Pope Leo's First Year

One year ago today, that traditional announcement of ecclesiastical good news, Habemus Papam ("We have a Pope"), resounded in Saint Peter's square, followed immediately by the surprising - shocking even - announcement of the election of the first American-born pope. While Robert Cardinal Prevost was certainly a plausible papabile, I think most run-of-the mill observers (myself included) adhered to the conventional wisdom that no American would be elected - until, of course, one was!

Suffice it to say that Cardinal Prevost was - as was commonly observed - "the least American" of the American cardinals. Indeed, had he just been a typical American cardinal, he would almost certainly not have been elected. Unlike a typical American cardinal, however, for much of his priesthood Prevost had been a missionary priest and later a diocesan bishop in Peru. He is thus legitimately seen as "the second Latin American pope." He is also a Religious, a former Prior General of the Augustinians, with world-wide pastoral experience, as well as being, at the time of his election, the head of the very important Dicastery for Bishops. So the election of the first American pope must certainly be interpreted more broadly, more universally, than through any primary preoccupation with particularly American issues (either American intra-Church issues or American political issues). Personally, I think it unlikely that he was elected primarily to be a counterweight to President Trump. That said, it is significant that the two most prominent Americans on the world stage now are Trump and Leo, and that Leo inevitably projects an alternative image of America, very different from that projected by its President.

The early impressions of Pope Leo - from the very first impressions when he appeared on the loggia dressed traditionally as a pope - have been of a return to normalcy. He seemed to be fulfilling a widespread desire for some continuity with his predecessor's more popular initiatives, but without his predecessor's polarizing and divisive personal style. He has celebrated public Masses frequently, returned to the traditional papal residence and to Castel Gandolfo, brought the cardinals together for consultation in consistory, and highlighted the unifying functions of the papacy, emphasizing the office over the office-holder's personality. He seems to appreciate the requirements of the role and the constraints it imposes on the holder of the office. His Augustinian spirituality of service in unity and community has been constantly evident in illuminating his fundamental spiritual orientation. Obviously the unity of the Church - something we cannot take for granted these days - is his high priority.

In his first address from the loggia, Pope Leo recalled that May 8 is the commemoration of Our Lady of Pompeii. Today, one year later, he is at the shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii, 155 miles southeast of Rome, whose founder, Saint Bartolo Longo (1841-1926), Pope Leo canonized last October.

Leo inherited the 2025 Jubilee Year with its already elaborately planned programming. With the Jubilee finished and Francis' commitments (e.g., the trip to Turkey and Lebanon) fulfilled, Leo in 2026 has more and more pursued his own path. His 10-day trip to four countries in Africa, for example, has highlighted his longer term priorities moving forward. So will his first encyclical, expected later this month.

Inevitably, however, he cannot escape the expectations that arise from his U.S. origin. After all, he speaks English! He addresses Americans in our own language and sensibility, and cannot be easily dismissed as a foreigner who doesn't understand American religion or American politics. Even so, Pope Leo has been wisely reserved on some of the issues that have dominated too much of recent Catholic life, especially in the U.S. Thus, in a recent in-flight conversation with the press, he said, "First of all, I think it's very important that the unity or division of the church should not revolve around sexual matters. We tend to think that when the church is talking about morality that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are greater and more important issues such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion that would all take priority before that particular issue." What long-term effects Leo's words will have on the priorities of the U.S. Bishops, of prominent lay Catholic converts (like Vice President JD Vance), and of the politically polarized U.S. Catholic community, all remain to be seen.

On a very practical level, one of the most important things that modern popes do is the appointment of bishops. In his first year, Pope Leo has appointed several American bishops - both ordinaries and auxiliaries - including, perhaps most prominently, fellow Chicagoan Ronald Hicks as the new Archbishop of New York. What stands out about some of his other appointments, however, is that they have been immigrants to the U.S.  - in other words, they are the sorts of people that the Trump Administration might prefer were not in the U.S. at all, let alone serving as prominent religious leaders in the nation's largest denomination. His very first episcopal appointment was San Diego's Bishop Michael Pham, who came to the U.S. as a young Vietnamese refugee. Later last year, he appointed Bishop Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez to the Diocese of Palm Beach, which includes Mar-a-Lago. Both bishops have been pro-immigrant advocates. Pham has accompanied immigrants to court hearings. Rodríguez has challenged Trump’s immigration policies and recently denounced the criticisms of the Pope as "disrespectful and violent." Then, a week ago, he appointed Washington Auxiliary Evelio Menjivar to be Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston. One of the reddest states now has as its Bishop someone who came to America as an undocumented immigrant teenager from El Salvador (supposedly smuggled into the United States in a car trunk).  Clearly, the Pope is letting the U.S. know where he stands on the issue of immigration, what may be the great moral crisis of this contentious period in American history. If any doubt remains on where the Pope positions himself on the immigration issue, that should certainly become clear on July 4, when he plans to spend the 250th anniversary of American independence on the Italian island of Lampedusa, the symbolic epicenter of the Mediterranean migrant crisis, an obvious and pointed statement.

