Live from St. Mary's College - Pride Month Preview, Election 2024, and a Pop Culture Roundup
Heidi, Fr. Daniel, and David go on the road for a live taping at St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. They end season 12 by looking ahead to Pride month in June, and to the 2024 election, as well as talking about what they've been watching and reading. Please join us for Season 13, starting in September!
INTRO - Welcome to Saint Mary’s!
Thomas Merton Conference at Saint Mary’s
SEGMENT 1 - Looking ahead to Pride in June
SEGMENT 2 - Election 2024 - First Looks
SEGMENT 3 - Pop Culture Roundup
TRANSCRIPT
INTRO
DAULT: Hello and welcome to The Francis Effect podcast, taping live at St. Mary's College.
SCHLUMPF: Woo.
DAULT: 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 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, right here 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: How have I been? I just saw you like two days ago for the recording of our previous episode, but it is so great to be doing a live episode of The Francis Effect. This is my first time. I know that before I joined the podcast, you guys used to do live tapings at the LA Religious Ed Congress, but it's really exciting to be at St. Mary's and to be doing a taping here. I am an alum of that school across the street, but I love coming back to St. Mary's, and I've been here many times since my graduation because you all have so many great speakers and programs here, especially at the Center for Spirituality. So it's great to be here.
How about you, Dan? How's it to be here where you are all the time, anyway?
HORAN: It was the shortest commute of the three of us. It was great. It's wonderful. It's very exciting. It's a busy time of year, as most of the folks in this room can attest. I know, David, up on the north side of Chicago, it's a busy time of year. Heidi, for you, it's always a busy time of year. The news keeps on newsing, but it's great to be here. The weather is changing. I think maybe it's decided to be spring for a minute before it becomes winter again. But there's lots of stuff going on, and as you said, we've seen each other very recently, because people listening to this episode when it drops in a couple weeks will not realize that this week's episode actually drops tomorrow. So if you want to hear this week's episode, for those who are with us live, I feel like I'm in a Christopher Nolan movie right now. Everything, what? What is time? What is space? Where are we? But I'm happy we're here. David, what are you up to? How's it going?
DAULT: So I'm very happy to be here. You may not know this, but this is one of the few times in the last two years that I've actually had a chance to see Heidi and Father Dan. And so I've been delighted all day to just get a chance to hang out with them. I had a good drive down here. The, there's a little bit of construction on the expressway, and that was a little difficult to get through, but everything else was good.
But also, and you all may not relate to this, but I am enjoying the fact that the semester is coming to an end, and that for me means a little bit more sleep, a little bit more rest and the chance to work on some projects that, have you ever been in a swimming pool and you've tried to grab a beach ball, but every time that you reach for the beach ball, the wave that you create by trying to grab for the beach ball pushes the beach ball farther away? That's been what my life has been like for the past six or seven weeks. So I'm looking forward to being able to finally grab that beach ball. So that's what I'm up to. But I'm also interested in what the two of you are gonna be doing for your summer and what's coming up for you. Heidi, how about you?
SCHLUMPF: Well, I'm the only one, not, not on an academic schedule, so I don't get to take the summer off, although I have some vacations planned. I have a couple events coming up this summer, and one I wanted to mention specifically, some of you here, I think, remember St. Mary's College hosted the Women of the Church conference several years ago. And I know that they're having it again this year in Collegeville, Minnesota, and I will be a speaker there. It's July 19 through 21. So I'm really looking forward to that. But otherwise we are planning to put the pool up in the backyard. I know I talk about that a lot on the podcast, and a couple vacations planned with my family, so. But you guys, on the academic schedule, you get a little more of a break. What about you, Dan?
HORAN: Well sort of, I guess there's no rest for the wicked or for theologians, because June for us is conference season. So we have the College Theology Society, the Catholic Theological Society of America. Those conferences take place in early, mid-June, and so we finish the academic year and then we are on the road doing papers, presenting them, listening to them, engaging with colleagues.
It's wonderful, but it is wonderfully exhausting. But the thing I'm most looking forward to in June is that here at St. Mary's College, we are hosting the International Thomas Merton Society Conference. A lot of first post-pandemic things have been happening. This will be our first post-pandemic in-person ITMS gathering, and takes place June 22 to 25 here at beautiful St. Mary's. You can register today. Please do.
SCHLUMPF: What about you, David? What are you doing this summer?
DAULT: Did I mention sleep? Also my family and I, we take every, one week every summer we take a vacation, usually to a lake or to some sort of remote location. And so I'm looking forward to doing that, but also, longtime listeners to the podcast will recognize that I'm not the fastest writer in the world. And so there are several projects that I have been intending to have finished, talk about Tenet-like time switches here. But I have several projects that I have been intending to have finished for multiple months now. And so my hope is that in the first few weeks of summer, I will be finishing that chapter and putting the final polish on that edit of that book manuscript that my editor's been waiting for. And getting started on some other things. So I'm excited about that. And because I am wired in a weird way, I'm also excited about the possibility of cleaning the house a bit. So that's coming up, too.
SCHLUMPF: Speaking of newsing keep newsing. So in our previous, and the time warp of, in, in the previous episode, we talked about the update on the synod, and we were talking about the continental phase, and I remember expressing a little bit of, I don't know, I think I even called it cynicism, about where things might go.
Well, guess what? In between recording the podcast and it dropping, tomorrow, but not tomorrow when people hear this. We got great news about the synod, so if you haven't heard, the pope has made it that laypeople, including women, will have a vote at the synod of bishops. Which, this is like a little bit of an insider baseball thing for people who may not even be following what the synod is. But it is quite big, I think, and I'm wondering what you guys think about that. We just wanted to update our listeners that it had happened, but what are you thinking?
HORAN: I think it's extraordinary. It is, it is, it's unique. It's important. It's long in coming. It's something that should have been done a couple thousand years ago, but here we are. The church moves at a slow pace. It's, it's significant. It's absolutely significant, and it will be interesting to see how the process works.
