Leo XIV Redux

Leo XIV from Chitown USA became Pope on May 8, 2025. However, 2025 was a Jubilee Year proclaimed by Leo’s processor, Pope Francis. Therefore, the theological ‘tone’ of 2025 remained ‘Franciscan’. 

To celebrate the end of the Jubilee Year and to begin to make his own mark on the Church, Leo convened a Consistory of Cardinals on January 7, 2026. Hoping for something new and refreshing from this pope, I was initially disappointed to learn that Leo directed the cardinals to reread Francis’ signature Encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium (EG, 11/24/2013) in preparation. 

Until I read it! Turns out, EG is full of exactly those ideas and perspectives that are vital to the Church’s future. I’m now seeing ‘Leo’ as an extension of Francis’ pontificate, made more concretely relevant and imbued with new vigor. Let’s browse:

“The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience.”

Arguably, with slight adjustment, this sentence could be applied to any culture at any time in human history. It is a restatement of the human condition. However, this particular formulation calls special attention to the ‘wages’ of consumerism: i.e. desolation and anguish, complacency and greed, a blunted conscience. In other words…us, as we are today! “Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.” (Wordsworth)

“Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others…and the desire to do good fades…” 

Here Leo is reinforcing a fundamental connection between ‘ethics’ and ‘the other’. Jesus, quoting Leviticus (19: 18), said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And he added, on this ‘hang all of the Law and the Prophets’.

We become aware of others as we become aware of our ethical obligations toward them. In an ideal world, we don’t abuse our pets. We don’t abuse them, not because it’s against the law, and not because we just read an article on animal consciousness. We take care of our pets because we love them and love is the source and manifestation of all ethics.

We do good because we love others and we express that love by caring for them. Usually, we recognize ‘the other’ most clearly in human beings. But that is not always the case. Just as in AA, where ‘anything’ can be your ‘higher power’ (not just God), so in ethics ‘anything’ can be your other: a pet, a tree, a mountain, Nature (Gaia), Cosmos …even God. For that reason the Great Commandment (above) also says, “Love God with your whole heart, etc.” True solipsists, however, acknowledge no ethics; knowing no ‘other’, they are bound by nothing. They are Dostoevsky (“God is dead…everything is permitted”) on steroids.

“Goodness always tends to spread. Every authentic experience of truth and goodness seeks by its very nature to grow within us, and any person who has experienced a profound liberation becomes more sensitive to the needs of others…If we wish to lead a dignified and fulfilling life, we have to reach out to others and seek their good.”

Question: What Fortune 100 company just awarded its 2026 advertising contract to the firm of Augustine, Aquinas, and Leo (XIII)? Answer: UAL (United Airlines). Winning Slogan: “Good leads the way.” Sidebar: When theology is no longer mainstream, the mainstream becomes theological. Truth will be heard!

Every undertaking of every intentional agent is motivated by that agent’s pursuit of Good as she understands it. Whatever we set out to do, no matter how distorted and perverse the result, we are initially motivated by the universal thirst for Good. 

We can discover the ‘good’ via the ‘other’ but we can also discover the other via the good. Ethical awareness makes us sensitive to the existence and needs of others. Whenever we seek another’s ‘good’, especially when it is in preference to our own selfish interests, we manifest love, the essence of all ethics. 

We will not begin to treat bots with respect because we discover they are conscious; we will discover that bots are conscious when we begin to treat them with respect.

Among other things, Christianity is a revival of the original boy band, Anaximander & the Pre-Socratics. According to the lead vocalist (6th century BCE), Being is Relationship. I come to be as I facilitate the coming to be of another. I am able to realize my good only by enabling others to realize theirs. 

There is no ‘self’ in ‘selfish’: selfishness is an oxymoron! (No, Billy, that doesn’t mean it’s ok to call selfish people, ‘morons’.) “I am selfish” means “I am not. I do not exist!” There are no rocks, there are no islands, only fields and flows.

