Train Derailment in Ohio, the Internet Debate at SCOTUS, and 10 Years of Pope Francis

INTRO

SEGMENT 1 - Train Derailment

Overview of rail accident

Pete Buttigieg visits

Donald Trump visits

Impact on fish and other wildlife

EarthBeat piece on a pastor from one of the nearby parishes

Gary, Indiana and East Chicago pollution

Laudato Si’ - Potable, clean water is a fundamental human right

Karl Rahner and the tomato

Care for the environment is part of our Catholic teaching.

SEGMENT 2 - Section 230 and the Internet

Overview

John Oliver on Artificial Intelligence

Algorithms are not neutral

Algorithms of oppression

Dominion Voting Systems defamation case

SEGMENT 3 - Ten Years of Pope Francis

NCR articles on the papacy

Spend time with the homilies of Pope Francis

“A wake-up call”

Episode transcript

Intro

DAULT: Hello and welcome to The Francis Effect podcast. My name is David Dault. I host a radio show called Things Not Seen about culture and faith, and I'm an assistant professor of Christian spirituality at the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University Chicago. I'm here with my good friends, Heidi Schlumpf and Father Dan Horan.

Heidi is executive editor and vice president of National Catholic Reporter, a publication that connects Catholics to church, faith, and the common good with independent news, analysis, and spiritual reflection. Father Dan is the director of the Center for Spirituality and professor of philosophy, religious studies, and theology at St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. Every couple of weeks we get together to discuss news and events through a lens of our shared Catholic faith. Father Dan and Heidi, welcome to you both. Heidi, how have you been?

SCHLUMPF: I’m great. I just got back, well, a day or so ago from several days in Southern California. I would say sunny Southern California, but it was not sunny at all. It was cold and rainy. We did not get any of that snow that some people got there, but I was there for the LA Religious Ed Congress, which I haven't been to in decades. So, and a number of people haven't been to in years because of Covid. So it was great to be back to the fully in-person congress. NCR had a booth there and we talked to a lot of readers, prospective readers, ran into a lot of friends and a lot of fellow colleagues from various Catholic organizations.

There was a little bit of a sadness to the event because obviously, the LA Archdiocese is mourning because of the death, the murder of Bishop O'Connell. And so they had a prayer service for him there, and a lot of people were wearing ribbons or thinking about him. But still there was a lot of enthusiasm.

It felt like a vibrant church, and it was really great to be there. Sorry you guys weren't there, ‘cause I know usually you guys are there and I'm not there. And now this year I was there and you're not there. So we gotta get the three of us there one of these times so we can do a podcast from there or something.

And speaking of not there, where are you, Dan Horan?

HORAN: I am not in LA nor am I in South Bend or Chicago. I'm actually just a few hours and a couple states south in the great city of Louisville, Kentucky. By the time our podcast episode drops, the event will be over. But I'm here to deliver one of the keynote addresses at a racism symposium hosted by the Archdiocese of Louisville on Wednesday, March 1.

So, delighted to be here. Louisville's a great city. Many people know that I am a big fan and scholar of the work of Thomas Merton. And just about an hour outside of Louisville is where the Abbey of Gethsemane is. Unfortunately, I do not think I'm gonna have time to make a pastoral visit to the Trappists out there and a kind of pilgrimage to the resting place of Thomas Merton this time around.

But I don't know, maybe there'll be an opportunity for me to at least have a little sip of bourbon while I'm in the bourbon capital of the world. So there's that, and I'm looking forward to this event. It was planned, actually, quite a while ago, and then there was the retirement of Archbishop Kurtz, who had been the longtime archbishop of Louisville, and the new archbishop coming on board who happened to chair the ad hoc committee that drafted the anti-racism document from the, for the USCCB, Open Wide Our Hearts, was appointed here. So there's a lot of change and turnover, and what's really exciting is that they're continuing the good work of drawing attention to this need in the church and world. So I'm honored to be a part of this, and maybe the next episode I can talk a bit about how the event goes.

David, you seem to be from what I can tell on our Zoom connection in the great city of Chicago and the wonderful neighborhood of Hyde Park. What's going on over there?

DAULT: Well, yeah, I'm in Hyde Park, and today is the day that Chicago votes for municipal posts. And so we got up this morning and we went to the polls and we voted. And so I'm a little off of my normal rhythm for the morning, but I'm feeling pretty good. I've just turned in a bunch of materials at Loyola.

This is not for tenure review, but it's the halfway point to my tenure review where my colleagues get to look at the scholarly work and the teaching and the other things I've been doing, and just make sure that I'm on track, and I feel confident that's all gonna go fine. But it's a bit of bureaucracy, and I'm not always great at navigating bureaucracy, and so it's been a bit of a stressful week getting all those materials together and getting them ready to go, but now they're all off. And so I'm happy about that and I'm turning to other things. I'm continuing to work on writing projects and continuing to be teaching my courses.

Actually, last night I had a chance to teach a class for a friend of mine, Jacob Goodson, over at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas. And I had a chance to teach a class on Julian of Norwich, and just really enjoyed working with the undergraduates and having a conversation about her Showings of Divine Love, which is a wonderful document if you've never read it. There's two versions of it, a shorter version and a longer version, but it'll only take you a few hours to make it through both, and it's very worth it if you've never encountered it before. So I had a lot of fun having that conversation.

HORAN: And did you remind the students that all shall be well? All manner of things?

DAULT: Yeah, in fact, at the end of the conversation we began to ask what we thought that assertion, that all will be well and all manner of things shall be well, might have meant to Julian, given the fact that she had lived through the Black Plague, the death of many of her loved ones, and other sorts of very traumatic experiences.

I thought that the undergraduates did a really good job of wrestling with the depth and the weight of both the assertion that all will be well, but also some of the visions of Christ that she has earlier in The Showings of Divine Love that are, for want of a better term, they're pretty grizzly. And so, I think that they handled the material really maturely. I was proud of them.

