POLITICS AND THE POPE DECEMBER 11, 2014 PAGE 1

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1 PAGE 1 TOM PUTNAM: Good evening, and welcome. I'm Tom Putnam, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. And on behalf of Heather Campion, CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation, and all of my Library and Foundation colleagues, I thank you for coming and acknowledge the generous underwriters of the Kennedy Library Forums: lead sponsor Bank of America, Raytheon, the Lowell Institute, the Boston Foundation; and our media sponsors, the Boston Globe, Xfinity, Viacom and WBUR. In the Presidential campaign of 1960, John F. Kennedy reminded voters that he was not the Catholic candidate running for President, but the Democratic candidate who happened to be Catholic. In an address to a group of Protestant ministers in Houston, he made firm his belief in the separation of church and state. Yet, religion continued to play a role in that campaign and in the decision of some voters. And JFK's election is seen as a watershed for this nation and for the Catholic Church, which was itself going through its own transformation during the decade of the 1960s. Those changes were in tune with the times, just as the selection of Pope John Paul II was later seen as a catalyst for political change not only in his native Poland, but throughout the Soviet bloc. And his papacy had its own effect on the trajectory of the Church in this new century. We gather this evening to discuss a new Pope, Francis, the first to hail from South America, who's offering a new tone and message to his flock and to

2 PAGE 2 the world. The question we pose tonight is what that means in a political context, both in this country and throughout the globe. We first considered such a Forum last year at this time when reading James Carroll's thoughtful article in The New Yorker magazine. Mr. Carroll is an author of 11 novels and seven works of nonfiction, including Christ Actually: The Son of God in a Secular Age. He's also a columnist for the Boston Globe, a scholar-in-residence at Suffolk University, and a frequent visitor to this stage. His insightful New Yorker article was paired with a delightful piece of cover artwork. And I thought it might be appropriate to have this whimsical view of Francis presiding over the opening of tonight's proceedings, especially fitting on this first day of snow. Few have been more successful in coupling matters of politics and faith than Sister Simone Campbell, the leader of the Nuns on the Bus advocacy effort to advance the cause of social justice, promote immigration reform and protest cuts to programs which aid the poor. In her memoir, A Nun on the Bus, which along with Mr. Carroll's new book is on sale in our store, she writes that when considering the name of their movement, she and her fellow sisters considered but rejected the name Nuns on the Run [laughter], as that might connote that they were running away from, rather than standing up for their political and spiritual beliefs. She just told me now that she was a Kennedy girl in the 1960 campaign and actually attended the Democratic Convention in the Los Angeles Coliseum with her mother and sister to hear JFK give his New Frontier speech.

3 PAGE 3 Neil Swidey is an author and reporter for the Boston Globe, who also wrote an extensive and thoughtful article about Pope Francis in the Globe's Sunday Magazine, in which he discussed his own Catholic upbringing in Somerset and Fall River. The essay examined this emerging papacy within a more local and regional context. Through it, Mr. Swidey provided a glimpse into his own family upbringing with images of his father working at the local church food pantry, which allows me to note that he has the distinction in the 35-year history of the Kennedy Library Forum series to be the only panelist whose mother not only attends to hear him speak, but bakes cookies for us to enjoy after the event is over. [laughter/applause] She's here in the front row, and we've already sampled some of her fare. Mary Gordon is an award-winning author of seven novels, six works of nonfiction, and three collections of fiction. She is also a professor at Barnard College. This summer, I took her most recent collection on vacation, hoping to take a breather from all things Kennedy, only to discover in the title novella, "The Liar's Wife," that the tragic events of 1963 serve as a backdrop and turning point for the story's main characters. If JFK was not the Catholic candidate years ago, she is not a Catholic writer, though Catholicism imbues many of her works. Our moderator this evening is Margery Egan, a talk radio host on WGBH, a former reporter and columnist for the Boston Herald, who currently writes

4 PAGE 4 for the Boston Globe's website Crux, focusing on issues related to Catholics, politics and the Church. As I conclude my introduction and we remove this image of Pope Francis, I suppose the question that is most on our minds is just how deep an impression this new Pope, this smiling snow angel can make on his followers, on this nation, and on our world. To explore this topic, please join me in welcoming Sister Simone Campbell, James Carroll, Margery Egan, Mary Gordon and Neil Swidey to the Kennedy Library. [applause] MARGERY EGAN: Thank you all for being here tonight. Before we start, just a couple of updates on the Pope in case you've missed them. I don't know if you all knew that the Pope has declared in the last few days that all dogs are going to heaven. [laughter] And cats and horses and guinea pigs, and everything else. Apparently, all animals are going to go to heaven, he declared just a few days ago. I thought that was great, and I hope he was infallible when he made that declaration. [laughter] So we can all meet up with Rover if we behave ourselves. And the other thing that just was reported just today by the Washington Post, there's a new Pew survey about the Pope's popularity around the world. In Europe, it's 84% approval. United States, 78%. Latin America, 72%. He's less popular in Muslim nations where Christians are not always welcomed. But the popularity of this man is just extraordinary and I think he's brought huge excitement to the Church, which everybody here has talked about.

