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Episode Description
With a new book released just this week, Dr. Margarita Mooney Clayton discusses When Mary Calls: Surprising Encounters with the Mother of God, a theological exploration weaving in seven encounters with Mary who “acts as a bridge…a living spiritual mother who guides individuals through danger, loss, and spiritual renewal, ultimately leading them closer to God.” She explains why Mary remains such a powerful spiritual mother in today’s fractured world and reflects on the ways beauty, suffering, and grace often become pathways to encountering God.
As Pope Leo XIV marks one year as the Vicar of Christ, Vatican insider Edward Pentin joins the show to discuss defining moments of the new papacy. From calls for unity and peace to ethical challenges posed by AI, Pentin examines how Pope Leo is shaping the Church during a pivotal time in history.
Monsignor Roger Landry also weighs in to reflect on the Pope’s momentous first year. He discusses emerging themes of Leo XIV’s pontificate, including the renewal of Catholic identity, evangelization, and the importance of rooting modern challenges firmly in the Gospel and Church tradition.
Catch the show every Saturday at 7amET/5pmET on EWTN radio!
And don’t forget to subscribe to TCA’s daily media roundup for smart Catholic news and commentary delivered straight to your inbox.
Bios
Margarita Mooney Clayton is an author, public speaker, and professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. She is founder of the Scala Foundation, dedicated to transforming culture by promoting beauty and joy through the arts, liturgy and higher education. She is a research fellow in theology and the arts at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University, and a widely respected author who writes frequently on faith, culture, beauty and education. Her writing has appeared in numerous academic publications and journals and has been cited in the New York Times. Her new book, When Mary Calls: Surprising Encounters with the Mother of God, explores how Mary continues to guide souls through suffering, beauty, healing, and spiritual renewal. She earned a Bachelor’s in Psychology from Yale University and a Master’s and Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University. She has taught in sociology programs at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Yale, and Princeton.
Edward Pentin is a senior correspondent for the National Catholic Register and a regular contributor to EWTN programs, with over 20 years’ experience as a Rome correspondent covering issues on the Vatican, the papacy, and the Catholic Church. Formerly a producer and presenter on Vatican Radio, he has reported for publications such as Newsweek, Newsmax, and National Catholic Register among others. He has appeared on a variety of Catholic and secular broadcasts including CNN, Fox News, and BBC World Service. He is the author of The Rigging of a Vatican Synod? An Investigation into Alleged Manipulation at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family and The Next Pope – The Leading Cardinal Candidates. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations and a Masters in Applied Theology.
Monsignor Roger Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. A graduate of Harvard and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, he served as Attaché to the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the UN in New York. In 2024, he was appointed National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the USA by Pope Francis. He writes for numerous publications, speaks on radio and TV, and served as executive editor for the Diocese of Fall River weekly paper. He is the author of Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God, and was an on-site commentator for EWTN’s during the 2013 papal conclave electing Pope Francis. He is national chaplain for Catholic Voices USA and New York Chaplain for the Leonine Forum. Msgr. Landry traversed the 1500-mile Eucharist Pilgrimage in 2024, coinciding with his 25th year in the priesthood.
The following transcript is machine generated.
Episode 368 Transcript
| Betsy | Welcome to conversations with consequences here on EWTN radio. I'm your host, Betsy Fentress. |
| Ashley | And I'm Ashley McGuire. |
| Betsy | And we're thrilled to have with us Margarita mooney Clayton. Doctor Clayton is a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the founder of the Scala Foundation. She's also a research fellow in theology and the arts at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University. In her new book, When Mary Calls Surprising Encounters with the Mother of God, she explores the contemporary and often miraculous influence of the Virgin Mary through a series of spiritual memoirs and interviews, seven to be exact, and it's written as both a spiritual memoir and a theological exploration. Margarita, thanks for making time for us today. |
| Margarita Mooney Clayton | Lovely to see you again, Betsy. |
| Betsy | So your book has made a real splash. And what's interesting is you're being endorsed by both prominent Catholics like Scott Hahn and Dominican Father Lawrence Lou, as well as Protestants like Eric Metaxas and historian Peter Brown. To what do you attribute that both Protestants and Catholics are coming together to praise this book? |
| Margarita Mooney Clayton | Well, to put it simply, that Mary is alive and she's moving in the world right now in unexpected ways, which an historian like Peter Brown can recognize and call really an ancient healing. Well, reaching out to a desiccated culture, or which a former Orthodox turned Protestant, Eric Metaxas, can realize that skeptics have long questioned the place of Mary in Christianity, but she has been a presence with the saints and with the faithful. Mary has been close to the people of God since not just the birth of Christ, and His crucifixion, but right there in acts of the apostles, generating hope in times of fear for the church and really binding the apostles and the followers of Christ together into a family. |