SCHLUMPF: So David and I had a little pre-recording conversation about the elections here in Chicago. It was hard this year. There's so many candidates for mayor, and I personally was moved from one ward to another when they did some redistricting. So we'll be both watching the returns tonight to see how that goes.

Hey, speaking of IPS, David, one of your colleagues was at Congress, Timone Davis. I went to her workshop, and it was amazing. She's such a great teacher, and she was up there teaching. It was really great.

DAULT: I love having her as a colleague, and I learn from her every time that we interact. And it, it's the exact same thing that you've just described. Like, there's wisdom and there's knowledge, and she thinks about things so deeply. Even the little things, she puts so much heart and thought into that really, as a colleague, as a fellow teacher, I'm constantly looking over her shoulder saying, how can I do this better, how is Timone doing it? And, and learning from her. So I'm so glad that she was there. And also, we found out while she was at LA Rec that she has been approved for tenure at IPS. And so that is a wonderful thing as well. So, many accolades for her, and I'm so glad that you had a chance to watch her do her thing because she's just amazing.

SCHLUMPF: She is. Oh, that's great news.

DAULT: Yeah. So listeners, coming up in the episode, we're gonna deal with three topics. We're gonna talk about the recent train derailment in Ohio and the environmental and social effects that follow from that. We're gonna be looking at a recent set of Supreme Court cases that may affect the future of the internet, the Section 230 cases from the Communications Decency Act, and we're gonna be looking at ten years of Pope Francis. All of that is coming up on the episode. This is The Francis Effect. Please stay with us.

Segment 1

DAULT: Welcome back to The Francis Effect. I'm David Dault, and I'm here with Heidi Schlumpf and Father Dan Horan. Every couple of weeks we get together to discuss a variety of topics from a perspective informed by our Catholic faith. Last month, on the evening of Friday, February 3, a train operated by the company Norfolk Southern derailed near the Ohio town of East Palestine, which is near the border of Pennsylvania.

According to officials, nobody was directly hurt by the accident. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, which investigates such accidents, the train consisted of 150 rail cars, most of which were transporting innocuous cargo like cement, steel, and food items. However, NTSB officials report that 20 of the 150 cars contained hazardous materials. Eleven of those 20 cars derailed, releasing their toxic cargo nearby.

Soon after the derailment, nearly 2,000 residents were evacuated, and schools and roads were closed. By February 6, the Ohio governor extended the evacuation order to a one-by-two-mile area surrounding the accident site. According to an NPR report, “Over the weekend after the derailment, firefighters worked to contain the blaze caused by the derailment. Authorities eventually grew concerned about rising temperatures inside a single rail car, which they worried could cause a catastrophic explosion sending shrapnel up to a mile away.”

As a result, authorities began a “controlled release” of the hazardous chemicals, which were deliberately burned. Despite EPA officials stating that air monitoring and municipal water testing in the area confirmed no immediate threats of danger to health and safety, some local residents continued to report physical symptoms such as sensing strong smells, headaches, and nausea. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources reported that the release of the hazardous chemicals into the environment caused the deaths of more than 3,500 fish nearby.

EPA officials confirmed that some of the contaminants were detected in the Ohio River, but assured the public that the river was large enough to effectively dilute the chemicals and not cause an immediate threat. Also, both Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and former President Donald Trump made separate visits to the area, the latter holding a campaign rally.

This train accident raises several concerns and questions, many of them intersecting. For example, what does this incident say about the safety of the railroads in this country? Was it preventable? Is it ever safe to transport such quantities of hazardous materials over the rail? Even if humans were able to be evacuated from the scene and generally remain safe, what does such an incident say about our nonhuman neighbors and care for creation? Dan, how are you thinking about this train accident? Where should we begin?

HORAN: Well. Taking each of those four questions may be a starting point. I would say first, what does this incident say about the safety of railroads in this country? And I would say a lot, as a number of commentators and people who are more expert in the area of transportation safety and transportation logistics have pointed out, our rail system in the United States is really poor. I live in the Midwest, as our listeners know, and have for the last seven, going on eight years. Before that, I lived in Boston before that, Washington, DC and New York and Wilmington before that. So I'm generally somebody familiar with the mid-Atlantic corridor, the old Acela line, as it were. And anyone who's taken Amtrak up and down the Atlantic coast there knows that's probably the most efficient, most predictable, least delayed of our kind of passenger rails. And even still, there are lots and lots of problems, not the least of which stemming from this weird relationship that we have to the rail system in this country, that is, that prioritizes freight. So there's a lot to say about just the logistics, the inadequacy of our infrastructure, the fact that it gets very little attention until catastrophes like this take place.

And so, it says a lot about safety of railroads, the efficiency of railroads. The fact that we have such a pathetic kind of passenger transportation system that is, that plays second fiddle to, to the industrial and commercial transportation system of goods. So, you know, that's point number one, which we can come back to.

Point number two, was this preventable? All the experts seem to suggest yes. Again, I'm no expert in this, but from what I've read, the presenting cause of this derailment had to do with the braking system an antiquated braking system on the train, something that has been on the radar of transportation experts for a while. The third question, David, you posed, is it ever safe to transport such quantities of hazardous materials over rail? I don't know. But it does raise a question that leads to this last sort of prompt, which is even if humans so far in the short term have been relatively spared of any danger, incidents, injuries, directly, and again, that's an asterisk sort of statement, because we don't know what the long-term consequences are.

We do know that thousands of fish, other forms of wildlife, plant life and potentially water systems have been affected by this toxic spill. And I think for me, who's very interested in expanding our area of moral concern beyond just ourselves, I am grateful, let me make that clear, that no humans were immediately impacted or harmed, as authorities tell us in this incident. But there's a slow burn, as we've seen in so many other instances around this country with former kind of factory work and chemical plants, or we see, for instance, the most recently we think of Flint, Michigan and the, and the water system there.