5 PAGE 5 But I want to start with what we hope for his papacy. And Mary Gordon, you've talked about hope for grownups. I heard you in an interview talking about how when you first read the article in the Jesuit magazine that talked about how the Church had emphasized too much the so-called sex issues gay marriage and contraception and abortion, and all that that he wanted to move away from that constant look at that, that you burst into tears. So what is your hope for all these books you've written that so closely followed your own Catholicism? MARY GORDON: Well, as a novelist and Jim's a novelist, and Sister Simone is a poet, so I think we're all writers in good company I think what he's done is changed the tone. And I would be hard pressed to say that tone doesn't matter. He's stopped the punitive tone of Benedict, and John Paul II. I think people give John Paul II more of a pass than, to my mind, than he deserves. He was actually extremely punitive, as was Benedict. I think the most important thing that he's done is to create a climate that is more of an embrace and that opens a door. Now, what that door is going to open to, I'm not quite sure because I find him extremely hard to read. He says many things that make me very hopeful, which is that he's my hope for the Church is that it will deal with the reality of what it is to be alive now, rather than a fantasy or a symbol of the past. And I think at least he opens the door to that. What is on the other side of the door, I don't know.

6 PAGE 6 I have to believe and hope against hope that this institution is capable of change. I'm not completely sure that it is. But I think what he's done is created a possibility where there was a climate of punishment. And I think he's undone the tonality of punishment. And at least that's an opening. MARGERY EGAN: You were nodding your head, Sister. The report about women religious is coming out on Tuesday. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Oh, yes, there's that, too. [laughter] MARGERY EGAN: We'll wait and see how punishing that is. But you were nodding your head when Mary was talking about the tone of punishment going away. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Yes. I think his approach of openness and welcoming diverse thought is a huge step forward. And my hunch is, he just sees the doorway and is inviting people in. He has less of an agenda for a doctrinaire approach. In Joy of the Gospel which he wrote a year ago, which is this fabulous document that I just love, that I brought, just in case I needed it he says there are four steps to peace-building. I think he's trying to build peace in the Church because what he says first is that time is more important than space, that "having dialogue is more important than protecting my turf." And that's what he's doing. Then he says that unity triumphs over conflict. People get

7 PAGE 7 tired of conflicting, having the conflict, having the fight. People get tired of it and he's welcoming people in. But the third one I think is most important, where he says realities are more important than ideas. And what he says he means is, "Everyone's story is more valuable than any of the intellectual theories that I have." And so he is trying to build peace with dialogue, with engagement and hearing everyone's story, without having his turf be the defining space and that is a huge, huge difference. MARGERY EGAN: But how does that translate, everyone's story and reality, as opposed to just ideas? You've talked about this, too, the tone has changed. He's more of a Christ-like figure almost with the washing of the feet and so forth that he did in that prison after he became Pope. But what does that mean, realities? JAMES CARROLL: The thing that I find most moving about him is that he isn't impressing us with what he's saying. I agree with you, The Joy of the Gospel is an absolutely elegant and powerful statement of faith and invitation to faith. But it's not the most important thing, actually, even that elegant statement. The most important thing is the way he acts, I think. And the word that comes to mind, for me, about the way he acts is and I wouldn't have used this about Popes. I can think of one Pope I would have used it about, Pope John, but the word that comes to mind is kindness. It seems a little shocking, actually, to be enthralled with a Pope for manifesting kindness. [laughter] But there it is. And here's an example: In

8 PAGE 8 the Italian press, upon his election and you may know this there was a widely circulated and widely enjoyed report that when he was announced as Pope and came out of the Sistine Chapel and was about to go out onto the balcony, he was being ushered into his new costume, his white robes and shoes. You know that he declined the shoes. But the story in the Italian press said that the man, the attendant, was standing there with the ermine cape, the symbol of the papacy, going back to the Renaissance, and he turned to the man and said, "The circus is over." [laughter] Now, here's the thing. He never said that! [laughter] That was in the press, God bless and forbid we should ever do such a thing. It was in the press. It wasn't fact-checked. There was a kind of great enjoyment of it because it was a quip, it was a kind of symbol of the new day quickly. But it was cruel. It was a putdown on the attendant. He would never have done that and he didn't do it. I'm sure he just politely declined the cape, and I'll bet he said thank you. To me, that's enormously important. I think it's part of the complaints some restless liberals have about him, is, he's not going fast enough or he's not addressing more directly the situation of women in the Church. He seems neutral or opposed even to the idea of ordaining women to the priesthood. What's going on with this? My own sense of it is, number one, Benedict is alive and he's profoundly respectful of Benedict's position, which I find admirable, even though I myself am not an admirer of much of what Benedict represented for the Church. But I sense in this man a determination, above all, not to embarrass or humiliate Pope Benedict. And the women's issue, Pope Benedict declared, as Ratzinger, that the Church's