| Ashley | So I'm a Protestant who became Catholic, and like so many Protestants, got a little bit tripped up on some of the Mariology and never really was against it and never really understood it. And as I was contemplating it, I went on a trip to Rwanda, where I was with a Protestant group, and we happened to join in a dinner with a Catholic pilgrimage group that was being led by Immaculate Ella. And this was only like ten years after the genocide. And I told her I got to meet her, and I told her I was thinking about becoming Catholic. And she grabbed me and she started telling me about Our Lady of Cuba, who and the people were actively having visions of her. And I know this is not one of the approved Marian places, but certainly it's it's being acknowledged. And then I also just had a group of women in my women's group come back from Nigeria, and one of them stayed with one of the visionaries. I didn't realize there's people who are still having visions. So can you talk a lot when you talk about how Mary is still alive? I think people think of these pilgrimage sites or this is kind of a thing of history, and we go and pay homage, but it's it's happening now. Can you talk about, and in your book how you highlight some of these, these things that are actively happening to people with Mary right now? |
| Margarita Mooney Clayton | Well, as you mentioned, Ashley, there have been powerful apparitions of Mary Kibet, Ho and Rwanda. Our Lady of is a tune in Egypt, not to mention Fatima and Lourdes. And there have been countless reports of miracles and healings. However, in our Protestant brothers and sisters and keep in mind, I teach Protestants and all the work I do with Scholar Foundation and the women's groups I lead. It's always been ecumenical. The hesitation when you talk about those apparitions as well. Can't there be, can't people be fooled? Can't there be demonic influences or false apparitions? And look, if you look at the history of the Catholic Church, it's always been recognized that a personal revelation for Mary doesn't make it authentic or authoritative. But we don't want to fall into the error of therefore rejecting the possibility that Mary does have a personal message for individual people and for our culture. So in speaking with the Protestants who are in my book that had a surprising encounter with Mary, what I tried to work with them on, and part of the reason I thought that they're two of the people I spoke to who were Protestant, had a miraculous healing through Mary, and this was as much a shock to them as it is to listeners, because they weren't actually looking for it, but they recognized that there was a maternal embrace reaching them, in one case a spiritual healing and the other a physical healing. And they didn't know what to make of it. And they came to me as a Catholic not to publicize this private revelation that they had, but to ask, how is it that I, a faithful Protestant, can't tell you anything about Mary? And why doesn't my church ever mention this? And so they came to me asking, this is part of what the book is trying to do, is to show that these miraculous healings, which these young Protestants experienced through Mary, bound them even tighter to the church and to Scripture, but in ways which they has. Protestants had never seen because of a skepticism about Mary, or, frankly, a rationalism that says, let's not talk about the miraculous, because we can be deceived by it. And so what I think is happening is just that more and more people are beginning to try to put together their experiences with Mary, with the Creed, the Eucharist, how we worship. And so the miraculous as in Mary's life, the miraculous has to give way to the ordinary. But we don't want to neglect Mary's extraordinary power. But yet what she's calling us to is a life of trust and a life of service, and really a life of heroic virtue. So I didn't write a book primarily about apparitions and healings, and there are several people in the book for whom their encounters with Mary has come more through the arts and through the liturgy. |
| Betsy | So, interestingly enough, part of the journey in this book is that it was through these Protestants coming to you that you reveal that even though you were born and raised Catholic, that Mary hadn't placed in your life a pivotal role, that you it was a source that you drew to in a in a particular way. But however, a lot of things changed through various trials and tribulations in your life. But can you talk about going to Cuba with your mother and, to subterfuge that was going on? You had to go through Mexico to pose as a tourist. You were carrying cash. You were carrying rosaries, talk about going there and seeing the destruction of the church. And yet what was going on underneath the rubble. |
| Margarita Mooney Clayton | As a very young girl, I went to Catholic school, and Marian devotion was part of our catechism. It was part of our Sunday liturgy. So I always had Mary. But when I went away to college at Yale, you start to think that in order to be a Christian in the Academy, you have to be able to know how to defend every doctrine and have big intellectual ideas. And that that sort of childlike trust in Mary is something of, oh, that's for people who don't have the chance to study or something like that. But as you mentioned, I began to just appeal to Mary for protection rather instinctively while carrying a suitcase into Cuba, where my mother is from. That was stuffed full of rosaries and DVDs for catechism, Bibles, all kinds of prohibited items. This was in 19, my first wine in 90, in 94. But this trip I write about in the book where I almost got caught was 2005. So about ten years later, and I had seen in those ten years and seven trips that a society built on atheist communism, where they in my mother's school of the Sacred Heart in Havana, ripped out the Sacred Heart of Mary and Jesus and put in its place two angry men wearing camouflage, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and replaced to Jesus through Mary with Fatherland or death. When you do that, when you replace our supernatural end with changing the world, and you get rid of Jesus and you get rid of his mother, well, what shocked me. Having seen that desecration, that's the word for total desecration that people, when we went to my mother's village, not only saved images of the people who they were told to forget, like my mother, someone had saved two stained glass windows of Jesus and Mary in his backyard, hoping and praying that someday those windows would be restored into the church, and the church would open again. And the heroic courage and hope to do that really struck me. But here I am also now, the Yale and Princeton educated person, thinking, I'm going to go into Cuba and, you know, bring in money and restart the economy or something like that. Whereas my mother, one of 14 children, mother of four children, you know, spiritual mother to countless people, what she had was compassion. And she went door to door listening to people's stories, embracing people, hearing stories of despair. And I saw in that motherly love that she had an image of Our Lady who can hold all of the pain in the world and say, what? I'm here. And if you ever want to come to church again, I'll walk with you. There. And you know what some people did? A woman at the other village that we visited walked into a church with no roof but an altar, and the priest had come to celebrate mass on that day. She had never set foot in a church before. She came to find out. What is this Christianity thing? And she brought flowers to the Blessed Mother. So that desire for Christ and reverence for his mother were knit together in people's hearts. And I realized, you know, who am I to say the faith is not essential, we just need social progress. Or let's just have Christ, but not his church and not his mother. The people in Christ, the people in Cuba didn't want Christ without the church or Christ without the mother. And it just dawned on me, well, if you look at the scriptures, there is no Christ, there is no incarnation. And this is Athanasius and this is church doctrine on the Mother of God. There is no hyper static union of a divine nature with a human nature. Without Mary's human nature. |
