Funding for To The Contrary provided by: This week on To The Contrary: Pope Leo has mainly demonstrated so far his commitment to listening and continuing the path of synodality.

Well, one of the things that Pope Leo brings that is unique to him, perhaps, is that in his seminary training, he had female professors.

Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé.

Welcome to To The Contrary a discussion of news and social trend from a variety of perspectives.

The Catholic Churc is now led by Pope Leo the 14th.

So many are watching closely to see how his papacy will address lon standing concerns around gender, race and LGBTQ issues.

With his background shaped by global ministry and a reputation for doctrinal fidelity, questions are emerging about how he will navigate differing church teachings on these topics.

With us to discuss this issue is Stephanie Hanson-Quintana, Vice President of Organizing and Engagement for Catholics for Choice and MT Davila, Associate Professor of Religion and Theology at Merrimack College.

Welcome to you both, and thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you.

All right.

So let's start— Let's start with you, Steph.

A lot of people are assuming because Pope Franci was a pretty liberal pope, that so will Leo be.

Is that a safe assumptio or is that a wrong assumption?

I think that it's really early in his papacy, as he himself is reminding us, there.

He's only a month into the job, and he said that a couple of times.

Pope Leo has mainly demonstrated so far his commitment to listening and continuing the path of synodality that Pope Francis started.

That was really encouraging to see during his first days to kno that that spirit of synodality, he wants to move that forward, that process forward.

So he said that he—tha we need a more synodal church, especially to those who are suffering.

So we truly, wholeheartedly agree with him on that.

And while we hope that he wil realize the damaging and hurtful rhetoric that women, especially women that had needed reproductive, care and abortion care received from the leadership of the church, we hope that he can actually continue the spirit of synodality that is so important for so many and encounter for Catholics who have been, who have been historically marginalized.

And we hope that he can actually take it a step forward, unlike his predecessor.

So, that's where— that's our hopes for what we have seen, we're cautiously optimistic about the path forward.

Yeah, synodality definitely brought Francis in contact with groups that previously had not had any access to the papacy.

As representatives of different churches and the whole synodal process, especially women.

He did engage with groups of LGBTQ Catholics and theologians at various points.

So it remains to be seen whether But it certainly was something that Francis was able to bring in.

What do you see Pope Leo developing into, like, a lot of people, when Pope Francis took over the papacy, expected him to be maybe a little more lenien on women's roles in the church.

He didn't really loosen much of anything up for women to be more participatory in church leadership.

What do you think about that and what do you think— how, if at all, do you think Pope Leo will be different?

Well, I'm not sure if he wil take up the following concern, but the final document of the synod, or the or the summary document of the first stage of the synod, talked about women deacons, about the door remaining a conversation and a conversation that needs to continue.

And there's a lot of work that has been done in the church.

Certainly there's a group called Discerning Deacons, which is a group of women who feel that call to become deacons and feel that it i a possibility within the church, theologically at least, for that to happen.

Whether or not that's a window that Pope Leo will look out of an and engage remains to be seen.

I think we are— maybe will not be hearing the same level of shocking or—or— big newsworthy phrases such as we got from Pope Francis “Who am I to judge?” in—in that airplane intervie that he would do on his travels.

About—about LGBTQ.

Correct.

Pope Francis is a little— Pope Leo, excuse me.

He's a little more guarded in how he speaks.

That doesn't mea he doesn't speak from his heart and to justice.

We can talk about that in a minute but we're not going to get those headline kind of phrases, I think, for now anyway.

Well, does that mean he will be more or less pushing forward—progressive, you might say, on changing where the church stands or is seen to be standing by the Catholic public?

I think that the changes that Francis welcomed such as having women lead very high level offices in the Vatican, are going to stay— are there to stay.

He's not going to change that back.

And I think that changes that Pope Francis introduced or suggested in "Amoris Laetitia", for example, which is a synodal document on the synod on the family and where he stated the possibility that divorced and remarried Catholic could take communion, which is for man still a very controversial topic and a very hurtful topic and painful topic.

