Spiritual Quote of the Day (Gorman Beauchamp, on the Vatican Amid ‘A Veritable Tsunami of Apology’)

“We live amid a veritable tsunami of apology. The Catholic Church, which, of course, has much to apologize for, has, of late, offered mea culpas to Galileo, the Jews, the gypsies, Jan Hus, whom it burned at the stake in 1415, even to Constantinople (now Istanbul) for its sacking 800 years ago by the knights of the Fourth Crusade, an event for which the late John Paul II expressed ‘deep regret.’ No wonder that a group in England, claiming descent from the medieval Knights Templars, is asking the Vatican to apologize for the violent suppression of the order and for torturing to death its Grand Master Jacques de Molay in 1314, an apology timed to commemorate the 700th anniversary of that fell deed.”— American literary critic and scholar Gorman Beauchamp, “Apologies All Around,” The American Scholar, Autumn 2007

Almost lost in the hoopla over last week’s release of Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical about AI (which I will try to discuss sometime in the near future), was his apology for the Catholic Church’s role in legitimizing slavery and centuries-old slowness over condemning the practice.

A couple of days later, I came across Beauchamp’s appraisal of expressions of regret by major nations and institutions over past injustices. If he took in the pontiff’s more recent statement, I can’t imagine he regarded it with anything other than cynicism.

To some extent, Beauchamp’s outburst was understandable, as he wrote it when cries for reparations, most notably for slavery, began to gain steam in legislatures across the country. Still, there seemed something altogether too categorical with his concluding sour plea, “No more apologies.”

Within a couple of years, the Grouchy Gus persona adopted by Beauchamp spread through American conservative circles. Although Barack Obama never used any form of the words “apology” or “sorry,” his remarks to foreign countries about America’s past tangled history in his first term fed a myth that he had done so.

It all climaxed in Mitt Romney’s charge during his 2012 debates with the President that he had been on an “apology tour”—a phrase that Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in a different context, would have called “boob bait for the bubbas,” or tough-sounding rhetoric meant to turbo-charge populist hordes. It was not one of the shining moments of Romney's career, and one that I'm sure he would prefer that people forget.

During his first year at the Vatican, Pope Leo was extremely cautious, making some moves that helped mollify the Church’s right wing that had smarted over the more spontaneous Pope Francis (e.g., calling for “generous inclusion” of those attached to the Latin Mass). But I’m afraid that President Trump’s increasingly intemperate outbursts (including, this weekend, his third) about Leo have neutralized that effort toward internal unity.

One sign of the end of this era of good feeling came in Christopher Tremoglie’s essay a few days ago in the conservative Washington Examiner, which posited that the pope and other liberals should have saved their breath, because it was African chiefs, waging war on fellow rulers and selling as chattel to whites, who were really responsible for the African slave trade.

Leo is not engaging in the “woke culture” or “white guilt” that has led Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and other GOP politicians to interfere in how Americans learn about the greatest stain in our history.

Instead, experience—in dealing with emerging Third World countries considering their relationship to Catholicism, and in tracing mixed-race Black creoles on his mother’s side of the family—has taught Leo how complicated and wounding the Church’s attitude towards slavery has been over the centuries.

It started with ecclesial institutions owning slaves themselves in the Middle Ages, and continued with Renaissance popes legitimizing the quest of Spanish and Portuguese conquerors to subjugate and seize the lands of “Saracens, and pagans, and other infidels, and enemies of the name of Christ" anywhere, according to Nicole Winfield's article for the National Catholic Reporter.

Africans now account for roughly 20% of the Church’s population worldwide. Moreover, it is growing rapidly not just in overall numbers but also, in contrast to what has been happening in the U.S. and Western Europe, in terms of seminarians, priests, and nuns.

For conservatives holding the line against any changes, if the Church hopes to retain its ban on clerical celibacy, it will have to import to the U.S. many of these African-trained religious personnel. And to appeal to these people entering the ranks of the religious, the church must own up to its past terrible mistakes related to the continent.

But another aspect of acknowledging past injustices, whether the Vatican’s or the West’s in general, is being lost. Formally admitting these mistakes not only has the potential to heal the wounded but to remind others why they would feel this way in the first place.

Slavery perpetrated over centuries, for instance, permeated virtually every aspect of culture and commerce over much of the world. Given that all-pervasive influence, nobody should imagine that it would not leave psychic stains on those it injured.

All the same, don’t be surprised if the pope’s right-wing critics begin to resurrect that “apology tour” bit. Only the next time, I want that “tour” to be comprised of Donald Trump and his supporters displaying proper penitence for denouncing a not-at-all-radical pontiff trying to speak plainly about the facts of history.

