Here’s the latest from the crossroads of faith, media & culture: 04//25

The path forward. Prior to Pope Francis‘ funeral over the weekend, I spoke with Christian writer Rod Dreher about the pontiff’s legacy. The author of five bestselling books and popular Substack blog Rod Dreher’s Diary brings the interesting perspective of a Catholic convert who is now a former Catholic to the subject. He is also a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute in Budapest. Live Live Not by Lies, a four-part documentary series based on his bestselling book of the same name, draws on the warnings of Christian survivors of Soviet persecution for Americans who may be taking their freedom for granted is currently streaming on the Angel platform. More on that later.

JWK: I  definitely want to talk with you about your documentary series which is currently streaming on Angel but, obviously, the big story this week is the death of Pope Francis his legacy on the Catholic Church. You bring an interesting perspective to the subject being raised as what I think you have described as a “cultural Catholic” who drifted toward agnosticism before converting to Catholicism and eventually leaving Catholicism. So, I wondering about your journey and how it affects your perspective.

Rod Dreher: Okay. Shall we start with Pope Francis?

JWK: Sure.

RD: I have always been a critic of Pope Francis. I was a massive admirer of Pope Benedict. I think Francis tried, in many ways, to unravel Benedict’s legacy. Even though I’m not a Catholic, if you care about religion at all – and especially if you care about it in the West – then you have to care about what happens in the Catholic Church.

I think Francis’ legacy will not be a good one. I think it’s a legacy of chaos and instability. I think it remains to be seen, of course, whether the next pope will continue the Francis policy – as we might expect he would because Francis appointed 80% of the cardinals who will choose his successor – or whether there will be a turn back towards stability, which might happen. We have to remember John Paul and Benedict appointed all of the cardinals who ended up choosing Francis.

One of the most astonishing things about the Francis papacy was the way he demonized so many of the people who were the most fervent supporters of the papacy and the institutional Church. I’m talking about traditionalists and conservatives. I think that Francis has, no doubt unintentionally, weakened the Church because he went after the people who were its most stalwart defenders of the Church as an institution.

If we get somebody like Cardinal Zuppi of Bologna, he’s a progressive but he’s a much more tolerant man. If he comes into power I think that’ll be good news for the Church. Of course, I, as a theological conservative, would like to see somebody more in the Benedict model. There’s a lot of repair work that needs to be done from the Francis papacy. The thing that ended up breaking my Catholicism was, of course, reporting on the sexual abuse scandal. Francis had been pretty bad on that. I hope that whoever succeeds Francis will finally start taking this more seriously.

JWK: Can you go into a little bit more detail about how he failed on that score?

RD: Yeah. Probably the most egregious example is Marko Rupnic, the Jesuit cleric who was in great favor at the Vatican but who, as we now know, sexually abused many nuns and other women. Francis did not punish Rupnic. Of course, the Jesuits kicked him out of the order but, as long was Francis was pope, Rupnic remained in good stead with the Vatican. Francis even assigned him to a parish in Slovenia. I mean that’s just outrageous.

There was Bishop Zanchetta from Argentina who Francis gave refuge to in the Vatican after (he) was credibly accused of sexual abuse in Argentina.

Francis rehabilitated Cardinal McCarrick. Benedict had put him out to pasture then Francis came in an brought McCarrick back into the fold even though I’m quite sure Francis knew what McCarrick was all about. Of course, he did defrock McCarrick, ultimately, after it was impossible to deny what McCarrick had done.

I think Francis…did not understand the gravity of the abuse scandal and he also ruled by personality. I had lunch with Cardinal George Pell three weeks before he died. I was in Rome…and I asked Cardinal Pell who he favored for the next pope. He said Cardinal Erdő of Hungary. I go “Erdő? Why him?” Pell said “Because he is a very good canon lawyer and this place,” meaning the Vatican, “is lawless.” That really stayed with me because Francis had (an attitude) towards running the Church. It was very personal. He leaves a mess for his successor to clean up…So, that’s my view of Francis.  