And one that caused lot of controversy for Francis.

He's not going to go back on that.

I think hes someone that is definitely goin to sustain all of these trends that Francis starte that many believe are liberal.

They're really embedde in the tradition of the church.

So they're not necessarily major sweeps away from the church.

It's simply different I guess, permutations of them.

Whether he will take them further, as to have women actually lead in— in more prominent ways, having even a sacramental role.

Those are doors that have not been fully closed yet, but that will be a lot harder for him to move along those lines.

Somebody asked him about where he stood on LGBTQ issues in the church, and his response was: Who am I to judge?

But then no chang came about as a result of that.

No doctrinal change, but certainly, a broader pastoral accompaniment.

In fact, I have a piece coming out soon in the Journal of Moral Theology, on queer Catholic families where that's not enough, right, for families and for queer Catholics, who have felt the sting of the church's doctrine on same sex marriage, on homosexuality, on transgender persons.

There is a deep pain on, on this subject.

What we got from Franci was a willingness to encounter those realities, a willingness to encounter those humanities and to elevate those humanities, from their suffering and from their pain and to engage with them.

That does move the needle a little bit, though it does not move the doctrinal needle.

And so the question will be, to what extent will Leo continue this practice of encounter?

He doesn't use so much the word encounter as the word accompaniment.

Its actually a more Augustinian word.

It's a similar premise, which is that we are walkin together from Saint Augustine, in the sense that we are walking— this human journey is a journey toward God.

And it's a journey that we do together.

And that when we lose sight of that togetherness, when we lose sight of that accompaniment, that's where you get so much strife, so much violence, so much polarization.

Steph, from where Catholics for Choice sit, was Pope Franci much of a change leader or not, where you disappointed?

We think that the Pope Francis did some remarkable thing in terms, like I think Professor Davila speaks really beautifully about it when it comes to that pastoral preference that Francis showed for a lot of historically marginalized Catholics.

And we celebrate that, we know that for many of the Catholics that we talk to, that meant a lot.

That brought a lot of folks back into their faith.

We heard so many moving testimonies of folks, that shared with us what Francis meant for them.

So we definitely want to hold that, and really celebrat that and be nourished by that.

And there's a couple of things.

And then turning to Pope Leo, there's a couple of things that are really encouraging.

We've been very encouraged by his formation.

We know tha although he was born in the US, he had a very multicultural formation.

We know that the fact that he comes from Augustinian tradition also, it's very rich.

We really think that his election points toward a dialogue with the peripheries of the church.

His critique of, of work or of, of like, labor and neoliberalism, his outreach to indigenous communities and also his support for a synodal vision of the church are very, very encouraging.

But at the same time, were really holding that in like tension with some previous comments that Pope Leo has made, particularly on the issues of LGBTQIA+.

The group Dignity USA noted on some remarks the last month that he made some comments in 2012 that are deeply concerning.

He said that the media and popular culture foster, and I quote, “sympathy for beliefs and practic— and practices that are at odds with the gospel.” And he referred to homosexual lifestyle as a term so that is extremely concerning.

While it was also noted that the Pope at the time was Pope Benedict, someone who really prioritized doctrine and the church.

So we are really holding that tension, like I mentioned, with like some really encouraging things about his leadership while also understanding that it's not a blank slate, that there is a history of these comments that we have to grapple.

But like, we are at a crossroads.

And Pope Francis was only able to go as far.

And then this is a time where we stand understanding if Pope Leo is actually going to either stay at that crossroad because that's very much possible or is going to move the conversation forward.

Now, do you think that Pope Francis got a bit, if you don't mind my referring to it as a bit of a break by people assuming, for example, when he made that commen about LGBTQ, who am I to judge, that people generally watching popes are— some people, anyway depending on what the issue is and how the church is divided some people get overly excited by those things.