And so there, there's lots to unpack still, but I do think we need to be mindful of the fact that there's a more than human context here, and it's one that will affect us in the long term as well.

SCHLUMPF: Yes, Dan. There's a good summary of some of the concerns. I'll, I'll just jump off and talk a little bit too about some of the people who have been affected and some of the issues that it raises for me. We ran a piece, as you know, National Catholic Reporter is very interested in issues related to the environment.

We have a separate sort of section in our online publication called EarthBeat. And we ran a piece there that came from a wire service where they talked to the pastor of one of the nearby parishes. And of course, they were among the people evacuated initially, masses had to be canceled. And then they became a distribution site for some of the assistance that was going out. But it was interesting to hear some of the parishioners in the nearby area and some of their concerns, in part because the communication was so poor to them, and with misleading or sort of incomplete information in the immediate aftermath of the accident.

And I'll admit that I think even some of the mainstream media did not do a great job of seeing how serious and big of a story this was initially. And I think what that leads to, and I saw this among some of my circles on social media, people getting into conspiracy theories saying that things are happening there that are being lied about or being covered up. And it'll still take a while for all of that to come out. But in the absence of good, honest, quick information, a number of people, especially people in that area who will be facing potential health hazards at the very least from what's going on there.

It also raises for me the same questions that get raised a lot whenever anything like this happens about the importance of regulation. This became such a dirty word among a certain segment of political folks during the Reagan administration and beyond, that regulations were a terrible thing, they slowed down business, they cost money. And I get that overregulation can be a problem, especially for small businesses. Yet, this is why we have regulations, because there are things that are dangerous, and living in a world without the government stepping in to regulate things for the common good and for safety, these are the kinds of things that happen. So, I'm kind of, of pro-regulation; I guess that identifies my political leanings one way or the other. But I don't know. It's, I think we're, it's sadly, it's already being called possibly the worst environmental disaster in US history. And I think given that we still, there's still a lot we don't know, it's something we need to be really paying attention to.

DAULT: So I want to step back and take a kind of Laudato Si perspective on this and really think about the idea of care for our common home. And I want to do that in sort of two waves. The first is the immediate physical effects, like the chemicals on the ground, the chemicals in the air, the chemicals that leech into the water.

These, as they mix and match, they will have effects, and we will need to have constant monitoring and real vigilance to try and figure out what those effects are, both in the near term and the long term. But there's also psychological effects. And we see this in the wake of any kind of environmental disaster, whether we're talking about something like a nuclear disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima or some other environmental disaster.

Like I think about the Bopal incident in India, back when I was a child, and where thousands of people were blinded, maimed, and killed by a toxic gas release around a chemical plant in India. There's the physical effect, but then there's also the psychological effect of simply not being able to trust the water that you're drinking or the air that you're breathing or the ground that you're standing on not to harm you.

And I think that Pope Francis is looking at both of these levels in all that he's saying about the environment, because it's not simply enough to be able to have physical safety, but also to have the assurance of safety that everyone who is involved in the processes are looking out for the best interests of the least of these who could be the most affected. And that's not what we're seeing here. We're seeing in fact, the exact opposite of that.

HORAN: Yeah, I think you bring up a really good point, David, and it reminds me as you were talking about the kind of psychological impact, in thinking about whether or not the water you're consuming or the air that you're breathing or the soil your children are playing in, I'm thinking of Northwestern Indiana, not that far from Chicago, East Chicago, Gary, Indiana, that area where there were some recent reports in the past year about high levels of pollutants and toxic chemicals that were in the soil that children were playing in. This brings me back to Laudato Si and Pope Francis, who makes a very clear statement in that encyclical letter that he says that potable, clean water is a fundamental human right, that this is not a luxury. It is not something that is a commodity to be traded or to be valued in some sort of way that's only for the few, but a right of every living creature, every human being particularly. The other thing I would say is, you know that, that creation has a right to its own integrity in and of itself.

And this is another instance I think, of, I think of two kinds of layers. One is just the sort of hubris that we as a species tend to exhibit, which is as long as it benefits us and increases our market value and can give some greater return to our stock investors, for the companies that are transporting and utilizing these chemicals, then we're not gonna bother with installing a better brake system for safety, even if it's an unlikely possibility that something dangerous, something like this would happen.

I think the other level, too, is what exactly is being transported. These are not, this isn't just like crude oil, which while problematic in, is typically not an issue, uh, when it's left undisturbed, undrilled, for instance, right? But I'm thinking of the fact that these chemicals in those rail cars that tipped over and were polluting the environment are lab-made, human-made, highly refined and complicated chemicals and substances that are not immediately familiar to the natural environment. And so we don't know what the long-term consequences are.

One of the containers contained thousands of kind of the equivalent of thousands of gallons of a chemical used as one of the primary ingredients in PVC piping, right? So these kinds of plastics that will last longer than any organic matter that we are familiar with naturally occurring.

So, so, there's a lot there. Even if, again, as I said earlier, just because human beings weren't immediately in the short term harmed by this, I think, David, you bring up this good point about the right to water and clean air and clean land, but I also think the land for its own sake and the other creatures that share our common home, as Pope Francis says, this is a moral issue.

DAULT: Well, and just to add to that, these chemicals also are oftentimes constituents for the fast, cheap, and easy products that we buy so readily. And so when, and I, again, I think of Pope Francis, like Pope Francis is not simply saying, stop transporting bad chemicals and stop polluting. Pope Francis is saying, look at the entirety, the whole of our culture, and see how everything that we're doing is interrelated.

Our desire for fast, cheap, and easy products leads to the economic advantage of transporting these kinds of chemicals across vast stretches of land with the risk of incredible harm to the environment. So we need to not simply look at the rail companies, but we also need to be looking at our own consuming behavior and rethinking how we are engaging with this common home that we have at our level of economics and commerce.