9 PAGE 9 teaching on the ordination of women was infallible. I mean, dug the hole right down to the bottom of the abyss. Infallible teaching? Excuse me. And people, even in the Curia, wanted that to go away. Because I don't think in fact, there was a commission of the Vatican itself that said the exact opposite. There's no doctrinal reason to oppose the ordination of women. So Pope Francis is kind, and he's clearly very kind to his predecessor, which I find admirable. And if he weren't kind of him, why would we take seriously his being kind to the people around whom are easy to be kind to? MARGERY EGAN: Well, Neil, get in here. In your piece, which was a great piece you grew up in Somerset, I grew up in Fall River, so we were neighbors growing up you talked about your parents as being kind of critical Catholics. I guess that was what he called Mom out here who made the cookies tonight, but the image of your father, the social justice piece, working in the food pantry and all that kind of stuff. If he's kind and he has changed the tone, which I think everybody more or less agrees he has, but nothing changes in terms of women, or in terms of divorced and remarried Catholics, or gays, where do the critical Catholics you talk about in your piece, about the numbers in Boston, which is a pretty Catholic place, just plummeting, what happens? NEIL SWIDEY: Well, what I look at with Francis is this extraordinary combination of charisma and calculus. I really do think he's a brilliant politician. John Paul had the charisma, but he had rigidity. That was his

10 PAGE 10 failing, and maybe that served him well dealing with Soviet thugs in his upbringing, but it held back the Church at a critical time. If you think about it, it's hard to imagine any institution in the Western Hemisphere that's more allergic to reform than the Vatican. So he has to use that power carefully and strategically. He's done it by going first with the charisma. I think we sort of know that. But I do think there is an agenda to use that for good. I think he's an older gentleman. When we look at transformational figures in Popes -- John XXIII comes to mind, who was only Pope for five years and he was dead before I was born, but all I heard about growing up was John Paul. He was a huge hero of my dad's because he used his time as Pope for good to outlast him, and I think that's what others have failed to do. So the first thing he's done is, for a lot of people probably in this room here in Boston and around the world who were Catholics, who saw the outrage and the scourge of the clergy abuse, sex abuse crisis, and yet stayed as Catholics, went back to Mass, that took an enormous amount of cognitive dissidence for people to do that, to step back into Mass, if you're a sort of a sentient Catholic, to think this is the institution, this is how profoundly it failed its most vulnerable, the children, and made these sins. But I'm going to go back because there's something important about that. What Francis has done is given those Catholics and many others permission and kind of a billboard for people to explain why they've stayed, that there is

11 PAGE 11 hope, that there is someone who believes in social justice, someone who did turn down the ermine cape and all the other trappings, and I don't think that is for political calculation. I think, like Cardinal O'Malley, I think this is someone who is profoundly uncomfortable with the culture of princes that has ruled the Vatican for so long, the trappings. This is where I think the political calculus comes in. If he can turn down those trappings, because being the Pope is the ultimate red line of life, the red rope line, if he can say no to those things, then how is some sort of monsignor in Milwaukee going to say "I need a driver and I need an opulent residence"? How is he going to do that? So that's a political, as well as a moral decision, I think. We'll see what happens from there. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: I think another piece of that that's so important to keep in mind is also that he's deeply pastoral and has his own spiritual life. He is not a person who is just following the rules. So much of what leadership has been defined as is doing the rules, right and publicly. But what Francis is saying, over and over, is that it's about the journey. It's about being together. That all are welcome. And yes, it's kindness. But more than kindness, it is openness to welcome in all those who journey together. And that is a pastoral response with spiritual leadership that we have been hungry for. Some of the Catholics that I've met that are the folks that have been holding on by their fingernails or letting go in great quantities find very touching that

12 PAGE 12 spiritual clarity that can admit ambiguity, can admit uncertainty, and talk about his own conversion. Those are huge spiritual leadership qualities that I think get included in your good analysis. MARY GORDON: I hate to be the downer. MARGERY EGAN: Oh, go ahead. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Go for it, Mary. We need it. MARY GORDON: See, I'm partly Sicilian. [laughter] But I'd like to respond to your question: how does all this tonality and charisma and symbolism, which again as an artist I would never downplay, but how does it translate to a lived life when people are still being denied Communion if they are divorced; when people are practicing birth control and being told that it's a sin; when gay people are still told, "Well, you're still a child of God as long as you don't act out on your desires"? And I think when you talk about social justice, and questions of poverty, particularly for women, issues of reproductive rights have an enormous impact on the lived lives of women around the world. It sounds like I'm a naysayer, and I'm not, I'm just a yes-but-er. One of the things that's happened to me, 150 years of being a feminist, is what people on the left have often said to us is, "Your agenda has to wait because first we're going to solve world peace and poverty. And then after we solve that,