Pope, Pentagon, and Imperial Impiety

So much chaos erupted on multiple fronts with the Trump Administration in the last 10 days that it’s easy to lose sight of the astonishing Free Press report that in January, Pentagon officials issued a veiled threat to the former papal nuncio that the Vatican had better side with the President on foreign-policy issues—or else.

This news item should concern all Americans, but especially Roman Catholics, one of the key electoral swing groups of the Trump era. (An estimated 56% of American Catholics voted for the President in 2024.)

Although it can be problematic to ascribe a single motive to a demographically diverse group like Catholics, GOP officials have surely been pleased that the church’s hierarchy emphasized so-called cultural issues like abortion and LBGTQ.

It encouraged voters to put in the background matters of relatively secondary interest to the archbishops, such as the rights of labor, economic justice, international peace, and humane treatment of immigrants—to say nothing of a return to power by the lone Presidential candidate since the Civil War to contest election results and foment a domestic insurrection.

I wish but don’t expect that archbishops and parish priests will use their sermons to address the disquieting report about the Pentagon meeting with the papal nuncio (a permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See, in effect an ambassador).

Administration officials and voters still in their thrall have predictably dismissed it as—take your pick—“fake news,” “uncorroborated” or “highly exaggerated.”

Those terms cannot be applied to what has happened since Sunday, however, including:

*Trump’s remarks to a reporter that he was “not a big fan” of Pope Leo XIV, adding “He likes crime, I guess”;

*The President’s lengthy, deranged—and, of course, spectacularly self-centered—Truth Social post claiming, among other things, that Leo “wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump”;

*A later Truth Social post—equally demented, but this time blasphemous—depicting Trump as Jesus ministering to the sick (the image accompanying this post);

* A subsequent news conference in which the President ludicrously declared that this latter AI-generated meme didn’t show him as Jesus but as a doctor.

A confession here: I have never voted for Trump, and it would not be hard to find posts of mine that have criticized him. 

At the same time, accepting at face value any report that confirms one’s biases—including those that, like this one, cited anonymous sources— damages a writer’s credibility and persuasiveness. 

So, when I first heard the Pentagon meeting news in fragmentary form, I wanted to know how much, if any, of it could be validated.

My conclusion, after reading the initial Free Press story, follow-up accounts, and other reports on the principals involved, is that, while not all details are demonstrably true, enough are verifiable that they should prompt soul-searching among past and present Trump-leaning members of the American hierarchy and the faithful who followed their electoral cues.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni has issued a formal statement declaring that “the narrative offered by some media outlets about this meeting is completely untrue.”

“Completely untrue”? Not so fast. 

Possibly, despite what the Free Press article claimed, Pope Leo XIV had other reasons for not visiting America on July 4 than anger or fear over the threat. Even if he might now be reluctant to come while Trump is still President, he could be persuaded otherwise eventually.

In addition, the provenance of the publication may, in this case if few others, underscore the report’s credibility. 

The Free Press cannot be dismissed as a progressive news outlet like MS-NOW or CNN, given that it remains true to the editorial philosophy of co-founder Bari Weiss, who now runs CBS News. It has no motive for publishing a story in which the Trump administration appears bullying.

Moreover, the meeting did take place. While not characterizing the encounter’s tone, the Vatican Embassy, or apostolic nunciature, in Washington told Catholic news and information service OSV News, that the meeting occurred. In addition, there’s a picture of the then-nuncio, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, with Defense Undersecretary Elbridge Colby, issued by the Religion News Service, a credible outlet.

The Financial Times has an article about what seems to have happened:

An American present—not Colby—alluded to the Avignon papacy, infamous in European history as the site of a “Great Schism” between pontiffs who had returned to Rome and “anti-popes” who remained in France, subject to state pressure and corruption.

Other Americans at the meeting, who had hoped to smooth-talk Cardinal Pierre and the pope into taking a gentler tone toward the “Dunroe Doctrine” towards Latin America, were aghast over the effect of the remark. 

That’s why an initial anonymous Pentagon source, while deriding the report as “just absurd,” did admit the meeting included “a frank exchange of views”—a diplomatic euphemism for a tense or even storm encounter.

At this point the Vatican doesn’t want a nasty fight with Trump; hence, Bruni’s disclaimer that offers no further details about what did happen.

While the Vatican Embassy termed meetings with government officials as “standard practice” for the nuncio, neither it nor the Pentagon explained why the meeting occurred in the Defense rather than State Department.