When you think about whether the earth was flat or not, which was a huge— a huge difference, among Catholics and other groups hundreds of years ago, it took the church 500 years to agree with, I believe it was Galileo, saying that, no, the Earth was not flat.

It was round.

And are we going to keep seeing this from popes where somebody mentions some possible bit of progression and a lot of very excited Catholics grab on to that and hope that indeed it will become true.

And then it doesn't happen for 500 years.

Pope Francis made headlines with this comment, but he also made headlines with comment about using slur not only once, but actually repeatedly.

So I don't see Pope Leo making big waves either— either way, one way or the other.

And actually in a comment that he made to the diplomatic corps a couple of weeks ago, he affirmed that family is founded upon a stable union between a man and a woman.

We also heard from him that— Yeah.

So more comments on sort of this, this direction.

And a lot of folks thought that was a win for traditional values.

So a lot of LGBTQI Catholic feel disappointed and rightly, rightly so.

So I think we remain watchful on the issue.

We can put our hopes in the right place.

But I think that remaining watchful and also not underestimating the power of the lady also, when it comes to we can talk about the Pope, we can talk about the Catholic hierarchy, particularly in the United States.

But it's also important to think, like turn our gaze to the pews and think about what faithful Catholics and how they feel and what they stand for.

And actually, this past month, we see a lot of folks celebrating the 10th year anniversary of the Laudato Si encyclical.

And that was a great example of something that a pope put together but then the lady bring forward, breathing life into a movement, a global movement for environmental justice.

So I think that it's important that we look at the trends, that we understand, the leadership that the faithful have right now.

But like, let's also turn our gaze to the pew and see what faithful Catholics every day are doing to mov some extremely important issues of our time forward.

MT, where do you think we're going to see movement?

I think, just following up on that a bit, that Pope Leo's—in his first address, he mentioned a synodal church and understanding that— Which means what to people outside who don't understand?

So, for the past number of years, five years or so, every so many years the church has a synod.

But the most recent one— A synod is simply a conversation among the leadership of the church.

But the most recent one was a synod on synodality.

And what that meant was that peice—conversation, right, synod— was opened up to the whole church and the the program or the plan was that we would listen, as was said, that we would listen to the people in the pews first, that the conversation was goin to bubble up from the bottom up.

Representative conversation, dare I say, Democratic conversation.

Its not necessarily Democratic decision making, but the conversation was meant to be democratic.

And some of the things that happened was that people actually took off with pieces of it while the official church was having its own process, synodal process.

There was—some groups had a synod for LGBTQ people.

You have Ish Ruiz, who's a Puerto Rican queer Catholic theologian, who has written about the synodal process among queer Catholics.

You have what we call the synod from the margins, which was a product of one of the Vatican, of the dicastery for integral human development.

But it was essentially saying, you know what?

Let's make—really, really make sure that part of the synod goes to the peripheries and listens to people in jail, listens to the faithful on the street, listens to prostitutes and migrants and all kinds of groups of people that we normally wouldn't say are sharing in the life of the church.

So him putting that forward tells me as, as has been said, that, listening is going to be part of his, of his leadership and that that listening is going to be perhaps, hopefully modeled after the Synod.

Now, when each of you speaks with members of the, of the public, Catholics, you know, regular churchgoing Catholics who aren't officials within the church, how do you explain to them the very slow movement of new principles, new guideposts, that make up Catholic rules and law and dogma?

How do you say that?

Let's start with you, Steph.

I want to uplif lived experience as a source of where a lot of the life of the church happens.

When I think about the church Bonnie, I think about, yes, there's the hierarchy, but at its core the church is the people of God.

And I think about there' no—there is limitations to what even the faithful expect of their leadership.

And I think the issue of abortion is actually a really good example of when sometimes the lady and, and just Catholics depart from what the hierarchy of the church is saying.

Pew Research shows that only 1 in 10 Catholics agree with the church hierarchy that abortion should be impermissible, banned at all in all cases.