13 PAGE 13 we'll deal with women's issues." So women's issues have often, even among progressive men, got put on the back burner. But they're not abstractions. The lived lives of women are enormously affected by issues of reproductive rights. I can sort of understand why he's doing it, which is the yes-but. But if you're talking about the reality of lived lives, all these issues of reproductive rights and sexuality have an enormous impact on daily life, and I'm not sure that he's ever going to address them. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Probably not. MARGERY EGAN: Here's what I wonder, because you wrote about this, James Carroll, in Practicing Catholic. You talked about the whole Paul VI moment when there was the encyclical about birth control and how many people thought we were going to have an okay on birth control. Tell people how you recounted that whole situation, which gives me hope that maybe he could do something, at least about birth control. Maybe I'm being too much of a Pollyanna. But explain that. JAMES CARROLL: The short of what Margery's asking is how does it come that the Catholic Church has taken such a stern position against birth control? Birth control, after all, especially when we're talking about prophylactics that work, or condoms that work condoms are relatively modern inventions. At the time of the reconsideration on birth control, the Pill had just been rendered safe for use by women. So in the early '60s, there was a Catholic commission appointed by the Pope to study the question of

14 PAGE 14 the Church's position. And an overwhelming majority, dozens and dozens against a handful of that commission, said not only should there be a change, not only should the Pill be permitted, since it satisfies technical ways around the old prohibition, but the entire prohibition of contraception should be let go of. And the Pope ruled against that vast majority, which included theologians, Bishops and a couple of Cardinals. And that is what generated the crisis of conscience in the Church. Because immediately you had pushback from Bishops and priests and theologians. Public pushback and Sisters, and the vast population of laypeople said no to the Church's teaching on this immediately. This was in 1968, the summer of 1968, that insane year when so many things came apart in society. This was the Catholic version of that eruption. MARGERY EGAN: Why did the Pope vote against all those theologians and Bishops? JAMES CARROLL: I think because the Church dug itself into a hole on the question of papal authority in the 19 th century with this very confused idea about papal infallibility. And Pope Paul VI I'm not a mind reader and he didn't tell me this but my assumption is he understood the value of papal authority was at stake because his predecessors had said no to contraception.

15 PAGE 15 And so, he was afraid of undoing what his predecessors had done for the sake of papal authority. It wasn't for the sake of sexual morality. It wasn't for the sake of basic questions of right and wrong. I don't think it was even for the sake of keeping women in their place, although that was an effect of it. It was for the sake of papal authority. And that's been the curse of the Vatican and the Catholic Church for more than 100 years. And this is why, Mary, I couldn't agree more with you. The assessment you just laid out for us is absolutely right, and it's why we have to be very cautious in our optimism, and especially why we males have to have a major second thought every time we want to put the agenda of women on the back burner. But how do you change an institution that has these commitments and the hole that it dug itself into on the question of authority? How do you actually change it? And if one of the things you're trying to change is the notion that somebody stands on top of the pyramid and gives orders to everybody else in the pyramid, if that's what you're trying to change, you don't stand on top of the pyramid and say, "Oh, and everybody before me was wrong and this is how it is now." You engage the institution in a process. MARY GORDON: I want to do another yes-but, sorry, Jim, but if you look at the people that he invited to the commission on family life, he did not include anybody that was really going to challenge the Church's position on birth control. The only lay people from America, for example, that he included were people in the natural family planning movement. So it seems

16 PAGE 16 to me if he were really interested in creating a dialogue on reproductive rights, he would have included people on that commission who would actually challenge him and he really didn't. So I don't think he's going to fall on that grenade. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: I don't think so either. This is the piece where I think we really also have to look at what do we do because I think it's tempting to put it all on him. Because he's Pope and he's supposed to be Pope and while we don't like this idea of infallibility, we sort of look to him as if he's going to take care of it all. NEIL SWIDEY: We like it when he s on our side. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Yeah, when it's on our side. It's kind of nice. I like to have somebody on my side once. But the thing that I've come to realize is that I think his style is so important for facilitating us creating Church the way Church should be lived and not getting caught in what this one man says. What we know is women in the United States and around the world use contraceptives. We know how to do it. We've taken care of that. It's like a non-issue that we, the people the edge is on leading worship. But more and more women I know are leading worship. From my perspective, I believe people are called to a variety of kinds of ordination. The fact is women are being ordained by communities, not the male model, but a women's model,

17 PAGE 17 to lead prayer. I know it's certainly happening in my religious community and around the country. So I think part of this is about Francis, but part of it's about us. Are we willing to take the risks and act as Church? I think that's the question. NEIL SWIDEY: One thing is just -- again, going back maybe because of where we are I think about this in terms of political leadership: what can we expect? I mean one of the benefits and one of the accelerators of Francis's popularity was low expectations. People really didn't know what to expect and if you look at the previous Popes, you sort of knew where we were going. Benedict, people say he is a nice man, but he was retrograde in terms of taking the Church back at exactly the same time it needed to confront the future. So the opening that he created is measured against what it could have been. And he was the runner-up to Benedict. People forget that. But people didn't expect that. I think in two ways: One, in terms of Presidential leadership, if you think about Presidents who led. So FDR took a populace that was wholesale against any involvement in the war, who were isolationist -- that was the opinion polls at that time -- and he led. He was just a bit ahead of the country. He didn't go too far ahead, but he used that masterfully, his political calculus, to get the country where he wanted it to go. I think of another thing just in terms of Supreme Court nominations. Bill Brennan, probably the most transformative Supreme Court Justice of the 20 th

