bridges with dialogue and encounter so we can all be one people always in peace.”
~Leo XIV
What I’m reading today…
There are pains associated with Christianity’s gradual transformation from a monopolizing cultural force into just one offering on an extended religious menu—though still a preeminent offering, at least for now. It’s not surprising, therefore, that the Christians coalescing around Trump want to make American Christianity great again. If the task force’s mandate of mere fairness is essentially a pretext for persecuting perceived enemies of the faith, then its real purpose is to restore this past vision of American Christian dominance.
Why didn't anyone predict the American pope?
And while I don’t want to speculate on this too much, Prevost’s anti-Trump stances, though expressed with some subtlety, were at the very least not a disqualifier for the College of Cardinals. America’s relationship with the rest of the world has profoundly changed during Trump’s second term. If Trump completely upended the Canadian election, maybe he negatively polarized the College of Cardinals, too?
The College of Cardinals, which had few representatives from other continents until recently, is now much more international. Some 80% of the cardinal electors were named by Francis, many from countries that had never before had a cardinal.
In reviewing his record, the cardinal electors might have taken a number of factors into account. Prevost would be an effective administrator as head of the church and was an expert in church canon law. He had decades of experience doing pastoral work in South America, as well as in North America. And as prior general of the entire Augustinian order, he would likely have traveled widely to visit many of the communities he supervised.
The new pope, Leo XIV, has spoken out about urgent need for climate change action
Pope Leo XIV has been outspoken about the need for urgent climate action and voiced his support for the use of climate technology such as solar panels and EVs. Pope Francis, who died in April, made the climate crisis a central issue of his papacy. He urged fossil fuel executives to transition to clean energy, calling the rising greenhouse gas levels “disturbing and a cause for real concern”; he declared a global climate emergency; and he launched a project to power the Vatican with solar panels, among other acts. Now Pope Leo XIV seems poised to follow in Francis’s environmental footsteps.
Under Trump’s emergency order, this pipeline through the Great Lakes wetlands could get fast-tracked
The Army Corps of Engineers, citing a recent national energy emergency order by President Trump, has expedited a permit review for a new miles-long section of an oil and gas pipeline that would bore deep into protected wetlands bordering Canada and the United States. The pipeline request from Enbridge Energy, a Canadian company, would cut beneath the Straits of Mackinac—the connecting waterway between Lakes Michigan and Huron—to install a tunnel 12 times as wide as above-ground existing pipelines. Tribal groups that had been cooperating with the Corps’ environmental impact statement for the project pulled out when they learned of the emergency review. The Corps announced April 15 that the project, known as Line 5, fits under Trump’s January order. Environmental groups have questioned the need and the rationale behind the pipeline change.
“We know that there is no national energy emergency. The U.S. produces more crude oil than any other country, ever, and has for the past six years. The emergency process is really a gift to the fossil fuel industry.” ~ Julie Goodwin, senior attorney at Earthjustice
On social media, Pope Leo XIV has shared criticism of Trump and Vance over policies
Elected Thursday as the Catholic Church’s first global leader to hail from the United States, Pope Leo XIV is in a new job that will have many crossovers into politics — a realm not entirely unknown to the Chicago-born priest, whose social media history includes sharing criticism of Trump administration policies and of comments by Vice President JD Vance.
Pope Leo could prove a powerful new critic for Trump
But here is a Chicagoan who moved to Peru to be a missionary for the poor, and became an archbishop there. He approved of Francis’s attempt to find a pastoral solution to divorce and civil remarriage; he showed moderate support for Francis’s gay-friendly declaration Fiducia Supplicans. His speech rang with those Franciscan themes of reaching out to others and being open to the world.
And then there’s his telling choice of name. Leo XIII was the author of Rerum Novarum, an 1891 encyclical that helped redefine the Church. A magnificent, prophetic text, it analyzed the poverty and injustice of its day and called for Catholics to attend to the poor through social action. I’d suggest choosing that name is the first distinctive step of the reign of Leo.
Pam Bondi Spilled Epstein Secrets to Bogus ‘Nanny’ at Brunch
Although Trump and Epstein were friends at one time, MAGA lawmakers and influencers have called for intelligence files on the disgraced financier to be declassified. During his Senate confirmation hearing, FBI Director Kash Patel vowed to release the names of people who flew on Epstein’s plane. Bondi faced a MAGA mutiny in late February and early March after releasing binders full of “new” information that turned out to be mostly documents that were already publicly available. At the time, she blamed the FBI for not being more forthcoming.
Marjorie Taylor Greene For Senate? It Sounds So Awful, Even Republicans Are Freaking Out
Greene has been a defining figure of this political moment: a hardcore Trump loyalist with a penchant for conspiracy theories and outrageous antics. But she is in Congress not because her act has broad appeal, but because she hails from a deep red district where having an R next to your name is probably enough to get you elected.
The Political Education of Karoline Leavitt
She has amped up Trump’s anti-media tirades while playing loose with the facts, breaking longstanding precedents for how the White House interacts with the press…the current tension “goes beyond anything that is traditional to the point of open hostility, and mockery and disparagement in a way that’s meant for the larger audience, not for the people in the room.”
Maga says Pope Leo may be American, but he's not 'America first'
But any jubilation on the American Make America Great Again right about the new Pope this week quickly dissipated as key voices from Donald Trump's Maga movement came to a disappointed conclusion: the first American Pope does not appear to be "America first".
A book I recommend…
Money, Lies, and God by Katherine Stewart
Katherine Stewart has written what may be the most important political book of the day, exposing the networks of dark money funded, ultra right-wing subversives who have already done enormous damage to our Constitution and the rule of law and are now perilously close to overthrowing the American government as we know it.
What I am watching…
What I read every day…