Beyond any immediate relevance to present Administration policies, the relevant fact is, of course, that the Pope is inherently a global figure. He is the leader of a global institution, whose members are in spiritual communion with one another on every continent all over the world. This is in conspicuous contrast to the increasingly insular, anti-globalist orientation being emphasized at present in the United States, especially among those for whom President Trump is more like a spiritual leader than a mere politician.

My sense, however, is that even those who imagined Leo's papacy as primarily a counterweight to Trump probably did not anticipate the recent, very public attacks on him by the American President. Popes and Presidents frequently disagree, but usually politely and respectfully. Trump's criticism of the Pope has been unprecedented in his expression of personal animosity, including the absurd claim that Leo endorses Iran's acquiring nuclear weapons! Presumably, all this is yet another deplorable consequence of Trump's unfortunate - and, maybe more to the point, unpopular - Iranian war, which hardly anyone would have anticipated a year ago. Ordinarily, public papal interventions in international relations tend not to have a lot of direct effect. The practical effect we should be on the lookout for will be whatever impact the contretemps between President and Pope has on American Catholics. (No one should ever forget that 55% of American Catholic voters in 2024 voted for Trump, and 64% of white American Catholic voters did so.) 

That said, Pope Leo obviously takes to heart Saint Augustine's admonition in his Rule: you would be at fault if by your silence you allow your brothers to meet their downfall, when by speaking you could set them on the right path (4:8).

 

Sigmund Freud at 170

 

Charles Darwin, it is sometimes said, eliminated God from nature; Karl Marx expelled God from history; and Sigmund Freud drove him from the human mind. The unholy Trinity of Darwin, Marx, and Freud are rightly remembered as the great disrupters, whose problematic legacy we now have to live with, whether for better or for worse. Definitely for the worse, the ideas of all three have been bowdlerized in socially harmful ways, such as Spencerian Social Darwinism and eugenics, in Darwin's case, and the Communism of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, in the case of Marx.

And what of Freud (1856-1939), who was born 170 years ago today in what is now the Czech Republic but was then still the gloriously reigning Hapsburg Empire? Freud was a product of the golden twilight decades of the Hapsburg Empire. That empire was both the symbolic heir of the old Holy Roman Empire (and hence heir to the ambitions, both political and religious, of Charlemagne) and also at the same time a glittering home for much of what was most memorable in turn-of-the-century central European civilization. Freud was very much an Austrian old-world scholar (one reason for his discomfort with America!) For Jews like Freud, Franz Josef's Austria was a good place to be. While Vienna had an anti-semitic mayor, none of that stopped Viennese Jews from being leaders in the arts and sciences. Freud's strong attachment to imperial Austria also helps explain his famous dislike of Woodrow Wilson, who Freud believed (with good reason) had contributed to the unfortunate demise of the Austrian Empire - a political, economic, and cultural disaster from which the successor states of the old empire have as yet never fully recovered.

Freud, of course, created psychoanalysis - both as an explanation of the human predicament and as a method of treatment for those in acute pain from struggling with the social civilizational challenges of that human predicament. As an explanation, Freud's theories shocked the world with what he purported to reveal about humanity and its unconscious desires. (Of course, anyone who believes in original sin should hardly find Freud's analysis of the human condition ultimately all that shocking.) As a method of therapeutic treatment, classic Freudian psychoanalysis is time-consuming, expensive, emotionally demanding, and increasingly dismissed as lacking in scientific credibility. The more modest types of talk psychotherapy many of my generation experienced - shorter, cheaper, and less demanding than psychoanalysis - were derivative adaptations, obviously inspired by Freud's methods and in that sense a major component of Freud's longer-term legacy. Freud himself recognized that, when it comes to the practical question of treatment, what he called "more convenient methods of healing" than psychoanalysis might be turned to just as successfully, which is what contemporary modes of therapy have done - largely with drugs of various sorts.