Was it an accommodation to Colby, whose grandfather William, as CIA head and a Catholic, interacted with Rome extensively in the Cold War? Or was the venue an attempt at intimidation?

If the latter, it should come as no surprise. Trump has sought to bully the press, large law firms, universities, corporations, and other non-governmental institutions. 

Why should a major religion fall outside his reach—particularly since Trump whisperer Laura Loomer has derided Leo as a “woke Marxist” for interfering with Trump’s mass deportation program?

If the allusion to the Avignon papacy is true, it would conform to a pattern in authoritarian regimes: the thuggish initiatives taken by a midlevel flunky, sure that his bosses would approve his move or, if not, cover it up.

Though MAGA influencers expressed shock about Trump’s vile actions and language over the Easter weekend, there is little sign yet of a re-evaluation among his base. There should be.

In particular, when his Catholic supporters consider Pope Leo’s increasingly sharp, direct criticisms of the President’s trigger-happy tendencies, they should bear in mind that he is merely conveying the consensus of the 1965 Vatican II document, “The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”:

“Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”

In an Atlantic Monthly essay published after remarks by Pope Leo last week, Francis X. Rocca confessed that, like many observers, he had mistakenly thought that, in comparison with Trump and even Pope Francis, Leo would be a “quiet” pontiff. But I’m not sure that Leo has stopped being “quiet” even now.

A ruthless authoritarian may prompt stances previously unthinkable under ordinary circumstances, as Thomas More, a government official who loved life, found no alternative to opposing Henry VIII. Extreme situations lead some to cowardice but others to courage.

What unites the Tudor-era saint and the American-born pontiff is an inner strength that seems confounding in a time of toadies.

More’s silent refusal to assent to Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn contrasted dramatically with courtiers and counselors who meekly went along, just as Leo’s steadfast opposition to Trump positions on immigration and national security diverges from the President’s allies within the American hierarchy (whose complicity with administration outrages I discussed in this post from last Christmas).

More of that is needed as the President breaches new moral boundaries. Will his followers take the lead of Leo, or follow Trump into ignominy?

The President’s actions over the last 10 days is forcing Catholic allies, within the administration and the American Church hierarchy, to choose sides.

J.D. Vance said the pope should stick to “morality” and not involve himself with “politics”—without explaining why a pontiff denouncing abortion is "moral" but one calling for peace is “political.”

On the other hand, Bishop Robert Barron, such an administration favorite that he’s a member of the Religious Liberty Commission established by the President, called the anti-Leo comments “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful” and urged him to apologize—a move that Trump predictably refused.

Before long, we may well find that whatever happened at the Pentagon in January is a mere dust-up compared with the unholy war that Trump now appears set on mounting against the Vatican.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Martin Luther, on the ‘Pope’s Court’)

“If we took away ninety-nine parts of the Pope's Court and only left one hundredth, it would still be large enough to answer questions on matters of belief. Now there is such a swarm of vermin at Rome, all called papal, that Babylon itself never saw the like. There are more than three thousand papal secretaries alone; but who shall count the other office-bearers, since there are so many offices that we can scarcely count them, and all waiting for German benefices, as wolves wait for a flock of sheep? I think Germany now pays more to the Pope than it formerly paid the emperors; nay, some think more than three hundred thousand guilders are sent from Germany to Rome every year, for nothing whatever; and in return we are scoffed at and put to shame. Do we still wonder why princes, noblemen, cities, foundations, convents, and people grow poor? We should rather wonder that we have anything left to eat.”—German theologian and Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther (1483-1546), Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate (1520)

The argument advanced by Martin Luther in this passage will elicit nods of agreement not just for millions of those who followed his lead in leaving the Roman Catholicism Church, but also theologians who have remained in the hope that the central teaching authority of the Church would eventually accept their thinking.

The vast bureaucracy underlying the Church has been the subject of both humor (Pope John XXIII, asked how many people worked at the Vatican, joked, “About half”) to lamentation (“The Curia does its best to stifle criticism in the episcopate and in the church as a whole and to discredit critics with all the means at its disposal,” German theologian Hans Kung charged in a 2010 “Open Letter to Catholic Bishops”).

But few have matched the extraordinary vigor of the questioning by Luther. It cites striking statistics (those “three thousand papal secretaries”!), historical allusion (sinful ancient Babylon), animal imagery, and tying it all to the condition of his native Germany.

In contrast to another pillar of the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin, whose presentation and style often reflected his early training as a lawyer, Luther’s prose burned with passion and invective.