Right.

So we see a departure from the— the doctrine of the church, what the hierarchy is putting forward.

And I thin this is a cross issues as well.

So I think that like I mentioned, yeah, like I mentioned, there's one thing that change is slower like you mentioned Bonnie, but also want to uplift the lived experiences of the people that are faithful Catholics.

And for them, change is happening.

I'd love to know what both of you think about the future of women in the church.

Will women be receiving any more power under Pope Leo than they did under Pope Francis?

And if so, in what form?

Well, one of the things that Pope Leo brings that is unique to him, perhaps, is that in his seminary training, he had female professors.

I think that is unique.

I'm not sure that Francis, or any of the predecessors, had that at Catholic Theological Seminary in Chicago, CTS.

Some of my colleagues were that, you know, have retired, were his professors.

So we have someone at the leadership who has learne much from women, has seen women lead in the church, especially in educational roles, knows that the seminary education, priestly education formation, is in the hands of many women theologians and scholars and so on.

So I have a feeling that he is even more strongly than Francis going to see the, the, the possibilities of women leading high level positions.

One of his first appointments is to appoint a sister to the office that directs all orders and, and, consecrated life.

That's also a fairly prominent office because it's very global and it essentially dictates to the different orders, how they're following their consecrated life.

And I don't think that's going to be the end of it.

I think that he's actually going to continue to add women to those roles.

We also had the visual very recently of him listening intently in the Paul VI room where the synod took place.

But he was listening to a different nun this time who was sharin a reflection, a sort of sermon, spiritual reflection on the Jubilee.

And, the visual was quite stunning.

She was doing the reflection at the top of the room, and he was sitting, listenin very silently, and all the other bishops and priests behind him listening very quietly.

So there was this woma in the front, incredible visual with all these men listening to her.

Now, that's a lot of visual.

It's not doctrine.

It's not an ordination.

It's not a sacramental office.

So again, I think where we might have some possibility of moving the conversatio forward is in the role of deacon and women deacons.

There's a lot of work that's been done on, on how this is, is part of church tradition, and it needs to be picked up again.

It' almost like a low hanging fruit.

It shouldn't take much to do but it is still controversial to have that possibility.

Do you think that Pope Leo could be the one to move the idea of women becoming deacon to the forefront of the church's doctrine of, or not doctrine, but list of accomplishments it would like to achieve under his papacy?

Its yet to be seen.

I don't know what kind of priorities he's shaping right now.

There's certainly complications in the world that, such as wars, such as the immigrant crisis and technology and AI, which are very much in his forefront to address, I think it would be considering the conversations that Francis was able to have on women deacons, that him not picking it up within his first year or two would be unfortunate.

That's not to say—he's young.

He has a lot of time.

But I think the conversation is ripe, especially because it was part of the synodal conversation as well The role of women in the church.

Last fall, when the synod was happening in the Vatican, Catholics for Choice brought a booklet of stories to Pope Francis with stories that we have collected, of Catholics that have needed reproductive care, who have chosen abortions, who have used IVF, who had used contraception to grow their families, like faithful people.

And our ask is that they listen.

So I—once again, we come with the humble ask for an open dialogue for some of the greatest issues facing women of the church, from leadership to health care to abortion, to reproductive care, a dialogue that unfortunately, for far too lon has been unequivocally silent.

So we pray that he assumes a role and a posture as the leader of the church that allows for conversation.

And at this point, that is what— we're hoping that he will consider the language that the church uses to talk about these things to discuss abortion, contraception and reproductive health care and know that is deeply hurtful and drives people away from a church they love.

So we're humbly asking for open dialogue for a conversation.

And we sit at a crossroad, and the most faithful thing that we can do is honestly, be willing to participate, which is such a key part of Catholic social teaching.

And we're here, we're ready to participate.

We are asking for a dialogue on this issue.

And that's where we stand.

That's it for this edition of To The Contrary.

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