EG brings together two absolutely core principles of Christianity: First, Good is the natural order of things; it spreads, it grows within us and it overflows into the lives of others. Second, we discover ourselves in others, specifically in the granting of reck. (Anaximander)

As a Baby Boomer I was a card carrying member of the “Who am I?” movement, dedicated to “Finding myself.” Drove my father nuts; he knew who he was…or so he said. But he didn’t know enough to calm my restless mind. He didn’t know that to find myself, I merely needed to find ‘another’ and grant them reck. Sounds like Francis, and now Leo, nailed this!

Positivists tend to dismiss Ethics as a ‘pseudo-science’ – hypotheses with no verifiable consequences. Not so! Christian ethics do have real world, behavioral implications. For example, Pope Francis (EG) quoted Thoman Aquinas: “…Mercy is the greatest of the virtues, since all the others revolve around it and, more than this, it makes up for their deficiencies.” 

What theologians call ‘mercy’, secular philosophers call ‘reck’ – the sublimation of apparent self-interest to the interests of the other. Love is the manifestation of Good and Mercy is the manifestation of Love. Just as ‘trespass’ (anti-reck) is the paradigm of sin (Lord’s Prayer) so ‘mercy’ is the paradigm of virtue (EG, also the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the merciful.”).

While creedal documents play a critical role in the history of the Church, faith is not a collection of propositions. Faith is always interpersonal, it is always the fruit of an encounter with another (person, pet, or Prime Mover).

“…Beyond the range of clear reasons and arguments… We need to remember that all religious teaching ultimately has to be reflected in the teacher’s way of life, which awakens the assent of the heart by its nearness, love and witness.

“I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them…”

We do not ‘encounter others’. We let down our defenses so others can encounter us…and so we can reciprocate. Francis goes on to point out the primacy of faith over formula:

“I dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.

“The deposit of the faith is one thing... the way it is expressed is another…we hold fast to a formulation while failing to convey its substance. This is the greatest danger. Let us never forget that the expression of truth can take different forms. The renewal of these forms of expression becomes necessary for the sake of transmitting to the people of today the Gospel message in its unchanging meaning.”

“At the same time, today’s vast and rapid cultural changes demand that we constantly seek ways of expressing unchanging truths in a language which brings out their abiding newness.”

Here Francis appropriates an essential insight from modern linguistics: There is a fundamental displacement between word and object. A specific verbal formula, originally intended to denote a specific object or state-of-affairs, will gradually, over time, come to denote something entirely different.

May I borrow an analogy from Cultural Astronomy… whatever that is. The earth’s axis wobbles 360° over a period of approximately 26,000 years. Today we are said to be in the Age of Pisces because the axis is in Pisces at the time of the vernal equinox.

But according to Broadway (Hair), “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.” Well, sort of. Actually, the Age of Aquarius begins c. 2150 when the axis will begin to denote the eponymously named constellation.  

At that point our verbal formula becomes neither word nor object but idol, a misplacement of concreteness (Whitehead). When we recite ‘rite words in rote order’ (Joyce) we practice idolatry. Therefore, if the Church is to remain true to its vocation, it must allow the unforced, organic evolution of new ways to express old truths. 

“Pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed.”

We see then that the task of evangelization operates within the limits of language and of circumstances. It constantly seeks to communicate more effectively the truth of the Gospel in a specific context.

“Reading the Scriptures also makes it clear that the Gospel is not merely about our personal relationship with God. Nor should our loving response to God be seen simply as an accumulation of small personal gestures to individuals in need, a kind of ‘charity à la carte’, or a series of acts aimed solely at easing our conscience. The Gospel is about the kingdom of God (cf. Lk 4:43); it is about loving God who reigns in our world.”

To the extent that God reigns, Satan doesn’t and Caesar governs within guard rails set by Divine Will. The Church’s mission is not the conversion of individuals, important as that may be, but the transformation of Society. We cannot expect to transform the whole merely by transforming its parts; we must transform both the parts and the whole. 

If Leo XIV can remain focused on just these points (the ubiquity of Good, the centrality of the Other, and the sovereignty of God), everything else will take care of itself, his pontificate will be a great success… and the ongoing process of rescuing the World from the Abyss of the so-called Enlightenment will continue apace.  

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The Triumph of the Church (c. 1625) by Peter Paul Rubens is an allegorical Baroque painting that celebrates the victory and authority of the Catholic Church, personified as a triumphant Church figure riding a chariot above vanquished heresy and discord.