Harris becomes the candidate, RNC and DNC conventions, and recent SCOTUS decisions
INTRO
Dan’s most recent book, Fear and Faith
SEGEMENT 1 - Kamala Harris becomes the Democratic candidate for President
Harris set to break fundraising records
Francis Effect live recording at St. Mary’s College
Mick Jagger still has the moves
Trump-Biden debate, “a slow-motion train wreck”
Assassination attempt on Donald Trump
Fears about chaos did not come to pass
Nancy Pelosi’s role in Biden stepping down
Second Catholic President
America article on the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI
SEGMENT 2 - RNC and DNC Conventions recap
Heidi’s 1996 converage of the Democratic National Convention
“Spirit wear” at the RNC
Heidi’s reporting on the RNC for NCR
“At RNC, God is everywhere, but not very organized”
Frank Pavone from Priests for Life was leading prayer services at RNC
“Catholics at GOP convention enthusiastic about Vance — though many unaware VP pick is Catholic”
“Abortion, immigration set to be key issues in presidential campaign”
Steve Millies’s column for NCR
DNC events focused on religion had a secular bent
Democrats for Life
Catholics Vote Common Good
Gus Walz
“Have the Democrats become the 'family values' party?”
“Catholics at the DNC: You won't go to hell for voting Democratic”
“Pro-Palestinian protests at DNC include people of faith”
SEGMENT 3 - Summer 2024 Supreme Court decisions
History of “Chevron Deference”
Laudato Si’
Criticisms of recent documents from DDF
Steven and David Read the Federalist Papers podcast
TRANSCRIPT
INTRO
David Dault
Hello and welcome to the Francis effect podcast. It is the 15th season. Can you believe that we've been doing this for more than seven years? 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 Dan Horan. Heidi is senior correspondent at National Catholic Reporter, a publication that connects Catholics to church faith and the common good with independent news analysis and spiritual reflection. Dan is professor of philosophy, religious studies and theology and Director of the Center for the Study of spirituality at St Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. He's also affiliated professor of spirituality at the oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. Every couple of weeks, we get together to discuss news and events through a lens of our shared Catholic faith. Dan and Heidi, welcome to you both. I cannot wait to hear about your summers. Heidi, how have you been
Heidi Schlumpf
it is so good to be back with you two. I have missed you, and I know you guys had a chance to get together in person, in real life over the summer, and I didn't get to join you, because I've been gone all summer, pretty much, and it's been a crazy one from started with a family wedding, included a two and a half week trip to China, which was amazing. Our daughter is born in China, a vacation to the Jersey Shore, the Wisconsin State Fair. In between it all, I did a little bit of work, including covering both the RNC and the DNC, and we're going to talk about the conventions later. So yeah, just I can't, in some ways, the beginning of the summer seems two years ago, and in some ways, it just flew by, but it was probably one of the fullest summers I've ever had. So good for me, good for my state of mind. I do want to give one shout out, because while I was at a convention, I'm standing at the Democratic Convention, not in the main hall, but at the McCormick Place for a religion event, and a woman says, I recognize that voice from the Francis effect pathway.
David Dault
Oh, wow. So
Heidi Schlumpf
shout out to Bibiana and Pennsylvania, who's was a delegate from Pennsylvania and a long time listener. So how about you guys? I know your summers were busy too, with lots of things, so catch me up.
Dan Horan
Well, I'll go first. I had a busy summer as well. I began the summer with conference season. So since we last recorded long time, listeners will know that in the Catholic theology world, June is kind of conference season. So it began a little bit earlier for me. This year, I spent a week in Palermo, Italy at the European Academy of Religion conference where I gave a paper and was baking in that Mediterranean heat and humidity. It was nice. But then I came back to the US, and we've had a very hot summer, global climate change and the like so. So lots of conferences, the Palermo conference, the Catholic Theological Society of America Conference in June, I was kind of surprised and humbled to be elected to the Board of Directors at the CTSA. So it's a great organization, one of the most important theological guilds, as we would say, among Catholic theologians and ethicists, wonderful people, wonderful colleagues. So honored to be serving in that capacity, we hosted our own conference here in July at the Center for the Study of spirituality. The conference was titled Teresa of Avila and peacemaking in a nuclear age, and that was just really great. It brought together activists and scholars who were engaging the work of Teresa of Avila and some of the more contemporary Carmelite scholars thinking about what peacemaking looks like, what spirituality looks like in this context today. I then taught a three week course at Boston College the contemporary spirituality of Thomas Merton, which was a blast, really a shout out to my students from that class. I spent a little bit of time on vacation, not on the Jersey Shore, not up in Wisconsin like you. Heidi, I'm jealous my first assignment after ordination was Long Beach Island. So I do have fond memories of the Jersey Shore, at least that portion of it, and I love being up north, so I've had colleagues in Chicago who had families with cabins up in the lakes of Wisconsin, and that always seemed neat. I did something similar, which is visited my family in upstate New York. My parents have a small what in the Midwest, they would call cabin, what we in New York State call a camp, up in near in a lake near the Adirondack Park, so I spent a week in early July with them and visiting my brothers and their families. So it was a lot of fun. We are already in our first week of school, of classes here at St Mary's and Notre Dame and Holy Cross college, so things are underway, and the we hit the ground running. I can't believe it's almost September. David, how are you doing? And can you believe it's almost September?