Address to the Christian Nobility, issued 500 years ago this month, was the first of three tracts in 1520 that propelled the rebellious monk further towards irrevocable defiance of the Pope. In The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, he called for reducing the number of sacraments instituted by the Roman Catholic Church from seven to two. In The Freedom of a Christian, he continued to attack abuses of the Vatican, only this time he began to explore, with greater eloquence, the essential equality of all believers: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”

But Address to the Christian Nobility especially fell on fertile ground. It helped that Luther wrote it in German rather than the Latin common to theological explication of the time. Communicating in the vernacular, coupled with the rise of the printing press (particularly in Luther’s own Wittenberg), meant that his attacks on the papacy found a far wider audience of lay readers than just his own community of theologians.

Within this wider lay community, Luther reached two receptive groups. The first—more important in ensuring he would not be executed like an earlier Church dissident, the Bohemian cleric Jan Huss—was the German nobility. 

Jealous of their prerogatives, they resented especially what Luther called the “three walls” used to safeguard the papacy’s absolute sway: the elevation of spiritual power above secular; the claim that nobody but the pope could interpret scripture; and the assertion that only he could convene a council of the Church.

In this environment, Luther’s call for secular princes to assert their proper temporal authority (“Oh noble princes and gentlemen, how long will you suffer your lands and your people to be the prey of these ravening wolves?”) furnished them with intellectual and theological justification for defying the papacy. 

The second lay audience for Luther’s tract—those outside the nobility—was far more problematic for him. He predicted that Germany would suffer the same fate as Italy, where, to create and maintain cardinals of the Church, “the convents are destroyed, the sees consumed, the revenues of the prelacies and of all the churches drawn to Rome; towns are decayed, the country and the people ruined.”

This baleful prophecy fed anger not only among merchants who might have read his tracts themselves but also German peasants who, though illiterate, would have heard his thoughts spread through the network of preachers already flocking to his standard. 

Five years later, when the “Peasants’ Revolt” erupted and spread in southern Germany, Luther—angry at insinuations that he had provoked the disorder, alarmed that he might lose the protection of powerful princes against the papacy—reacted with another tract whose title conveys better than any commentary the intensity of his feelings: Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants.

Luther’s appeal to secular authority and his frequent, revolutionary use of the German language arose from his intense identification as a German—an instinct all the more remarkable because that land was still a motley collection of states within the Holy Roman Emperor, not the united nation-state it became after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.

But in calling for the overthrow of one form of unequaled authority, he was merely exchanging it for another: the power of the princes. Once he advocated for obedience to these secular rulers—even urging these princes to forsake leniency against protesters (“It is the time of the sword, not the day of grace”)—he was priming the masses for absolute fealty to a political colossus unrestrained by the fear of God that gripped and restrained him throughout his life: Hitler’s Third Reach.

 (For a searching discussion of the consequences of this, please see William Castro’s “Luther and German Nationalism” in the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals’ “Reformation21.”) 

Quote of the Day (JPII, on Earth Abuse as a ‘Seedbed for Collective Selfishness’)

“In our day, there is a growing awareness that world peace is threatened not only by the arms race, regional conflicts and continued injustices among peoples and nations, but also by a lack of due respect for nature, by the plundering of natural resources and by a progressive decline in the quality of life. The sense of precariousness and insecurity that such a situation engenders is a seedbed for collective selfishness, disregard for others and dishonesty.”— Pope John Paul II, “Peace With God the Creator, Peace With All of Creation” (papal message for World Day of Peace), Jan. 1, 1990

Quote of the Day (Pope Francis, on the ‘Culture of Deterioration and Waste’)

“Many are the faces, the stories and the evident effects on the lives of thousands of persons whom the culture of deterioration and waste has allowed to be sacrificed before the idols of profits and consumption….  Many lives, many stories, many dreams have been shipwrecked in our day.  We cannot remain indifferent in the face of this.  We have no right.”— Pope Francis, “Speech to UN Officials in Nairobi,” Vatican Radio, Nov. 26, 2015

Quote of the Day (Pope Francis, on the Earth as Our Trust)

"We are not God. The Earth was here before us and was given to us."—Pope Francis, Laudato Si (“Praise Be to You”), the encyclical letter on “Care for Our Common Home,” in the context of climate change

Quote of the Day (Fr. Thomas Reese, on the Pope’s Challenge to Clericalism)

“The pope has called for a new style of being church, a style that is pastoral and open.… But the church is not the pope. Unless bishops, priests and laity follow his example and embrace his priorities, there will not be permanent change in the church. The temptations to clericalism and self-centeredness are too strong. We have to stop admiring the pope and start imitating him.”— Fr. Thomas Reese, “The Francis Revolution,” National Catholic Reporter, March 6, 2015