Psychoanalysis, moreover, does not cure, which more contemporary therapeutic approaches may sometimes dubiously aspire to do. Rather, it tries to free the suffering soul to cope - to cope minimally, to cope better, maybe even to cope well. It seeks a secularized version of Christian liberty, the freedom Christ brings from sin and guilt, which doesn't necessarily make life all that much easier, but does allow it to make sense.

Freud assumed (with more confidence than history may have warranted) that in our modern world no traditional moral system could continue to compel elite belief. He offered an alternative to religion that paradoxically vindicates humanity's original religious impulse, which rationalistic modernity refuses to acknowledge and cannot abide. Unlike our contemporary therapeutic culture of individualistic self-fulfillment, however, Freud offered a secular, pseudo-scientific alternative to religion that repeated religion's warning against the individual pursuit of transitory happiness and modernity's erroneous equation of individual happiness with ultimate meaning. 

Even as he undermined it, however, Freud affirmed the civilizational necessity of a system of moral demands upon the individual. He emphasized the sublimation of instinctual desire as indispensable to civilization and the fulfillment of humanity's communal purposes. His psychoanalytic therapy tried to help fill in the gap created by the modern collapse of moral community and consequently the individual's increasing need to go it alone. Freud tried to replace older and (to him) historically discredited means of making sense of life (like religion) with newly strengthened individual inner resources.

As Philip Rieff famously observed in his classic The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966): "A man can be made healthier without being made better - rather, morally worse. Not the good life but better living is the therapeutic standard."

May Day

Today is May Day, although a chilly 44 degrees in the city at the start of the day belies the inherited image of May Day as a herald of summer.

May Day is a curious combination of, on the one hand, an ancient spring festival, midway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, traditionally marked by rituals to ensure fertility for crops and livestock, and, on the other, a modern International Workers' Day, originating in the late 19th-century U.S. labor movement and adopted as an international socialist holiday. Those of us old enough to remember the Cold War will recall how May Day was one of the days when big parades would be held in Moscow and other communist capitals (the other one, of course, being November 7, the anniversary of the October Revolution).

May Day was highlighted in the 1960s musical Camelot. ("Those dreary vows that everyone makes, everyone breaks, in the merry month of May"). Apart from such theatrical evocations, however, in our de-natured, disenchanted, post-industrial, technological world, the change of seasons obviously matters much less than it did for all of previous human history. Such seasonal celebrations as May Day survive only marginally as folkloric occasions, the stuff of romantic nostalgia. Maybe some group erects a maypole somewhere, but its original meaning no longer has any operational significance in the lives of those play-acting dancing around a maypole. 

Likewise, with the fall of communism, the political salience of May Day has receded. International Workers' Day still resonates in labor and left-wing political circles, of course, but labor unions, social democratic political parties, and workers' and "left" causes in general have fared poorly in our present politics of neo-liberalism and populism. On the other hand, we now have an acknowledged social democrat as mayor of New York, whose election may infuse some new vitality into that troubled movement. The more fundamental problem, however, is that much of what passes for the progressive left represents society's winners, those whom the system has favored and who have benefited so much from it, not those left behind, who tend to look elsewhere for a focus for their political allegiance.

As Pope Benedict XVI famously wrote back in 2006: "Democratic socialism managed to fit within the two existing models as a welcome counterweight to the radical liberal positions, which it developed and corrected. It also managed to appeal to various denominations. In England it became the political party of the Catholics, who had never felt at home among either the Protestant conservatives or the liberals. In Wilhelmine Germany, too, Catholic groups felt closer to democratic socialism than to the rigidly Prussian and Protestant conservative forces. In many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness." ("Europe and Its Discontents," First Things, January 2006).