18 PAGE 18 century, was appointed because Eisenhower needed to shore up the Catholic vote and he thought if they got a nice Republican on the Court and no one had any idea what he was going to do. I think in some ways that's what Francis has now. We don't know where he's going. We don't know where his true compass is, but we have a good sense that it's a moral compass, that he's going in the right direction, and he wants to lead in a place that's better than it's been. MARGERY EGAN: So I just want to be clear, Sister. What I think you were saying is that since there are a lot of practicing Catholic women who are using birth control, that it's not as big of an issue because there are no families of 12 anymore in the pews in front of us on Sunday morning? Is that what you're saying? SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: I think that's a piece of it. Of course, I always have to say, ask the Catholic Sister about contraceptives, it's just really ironic. [laughter] So maybe I don't understand. [laughter] Women have taken responsibility for their lives and found the Church out of sync, out of step with what was sane and MARGERY EGAN: So they're just ignoring it.

19 PAGE 19 SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Yeah. Well, but it's also more than ignoring; it is knowing that it's the celibate boys who don't quite get it. [laughter] And what could you expect? [applause] MARGERY EGAN: So let's talk a little bit about divorce and remarriage. By the way, this was an interesting anecdote about Tom Menino's funeral Tom Menino, the Mayor of Boston, as you know, just died recently and his funeral was on television. I was watching his funeral on television and I noticed that when it came time for Communion, Secretary of State John Kerry was in the front row and Vice President Joe Biden was in the front row, and the Mayor of Boston, the new mayor, Marty Walsh, in the front row, all these pro-choice, very publicly pro-choice politicians. In fact, John Kerry, who'd been told by the recently deposed Burke, the Bishop Burke, that John Kerry shouldn't get Communion because he was a divorced and remarried Catholic. Well, it was very interesting when it came time for Communion. Suddenly we were not looking at the altar or at the people in the pews. We were looking at the stained glass windows. And I thought Tom Menino's family must have asked the TV stations not to show the people because they didn't want to cause controversy. Well, in fact, it was not Tom Menino's family. It was Cardinal Sean O'Malley's Archdiocese of Boston, which, if you read CruxNow.com, you would know [laughter], because I wrote about this. And when I talked to Terry Donilon, the spokesperson for the Archdiocese, he said the same thing happened at Ted Kennedy's funeral, which again is full

20 PAGE 20 of divorced and remarried, pro-choice Catholics getting Communion. So Sean O'Malley said he didn't want this to become the focus. He would have taken some heat, too. So there's some self-serving thing about it, too, that he was presiding at a Mass or there at a Mass where all these pro-choice, divorced and remarried Catholics were getting Communion. But I thought that was a fascinating development that he did this himself so that you wouldn't have a big brouhaha about pro-choice, divorced and remarried politicians getting Communion. So this is a long way around getting to my next area of inquiry. What about divorced and remarried Catholics? Now, same thing, a lot of divorced and remarried Catholics are getting Communion, and their priests know they're divorced and remarried. And they go right up and get Communion. But my sister's in the front row here and we live on the Cape in the summertime, and we're at the Kennedy Library, and I have seen many times at Mass in the summer Joe Kennedy the former Congressman, who of course is divorced and remarried, and his wife, Sheila Rauch Kennedy, his first wife, wrote a book trashing the annulment process Joe Kennedy, who's famous, stands in the back of the church with his second wife Beth, while everybody else goes and gets Communion. He never does, because he's famous. If you're not famous in many cases, you're doing this on a regular basis. So is this an issue that we might see Francis addressing or changing? We got a little bit of that in the synod in October, but not very far.

21 PAGE 21 MARY GORDON: I'd like to just speak to a larger issue that I think addresses that and addresses what Sister Simone says, which is the schizophrenia of Catholics like us in our relationship to the Pope. MARGERY EGAN: Totally schizophrenic. [laughter] SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Medication perhaps is required. MARY GORDON: We're practicing birth control. We're going to Communion although we're divorced. We're pro-choice. On the other hand, we're all revved up about this Pope when the way that we live our lives says that the Vatican is not who defines who we are as Catholics. It shouldn't be that important to us, and yet it is. That's a real schizophrenia, which is why did I I cried when I read that about the Pope. On the other hand, I'm a pro-choice, divorced person who practiced lots of different kinds of birth control and it wasn't only condoms in [laughter] Trust me on that. I think there's something very, very odd about the fact that emotionally we want Papa, even though we are grownups and we know in real life we don't need him. So I think that's very schizophrenic for the likes of us. JAMES CARROLL: I think though that we need to flip our point of view on this, because I think that following up on both you, Mary, and you, Sister, and actually also, Margery, your summary of this very concrete situation of divorce I think what we're really seeing and nobody in Rome

22 PAGE 22 is going to tell us this is what we're seeing what we're seeing is Rome had gotten the picture. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: They've woken up, yes. JAMES CARROLL: And they are doing the changing. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Yes. JAMES CARROLL: I think that this began with Pope Benedict. Pope Benedict's resignation is the great unaddressed mystery in this story. No, really, Pope Benedict's resignation is far more radical than anything Pope Francis will ever do. It's more radical than allowing birth control or, I would argue, ordaining women. For a Pope to resign We thought at the time maybe it's a health issue. We know by now that it wasn't a pressing health issue. He's quite lucid. He's healthy. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Some of us thought it was the Vatican Bank. JAMES CARROLL: Well, there were scandals bubbling below the surface. But my own reading of it is Pope Benedict understood that the Church was at a critical point and a vast change, a sea change was required and he couldn't do it.