David Dault
I cannot believe that it's almost September. I have one child who is starting high school and another child who is starting eighth grade, and in fact, they have now started I don't even know why I'm saying that it's going to happen, because it's happening as we speak, and that is blowing my mind like you. I had a very busy summer. I started the summer with a quick trip to Toronto to a conference up there. Folks who who pay long attention may know that I'm the president of a an adjacent organization to the big religion conferences like rnsbl. And we had a panel at a wonderful conference of the Eastern international region of the American Academy of Religion up at the University of Toronto, and I really enjoy that city. Had a wonderful time, met some great colleagues, and I delivered a paper and chaired a panel, and that was good. And then over the summer, I finished a book, and that felt really good, because accessorized Bible is now all done. It's in the hands of my editors. It's in the very first part of that process, but it's been through peer review, it's been through all the hoops that it needs to jump through, and so now we're just line editing and doing all the things that get it towards publication. So I'm delighted about that, and I'm about a third of the way through a second book, so I've been revising my doctoral dissertation. It's a gut rehab from the ground up, and that's been a really enjoyable process. Because, unlike accessorized Bible, which was kind of like pulling teeth to write, this has proven so far to be a very enjoyable and fast, right? I think partly because it's already mostly there, and I just have to follow the the kind of blueprints of things and add some new ideas. It's just it's going quickly, and I'm looking forward to this book being out in the world as well, the real kind of important piece for me, though, and listeners who were with us last season will know this, I had a really major health scare in the spring. It wasn't fatal, but it was fatal. Adjacent kind of stuff. I had what's called a deep vein thrombosis, and three of my major blood vessels in my left leg were completely blocked, and so I have been on blood thinners for the last six months, and I have been exercising and doing other things to kind of help get this along. And I had a little bit of a health scare last week, went in and got checked out, and the good news is that two of those complete blockages are now completely cleared, and one of them is partially cleared, and strangely enough, in the process, I grew a new vein around the clots as well. So my leg is healing. It's just it's a chronic illness, and I'm exhausted most days, and I have to take a nap most days. And starting the semester with that kind of detriment. I'm not sure how this semester is going to go, but I have wonderful colleagues and a very supportive environment around me, and so I'm very optimistic, but it's so to say that my summer was mixed would be an understatement. But along with the very clear negatives, there were some astoundingly good positives. And we took a vacation my family as well. We went north of Grand Rapids to a little lake in Michigan, and we spent a week there, and it was very relaxing. I didn't swim because that's not really something that I do, but I enjoyed watching my family enjoy the water, and I enjoyed the sofa and the laptop writing my book. So that's kind of how these things went. There's so much that we're going to be catching up on during the episode, but I just want to echo what Heidi said, I have missed you both. I've missed these conversations, and it's amazing to me how much these conversations help to buoy my faith and to help me to stay connected to the Catholic Church. And I know that when we hear from listeners, they say similar things, that that this is somehow a connecting point for them. And so I just want to express extreme gratitude at this moment for everything that you all bring to these conversations. I'm glad to see you again, and thanks for being here
Heidi Schlumpf
well. And I want to say express gratitude for your improving health, David, because you gave all of us a little bit of a scare last spring, and again, last week, I can't believe you wrote a whole book in congratulations on I know you were on sabbatical last year too, but to finishing that book and Dan, I think you have a book coming out right now. Don't you
Dan Horan
have a book that just came out? I guess it was in the early summer. I guess that's something I forgot in our Roundup. Yeah, it's a book called fear and faith, hope and wholeness in a fractured world, by Paulus press. So you can check that out. Maybe we can put a link up. And yeah, I just want to echo the theme of this initial kind of conversation is echoing echo gratitude and appreciation and thankfulness that David, you're doing better or not, and you're on the mend, and that we're back together 15 seasons is a little bit crazy. It's hard to believe. It's also hard to believe that you have kids in junior high and high school, because if my math serves me, your youngest would have been in first grade when we first started this podcast, and now is going into eighth grade, which is wild. And I know Heidi, your kids are getting older and moving through high school as well. So time is flying. I just in my mind, I will always picture both of your sets of kids as just little kids, so it's amazing to see them grow up.
Heidi Schlumpf
No, we're in the teenage years. I get a sophomore and a junior. So yeah, it's different, different, but good in some ways too, I have to say, traveling with our family, vacationing with our family this summer. It was really fun in a way, and exhausting, but not in the same. Way as it is, as chasing around little toddlers. So shout out to all of our listeners who are still doing that, because I know that's exhausting in a totally different way.
David Dault
Well, listeners on our show today, we're going to be picking up on three topics. We're going to be looking at the switcheroo that happened at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, where President Joe Biden stepped back and vice president Kamala Harris has stepped forward as the new nominee. And in our second segment, we're going to be recapping both the Republican and the Democratic conventions, and we're going to be benefiting from Heidi's time on the ground, both at conventions. And then in our third segment, we're going to be looking at some recent Supreme Court decisions that dropped in the middle of the summer, they are monumental, both for the shape of the court moving forward, but also for perhaps the shape of our democracy. So we'll be getting into all of that when we come back in just a moment. This is the Francis effect. Please stay with us.
SEGMENT 1
Heidi 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 a variety of topics from a perspective informed by our shared Catholic faith. It's been a roller coaster of a summer election season going into the June 27 presidential debate, the first and earliest of such meetings this year, there was widespread displeasure with the two candidates, who happened to be both the oldest and two of the most unpopular candidates to seek the office or re seek the office, as was the case with President Biden and former President Trump the 2024 presidential race was, in effect, a rematch of the 2020 race. The Democratic Party was particularly divided over what was a growing concern about President Biden's age and acuity and whether he had what was necessary not just to govern for the next four years, but also run a successful election campaign over the next few months, the June 27 debate was presented as Biden's opportunity to prove the naysayers wrong and show that he still had what it takes. Then the debate came and everything fell apart. Biden's performance was universally recognized to be disastrous, and immediately, questions about his ability to win haunted the electorate for weeks following the debate, the Biden campaign insisted he was staying in as the Democratic candidate, and that he was the only one who could beat Donald Trump in the general Election. A little more than three weeks later, during which time, there was an assassination attempt on Trump, and the Republicans held their national convention with the confidence that the race was all but won. On Sunday, July 21 President, Joe Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the race. He soon afterward, endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to be the new Democratic presidential candidate. Almost immediately, the energy surrounding the race changed with enthusiasm for Harris growing impressively in a party that was experiencing an existential crisis just hours before, one marker of the excitement was the amount of money her campaign raised over 200 million in the first week of her candidacy. She's currently set to break fundraising records, having already raised 540 million since her campaign was announced in July. Dan, like the two of us, you've been following this consequential presidential race. What do you think about the change in the Democratic ticket and the state of the race generally, and what thoughts do you have as the race moves forward?
