Weekly roundup: An American Pope! + We're Using the N-Word to Fundraise Now?
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Brad and Dan discuss the landmark election of the first American Pope, Leo XIV, highlighting his background, his critical stance on immigration, and his potential impact on American politics.
They also examine a troubling incident in Minnesota where a woman called a 5-year-old black child the N-word and subsequently raised significant funds through a Christian platform.
The conversation ties these issues into broader themes of white supremacy, conservative Christian victimhood, and the necessity of deeper education on purity culture and white Christian nationalism.
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This will be led by Dr. Sarah Malziner, who is an absolute expert on Purity culture, white supremacy, and the history of white Christian womanhood in the United States.
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There is nothing remotely Christian, American, or morally defensible about a policy that takes children away from their parents and warehouses them in cages.
This is being carried out in our name and the shame is on us all.
That was retweeted by Robert Prevost, who is now Leo XIV, the new American Pope.
In 2025, he's only posted five times, but in those five times, he has criticized J.D. Vance, saying that he is wrong about the Ordo Amoris.
He has wished well for Pope Francis and his health, and he has criticized Donald Trump for laughing at Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Today, we break down the surprising choice of the man who is now Pope Leo XIV, the first American Pope and what it means for American politics, his stances on immigration and his understanding of global affairs.
We then go into a case out of Minnesota where a woman used the N-word in reference to a five-year-old child on the playground.
The incident was recorded, and instead of being shamed, she has used it in order to raise over $700,000.
Dan and I discuss what that means in terms of our culture.
And the deep ties to white Christian womanhood, the myth of innocence, and the ways it links up from everything antebellum South, plantation owners, and white supremacy in our country.
I'm Brad Onishi, and this is Stray White American Jesus.
Stray White American Jesus Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
I'm Brad Onishi.
Great to be with you on this Friday here with my co-host.
Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Nice to see you, Brad.
Good to see you, Dan.
You're living your best middle-aged life, as we've discussed.
We should probably create a whole podcast just about that.
I can talk about the goth festival I went to last weekend.
Yeah, and you were supposed to hear a big band last night, but it got canceled, so I'm sorry for that.
The fact that you, a middle-aged man, were out on a school night going to see a band, that's impressive.
That's just like, wow.
So it's Alice in Chains.
They had to cancel their inaugural tour kickoff night.
They had to cancel it last night for some apparently non-life-threatening medical emergency of one of the band members.
But there's this group of kids walking around, probably teenagers.
So they got, like, the Alice in Chains shirts, except for the one kid with, like, the Friedrich Nietzsche t-shirt.
Ah, yes.
I'm like, of course he is.
So I'm old enough now, even as somebody who reads and teaches Nietzsche, to be like, come on, like, you know.
But, you know, channeling as a Gen Xer full of all my grunge, angst, like, you know, whatever.
I'll take the kid in the Nietzsche shirt at the Alice in Chains show.
Yeah, rock on, kid.
Rock on.
All right?
All right, y 'all.
Well, we have a new pope, and we're going to dig into what that means, who he is, and why, in this moment, we have the first American pope.
It just adds another wrinkle to an already very wrinkly time.
We're going to then jump into a woman.
In Minnesota, who called a child the N-word and was all caught on video.
And she then raised $700,000 online as a kind of vice-signaling campaign.
If we have time, we're going to jump into some stuff about the campaign for Donald Trump to have a third term and what people are doing to organize that.
And we'll see if we get to it.
So let's start with the Pope.
Dan, I'm just going to start with this question to you.
We didn't talk about this before we started recording, but where were you when you heard that we had an American Pope?
And what did you initially think?
I think I was driving somewhere and like a thing popped up on my phone, which I checked at a stoplight.
I was stopped.
I was not driving, but you know, and I saw that.
And my initial thought was, it was surprising.
I had been checking, like just kind of casually, but...
Sports books that do betting on the Pope.
There were these things with how the odds were changing each day, and the odds for an American Pope were low.
It's pretty widely known, there's been a lot of reporting since this, that traditionally the idea has been that the Catholic Church has not been eager to have an American Pope, because the U.S. is so, like lots of reasons, militaristic, big, powerful, influential, rich, and kind of not wanting to give that kind of authority to a cardinal, traditionally a cardinal, from the U.S. So I was surprised, and before I had a chance to look into anything, I didn't know anything about this person.
I was just thinking, like, I wonder, like, what kind of American bishop or cardinal this is, because, as we've also talked about, the American, you know, the Council of Bishops, Catholic bishops in the U.S. has not been a huge fan of Francis, and there was a lot of thinking that the next pope would be kind of in the same trajectory as Francis, because...
Francis was very popular globally, and so there's sort of pressure within the conclave to move in that direction.
So I had a lot of thoughts just sort of being like, oh, they picked an American bishop, cardinal.
I wonder what kind of American bishop or cardinal, which of course is the really interesting thing as we dive into this.
I was on a call, like a meeting, like a Zoom sort of meeting, and...
You know, there's four or five people on the call, and I sort of look down on my phone at some point when I feel like, you know how it goes in meetings, you know, you're just sort of like, someone's talking about something that, you know, you're like, whatever.
And I hadn't opened my, I just looked down, and there's a message from a French reporter who I'd spoken to like a year and a half ago, who like very politely is like, dear Mr. Onishi, we have an American Pope.
I'm wondering if you can comment on it or have anything to say.
And my heart just like, was just like, I was like, are you serious?
The Pope is American?
And I was so afraid it was Cardinal Dolan.
I was so afraid it was James Dolan from New York.
And I just thought, like, you've got to be kidding me.
What happened here?
And then I, you know, I did, I signed on and I saw it was who it was and who he was and all that.
And I, you know, things changed.