And, suddenly Karl Rahner’s tomato has arisen in my mind of, you know, you, you buy the cheap tomato, but you don't see all the human and environmental costs that go into bringing that cheap tomato to you.

SCHLUMPF: Well, I love that you brought Francis into this, David, and it's a thing to do, right because of Laudato Si and so many things that he said. What strikes me is how much care for the environment is part of our Catholic teaching, and yet, was this major news story that is affecting our environment, both human and other parts of creation, was this brought up in church circles? Was this brought up at parish masses this past weekend or the weekend ago? So, I think this, every time we talk about some sort of environmental story or some sort of in terrible weather patterns and these kinds of things, it seems like some people are able to put that outside of, separate from our moral framework as Catholics or our church teaching.

And yet this pope and other parts of our teaching that have been so held up show that it is essential to our faith to care about creation, and we need to do that. So let's hope that, sadly, I think we are going to be having to come back to this topic again and again, but let's hope we see going forward from here, people picking up the Catholic and moral connections with this issue as more information unfolds.

So, thanks for listening to this segment and we'll be back. This is The Francis Effect.

Segment 2

SCHLUMPF: Welcome back to The Francis Effect. I'm Heidi Schlumpf, and I'm here today with David Dault and Dan Horan. Every couple of weeks we get together to discuss a variety of topics from a perspective informed by our shared Catholic faith.

In the mid-1990s, the internet was moving from an obscure research network used by scientists to a massively popular communications platform used by millions of ordinary citizens. In 1996, Congress passed a comprehensive law to help regulate the content of websites on the internet, known as the Communications Decency Act, also known as the CDA. In 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the majority of the CDA on the grounds that it was overbroad in its scope and that it violated the free speech protections of the First Amendment.

However, one part of the CDA remained in force: a portion referred to as Section 230. This was the part of the CDA that protects the ability of tech platforms like Twitter and Facebook to host user-generated content like social media posts, video and audio files, and comments without being held legally liable for that content.

Section 230 also allows platforms to moderate their services and remove posts they consider objectionable without becoming liable for all the content on that platform. Section 230 has been called “the law that made the internet.” And for nearly a quarter century, it has brokered an uneasy peace among stakeholders with vastly different ideas about what the internet is for and what it should be used for.

But now Section 230 is itself back in the crosshairs of the Supreme Court. In a series of cases heard before the court last week, Gonzalez v. Google and Taamneh v. Twitter, plaintiffs are bringing an argument based in antiterrorism laws to try and circumvent the free speech defenses traditionally used by giant social media platforms. David, there are a lot of moving parts here. Can you walk us through the basics of this recent Supreme Court challenge to the CDA?

DAULT: I'd be glad to, and there are a lot of moving parts, and I will simply say that as I've been looking at these cases, my own position has shifted a number of times, so I'm still learning and absorbing kind of new interpretations about these sorts of things. And for listeners, I want to give this in very simple, broad strokes, with the caveat that there's gonna be a lot more complexity that we can dive into.

If we imagine a newspaper through the ages, the newspapers and magazines have broad free speech protections. But if a newspaper or magazine were to, as part of its editorial policy, print an article or print a large headline that says we advocate the overthrow of the government by violent means, they would be getting involved in something that oversteps their free speech protections and goes into something like criminal activity. And so there are laws that exist to stop publications like newspapers and magazines from promoting and doing those sorts of publications as part of their editorial policy. But now let's imagine instead of a newspaper or a magazine, a bulletin board on a wall, and people are allowed to post flyers on the bulletin board however they wish. And somebody puts up a flyer that says, come to our rally. We're advocating the overthrow of the US government by violent means, and they stick that on the bulletin board. Traditionally, the legal regime that we have would not hold the bulletin board owner liable for the content of that flyer.

Instead, the person who themselves posted the flyer would be the one who was responsible for that particular type of speech. But now I'd like listeners to imagine one more scenario, where we have a very crowded bulletin board with lots of flyers on it. And so the bulletin board owner has created a mechanism that watches where your eyes go and looks at the last five flyers that you have looked at, and then they've got a mechanism installed on that bulletin board that will rotate forward other flyers that are similar to the last five that you just looked at. And so in this particular case, you've looked at a couple of bulletin boards about getting together in large groups, for a picnic or maybe for a fireworks display. And for some reason, this mechanism rotates forward now the flyer that says come to our gathering where we're advocating for the violent overthrow of the US government.

Now the question is, Who is responsible for your seeing that flyer? Is it simply the person who put the post on the bulletin board, or is it somehow also the person who invented or operated the mechanism that brings that flyer forward for you to see it? And in very broad and simple terms, that's what's going on in the Gonzalez and Taamneh cases here. Who is responsible not for the speech, but for the mechanism that brings the violent or criminal speech into your view? And so that's the beginning, but I'd love to hear questions and where you all are thinking about taking this.

HORAN: Like you, David I've been back and forth on this. I tend to lean toward a kind of neutrality, a fan of net neutrality, not wanting there to be too many invisible or not-so-invisible, Adam Smith-like hands involved in a space that's intended to be widely accessible.

However, I keep going back and forth on, on this because like you, a lot of the journalists who've been covering this, and even actually the Supreme Court justices themselves in hearing the arguments and asking questions, have used some of these kind of static images or metaphors, like newspapers and magazines versus I, I liked your corkboard, bulletin board image.

The algorithm dimension of this becomes really complicated, because on the one hand, the tech companies are arguing that this is a sort of blind algorithm, right? It's not intentionally promoting, it's not seeking to promote, one kind of speech over another or some kind of divisive speech or hate speech or terrorism, pro-terrorism over another.

And I think, I believe it was Justice Thomas. One of the more entertaining interventions he's ever had, and from my opinion, was talking about recipes. If is this, if the same algorithm, you're into cooking and go down a rabbit hole on YouTube and you keep getting new and new recipes, isn't that a good, and if the same kind of dynamics at play for pro-terrorism content, how do people make sense of this?