Dan Horan
I have so many thoughts, and I've been waiting months to talk about them with the two of you and to share with our listeners. I think I think I want to begin actually, by going into a kind of imaginary time machine back to April 2023 when the three of us gathered here in South Bend on the campus of St Mary's College for a live recording of the Francis effect. It was the last episode of that season. Seems like a lifetime ago, and at that point there was a discussion about the primary season, right? We were looking ahead to the presidential candidates, the fact that Trump was very likely to be the presumptive Republican nominee, and that there didn't seem to be any serious contenders who were challenging President Biden at the time. And one of the things though that had been discussed was concerns about his age. So this was again, more than a year ago, and at that time, I remember saying, I went back and looked at the transcript, which you can do on our website to see exactly what I said, and I was concerned about ageism, and made the point that ageism slices both ways, and that similar kind of concerns about age were kind of predicated of somebody like Now transportation secretary, but then Mayor Pete Buttigieg that he was too young, that he was not experienced. It wasn't his time, and that I said, this is something we should be careful about. There are plenty of other people who are SEPTA and octogenarians who live very busy, very high stress lives. We think perhaps of somebody like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or maybe Pope Francis or Mick Jagger, who was about a month younger than President Biden. And so I made a case at that point that I needed to see more development around reasons to consider age or acuity as a legitimate concern. As we got closer to the June 27 debate, polls were already making clear for months that the people in the streets right, your average voters, your average kind of rank and file Democrats and others were growing increasingly concerned about having somebody as old as President Biden, in part concerned because his own sort of performance was slowing, was becoming more halting and. And yet the leadership of the Democratic Party seemed completely in denial about that. And of course, what everybody said was, we're going to go into this debate, and President Biden is going to show himself, as he did at the State of the Union earlier that year, and that this would be the kind of decisive proof. And like everybody I watched the whole debate, I was horrified. I just could not believe what I was seeing. It was like a slow motion train wreck, right? Car crash. So I bring that up because I think I've changed my view. And in that moment, like the second by second watching of the debate, everything that I had kind of hypothesized in April previous, in that previous in that previous conversation in april 2023, went out the window, and I thought this was a really serious concern, and I fully expected President Biden to step aside the next morning, and then it was three weeks so that I just wanted to bring that kind of historical context. We've talked about this before, and that I've changed. I changed my view of that. And for the three weeks between that debate and his eventual stepping out of the race and endorsing vice president Harris, every day, I was kind of racked with stress about this, because there was, there seemed no way that President Biden was gonna be able to pull this off, and it basically ensuring a Trump victory. And then when Trump survived an assassination attempt. I thought you can't script something more kind of mythological, which is exactly what Trump's base is seeking. So it just felt very personal. It felt very real. It felt very scary. And I don't mean to be to exaggerate or to be kind of hyperbolic about this, but I think the stakes were real, and my view about age and acuity and those other concerns really shifted. That's my initial kind of response. What were your reactions? What do you two think
David Dault
so I'm kind of like you. I watched that debate Dan and was very crestfallen. I have really appreciated all of the things that President Joe Biden, has done for just across the board, just an incredibly successful presidency, not a high profile, flashy set of accomplishments, but a very consistent set of major accomplishments, whether you're talking about sort of relief for student loan borrowers or for certain types of health care and drug costs and things like this. A lot of wins for the Biden administration, but he didn't bring it in that particular moment, and I almost don't have words for it, the ability for Donald Trump, with all of his inadequacies, both his unwillingness to engage with anything that we might call facts of the truth, and his downright incoherence when he's asked a direct question, nevertheless, he took the field in that debate, and it was really no question who was the perceived winner. And so I was energized by Joe Biden having the guts to step down and Kamala Harris stepping up, I will say Kamala Harris is not the candidate that I would wish for this particular moment, just in terms of her past, her policies, her commitments to certain types of carceral and law enforcement solutions to social problems, like not my ideal candidate, but a much stronger candidate in this particular race than Joe Biden could be. And so for me, I am energized, and I'm very pleased with the possibilities here, also delighted with the idea that a woman of color might have the most powerful job in the world. That also is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. But yeah, just how we got here is the most bizarre set of things, like, it's not even a month that all of these transitions have happened, and yet it feels particularly as Heidi was saying, with all the fundraising. I mean, there has been a real kind of surge of momentum that's hard to deny. Heidi, I'm very curious about your thoughts about this as well.
Heidi Schlumpf
Well, I have a funny story, because I did not watch the debate, even though I'm a political enthusiast, but I was on a high speed train in China when I got some mention, I think, online, that the debate had gone disastrously for Biden. And it was somewhat surreal, right to kind of be in this other country that is not a democracy, reading about our democracy in peril. And when I got back, I quickly caught up on on what I had missed, and I had concerns. That's curious, Dan, how you went back to our conversations way back in April. I cannot think that far back. I had concerns because I was afraid of the chaos that would ensue if Biden stepped down and was wrong, because that's not what happened, and instead, there was this immense coalition of coalescing around her, Kamala Harris and I one thing that I've noted and I recognize. Us at the convention was the role that a number of Democrats, but specifically house speaker, or former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi played in you know, even though she and Biden are friends, and she has so much respect for him and for his, as you said, David's successful presidency, she had to give him the hard news that this was not good for the party, not good for the country. And I've read in some places, they haven't spoken since, but she doesn't regret what she did, because she is a patriot for doing that, and he is a patriot for doing something that that you rarely see, which is someone voluntarily giving up that amount of political power. So yeah, I think we often use the word like extraordinary, or, you know, rare. What happened this summer is truly extraordinary and rare, and it's been a little unnerving to live through it. It makes for good journalistic covering, but I'm I don't have a lot of opinions, except to say it seems like I have more confidence in our democracy than I had before.
Dan Horan
Yeah, I really appreciate that point too. I don't think it can be overstated. I know it's almost cliche now to talk about how heroic, How admirable, how exhibiting of integrity, President Biden's actions are and people will try to muddy that by saying, Well, he was pushed out even these accusations against House Speaker, former Speaker Pelosi or Schumer or Hakeem, Jeffries and others, where President Barack Obama, too, who is said to have been pretty influential behind the scenes, all of that aside, I think those people were offering genuine, sincere counsel. It wasn't about it wasn't personal. It wasn't like vindictive. It was listening to what people had been saying in the polls for months, which I think is not, I think is really important. All that sad, what you said, Heidi, is exactly right, which is, it's incredible to think about somebody walking away from something so personally significant to somebody president. Biden ran for president three times. He was vice president for eight years. He served for 52 years in public office. This is somebody who bleeds red, white and blue, and cares about this country and its people tremendously, which I think is very reflective of what we would want to see in the second Catholic President of the United States. For Catholics, that's not a bad thing, not to be kind of chauvinistic about Catholicism or triumphalistic or something like that. That's not my point. But I think Joe Biden exhibits a moral clarity and quality that is very rare in this very difficult decision that he did have to make on his own, and he could have refused. I was actually, somewhat ironically, on Sunday afternoon, when the news broke, I was working on my NCR column in which I was going to write about at that point, Joe Biden had not announced that he was stepping down, and I was going to make a case after three weeks where I hadn't said anything. I was waiting. I was hoping that I'd be outbeat by the news, and I was gonna, I wrote. I was writing something that actually American magazine wrote an article later that day or the next day that had similar themes, which was the point to the model of Pope Benedict the 16th, which is that when you looked at his predecessor, as he did, John Paul the Second, held on in his decrepitude too long and to a point where he was no longer able to do the ministry of the papacy. He there were people around him who were running Vatican City and the Holy See for years. And it was people have spun that George Weigel probably first among all about this as a kind of heroic papacy. Look at how he embraced his frailty in the public and his illness and so forth. That may be true, but he also had a real responsibility as the first among equals in the College of bishops. And what Benedict the 16th did, that no one had done for 800 years, was say, I have done what is mine to do with St Francis of Assisi, said, May the Lord show you what is yours? And he stepped back and left something that is again, very high profile, very powerful position in the world as a world leader, and that's what I see. Joe Biden doing something very similar. If he had dug in his heels, he would have been maybe also viewed, especially if he won as a JP, two like figure. But I don't think it was going to go that way. So I think that's something we're thinking about too, and why I really admire the model that's being put out. The other thing I'll say, and Heidi, well, I know we're going to talk about this in the next this in the next segment, and you have firsthand live experience from the DNC Is that what it also has done in these last in the last few weeks, last month, was break open the seal on the package where all of these middle aged and younger Democratic politicians Who are so talented and so interesting and so captivating had been kind of locked down by this gerontocracy. And so it's been wonderful to see these deep stakes where there hasn't been this hostility, but you have all these governors like Shapiro and Bashar and obviously walls as we know, Gretchen, Whitmer, Secretary, Buttigieg, all these people who had. Been kind of towing the party line literally, and and now are able to kind of shine, and I think there's a such a stark contrast between what we saw. And I'm eager in the next segment to hear Heidi, your first name experience of the tone of the RNC versus the tone of the DNC