So let's talk about Leo XIV.
And who he is and where he comes from.
I'll give a little bit of info here, Dan.
I want to analyze some stuff that's happening with MAGA having a hard time with this choice.
I want to talk about his first homily and his first words as Pope and what they can tell us about where he's going and talk about the ways that LGBT Catholics are actually responding to this in some sense.
Who is he?
Born 1955 in Chicago, Illinois.
It seems we know now he's a White Sox fan, so that's tough for all those Catholic Cubs fans.
We are sorry and we hear you and see you today.
Big day, Dan.
It's a big day for Dan Miller.
It's also a big day for Villanova University.
I want to explain that.
So he went to Villanova, was a math major, seemed to study some philosophy there.
And we actually know he studied philosophy, Dan.
Because you are two degrees away from the new pope.
The fabulous, goth, metalhead dad that you are, you also are two degrees from the pope.
So go ahead, explain it.
I saw a Facebook post last night that my doctoral supervisor taught the pope.
He was not the pope then, obviously, in like a German...
Existentialism, Phenomenology, Philosophy course.
I guess it was his, he said it was Bob, as he was known to regular people.
It was his senior year, and he took this class, and my advisor taught it, like in 1977, I think he said.
So, I mean, a long, long time back.
But yeah, so me and the Pope were like this, and, you know, clearly close, and could talk about, you know, German philosophy, because I'm sure that's what the Pope likes to do.
Well, that tracks because he graduates in 1977 and he enters the Order of St. Augustine and enters the path that would take him all the way to the papacy that year.
He does his theological education in Chicago and then heads to Rome.
He's ordained a priest in 1982, four or five years after graduating from Villanova.
And as I think many people know by now...
He spends a lot of time as somebody in his late 20s and his 30s in Peru.
So 1988 to 1999, he's in Peru doing various things and playing various roles.
And I'm going to read a bit from Vatican News.
In 1999, he was elected Provincial Prior of the Augustinian Province of Mother of Good Council in Chicago.
And two and a half years later, the ordinary general chapter of the Order of St. Augustine elected him as prior general, confirming him in 2007 for a second term.
What that means, Dan, is that almost from the time that he becomes a priest, he is not based in the United States.
He's in Rome, he comes back, and then he's in Peru.
He goes home to Chicago at the turn of the millennium.
By this time, he's been in ministry, he's been in clergy.
For roughly 15 years.
His ministry, his outlook as clergy has been shaped by his time in Peru.
So this is the first American pope.
But as you and I have heard, and I don't say this condescendingly, but I am going to say it.
If you've ever traveled abroad, if you've ever lived abroad as American, you'll meet folks who say, oh, you're not one of those Americans.
And I think what they mean by that is like, you're an American who like...
Seize the rest of the world, and you know that there's a world beyond your country, and you have a worldview that extends beyond the myopia of Americanism.
This is a clergy person, a priest, and then all the way to the papacy who's been shaped by experiences in places that are not the United States.
There's more to say about that.
If you want to jump in here, go ahead, though.
Yes, I mean, a couple other things just to that point is...
I think I read this description on CNN and it made sense.
And, you know, it's funny that you talk about your initial response upon hearing he's an American and mine.
They're just flip sides of the same coin.
My assumption was he can't be, like, you know, it can't be Dolan.
Like, they wouldn't, you know, and I still think that's the case.
They didn't choose Dolan.
So it's the flip side of the same thing.
So you start digging into this.
I think it was CNN that described him as having been described by other cardinals as the least American of American cardinals.
And I think that this is that piece of it.
You highlighted some of that background, but he was also appointed a bishop in Peru.
So, I mean, he was a bishop there.
He wasn't a bishop in the U.S. I think that was 2014 to 2023.
He's also a dual citizen, so he has Peruvian citizenship, I believe, since 2015, and a Peruvian passport.
He speaks apparently fluent Italian and Spanish, presumably Latin, you know, in the Vatican, as well as English, and chose to, you know, we'll talk about the first homily, his first speech in Spanish and Italian, did not.
Speak English, didn't, you know, try to address everybody.
So really, as you say, American by nationality and in some crucial ways, but shaped by that Latin American, South American kind of perspective, very similar to one Pope Francis, with whom apparently he was kind of, you know, moved in similar directions.
Pope Francis apparently, things I've read, said that he was very complimentary of him.
And so forth.
And I think that ties in with that theme of the Cardinals wanting to move in a particular direction.
He will talk more about this, but he's also thought to be a centrist in some ways.
And he would have to be, because you've got to get enough Cardinals to vote for you that you can't just be one wing of this kind of fractious group of people.
But I think what you're highlighting is...
This very, I think, sounds like complex identity, nationally speaking, of this person that they've chosen.
So in some ways, a lot of continuity with Francis, but also an American.
I think that that is also still significant because it does raise that question about what kind of American.
I think we'll get into this in a couple of minutes, I think.
It raises interesting questions about how is this pope going to be perceived by American Catholics, by MAGA world, by that traditional Catholicism.
And I just want to throw out as well, you rattle off some of his credentials.
It means that he led the Augustinian order, like the order of Augustinians.
I mean, that's a big deal.
I don't know.
Maybe he and J.D. Vance can sit down, talk some Augustine, and have some good debates there.
So I think it's really interesting on a number of levels, the American piece of this.
He was the leader of the Augustinian order, which is the fourth order in the hierarchy of orders behind the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Carmelites.
This is not a traditionally power player kind of source of popes.
I know some of you are listening, like, what are you guys talking about?
Like, some of you are like, what is that?
So, I'm not going to go down that road, okay?
I think the point, Dan, that you're making is, A, he comes from an order that is based on an ethos of living together, relying on the generosity of others, living in kind of a sense of...
of poverty and spirit, but living in the city.