| Betsy | You call it a bridge, the bridge. |
| Margarita Mooney Clayton | But even in terms of Christology, the divinity of Christ taking on human flesh requires Mary's human flesh. And so this is why in the early church, calling Mary the Mother of God, was it celebrating that she knew how to care for a young baby? It was actually celebrating the union of the divine with a human. And Mary is essential, is essential to the divinity of Christ in Scripture. And this is the main scriptural point that, to my knowledge, no major Protestant theologian has ever, ever questioned that because it is the definition of Christ. Divinity is that he took his human flesh from Mary. And so the mother. That's what the title Mother of God means. And this is in the early church, this, to my knowledge, no reformer rejected that title. Now, what people might say is, well, if people aren't well-formed, the title can be confusing because it sounds like you're saying Mary is divine. Nobody's saying Mary is divine. What they're actually saying is that God elevates the human into this union with the divine. At the incarnation. And that, my friends, is indeed a scandal to many people. But it is what Christians, the all Christians I know proclaim. |
| Ashley | You mentioned beauty and, art and how some people encountered Mary through through that. And it's a theme in your book, you say that recovering art as a participation in God's governance and is co-creating with God is crucial to the healthy formation of young people, our places of worship and everyday lives. And I will say that we try to take our kids. I have five kids to a lot of museums, and I used to not really enjoy the older religious art, but lately I've been kind of rediscovering it and and just being drawn to it. And the other day I took we took our kids to some exhibit and I told them, I said, what do your eyes tell you? Like how how could there be this much beautiful art depicting Mary if she was not an essential part of not just Christianity, but of culture? So can you talk a little bit about about the role of, of beauty and art in encounter with Mary? |
| Margarita Mooney Clayton | One of the personal stories that I share is that, in part, I had drifted into a very intellectual faith, and I was a single, unmarried woman until the age of 48, when I thought during those years, well, if God hasn't blessed me with a husband and children like I desired, maybe this whole motherhood thing just, you know, it's not for me. But I ended up a wife and a stepmother at the age of 48. But I married a wonderful man who studied physics at Oxford and then became an iconography. Now that's a story for a different podcast. But what I had begun this journey, actually, because I honestly began to feel that as a single professional woman, everybody told me to just invest more time and in my career and my freedom because I wasn't tied down by five kids, but I was starving inside for the things that I loved as a little girl. Music. My family's very musical art, but I didn't. I'd never been taught that the experience of art and music, how to integrate that with my intellect and with my faith. Now I was raised Catholic, so of course it was there. But when I met my husband, who had studied iconography, and we began to talk about the liturgy and, and worship, and we're not talking here about like, which liturgical right you follow, which is what a lot of Catholics want to talk about. But we talk about the basic fact that Catholic worship is fully embodied and goes through all senses. Now, I say this because, again, I teach in a reformed institution, and across American Protestantism there's been more and more of a shift, the worship service being preaching and contemporary music, but not really any more Eucharistic liturgy or liturgies with something of a contemplative side where the senses are being fed. So that we have an interior encounter with Jesus. I mean, I've heard colleagues and students of mine say, yeah, and the reformed tradition, it's all about hearing the word and responding with virtue. And there's musical beauty stuff. Well, that's that's personal devotion. That's not liturgical. That's like feeding your feelings or something. And I sort of implicitly thought that as a Catholic because, look, a lot of Catholics in the U.S., we imbibe the larger culture. But what I realized through David and in the book, I interview David's mentor named Aiden Hart, who was a young seeker and teenager in New Zealand who discovered the Bible on his own, became Baptist, loves the Baptist faith, the word of God, but wanted to be an artist, and his desire to integrate his love of Scripture and art led him to become Orthodox. And then and and iconography. And so what I learned, from iconography is like David and my, and his mentor, Aiden Hart is that depicting Jesus as a human? I mentioned a moment ago, Athanasius and the incarnation and Christ being fully human. That's why we depict Jesus, because he was a person. He was a human being. He had a face. And so I now really believe that in church we need to depict Christ and depict his mother because we remember that they're persons. But also, as I said a moment ago, that they're persons who are still alive in a transfigured state, which is why traditional iconography doesn't look like a portrait. It's not that they don't know how to draw, but they're drawing a person in their likeness. But with the mystery of that transfigured person, because they're now in another realm. And there's something about those images, as you said, Ashley, there's something about those images that if you encounter them, work on you slowly. And I've taken students to an eastern Rite Catholic church, Saint Mary's Byzantine Catholic Church in Hillsborough, new Jersey, and some of them have never been in a church with images. But one of them, or several of them, have such a direct encounter with Christ and Mary in the images that they are absolutely taken into this kind of like, window to, to heaven. And I saw for people who have no exposure to art in church, the direct encounter with Christ in his mother that can come through these powerful images. And it really made me think that there's something to this wonderful tradition that needs to be preserved and and reignited. |
