On this episode of “Interesting Times,” Ross Douthat is joined by the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and the editor of America Magazine, to reflect on the legacy of Pope Francis and the challenges facing the next papacy.
Below is an edited transcript of an episode of “Interesting Times.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ross Douthat: The death of Pope Francis ends, or at least temporarily suspends, a tumultuous period in the life of the world’s largest religious institution. A period where the pope was often pitted against his own bishops and cardinals in arguments about how much, and in what direction, Roman Catholicism should change.
My guest today and I were often on the opposite side of those debates, and so I’m hoping that our conversation can help illuminate the stakes in Roman Catholicism’s conflicts, the prospects for the church’s continued unity and the implications of these debates for the future of religion in the modern world.
Father James Martin is one of the most famous Catholic priests in the United States. I think the only Jesuit to ever appear on Stephen Colbert’s late night TV program, and the author of many, many books. Most recently, a meditation on the New Testament story of Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead.
Father James Martin, welcome to Interesting Times.
Father James Martin: Good to be with you, Ross.
Douthat: So I want to start by talking about Francis as you personally experienced his pontificate and as you experienced him.
He was the first Jesuit pope. You are a Jesuit. You met on a number of occasions. He wrote the introduction to your latest book. So I wondered if you could talk about Pope Francis as a priest, which was something that he very self-consciously aspired to be. Not just the pope of the Roman Catholic Church, but a priest of Catholicism.
Father Martin: I think that’s key to understanding who he was. He was a Jesuit and a priest for most of his life. He had something of a checkered relationship with the Jesuits because he was, by his own admission, rigid and authoritarian. So when he was elected, not every Jesuit was happy. In fact, he was on the list in the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. And interestingly, I was reading a piece in The Times that had a list of all the electors and I asked a fellow Jesuit who was much older and had worked in Rome, “Who is this Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” And this old Jesuit said, “He’d be terrible.” But he proved to be a real model Jesuit and was always very close to the Jesuits during his pontificate.
I think a lot of the stuff that he did could be mystifying to people. Questions of discernment, freedom and difference are all Jesuit concepts. And so I think that’s key to understanding who he was. He was always a good Jesuit.
Douthat: When did you meet him for the first time?
Father Martin: I met him very briefly for the first time after a Mass at Casa Santa Marta. And I just shook his hand and he said in earnest, “Pray for me, reza por me.”
And then in 2017, he appointed me as a consultor for the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, which is a very low-level appointment for the communications office.
Douthat: Because of your expertise in podcasting.
Father Martin: That’s right. I was actually kind of surprised. And a friend of mine said, “Would you like to meet him?”
I said, “Of course. Would he like to meet me? That’s the question.”
And I had already started doing this L.G.B.T.Q. ministry and when we were at the audience, I introduced myself and he said, “Ah, I’d like to have an audience with you.” And I said, “Oh, yo tambien.” And in September 2019, we had our first one-on-one meeting, and it was really life changing, just being with him, talking about these issues and just feeling completely relaxed. He was very warm and friendly. One of the things I want to share with listeners and viewers is: He was just a nice guy, friendly, fun. And I’d never spoken to a pope before. And at the end of the half-hour meeting I thought, oh my gosh, I’ve been talking the whole time about this one issue. Maybe he wants to talk about something else. So I said, “Holy Father, what can I do for you?”
And he said, you can continue this L.G.B.T.Q. ministry in peace, which I found extremely encouraging and moving. He didn’t have to do that and he didn’t have to meet with me a couple of times. We would exchange notes over email in his little crabbed handwriting.
Douthat: Would you get those notes scanned via email?
Father Martin: I ended up getting the email address for his secretaries, which were different people at different times. And I would send him more formal notes typed out in Spanish or Italian, thanks to Google Translate. And his secretaries would send me back scanned PDFs of his handwritten note, which they would have to transcribe or transliterate because it was this tiny little handwriting.
And then I would ask someone here to translate it. So that’s how we communicated.
Douthat: That’s how it works in the universal church.
I was always struck — and thinking about his legacy I’m struck by it even more — by the visual element of his papacy. After he died, a lot of people on social media were sharing the photograph of him in the empty, darkened St. Peter’s Square, holding the monstrance, the Eucharist, the host that Catholics believe is the body of Christ, in the midst of the worst pandemic in 100 years. And I feel like at the beginning of his pontificate, there were a lot of those moments.
The one that I remember most is him embracing a man who had boils or was disfigured in some way. And I feel like he had a certain genius for creating Christian iconography in his public moments that I think will be one of the more lasting elements of his papacy.
Father Martin: And like Jesus, who taught with words and deeds, he taught with gestures as well. And Francis was very good at that.
As you were saying, the image that I’ll take to my grave is him embracing that man with the skin condition. That image called up Francis Assisi, embracing the man with leprosy, and Jesus embracing people.
One of the great things was that it was natural. He wasn’t doing it for show or to impress people. This was who he was. And he naturally reached out to people like that, which made for good teaching moments. And I agree that the visual is just as important as any encyclical that he did.