What I would suggest is, zooming back out a little bit and realizing alongside a lot of the great conversation that's been going on right now with increasing public access to artificial intelligence platforms. In fact, a shout-out to John Oliver's show Last Week Tonight this past Sunday evening, I think did a great job exploring why this is complicated, and more complicated than people realize, that these algorithms, and more importantly, the data sets that go into them, that inform their learning. So they inform, like, the algorithmic kind of processing and then suggestions are not neutral. They are what's available as raw content on the internet or what's been posted to YouTube or what is the result of the engagement of those who elect to be on these platforms. So think of Twitter, for instance.

Twitter is famously sort of a cesspool at times, maybe only more so since its recent new ownership. But the, you gotta take all the input that's going in there. It's not a reflection, a kind of neutral reflection of the opinions, experiences, or realities of the world as such; it's the people who elect to be in there and put that content in there. So I don't know what the answer is. But I get hung up on that, because what's going into the algorithmic sort of analysis is not a, a sampling across 7 billion people in views and perspectives and experiences in this world.

Oftentimes, it's very particular. It's angled, it's agenda driven. And so, maybe part of the way to respond to this, from my kind of layperson's view when it comes to technology, is to say there needs to be clear boundaries around what is acceptable to be considered in this kind of recommendation platform.

DAULT: I really like where you're going with all of this, Dan, and I, I just wanna make sure that listeners are tracking with us. So in both of these cases that are being brought before the Supreme Court recently, they're examples of terroristic activities like people being killed as a result in part of being exposed to recruitment or training videos that were presented to them through the algorithms on YouTube or through a Twitter feed.

And so that is one piece of this. I also wanna say that at the time that it was written, 1996, Section 230 was really threading a very interesting legal needle, because what was happening was the concern that if these big tech companies began to moderate any content at all, if they looked into their bulletin board conversation rooms, chat rooms, anything like that, and began to moderate that content, then they would be on the hook for all the content.

And so Section 230 was trying to navigate a path where the good-faith effort to moderate some dangerous content didn't mean that they were liable for all the content. And 25, 26 years ago, that was actually a good solution to the problem. The difficulty is that the internet has advanced and evolved since then. And so now we're dealing with much more complex approaches to user-generated speech. And we've talked about Twitter and Google. Basically, we are generating the content that we're consuming, and now these have become very broad protections where places like Twitter basically don't have to moderate any hate content.

And you've probably had the experience, I certainly have, of seeing something that is explicitly violent on Twitter, reporting it, and getting the comments back. Well, this didn't violate our terms of service. Right now, Section 230 is being used as an overbroad and sweeping protection for all manner of hateful activity online. I think that it's an outdated law. The, one of the questions, then, is the Supreme Court the right place to fix this? And if not, how do we fix this?

SCHLUMPF: Yeah. And the journalist in me, of course, is very uh, in agreement with both of you about the importance of free speech and not wanting to overregulate that. See my previous conversation in our last segment about regulation. But the Decency Act, the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

This was this huge year of deregulation of the communications industry done under a Democratic president, not a Republican one. And it has had such an influence on everything from TV commercial advertising to kids, to the, what we're talking about in this case, the way the internet has grown and evolved since then.

I think we only need to look to the outcomes to know that there's an issue here. And I'm not saying the solution is necessarily to flip what we've been doing. As a member, person who works for an organization that is dependent on algorithms to help get our content to other people as well, I also understand how difficult it can be, and I'm sure there's some technical solution out there somehow to regulate and to moderate. Publications, ours included, have moved towards not even having commenting on our articles anymore because it is impossible to, uh, keep track of it.

But we only need to look to what the consequences have been. And obviously the very serious ones that are cited in these cases where it's a matter of life and death. But just the increasing news reports that we're hearing about, I'm thinking of just in the last couple weeks, that huge story. I think it was in the Post about the effects of social media on young people, especially young girls.

There was a report a couple weeks ago about the intense harassment that journalists experience on social media, including violence and how inordinately that affects women journalists. And I just think just in my day-to-day interactions on Twitter how often things can take off and turn ugly, if not violent.

And we know that something needs to be done there. And I'm not sure what the solution is again here, but, and I'm not sure the Supreme Court, this Supreme Court, is the one that I trust to, to make that decision, but I will be following this case closely.

DAULT: Well, and I want to now step back and take this particular case and what it represents as a metaphor for our churches, particularly in the Catholic tradition, because what we're talking about and the dynamics that you're describing, Heidi, are extremism gets amplified, and in fact, extremism amplified gets rewarded either by advertising dollars or just having eyeballs sticking on the site.

And some of our leadership have taken notice of that and have begun to implement that same sort of dynamic in our parishes, where in their communications, in their social media, they begin to try and attract more and more extreme edges or fringes of the faith, again, to try and get an a very animated base, either to donate or to basically be the kind of equivalent of shock troops in the social sphere. And to me that's a great concern, because what we're seeing happening play out in the tech field, we're also seeing play out across the social spheres, particularly in the churches. And I'm wondering what you two think about those kinds of dynamics and what we as Catholics can be doing about that.

HORAN: Well, I think, going back to a statement I was making earlier about how these algorithms are not neutral, they’re not blind. They learn from our input, and they mimic kind of human processing based on the information that we put out there. And so these studies have been done, including around job application evaluation, that they are not unbiased.

In fact, the same sort of human, oftentimes racist, sexist, other presumptions that the quote unquote computer or software doesn't realize, but it's only operating from the test cases, the sampling that we provide to it. I'm thinking about how this is both a digital problem and a kind of analog human problem. That maybe expands what you were saying, David, about the implications for the church. So I'm thinking about the ongoing defamation lawsuit of damages nearing 1.6 billion dollars of Dominion Voting Systems against the Fox News Network and the discovery that's been, been released, we've been getting sort of these troves in the last two weeks about the, just the blatant lying that is going on under the kind of umbrella of something that calls itself news. And so, this isn't like computer generated, this isn't ChatGPT or something like this, or some AI system generating this. These are humans making choices to put out into the system and therefore engage with other humans and inform their opinions based on lies that are motivated by what the humans making that decision, who are broadcasting these lies, believe their hearers or viewers want to see.