| Ashley | You know, as you're as you're saying this, I'm, I'm remembering that I'm almost finished with Elizabeth Ann Seton is a biography of her. And it's something I think people don't know so much about her. But it was her time in Florence and the iconography and the beauty in the churches. She was on the journey, but and had just had this horrible tragedy of her husband dying. But, there's a whole chapter in the book about her really mystical experience in Florence with the beauty and specifically a lot of the iconography in the churches. |
| Margarita Mooney Clayton | So, oh, I love Elizabeth Ann Seton. I'm from Frederick, Maryland, which is close to where she started her Catholic schools, and she was Anglican before she became a Roman Catholic. And as you as you may know, there were different strains in the Anglican Church, one of which kind of has. And the Anglican Church in England and more broadly is very interesting because it is a reformed church, although not part of the original Reformation, but it's a reformed church that has a very strong wing that has recovered the Marian and the liturgical dimension, often with opposition from the more evangelical wing of the Anglicans. But I have prayed the Rosary with Anglicans in England. The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham has reformed, Catholic and Orthodox going. And so there's actually a revival in certain places of Europe with Mary as an image of the patroness of the nation and places where these pilgrimages and superstitions and all of that were actually squashed out by legal decree. And so not only do we have kabelo, which is a new apparition, we have people going back to some of these older European sites of Marian devotion and recovering the place of Mary. And really, what I think this means with, to someone like Peter Brown, who's an historian who knows Christian history, I said, you know, Mary is the visible inculturation of the faith across culture and across nations. And this is why she's depicted in Chinese sacred art, Japanese sacred art, because we are the body of Christ. We are the family of Christ, and we have different faces. So Mary, helps again embody this incredible truth that we have unity in diversity. And this is what, to me, the meaning of Mary's presence at Pentecost in Scripture is about, is about. Each of us retains our dignity, but we're now pulled into this communion. And that's an incredible, beautiful mystery. |
| Betsy | So I feel like the book has different ways that people have been drawn to Mary Summons through beauty. You talk about a fugue and, music referencing Carroll House lander. That's a great section of the book, but sometimes it's through sorrow and pain. So can we talk a little bit about Sally, who contacted you out of the blue, and her really tragic story of multiple miscarriages and how Mary unexpectedly entered her life? |
| Margarita Mooney Clayton | Sally's story. When I received an email from a young woman who said, I'm a young Protestant woman and I want to speak to you because Mary saved my life, you know, what do you do with an email like that? Well, I had a zoom call with her, and as I recount in the book, this this beautiful young woman shares with me how in a period of about 18 months, she had three miscarriages in a row. And during this time, oddly, she had been a seeker, wasn't raised in any kind of faith, joined a methodist church, had a vision of a woman, and when she described the vision of this woman, what what shocked me was that it sounded like the woman in revelation standing between heaven and earth like a tear in the world, wearing a robe with stars. And something about this woman communicated maternal love. And what happened was that scary? Sally thought, this must be the Virgin Mary. Who else could this be? In part because of how she looked, and in part because of how she made her feel known and loved and cared for. But Mary appeared to her a couple of times, and she felt Mary was giving her the courage to be open to conceiving life again, even though she had been through two horrible miscarriages at that point. And she did conceive again. But it was an ectopic pregnancy, and she only found out it was an ectopic pregnancy because Mary urged her to go to the doctor before flying on a very long flight. And the doctor said that had the pregnancy ruptured during that flight, she and the baby both would have perished. And so here's this woman living with this tragedy that Mary saved her, but she lost her baby, and she lost three babies in her womb. And she felt like walking death. But what we spoke about, and of course, this is present if you think of Mary, not only at the birth of Christ, but also the mother of the crucified Christ. And so that reality, the suffering mother, is an incredible image of the power of motherhood to stand witness in the midst of suffering that cannot be solved. I also write about this in my chapter with Albert Rabideau, a mentor who wrote about slave conversions to Christianity and how the most controversial part of Christianity is still that God doesn't take away all of our suffering. But he walks with us and he says, this is the primary thing that the slaves understood about Christianity and embraced, hoping that God would bring fruit out of their willing acceptance of a certain amount of suffering can't be solved. So this woman, Sally, felt, even if Mary didn't intercede to protect her baby's life, which is what she wanted, that she was granted spiritual healing through Mary's maternal embrace. And that story, having shared it, Betsy and Ashley, so many women have contacted me who have lost babies, who want to believe that what I said to Sally is true, which is that your children are in heaven with Mary and they will know you by your name. That's what I said to her. And she said to me, thank you for speaking of my children like they were people. And I just thought, what did they tell you in the hospital? That the rest, the remains of your pregnancy, have now been discarded? Or people don't want to talk. |
| Betsy | About the loss of life. |