Douthat: Let’s talk about the doing as well as the showing. This was a dramatic pontificate in a lot of different ways. But from my perspective, I’d say the great drama of the pontificate was a push to change church teaching or practice on a host of difficult and controversial post-1960s issues.
You had controversies that conservative Catholics regarded as having been addressed and settled under prior popes, such as whether divorced and remarried Catholics should take communion without getting an annulment, the possibility of female deacons, if not female priests, the possibility of allowing blessings for same-sex couples. All of these were suddenly in the air. And that mattered a great deal to you because one of the forms of work that you took up under Francis was writing and arguing about gay Catholics and their place in the church.
So as a sympathizer with that push and opening of debate, how far do you think it went? How far did Francis go on those issues?
Father Martin: While those issues were in the forefront of a lot of our minds, I think the hot button issues were secondary for Francis. But I think he went as far as he could.
When I was a delegate at the synod, which is the worldwide gathering of Catholics, one of the things I learned was how much he wanted church unity. You could see how much pushback there was from places like sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and even in the United States to some of these issues, like women deacons, and L.G.B.T.Q. people. And he said a couple of times, unity is more important than these conflicts. So I think he tried to open the door to the discussion about some of these issues without breaking the church.
I think one of the fundamental differences between Pope Francis and a lot of his critics, particularly in the church and sometimes even in the hierarchy, was that he really spent time listening to people talk about their spiritual lives and had a real reverence for it — the activity of the Holy Spirit in the individual person’s conscience.
So when he talked about discernment and listening to people, even in the synod on L.G.B.T.Q. issues, and in “Amoris Laetitia,” his apostolic exhortation on the family, a lot of his critics said: “Oh, well, anything goes, we’re going listen to people. It’s all about polls and opinions.”
But I think what they missed was that he really did trust the active Holy Spirit in the individual. I think that encapsulates why people struggled with that. Because it’s a challenge when you hear something like that we need to meet people where they are. We need to listen to them. We need to see where the Holy Spirit is active.
But to your point, he didn’t want to move the church so far that he would break it.
Douthat: What were the concrete changes though? Because the point you make about disturbing or disappointing people runs both ways. Conservative Catholics were disturbed by the way the pope talked about these issues, and the debates he wanted to open up.
But by the end of his pontificate, more liberal Catholics were disappointed because, they said, “Well, he left us in a place of ambiguity where he talks about the individual soul and discernment and issues, statements and teachings that can be read in somewhat different ways depending on where you are.”
But there isn’t a concrete change to the catechism in what it says about the immorality of same-sex relations. He opened the debate about possibly ordaining women to the deaconate, but it didn’t really go anywhere. So what do you think concretely changed under Francis?
Father Martin: You could say, for example, that concretely we were brought to a greater understanding of the importance of the human dignity of migrants and refugees. There’s no change in church teaching on that.
But to your point more specifically, the catechism changed on the death penalty. It’s now inadmissible. That’s a small thing. Early in his papacy, he said he wanted more “incisive” roles for women in leadership positions. And now you have a woman who’s the head of a Vatican Dicastery, or office. The governor of Vatican City is a woman.
I think there’s been significant changes in church practice for L.G.B.T.Q. people, like the allowance of blessing of same-sex couples under certain circumstances. And then also something that I think is overlooked is his call for the decriminalization of homosexuality. That’s a big deal over in sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe and Latin America.
So, I don’t think he set out to change the catechism. But I think he changed the conversation. And to change the conversation and to change the approach and the tone is a kind of change in teaching.
But again, I came away from the synod understanding anew, or maybe for the first time, the importance of church unity and what a difficult job he had.
Douthat: But is that the hard limit from your perspective? Let’s say, we elect Pope Francis II or Pope John the 24th, someone who’s seen as sort of a successor to Francis in terms of being open to liberalization. And you were named head of the office of doctrine.
Would you see the limits on changes to church teaching as being primarily about church politics? You need to keep conservative Africans and more liberal Germans together in the same church, or is there just a limit — and here I’m speaking as someone who obviously thinks there is — on just how much the church can change what it says about sex no matter what changes in modern culture?
Father Martin: I think the basis, as we both agree, would be the creed. You’re not going to change any obvious dogma.
You’re not going to say suddenly, “Guess what? Jesus didn’t rise from the dead.”
Douthat: You’re not going to say that.
Father Martin: Yeah. So we should start there because I think a lot of Catholics feel like, “Oh my gosh, Pope Francis was changing everything, or anything goes.” And that’s not accurate.
I do think that is a limit. I think church unity is a value. Christ said that they all may be one. I think anything that goes against that value needs to be looked at carefully. So it’s a balance between what you might call prophecy and unity.
I’ll tell you a story. I would write to him a couple times a year, and I suggested that he do something — I forget what it was — about L.G.B.T.Q. stuff. And he said: “Yeah, that’s a good idea. But if I do that, I will provoke a chain reaction.” I thought that was an interesting choice of words. And he saw that as a negative thing.