23 PAGE 23 I also think the Cardinals knew that. I think that they knew something, or sensed something in Francis. And what Francis quickly got was, We can no longer stop pretending the Catholic people have left us behind on any number of issues. This is the way change happens. I think. This is a grassroots revolution. And all you can hope for with a grassroots revolution is an authority structure that can adjust itself to it. I think this is what that looks like. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Right. And an important piece about that grass roots is knowing that the grass is different all over the globe. So being able to be a pastoral person who has room for everyone in this extremely diverse globe of ours. When he speaks about immigration, it's so great because he says, "I think I'm the only leader who doesn't have any boundaries. I have no limits to whom I care about." So his perspective of immigration is as the whole and that sense of the whole, then, allows much more for that welcome and much less about European colonial continuation of domination. NEIL SWIDEY: I think that, again, what he's maybe starting with is looking at the places The divide that he's most animated about is rich and poor. I think it's fairly clear about that and that comes from a South American viewpoint that he's coming from. I think for much of the recent decades, there's been a sense of Rome that, "We've lost America, we can write off America because they're not coming back." They're people like you

24 PAGE 24 who sort of have said, "This is what we need to do before we'll even entertain it." And they weren't going to do that. But this issue of rich and poor could be an opening, because it does go back to the roots of Christianity. It goes back; that's the radical roots of Christianity so maybe that's where he started. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: He's even gotten Paul Ryan talking about it. So it has been having an impact that is making change in the political reality in our country. Now, his answers, Paul's answers so far, he hasn't quite gotten it. But at least he's talking about it. NEIL SWIDEY: But here's the other thing. He uses the word "poor" a lot. No American politicians use the word "poor" anymore. They don't. They use "middle class." As I said in that piece, it's almost like they're afraid to use the word "poor" because they'll get some focus group zapper that will use that. Because "middle class," "working class" has been test marketed for consumption about that and "poor" doesn't because for whatever reason. He does that. He's radical in that way of sort of bringing that issue back and going back to Europe and saying about these issues as well. MARGERY EGAN: I was going to wait until later to talk about politics, but since you just brought up Paul Ryan, who of course was the Vice Presidential candidate last time around with Mitt Romney, I do wonder what you think about the impact of the Pope not to be so United States-centric,

25 PAGE 25 but we are in the United States what you think might happen, if anything, with the 2016 election. Because you have a lot of people that are talked about as contenders for the Republican nomination: Paul Ryan, he's not at the top of anybody's list right now. Chris Christie is a Catholic. He's back and forth up there at the top. Jeb Bush is a Catholic. Bobby Jindal is a Catholic convert. You wonder whether some of these issues that the Pope talks about, the inequality issue JAMES CARROLL: Immigration. MARGERY EGAN: Immigration issue. Global climate change issues. The last time around in 2012, it was fascinating how many, particularly Paul Ryan and Rick Santorum, wore their Catholicism on their sleeve. And that was their, "Well, I'm doing this because of my Catholic beliefs." Well, now things have not really changed doctrinally, but they've changed at least in tone. So what does this mean for 2016, do you think? JAMES CARROLL: Well, I remember when Pope Paul VI came to the United Nations in Popes weren't political. And President Johnson was led to expect led mostly by Cardinal Spellman of New York that the Pope was going to give a speech that would include a resounding denunciation of communism. Spellman was under that impression because he had provided the speech. [laughter]

26 PAGE 26 Johnson looked forward to the Pope's speech at the United Nations as a kind of moment of triumph. Why? Because in October of 1965, Johnson's war in Vietnam was six months old. We had launched Operation Rolling Thunder in February, and he could already see the clouds gathering of major opposition to this war and he was afraid of it. Some of you may remember what Pope Paul VI said at the United Nations. It wasn't Spellman's speech. It was a speech that climaxed with a resounding, passionate cry: "No more war" in French. [Panel tries to translate into French] JAMES CARROLL: It climaxed with this wonderful repeated, resounding, "No more war. War never again." We're in the thick of a savage war. The general assembly leapt to their feet. I mean, it was an unbelievable moment. It was the beginning in real terms of the Catholic wing of the peace movement. It was a summons by the Pope to oppose the war in Vietnam. Popes have political power. Pope Francis is addressing the United Nations next September. What war will the United States of America be waging at that point? SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Too many.