And I think that's exactly what these algorithms do, right? Because the longer you stay on YouTube, the more clicks you make, the longer you stay on other social media platforms and click, you know, various your eyes, see ads and these sorts of things, the more money somebody is making, the more money others are spending.

And that is overtly clear in the text messages and emails and depositions of the Fox staff and ownership as we've seen. And I think this is a human condition ratcheted up. I think about this with any kind of technological advancement. Not to sound like some kind of prophet in a cave who's a Luddite screaming and yelling about these sorts of things, but let's be honest, it's the same question we have in the Catholic tradition around whether or not there could even be criteria in today's modern era that is, that constitutes a just war, right? When we think about the reality of atomic weapons, when we think about how quick escalation can take place, when we think about technologies like drones and we think about, like, cyberhacking and all these kinds of things, on the one hand, these are new problems; on the other hand, they're the oldest problems in human history, and so I'm with Heidi on this one, and I think, David, you're probably in the same boat with all three of us are, that we don't have an answer to this. But I do think, you know, surprise, surprise. As a theologian, I'm gonna invite us to come back to a human theological anthropology.

How we understand ourselves, the role of sin, the role of grace, the role of pride, the role of selfishness and desire and greed. I think those are kind of the same questions at the core. I have to admit, I was kind of charmed by the ownership of the nine justices in, in the excerpts that I've heard that they're like, we don't understand this. You need to explain this to us. Which on the one hand is I call it charming because I'm like, okay, everybody's human. We don't all know this stuff. On the other hand, these are nine not-young people who have to make some very serious decisions or encourage the US legislature to do that. And they're in a similar boat. So, maybe all of that is a long way of saying I don't know what the heck to do.

SCHLUMPF: Well maybe they should bring in David Dault to do some education, ‘cause he's such a great teacher. He put it in such great context for us. You know, I was going the same place that you were there, Dan, and to follow up on what you said, David, is that this is a faith problem. This is a moral issue.

I'm glad you brought in the issue around the Fox News folks who were blatantly lying to their viewers and then behind the scenes knowing that they were lying. It's bad enough when you thought they really believed all that stuff they were saying about the election being stolen, because their ideology had clearly blinded them to what was obviously the truth, but then to find out that they didn't even believe it themselves and it was a purely crass way of, like you said, responding to a system that alleged, you know, that as you point out, David, that does reward this kind of thing. But I guess I just am concerned, because it, we are seeing that in our churches on Catholic Twitter and in communications and publications and these sorts of places that are religious in scope and Catholic in scope, because we are not exempt from these other places and broader culture; we are also proud of our culture. And so, but you would think, and you would hope that we could be leaders in this area because we have our moral tradition. We have our faith that should be prompting us to do better. So until we can, I'm not sure that we're gonna be the poster childs for how to do the internet, right? Unfortunately.

DAULT: I just want to pick up on what both of you have just been saying, the idea that we need to be leaders in this. I couldn't agree more. And Dan, you pointing out that moment where the justices basically said, we don't understand this, and yet they have to make decisions on it. I want to challenge all of our listeners to do your best to become better informed about these broad issues, both in the tech world, but also as we've suggested, how they spill over into the social life of our parishes and to really become actively engaged in talking to your lawmakers and talking to your deacons and priests about the social effects of these kinds of algorithmic decisions, and the more that we can get involved in that as leaders with moral seriousness, I think the better that the world will be. But we can't expect somebody else to do it.

We can't expect the justices to do it. We can't expect the priests to do it. We can't expect the deacons to do it until we start doing it. So that's my challenge to the listeners and my challenge to myself to become even better informed about this. And I'm sure, unfortunately, we're gonna have to come back to this topic, but for right now, we're gonna move on.

Thank you so much. You're listening to The Francis Effect. We'll be back in just a moment.

Segment 3

HORAN: Welcome back to The Francis Effect. I'm Dan Horan. I'm here with David Dault and Heidi Schlumpf. Every couple of weeks we get together to discuss a variety of topics from a perspective informed by our shared Catholic faith. Ten years ago, after the historic resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, a papal conclave was called to elect a new pope.

That conclave began on March 12, 2013, and one day later, on March 13, on the fifth ballot, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina was elected to lead the worldwide Catholic Church. He took the name Francis, the first pope to do so, and Pope Francis has been a pope of many firsts. The first Jesuit, the first pope from the Americas, the first pope from the Southern Hemisphere. Ever since he first appeared on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica on the evening of the thirteenth and asked the people to pray for him, he has been surprising Catholics around the world and in the United States. From the beginning, Francis has put a particular emphasis on God's mercy. He used the image of the church as a field hospital where wounded people can come and find healing. To a question about LGBTQ persons, he responded, who am I to judge? He was elected to be a reformer, and while he has not instituted major reforms such as reinstituting women as deacons, he has allowed such questions to be considered, and done so openly. Francis's writings include the monumental encyclical Laudato Si, published in 2015, On Care for our Common Home, which calls for the church in humanity to respond to global warming and excessive consumerism.

In 2022, Pope Francis wrote Fratelli Tutti, an encyclical that pointed to the values of fraternity and social friendship as a way to build a better world. In his homilies, speeches, and writings, he emphasizes God's love, urges going to the margins to those who are suffering, and he does not hesitate to criticize the way some yield power in ways that do not serve the common good.