And I came around to agree with him that it’s not worth breaking the church over some of these things. So I think his approach was to open the discussion, which was a change.
Douthat: For listeners who are not intimately familiar with the endless wrangling within the Catholic Church about some of these questions, which has been going on in every Christian church but also non-Christian churches, there is this running tension between where late modern life has ended up in terms of people’s lived experiences, who people sleep with, who people get married to, when people get divorced, and the pretty stringent line on sexual ethics that has been part of Christian teaching from the beginning. And one of the frustrations that conservatives, like me, sometimes have is that the liberal argument is always open-ended. It’s always saying, “We’re not saying exactly what church teaching would be, we just want to start a conversation.” But then it seems clear to the conservatives that in the end, the conversation only ends when the liberal perspective carries the day, which is what has happened in a certain number of more liberal Protestant denominations.
So I want to push you to be a little bit concrete. What is the thing that Christianity and Jesus Christ teach about sex and marriage that has to be held onto that is different from what a nice, well-meaning, secular, liberal listener of this show might believe about sex? What is the Christian difference that needs to remain no matter what kind of conversations and evolutions we have?
Father Martin: That’s a great question. I’m not a moral theologian, so I’ll try my best to answer that.
Douthat: You are a Jesuit, a priest and a man. I think you’re eminently qualified to answer the question.
Father Martin: Well, thank you.
I would say reverence for the other person. I would say sex and sexuality is something that is sacred. Not using the other person, and the value of monogamous relationships. Jesus doesn’t teach much on marriage. He teaches a lot on divorce. His first miracle is a wedding feast. So there’s a positive outlook on that.
Douthat: He’s pro-that marriage, at least. He favored that one.
Father Martin: He, of course, is celibate. He doesn’t get married for a number of reasons. But I would say that’s the distinctive Christian contribution today: reverencing the other person and not using the other person and seeing sexuality as sacred and deep and not something to be used in a relationship.
And I think that is different than a lot of liberal secular understanding of sexuality. When people come to me in the confessional, that’s one of my first questions: Are you reverencing the other person? How are you treating the other person?
And I think that’s different because it’s not accepted in what Pope Francis would call today’s throwaway culture by every liberal, secular person. Even a good person.
Douthat: The secular liberal narrative of sex that I certainly hear would use terms like consent and respect instead of reverence and sacred. And at least when I read the New Testament, the things Jesus says about sex are quite stringent. He doesn’t say anything in particular about homosexuality, but he speaks very strongly about marriage as lifelong and permanent. He sees remarriage after divorce as a form of adultery.
I became a Catholic in my teens after some time in different Protestant churches. And one of the things that always struck me about Catholicism — even in its weirdnesses, including the things it says about sex like masturbation is a sin — is that it seemed very biblical in that way that like the Catholic Church is the only major Christian church in the West, at least, that still seems to say something about what’s wrong with divorce.
There are a lot of divorces in my family tree. And I have a pretty good sense of what is wrong with divorce and why it’s good for a church to say something about that. And I think conservatives in these intra-Catholic debates are often framed as trying to hold on to some rigid understanding of human beings. While I think that sometimes can be true, I also am worried that some of those things would slip away in the more liberalized church of an imagined successor to Pope Francis.
To me, it’s just not enough to say Christianity teaches some kind of generic reverence. I think it’s important that Christianity teaches something like marriage is an insoluble one flesh union that you can’t easily get out of. Do you agree with that?
Father Martin: Which part?
Douthat: The part that there has to be something more than just a general statement. That there is a specific concreteness to the way Jesus talks about sex as the way he talks about wealth and poverty.
Father Martin: Absolutely, in terms of the sacrament of marriage. But I think what Pope Francis was trying to do was to remind ourselves that we’re also dealing with individuals.
And when we’ve talked about divorce, masturbation —
Douthat: I brought it up just for the record. Sorry.
Father Martin: I don’t know any man that comes to the confessional, at least in my experience, who does not confess that. So it’s common.
One of the things that Pope Francis is trying to teach — and I think is Christian teaching — is encountering the person where they are and as they are. And he said the name of God is mercy.
So yes, obviously we have all these rules, we have all these traditions, but what is the pastoral application of these things in the confessional, in a person’s life? I think there is something of an overfocus on some of these topics. And I think Pope Francis was trying to remind us that there are other topics.
I feel like most Catholics in the world understand what the Catholic Church teaches on marriage and homosexuality and masturbation. There aren’t a lot of Catholics that know what the church teaches on poverty, the environment, those kinds of things. So I think this is what Pope Francis was trying to do.
In an interview with Jesuit magazines, including America Magazine in 2013, he said something like, I’m not changing anything. But when it comes to questions, sexuality and abortion and things like that, I feel like people know it and it’s time to be a good teacher and move on to the next lesson.