And the Augustinian order was founded on that.
It was not meant to be those who went into the desert and retreated from society, but it was also meant to be people who had a distinct life together, communal life together within the city walls.
And so that's kind of where he's coming from.
We can come back to that in a minute.
I just think the point you're making in an I'm happy to talk about this more here down the road is...
Augustine is ubiquitous in, like, the American religious right.
Like, you can talk to J.D. Vance, whose patron saint is St. Augustine.
You can read Catholic, common good Catholics who are, like, on the American right, and they are very into Augustine.
You can look to Josh Hawley, who loves Augustine, the Protestant senator from Missouri.
So, to have the actual leader of the Augustinian order be Pope is sort of like, hey.
Do you all know Augustine better than him?
So we'll get there in a minute.
Let's talk about some of what we know about him.
So a lot of you have seen this already, but let's just go through it.
He's not a big social media person, but he did tweet a couple of times in 2025.
So just this year, he criticized J.D. Vance's view on Catholicism.
He retweeted a piece that said J.D. Vance is wrong about...
The Ordo Amoris, which you've talked about.
And that was from America Magazine.
I was just going to say, just real quick, right to that complex American relationship with the Catholics and Augustine and the papacy front and center just right this year.
So he retweets those.
One is from America Magazine, one is from NCR.
And so he's critical.
He posted an article opposing Trump's immigration policies.
And he also criticized Trump and Bukele's making fun of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
There's some other things that are notable.
One of them is in 2017, he retweeted Chris Murphy, the senator from Connecticut, when Chris Murphy basically shamed the Senate for their cowardice to not act on gun control.
Murphy at the time wrote, none of this ends unless we do something to stop it.
And Robert Provost did that.
As you might imagine.
The election of this American pope, the choosing of this American pope, did not sit well with some of the folks in MAGA world.
Charlie Kirk seemed to, the longer things went on and the more he learned, the more he went into doubt.
He was like, oh, wait, he's a Republican.
Wait a minute.
It's like one of those moments where Charlie Kirk kind of realized in real time, like, oh, whoops, this may not be the guy I thought it was.
We talked about his not-so-great tweets and other things.
Jack Posobich, who wrote the book Unhuman and proclaimed the end of democracy at CPAC, wrote God Save the Church.
The one that has probably gotten the most attention is Laura Loomer, who was just with Donald Trump, telling him to fire people like National Security Advisor.
So Laura Loomer is a wacko.
But somebody who gets to visit Donald Trump often.
I don't know if any of you do, but she does.
She has access to the president.
At one time, she just tweeted in all caps, woke Marxist pope.
She really, really hated the fact that he tweeted about ending racism and brutality in the wake of George Floyd's murder.
Robert Provost reposted a bunch back in 2020 related to the George Floyd murder, and Laura Loomer hated that too.
You are seeing some meltdown with Maga World about this choice, and I think it's probably a good time for us to stop and just discuss that.
I want to read more into his...
Well, let's take a break, and then let's come back and look into his first comments and his first homily.
And then I think we should reflect on...
I was going to say we should pontificate on Dan, but, you know, I know.
Yeah, well played.
We should.
I know.
Thank you.
We should reflect on why an American pope now.
Because I do think there's things that are worth analyzing there.
And I think there is a message.
And I think we can maybe dig into that.
Let's take a break.
All right.
Let me call something out for you, Dan.
In his first homily, actually, in his first comments as pope, not his homily, but his first comments on pope as he came out to greet people, he said, He then talks about how we must be a missionary church,
a church that builds bridges, dialogue, always open to receive, like this square with its open arms, all who need our charity, our presence, our love.
I thought this was pretty intentional.
One, he's saying, I walk with you, so I'm not one of those.
Ratzinger-style popes who thinks, I am the Holy Father above everyone.
He's continuing that spirit of Francis of like, I'm going to walk with you.
He also says, we need to be a missionary church that builds bridges.
And you can interpret the missionary thing a lot of different ways.
I'm interpreting this as an extension of Francis, like saying, we need to walk together with those around us, no matter who they are, and build bridges to them.
I got a bunch of other thoughts, but jump in here on this or on his first homily, which he just gave a bit ago.
Yeah, I think, and again, it's maybe a bit like reading tea leaves.
Who knows kind of what we're getting right or wrong here.
But so those opening words, that notion of being a missionary church, a son of a ghost, being a Christian with you kind of thing, and a bishop in service of you, I think is what the bishop for you means.
A theme that I felt like I picked up in the first homily was also this notion of authentically being Christian.
I feel like there was a statement of Christian identity.
And so he makes some statements in there, and I'm not going to get them exactly right, but he says some things about, you know, that it's a hard time to be a Christian, and it's a time when Christians can be reviled, and so forth.
You just read that, or you hear that, and you're like, oh God, here we go.
Like, here we go.
This is like American Christians who think that they're...
You know, oppressed and this and that.
But then he goes on and he talks about this place called Caesarea Philippi in the Bible, and it's this place of sort of opulence and splendor and so forth.
And he also contrasts what he calls a sort of the practical atheists and the people who might claim to be Christian, but my takeaway was are more concerned with appearance and power and prestige.
Again, maybe I'm looking too much into it, but I feel that there's this sense of, here's what authentic, real Christianity is, and we're going to have issues with the Pope, I'm sure, but a real shot across the bow, rhetorically, to a lot of American...
What name do we want to...
What do we give the Laura Loomers of the world?
What do we call them?
The people who are rich, the people who are powerful, the people who claim...
This Christian mantle, who are not interested in walking with others, who are not interested in exercising charity, who are very explicitly concerned right now with holding and maintaining power and opulence.