David Dault
well. And I just want to add to that you mentioned Tim walls. And even though I have reservations about Kamala Harris, I was so impressed by the choice of Tim Walz, and the more that I get to know him as a candidate, the more especially I get to know his family. I am just blown away. And can't think of a better choice for vice president the things that he has done on the public stage, and especially the phrase that he used that he said, you build political capital to spend it as quickly as possible on behalf of the vulnerable. I'm paraphrasing that, but that that really resonated with me, and what I hope moving out of the Trump era might mean for American democracy a real change in terms of the core moral seriousness about what we think the political mechanisms are all about. That's my sincere hope as we move into this So
Heidi Schlumpf
one quick behind the scenes thing I can tell you about the Veep sweep sweepstakes was that, as we often do in the journalism business, we prepare stories in advance for things that might happen. And with Mark Kelly being talked about he is Catholic, and with Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania, who was attorney general during the Pennsylvania grand jury report looking at sex abuse in the Catholic Church, I had prepared stories about both of them, thinking it might be one or the other, and then walls was certainly in the mix, but I was a little surprised by that choice, but he seems to have been a good choice for a lot of reason, and so far, is really connecting with a lot of voters, as you said, David,
Dan Horan
yeah, and I'm sure in the few months that we have left before the general election, we're going to be talking about this quite a bit. So listeners get ready, and of course, as always, feel free to share your own views and perspectives. I'll just add one thing, though, the game has changed significantly in this dynamic and rapidly moving presidential campaign. There is a lot of time still left, as they say on the clock, and nothing is a foregone conclusion, right? We everybody learned that in 2016 again in 2020 and so we will stay on top of this and continue to discuss this on the Francis effect, which is what you're listening to now. We'll be back in a minute.
SEGMENT 2
David Dault
Welcome back to the Francis effect. I'm David dault, and I'm here with Dan Horan and Heidi Schlumpf. Every couple of weeks, we get together to discuss news and events through the lens of our shared Catholic faith. This summer, both the Republican and Democratic parties held their conventions just up the freeway from one another, and about a month apart, Francis effect co host Heidi Schlumpf attended both events and covered the role of religion at the conventions for the National Catholic Reporter, millions of Americans also watched from their homes. First, the Republicans met in Milwaukee, July 15 through 18th to nominate Donald Trump for president, just days after an assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, moments after being grazed by a bullet, Trump had raised his fist and said to the crowd, fight on the first day of the convention, Trump announced that his running mate would be JD Vance, the junior senator from Ohio and author of The Best Seller Hillbilly Elegy, Vance had converted to Catholicism as an adult, and although there was much talk of a kinder, gentler Trump that only lasted about 10 minutes into his acceptance speech before he returned to his rhetoric of grievance and personal attacks. Four weeks later, the Democrats gathered in Chicago to nominate vice president Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. This happened after President Joe Biden stepped aside and threw his support behind Harris. What had been predicted to have been a low key event became a joy filled, optimistic party, yet one also tempered by the constant reminder that quote, We have a lot of work to do. UNQUOTE Heidi, as someone on the ground for both conventions, give us some feel for your impressions. What were some of the highlights and the lowlights.
Heidi Schlumpf
Yeah. So first of all, a shout out to my boss, Joe farrillo, who assigned me to go to both of these conventions. I had volunteered to cover the Democratic convention since it was in my home city. And I hate to say this but 28 years ago, I covered the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 96 when I was a reporter for the Chicago archdiocese and newspaper. But he realized, of course, we should cover both of them, and sent me also to Milwaukee in July. So some of the impressions that I had, and I wrote three stories while I was there. First of all, the security was amazing and really heavy at the convention, as it was at both. But because of the attempted assassination attempt just days before the convention, there really was this heightened concern. But literally, every street corner had dozens of uniformed officers on it, and I will say there was a feeling. You know, in retrospect, everyone is talking about how the Republicans thought they had it all wrapped up at their convention, because they still thought that Trump was going against Biden. There was a general happiness among the delegates. One thing I noticed, in contrast to the Democratic convention is that man at the Republican Convention, everyone wears red or red, white and blue, or a dress with Donald Trump's face all over it, or some level of spirit wearing. So there was definitely that feeling of Team cohesiveness there. In my attempts to cover religion, I visited two local parishes within just a few blocks of the convention perimeter, who were staying open for they had lunchtime masses and prayer. You know, a lot of I did not see a lot of convention goers there, but the people at the parishes were so hospitable. And I went to an event sponsored by Georgetown University at which Chris LaCivita, who is one of Trump's co chairs of his campaign, spoke, and that was very interesting. Now the lowlights were obviously the overall negativity and attacking. There was so much discussion of this changed Donald Trump, which, in retrospect, now a month later, seems laughable, but there, there was so much focus on his strength after the assassination attempt. And for, like I said, for the first 10 minutes, he did seem somewhat less of himself in his speech, but that speech went on forever and and he went back to his old ways. The other low light, I guess, that I recognized and wrote about was that there wasn't much of a religious vibe there, which was so surprising to me for the for the Republican convention. So obviously, there's religious language from the convention podium. That's easy. Everybody does that. God bless America. God saved Trump from this assassination attempt. You heard that all over but like I said, No one showed up at the parishes. There were no really organized religious events, except for one evangelical sort of prayer service the last day that I couldn't get into as a member of the media. So. They did have this prayer room there that was organized by an evangelical group, but they had a Catholic prayer service twice a day, and I showed up for them every day, and was a little bit surprised when I walked in and guess who was leading the Catholic prayer services at the RNC, Frank Pavone, former father, former father, Frank provone, from priests for life, wearing all black, but not a white collar, and not referring to himself as Father Frank, but letting everybody else refer to him as that. And very few people the most, maybe a couple dozen, were at one but most of the prayer services had three people, five people attending so very low level of religious engagement. And when I went to interview people about JD Vance being named, a lot of people didn't even know he was Catholic. Now, granted, he didn't write about that in his book, because it came later in life. But before I go on too much, maybe I'll let you guys comment about the GOP, and then we'll come back to the DNC, yeah,
Dan Horan
I think it's interesting. You wouldn't have that perspective from just watching the videos as like David and I did to hear about the lack of overt religiosity, right? And so it is interesting to see how the GOP has, at least since Reagan really presented itself, right, molded itself and aligned itself with especially white evangelical communities. But then in more recent years, with the usccbs, kind of turn to the GOP, this oftentimes tied to an anti abortion agenda. The GOP has kind of presented itself the Republican Party has presented itself as the party of religion, right, of Christianity, of and then within Catholic circles of Catholicism. But I wonder if in this age of Trump, there's not enough room for Jesus, Christ or for God, that Trump is the one who is being worshiped there, right? Such that think about the affective displays of religious faith. So Christians often wear a cross around their neck or a pin on their lapel, and this is a symbol of the one who was crucified, right? It's a symbol of our faith, but it's a symbol that refers to Jesus. Notice on that first night when Trump made that appearance with that giant bandage on his ear, people started putting pads on their ears and gauze on their ears, kind of in a religious homage, yet again, right? There's this sort of, again, secular worship of this person, Donald Trump, that combined with the fact that they're the one living previous Republican president was nowhere to be seen. A lot of Republican sitting Republican governors were nowhere to be seen. They were either not invited or not made to feel welcome. Contrast that with the two living and able former Democratic presidents at the DNC, I'm sure Jimmy Carter would have been happy to be there. I know his grandson spoke. But there was this sense that there's more than one person. And so I don't know, David, I don't know if you have thoughts about this too, but it just smells to me, in light of Heidi, your point about people who would identify on surveys and respond to pollsters who are Trump fans also present themselves as very religious people, very Christian people, and yet that didn't seem to be present here. That's really striking.