I found that to be a really interesting insight because I think what people saw as his ignoring was rather him saying, “We’ve understood this and now let’s move on to other topics, which I think have been less stressed like poverty and the environment,” which was a surprise.
Douthat: Do you think that’s a stable equilibrium though? Say 100 years go by and that becomes the equilibrium of the Catholic Church. The church has a very pastoral sort of case-by-case approach to issues around sex and sexuality. But nothing ever changes in the formal teaching of the church. The church never recognizes same-sex unions the way it recognizes heterosexual unions. It just remains in this place. Are you personally content with that?
Father Martin: No. I think we should always be open to the signs of the times and what science teaches us and what we understand about the human condition.
You can go back to Thomas Aquinas and he’s talking about that. We have to understand, in terms of homosexuality for example, what are we learning? And we certainly don’t want to say that we’re in the same place that we would have been 1,000 years ago about homosexuality because we’ve learned things.
When you look at, for example, the Second Vatican Council, it’s the church in the modern world, not the church against the modern world or the church frustrating the modern world. And so I think this is where discernment comes in, honestly.
And I know people might roll their eyes and say, oh, that’s just a buzzword. I think he really was the pope trying to help us reflect on the signs of the times. Say, Where is the Holy Spirit active? What am I calling people to do? What am I calling the church to do?
But that’s an inherently frustrating and messy and open process. Discernment is really open-ended and that’s OK. So I don’t know where it’s going to end up, but I think —
Douthat: How do you think the modern world is going right now?
Father Martin: Oh, not too well.
Douthat: Not too well?
Father Martin: Yeah.
Douthat: Would you be comfortable if in 100 years, it seems like the church has to be more oppositional to the modern world than it did in the 1960s?
Father Martin: I think the church is very oppositional to the modern world as it is now. I mean, just talking about the poor and migrants and refugees and the sick is very countercultural. Pope Francis, like good church leaders, preached the gospel as he understood it. And if it became political, so be it.
In my conversations with him, one of the things he didn’t like was ideologies. He was allergic to that. If he got the sense that you were pushing an agenda or an ideology, he didn’t want any part of that. And so this is this person who has a deeply pastoral heart, and I think that’s a wonderful thing for the church.
Douthat: Let’s pick up on that and talk about the lived experience of more conservative Catholics during this pontificate. From your point of view, and from the point of view of a lot of Catholics, the Francis pontificate was experienced as just a period of greater freedom. You’re a priest, you have vows, you’re part of an order. You’re under certain kinds of obedience. And it was clear to me certainly that there were many people inside the church, who had opinions that they didn’t feel comfortable expressing under Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict, who felt comfortable expressing them under Francis.
Is that a fair description?
Father Martin: I think that’s fair. Tom Reese, our editor at America Media, was fired by Cardinal Ratzinger, which was his right —
Douthat: The man who became Pope Benedict.
Father Martin: And he often said that, “I got fired for writing things and publishing things that Pope Francis is now saying from the pulpit.” So I think that’s a fair comment. People felt freer to express themselves.
Douthat: Do you worry in a different pontificate that you will feel less freedom?
Father Martin: Oh sure.
Douthat: Are you sitting here in this podcast worrying that things you say could be held against you? Under a future pope? I’m just curious.
Father Martin: No. Look, I didn’t always agree with Pope John Paul II or Benedict, but I tried not to be critical. I was also careful not to go out of bounds and try to color in the lines. As a Jesuit, we’ve been dealing with popes for 450 years, and so you have to, in a good way, you have to come to peace with that. And also like, this is spiritually —
Douthat: They come and go, but the Jesuit order continues.
Father Martin: No. What I meant was, in a good way, we take vows of obedience and we have a special vow of obedience with regard to missions to the pope. So we see him as our leader. And even if we don’t agree with him — we go along, we try to support his way of being pope. So whoever the next pope will be, I’ll work with him and try to promote what he’s saying.
I’m actually very excited to see who it’s going to be. I think you’re going to see someone who’s a little bit more moderate, a little bit more of a stabilizing influence.
Douthat: I’m curious what stabilization looks like, because the flip side of what I just described, the phenomenon where some, maybe many, Catholics felt more comfortable to speak freely under Francis was the experience of a lot of conservatives and traditionalists I knew. Which was kind of a mirror image of the liberal experience under John Paul II. You mentioned at the outset that there were a lot of Jesuits in Argentina who felt that Francis’leadership as a young man was authoritarian and rigid.
The reality is that a lot of conservative Catholics felt that his pontificate was not open and free-flowing. That it was authoritarian in his own way. It used to be that the papacy would investigate more liberal religious orders, and suddenly it was conservative and traditional orders being investigated.
And then especially you had a very explicit crackdown on the traditional Latin Mass, which is something that is attended by a very small number of Catholics, but is very meaningful to that number of Catholics.
