I disagree! Strongly. Charlie Kirk was an awful human being and the worst kind of hypocrite. Vance is determined to step into his shoes, and perhaps his house slippers.
I am not a Christian, but I respect and admire the Pope for his courageous stand against the evil that these “men” represent. Go Leo!!!!
I appreciate your commentary here. I don’t think my comments about Vance’s affection for Kirk are really core to the substance of my argument. I would consider it quite tertiary to the main thesis of my argument.
Good for you. We have your back. Win-lose is not working anywhere in the world that I know of. Dialogue assuming positive intent can open doors previously invisible. Stay steady.
I sincerely hope that the Vice President accepts your invitation to civil and constructive dialogue. There’s absolutely too much demonizing on both sides. These are too important moral issues to retreat into ideological bunkers. I’ll pray for a positive RSVP!
Your invitation to the VP is generous and fair. He won’t accept. First, the administration won’t let him for fear that he’ll make a fool of himself; and second, he can’t afford the risk of trying to defend administration policy that is entirely at odds with Catholic teaching. If he does accept, I’ll be glued to whatever medium broadcasts it. True Christian faith (not the MAGA/Mega brand) is incompatible with the current administration.
As long as it’s a dialogue. Charlie Kirk wasn’t interested in dialogue as his premise was “prove me wrong.” Dialogue requires curiosity on both sides to explore the other’s perspectives. Kirk lacked that & I suspect Vance does, too. The “prove me wrong” in such a case is to show up with an open mind.
“We cannot become starched Christians, those over-educated Christians who speak of theological matters as they calmly sip their tea. No! We must become courageous Christians and go in search of the people who are the very flesh of Christ, those who are the flesh of Christ!”
Here it is time, finally, to bring forward the thinking of a person whose name I have not read here, and who was a deep dialogue partner of Pope Francis.
That name is Father Leonardo Boff.
I urge you to read this.
Leonardo Boff and Jorge Mario Bergoglio—two leading Catholic voices from Latin America—write from a common horizon shaped by Vatican II, the social upheavals of the 1960s–70s, and a grassroots ecclesial culture attentive to the poor.
Boff, the Brazilian liberation theologian, articulated bold theological and political critiques: the poor as the
primary interlocutors of theology, sin conceived structurally rather than merely personally, an ecclesiology rooted in base communities, and an ecology inseparable from social justice.
As Pope Francis, Bergoglio turned many of those same concerns into central pillars of his papacy.
Understanding the relationship between their texts shows not a simple teacher–pupil transmission but a shared language adapted to different genres, responsibilities, and aims.
At the heart of both thinkers is a fierce conviction that the poor must determine the Church’s priorities. Boff insists that theology be tested “in the examination hall of the poor,” making the lived experience of marginalization the epistemic ground for Christian truth and moral urgency.
He treats the poor not as passive beneficiaries but as active subjects whose condition exposes structures of domination and calls theology to emancipation. Francis echoes that priority repeatedly: the poor are “at the heart of the Gospel,” and the Church’s credibility is measured by its response to them.
Yet where Boff’s language is methodological and programmatic, Francis’s is pastoral and magisterial.
In documents like Evangelii Gaudium, the emphasis is on conversion, witness, and institutional accountability—the care of the poor as both prophetic demand and measure of ecclesial authenticity—rather than on the programmatic political options sometimes advanced by liberation theologians.
Closely linked to the preferential option for the poor is the shared attention to structures of sin. Boff’s work challenges Christians to see sin not only as individual moral failure but as embedded in social, economic, and political systems that produce and perpetuate exclusion.
He does not hesitate to borrow analytic tools from social theory—even Marxist critique—to diagnose and name structural injustice.
Francis likewise condemned systemic forms of dehumanization—consumerism, economic models that create “throwaway” people, financial speculation—but his diagnosis is framed within a moral-theological idiom intended to reach a plural global audience.
Laudato Si’ and Evangelii Gaudium name “structures” and “systems” as morally culpable, but Francis tempers polemical analysis with appeals to dialogue, reform, and the common good. The convergence is evident in vocabulary; the divergence lies in method and prescription: radical structural transformation features more readily in Boff’s polemical repertoire, while Francis pursues reform through ethical exhortation and institutional practice.
Ecclesiology is a third strand where the two authors meet and part company. Boff celebrates base communities—small, popular Christian groups—as loci of theological insight, lay initiative, and social transformation.
His ecclesiology, sometimes described in terms of “ecclesiogenesis,” emphasizes the Church as a historical, dynamic process shaped from below. Francis, too, champions lay participation, the sensus fidei of the People of God, and synodality—listening, subsidiarity, and decentralization are recurring themes in his teaching.
Yet Francis articulates these commitments within the framework of a global, sacramental Church that retains hierarchical structures.