We can just think of Trump like coating everything in the Oval Office with gold and, you know, all this kind of stuff, and really calling that out as a kind of false Christianity in the name of something, you know...
Deeper and more authentic, and I'm there, I'm carrying in the Augustinian roots that you're talking about and all of that.
So those were some of the broad brushstroke themes that I felt like came out in this.
And if I'm a J.D. Vance, or I'm a, you know, certainly a Donald Trump, or I'm these other people who are, you know, cashing in and making lots and lots and lots of money right now out of talking about being, you know, good conservative Catholics and so forth.
I'm not seeing myself reflected in what this new pope is saying.
This is what authentic Christianity is about.
And I think that I couldn't help but see that as intentional and calculated.
I also think it speaks to that issue that you raise of, like, why an American pope or an American cardinal?
Why this American cardinal?
And perhaps it speaks to that.
So those were some of my sort of themes that I felt like I could distill.
You know, a quick read of the homily and taking a look at that.
That notion of authentic Christianity, but a very different understanding, I think, of what it means to be authentically Christian than what we see in the halls of power in MAGA land, USA, even the ones that claim Catholic authority.
So that was a take that I had.
Let me read the quote you're talking about.
Yeah.
Today, too, there are many settings in which Jesus, although appreciated as a man, is reduced to a kind of charismatic leader or Superman.
Superman, a charlatan, yeah.
This is true not only among non-believers, but also among many baptized Christians who thus end up living at this level in a state of practical atheism.
There's a lot to unpack here.
Now, I think one way you could interpret this is you reduce Jesus to a charismatic leader.
That was always the old trope we heard as evangelicals, Dan, that like...
All those mainline and liberal Christians, they don't see Jesus as a savior.
They just see him as a charismatic leader, Allah Che Guevara and the Buddha.
And he's not the savior.
He's not the son of God.
He's not God himself, second person of the Trinity, whatever.
I'm not sure that maybe I'm just wanting to read this positively.
And that's fair if y 'all think so.
But I think this is a shot.
I think this is saying.
If you think that Jesus, let me put it this way, and again, there's a chance I'm reading this into it.
If you think Jesus is a war leader, if you think Jesus is a Superman political bulldozer, if you think Jesus is nothing more than an excuse for you to act like you're a Superman, you are living the wrong way as a Christian.
And just to jump in there, think of all the other themes that we talk about, the hyper-masculinity stuff, the militant masculinity, the Jesus as...
Big, you know, just all the Jesus is warrior, the war games at churches, all of this is what Jesus is kind of thing.
I think all of that's captured in there as well.
A critique of that, with that language of Jesus as a kind of Superman, a kind of comic book, cartoon sort of figure that he's been reduced to within that kind of framework.
And so I, you know, I think to me that there is a sense of a shot across the bow there.
He also mentions a church that is a synod.
And I want to bring this up, this quote, because it is from his first remarks when he came out to greet the people as Pope for the first time.
He says this, to all of you brothers and sisters of Rome, of Italy, of the whole world, we want to be a church of the synod, a church that walks, a church that always seeks peace, that always seeks charity, that always seeks to be close, especially to those who suffer.
If you're not privy to inside baseball, like, Francis was a pope who was heavily emphasized the synod.
And it was this idea of walking together, the idea that there was a participation in the church and in the church's direction and movement.
That was, that included the participation of lay people.
It included decision making by people who were lay people.
It was a common approach, an everyday person approach to as much as possible.
And don't get me wrong, I don't want to overblow this and I don't want to make it all out to be egalitarian flowers and roses.
But it was an approach that emphasized this participation of the common person.
Francis talked about the synod of synodality, which sounds like the, you know, The worst academic jargon anyone's ever heard.
Like, if you showed up with a title like that at an academic conference, I would roll my eyes.
I would.
But the Synod of Synodality is meant to be the gathering of leaders in a way that includes the participation of the lay person.
So, this is not an accident by Leo XIV when he talks about being a church of the Synod.
So I think that's there.
Let me throw this at you, Dan.
Just before we kind of run out of time and all of that, he is openly critical of Vance on immigration.
He's openly critical of Trump and Vance on immigration.
His brother did an interview yesterday on CNN, and his brother says, I can tell you right now, he's not happy about how immigration has gone in this country and what is happening with ICE kidnapping people and so on.
He spends his...
I mean, we're talking two, two and a half decades of his career.
More of his career in Peru than in the United States.
Let's put it that way.
More of his career in Latin America than in the United States.
What I took away immediately as I started to reflect on this yesterday was, this American pope now, why?
Because America has always been, at least in recent memory.
Too powerful, too militaristic for the Cardinals to consider an American Pope.
But now if you have an American Pope who is the kind of American that he is, there's a chance that this happens.
And let me give you a scenario and you can tell me if you think I'm crazy.
I'm thinking of like my wife's extended family in the Northeast.
These are folks who are Polish American, Irish American.
They go back to those Catholic, Working class, northeast, blue-collar folks that you might imagine from the mid-20th century.
They come from the cities and towns where the factories dried up.
But there's still just Catholicism coursing through these small towns in the northeast and in other parts of the country.
And I'm thinking of some of her aunts and other family members who go to mass Saturday night, Sunday.
They're very, like, devout.
There's a lot of lived Catholic religion in the home and in the community.
They're going to be so proud, Dan, to have an American pope.
Like, I can just tell you right now, they're not talking today about immigration.
They're not talking today about, is he Republican or Democrat?
You know what they are?
They are so proud that an American is pope.
They are like, oh my God, one of ours is pope.
That's amazing.
Just like...
The Polish were so excited when John Paul II was Pope back in the day.
They are so proud.