And Francis was not an admirer of traditionalists. I would say he spoke very harshly at times about conservatives and traditionalists in a paternal, but scolding way. That is a very commonplace conservative perspective. So I’m curious both what you think about that perspective, having been talking about the pope as a figure of openness and dialogue, but also whether you think, is it possible to govern a divided church without having that kind of experience?
Should it be possible for a pope to be pope without either liberals or conservatives feeling persecuted?
Father Martin: Here’s the answer you don’t get from Jesuits a lot: I don’t know.
That’s interesting. I would say that each person who comes in is going to have his predilection and sort of way of governing. My sense, you might disagree with this, is that Francis was a lot more patient with his critics, who were much more vocal, than critics under St. John Paul or Pope Benedict. And I think he gave them a lot of leeway.
Eventually he brought the hammer down on some people. But I think that was after a long time.
Douthat: The czar was very patient. With his subjects.
Father Martin: My sense was that he was very patient with people who were above and beyond.
I don’t know any example under John Paul or Benedict, cardinals and archbishops, who were so vocal, calling him a heretic and an apostate and a false pope. I just didn’t see that under John Paul and under Benedict. So I think he was more patient.
In terms of the Latin Mass, as I understand it, the Second Vatican Council encouraged the church to turn toward the vernacular. That was in general what the council was trying to do.
But the Latin Mass continued in certain places. Pope Benedict published something that said that it needs to be more widely accepted and more easily celebrated by priests without special permission and stuff.
And this is how I understand — I know you might disagree — but that document was saying that this is a kind of testing period to see how it works. And one of the reasons I think Pope Francis limited the use, was because he saw that kind of testing period lead to division where certain people say, “We’re more Catholic than you are,” or “the Paul VI Mass doesn’t count.”
I think he wanted to really sort of stop that. I know that upsets conservatives, and I can certainly understand that because it’s such a value.
Douthat: From my perspective, it’s less about the general idea and more of a concrete lack of pastoral care. My impression, again, observing Rome from far away is that Francis had a lot of critics and he had a lot of very vocal American critics.
Father Martin: Very vocal. Sometimes even in the hierarchy.
Douthat: I was such a critic. I think probably the most challenging emails we ever exchanged were when I was writing some very pointed criticisms of the Holy Father. But most of the people who attend Latin Masses are in the position of looking — as so many people are in this 21st-century world of ours — for a tangible connection to the divine. And I don’t think it’s surprising that some people find that connection more fully in an ancient liturgy.
It seemed to me there was a failure to use the language that you’ve been using in this conversation, to meet the conservative or really the traditionalist part of the church where those people are.
And it made me worry about the larger question of unity and how a church that has these divisions, holds together.
Father Martin: Well, that’s a really interesting question. We had an article in America Media by John Baldovin, who was a liturgical theologian, that talked about the Latin Mass. And to go back to church unity, I don’t know if I would’ve made the same decision as the pope in terms of the limiting, but I think he saw it as a threat to unity. That was behind that document that he came out with.
And so if we’re going to say that we need unity, in terms of sexual teaching and not breaking the church on that. I think he didn’t want to break the church on that as well, on the Latin Mass. That was his judgment.
Douthat: What draws people to Christianity, and what draws people to church right now? Because one of the interesting questions hanging over the church right now is that in certain ways the liberal/conservative splits are generational, but not in the way that people usually expect. Certainly among priests. If you look at surveys of priests in the United States, for instance, I think this is true.
Maybe not to the same degree elsewhere in the world. Younger priests, while not necessarily politically conservative, tend to be more theologically conservative than older priests.
So as someone who is seen as more on sort of the liberal side of the spectrum, first, what do you make of that trend? But also what does it say to you about sources of zeal, sources of intensity in the future?
Father Martin: It’s a great question. I think I may have said this to you before. I’m more traditional than you might think. That’s the first thing. So devotion to the saint, to the blessed sacrament to Lourdes too. So some of these things are right up my alley. My general rule is whatever brings you closer to God. And if you like the Latin Mass, wonderful. If you like to go to a Taizé service, wonderful. If you like Sant’Egidio — I know this is all inside baseball stuff to non-Catholics, — wonderful. And it’s not surprising that people would turn to more traditional ways of being Catholic and traditional rights.
In times of uncertainty.
Douthat: Interesting times, you might say
Father Martin: There’s a certain comfort to that, and I think it’s great. Here’s the dividing point for me: As long as people who say that don’t say that other Catholics are somehow not Catholic.
So I think as long as there’s openness to both sides. As long as you’re not, what a friend of mine calls a rigidarian, then I think it’s great. Look, I grew up in the 1960s, 1970s Catholic Church, which a lot of people deride as “beige Catholicism.”
Douthat: Felt banners.
Father Martin: But you know what? It meant a lot to me, and it still means a lot to me.
And I go back to my home parish, which is this big 1960s, A-frame parish outside of Philadelphia, and I love it. And if that appeals to me, that’s great. If someone else goes to a high solemn Mass that’s in Latin at some cathedral and that appeals to them, that’s great.