David Dault
I do have a lot of thoughts, and I can only really give a 30,000 foot view with the time that we have, but there is this is nothing new, certainly the sort of rhetorical presentation that a certain type of fundamentalist or evangelical adjacent Christianity is the only legitimate type of Christianity. And we can talk about this with regard to the Lutheran reaction, to Tim walls as well notions of bona fides, which really are falling more along party lines than any kind of doctrinal or practice lines. And I think that you summed it up that there's really not room at the top of the worship ladder for both Donald Trump and our Lord and Savior. And in a lot of cases, Trump Trumps our Lord and Savior in these sorts of situations. And so I think that it's really interesting, Heidi, for all of the reasons that we've been talking about, that you were able to sort of see this in real time, in ways that we couldn't see when we were watching from a distance, especially who they choose as their visible worship leaders in these spaces. And I we can also talk about the invocations from the Catholic bishops in Milwaukee and in Chicago, the difference in how they dressed, how they presented themselves, what they spoke about. So there's interesting religious resonances through all of this. And I'd love to spend three hours talking about it, but we don't have the time to do it, so I want to step back and see if there's more that you want to say about the DNC Now,
Heidi Schlumpf
sure, and I'll just share in this. In the show notes, we can share the story that I wrote from the RNC, which had this headline at the RNC, God is everywhere, just not very organized. And so again, it was sort of this surface level referenced of religion. And of course, with the issues of abortion and immigration on the GOP side, not necessarily matching Church teaching. And I heard from Catholics who felt both ways, both saying not a problem for me, or saying, Yeah, but I'm still going to vote for Trump, even though they removed abortion ban from the platform, or because they are carrying signs that say mass deportation now. So at the DNC I will send this is a little fresher in my mind, because it just happened, there really was that feeling of enthusiasm, and everyone's making fun of this word, but joy. And my colleague Steve Millies, and friend of the podcast, I was able to get him a press pass for one day, and he really wrote up a nice column giving his impressions as someone attending. And he captured that joy, although with a warning to the Democrats to not get too excited. The speeches were great. There's a lot, as someone who used to teach speech and debate some such great oratory there, and many of the of the best speeches, in my opinion, were given by women. So there definitely was that as you walk the hallways, even at the United Center, just the feeling of diversity and how it really looks more like the America, at least, that I live in this in a city people of color, what lot of women, especially at the speeches, I think the best speech was Michelle Obama's certainly Oprah that she can give a good, Great speech to Hillary's speech and, of course, Kamala speech. There were also a lot more religion events, at least formally. The actual DNC hosted two events by their Interfaith Council. Now, curiously, they both had to do with non religion. So the first one was about kind of coming together to counteract Christian nationalism, and many of the people who were coming together were atheists and non religious folks. And the second event was about using the language of values language, as opposed to explicitly religious language. And I wrote about that in a piece that ran this week. I also went to an event not explicitly religious from the Democrats for life, and then the group called Catholics vote common good. So which is kind of a subgroup of the vote common good, group of progressive Christians held an event which I covered as well, during which and we have another great headline on my piece, was Catholics at DNC colon, you won't go to hell for voting for a Democrat. I think it was Pat Carolyn who said that, right, which Patrick Carolyn actually said on the panel. So a lot more of explicitly religious events. I'm trying to think what would have been the low light at the Democratic Convention. Yes, some of the lines were long and the logistics were crazy. They had some events at McCormick Place and some at the United Center. I clocked it on my tracker, and I walked 32 miles in four days, so it was a slog. But again, I'm really grateful for the chance to have been on the ground at both these events, and I plan to do a lot more political reporting between now and November. What was your impression from at home of the Democratic Convention? Well,
Dan Horan
like other commentators and podcast hosts such as ourselves, I share a kind of frustration with how the programming got off the rails. And so a lot of Heidi, you walk 30 something miles, but you also stayed up very late every night that the prime time speakers, including President Biden himself, got pushed back to the early hours of the next morning. So I didn't stay up to watch a lot of the things live. I tuned in occasionally and but then caught up the next day, because that was really just the only I wasn't gonna stay up to two in the morning every night. I agree with you, Michelle Obama is just so masterful, so brilliant. As others have said, too it's too bad that she doesn't want to be in politics, because she is just, yeah, she's just amazing. Second to her would be President Obama, I think, but he's always extraordinary. I was kind of interested. It was, it did go long, but President Clinton's address was like, so very President Clinton, very folksy, very kind of off the rails. He went way too long. I did catch him because he was early in one of those evenings. So that was one of those times that I tuned in. But of course, Oprah every I mean vice president Harris, they were all extraordinary. We got to talk about Vice President candidate, Governor Tim walz's address, which, again, all of his public addresses have been really quite extraordinary. And then, of course, his neurodivergent son, Gus, who just kind of warmed everybody's heart with that spontaneous affirmation of his father. It just it was, it's so cool to see. And David, I know that touches your own experience, as you were saying earlier, about the kind of more you learn about this guy and his family, the more relatable he is. I'll just say I was in Minnesota for a board meeting a couple weeks ago, and my host actually was driving me and a colleague around us were waiting for another colleague to fly in, whose flight was delayed. And so we were in St Paul and drove past the governor's mansion. And it was just so interesting to think about the fact that this guy and his spouse sold their house when he became governor, to move into the governor mansion, because they ostensibly. Couldn't afford to just pay the mortgage on an empty house, and that they have very few assets. I mean, these are people who are just salt of the earth, middle kind of America type folks that indeed, as people learn more about their story, the more interesting they are. I have to say, I was surprised myself, going back to Sunday, July 21 at how I got swept up in the enthusiasm around vice president Harris. It doesn't hurt that last year was it, last year, a year and a half ago, I was in Washington, DC with my family, and standing near the Lincoln Memorial during Holy Week, and this huge motorcade showed up, and it was vice president Harris, the first, the second gentleman and some of her extended family that were in town for Easter, and she was taking these little grand nieces of hers by the hand up to the Lincoln monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and it was just so wild to be feet away from her and how much people loved her. I mean, it was really very cool, and that was at a time when she wasn't as much in the public eye as she certainly is now. But I am just very relieved. I appreciate the joy and enthusiasm, Heidi, that you talked about, it was palpable through the screen and the reporting. I also agree with Steve and some of our other colleagues and other commentators that this is, let's not get swept up in this is a done deal. But it is so refreshing to see that it is not a choice between two people who most people would have to hold their nose to vote for, and it's not to falsely equate Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It's just that the concerns around Joe Biden made it there's just not going to be that Joey and enthusiasm. So David, what is your sense? Well, I