| Margarita Mooney Clayton | In the womb in certain churches because that might raise uncomfortable issues. So let's just not address babies who died in the womb, lest we, I don't know, talk about difficult things. So I think with Christianity and Mary, what that the real hope is not in preventing our suffering, but that in believing that in with God's grace in the other world all will be, all will come together. But in this world our suffering can be sanctified. And Sally said to me, you know, a lot of people told me it was okay for me to be angry, but I didn't want to be angry at God, and I didn't want to be resentful and I didn't want to live from a place of anger. And I needed Mary's compassion to help me learn how to turn my suffering into compassion with other people. And this is a problem if we're telling people that their suffering can justify anger and disservice to other people. And so again, Mary is very countercultural right now. But that message, I believe, appeals beyond people who have lost babies to anybody who has suffered unjustly. And when I mention that there can be incorrect devotion to Mary, well, there can be incorrect devotion to Jesus. Oh, well, Jesus didn't answer my prayer, so I'm just going to walk away or, you know, but who's who said or I prayed for a miracle from Jesus and I didn't get it. Therefore, I'm going to lose my faith. No no no no no, this is not Christianity. We have to hold it all together. And Mary holds it all together. The birth, the death and the glory. You can't separate them. |
| Betsy | Well, we could talk to you for much longer about this amazing book, Margarita mooney Clayton. So if you'd like to learn more about her book, please visit the Scala Foundation. Org and make sure to order her new book, When Mary Calls, now available on Amazon and at your local bookstore. Thank you so much for joining us. |
| Margarita Mooney Clayton | Thank you for having me. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Welcome to conversations with consequences here on EWTN radio. I'm your host, Ashley McGuire, and I'm Betty Fentress and this week, it's hard to believe marks one year since Pope Leo was chosen on a sunny day in Rome. The TCA team was actually there to witness it, and as we contemplate the last year, we have the one and only Vatican insider Edward Penton, back with us of the National Catholic Register. Thank you for making time for us today, Edward. |
| Edward Pentin | Sure thing. Good to be with you both. |
| Ashley/Betsy | So you've been a close Vatican observer and have covered multiple pontificates for years. Give us your your top line. What has stricken you the most about this one year mark with Pope Leo and his first year in the role? |
| Edward Pentin | Yes. Well, I think that the main point about this pontificate so far that we've seen the main characteristic, I think, is to try to return the papacy to a certain sense of normality and put the Vatican and the papacy on a more even keel after the, rather tumultuous or very tumultuous, really, pontificate of Pope Francis. I think it's been very much a sense of trying to, to restore, a lot of the traditions of the papacy, and bring back, as I say, a real sense of, of normality and familiarity with, with the papacy as it's always been, because there weren't certain, the breaks and ruptures really in the previous one, which I think, upset a disturbed quite a few people. And I think this, this has been a really a pontificate to, to to address that. |
| Ashley/Betsy | So I'm glad you brought that up, Edward. He revived a lot of traditions, as you say, even from what he wore when he came out to the loggia to greet everyone as Pope for the first time, and visiting Castel Gandolfo, which is really turned into consistent press conferences there as a journalist. What do you think about the new access approach that he seems to be offering? Is it healthy or does it create peril for him being misunderstood or speaking, off the cuff? |
| Edward Pentin | Yes. Thanks for asking about that. It's a good question, because I actually wrote about this in December, because this was probably one of the most revolutionary things. I think that Pope Leo has done in a way. Because no pope, even Pope Francis, didn't address the media in this way. Like like a politician. Really? They're called press gaggles or media scrums, where the Pope or the politician will go to the to the assembled press, usually outside, and just talk to them and and receive questions and answer them. This is very unusual for a pope. As I say, it's unprecedented. And I think there are pros to this. Of course, the, you know, it gives it makes the Pope much more accessible. You get to know him better. He's much more frank, as it were. And it gives the press the, the opportunity, not just on the papal plane, which has been the tradition of these kind of meetings, but they're more controlled. This is gives the press a more, freedom to just ask him whatever they want and he'll answer it. But the drawbacks of this, I think, are quite clear. And they're the fact that the Pope isn't a politician. He has a totally different role, and it's really for the salvation of souls and to guide those souls to heaven. It's not he's not a politician, per se, although, of course, politics does come into it. And I think there is a danger with this, this interaction with the press. As we've seen, because it's got him into hot water a few times of becoming more politicized and politicizing the papacy in a way that it probably shouldn't be. And I think there is a sense that, it's just become a little bit too familiar. And it takes away also a certain mystique of the papacy when he becomes to, to close to the people in that sense and to, you know, holiness means being separated. And to some extent, that's why priests are kind of separated from, from, the people, because it's it also undermines their, their special role as priests to be certainly in separated in some way and a and a holiness and element to it, which means being separated. So I think all of this plays into concerns about this. But so I said a bit more than you expecting, but I think this is really quite a, a significant, innovation of his, which, which says which is controversial. And I think as we've seen it does it does get him into a bit of trouble as we've seen in the past, past few months. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Edward, one of the things, you know, I think at the end of Pope Francis's time, there was a sense that, the church was in a pretty divided and confused state on a lot of things and, a lot of people and, you know, they were talking about their hopes for the next pontificate. There was an emphasis on unity, and it was encouraging and heartening to hear Pope Leo, in his first words, come out and stress unity. It's it's in his people crest. And he's even given answers in some of these more off the cuff, interviews that you talk about. One that really struck me where he was asked kind of a controversial question, and he just said, I think to go any farther would cause division. And I thought, interesting, but what are your thoughts on that? I mean, do you think, are you seeing that as a theme? And is it is it playing out? |