So I think the key is not cutting off the other side and really taking the other person’s spirituality and faith seriously. And I do see that in Catholicism. I do see a lot of: You’re not really Catholic if you do this or that. And that’s frustrating because the Catholic Church really should be: Here comes everyone, particularly in spirituality.
I feel really strongly about that. I hate when people say, “You’re not a good Catholic because you don’t pray the rosary.” Or, “you’re not a good Catholic because you don’t go to Taizé services or Sant’Egidio.”
Douthat: Or you’re not a good Catholic because you’re a convert. There’s a whole discourse where — there are phenomena certainly where people convert to Catholicism and within six months have decided that they know absolutely everything about the faith and can become very annoying.
Father Martin: Well, there’s that.
Douthat: But there is also a weird anticonvert tendency and discourse.
Father Martin: I hope not, given that we’re speaking right after Easter.
Douthat: One would think there wouldn’t be.
Father Martin: For me, the trouble is when people say, because you don’t do this, you’re a bad Catholic. And it’s basically because you don’t do what I like doing. And that’s really frustrating to me. I mean, this is not to gather sympathy, but when I told people that I love the rosary, that I went to Lourdes, people kind of cocked their head at me and said, how can you believe in that stuff?
And I say, well, I’m Catholic. And to be diminished that way is a very strange feeling.
Douthat: So then, how does it all hold together? You’ve described something that is real. The vast diversity of the Catholic Church. But you do have this set of issues that have led to outright schism in many of our fellow Christian churches: Anglicans, Methodists and so on.
And you have a landscape, whereas, as you said at the outset, the pope pushed a certain distance on hot button issues and then said, “OK, if we’re keeping the Germans and the Africans in the same church, we can’t push any further.” But what does hold the church together in the end?
Father Martin: That’s an easy question actually, which is, as you know, the Holy Spirit.
Douthat: Yes.
Father Martin: Truly. The Holy Spirit holds the church together and we have to believe that. And the Holy Spirit’s guiding the church. We really have to believe that Jesus Christ, who is present to us through the Spirit, holds us together. We believe that.
Douthat: That’s all true. But we have had a great schism where we lost the Orthodox, or they lost us. We had the Protestant Reformation, an unfortunate period of trouble that we’re still recovering from. So the Holy Spirit holds the church together in some form, but in this form, the church of you and I in the 21st century, what makes people of these different perspectives want to stay together?
Father Martin: Well, I would say the second part of that answer was the pope and the primacy of St. Peter. And I think that’s why he was so focused on unity. And all the different things we’re talking about — sexual teaching, traditional Mass — that’s the constant theme of unity and hopefully the hierarchy.
And hopefully, our local priests and lay leaders, those are all kind of unifying forces, we hope. But really the unifying person is the pope, which is what he was trying to do.
Douthat: I don’t think this is entirely unfair, but a cynic might say: It is the pope that holds the church together. It’s the papacy that holds the church together. But it does because it offers this point of influence and shaping power that everybody wants a chance to ultimately control. So no one in the end wants to leave the Roman Catholic Church and just become the German Catholic Church, or the sub-Saharan African Catholic Church because Rome itself offers this place of influence over the world that you would be foolish to give up.
And I think the cynical perspective has some truth. I’m very interested in — as someone who was a Protestant, and watched how quickly Protestant churches could break up and split apart — how much people who really disagree with each other inside Catholicism tend to stay in Catholicism.
Father Martin: I do think that’s less of a political thing and more of a spiritual thing.
I think people really want to stay in the church because they believe in the Catholic Church, they believe in the apostolic succession, they believe in the pope. This goes back to St. Peter. I just think that’s so powerful.
Someone asked me recently: Do you think there’s going to be a schism because of homosexuality and the teaching of the church and same sex unions and the blessings?
And I said: These people who are opposed to what the Dicastery for the doctrine of the faith published want to be Catholic. They don’t want to leave the church. Who wants to leave the church? So I think it’s much more of a spiritual question.
And that’s why and even when Pope Francis, was asked: Do you think there’ll be a schism? He said: No. Because I think he understood that people don’t want to leave. Why would they? They might want to see changes. And priests and cardinals and members of religious orders, we’ve also made promises and vows not to leave, so we’re not going anywhere.
Douthat: You guys are stuck so let’s be clear about that. I also wonder, in this landscape, how much influence a pope or the hierarchy has over lay Catholics who disagree with them?
You said: hopefully the hierarchy unites us and hopefully the pope unites us. But since the sex abuse crisis, it’s changed dramatically how ordinary Catholics think about the hierarchy. People have less respect for the bishops than they did.
And in terms of Catholic politics, it doesn’t seem like the bishops have very much authority over Catholic politicians. For a long time, you had pro-choice Catholic politicians who favored abortion rights, and the bishops would criticize them. That didn’t seem to go anywhere.
And now you’ll have politicians on the right who take anti-immigration stances, and the bishops will criticize them. That doesn’t go anywhere either.