27 PAGE 27 JAMES CARROLL: And what will Pope Francis's message about it be? That's a bigger question for me than the Catholic candidates for President, actually. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: But I think your point is so important, Jim, that the moral standard and the capacity to cut through the sound bite and the tested message is critical to talk about the heart of the moral stance. It's true with income inequality, it's true with war and violence, it's true with gun violence in our nation. It's true on so many levels -- that capacity to speak truth that is readily identified when spoken is what's needed and to cut through the political gamesmanship. That is where I think our nation is so hungry. Even our politicians are hungry for that. Good point. MARGERY EGAN: Either of you want to weigh in on that? NEIL SWIDEY: I would just say, to Tom's point, we talked about John F. Kennedy as the Catholic. There hasn't been another Catholic President since then, right? MARGERY EGAN: That's right. NEIL SWIDEY: People talk about that as a big milestone, that that was going to usher in something different. Maybe it has. We dealt with it a lot with Mitt Romney as the potential first Mormon President. But there's something interesting in that. There have been a lot of Catholics who've run

28 PAGE 28 for President who haven't been I don't know that that's a factor or it's just a curiosity. JAMES CARROLL: John Kerry would have been President if it weren't for the conservative Catholic Bishops who fed into the culture war SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Amen. JAMES CARROLL: against him. The Catholic alliance with the Republican Party that year was pivotal in the defeat of John Kerry. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: But do you know what that defeat then resulted in? That was when I came to Washington. The day before the November election, I started my job at Network. But as a direct result of that, then those of us who have a more progressive voice got engaged in developing a network of opportunity and ways of getting into the press so that Catholic was not equated with that conservative message. And it's taken time, but that change is beginning to happen. JAMES CARROLL: And we should acknowledge, Sister, shouldn't we you probably don't want me to in the American political system, Obamacare would have been defeated if the Nuns on the Bus hadn't given cover to Catholic legislators who could vote for it. [applause] SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: I don't mind you mentioning it.

29 PAGE 29 JAMES CARROLL: Did I do that okay? Was that all right? SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: You did great. But I really felt like it was, since we're Catholic, that nunc dimittis moment where I thought if I never did another thing, writing the letter that the Catholic Sisters signed made my life a worthy contribution on this planet. So it was a humbling, terribly important thing. But now we're wrestling with the implementation and improvement because not everybody has access to healthcare. And that still is anguish in the richest nation on earth, but it's a huge step forward. MARY GORDON: One of the things that's humiliating to me is that the most backward-looking people on the Supreme Court are all Catholic. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Well, just about everybody on the Supreme Court is Catholic, forward looking and backward looking. It's really MARY GORDON: Well, Sonia Sotomayor is Catholic. So thank goodness. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: And Elena Kagan. MARY GORDON: She's not Catholic.

30 PAGE 30 SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Oh, her mother was. MARY GORDON: But some of the people in the world that are most responsible for some of the worst aspects of American life are Catholic and that's pretty humiliating. So I don't know who they were listening to, but I think your point that Kerry was defeated by JAMES CARROLL: Catholic culture wars. MARY GORDON: Yes. But also, when you think about it, some of the staunchest pro-vietnam people, like our parents, were Catholics in the '60s. So I'm not sure that what Pope Paul said spoke to people who would not have otherwise have been ready for it. NEIL SWIDEY: But this is the challenge of Francis. There are people who are impatient with him on the left. There are people who are impatient with him and suspicious of him on the right -- people probably who subscribe to the thinking of the Supreme Court Justices who are Catholic that you referred to. That's leadership. He's got to bring that disparate, diverse, very tumultuous group and get them somewhere and not get so waylaid in those hot-button issues that nothing can happen. That's, I think, what he has tried to do. That is his approach. We don't know, but my speculation is let's put the hot-button issues aside for a minute. Not aside forever, but let's put those aside and let's see if we can find some areas where we can talk about, whether it's rich and poor, whether it's basic immigration or decent human

31 PAGE 31 rights or other things -- immigration is obviously another a hot-button issue - - and let's kind of move that way. I don't know if that's going to happen, but I think that's the approach. JAMES CARROLL: Back to your good question about Actually Pope Francis has already effectively removed Catholics from the culture war in America. The culture war has been paralyzing our country, and it's been largely Catholic. The Supreme Court Catholics mostly represent that, but that's over. That's the power of who-am-i-to-judge and that was about gay people, which was for so long the center of the culture war, the main button that was being pushed, gay marriage. Of course, we all in this state can be so proud of Margaret Marshall, who initiated this fantastic next chapter in the civil rights movement. But Catholic politicians on the right can no longer claim their Catholic identity as a powerful part of their political argument because the Pope is not there, and that is transforming. That even goes to abortion -- which is not the same as a moral issue for the Catholic Church, but the Pope has said again and again and again, "These questions including abortion he hasn't been explicit, but it's clearly his meaning must not be the defining note about the Church's life in the world." MARGERY EGAN: You know what I also wonder about I was looking before for this headline and I finally found it. Simone Campbell, a piece that you wrote: the headline was "US Bishops More Conservative Than the