Where Boff’s proposals at times challenge central authority, Francis adopts a reforming posture that seeks to democratize pastoral practice while preserving magisterial unity.
The result is a participatory ecclesiology filtered through papal responsibility.
The ecological convergence between Boff and Francis is especially striking.
Boff’s later writings weave ecological care and social justice into a single moral fabric, portraying the Earth’s degradation and human poverty as interconnected wounds.
Francis’s Laudato Si’ develops an “integral ecology” that explicitly links environmental crises to poverty, migration, and economic inequality. Laudato Si’ universalizes and systematizes what Boff and others had been saying in Latin America: creation care is inseparable from the fight for social justice.
Still, Francis’s encyclical broadens the argument with scientific engagement, juridical reflection, and policy-oriented appeals aimed at a global constituency, whereas Boff’s ecological critique often arises from theological and pastoral provocations within local and regional contexts.
Tone and genre further shape how each author advances similar concerns.
Boff can be polemical, daring, and theologically experimental; his method blends scripture, social analysis, and political categories with an urgency that sometimes provoked Vatican censure in the 1980s.
Francis writes from the office of the papacy and therefore chooses a pastoral, dialogical tone intended to persuade diverse audiences—believers and nonbelievers, clergy and laity, political leaders and ordinary people.
This difference in posture explains why shared phrases—“the cry of the poor,” “the cry of the earth,” “structures of sin”—appear across their works without the papal texts adopting the full political or methodological boldness of early liberation theology.
Textual echoes reveal the nature of the influence.
Francis seldom cites Boff directly in his major documents; instead he credits Latin American episcopal conferences, magisterial tradition, and a broad theological inheritance.
Yet thematic motifs recur: Boff’s insistence on poverty as theological locus, his structural analysis of sin, his promotion of grassroots ecclesial life, and his integration of ecological concerns form part of the intellectual soil from which many Latin American and global Catholic reforms have grown.
In that sense, Boff’s contribution is less a discrete set of doctrines implanted into papal teaching than a pervasive shaping of questions and priorities that Francis reformulates in a papal, universal language.
Ultimately, the relationship between Boff’s theology and Francis’s magisterium was one of deep convergence coupled with significant adaptation. Boff supplied probing critiques and conceptual tools that highlighted the moral urgency of poverty, systemic injustice, ecclesial participation, and ecological ruin.
Francis took those concerns and translated them into a papal agenda that universalizes the critique, insists on pastoral conversion, and seeks institutional reform compatible with global Church governance.
The result was a papacy that carried liberationist priorities into the center of Catholic discourse—poverty, structural critique, lay participation, and integral ecology—while reworking their method and tone to serve the aims of pastoral leadership and global moral persuasion.
Thank you, David, for introducing me to Boff. I downloaded his introduction to liberation theology, at 4 AM EST no less and I will be reading it with interest.
To me, Vance is the antithesis of the Church’s social doctrine. In the Spring, I mailed him a copy of my recent book on CST, Choices. As he never acknowledged its receipt, I do not know if he read it.
I would love to witness any discussion between Hale and the ghost of Kirk.
You said a lot of interesting and well thought through things but the two words I want particularly to highlight, are ‘Baby Catholic’ - your words, my capitals. Yes, he’s got a long way to go before he pontificates as he does. He should put in the time and get on his knees and do a whole lot more novenas, pilgrimages, Lenten observances and much more! Have his own Catholic experience and stop pressuring his wife into joining the church. She’s probably a very good Hindu!
I applaud your invite which recognizes above all the common ground on which you stand by your faith in Christ. If you can meet in this unityyou will be following the synodal path which Pope Francis opened and Pope Leo pursues. This way of dialogue and holy listening is the way forward. Be assured of my prayers for the door to open.
Ridiculous religious repression is foisted on Americans by Christian fanatics trying to impose laws requiring all Americans to practice the fanatics’ own personal religious beliefs. These proselytizers are working to destroy the guarantees in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . “
Your faith journey is our journey. You are helping us follow the Light of Truth.
I feel your pain, your sadness and your disappointment. Unfortunately in our country today, “us will be wrong and they are right!” In the meantime, “we” stand with you!
This is a fantastic approach. I hope the 'baby Catholic' Vance agrees, not the opportunist fake MAGA Vance. Seeing a dialogue between 2 educated, pious men about our shared faith would be an amazing thing.
I’d even welcome a good-faith debate between two educated people with a desire to live in our faith but sometimes falling short of piety. What a wonderful opportunity Chris. Imagine if indeed our hearts were opened by this conversation.
This is a good invitation, and the graciousness is important. One question though: do you have a source for Vance being “enraged”? His tweet sounds straightforward, with no emotional subtext. (But yes, with an implied threat.)
My only source is the Daily Beast article making that claim. My White House connections aren't really privy to the particular 'moods' of the vice president.