JWK: Some time back I spoke with Mary Ann Glendon about her book In the Courts of Three Popes about her working relationships with Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict and St. Francis. She said to me that, while Pope John Paul and Benedict spoke with clarity and consistency, Francis’ messages tended to be more ambiguous and hard to interpret. Would you agree with that?

RD: Absolutely true. I mean look, in the world we live in today there is so much information coming at Catholics from all over. They need the Church to speak with clarity and with authority. Francis didn’t. He made things harder to understand for Catholics. You know, I’m no longer a Catholic but I believe that the fate of Western civilization depends on the strength of the Catholic Church – which created Western civilization more than anybody else, any other institution. So, it’s good for all of us who live in the West when the Catholic Church is strong and speaks with a clear voice. That was not the case under Francis. It was the case under John Paul. It was the case under Benedict. I hope it will be the case under Francis’ successor.

Francis was a sentimental humanitarian. He had certain pastoral strengths but one of the things he completely missed out on, that I think was pastorally necessary for our time, was to speak with clarity all the time.

JWK: Of course, he led the Church during a tumultuous era that included the Covid crisis, the events set in motion by the death of George Floyd and issues of involving transgenderism and immigration. Some people felt like he got a little too involved in politics. What are your thoughts on that?

RD: Well, look, it’s impossible for any serious religious leader to avoid politics. The Catholic Church has a lot to say about what a good society is. I think that any pope has to be careful the extent to which he inserts himself into politics but Catholic social teaching is a real thing. It has a lot of good things to say to the political world. Again, I think Francis was guided mostly by sentimental humanitarianism.

On the migration crisis, for example, (one of the first visits) he made he made as pope was to the Italian island of Lampedusa where a lot of migrants from Africa were showing up in boats. At one level, you expect the pope to be compassionate to suffering but I live in Europe now. To actually live there and to see how mass migration is transforming and destabilizing European society is just incredible. For Francis to keep talking in the way he did about migration in his completely abstract way was (out-of-touch).

(Compare that) to the argument of JD Vance (who) defended the Trump Administration‘s approach to migration by referring to Ordo Amoris which is straight Augustine. St. Augustine was the biggest influence on JD in bringing him into the Catholic Church. Pope Francis could have taken that opportunity to have a dialogue with him about applying the teachings of the Church to the migration question in a subtle and sophisticated way. He didn’t do that. He chose instead to take the sentimental route, to say that any refusal of migration is a violation the Gospel teachings. I think that’s not only wrong and intellectually irresponsible but it’s also a teaching that is dramatically undermining the position of the Catholic Church in Europe for a couple of reasons.

First of all, the Muslim migrants who are coming into Europe have no sympathy at all for Catholicism. In fact, I dedicated the French version of my book The Benedict Option to Fr. Jacques Hamel who was an elderly French priest who was murdered…as he celebrated mass by two ISIS terrorists. This is a huge problem that Francis seemed to have no interest in.

Secondly, so many bishops, as well as Protestant leaders, in Western Europe are all in favor of migration. They are not having to pay the costs that ordinary Europeans – both Christian and non-Christian – are having to pay with crime, displacement and that sort of thing. So, they’re bringing the Church to disrepute. People have begun to look at the Church as one of the institutions responsible for the destabilization and even ruin of their own lives.

JWK: And even making money off of it in some instances.

RD: Exactly. The migration issue is complicated for Christians. We get that – but Francis, like so many of the bishops, seemed to think it’s a very simple thing. This is what I mean by sentimental humanitarianism. I think JD Vance, although he’s a new Catholic – He’s a Catholic for only six years – at least has a more sophisticated and, dare I say it, pastoral view of how to think about this sort of thing than the pope did.

JWK: Some people have given Pope Francis credit for being more inclusive and welcoming to the gay community and to divorced Catholics. How do you feel he handled those issues?