Francis, though, is not without his critics, especially in the United States, where more conservative or self-identified traditionalist Catholics have opposed his more open style. Many of those critics also do not like what may end up being Pope Francis's signature compliment. That is, the ongoing Synod on Synodality, which tries to move the institution to being more of a listening church, rather than one that just prescribes answers. Heidi, NCR has been reporting on Francis for these past ten years, and your publication will have several articles that analyze his papacy as we approach the March 13th anniversary. So maybe we should begin with you; what are your impressions about Pope Francis and his influence on the church so far?

SCHLUMPF: Yes. So I've been thinking about this Pope Francis anniversary since before the new year, when we started doing our planning, which was also before the death of Pope Benedict. So, it's been interesting to mark the end of his life, when he died on New Year's Eve. And then also be looking back to the ten years of the papacy since Pope Benedict left as active pope.

I'm about to go into, after we finish recording here, another event where I'm going to be speaking with our two Vatican correspondents, our former Vatican correspondent, Joshua McElwee, and our current Vatican correspondent, Chris White, about their impressions of covering Francis. So I've never been a Rome correspondent, but I have been editor and national correspondent during the Francis papacy, and it is an exciting time to be in the church. It's an exciting time to be a Catholic journalist, to be covering a pope who clearly was elected to take things in a different direction than they had been under the two previous papacies. But who has clearly run into some of the very human obstacles in trying to move a very large organization in another direction.

So I think there are a lot of Catholics, especially in the West, I know in the United States, who have not been fully excited about some of the changes that Pope Francis has tried to do. They've been small, they've been incremental, and sometimes they haven't happened at all. But I, the tenth anniversary is a good time to step back and just realize how much things have changed, even just in the tone or the tenor of what it's like to be in our church.

And to move from a culture of fear, where everything is about clamping down on theologians or instituting new rules and regulations designed to stifle open debate about things, to a leadership that is actually encouraging that and saying we need more of that. So that is a very significant change, and we can't deny it.

And I think one of the ways to measure how significant it is is by how much opposition there has been to it and who is opposing it. So the opposition to Francis, especially here in the United States, is the topic of one of our major articles that's coming out this week, looking back over the last ten years, because I think that's an indication of just what he's trying to do, is sadly, how many people are opposing that.

What about you guys? What are your thoughts about Francis after ten years?

HORAN: Well, yeah, I think it's unfortunate and sad that we have to always add a caveat about the resistance he receives and that his ministry has elicited, especially in the United States, quite frankly. I've written about this in my column, and have spoken about this publicly that, you know, I, I feel very fortunate to have an occasional global perspective. Last summer, for instance, I was in South Africa for a month and a half lecturing, and was able to kind of on occasion look back at my home country, at the United States and the church in the US in particular. And it's embarrassing at times. There've been recent articles of bishops in the US jabbing at one another. There have been the signing of the Dubia calling out Pope Francis, there have been those who have taken the side of the disgraced former ambassador for the Holy See, Vigano, over the sitting bishop of Rome, the Pope. You can't make this stuff up at times. You really just can't.

And so that upsets me, because I think this past decade has been, despite all of, or maybe in the context of, all of the transition and turmoil, violence and war, global pandemic, rising consciousness about inequity and injustice in our communities, both here in the US and abroad, I think Pope Francis has been an extraordinary pastoral leader.

He doesn't get everything perfect, but that's okay. He's a human being, as all popes have been, as every saint has been. But I do believe that he's sincere, and,  and the one thing that guides his ongoing discernment is the gospel, and that's all of our call through baptism is to live the Holy Gospel.

And if, my sense is, I can't speak for Pope Francis, but my intuition and my observations lead me to say that when he sees a conflict between what he's expected to do, what other people think he has done, or what precedent may have suggested, and he sees the needs right before him and sees a conflict with what the gospel is asking of him or what Jesus would do in his shoes, he sides with Jesus and the gospel. I can't resist pointing out that that is exactly what his namesake, Francis of Assisi, was best known for. Not letting stereotypes and vilification of his Muslim sisters and brothers get in the way of fraternal embrace and peaceful dialogue. His reaching out to the margins of society with day laborers and those who are suffering from forms of marginalization, driven by misunderstandings of health like leprosy or by social class, we have example after example of Francis of Assisi taking the side of the gospel over the side of anything else, at times including practices and assumptions of church leadership.

And so I think Pope Francis has ruffled the feathers because there is no blank check anymore. Just because you have a miter, just because you have a pointy hat, doesn't mean that you can do and say whatever you want. Especially when that comes up in con-, in contradiction to what Jesus lays out for us by way of action in the gospel.

DAULT: I'm just gonna say, so listeners, longtime listeners may know I was not born Catholic. I joined the church when I was 35 years old, thereabouts. And this was midway through my theological training, and so I came into the church with a lot of knowledge about the history and the theology. I knew what I was getting into, but it was also a lot of potential, like I saw potential for the Catholic Church that wasn't being realized in terms of its ability to really stand for the vulnerable, to really be able to step into the breach against some of the vicissitudes of capitalism.

I really kind of was coming in a hopeful way, and the papacy of Pope Francis has really deepened all of that, like it has taken all of these intellectual potentials and it has helped to bring it together into a coherent, theological, organic whole for me. Like, the whole of my understanding of what it means to be Catholic has deepened so much by being challenged by the ideas that he's put into his papacy. The idea of synodality has become revolutionary for me, but also the way that Pope Francis talks about the need for the poor to be supported in becoming the protagonists, the dignified protagonists of their own destinies. And that has become a rallying cry for me as both a teacher, but also as a servant of the faith, someone who wants to look for opportunities in my daily life to support those that I encounter in their dignity and in deepening the ability for them to become agents of their own story. All of this is part of the gift that Pope Francis has given to me as a believer.

My Catholicism is so much more rich than it would have been if we had stayed on the trajectories of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. They were wonderful thinkers. But as the Talmud says, a clever mind is not a heart. And Pope Francis has both a clever mind, but also a depth of heart that has really revolutionized my walk as a Catholic. I'm so grateful for this ten years. It means that I'm gonna be a Catholic for the rest of my life, I'm sure.