| Edward Pentin | Yes, very much so. That actually, because I think part of his sort of return to normalcy is also geared towards taking away or lowering the temperature. A lot of the, the divisions and, and concerns of the last pontificate, his aim as he's often stressed, I mean, his first words were peace be with you. And he came out onto the loggia, and he's very much keen to to bring back a certain peace and unity. Unity in a polarized church and world is what he's working for. And so, yes, that's very much part of his, priority of his. And you see it in his whole way of dealing with issues. I mean, he'll he'll not really come down on particularly strong when either side of an issue and he'll be very much trying to steer a middle course. But, as I say in a piece I've written for The Register, which will be published, I think, on the on the anniversary, it's that can only go so far. At some point, he's going to have to come down pretty strongly on on the key issues which are coming up. Very controversial issues which which I think he won't be able to sort of straddle the fence. He's going to have to come down one way or another. But, you know, as Christ said, he came to bring the sword, not, you know, not unity in a sense. And so, at some point, he's going to have to come down on the side of truth, and that will inevitably bring a certain amount of disunity, but that'll be a necessary disunity, as it were. So I think that's what we've got to see and what we're going to have to see in the future. But but certainly his whole demeanor is to sort of bring about, peace. And as I say, to lower the temperature somewhat. |
| Ashley/Betsy | So a lot of that unity really revolves around his relationship with the Cardinals. What have you seen with regard to that? He brought the ball together in January. Does seem to be more communication and fellowship among the college. |
| Edward Pentin | Yes, indeed. Betsy one that's another key part of his willingness to try to bring unity is, is one concern which is raised at the general congregations before the conclave last year was this lack of collegiality with the with the cardinals, and that Francis didn't really consult them at all. I mean, he consulted his college of, his, Council of Nine cardinals, but apart from that, he did very little. And in fact, the consistory were canceled for most of his pontificate. So by him restoring that, is has been very largely welcomed by the cardinals. And he's, you know, he's willing to talk to those Cardinals also who were very much marginalized during the Francis's years, like Cardinal Burke and Cardinal Muller. Cardinal Sarah, these ones who were trying to uphold orthodoxy, were very much sort of pushed to one side and not and actually sort of, you know, in time, in the case of Cardinal Burke, were was sort of, was persecuted. So, so certainly he's been trying to sort of recover that and heal that. And I think, yes, I think the Cardinals have been happy with that. Although the consistory in January and the one in June has been criticized as possibly being to the nodal in its, in its format, which isn't really the purpose of a consistory. The consistory is really to be a consultative mechanism for the Pope. It's not a sort of talking shop where the cardinals just go around and discuss things with each other. It's it's really as a, as a means to advise the pope, which is one of the key roles of every cardinal. |
| Ashley/Betsy | You mentioned, synod ality. And it seemed like, especially in the beginning of his pontificate, see, there was a lot of buzz about what's he going to do about Synod ality, which was a big theme of Pope Francis's. And he certainly made, references to it, but doesn't seem like he's really done anything with it. What are your thoughts on, what are your thoughts or what have you heard about where that's headed? |
| Edward Pentin | Yes. Well, he's he's clearly quite keen on the synod all model. But at the same time, he's trying to sort of bring a bit more discipline, I think, to it he's trying to sort of, and not make it so sort of lay oriented. He's trying to uphold the, the bishops authority within us, the nodal structure, which which was rather put to one side during the Francis years because there was a lot of emphasis on on lay involvement and almost putting laity on the level of the bishops. And I think he's trying to restore some of that, that traditional previous model of the bishops being, being the authority in this, the nodal, structure. But yeah. So on the other hand, though, he is very much does seem very much keen with that sort of model, of, of a lot of, you know, discussion and getting around tables and discussing key areas, which in many ways, you know, a lot of the faithful believe has settled matters on doctrine and so forth. So whether he sort of continues Francis's sort of model of solidarity, which which really put everything up in the air and, made it seem as though doctrine was up for grabs. I think he's going to probably be a lot more, kind of more sort of, serious in a way, or more sort of, returning to, you know, upholding doctrine and putting that, at the center rather than, making it all seem sort of up in the air and, and, you know, up for discussion. So, so I think that's what he's trying to do. But, but we'll see more of that as time goes on, especially if there's another synod in the coming year or a few years. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Here in the United States, Edward, since Easter, the Trump Pope, back and forth has kind of dominated the news, as I'm sure that, you know, what is your take on that? We have a monumental meeting coming up this week with, our secretary of state, Marco Rubio, coming to the Vatican. We're we're what's the word on the ground about all that? |