The synod also, what the synod is gonna be called, I saw another theologian tweeting about this, that this is an open question. Technically, these are synods of bishops, but now traditionally, only bishops can vote in a synod. Now that women, laypeople, religious who are not ordained bishops, can vote and have right of voice and vote, some have had right a voice for a while. What do you call this? Is it just the synod, which actually is really significant. It's important. Nothing like this has happened before. And one of the things I'm gonna be looking for is the transition from what's called the instrumentum laboris, which is the kind of plan for how the conversation at the synod is gonna take place, what that looks like. What the conversation or what they call interventions on the floor of the synod hall look like when people actually offer input or offer reports, offer insight or debates at times, and then what the final document looks like, because the final document is voted on by the voting members of the synod. And for the first time in church history, non-bishops are gonna be able to do that. And so I hope this is gonna be something more reflective, as the synodal process has intended to be, of the whole church.
SCHLUMPF: So I know there was a brother before on it that, was he non-voting? I can't remember.
HORAN: Yeah, that's a good question.
SCHLUMPF: And I think that's how we moved here. But I would definitely like to acknowledge the activists, and especially the religious women who have been calling for this for a long time and trying to move this forward. So it's really a great um, great, great step forward. And of course it happened because I said, oh, I don't know how these things are gonna go. And then some good news happened, so.
DAULT: Speaking of what's coming up, here on the show today, we've got three topics. We're gonna be talking about Pride Month, that is coming up in June. We're gonna be looking ahead to election 2024 and doing some first takes on what that might entail for us. And we're gonna be doing a pop culture roundup, so we do hope that you'll stick with us. Thank you for listening. This is The Francis Effect.
SEGMENT 1 - Looking ahead to Pride in June
HORAN: Welcome back to The Francis Effect. I'm Dan Horan, and 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. On April 25, President Joe Biden officially announced that he will seek a second term, positioning himself once again as the alternative to former president Donald Trump, and as the best person to repel the threats to our democracy.
As Biden said in the campaign launch video, “When I ran for president four years ago, I said we were in a battle for the soul of America, and we still are.” The 2024 presidential race is likely to be a rematch between Biden and Trump, if pundits and polls are to be believed, and we don't know about polls these days. Most commentators agree that neither Robert E. [sic] Kennedy Jr. nor the author and guru Marianne Williamson pose a significant threat to Biden for the Democratic nomination. On the GOP side, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump's main competitor, has been losing ground in polls over the past two months, though some polls do seem to show DeSantis ahead of Trump.
Already, much is being made about Biden's age. At eighty years old, he is already the oldest president in US history. If he were to win, he would be 86 years old at the end of his term. If Trump were to regain the Oval Office, he would be 82 at the end of his term, which would be older than any other American president. Trump is currently 76. If the 2024 presidential election is Biden versus Trump, early polling seems to show a close race, with Biden leading Trump by 1.4 percentage points on average so far this year.
Of course, polling this early in the race is notoriously unreliable. When The Francis Effect returns for its thirteenth season next fall, we will surely be talking about the 2024 presidential campaign. But let's do a relatively quick first take on this topic. Heidi, what are you thinking will be the issues that the country will be focusing on during this election?
SCHLUMPF: Well, I do know that much is being made about Biden's age at this stage of the announcement, and I'm hearing that when I talk to young people. So I'm curious, maybe we'll hear later from some of the students who are here to with us today. I personally would like to be seeing a younger candidate, and I think that really what's gonna make a difference in this election and in every election is turnout. And what we keep waiting for year after year, after election after election is to see young people really turn out. Because if we could get a younger turnout, I think some elections would be going the other way.
I know, Dan, you also listened to the daily podcast from the New York Times, and I listened to it on the way here to South Bend, the one from yesterday that talked about the strategy for Biden, really. And this commentator, I don't recall who it was, said he really only needs to win one of three toss-up states. So Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona, and I thought that was really in, and this person was confident that he would be able to take one of those states, whereas the Republican nominee, Trump or DeSantis or whoever it might be, would have to win all three. So turnout will be important, but it'll be a much more local race if that analysis is really correct.
But in the end, I think we're gonna see a lot of what we've been seeing the last couple years, which is culture war issue discussion. As important as it is to talk about economics or foreign policy or war or all the other things that are really affecting our day-to-day lives, we're gonna be talking about transgender bathrooms or abortion pills or the kinds of things that make conflict and unfortunately, we in the media cover, but maybe aren't as important in the larger scheme. That's my opinion. What do you guys think?
HORAN: Well, I think, I'm with you on the age concern. This is something a lot of people are talking about. It's getting a lot of attention, and for historic reasons. We've had back to back the two oldest presidents we've ever had. We forget that former president Donald Trump was the oldest up to that point as well, and so it's something worth noting.
I go back and forth, frankly, as somebody who has just entered middle age and is feeling a bit older and realize, especially at a college where I'm teaching students who could be my kids age-wise in terms of generational difference, I realize like, okay, I not, I don't have the energy I once had, these sorts of things.
But I have to say that ageism has been a very serious problem, especially in civil politics, in both directions. So if you remember the primary for the Democrats in 2020, former South Bend mayor, now transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, would've been the youngest president in American history, and a lot was made of that, about he didn't have enough experience, he needed more time, he needed more exposure, et cetera, et cetera.
I see the same sort of thing being played out in reverse. So one of the things I've been thinking about is how significant age is. And I don't have an answer to this, because I think oftentimes we lump people into general categories. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, now Secretary Pete Buttigieg, is an exceptionally brilliant, talented person. Regardless of your politics, you can't deny that. And I think the same thing can be said about other people who are much, much older. I think about the late Queen Elizabeth II, who ruled into her nineties and what had her wits about her, and clearly had a lot of responsibilities. There's been some social media chatter around President Biden's age, and people have noted that Mick Jagger is only a few months younger than President Biden, and yet see what he does on stage.
DAULT: Is he running?