And I wonder if there is a message that says, this Pope is going to look at everyday Catholic Americans who are swayable, who are prone to take on the political leadership of their church, and to look at them with teachings.
Of love and hospitality and welcoming the stranger that will fly in the face of some of what they might be tempted to adopt from more right-wing influences in their churches and communities.
And I just wonder if there isn't a message from the College of Cardinals here that says, or the conclave, that says, this is the American we chose because this is the American who's going to speak to those members of the church who are going to be so proud to have him as their holy father.
That there's a chance it might have an influence on American politics.
And maybe I'm overblowing that too.
And maybe you all can say, Brad, your brain has been fried because you spend every day thinking about politics and religion.
And so you're probably like, this is not about you.
But I'm just saying, that's who I immediately thought of as people that are going to be so damn proud that this is their pope, one of their own sons, whether you're in the Midwest.
Whether you're in Wisconsin, you know, whether you're in Western Massachusetts, and that might have an effect on the ways we're seeing immigration and Americanism go today.
I don't know.
Thoughts along those lines?
Yeah, I think you're not wrong.
And I don't know how much I think the Cardinals are actively trying to sway American politics, but I think speaking to a certain kind of Catholic constituency...
With an obvious eye to the United States, you just chose an American pope, right?
That's a part of the equation.
It's Pope Leo XIV.
That's the name he chose.
Leo XIII advocated for the poor and for workers.
And people probably know this, but the popes, when they choose their name, there's a significance to the name.
And so the first thing everybody does is go and look at other Pope Leos and what did that mean and so forth.
But if we look at the domestic politics and religion, I think the dynamics of Catholic authority and hierarchy as it plays out in certainly the U.S. context is just sort of endlessly fascinating.
But we know that one of the things that has happened on the political left in the U.S. is a strong erosion of blue-collar Blue-collar, working-class Americans and the support that they haven't had.
And many of those people identify as Catholic.
And here is somebody who you're saying, and I think you're exactly right, this is somebody they're going to identify with.
This is like, to put it into American jargon, blue-collar, working-class, those are the workers.
Those are the kinds of people he's been advocating for.
And I think you're right that it opens up really interesting questions about what happens moving forward.
To those Catholics, are they going to listen to a J.D. Vance when he's like, you know, we're called by God to love our families more than we love immigrants or something like that?
Or is that going to sound cold or callous?
Are they going to listen to the American Pope who is talking about something different and talking about them and talking about their needs in a way that I think does also press against Democrats and others to have to show that they're going to actually meet those needs?
I think there's real political work to be done there.
But I think it opens up really, really complex issues.
I think it also then...
And this is the interesting thing, right?
People think about the Catholic Church as being so authoritarian and so hierarchical, and in a sense it is, obviously.
We've been sitting here talking about all the people, you know, professed Catholics and others who don't like this call for a pope.
We've talked about the American Council of Bishops, many of whom didn't like Francis and don't like this.
And so what does that do when on the political right you're trying to claim the mantle of Catholicism if you have somebody who...
And we'll see how this plays out, but certainly at a mass level is seen to be opposed to what you're proposing.
And it's not a quote-unquote foreign pope.
It's one of ours, as you say, as those Catholics will say.
So I think it highlights a lot of really interesting dynamics, and we don't know how that's going to play out.
We don't know how front and center that might be.
As I say, he's also a centrist and has to be.
So what does that look like when it comes to actual practice and messaging and so forth?
I think there's really interesting stuff to think about and watch as we move forward with American working class Catholics and how this might shape things, knowing, as you pointed out, that he has been critical of MAGA world and Vance and Trump.
And I think it's a really interesting set of bylines to think about going forward.
But I think the thing you just said is actually the thing that sticks out to me.
You cannot write him off as a foreign pope.
You know, some of you listening are like, who cares?
And if you're a Catholic listener, you're like, who cares?
But there are going to be political lines drawn.
There's going to be appeals to authority.
There's going to be appeals to who are you going to follow?
And is it going to be J.D. Vance, who, like, just this week, in one of the most cringeworthy moments I've seen in a long time, was talking about the Olympics in a couple years, which will be in the United States.
And he was like, oh, we're so glad that people will be coming from all over the world.
Enjoy the Olympic Games.
But if they stay too long, you know, they'll get in trouble and we'll have to call, you know, Secretary Noem and ICE.
And it was just like, how is this man representing our country in any way?
So are you going to believe that guy?
Or are you going to believe the Pope, who is not born in Argentina or Italy or Poland, but is born right over there in Chicago, the heartland of the United States, who's a Chicago Sox fan, went to Villanova.
And, you know, you can say Villanova's an elite school or whatever, but this is not a guy that is illegible to the average American in many ways.
I think that's important.
I want to make two more points before we move on from the Pope, and that is there are credible allegations of sexual abuse that he seemed to have ignored or covered up or just not given the attention they deserve.
Those go back a decade or two.
And, you know, I think that...
Andrew Seidel says this well.
He said it well the other day on his podcast, One Nation Indivisible, which you should be listening to.
He said the Catholic Church at every level, whether you're a bishop, whether you are a cardinal, every person there can probably be accused in some way or another of covering up clergy abuse in some way, whether by passively, actively.
And I'm not saying that blasé.
This is not me making a Catholic clergy joke.
This is not me being facetious.
The abuse is so widespread in the church that that is possible.
And the new pope is no exception to that.
And so, you know, I've seen Catholics to this in different ways.
And, you know, I saw Claire Willett, who I appreciate as a writer and who calls herself the Internet's gay aunt and somebody who just does a lot of great creative work, say, on Blue Sky Yesterday, a troubling history of how he handled two sex abuse cases is inescapable.
He must know that.
A lot hangs on how he engages with things going forward in terms of reform on this front.