David Dault
want to also echo having watched both, the difference in energy, at least through the through the screen, was palpable. But also there was a real sense, even though, as you mentioned, Dan, the schedule went long, there was a real sense of kind of stacking and putting together the entire Democratic National Convention as a kind of spectacle for the viewers, which I as a person who has worked in television and trying To get to the right beats and the right moments for emotional connection. I was sitting there as a former producer of television, and I was, I've never produced live television, I was marveling at how well they did again and again on each night, even though they were oftentimes off schedule. There were so many points where I felt myself emotionally connecting to the people through the screen, and that that speaks to the craft, of course, but I think it also speaks to the quality of the people that I was watching. And that brings me, of course, to Gus walls, as you mentioned. So listeners may or may not know that I am, that my wife and I, we are the parents of two children on the autism spectrum. Our younger child is hypo verbal, which means that he he hardly ever talks. And so to watch a non verbal, neuro divergent child being overcome by a moment and standing up and having that kind of emotion and having the willingness to sort of shout, that's my dad. That's my dad. I love him. I'm getting choked up right now just thinking about it, because I recognized my own family in that moment, and some of the struggles that we have around sometimes trying to have our children feel at home in spaces, and to feel comfortable enough to be themselves in spaces, and the fact that this was A family where this child could feel that kind of support in that moment to be himself was wonderful. I was also very angry at some of the immediate teasing bullying and backlash that came and again, as the parent of a child who sometimes receives teasing and bullying at the hands of peers and at the hands of adults, I found myself wanting to be very defensive of the walls family in that particular moment. So I would say, as a Catholic, okay, this was a wonderful model for God's extraordinary variety. One of the things that when I first joined the Catholic church, I was told was, when you hang out with the Episcopalians, it's like riding in the limousine. When you come into the Catholic Church, it's like being on the Crosstown bus. You're going to meet every kind of person at mass. And that has really been true in my experience. Up to and including one of the first places that I worshiped, there was a homeless person who was an usher, and that kind of inclusivity, that kind of intentionality around a type of Catholicism where everyone truly is welcome. That, to me, is the sort of spirit of the peaceable kingdom. And I saw that modeled at the DNC, and that, for me, was just amazing to see.
Heidi Schlumpf
I
Dan Horan
appreciate that, David. I also want to anticipate some of our listeners will hear these two segments in the way that we are contrasting the RNC and DNC, as well as the shift in the presidential ticket as, perhaps unfairly, rah rah Democrats, that we're here just promoting the Democratic party or something like this. And I think it's important, and I know that the three of. Disagree. That is not our intention. What we're doing is talking about, as David just did, on a very personal level, real substantive differences between these two parties, between their candidates, between the discourse, the policies. And this is the problem when people reduce one's Catholic identity, one's political identity, to one or two issues only, so that if you convince yourselves, for instance, that abortion is the only thing that matters, even when you have the RNC distancing itself from its own anti abortion policies, you're going to be convinced to do something to support people who are maybe not morally upstanding. Just to put it kindly. And I think one of the things that I see as well, not only the enthusiasm and joy that isn't just a drug trip. I think it's organic, because of what has been unleashed. What has been unleashed is, or what we've been freed from, is this sort of impossible decision, as so many people felt it. And what we see now is such a stark contrast that's also an age contrast, right? Donald Trump is almost 80 years old, as opposed to somebody who is in late middle age, Middleton, late middle age, who was very energetic and youthful. But also the contrast is quite different as well. When you think about somebody who is a convicted felon, who has been impeached twice, who has said that he wants to pardon the rioters on the January 6 insurrection that resulted in the death of more than five people, and you contrast that with somebody who is, as David said, has a record as a prosecutor, as an attorney general, of being maybe sometimes too much on the side of law enforcement. But in this particular context, I think it's really the contrast is just so clear. Who do we want to be in charge of our government at this time? Right to be a leader. And I think that's something worth noting, especially when we zoom back out and think from a Catholic perspective, as David says, Who is all about who is more likely to promote and protect the common good? And that's what the Catholic Church teaches, that our government is about and for
Heidi Schlumpf
well. And I thanks for saying that, Dan. And I will just clarify that I'm not giving my opinions specifically here, and instead, I'm sharing my reporting and my observations. And I can say that on the topic of abortion, I was surprised at the DNC how often it was mentioned, and maybe you couldn't hear this from the television recording, but it also got some of the loudest cheers. So obviously, the idea of women's reproductive freedom and rights and control over their own bodies is something that really spoke to the audience there. And David, I can just give you a few other things about the production of the convention as an event. Okay, I was a little disappointed that Beyonce didn't show up, and I did stand there for 10 minutes waiting to see if she was gonna be there, but the use of music otherwise throughout the convention was amazing. Obviously, many famous people who were popping in and out, and the roll call really captured that whole like patriotism and joy that people had about their state and their country. I will say the just finally, and I know we're going past time here, but I did also cover the protests, the pro Palestinian protests that were held every day. There were minimal protests at the RNC, but at the DNC, and I'm kind of proud of our city of Chicago for doing a good job of allowing people to use their First Amendment right to speak out, and for the most part, it was done very safely, with relatively few arrests. We did not have 1968 all over again, and there were a number of what I wrote about was the number of people of faith at those protests who were there because their faith, whether it was Catholic or otherwise, compelled them to speak out on behalf of Palestinians. I think many of them were very disappointed that there was no Palestinian voice inside the convention hall, and I think that was a missed opportunity. But overall, I would say, yes, a very successfully produced event, actually, both of them, probably, I would say, because I had some concerns about safety at the RNC one night, Carrie lake was very much riling up the audience to be very anti media, and they were booing us, and I had been told when I picked up my credentials at the Republican Convention to take my yellow lanyard off when I was not inside the hall, because it identified me as media, and they couldn't guarantee my safety as media, which that that says something about a party when they have to tell you that so but overall, both very interesting events to cover, and I know we'll be seeing as we go through this fall, many more things to talk about on this topic.