HORAN: He's, he's physically running. I guess the point is this, because of the ageism against senior citizens, the presumption is, well, his health is an issue, which is of course the case, but I bring that up, too. Pope Francis is not young. There are people who carry a lot of responsibilities at an older age.
I guess what I'm trying to say is whether we're talking about people who are more older than traditionally expected or younger than traditionally expected, we need to look at the person themselves. And trust, what are they capable of? Because just because I at forty don't feel like I could do what President Biden does in his eighties doesn't mean that he can't do it. And I certainly can't do what Mick Jagger does. Can I dance like Jagger? No.
DAULT: Well for me, I hear what both of you are saying about age, but I'm more concerned about mindset, and one of the things that as a fifty-two-year-old, a proud member of Gen X, can one be proud of being Gen X? I don't know, but thank you. But as a member of Generation X, I'm aware that there are very few politicians from my generation, and certainly we haven't had any presidents who have been Gen X presidents.
And so this is really something that I think is a problem across the board, is that we see these aging politicians who are literally clawing onto power and refusing to relinquish it. And that, that I think is a, is an indication of a larger problem in our society generally with the sort of availability of wealth and the availability of opportunities. There is a real concentration in that particular generation, and so I am always a little cautious to think about the ways in which the presidents are thinking about how the country should be run. And the ideas that I see from these older candidates are, I'm sorry, they're old ideas. And I would really like to see some more youthful vigor in the conversation.
SCHLUMPF: Yes, sometimes I think that's what people who are concerned about Biden's age, it, it is code for maybe wishing he weren't so moderate and maybe he was a little more to the left, as many young, at least young members of the Democratic Party are. So I think that might be part of it.
And since we're all revealing our age up here tonight, is that it? I'm about to be fifty-nine, so I'm older than all of you, but I personally would love to see someone younger moving up in politics. But on the other hand, I think what we're going to see, again, if it is a Trump-Biden rematch, so to say, it's gonna be a choice like it was back then between chaos and some level of normalcy, and I think I'm hopeful that the country will choose normalcy.
DAULT: Well, one of the things that I'm interested in, I, and longtime listeners will know that I watch very carefully this synodal process in the church, and I think that there's a real kind of leverage point of hope there, because if we can get better as a, as a theological and liturgical body of listening to each other, and in particular of listening to those voices that have traditionally not been included in the conversations, that becomes a really great model for a democratic renewal generally. And so I hold a lot of hope for Catholics who are engaging very actively in the process of synodality, being able to take that into the body politic.
HORAN: Yeah. I wanna pick up on that a little bit, too, with the Catholic theme in particular, but just to call back to a moment with this younger view or like, younger, newer perspective. I'll just point out that another senior citizen politician is Senator Bernie Sanders, who a lot of young people, particularly in the 2016 primary season, identified with somebody who was nowhere near their generation, because age doesn't necessarily define one's worldview, politics, ideas, ideology, and the like.
So that's important. It's one factor among many, which is a segue way, perhaps, to the Catholic conversation, because this will be something. President Biden is only the second Catholic president the United States has had. And if Governor Ron DeSantis is a candidate, throws his hat in the ring, he may be, he's Catholic, identifies as Catholic as well, at least historically. And so that's a factor.
And then one of these questions that will come up oftentimes, both in secular media and in Catholic media, is, what is the “Catholic vote”? Who are people gonna get behind? And I think one of the things that's rather disappointing when we look at the data, look at the facts, is that Catholic voting tracks with other demographics in those identity categories. So there is no single Catholic block, but there's a lot of energy and a lot of attention that goes into convincing both internal, into the church, other Catholics and externally to pollsters and to commentators and pundits, that there is one issue or a handful of issues that are exclusively Catholic, and that's the way they're gonna vote. That just isn't the case. So I think it's interesting to see, we're not yet there where people are talking about demographic groups, but I wonder if anything's gonna change. What do you think, especially you, Heidi, you’ve followed this for a long time?
SCHLUMPF: Yeah, I wish I was planning already ahead for my convention coverage. I know I'm gonna have the Democratic Convention in my current hometown in Chicago, and then the Republican Convention will be in Milwaukee, which is where I'm from originally.
In between those two conventions, we're going to have the Eucharistic Congress, which is what the US bishops will be focusing on that summer, but we'll be writing a lot about Catholic involvement in politics. And I think that the Dobbs decision from last year is going to influence this next election in the way it has in elections that have happened since then.
And this is a topic that has a lot of Catholic resonance, so we have the pro-life teachings of the church, but we also have a number of Catholics who want to implement the pro-life teachings of the church in a different way than only by making abortion illegal. So I think we're gonna hear a lot about that, a lot about Latino vote.
Again, it was interesting in that podcast I listened to, to say that Florida's not in play anymore. So that's a red state now. And Biden doesn't need to win it. So then there might be less focus on the Latino vote, but we will be focusing on that.
DAULT: So I'm interested, Heidi, about what you just said about podcasting, because another factor that I think is really playing in more and more, and one certainly that is near and dear to my heart, is the idea of new media. And we have seen over the past decade, certainly, that social media has a tremendous effect on the ways in which elections play out.
And I, I think of Ron DeSantis’s recent trip to Japan, and he was there fresh off the plane and was giving a press conference, and people screen-grabbed aspects of that press conference. And it was sort of a kind of Howard Dean part two. So I think that politicians have to be a lot more savvy, given the media landscape and how things have changed.
I remember the story about Richard Nixon talking about Walter Cronkite and saying, well, if we've lost Walter Cronkite, we've lost the nation. Now it's, if you've lost a certain band of Twitter followers, you've lost the nation. But I also think about the ways in which the democracy of something like what we're doing right now, which is literally, I set up this equipment and now we're talking and we're recording it, and it's gonna be heard by thousands and thousands of people. Like this is a real kind of resurgence of the ways in which back 500 years ago, the printing press really revolutionized a lot of the ability to influence popular thoughts. So I'm very interested to see what's gonna be coming.