He had some quotes about homosexual lifestyle.
Bad.
Not great.
But, and Claire Willett points this out, and I think this is worth mentioning, Catholic LGBTQ publications like Outreach and New Ways Ministry are kind of saying, look, there's good vibes, and let's see what happens.
James Martin was the very popular...
A Catholic figure gave a priest, gave an interview at Outreach, the LGBTQ Catholic Resource Magazine and website just today, where he talked about how this Pope is humble, understated, willing to listen.
And, you know, when asked about how LGBT Catholics should feel right now, he said, when you look at his past statements, remember that he's committed to synodality, that he's an open person, he's very smart, he has worldwide experience, he's an American, and he has a certain understanding of American culture.
It's a kind of past isn't great.
We'll wait and see.
And we're not going to ignore that.
I want to make one or two other points.
Well, I don't know.
Do you want to jump in there at all?
It ties in.
I mentioned a couple of times that he's seen as sort of a centrist.
And again, I think I'm quoting from CNN who said it this way, and I think it captures this.
It said that he was, quote, expected to lean more progressive on social issues like migration and poverty.
But fall more in line with moderates on moral issues of Catholic doctrine.
And that's how they describe that.
And I think that that maps onto this.
A firmer's stance on things like poverty, workers' rights, those things we were just talking about, immigration.
But what it's coding there as moral issues of Catholic doctrine, it means that probably not as progressive on things like LGBTQ plus inclusion.
And we talked about that with Francis last time.
I think it's worth noting that those kind of analyses, I find it interesting that they always make that contrast between social and moral issues, as if the social issues are not moral issues, as if the so-called moral issues are not social.
So I mean, I think there's real work and concern there.
I think that when you hear...
The optimism, it's against the framework of the Catholic Church.
And by that I mean the Catholic Church has very traditional teachings.
It's the source of a lot of traditional teachings about gender and sexuality and so forth.
And so what's seen as a progressive pope, it's frankly, you know, for those on the outside, it's going to be a low bar.
But you start somewhere and you try to get those voices in the room and you try to build on this emphasis of speaking to lay people and hearing from them and so forth.
We did see that movement with Francis.
I think that's what people are optimistic about, but I think it highlights those complexities that are also going to be here as we move forward.
Last point, and that is, to me, the election of this pope is a third blow to Trumpism from the globe in a matter of weeks.
And what I mean by that is this.
The Canadians elected Carney as their leader, who was just at the White House this week, for another...
Gut-wrenching, blood-curdling photo op session in that gold-encrusted Oval Office now that looks like...
Yeah, just some...
It looks like an investment banker who's 23 years old got his first huge payday and was like, I'm going to deck out my apartment in gold to impress girls.
And it's just...
Oh, my God.
Anyway, the election of Carney was interpreted and...
As basically a rebuttal to Trump.
It was like Trump reversed Canadian politics in a matter of two months.
What looked like a surefire conservative takedown ended up in a Liberal Party victory.
The same in Australia.
And we're not going to spend much time on this, but Australia had a similar outcome.
And now you have this pope.
I want to just say to everybody, there's so much bad news every day.
The world, at least in these instances, we can give others.
The world in these instances is saying no to Trumpism, no to MAGA, no to this brand of rising fascist politics.
Now, there's examples we could give that are not great, whether that's Italy, whether that's other places.
But Australia, Canada, and the Vatican have, to me at least, given pretty resounding statements of like, we're not on board with Trumpism.
And that's a good thing.
Like, we're not seeing dominoes fall, where...
Oh, look, our neighbors to the north elected their version of Trump, and now they're doing doge.
Like, imagine if that scenario happened.
Imagine if Australia was doing that.
Imagine if they had chosen a pope who was like best friends with Viktor Orban.
Those are all scenarios that could have played out.
They didn't.
Let's at least hold on to that right now.
Any final thoughts on the papacy, on him being from Chicago?
The memes are running wild.
There are...
There are videos of, like, the Chicago Bulls announcer from 1996 overlaid over to the Holy Father coming out to meet the people for the first time.
It's wild out there to have a Pope from Chicago, but anyway.
On a, you know, they're living in Massachusetts.
You've got a lot of Boston Catholics who are probably not, you know, as excited about the Chicago roots and the White Sox and all that sort of stuff.
On a more serious and negative side, I'm interested to see...
How long it takes for MAGA to say that he's not really American.
Yeah, exactly.
Because of the Peruvian dual citizenship.
Two passports.
Yep, two passports, Peruvian dual citizenship all the time in Peru, how he doesn't really care about American sovereignty or borders or whatever.
I'm curious.
It's going to come.
That's what they're going to do.
That's what populists do, is if you've got a noteworthy American who disagrees with you, you just try to define them out of being real Americans.
And so I'm...
I'm curious to see how long it's going to take for that to really come out.
And again, highlighting that, how and if that plays with some of those blue-collar Catholics who is—I think you capture it really well.
For those of us on the outside, it might seem strange, but there are Catholics who are really, really, really—the word Pope means it's like a soft nomenclature for Father, like Papa, right?
And there are Catholics for whom that office is that.
That is what it means.
And I don't know.
Again, just all these dynamics, I'm curious to see how they play out as we move forward.
All right.
Let's take a break.
We'll come back and go to Minnesota, where the N-word is being used.
As a fundraiser, basically.
Yeah, as a fundraiser.
Christian fundraiser.
Be right back.
All right.
Reading from the New Republic.
Parker Malloy writes, what happens when you call a five-year-old black child a racial slur in public?
If you're Hendrix of Rochester, Minnesota, you apparently get rewarded with more than $700,000 in donations.
Last week, Hendrix was at a playground.
She accused a five-year-old black child of taking things from her bag.