SCHLUMPF: Well, that is such a beautiful testimony, David. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I hear that from everyday Catholics as well, that even if, and everyday Catholics and former Catholics, so even if Francis maybe hasn't brought people back to regular practice of the faith, that he projects this image of a more listening, a more open, a more caring church.

I think to use political labels can be dangerous, and to call him a liberal is probably not very accurate and does not reflect the complexity that you, David, have found. I would really encourage people who, you know, maybe if your only experience of Francis is, of filtered through the media and the things that tend to rise to the level of headline level, I would really encourage people to spend time with some of his writings, either whether it's his weekly homilies or addresses, or some of his documents. I was able, or I chose to during Covid, to do some homeschooling of our kids with religious ed, and with my son, who was in junior high at the time, we went through Laudato Si. And I don't wanna speak for my son. Let's just say both of us were a little surprised at some of the challenges in his writing. They're challenging to a, to all Christians, to all people, that we could be better living the gospel. And any leader who's able to really get to the heart of things, which is Jesus's message, which I think Pope Francis is most focused on, is a good leader. I think so, as someone who works in leadership, I often look to the way he leads to see if there are things to learn there, too.

DAULT: Dan, I'm curious, in the ten years that Francis has been pope, how have the various Franciscan communities reacted and responded and grown as a result of his papacy?

HORAN: That's a great question. I certainly don't wanna speak for all Franciscans. I can speak anecdotally, and I can speak for my view. But I would say by and large, there's been a great reception. I think everybody was skeptical, we included. Maybe not as skeptical as his Jesuit brothers when he took the name Francis, and there was that initial flurry of misunderstanding or unfulfilled hope that he was taking the name Francis Xavier. But it was a wake-up call. I remember those early years having conversations where we'd say, from the very beginning, his pastoral spirit was on display and he really seemed to be channeling Francis of Assisi, that he felt very compelled, the concern for the poor, the concern for peacemaking, the concern for the whole of creation, I think, the concern for the forgotten and the marginalized.

One of the things that's worth remembering, too, Francis of Assisi, along with some of the other mendicant orders that, that rose in the thirteenth century, that whole model of religious life was very new. It was brand new, in fact. You had canons regular and monasteries of cloistered women religious and monks. And then you had secular clergy, what we today we'd call diocesan priests. But this idea that there would be religious who would go out to the public squares and to the fields where people worked and to be with them and work with them and be co-laborers, literally in the vineyard, not a place where people would come to them only on Sunday mornings, but a community in which you would be a full part, not often a monastery on the hill, but in the fields, on the streets with folks, you know, that's so emblematic of Pope Francis's ministry. I always talk about this, and I joke about it sometimes about how unpredictable he is, but look at the gospel in action.

That first weekend after his election as Bishop of Rome, even before he was formally installed at the Lateran Basilica, he goes to a local parish in Rome and celebrates mass, kind of surprises people, but he's the local bishop. He's the bishop of the diocese. What a great thing to do. And then to put icing on the cake, he, like a normal pastor, processes out with the ministers and keeps going, walks out the door into the street to greet people, shaking hands and asking people how they're doing, just like the pastor would after celebrating Eucharist on Sunday. And the Swiss Guards were not amused. That was not planned. They didn't scope it out. They didn't have snipers on roofs or anything like that. And to me, it's been the same thing ever since, even as he slowed down and his health has been more difficult. I bring that up because I think he is living up to, as far as I can tell, his namesake’s vision and mission quite well.

And my understanding is that most of my Franciscan brothers and sisters agree wholeheartedly. Sadly, the church leadership and laity in this country that are swept up into the polarization we've been talking about really throughout the episode, I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule. But I know, for example, not the current minister general of the Franciscan order, but his predecessor, who was an American, Father Michael Perry, was very close to Pope Francis and remains very inspired by the Holy Father’s modeling of what Franciscan, maybe with a lowercase F, right, Franciscan for all, not just capital F friars and sisters and lay Franciscans, but all people are called to live the gospel. So, yeah, I think people have been really pleased. I have; I've been frustrated with him at times. I think that's important, too. Like I said, doesn't always get everything right or doesn't understand things.

But I will say there are times where I've been so impressed. And one example comes to mind with, I think, his, as he would explain it after the fact, his quick judgment around the Chilean bishops’ crisis in, in, in the sexual abuse cover-up, where he was taking the side kind of half-informed or erring on the side of a good faith, only then to come to realize that that was probably a mistake.

And famously, all the Chilean bishops in one group resigned. People will recall that instance and the Pope acknowledging he had made a mistake in his judgment. I don't think we've seen that in, in the last hundred years. Really a kind of sense of humility and honesty and humanity, which is very refreshing and is honest. I think anybody who assumes that role or any ministerial role and doesn't acknowledge that they make mistakes and own that is full of you-know-what.

SCHLUMPF: Yeah, you mentioned his health, Dan, and you know, he's not a young person. He's 86. We'll, probably not gonna see ten more years of Francis. I don't know, maybe five would be great. But I think as we approach the anniversary, there'll be a lot written and said about looking back on the last ten years.

And I encourage people to go to NCR online and to read as much as they can about him. But to think too about what might be saying going forward, I think there are a number of things that he has not accomplished yet that need to still be implemented. My sense is that he wants to remain pope long enough to see the Synod on Synodality through, which has become a two-year meeting now. And that that might be part of his legacy. But who knows? The world may put challenges in front of the pope that might change what we think we're gonna see in the years to come.

DAULT: Well, listeners, we would love to hear how The Francis Effect has affected your own walk of faith. So if you wanna share that with us through email or social media, we're always happy to hear from you. Heidi, Father Dan, as always, it is such a blessing to get a chance to talk to the both of you. Thank you so much, and we will be back in a couple of weeks. Listeners, I hope that you all will join us. You've been listening to The Francis Effect. Thanks so much for being here with us.