HORAN: Well, I have two thoughts. One of them is to pick up on the Walter Cronkite remark and to think about some of the news that's happened as we're recording this week, with Fox News firing Tucker Carlson and CNN firing Don Lemon and 538 Nate Silver. One of the cofounders of 538 is, is being like, oh, so there's change right now in people who have been significantly influential in some of the public conversation around politics. So I think that's something we also need to see. Is that actually gonna change anything? Will somebody step into that space? Time will tell.
The other thing I was thinking about was, to circle back to the opening, when acknowledging with President Biden's announcement of his intention to run again in 2024, there does not seem to be any serious contender, and there has been a lot of conversation about how that would be good or bad if there was somebody in the Democratic Party to rise up, maybe analogous to Ron DeSantis, to Donald Trump.
Do either of you have thoughts, or maybe it's like a wild card or a fantasy team, like you have fantasy football. Who could you imagine filling in a space, and would that be good or bad?
SCHLUMPF: In the Democratic Party? Yikes. I don't know. Yeah, tonight's the draft, actually, the NFL draft, we're missing it. So who would we draft?
HORAN: I don't understand football. Don't tell the people across the street.
SCHLUMPF: Like, right now it seems almost, like, traitorous to raise up somebody else when we're trying to avoid that kind of primary conflict, I think. But yeah, I'm not sure. I guess I would like to see someone who, and I don't mean to just like play the identity card, but I'd like to see someone who's not like an old white guy. I have been somewhat disappointed by Kamala Harris. I think she's good at some things, but I don't see her as presidential candidate possibility. So I'm not sure. Do you have somebody?
DAULT: So I love stirring the pot, and I love the idea of shaking things up. And I love the idea. Like I've, I'll just share with everybody that I’ve voted third party in a lot of elections. For a lot of reasons, but I like the idea of coming from the outside with ideas and principles. And so I would love to see in a few years someone like Justin Jones down in Tennessee continue to rise in, in exposure and to actually bring the kind of deeply heartfelt politics that he's bringing where he's literally listening to people and actually being the kind of politician that you heard about in days of yore.
I'd love to see candidates like that, and that's one of the things that I'm really excited about by the younger generations is they understand the media aspect, and they're learning the political aspect. And so if nobody from Gen X gets to be a president, I would love to see one of these folks get to be a president. But I'm cynical enough to realize that probably there's gonna be a hundred-and-thirty-year-old white man trying to claw on to power in the presidency in 2048 or whatever it is. So, yeah.
SCHLUMPF: Well, and for people who don't know, he the, one of the Tennessee legislators who was censored or expelled and then, and put back in because he dared to speak up and join young people in speaking up about gun violence. Well, I know we're gonna keep talking about this, especially when we come back in the fall, and I know we'll be covering it at ncronline.org. But we'll table this conversation for a while and move to our next segment. You're listening to The Francis Effect.
SEGMENT 2 - Election 2024 - First Looks
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 shared Catholic faith.
In just a couple of weeks after this episode drops, the United States will begin celebrating the 53rd annual LGBTQ Pride Month throughout June. The tradition began on the one-year anniversary of the 1969 LGBTQ uprising at the Stonewall gay bar in New York City, which sought relief from police and political harassment of queer people. While originally a single day known as Gay Pride Day marked the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, traditionally celebrated on the last Sunday of June, many cities across the United States began to mark the occasion with a month-long celebration in June. According to the Library of Congress, “Today, celebrations include pride parades, picnics, parties, workshops, symposia and concerts, and LGBTQ Pride Month events attract millions of participants around the world. Memorials are held during this month for those members of the community who have been lost to hate crimes or HIV/AIDS. The purpose of the commemorative month is to recognize the impact that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals have had on history locally, nationally, and internationally.”
At the same time that the LGBTQ community and its allies are gearing up to celebrate the dignity and value of all people, state legislatures are proposing laws that restrict the civil rights of LGBTQ individuals, while especially targeting transgender folks. Overseas, the threat to LGBTQ individuals is rising in terrific ways, such as in Uganda, where its parliament passed draconian anti-gay laws. According to the New York Times, the new Ugandan legislation “threatens punishment as severe as death for some perceived offenses and calls for life in prison for anyone engaging in same-sex relations.”
The rise of contemporary homophobic and transphobic views, discourse, and violence is not limited to politicians and state actors. Some church leaders have also contributed to the ongoing dehumanization of members of the LGBTQ community, especially targeting trans folks. As we discussed in an earlier episode this season, on March 20, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine released a document calling for Catholic hospitals and healthcare providers to deny gender-affirming care for trans, nonbinary, and even some intersex people.
As we look ahead to LGBTQ Pride Month, we're also aware that there are some Catholic organizations, ministries, and religious communities that are supportive of the LGBTQ community and advocate on their behalf, not in spite of, but precisely because of, their Catholic identities. Still, homophobia and transphobia is alive and thriving amid many who identify as Catholic, especially among some of the most vocal church leaders.
Dan, you've written and spoken a lot about the LGBTQ community and Catholicism. You also co-teach a queer theology course here at St. Mary's College. What thoughts do you have about the intersection of Pride Month specifically and the LGBTQ community broadly and Catholicism?
HORAN: Well, I have a lot of thoughts. And I think you summarized a lot of the issues that are before us right now. And one of the things I'd like to highlight is the sort of juxtaposition that we have between what is meant to be a time to celebrate the dignity and value of all people loved into existence by God, and at the same time a kind of ramping up of a dehumanizing and life-threatening reality. You have places like Uganda, as you mentioned, David, where the threat is very immediate, but then there are subtle ways in which those threats persist. Threats against people's safety emotionally, psychologically, at times physically and the like.