So if you have young kids, I don't know if you have ever had young kids or watched young kids.
The playground is a place you go to.
I don't know, Dan, I go to a lot of playgrounds.
I'm kind of a playground connoisseur at this point.
I know kind of playground politics at this point.
You know, you're always aware of, like, the kids who don't seem to have parental supervision, the kids who do, the kids who are doing that, the kids who are doing this.
These kids are a little older than my kids, so I got to be careful so my kid doesn't get run over.
None of those politics, Dan, in my mind, have ever come close to thinking that if a five-year-old did something that was, I don't know, at least from my perception, Not appropriate.
That I would, I don't know, use a racial slur that has a singular history in our country's landscape.
Let me play this video.
And friends, it is disturbing.
So if you want to, I'm going to give you fair warning, like if you are working out right now or driving, try and you want to fast forward 30 seconds, now would be a good time to do that.
But here's Shiloh Hendricks after she is accused of using an N-word, using the N-word in reference to a five-year-old.
You call him a nigger, the child?
Did you call the child a nigger word?
It is my own business.
You call him a nigger?
Okay, why don't you have the boss to say it right now again?
Okay.
All right, that's what you say.
Nobody dig into your shit.
That little kid, you call him a nigger?
That little child?
Are you about to hit him?
You chase him here?
He took my son's stuff.
So that gives you the right to call a child, five-year-old, a nigger, the N-word?
If that's what he's going to act like.
That's what you're going to call him?
If that's what he's going to act like.
You know, that's a hate speech.
And you can be recorded for that.
I don't give a shit.
Okay, we'll see about that, what the internet has to say about you.
So, what you hear on the video is she basically owns up to calling him this name.
She says if he's going to act like one, I will call him that.
And then he calls the person who is videoing her the N-word as well.
He then says, we'll see what the internet has to say.
And unfortunately, the internet had a lot to say.
She organized the Give, Send, Go campaign and has raised $700,000 and counting.
Who knows where that will end up?
So much to say here.
I'll throw it to you.
So, yeah.
So sort of like trying to pick up where to...
Where to start here?
So the first thing, Give, Send, Go, for those who aren't familiar, is a Christian fundraising platform, and I think that that's really significant here, that this is not just like a GoFundMe or something like that.
This is a specifically Christian platform.
I spent, I don't know, I feel like this is the negative way to say it.
It's like I've done my time on the playground, like, you know, as a parent of, like, young kids and whatever.
And kids do things I always refer to as, like, age-appropriate inappropriateness, right?
So, like, yeah, five-year-olds do stuff that's inappropriate, but it's completely on par for five-year-olds.
And I can just imagine some five-year-old being like, oh, here's a bag.
I wonder if there's, like, snacks.
Or, like, I don't know.
They saw something shiny.
Who knows why they go digging through the bag.
It's the weirdness of having to correct somebody else's kid.
It's the, like, all that.
But, yeah, like, you reach for the N-word.
And then the mindset behind it, the quote I came across as well, is that I called the kid out for what he was.
Not like what he did, like what he was, or as we just heard, you know, if he's going to act like that, I'm going to call it.
I mean, it's just no hesitation that the N-word is something that actually applies to people, and it applies to people because of race, and we're going to use it, and all the doubling down and everything else about this.
But then it flips, and this is so much a part of this contemporary conservative Christian discourse.
Where ostensibly the reason is that, you know, she's now being harassed and so forth and needs to relocate and raise this money.
But it's that standard conservative Christian white American, we're the real victims here.
The real victim, when I call a five-year-old African-American child the N-word, oh, poor me, poor white me, suddenly being attacked for my views and my faith and my race and everything else.
Turns into the victim and raises, you know, almost three quarters of a million dollars in a really short period of time.
And the reason why it matters to me so much, or so significant that it's a Christian platform, is that I think it resonates with a lot of American Christians that this somehow is religious persecution.
She's being targeted because she's a good white American Christian, and this is what's wrong with America, is that you just can't speak your mind anymore.
And so, like, the racism...
The casualness of the racism, the entitlement to be a racist and to voice racist epithets toward children and adults, all of it is, I think, telling of that cultural moment in conservative American Christianity and all that sense of entitlement, that sense of persecution, all of that, so that no matter what happens, they are always the victims.
They were always entitled to have done what they did.
There was always a good and valid reason.
And I think the fact that she's raised all this money shows how deep a current that is in our present cultural moment.
And I think that that's really disturbing.
So, we've had Kyle Rittenhouse.
We've had Daniel Penny.
And in both of those cases, there was an argument that I do not buy, and I do not ascribe to, that Kyle Rittenhouse was doing something honorable or in self-defense.
He was somehow attacked and his life was under threat so he reacted by shooting two people.
Daniel Penny was on the subway and this guy was acting erratically and his life was needed to keep people safe.
I don't buy it and I'm not on board.
But there was at least, Dan, an attempt to provide a moral justification for the actions and say this is why this person should be lauded rather than attacked.
Okay?
I think where we've gotten with this example is there's no moral defense.
There's no way to say, I did something that was actually needed or providing safety for others or was somehow morally defensible.
I did something that was morally indefensible and now I'm being attacked for it.
Therefore, I'm a victim.
Please give me money.
There's no, like, recovering this for her.
There's no recouping it.
There's no changing the narrative.
Oh, she was actually the one.
Who was misunderstood or whatever.
Like, that to me is why this story is notable.
Because there's not even the cloak or the cover of a moral defense or an argument for being correct.
It's just victimhood for being the one who dehumanizes another person.
And the moral defense, such as it is, the pretense for this, is just racism.
Explicitly, like it's...
I called him the N-word because he acted like the N-word.