Unknown Speaker
Heidi, I
Dan Horan
think that anecdote is really striking and haunting, isn't it? Yeah, I'm just struck by that. The other thing I'm struck by is, again, the hypocrisy and irony that we see on display at the RNC, where Carrie Lake her claim to fame is being a television news person, and so the fact that she now is turning on her own people, her own profession, her own career, is just so a galling anyways, I think we've said what we need to say.
David Dault
Heidi, I just want to express how grateful I am, and I know our listeners are. Or I know Dan is for your first hand accounts, we really couldn't have gotten this kind of insight had you not been there and spent the time. So even with some of the weirdness that you encountered, I'm so grateful that you took the time to share this with us listeners. I know that we will be covering a lot of angles of the upcoming election as our episodes continue, but we're going to move on from this segment for now. You're listening to the Francis effect. We'll be back with you in just a moment.
SEGMENT 3
Dan Horan
Dan, welcome back to the Francis effect. I'm Dan Horan, and I'm here with Heidi Schlumpf and David dault every couple of weeks, as you know, we get together to discuss news and events through the lens of our shared Catholic faith. Over the summer, the Supreme Court of the US concluded one of its most controversial terms in its history. The decisions made over the past year have the potential to shape not only the future of the court, but the trajectory of our nation for decades to come. In early July, Georgetown Law Professor Cliff Sloan was quoted in US News and World Report saying, quote, this is a court that is in a hurry to drastically reshape the law. It's in a hurry to throw out precedents and upset settled law and make profound and fundamental changes in our law. In that sense, it's one of the most extreme and radical Supreme Courts we've ever had, and this term really shows that unquote, two cases touched on the lingering effects of Donald Trump's presidency. In the case Trump versus the United States, the court shocked many observers with a ruling that presidents are entitled to immunity from prosecution for official acts taken in connection with the exercise of their core constitutional responsibilities, and that they have a presumptive immunity with regard to other official acts. In their joint dissent, Justices Sotomayor Kagan and Jackson wrote that the decision, quote, makes a mockery of the principle that no man is above the law. UNQUOTE, in the second case, Fisher versus the United States, the Court held that the US government overreached when it prosecuted hundreds of Trump supporters using the charge of obstructing an official proceeding. The ruling could lead to new trials and lighter sentences for those being prosecuted for the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 the ruling may also affect some of the charges brought against President Trump himself by special prosecutor Jack Smith, but the case that might end up having the biggest impact of all was Loper bright enterprises versus Raimondo. This case took up a review of a long standing precedent known as the Chevron deference, established in 1984 the chevron doctrine allowed the executive branch and federal agencies to offer reasonable interpretations for vague statutes passed by Congress. In overturning the Chevron deference, it now falls to state and federal courts to interpret these statutes, a decision that will upend and perhaps destroy the power of regulatory agencies to protect things like our food, our consumer products and the environment. There were other decisions, of course, but these three really set the tone for the end of the term, and give us a lot to talk about, much more than we have in this short segment. But David, guide us. Where should we begin? Well, I
David Dault
really want to start with the third decision that you mentioned, the decision that affected Chevron deference and from 30,000 feet, it may seem like this is a reasonable decision. Courts are set up to look at complex data and to settle ambiguities. So why wouldn't we use the courts to figure out whether or not there's too much salmonella or botulism in our food supply, or too much lead in our water? Well, the answer is that there are so many complex ambiguities that we currently have in our contemporary lives that pulling the agencies that actually have experts and the means to test and gather data around these questions, and to put that instead in the hands of the courts is just the most ludicrous thing in the world. And so even though Chevron deference was not perfect, and it came out of the 1980s where there was the beginning of a real war against what we might call the regulatory state, there were, there were real gains that happened under this regime where we have good, robust consumer protections, we have good, robust environmental protections. We have good, robust protections on our food supply. We are now in a wild west sort of situation where moving out of this Court term, it is very unclear if any of those agencies try and do things like monitor the level of toxins in our meat or the level of toxins in our water or the level of toxins in our air, whether or not they will actually be allowed to Use their regulatory functions to try and keep us safe. So as a Catholic, we are taught that part of our job is not simply to protect ourselves individually, but to really look to the whole of creation. Documents like Laudato Si from Pope Francis really speak to this. We are intimately interconnected with our environment. We are intimately interconnected with our food supply. We are intimately interconnected with those around us who may not be parts of our immediate family. Their safety is our safety, and we're in a very precarious situation now. So even though I think it is worth also talking about the sort of things. That affect the Trump presidency and the idea of the imperial presidency and all that's we'll get to those. But where I really want to start and hear your thoughts is around this question of Chevron deference.
Heidi Schlumpf
Well, I guess when I see court decisions that favor big business, one of the things that I think about is the many revelations that have come out about various members of the Supreme Court who have had this connection to billionaires and big business in ways that are with questionable ethical connections. So I know over the summer, we also had Biden making this proposal about more ethics regulations on the Supreme Court, maybe even term limits per Supreme Court justices. And I just think, especially when you look at Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginny, and the amount of clearly conflict of interest relationships that they have, and then these decisions coming out, it has you. I mean, it can't help but be concerning. Obviously, there have been a lot of call for more ethics regulations against the Supreme Court, and a lot of survey data showing that there's very little confidence and respect for the Supreme Court these days. So so that's my initial reaction to that ruling.
Dan Horan
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I mean, not only is there the kind of the public view, the low public view of the Supreme Court. But it's also important to remember that the lower courts are are filled. The judges are either appointed by politicians or they're elected by the electorate. And so these are people who are not, you know, and that doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing, right? I don't mean to kind of suggest that all judges, because this is the process by which they're appointed or elected, are incompetent or whatnot. What I do want to zero in on is that they're not experts in all these areas. And it would be like going to me to get a second opinion on your cardiology exam or something like this, or going to Justice Thomas, because you need your electricity in the house rewired or something like this. You need people who are expert in their own fields and in their own areas. And what this does is, David, I think you'll use the language of Wild West. I mean, nobody wants to go back to that, despite the many fans of Yellowstone. I don't think real life wild west where you're doing frontier medicine and you're going to the barber to be leeched or bled, is what we really want. And in a sense, that's what's being presented to us. I really liked your reference, David, in the Catholic world, to papal encyclicals in church teaching. And one of the things I've admired about Pope Francis, generally speaking, with one major exception that I can name, is that he does and his the people around him in leadership in the Holy See have tended to consult experts when forming some of these teachings. Right? So Laudato Si, I think, is a great example where natural scientists and economists and political scientists looked at that document and realized there are clear evidence. There's clear evidence here that real scientists, real science, real information, real experts, were involved in the drafting of this right? It's a theological document, it's a moral document, a social document, but it has at least some of the footing, the grounding of expertise. I can't say the same about some of the dicastery for the doctrine of the Faith's more recent documents around gender and around sexuality. That's a conversation for another time or to be had yet again. But I do think that this is the value of expertise, right? That you know, just really frightens me to think about some federal court or some Regional Court overturning or interfering in, like the FDA, exercise of its responsibility over medications, for example, or over the FAA, for instance, which falls under the Department of Transportation, like is something overriding I think about the Boeing situations that we've seen with these airplanes, and I mean, it's just very disturbing to me.