That said, the Church's mid-20th-century attempt to co-op May Day hasn't fared much better than the day's secular iterations. In 1955, Pope Pius XII established a religious analogue to International Workers' Day, the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, which acknowledged the dignity of labor and celebrated Saint Joseph (himself referred to in scripture as a carpenter) as a patron of workers. Saint Joseph the Worker replaced the feast of the Patronage of Saint Joseph (formerly celebrated on the third Wednesday after Easter). Liturgists, however, seem not to have taken to the new feast, for in the problematic post-conciliar 1969 calendar, Saint Joseph the Worker was reduced from the highest ranking liturgical day to the lowest ranking ("optional memorial"). It is perhaps pointless to try to make sense of the post-conciliar calendar reform. Personally, however, given the abiding religious resonance of at least some aspects of democratic socialism, I find the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker worth keeping.

The Gospel reading for today (Matthew 13:54-58) recalls the famous incident in the Nazareth Synagogue where the people took offense at Jesus. Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds? Is he not the carpenter's son? That's as good an account as any of the lack of respect accorded to work, of our failure to appreciate the contribution of those whose labor is in fact essential to society's successful functioning.

Photo: Saint Joseph Altar, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY.

Special Relationship

 

When the United States celebrated the Bicentennial of Independence in 1976, Queen Elizabeth II, the fourth generation great-granddaughter through the senior royal line of America's last King, George III, was invited for a state visit as an appropriate culmination to our national festivities. That state visit included a memorably televised State Dinner in an air-conditioned White House tent in July 1976. (I remember watching the event - including President Ford dancing with the Queen - with several grad school classmates.) Given that history, it was virtually inevitable that our 250th birthday would also be highlighted by a visit by King George III's next heir, King Charles III. Accordingly, the King and Queen Camilla arrived in Washington, DC, on Monday where they were effusively welcomed by President and Mrs. Trump.

The term "special relationship" goes back to the World War II partnership between FDR and Winston Churchill. But, of course, the relationship goes back much longer - starting with the English and Scottish colonists who settled in 13 North American British coastal colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, whose descendants eventually declared their independence 250 years ago. Once our independence had been recognized by Britain after a long and costly war, one of the new country's important tasks was to manage its relationship with the mother country, which was then the most important power in the world.  Since then, the relationship has been somewhat reversed, and it is now the U.S. that is the world's superpower and the U.K. which has to manage its relationship with the U.S. as best it can, 

The theory of our "special relationship" can be traced all the way back back to John Adams' famous address to King George III on June 1, 1785. Adams said to the King: "I Shall esteem myself the happiest of Men, if I can be instrumental in recommending my Country, more and more to your Majestys Royal Benevolence and of restoring an entire esteem, Confidence and Affection, or in better Words, “the old good Nature and the old good Humour” between People who, tho Seperated by an Ocean and under different Governments have the Same Language, a Similar Religion and kindred Blood.— I beg your Majestys Permission to add, that although I have Sometimes before, been entrusted by my Country it was never in my whole Life in a manner So agreable to myself."

Fast forward to 2026, the 250th anniversary of American independence, in celebration of which King George III's successor, King Charles III, addressed a joint succession of Congress (photo). The King praised the American Founders, who "united thirteen disparate colonies to forge a Nation on the revolutionary idea of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. They carried with them, and carried forward, the great inheritance of the British Enlightenment – as well as the ideals which had an even deeper history in English Common Law and Magna Carta." 

The King referenced his own Christian faith and his long-standing commitment to interfaith dialogue, expressing his belief "that the essence of our two Nations is a generosity of spirit and a duty to foster compassion, to promote peace, to deepen mutual understanding and to value all people, of all faiths, and of none."

He spoke at length about "The Alliance that our two Nations have built over the centuries – and for which we are profoundly grateful to the American people" He referenced the two World Wars, the Cold War, 9/11, and then pointedly turned to the present: "Today, Mr. Speaker, that same, unyielding resolve is needed for the defence of Ukraine and her most courageous people – in order to secure a truly just and lasting peace."

Nor was that his only reference to a potentially contentious issue in our present relationship. "Yet even as we celebrate the beauty that surrounds us, our generation must decide how to address the collapse of critical natural systems, which threatens far more than the harmony and essential diversity of Nature. We ignore at our peril the fact that these natural systems – in other words, Nature’s own economy – provide the foundation for our prosperity and our national security."

From what the King called "the bitter divisions of 250 years ago," he recalled how our two countries have since "forged a friendship that has grown into one of the most consequential Alliances in human history." And he expressed his hope - obviously the underlying point of the royal visit "that our Alliance will continue to defend our shared values, with our partners in Europe and the Commonwealth, and across the world, and that we ignore the clarion calls to become ever more inward-looking."

Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

The Mysterious Island

One of the benefits of being part of a parish book club is that it makes me read books I would otherwise probably never read - like, for example, this month's selection by Jules Verne (1828-1905), The Mysterious Island (1875), tr. Jordan Stump (Random House, 2001).

It is easy to appreciate why a technology-loving 19th-century audience might have been taken with this novel. That was when the industrial age was most celebrated, and Jules Verne was certainly one to express that celebratory spirit. Of course, even in the 19th century, the Romantic movement revealed reservations about progress, but the overall direction of the 19th-century saw modernity, science, and technology as benefits to be celebrated. For many of us in the 21st century, however, when even space exploration has lost a lot of its luster, the triumph of the industrial age has long worn off. We are as apt to be bored by Verne's castaways' creative inventiveness as his earlier readers were excited by that aspect of the story. I know I was! As a result, I found much of what was probably meant to be an exciting adventure somewhat tedious. (It doesn't help, of course, that we are dealing with a 19th-century, originally serialized novel.) The tedious passages describing the seemingly endless succession of lucky chances and technological accomplishments call for patience on the reader's part. That patience will be rewarded as the final chapters of the story become more adventurous - and more surprisingly mysterious.

Characterized in Caleb Carr's Introduction as "arguably Verne's most important and self-revelatory book," The Mysterious Island tells the increasingly implausible story of five Americans marooned on a deserted Pacific island somewhere in the southern hemisphere, who utilize their scientific knowledge and ingenuity to exploit the opportunity provided by a richly abundant island not only to survive but to prosper, to make their island into a miniature modern industrial society. This would especially appeal perhaps as in some sense almost an allegory about America itself - an almost miraculously abundant wilderness turned into the world's most prosperous society (albeit taking much more time to accomplish this task than Verne's lucky castaways). The reader may assume that Verne (and many of his readers) would have shared a Tocquevillian attitude about America as the modern world's emblematic future.

Less emphasized but immediately obvious to this senior-citizen reader is the evident physical fitness of all the protagonists, who regularly walk endless miles and perform multiple feats of physical labor. None of this is superhuman, of course, but it is a reminder that their multiple accomplishments might well be beyond the capacity of any random collection of five less talented and less sturdy individuals in the real world!

The author summarizes the protagonists' sense of their accomplishments on the first anniversary of their arrival at the island: "They had begun as mere castaways, fighting the elements for their wretched lives, and unsure of their prospects for success! And. now, thanks to their leader's knowledge, they were true colonists, equipped with weapons, tools, and instruments, and they had taken the island's various plants, animals, and minerals - elements from each of nature's three kingdoms - and turned them to their own advantage!"

This plot is complicated, however, by the fact that all is not as it initially seems. The island is, in fact, mysterious. the mystery component contributes a whole other dimension to the story, making it more than just a celebration of science and ingenuity. The author obviously agrees with the colonists' de facto leader that progress is "a good and necessary thing" and that is "a mistake" to believe one could bring back the past." But, in an ending which 21st-century readers might even better appreciate than the original audience, nature wins out; and all the technological ingenuity in the world is ultimately no match for it.

And, for all the castaways' seeming self-sufficiency, that progressive trope is, of course, completely undermined by the presence of the mysterious benefactor, whose own story highlights the abiding relevance of human power politics, science and technology notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, the story takes a novel turn with the discovery of someone else who has been marooned nearby. The experience of finding a man abandoned on a neighboring island for some 12 years and reduced by his isolation to a seemingly sub-human savage state, and then, as it were, coaxing him back to something resembling normalcy, that sub-plot prompts interesting reflection on exactly what it means to be human, on what it means to say that. human beings are social animals - this in the 19th-century heyday of liberal individualism!

Yet that experience itself - namely how the colonists ever even came to be aware of the existence of their new comrade - only further seems to highlight the story's growing sense of mystery. We now know for certain that there must be someone, somewhere, who is also an active character in this story. 

In the end, the mysterious someone does the colonists one final life-saving favor, just in time, as nature triumphs over civilization; and the colonists get to do that characteristic 19th-century thing, they immigrate to America and build themselves a successful and prosperous life together there.