Like, there's no doubt that, like, that's a racial term that should be applied, that that's real, that it applies to particular Americans and all the racist history.
That's just taken for granted.
So, like, the defense is, well, yeah, I used a racial slur because that person is what I say the racial slur is.
Like, it's just right there on the surface.
And that's what, again, 700 and some odd thousand dollars worth of Christians think is legitimate white Americans.
So this is a perfect time to make an announcement.
And you heard this at the top.
We're doing a seminar with Sarah Malziner.
Now, Sarah Malziner has written a book about purity culture and white supremacy.
That book is coming out later this year.
Dan and I actually will be at the American Academy of Religion in November.
On a panel talking about that book.
She's also done a podcast with us called Pure White.
And you should go listen to that right now if you haven't.
It is at accessmoondy.us.
Pure White is all about how white Christian femininity has been a weapon to advance white supremacy and dehumanization of black people and others.
Like, it's...
What that podcast about is...
Exactly the Shiloh Hendricks example.
A white blonde woman claiming victimhood for dehumanizing another person by calling them the N-word and then gathering support from other Christians who rally around her to make sure that she's quote-unquote safe.
Go listen to Pure White.
Axismundi.us, Pure White.
But the seminar is coming in June.
If you'd like to sign up, you can go to our website, straightwhiteamericanjesus.com slash seminars.
And look for that seminar.
It's happening June 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th.
She'll be talking all about these issues, purity culture, white supremacy, and femininity.
And Sarah's, I don't know, Dan, I can't really think of another person who's better at talking about these things and teaching about them than her.
She's written two great books on these subjects, is a world-renowned expert.
Go check it out now.
This is the unfortunately perfect example of why we need a course and a seminar like that.
Just to jump in there real quick about the strength of her work.
It's the kind of thing that critics of the kind of work that Sarah does or the kinds of things we talk about will always be like, well, that's a caricature.
And then this happens.
It's like somebody's like, oh, it's not that.
It's a caricature.
You overstate it.
Nobody would ever...
And then straight out of central casting, here comes a real person in the world who does exactly like what...
Sarah is describing it.
You're right.
It's like literally a textbook example of this kind of thing.
And so I agree with you.
I think Sarah's work is top-notch and second to none in these areas.
But you will leave a session with Sarah realizing that what Shiloh Hendricks did on that playground in Minnesota goes back to white women looking over plantations in the Antebellum South.
And all the connections will be made.
StraightWhiteAmericanJesus.com.
Seminars, you'll see it, and you can sign up and get ready.
Email us if you have any issues there.
Dan, what is your reason for hope?
My reason for hope this week, it's a little wonky, but you know, I'm kind of a wonk, so that's okay.
It's the growing recognition that Congress is scared to own the doge cuts that have been coming out.
So a lot of machinations, people recognize that obviously there's a lot of questions about the legality of what Musk and Trump have done and so forth.
But the long and short of it is Doge makes this big case of withholding all these funds and so forth.
The Trump administration can't actually cancel those funds.
Only Congress can do that.
They can delay the disbursement of those funds.
And there's lots of debate now about whether or not they violated the law and holding them and so on and so forth.
But what we're seeing is the Trump administration now having to go to Congress and say, we want you to actually make these cuts law.
They can't last.
We're having a lasting impact if they're not a law.
And Republicans are afraid to do it because Republicans are finding things that we predicted months ago, that I think others predicted months ago, that the doge cuts were going to hurt real people in red states.
They were going to hurt people who depend on, you know, federal agencies of different kinds, federal workers, that quote-unquote federal workers wasn't all about bloated bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., but it was all over the country.
We're seeing that, and I think that pushback from Congress is hopeful.
The broader thing that I've talked about before, that people ask me about is, and we've talked about this, is that at some point the Trump administration has to govern.
They can't just dictate law through executive orders and so forth.
And right now, this just continues to show that they really have no vision of how to do that.
And I find that what that does is it brings into view, I think, for growing numbers of Americans, those persuadable Americans, that maybe this was a bad idea.
And I'm obviously disappointed that this is where we have to be for that to come into view, but I see this as a sign of hope, that ongoing awareness of the limitations of a Trump administration and the MAGA vision of America.
I just want to emphasize as a bit of good news, what I said before, which is that, you know, Canada elected somebody who's seen as the un-Trump.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think Carney is like this progressive dream, but he's a lot farther than...
We could have been with some other outcomes in Canada.
The same in Australia and then the same at the Vatican.
And I just want everyone to think about that.
That if you think about those three cases going the other way, the kinds of despair we would have felt.
That, you know, when you feel like things at home continue to be dismantled and continue to be bad news all the time, it helps to look around the world and say there are people rejecting this.
And that there are somehow, whether they're symbolic or other reinforcements, when it comes to fighting and battling this kind of institution of fascism in our country.
And I think we should hold on to that.
And I think we shouldn't let that go.
And I think we should join in any way we can in recognizing those things happening across the world and forming alliances and solidarity with people.
To me, that is good news.
And I think the choice of the Pope could have been very different.
And it's not roses, and as you put it, Dan, it's all in perspective of the Catholic Church, which is not a progressive institution by any means, but it could be different.
All right, y 'all.
I'm going to be back Monday with an interview that will highlight another case about somebody saying the N-word and getting defended.
It's just a coterie, Dan, of things.
But we're actually going to be talking about the right-wing takeover, or at least attempted takeover of California, which some of you don't think is a real thing, but it is, and it is something that's on the docket.
Be back Wednesday with It's in the Code and Friday with the Weekly Roundup.
We appreciate all of you and hope that you are listening to One Nation Indivisible with Andrew L. Seidel, because he's doing great work.
He spent Dan an hour on the Oklahoma case last week and laid out every possible angle of that, which is fantastic.