RD: I think he did it quite poorly. On the question of gay Catholics, he – or his doctrinal office – issued Fiducia supplicans approving blessings of gay couples. This got a lot of pushback from bishops, especially the African bishops. If he had simply wanted to bless individual gay Catholics, there’s no doctrinal problem with that – but he didn’t do that. He approved blessing couples. That can’t be reconciled with Catholic theology. This is part of the whole question of a lack of precision and clarity. The Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality are in stark contrast to what the modern world believes. We all get that but the answer can’t be to throw out the teachings. If you do that, to achieve uncertain results, you are undermining your own credibility.

On the matter of divorced Catholics, I mean I myself am divorced. I was married as a Catholic though I’m not a Catholic anymore. I understand intimately the problems divorced Catholics have. I credit Francis for trying to find a more pastoral accommodation for divorced Catholics…but the fact that most things that he did seemed to be acts of the will that didn’t accord with Catholic teaching I think was really problematic. Even though I myself would like to see more mercy extended to divorced Catholics under certain circumstances, Francis’ wasn’t the way to do it because you have to find a way to do it that also is faithful to Catholic doctrine. Otherwise, the Church loses it authority.

JWK: So, where does the Church go from here? As you mentioned earlier, Pope Francis appointed many of the cardinals who will be voting on his successor but, as you also mentioned, that’s not always a guarantee of which way the Church is going to go. What do you think will happen and what would you like to see happen?

RD: I think, ironically, the “Francis Effect” will be to diminish the influence of the hierarchy of the Vatican on the behavior of ordinary Catholics. Now, it’s not like most Catholics today actually obey what the pope says. Rightly, or wrongly, we live in a different world, a much more secular world, but the Catholics I know who are more conservative theologically have had to learn the hard way that the Office of the Papacy is not the rock that they formerly believed it was. So, they’re trying to find their own way, as Catholics, to live out Catholic truth without having to count on the support of the Church itself.

I think we’re going to see more and more Catholics living what I call the “Benedict Doctrine” – which is to say finding ways to live out the Catholic faith in smaller communities depending on their own knowledge of Catholic teach…and making alliances with priests and monks who are still faithful to the magisterium. So, I think we’re gonna see that.

It’s also true, I think, that we are seeing now a new revival – certainly in Europe and maybe in America – of young people coming into the Catholic Church. I was in France right after Ash Wednesday. All of the French Catholics were talking about how shocked and delighted they were that on Ash Wednesday their churches were full for the first time in decades. That’s great news but, I tell you, the people who are coming into the Catholic Church now – the young people – are not coming in because of Francis. They’re coming in in spite of him and the theological liberalism that he stood for.

I think that we’re not gonna see a big turnaround in the loss of faith among people in the US and Western Europe. I hope we do (though) I don’t see that in the cards – but there are some reasons to hope in these smaller groups. In France, the annual pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres has drawn typically about 18,000 young people who are traditionalists on the three-day march from Paris to the cathedral in Chartres. This year they had to shut down online registration after two days because the system was overwhelmed. That is fantastic news. These young people who are wanting to go on that pilgrimage are not liberals. They’re conservatives.

JWK: Why do you think that is? Why are they attracted to a more conservative church?

RD: Because a more conservative church gives them deeper roots and the historical legacy of the Catholic faith. It gives them something solid to stand on in a world in which everything seems to be in flux. It gives them a sense of transcendence that they don’t often get, maybe, in their parish – a sense that there’s more to the Church than simply doing good works. They’re looking for a reconnection with the transcendent dimension of faith. This is what (my book) Living in Wonder is about. It’s…a re-enchantment that’s going on among the young, not only in Europe (but) in the US well, which is a sense of looking for the miraculous, a sense of the spiritual and the transcendent.