So it's really important. I think there is an intersection, especially when we talk about Catholicism as a tradition that is supportive of all life, you know, as the saying goes in our community, from conception to natural death. Well, whose life are we talking about? I was noticing in the last segment, Heidi mentioned The Daily and I was thinking of a New York Times article as you were introducing the segment, and I was thinking about how yesterday in the Montana House of Representatives, they elected to block a trans lawmaker from the house floor for the remainder of the legislative session, which is really striking. We're seeing this in lots of places. We talked about the Tennessee legislators who were removed and then brought back.
We see this playing out in lots of different ways, and I think one of the things that's really disturbing is that this is, as reporting in the New York Times and elsewhere has shown, this is a coordinated effort to target people, and I think as Catholics that's something we should be aware of. It's something that our faith challenges us to care about and to be compassionate about and to be vocal about. What are you two thinking about this?
SCHLUMPF: Well, I know that the laws that you mentioned in the opening segment were, this is becoming an issue for LGBTQ, especially trans, folks who are considering moving to different states because of the way some of these laws are coming into being. What I'm looking at specifically is the intersection with Catholicism, of course, ‘cause that's what we're covering at our newspaper. And when I was preparing for this segment, I went and looked back on like, well what have we been covering about LGBTQ lately? And what was interesting to me is that pretty much most of the articles that we've run in the last couple weeks are mostly about trans issues. So this is not because we're making a big deal of it; it's ‘cause that's what's in the news.
And I think that's what we're seeing, is a move, I think, people who are anti-LGBTQ have realized that they lost the argument with the passage of gay marriage nationally. And I just think there's such acceptance and in, in further generations it's not even a big deal anymore, but that the transgender issue is the one that now is becoming the sticky one that everyone is making a big deal out of. So we had an article covering a legislator who was filibustering to protest, and she's Catholic, to protest anti-trans legislation. We've written about this document that came out of the US Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, that was ostensibly to say that they can't have trans healthcare at Catholic hospitals. We've written a lot about policies in Catholic schools and how that's affecting trans students and their families.
One thing I noticed is that in the synod conversations, issues around LGBTQ Catholics always come up, and so this is something that's not gonna go away. And I think our church needs to do a better job of being welcoming.
DAULT: Well, and just to build on that, you mentioned that there has been a real kind of sea change where it used to be gay marriage issues and now it's anti-trans gender bathroom bills and those sorts of things. And unfortunately, I think it's people with casual access to comfortable violence who are looking for the most vulnerable and easiest targets. They do that for political gain, but they also do that because of some distorted sense of righteousness, and maybe you all have encountered times when righteousness has decayed into self-righteousness, and where we are bolstering our own self-image by denigrating someone else, but believing somehow that God is cheering us on.
And this is an issue for me personally, because we mentioned down in the various legislatures, down in Missouri, there has been a similar set of attacks. And my family is caught up in this, because I have a niece, and my brother and his wife, and they're all trying to protect their trans child, and they have been written up in the Washington Post. My sister-in-law has gone again and again to try and testify in front of the legislature to try and basically say we are here, we're human, and we are trying to do the best for our child. Why are you attacking us? But they're literally figuring out now how to leave the state, how to sell their house and move somewhere else where their family can be safe.
So we're encountering now a season where people are literally fearing for their livelihoods and their lives. And if that isn't of concern to Catholics, I don't know how we can talk about life issues, because we're actually talking about real people who are under attack. And I think, and what I teach my children, is that to be Catholic is to step into the breach between the threat and the vulnerable and to be the shield and to try and say I will be a person who is in solidarity with the those that are suffering and those that are most vulnerable.
HORAN: I think another way that there's an intersection between Catholicism and LGBTQ+ issues and the dignity and value of all people is the synodal process that we're experiencing right now. The whole premise is that we listen to one another, that we hear the experiences of others. Synodality literally means to walk with others. And if it's done right, if it's done well, if it's done with authenticity, then we will hear one another. And those in positions of power and leadership in the church and beyond ought to hear.
And what I'm seeing, and I think what you're giving witness to in your own family experience, David, is this refusal of some to listen to others, so that when you have people who have their own experiences saying and narrating, this is my experience, and people are staring them in the face and saying, that's not true, you're not real, this doesn't exist, it's a real problem. And if we had any other kind of category like this, we, I think we'd be more inclined to recognize it. I think there's a way in which that this is a newer sort of public conversation leads some people for whom this is discomfiting to assume it's new, and it's not.
And I just wanna say about the listening thing, too, in synodality, that at the same time, there's a lot of anxiety among church leaders and pastoral ministers about what are we gonna do with young people today? A lot of you are Gen Z, right? Students here at the college and beyond, and a lot of our listeners, Gen Z is at a rapid pace disaffiliating from institutional belonging in churches, especially the Catholic Church. And part of the reason, time and again went polled, they point to is this anti-LGBTQ sort of policy and view and activity and language. And I want to just lift up, um, a really moving essay that was published in the website Outreach, which is sponsored by America Magazine, America Media, in which a Notre Dame trans student wrote of their own experience as a trans student who loves the church and wants to stay in the church, is a student here involved in the tri-campus community, and it's a very powerful reflection. It's actually quite poetic the way that this person explains their experience, but the core of it is, can you just listen, I'm here. I want to have this relationship with God. I want to develop this. I want to be supported. This is somebody who isn't the kind of mass-exodus members of the generation who are disaffiliating, who wants to be here and is begging, crying out for fellow Christians, fellow Catholics, for church leaders to listen.
DAULT: Well, and this is something that I think has been said again and again about LGBTQ Christians generally, but we can say it also specifically about Catholics. If you have been treated the way that these populations have been treated and you still want to show up and praise Jesus, you must have an incredibly strong faith. And we, I think I'm just echoing what others have said. We can learn from these kinds of witnesses about what it means to have faith and what it means to have a kind of depth of that anchor of faith.
And I'm just also thinking a lot about the ways in which our episcopal leadership is really not doing what I hope that they would do. And in the synodal process, we have all been aware that there are some that are resistant at the episcopal level to the synodal process itself, or to really enacting the synodal process other than the skeletal vestiges of it, and I think this gets back to whose story gets to be told.