| Edward Pentin | Yes. Well, I think he's, I mean, this is partly goes back to what we were saying earlier about the media scrums because the through those, those interactions, he's waded into specifics of American policy, and that I think has caused some problems because Pope's as I've known, you know, over the years, even Francis wouldn't really get into the specifics of domestic policy, even if it's foreign policy, he would always try to step back and speak in generalities and leave it to the bishops. You know, the principle of subsidiarity, and leave it to the bishops to discuss, intricacies of policy. And I think this possibly has been and who knows? I mean, it seems to be a slight miscalculation on his part. That's not to say that's not to excuse. Of course, President Trump's, raising of the rhetoric. But I think it does. You know, I think it is questionable whether he, he is right to be saying these things, and getting into such specifics. But, but yeah, I think I think generally speaking, he's, he's been trying to sort of, obviously, plead for peace, which of course, is his role, as you would expect any pope to do. And of course, John Paul was very strong. And when the Iraq War was, was developing, speaking out against, conflicts. And, and that was really to protect the Christians, of course, in the Holy Land. But, but yes, this is, this is certainly, I think, a possible problem for him, which, which of hopefully this meeting with, with Marco Rubio will help, resolve or at least, tone down somehow. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Another thing, another tricky thing that, the Holy Father has inherited is the church's relationship with China. And, he was asked, I think, in one of his media scrums, point blank, about Jimmy Lai and gave kind of an answer that, you know, I think he said something to the effect of, I have nothing to say about that. And so that's left everybody wondering, is he there's something going on behind the scenes. But what what are your thoughts on that? I mean, I've no question that he's given how outspoken he is about peace that he's wants to help Jimmy Lai. But what have you heard about that? And, and any maybe potential back door conversations that have been going on or. |
| Edward Pentin | Yes, I don't as far as I know, there aren't any, actually, I, I know that he met Jimmy Lee's wife. Right. Not long ago, at a after general audience. But he hasn't, as you say, said anything. And I don't think he's done anything behind the scenes. So of course we don't know for sure, but that doesn't seem to have been any movement there. And I think it's very much part of his willingness to be, primarily a pope of continuity with Francis. In that sense, I think so. I don't think he wants to change the the policy towards China in any way. It doesn't seem to he hasn't said anything about that. And in I think in many aspects, it's also in doctrine. I think he wants to be fundamentally in continuity with Pope Francis. I don't think there's going to be huge, changes in, in that approach. Both with, in those sort of foreign relations and I think with a lot of doctrine. So I think it's very much a he's continuing a sort of pontificate of continuity. And but as I say, these other big issues and possibly China too, at some point is going to have to to make some serious decisions. And then we'll see more about where he's, who he is and where he's wanting to lead the church. |
| Ashley/Betsy | One area where the Pope, Leo has been very outspoken is on the threat of AI, and he just talks a lot about the dangers of technology, even meeting with some mother of a teen boy who took his own life after falling in love with an AI bot. Just heartbreaking. What impact do you think his words might have on the dangers of AI? And do you have any insights into his upcoming encyclical released which will be released later this month? |
| Edward Pentin | Yes. Well, he's he's been very I mean, he put he chose the name Leo, of course, because Pope Leo was very much, the pioneer of sort of, getting the church to think about social justice issues. He wants to be very much the Pope, who I think wants to to put artificial intelligence and this rise of technology center of his pontificate, he's much more interested in that. For example, than I think, Francis is social teaching, which is very much focused on on the poor. I think he wants to focus on this more, and, and he said so really as much and he's called for a, I think a lot of times what he's spoken about this is called for international regulations and ethical limits relating to AI. And I think we're going to see possibly in this encyclical, you know, a real sort of reassertion of the importance of ethics and the natural law in dealing with, artificial intelligence, because otherwise, without it, it could, of course, become very dangerous. And that's what a lot of people have warned about. So I think that's going to be a key part of his his encyclical is really just to emphasize the importance of human dignity within the whole realm of artificial intelligence and to, yes, bring a certain amount of control. And, as I say, ethical limits to it and to, to to remind those involved in it that there are ethical limits. So that's, that's what I think will happen. Yes. And it could become, it could be out quite soon. I've heard it could be published perhaps in the next couple of weeks, but who knows. |
| Ashley/Betsy | So Betsy and I are Americans, and like all Americans, were waiting to hear when the Pope might visit America. But as we've heard it doesn't seem to be on the docket for any time soon. I did see that, he will be visiting Spain, where he's going to be a part of blessing the Sagrada Familia as it completes its century long construction. What are some of the highlights, upcoming highlights of of trips that he's taking or, or events that we should be watching for? |
| Edward Pentin | Yes. Well, I think the trips will be interesting. He's had pretty successful one so far on his foreign trips. So I think, those are certainly ones to look out for. I think, yes, I think he's, I think his whole relationship with, with other countries, especially, as I say, China, but others will be interesting. But I, I can't actually recall the, the trips he's actually got planned at all of them, but, but certainly he's going, as you say, he's going to Spain, which will be an interesting and important trip. A lot of his focus is often on going to be on the immigration. I believe he's going to one of the Canary Islands, which is also a place of, where a lot of migrants land, as well as Lampedusa, of course, on July 4th. So he's very much, as I say, carrying on with that, that emphasis, the Pope Francis head of care for migrants. But at the same time, he's also been quite balanced about it, saying that, you know, countries have a right to, to protect their borders and that those migrating should try to you know, stay in their homeland and, and improve their countries. So he's trying to be quite balanced about it, but at the same time showing pastoral concern for migrants as well. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Well, it's hard to believe that it's been a year with Pope Leo. But Edward, we thank you so much for joining, giving us your insights on this very interesting year and what to look for ahead. To learn more about Edward Penton, catch all of his writings at the National Catholic Register by visiting NC register.com and make sure to subscribe to his new Substack. Edward, what is your Substack? |