The problem is so many of these young people are not going to the Church looking for it. They’re turning to various forms of the occult. This is something that’s largely invisible to a lot of pastors. Frankly, it was invisible to me. I’m 58 years old. It was invisible to me…because that’s just not my experience. A young Anglican seminarian at Oxford in England approached me while I was working on the book and (said) to me “Your generation doesn’t see this. You think the great enemy of the Church is atheism and secularism. I’m here to tell you, that’s true for your generation but not mine.” (I asked) “What is it for your generation?” He said “The occult, including minor forms like tarot cards, astrology, all the way up to paganism, Wicca and even satanism.” He said that “This is something that I know that I am going to have to be struggling with the rest of my life as a pastor but your generation doesn’t see it.” I did some research on it. The young man was right.

There’s a brand-new book out by Christian Smith. He’s a Catholic sociologist at the University of Notre Dame. The book is about why religion became obsolete. He talks about that sort of thing too – that so many of the young are turning to the occult and not to the Church because they’re seeking enchantment. They’re seeking a direct connection with a sense of wonder. I believe that, whether it’s the Catholic Church or any church, if it’s going to be able to reach the young it needs to be much more willing to revive devotional practices that connect us to a sense of the transcendent.

JWK: So, is the secularism of the world leaving a void that needs to filled?

RD: Yeah. I think about how I became a Christian myself. I was a teenage agnostic. I fell away from away from the sort of very weak Protestantism in which I was raised. I was struck by lightening, so to speak, by going to the cathedral at Chartres when I was 17 years old. I was with a tour group. I walked into that church. I had no idea that Christianity could be that – that there was a form of Christianity that could inspire people to build such a glorious temple to the glory of God.  It put me on a search. I didn’t walk out of the church that day as a reconverted Christian but I started searching for a connection to the Christianity that raised Chartres. Eventually, I became a Catholic. It was eight or nine years when I became a Catholic. It was a wonder.

It was not only the wonder of seeing the sacred beauty of Chartres but also, at the end of my journey, talking to an elderly monsignor in Louisiana where I was then living who gave me a story. Even at 90, he talked about he had been an atheist as a young man but then he experienced two miracles involving the Eucharist that led him not only to return to his faith but to become a priest. Now, these events had happened like 40 or 50 years earlier but that old man whom I was interviewing for a story was crying as if they had happened the week before. I think the old man, who died many years ago, was a saint. That old priest was a saint.

It was first encountering wonders and things of beauty and then (being) in the presence of this saintly old man who had had his life radically changed by miracles that convinced me to surrender everything to God and to finally become a Catholic and a serious Christian. Pope Benedict, himself, once said that the best arguments the Church has for itself today are not the rational propositional arguments but rather the beauty that comes out of the Church as a part of architecture and the example of the saints. I think I would agree with that.

JWK: Turning briefly to Live Not by Lies, the Angel documentary series based on your bestselling book, why do you think the book resonated so much with readers and what inspired you to create the streaming series?

RD: About ten years ago I began hearing from people in the US who had come to America to escape Soviet communism who were starting to say that the things they saw happening in America…reminded them of what they had left behind. I thought that was an extreme judgment but, the more I talked to them and thought about what they were saying, I realized that they were really onto something. We weren’t building gulags in America but the same of patterns of thought behind totalitarianism were starting to manifest in a different way in America. I wanted to explain what they were seeing and why it’s important.

In the second part of the book, I went to the former countries of the Soviet bloc and talked to Christians who stayed behind. They had not emigrated. They had stayed behind and resisted communism. I was interested to know what advice they would have for Christians living in the West today. The book came out in September of 2020 in the middle of Covid and after the summer of George Floyd. It got zero mainstream media attention but it ended us selling over 200,000 copies, mostly by word of mouth, because people understood intuitively that something had gone very wrong in our country. These people, that I gave voice to, helped people today in America understand it.

Now, there’s a four-part documentary series about it where you get to see some of the same people I talked to in the book. You get to see their faces and hear their voices. I’m hoping to reach, with the movie, people who didn’t read the book – especially young people who have no memory of what communism was or what totalitarianism was – because they need to know.

(Our conversation about Live Not by Lies continues in my next post.)

John W. Kennedy is a writer, producer and media development consultant specializing in television and movie projects that uphold positive timeless values, including trust in God.