So do you think that the hierarchy has real influence? Can it regain real influence? Or is it just presiding in this way that doesn’t matter that much to a lot of ordinary Catholics?
Father Martin: You’re right. The bishops have less authority in the wake of the sex abuse crisis.
I think the pope still has a great deal of influence and I think, as you were saying earlier, it’s not just his words, but it’s his deeds. I think that those kinds of gestures can help people understand Catholicism and Christianity more. And that’s an influence. I think when he speaks out on the death penalty, on migrants and refugees, or on the environment, I do think Catholics listen — maybe not to their local bishop.
I’ve often had the experience of saying to someone: “By the way, what diocese are you in?” And they won’t know.
I’ll say: “Well you must know what diocese you’re in. When the priest says the Eucharistic prayer and puts the bishop’s name in, what does he say?”
And they say, “I don’t know.”
But they know the pope. And so I think he can have a great deal of influence. And Ross, you brought up the instance where Pope Francis embraced that man with the skin condition. I looked at that and I was terribly moved and I thought: He’s influencing me even though he didn’t say anything to me. I had only seen the picture.
That’s a kind of influence and that’s a kind of teaching and that’s a kind of unifying effect. So the answer is yes, he can have an effect. And local bishops can do that from time to time. I don’t want to dump on the bishops, but I think people see them less.
Douthat: I think they can. But certainly bishops’ bureaucracies, like the national councils of bishops and so on, I feel like they imagine themselves having a kind of authority that has completely evaporated.
And personally, I would like to live in a world where Catholic politicians of both the left and right — not a world where they changed their position entirely because of something a bishop said — felt like they had to address a bishop’s critique. I just don’t know how we get back to that world.
I’m curious about your reaction to this, and I’ve been writing about this a little bit lately, but I feel like there is a renewed interest in religion in the Western world right now.
Father Martin: Yes.
Douthat: But I think it’s happening very much at the ground level. And maybe that’s where renewal always happens.
But it’s people reacting, as you said, to what’s going on in the world. Things in their own lives. It’s not about suddenly having the debate about whether gay marriage is settled or anything like that.
If I’m being optimistic, I would say it’s almost people moving past some of the culture war arguments that you and I have been having for a long time and saying, “Well, these are not fully resolved, but I’m going to go back to church anyway.” And it also feels like it’s happening as if it has nothing to do with the hierarchy of the church. The hierarchy is just not in the action.
Father Martin: Yeah, I think that’s accurate.
People are probably looking at their secular lives, their secular lifestyles that might not have God in it, and say, “This feels empty.”
I really believe that in every person’s heart, there’s a natural desire for God. And I think if that’s suppressed, it eventually comes back. I think that’s what’s happening culture wide. I think people are finding the secular world empty. “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you,” said St. Augustine. And, I think that’s what’s happening — finally.
I’m surprised it took this long, actually. I don’t think it has a whole lot to do with the local bishop or even the local priest. It’s a desire for God. And in that desire, I think we have to meet people.
In Jesuit churches people often say, these are the churches for the people on the way in and on the way out.
Douthat: [Laughs]
Father Martin: And I think we have to meet them there. I think that’s one of the things that Pope Francis was trying to do. I would say that one of his most memorable images was the church as a field hospital, which he used in an interview with America Media in 2013.
I’d never heard that before and it’s such a great image. I always think of “M*A*S*H,” the old TV show. It’s open, people are coming in, they’re getting their wounds dressed, they’re getting treated. There’s more transparency. It’s focusing on people who are wounded.
And then later, in the synod, the title of one of the working documents was “Enlarge the Space of Your Tent,” which I thought was so beautiful. And so I think one of the things that Pope Francis was trying to do is to reach out exactly to people like that, who might be curious and not understand the church, and say: “Welcome. This is about mercy and love, and you’re welcome here.”
Douthat: Looking beyond some of the culture war issues and church debates we’ve been talking about. What would you like to see the next pope do?
Father Martin: Gosh, what a great question. Now, you’re going to think I’m making this up, but I want him to be a holy man who proclaims the gospel.
Douthat: I don’t think you’re making that up.
Father Martin: But I would say, on a particular issue, I think there was a lot of convergence at the synod — that was a big word that we used a lot at the synod — on the question of women’s ordination to the diaconate. I think there’s actually a lot of convergence in different parts of the world. So I’d like to see him at least continue that conversation, which would be a big deal.
Douthat: You’re still staying, though, with the culture. Give me somewhere he should go.
Father Martin: Oh gosh. Let me think about that. Where should he go? I think they’ve all gone everywhere!
Douthat: I know they’ve gone everywhere. But you’re his traveling secretary and you get to pick the first destination and it can be anywhere.
Father Martin: A refugee camp. I think that would be the first place I would go.
Douthat: Where?
Father Martin: Gosh. Well, I’m a little biased. I worked with refugees in East Africa. I’d go to a refugee camp in Northern Uganda to greet the Sudanese. That’s a great question.