| Edward Pentin | Yes, it's at Repentant substack.com. I believe that's where you can find it. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Well, head over there if you want the real scoop on the Vatican and the Catholic Church. Edward, thank you so much for joining today. |
| Edward Pentin | Sure. My pleasure. Good to be with you. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Welcome back to conversations with consequences, where I am joined once again by our TCA chaplain, Monsignor Roger Landry. And Monsignor, we have a big anniversary on May 8th, the first anniversary of the election of Pope Leo to his pontificate. Give us an overview of all of the star studded things that have happened this last year. |
| Msgr Landry | Happy to do that. But first, happy Mother's Day in advance, Betsy, and happy Mother's Day to all the moms who are listening to us, including all those through the Catholic Association network, which is dominated by good Catholic women. And so we we need that spiritual motherhood very much, and we need that physical motherhood in the church. Pope Leo, I'll never forget his election a year ago. May 8th at the white smoke happened a little bit after 6:00 in the evening there in Rome and noon on the East coast in the U.S. and to be able to announce those words when it first came out. And as soon as Cardinal Dominique, mom Berti said, Roberto, I knew that there were four Roberts in the college and the other three Cardinal Robert McElroy of DC. Kind of Roberto, happily of Darin and Cardinal a beer. Sara of Africa. None of those three were going to be elected. So before you even said Francesco, I knew we had the unbelievable reality of the first American Pope, and I had the chance to announce that through EWTN to I. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Watched you live do that for many. |
| Msgr Landry | Years, a world that we have the 267 Peter, but the first born in the United States of America, baptized in Chicago water and nourished by the faith of, American Catholic priests, American Catholic religious American Catholic laypeople, the church in the United States is now fully grown up, as we now, give to the whole church, the whole world. The first American Holy Father. And doubtless Jesus in his public ministry, as he was looking ahead to who was vicars on earth, would be had looked at the United States, and that Jesus must have had us in mind as he was able to see, and his divine wisdom that eventually there would be an American as the living Peter, on whom we are to continue to build our faith. And so what an extraordinary moment that was, since that we've really seen various qualities. The first is he absolutely seeks what his papal motto says in Allo Uno UNAM one in that one, literally one in the one Christ that he's really seeking unity. At the end of Pope Francis's pontificate, the church was a little fractured, for lots of reasons. But we, the cardinals intentionally were looking for somebody who could bring us all together because we are a family of God. We are a family of grace. And Jesus wants us to be peacemakers, not just on the outside, but peacemakers on the inside. That's what it means to be a child of God. And Pope Leo has tried to lead us to that unity. Some people might want Pope Leo that come on out and make a stab and one issue of theirs or another. Sometimes he has, but most of the time he's not been focusing on what divides Catholics, but on what brings us together, because that's greater even than the other problems that have to be fixed. And so some people have tried to Eggman to get him to comment earlier than perhaps you would want to on one important issue or another. It's not that these issues are not important, but he didn't want his whole pontificate to be defined by quickly going after one of these things or another, because he really wants it defined by unity. The second is a is is downstream from that unity, which is peace. His first words, as soon as he came on out, were the in a crystal resort to see a country devoid the peace of the risen Lord be with you all. And he really has been trying to bring that tranquility of order that was reset for us by Jesus when he rose from the dead, that he triumphed over sin which always divides, which always makes us fight against each other in one way, the other. That Jesus has triumph over sin, his triumph even over death. And he wants us to be not peace wishers, not to be peace blabbers, but peace makers. And so, Pope, Pope Leo has been in fleshing what that looks like to be a peacemaker. Little did we know a year ago the types of wars that would break on out in the subsequent 12 months. But Pope Leo, from the beginning of his certificate, has been talking about that. And then the third would be, he said, on the balcony in his first words, to the world. We must look for ways together to become a missionary church. As I like to stress, as the national director of a difficult mission society, Pope Leo is the first missionary to all the nations to be the successor of Saint Peter. Since Peter, every pope is supposed to be apostolic, every pope is trying to bring Jesus to those who are not yet Christian, or bring our separated brothers and sisters back. But Pope Leo had left the United States to spend 22 years as a missionary in Peru, and then 12 years of his life traveling to more than 50 countries, visiting the 3000 Augustinian friars to be able to strengthen them in their mission work. And so in Pope Leo, we really have a missionary pope. And throughout these last 12 months, he has spoken repeatedly about missions. He speaks about the missions on Christmas, speaks about the missions on Ash Wednesday, he speaks about the missions on Holy Thursday and his Easter message to the world. It's mission. Mission, mission, mission, mission. He's trying to turn our attention to the 5.5 billion who aren't Christian in the world, who don't have yet a friendship with Jesus, many of whom don't really know much more about him than just simply a name, and that that has some link to Christianity. And so Pope Leo is trying to make the whole church missionary. So that the 2.6 billion Christians can go to the 5.5 billion non-Christians and share with them the treasure of life and love. We have with the Lord. |
| Ashley/Betsy | What an amazing legacy for this first year, and I know we're all anxious to see all all the other amazing things he's going to do. Thanks for joining us, Monsignor. |
| Msgr Landry | Great to be with you, Betsy. Happy Mother's Day once more. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Thank you. |