32 PAGE 32 Pope." And many people have said that the culture warrior Bishops were card-carrying members of the Republican Party, and they were much more conservative. But you've seen already changes in the people that the Pope has appointed to be Cardinals. He's going to appoint many more in February. We don't know if it's 10 or 12 or maybe more. I know you're yes-but, and maybe I'm being too yes-yes, but it would seem as though he's moving to appoint people that are less culture warrior. I find it fascinating that Cardinal Dolan in New York City, who is a very political guy -- he could be running for office if he weren't a Cardinal himself -- seems to have done almost a 180 from where he was before as a culture warrior to much different now. And you heard Sean O'Malley on 60 Minutes saying things like, "Well, if I were starting the Church, I would have made women priests. And that the investigation of the nuns is a disaster." So I don't think he would have said that I could be wrong pre-francis. So you wonder whether these new appointments will make a kinder, gentler hierarchy at the Cardinal and Bishop level, which could change things. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Well, when you see the appointment of Cupich in Chicago that was a huge indicator. But I think we also have to be really clear that we have a very limited pool of folks who are on the leadership track who share these qualities right now in our nation. Because those who were favored in seminaries for a very long period of time have been the climber types, who are more interested in the rules and in the oldfashioned calling Pope Benefit the old-fashioned style, the pre-francis style.

33 PAGE 33 So I think that, yes, some significant work can be done. But since we're Catholics here, can I go to Confession? [laughter] I have to confess that in some ways, it's easier for me to deal with someone like Chaput, the Archbishop in Philadelphia, who is again raising the Fortnight For Freedom, and they're going to have one next year. He's still doing the culture war. It's easier for me to deal with his consistency than to deal with Dolan's going in the wind. NEIL SWIDEY: I think what you wonder is has Francis given O'Malley permission to say more what he was thinking? And has Francis inspired Dolan to say something that he's not thinking? SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: I don't know. I don't know! That's perfect. That is perfect! MARGERY EGAN: I don't know. And the Bishop in Rhode Island is also sticking by his very conservative guns there. So I don't know. What do you think, Mr. Carroll? JAMES CARROLL: It takes a long time to change an institution like this, because it's made up of human beings. And these are all human beings, these are all human beings. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: There's the problem! [laughter]

34 PAGE 34 JAMES CARROLL: These are all human beings who have to be dealt with in ways that make quick and efficient change difficult. But it still happens. The analogy that has instructed me for a long time about the Catholic Church is the Soviet Union. I used to pray for a Pope John XXIII. Then I started praying for a Mikhail Gorbachev, because what we need is somebody like Gorbachev who can preside over the dissolution of a dead authoritarian structure. That's what the Church built for itself. It was a tragic, tragic mistake, going back more than 100 years. NEIL SWIDEY: But after Gorbachev, we have Putin. MARGERY EGAN: I love this line; I copied it down, James Carroll describing the Vatican bureaucracy: "The iron triangle of bureaucracy, dogma and male power." I thought that was very good. But a couple things I want to make sure I get to before we run out of time here and open the floor to questions. On Tuesday, this long-awaited report on women religious is going to be released. Not the one about the Leadership Conference of Women Religious; I guess that's later. But the one about all the SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: The visitation.

35 PAGE 35 MARGERY EGAN: Exactly. You are, of course, a member of the women religious yourself, Sister. So what are you hoping is going to be released on Tuesday? Many people, of course, have criticized the Pope for not calling off what Cardinal O'Malley called this disastrous inquisition. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: People have to remember there are two things. One is the center, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, for doctrinal errors done by the group that is responsible for seminaries, not responsible for religious life. And last time I checked, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is an association; it is not a seminary. Not that I have any feelings on this subject. [laughter] But the second one was the visitation, and the visitation got started first. And that was every religious institute in the United States was visited in some fashion. MARGERY EGAN: And that's coming out SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: They're releasing that report. So it's about each of our communal lives, so there's a lot of concern about this. But what is being done is it's being done at a press conference. It's being done at an advertised press conference where all the leaders of the LCWR have been invited. The leaders of women's congregations in Rome that have participated have been invited. It is a big hoopla that they're doing. So we take from that that it's going to be mostly a positive thing because when they did the negative censure, all they did was give it to the Sisters when they showed up at a meeting, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious

36 PAGE 36 and then had the US Bishops post it on their website, immediately. So that rather undercover way of doing the censure is the antithesis of what they're doing with this. So we believe that it will be more positive in summary about what our life is like. And hopefully there will be some understanding of US culture in the process. Because Sister Sharon Holland, who's now the president of LCWR, worked in Rome for many years as a canon lawyer, and she said she spent most of her time trying to explain US culture to those in Rome. Because they just don't get who we are. So that piece hopefully will work out. We'll see. They're going to put it up on YouTube. And those of us that are part of LCWR are going to be able to watch it at -- what did I figure out? -- 6:30 in the morning on the morning of the 16 th. 5:30 or 6:30, I forget. JAMES CARROLL: Like a royal wedding, sort of. [laughter] SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: Sort of like a royal wedding. We'll see, we'll see. NEIL SWIDEY: Let's hope that the self-destructive actions like that, we can move beyond. That would be a good sign. SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL: But here's the thing. It was selfdestructive. It was ridiculous. But the Holy Spirit, in my view, the Holy Spirit used that oppression to liberate an energy in our nation that was way