And I, I've reflected a lot on the fact that many times, unfortunately, bishops that I have encountered are people who really like telling other people what their stories are, but not really being willing to listen to the heartfelt stories that are told to them, and this aspect of re-narration, I think, is dangerous for the church generally. It leads to an authoritarian church. And so I really like the idea, as you're saying, of synodality, because it allows for the process of kind of deconstructing and destructuring this authoritarianness in the church.
SCHLUMPF: Well, and while we don't always see bishops who are doing such a great job of listening, I think we do have some modeling from the top in Pope Francis, who has tried to listen to people who are different, who has listened and changed his mind about things. I don't think we're gonna see any change in church teaching on LGBTQ issues anytime soon. Look how long it took for women to get a vote at a synod. But I think the posture of listening and not dehumanizing folks is something that we could at least aspire to.
I know that the, there's a role for media there, too, in terms of whose story gets told. I think part of the whole reason things moved so quickly with gay marriage, and I'm old enough to remember watching that happen. I mean, I remember I had a gay colleague at the time who was like, there is not gonna be legal gay marriage in my lifetime. And I believed him, and then boom, five years later or something, things moved so quickly, and it was because, I think, brave LGBTQ people came out of the closet and told their stories to people, and everybody then found out, oh, I know somebody. There's somebody in my family. This affects them. And I think it's just a matter of time before that happens with trans people as well. And we can tell those stories in the media, and thanks for sharing that story. I saw it on Twitter today. That was really moving.
HORAN: I would just also add too, that I think there are overlapping resistances. Not only does the church take a long time to respond; we talk about 2,000 years of history. That the church thinks in centuries and not in news cycles like we might in a twenty-four-hour system like we have in 2023.
But I think the other issue, too, is what readiness is there as a faith community to do the ongoing dynamic work of faith seeking understanding, which is the role of theology. As a theologian, David is a theologian as well, part of what we do professionally is in a spirit, like we say, every episode, every segment, we talk about a position informed of you, informed by our Catholic faith. We are committed to faithful Catholics who from within the tradition want to continue to understand more and more clearly what it is we say we believe. And so sometimes at moments throughout history, sometimes it happens in big ways, in little ways. Sometimes it takes centuries.
So you know, Pope Francis saying, yeah, non-bishops, laymen and women and others, they should have a right of vote at the synod. Some people would've thought like gay marriage, like your colleague said, like that was never gonna happen in one's lifetime. I think part of the issue, too, is when we see certain populations who challenge preconceived notions, it should call us to look at the foundations of what we're grounding our claims about. So when it comes to what we understand human existence to be, is it so binary, for instance, or is it so limited to preconceived notions that have existed for centuries or teachings that perhaps are grounded in, in ancient philosophy that may have made sense and may have been the cutting edge at the time, but we've learned so much about who we are and who the, and what the world is and who God is. So I think that's part of the issue, too, that we've seen a lot of reports from ethicists, from theologians who've said we've got work to do. It isn't LGBTQ people who are the problem; it's what we understand or maybe how we articulate the theology that is maybe in need of examination.
The one other thing I would add is a reminder, too, and regular listeners to the podcast will know that I say this all the time, that what makes the church are the baptized. And so, all trans folks who are baptized, all gay and lesbian folks, nonbinary folks, queer folks, they are as much the church as Pope Francis or as the local bishop or as the local pastor or anybody else. And so when the author, this, this trans Notre Dame student reflects on their own experience of faith, they are as much church as anybody else. And I think we lose sight of that too often.
DAULT: Well, one of the things that Pope Francis reminds us of as well is this idea of becoming protagonists in our own stories, and I've been deeply influenced by that. In 2015, and longtime listeners will know, I come back to this quotation again and again. In 2015, Pope Francis spoke to the United Nations, and he said the role of those who have access to privilege is to help those who are vulnerable to become dignified agents of their own destiny.
And I think that's what we're talking about here. When someone is saying I have an experience of my own body, they are the genius of that experience, and we should honor that, and we should find ways to care for those people through that journey. I think that is what we saw our lord and savior do again and again when people came and spoke to him about their own journeys. And I think that is a wonderful thing for us to be doing as Catholics together.
Now we're gonna be coming back to this issue again in the next season, but we're gonna leave it for now. You've been listening to The Francis Effect. Please stay with us.
SEGMENT 3 - Pop Culture Roundup
SCHLUMPF: Welcome back to The Francis Effect. I'm Heidi Schlumpf, and I'm here with David Dault and Father Dan Horan. Every couple of weeks we get together to discuss news and events through the lens of our shared Catholic faith.
Well, we're coming to the end of season twelve, and as we look forward to our summer break, we thought we'd go out on a little bit of a lighter note. We've spent the last few months looking at issues facing our nation, catastrophes around the globe. As important as all those things are, it's also important to do a bit of self-care and a little bit of mindless distraction. So welcome to another pop culture roundup, where we take a few minutes to share what we've been reading, watching, and listening to lately. David, why don't you start us off? What's been on your radar for entertainment these past few months?
DAULT: Well, so lately, my wife and I have been spending our evenings watching an episode each night of Abbott Elementary. And this is a program that at first, I was like, it's a knockoff of The Office, I'm not quite sure I get it. Now, several episodes in, I get it. I love it. I'm in love with the characters, but I'm also in love with having my own children in a city-based elementary school system. I am seeing some of the things that my kids are dealing with day to day, imaginatively shown there on Abbott Elementary. So we've been enjoying that, and I highly recommend that.
Another show that just absolutely knocked my socks off, and I hadn't expected it to, was The Last of Us, which is, in case folks are unfamiliar with this show, it is yet another zombie show. However, it manages to have some original takes on this genre. And the thing that really, really got me about it is at the same time that the main male lead in The Last of Us, Pedro Pascal, is there in this show, he's also been the main male lead in another show that we've talked about before, The Mandalorian. Yeah.