Douthat: That’s a good answer. I’ll accept it.
Father Martin: But let me think. There’s so many other places.
Douthat: Pick it this way. You mentioned Lourdes. How about a place associated with the supernatural and Catholicism. A shrine? A site of a visitation?
Father Martin: Oh gosh. Well, let me tell you, if I were pope — which will never happen in a trillion years — I would go to Lourdes first, no question, and then I would go to the Sea of Galilee. I mean, this is all selfish. I would go there to pray. And then I’d go to Knock, I love Knock.
Douthat: This is in Ireland.
Father Martin: Yes, in Ireland. I love that. But of course this is all more for the pope’s personal spiritual life. But I think going to a refugee camp in Northern Uganda, Lourdes, the Sea of Galilee, and then some big crazy city like New York.
I’d probably go to Argentina because I know the people in Argentina were upset that he didn’t come back, which was very interesting and kind of mysterious. Where would you have him go?
Douthat: I like the idea of Lourdes and the Sea of Galilee, somewhere associated with our Lady of Guadalupe. I mean, the church has been consumed with issues about sexual behavior and its relationship to secular politics and so on, and one of my prevailing views is that we’re entering a much weirder time when it might be just really good for the pope to be at the Sea of Galilee, or in other places associated with the moments when Christianity claims that God has actually reached down and touched the things of Earth. So something in that zone is appealing to me.
Last question: Who is going to be the next pope?
Father Martin: They have that expression in Italian, “chi entra al Conclave da Papa, ne esce cardinale,” which means you enter a possible candidate, you leave a cardinal.
I really don’t know. I think they’re going to go for someone who’s a little bit more moderate, less revolutionary. Some people have told me that the Italians feel like this is their last chance, because the church is moving toward the global South, and Francis certainly appointed a lot of bishops from there. I look at the same candidates that everybody looks at — Pietro Parolin, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Matteo Zuppi, Luis Antonio Tagle. I really don’t know. It’s kind of exciting because I think it’s pretty wide open.
There’s something interesting going on. I think people misunderstand this statistic that Pope Francis has appointed something like 75 percent or 80 percent of the cardinals as thinking they’re all going to be in lock step with him. If you think about it — and I’m sure you know this — Francis really tried to name cardinals from far-flung places.
Douthat: Small dioceses.
Father Martin: Exactly. I know the cardinal archbishop of Mongolia now, who’s a lovely guy, Giorgio Marengo. Papua New Guinea. It was less about the kind of people he liked and historic sees and dioceses than about raising things up. That doesn’t mean that the cardinal in these far-flung places is in lock step with Francis. So I think it’s more variegated than one would think.
Secondly, someone said to me that, because they’re kind of from far-flung places, they don’t know each other very well. So that argues for more of a Vatican diplomat, say for example, like Cardinal Parolin, whom they might know from visiting the Vatican.
But the third interesting thing is, a lot of them were at the synod. There were a lot of cardinals at the synod in that room. And a lot of people said to me when I was there, look around you, the future pope could be in this room. So I think they took their measure of one another in the synod.
And then the final thing is that, given the political situation these days, people might look around and see a rise in dictatorships and autocracies and might say, wow, we need someone who’s going to be a strong voice against that. So I think all these things contribute to make it a really hard conclave to predict.
Douthat: Yeah, people talk about a moderate choice, and I think that could just mean a boring choice, in the sense that you could pick someone who is a Vatican bureaucrat or a diplomat who doesn’t have an incredibly strong public presence. That would be my impression of Cardinal Parolin — maybe unfairly — who is sort of the insider candidate. But my assumption is it’s either going to be a situation where you have all these cardinals who don’t know each other as well as they normally might, and so very quickly there are a couple of front-runners and it consolidates very quickly. But if that doesn’t happen, then it seems like you get into territory where you should just scratch off all of the leading contenders because almost anything can happen.
Father Martin: But then if you scratch off the leading contenders, I don’t know how well the other ones are known. That’s the thing. And unlike that movie “Conclave,” they’re not going to elect somebody whom they met last week.
Douthat: Unless the Holy Spirit should intervene.
Father Martin: Unless they throw a wind in the open, exploded windows of the Sistine Chapel, which — I’m giving away too much of the movie.
I would say they need three things. They need someone who’s holy. They need someone who is a good evangelizer. And then they need someone who’s a good administrator. Those are three hard things to find in one person. I think each of those names that I mentioned are all three of those things. But who knows? Only the Holy Spirit.
Douthat: On that note, and speaking in agreement, in favor of openness to the Holy Spirit, Father James Martin, thank you so much for joining me.
Father Martin: My pleasure. God bless you.
Douthat: Thank you.
Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com.
This episode of “Interesting Times” was produced by Elisa Gutierrez, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Andrea Betanzos and Katherine Sullivan. It was edited by Jordana Hochman. Engineering by Pat McCusker and Isaac Jones. Original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Michelle Harris and Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