David Dault
Well, let's take a step back and now look at these other two decisions that were mentioned in the topper and in particular the question of presidential immunity we have in the liberal tradition. And I mean that in the little L liberal not the big L political liberal tradition, this notion that individuals are wonderful when they make choices, but also when you begin to give individuals more and more power, the phrase that come to comes to mind is power corrupts absolute. Power corrupts absolutely. And so we in our American tradition, have this notion of checks and balances, that the executive branch would be checked by the judicial and the legislative branch, and people like the press would be scrutinizing all of these branches to try and keep them accountable and honest and to put light on any kind of corruption that would happen. The regime that has just been laid down by the Supreme Court really skews that balance, because now anyone who gains the office of the presidency has. Has a tremendous advantage, because they basically cannot be prosecuted for anything that they do. And I say that as a resident of Illinois, where three of our recent four governors all went to jail, because executives sometimes will use their power for ill gotten gains. And luckily, at least here in Illinois, we had mechanisms to check that, and when we had evidence of it, to prosecute. Well, now the ability to prosecute has really been pulled away from the federal executive branch, and so I'm curious about your thoughts about that as well. You're
Heidi Schlumpf
right, David, about about Illinois where we have had problems with our executive branch. So that's a perfect example. But I will say that I think when this decision came down, there was, there might have been an assumption on a part of some of these justices that Joe Biden was not going to be president, or that he was running, he would lose, and that this was for Trump. Now you have Joe Biden, who's a lame duck, who theoretically could do anything he wants between now and the end of his presidency. He won't, because he's a good, moral Catholic guy, but that's the problem with these decisions, is that they seem to favor one party over another, maybe when they come down, but then they have a way of coming back and biting that party in the butt, because they can go both ways. I mean, either way, it seems like it's not, it's not a smart decision, and is concerning, I think, to a lot of folks.
Dan Horan
Yeah, I agree. I think, like this was something that needed to be handled very delicately. I think there are certain things that need to be protected, immune from decisions that are immune from prosecution and so forth, that are necessary actions of the chief executive, which is the president. But I think they came in when, like a little tool was necessary. They came in with a sledgehammer. And this is incredibly dangerous. I honestly, I don't mean to sound like like a cheesy patriot, but when I read that decision when it came out earlier this summer, my first thought was of the founding fathers, and my thinking is like so much of those documents. And David, you and our friend and colleague Steve Millies, have a podcast. We were going through the Federalist Papers, but you would know this better than me, but the word tyranny comes up a lot as a concern, right, the tyrannical temptation of absolute power that's seen through at that time the British monarchy, and it was explicitly designed in our Constitution and the structure of government that you named to establish a checks and balances system to prevent that kind of tyrannical behavior. And this seems to give a permission structure for people like Trump or others to do whatever they want in ways that are just unthinkable. I want to go back to this question of checks and balances as well, and the lack of balance of power. It's not only the executive branch, but we've been dancing around the Supreme Court itself, right? That is, as we're finding somewhat accountable to no one. As more and more details continue to surface, I think the issues around justice alitos wife, and the flying of the flag and these sorts of things, the recordings of them at a private event where they exhibit some really kind of abhorrent views, both about Christian nationalism and about their own Catholic identity. Justice, Thomas's continued indiscretions around financial gifts and the lack of disclosures, the kind of cozying up to these billionaires and so forth, without any kind of recourse, without any kind of accountability. I think we have two of three branches of the government right now that that are really struggling to find any kind of accountability. There's a certain irony, because Congress is oftentimes viewed very unfavorably by the American public, but at least with the two chamber the bicameral system that we have, you can't pass a law without both houses signing off on it, so you at least have some kind of check and balance in theory, especially when the two parties are split across those houses. I think we're in some deep trouble here, and there needs to be some very serious reform of the courts, reform of the executive branch. I know that, in some ways, potentially resolved through constitutional amendments, and we have some basic constitutional amendments that have not even come close to seeing the light of day, like the Equal Rights Amendment, which should be a no brainer, right? Saying that women are equally as much human as men in this country, that's been kind of dead on arrival for for a time. So I don't have much hope that a constitutional amendment is forthcoming to resolve these issues, but I do think it's deeply troubling, and I do worry about what kind of permission structure this precedent establishes moving forward.
David Dault
Well, I just want to add to that, I think sometimes, and we talked in our last segment about the way in which both the RNC and the DNC convention sort of looked like spectacles that we could watch, and they were well tailored, well manicured, to play with our emotions and all of that. I think sometimes we can think about all of the mechanisms of government as that kind of distant spectacle, and as Catholics we are called to be in the. Evolve with the common good of everyone, and so we can't let politics, particularly this year, but really anytime, we can't let it be a spectator sport, we have to actually get involved. And you talked about the podcast that I do with Steve Millies about the Federalist Papers, one of the things that I've been reflecting on a lot is the parallel between George Washington having two terms as president and then having the guts to step away at the time, an incredibly powerful position. And he said this is enough, and he set the precedent so that there would be limitation on any one person wielding that kind of power. We have an echo of that with Joe Biden stepping back and letting someone else come into the fore. I really see that as a kind of parallel. That's the kind of civic care for the greater common good that we need to be focusing on. The essence of democracy is that it's not heroic. There's not only one person who can save us to sort of borrow a phrase from a recent sort of set of Republican talking points. The point is that in these offices, in these structures, ordinary citizens can step in and do their part for a time and then step back to civilian life. That is what we need to be getting into more and more. And so I just want to encourage listeners, please be encouraged, but be encouraged, not only to cheer, but also to step forward and to get involved, whether that means calling your representatives and telling them about your moral positions and making sure that they understand when you disagree with them or when you agree with them, but also when you have opportunities to step up, whether it's for jury duty or a school board or some greater office, to get involved and to really try and bring your morals into the marketplace of ideas and to speak your piece, because that's how all of this continues to work. Friends, I am so glad that we are back in production, and I am so looking forward to this season, and Heidi and Dan, I'm so glad to be back with you. This has been a wonderful conversation. We're going to leave it here for now. Listeners, we will be back again in two weeks for the next episode. Thank you so much for being with us. This has been the Francis effect. We will be with you soon.