And the contrast between these two shows with the same actor is really amazing to me, because in both cases, it is a father figure taking a vulnerable young person on a journey. The difference being that The Mandalorian is very much like by-the-numbers Star Wars stuff at this point, whereas every single moment in The Last of Us is this earned, really wonderfully crafted, dramatic sort of triumph. And I just remember, like from the second or third episode on, just every episode weeping and being really caught up in the characters. And I just, I've been just blown away by it. Really blown away.
HORAN: Well, since we're talking about TV shows, let's stay on that topic and stay there. I know just because before we got on air, Heidi and I were having a conversation, so she's gonna mention some that I have in my queue. But right now, I feel like this month in particular, it's been like an overwhelming amount of awesome shows that are, like they've all decided to release, I don't know if they're competing for ratings or streaming or whatever, but to pick up with The Mandalorian, I am making my way through the fourth season of, is it the fourth now? Yeah. Third season of The Mandalorian. And I'm, I love it. I didn't, I needed to have the whole season come out so I could binge it at my own pace.
And, but a show that I'm also watching that I'm obsessed with, and it is the fourth season of this show, and so that's why I'm getting confused, is HBO's Succession. And so that is a guilty pleasure, because it is a very disturbing show for so many reasons. Mostly because of just the kind of gratuity of everything, the wealth, the, but it's so wonderfully written and acted, and it's really very interestingly filmed. So, a lot of things have happened already. I won't, no spoilers here in season four, but I am eager to see what's gonna happen, and I'm watching that as the episodes come out week by week. But with The Mandalorian, I'm catching up right now, and I am a Star Wars guy through and through.
So that said, a show that's on my cue, I haven't seen yet, Heidi, for those listening at home, is pointing to David and me. We are also both wearing blue blazers right now. We did not coordinate this, but you can tell we've been friends for a while, and Heidi is not the Star Wars person, but David and I are nerds about this, that and The X-Files. But I'll just say that I haven't started Andor yet, and I need to watch that. That's another Star Wars world, Star Wars universe program that has been getting a lot of attention. Heidi, what are you watching?
SCHLUMPF: I'm not watching Star Wars, once again. So usually when we have these pop culture roundups, then I get to listen to these two guys talk about their Star Wars things. But, well for once, I'm watching something that you're watching David, I'm watching Abbott Elementary, and I'm watching it with my daughter, which is nice to be able to have a couple shows that I can watch with at least the one child who still is willing to watch TV with me.
I'm watching two shows that are really capturing my imagination these days. And one I won't talk about very much, ‘cause it's Ted Lasso, and I know Dan was telling me he's gonna wait till they all come out so that he can binge them. This is supposed to be the third and last season. It's as good as ever, and I just, I'll just say I watched the episode in which they go to Amsterdam, so I'm a little bit behind, too. But it was really moving, and like many people, I'm anxious and wondering how it's all gonna wrap up.
The other show that I've been watching, shout-out to my friend Michelle, who suggested, I couldn't believe that I hadn't watched The Morning Show yet, given that I'm in media, and my husband and I started watching this, and it is very compelling, but sometimes after each episode, we turn to each other and we're like, is there gonna be any redemption in the show at all? Or is everybody just evil and terrible? I don't know. I'm seeing hints of it. We're not quite done with season two, and I know there's a season three, but I'm enjoying those two shows right now.
HORAN: So I'll piggyback on that because I have not, I'm not caught up on The Morning Show, either, but I did start watching it, and I had the similar feeling. It's that guilty pleasure like Succession, where everybody, it's you can't really root for anybody after a while. It's so dark, at least the topics are, but it's also compelling. I love that word. I think that's a great way to describe it. And I will join the trio. All three of us have the Venn diagram overlap of Abbott Elementary. I love it. My, it's, it really is an intergenerational thing. My parents, my mother's a middle school teacher and she loves it, and so it's fun to watch that.
But let's switch gears a little bit. We've been talking about TV shows. What about, the, is it silver screen? Is that TV or is that the film? What's movies? Movies are silver screen?
DAULT: Yeah, movies are the silver screen.
HORAN: Well, let's move to the silver screen, then. I don't know what I'm talking about. So I do have a bragging right here, which is for the first time in about nine or ten years, I managed to see every single of the ten movies nominated for best picture. Yeah, I need a life. Okay, so, sometimes on planes. Sometimes I had to actually go to a physical movie theater in South Bend to watch the Avatar movie that was 900 hours long. And so, they really needed an intermission. It was a very long movie. It was better than I expected, because I had low expectations, but I just wanna highlight two of them.
The Oscar-winning one, which is what I was voting for internally as well, which is Everything Everywhere All at Once. If you have not seen that, you need to see it, is absolutely extraordinary. And then another movie, which is, talking about compelling and very heavy, is Women Talking. An extraordinary movie about women in a Mennonite commune in South America. It's based on a true story, who have been the longstanding victims of sexual abuse by those in the male members of that community, and the men have been taken out of the community, are, been arrested and being arraigned in the town. And these women are gathering to decide what they're going to do. Are they gonna stay and fight? Are they gonna stay and try to reconcile? Are they gonna leave? And it's very powerful. So two, those are two movies.
Avatar was fine. I was surprised by how good Elvis was. I did not look forward to it, so I'll just tell you, like, I didn't set out to, to watch every of the ten movies, but I happened to have seen five, and then the nominees came out and I'm like, ah, gotta finish this. And so, what movies are you all watching?
SCHLUMPF: I don't get to watch movies very often, you know, I haven't been back to a movie theater yet, even after COVID, this is partly workaholism and partly parenthood, but I do get to watch movies on planes, and I'm back traveling for work. So I did see Elvis on a plane, and I watched on my way to spring break, I watched um, I think it was the Whitney Houston movie, which was, I knew how that ended, which was sad.
And then I watched, on the way back from spring break, I watched Just Mercy, because I had not yet seen that about the story of Brian Stevenson. And I was going to an event last night where I got to see him speak. So I had wanted to see his movie, but I haven't been to very many. In fact, I wanted to see, see a movie while we were down in Arizona. But when I looked at what was showing, that didn't seem like there was anything very good. There was that, what's the comedy with the guy who's like, pretending to be the painter?
HORAN: Oh, Bob Ross? Yeah, that one. Yeah.
SCHLUMPF: It got panned, so I didn't spend the money. What about you?
DAULT: So, I can't remember the last time that I've watched a movie. And that means not just going to a theater, but streaming. Like I just, I, movies have not been a part of my family's life for a while now. Currently right now, the kids and my wife and I are watching the entire series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So that kind of stuff.
But the thing that, that when my wife and I sit down at night and we wanna watch something streaming, we usually watch stand-up comedy, and so last night or the night before, whenever it came out, we watched the new John Mulaney, and if you haven't seen it, it's very much worth your time. I, I recognize that there's a lot with John Mulaney right now, but it was really raw and honest, and I found myself really amazed that he was able to take such a dark sort of body of material and make it both funny, but also you never really root for him throughout the entire story. Like he, he makes himself the villain in kind of an interesting way. So I found that to be just fascinating.
HORAN: I haven't seen the recording, the Netflix special, but I did see him live working that out last year on the tour that became the, the show. And it was, for those who don't know his story, just what David's referring to as this dark materials, that he's struggled with addiction. He's been very public about that for a long time, but on top of that, there was relationship issues with his spouse, with whom he's now divorced, and he has a kid with another person at this point. And so there's a lot, he was going through a lot of difficulty, but in a way that very few people can, and he certainly is gifted at, he, he's able to make it funny and engaging as well. So I think that's great.
Okay. So I guess I'm the only movie viewer, which feels, I feel left out here. I, and it's like there's only twenty-four hours in a day. How am I watching all these movies? I don't know. I, maybe I need to do something else.
SCHLUMPF: Children.
DAULT: Yeah. Children. Yes.
HORAN: It. That's it. That is a hundred percent it. So what are you reading, then? Are you reading?
SCHLUMPF: Good question. I think I shared on a previous episode how I had to binge read, I can't even remember now, thirteen, sixteen books in three and a half weeks because I was a judge for a contest, and I still can't, those that, those results still haven't come out. So I can't reveal what the books are, but some of them were really good, and I'd love to tell you about them.
Most of them had to do with issues of faith and race, and so that was pretty heavy. So over my spring break, instead I picked up a mystery and read oh, what's her name? Sara Paretsky, who writes about a Chicago, you know, heroine who's discovering mysteries or something. So I read for a living all day, so I don't often dive into nonfiction, at night, anyway.
DAULT: On that note, my other show that I occasionally reference here on Francis Effect is the show Things Not Seen, and that's largely an interview show similar to Terry Gross, Fresh Air, that kind of thing. And so more often than not, I have an author on the program and I also, I work a full-time job as a professor and I do a lot of media work, so I don't have a huge amount of time. So I'm cramming books constantly to try and read and be able to have intelligent conversations with these guests.
So I read a lot, just like you're saying, Heidi, but I don't actually read for pleasure, and that's why about five weeks ago, I had this crystalline moment where I walked over and pulled down a book of short stories that I had bought two years ago at the beginning of the pandemic, but had just filed away. And I sat on my couch. I didn't ask anybody's permission to do this, I just did it. And I read a short story, and I read Ted Chiang's “The Story of Your Life,” which is the story that the movie Arrival was based off of. And it blew me away, and it was exactly what I needed.
And I remember how I felt sitting and reading it, because it just rocked my world. It's a very good story. I love the movie, but the story was just amazing and brought out aspects of the movie that I hadn't seen. And that has shifted some things for me, because now I'm going to some of the work, the reading that I have to do for work, and seeing if I can dig into it the same way that I dug into that short story.
And so I want to share with everybody I've been working with a student through this semester on an independent study. We've been reading The Showings of Divine Love from Julian of Norwich. And if you've never read this book, I've been trying to read it the same way that I read that Ted Chiang short story, and it's knocking my socks off, so I am loving that.
HORAN: I love Julian of Norwich, and I also love Ted Chiang, and if you like that first collection of short stories, his most recent one, Exhalation, is, amazing. Great stories in there. I'll just add two other books, because like my two colleagues here, I read for a living, read books, write books, read papers, and the rest.
So it is nice when you can find a space to do something that is pleasurable, whether it's a short story on the couch or a book of poetry on a plane or two books lately. Haruki Murakami, the great Japanese author, I like his nonfiction a lot. So one of my favorite books of his from a few years ago is What I Talk about When I Talk about Running. And so he's a great novelist. He's a short-lister for the Nobel Prize for many years now. And so he has a new book in translation from the Japanese called The Novelist as Vocation. And it's really interesting, these collections of essays of him talking about the act of writing. So those who are interested in writing or reading and fiction in particular and what it's like to be a novelist, I recommend Murakami's book.
The other one, which was a page turner, even though individually I already knew a lot of the details, it's also stunning when you see somebody put a book-length project together, and I want to commend Mary Jo McConahay's recent book Playing God, about the American bishops and politics. It's really very good. And like I said, it was a page turner that, that just came out a few weeks ago, but I, I recommend it.
SCHLUMPF: Review coming in NCR Online, not from you, but I have, I have one assigned, so look for that soon.
DAULT: So listeners, we are very glad that we have been part of your pop culture during this season twelve, and we are gonna take a break for the summer and get a little bit of rest and get a little bit of work done, but rest assured we will be back in the fall for season thirteen.
Thank you so much, on behalf of Heidi and Father Daniel, for being with us on this journey, for praying for us and allowing us to be prayerfully there for you as well. We are so grateful to each and every one of you for the fact that you care about making the church better and care about those that the church is here to serve. So we look forward to being back with you again. This has been The Francis Effect. We will see you in the fall.