Hm, except that the Daily Beast says “According to Hale, the alleged remark ‘enraged’ Vance…”
You are the source for them! I do remember that in the first substack you wrote about this, you said Vance was “enraged” and then shared his tweet. I remember being struck by that characterization because the tweet didn’t sound “enraged” to me at all. I think this word originates with you, and you might consider revising that characterization of Vance’s mood/frame of mind since you don’t have a source for it and since you are seeking a more substantive conversation with him. I say this as a person with no love for Vance!
Charitable dialog is a great idea! I hope it happens.
The one thing many of us are wondering: While I don't expect you to do it here, can you actually name the White House source who told you that "the pope doesn't know what he's talking about"? Or would you choose not to do that now that the vice-president has implicitly threatened that person's job? Just curious.
The person told me with the expectation that they wouldn’t quoted by named, so I want to honor that promise I made to them.
I find it interesting that Tricia McLaughlin’s comments on Wednesday more or less are a longer version of “the pope doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
It's 100% what this White House thinks. They said it on background and on the record within a period of 24 hours.
I disagree! Strongly. Charlie Kirk was an awful human being and the worst kind of hypocrite. Vance is determined to step into his shoes, and perhaps his house slippers.
I am not a Christian, but I respect and admire the Pope for his courageous stand against the evil that these “men” represent. Go Leo!!!!
I appreciate your commentary here. I don’t think my comments about Vance’s affection for Kirk are really core to the substance of my argument. I would consider it quite tertiary to the main thesis of my argument.
Agreed.
I do not know where you are coming from on this one, Chris.
Kirk was hardly worthy of emulation on any level.
He was a hate monger.
With all due respect, you might want to look again at Kirk’s notion of, and practice of, “debate.”
Kirk did not promote fair debate. He promoted set ups , bullying, and shams; just like his politics.
Good for you. We have your back. Win-lose is not working anywhere in the world that I know of. Dialogue assuming positive intent can open doors previously invisible. Stay steady.
I sincerely hope that the Vice President accepts your invitation to civil and constructive dialogue. There’s absolutely too much demonizing on both sides. These are too important moral issues to retreat into ideological bunkers. I’ll pray for a positive RSVP!
Your invitation to the VP is generous and fair. He won’t accept. First, the administration won’t let him for fear that he’ll make a fool of himself; and second, he can’t afford the risk of trying to defend administration policy that is entirely at odds with Catholic teaching. If he does accept, I’ll be glued to whatever medium broadcasts it. True Christian faith (not the MAGA/Mega brand) is incompatible with the current administration.
As long as it’s a dialogue. Charlie Kirk wasn’t interested in dialogue as his premise was “prove me wrong.” Dialogue requires curiosity on both sides to explore the other’s perspectives. Kirk lacked that & I suspect Vance does, too. The “prove me wrong” in such a case is to show up with an open mind.
“We cannot become starched Christians, those over-educated Christians who speak of theological matters as they calmly sip their tea. No! We must become courageous Christians and go in search of the people who are the very flesh of Christ, those who are the flesh of Christ!”
Here it is time, finally, to bring forward the thinking of a person whose name I have not read here, and who was a deep dialogue partner of Pope Francis.
That name is Father Leonardo Boff.
I urge you to read this.
Leonardo Boff and Jorge Mario Bergoglio—two leading Catholic voices from Latin America—write from a common horizon shaped by Vatican II, the social upheavals of the 1960s–70s, and a grassroots ecclesial culture attentive to the poor.
Boff, the Brazilian liberation theologian, articulated bold theological and political critiques: the poor as the
primary interlocutors of theology, sin conceived structurally rather than merely personally, an ecclesiology rooted in base communities, and an ecology inseparable from social justice.
As Pope Francis, Bergoglio turned many of those same concerns into central pillars of his papacy.
Understanding the relationship between their texts shows not a simple teacher–pupil transmission but a shared language adapted to different genres, responsibilities, and aims.
At the heart of both thinkers is a fierce conviction that the poor must determine the Church’s priorities. Boff insists that theology be tested “in the examination hall of the poor,” making the lived experience of marginalization the epistemic ground for Christian truth and moral urgency.
He treats the poor not as passive beneficiaries but as active subjects whose condition exposes structures of domination and calls theology to emancipation. Francis echoes that priority repeatedly: the poor are “at the heart of the Gospel,” and the Church’s credibility is measured by its response to them.
Yet where Boff’s language is methodological and programmatic, Francis’s is pastoral and magisterial.
In documents like Evangelii Gaudium, the emphasis is on conversion, witness, and institutional accountability—the care of the poor as both prophetic demand and measure of ecclesial authenticity—rather than on the programmatic political options sometimes advanced by liberation theologians.
Closely linked to the preferential option for the poor is the shared attention to structures of sin. Boff’s work challenges Christians to see sin not only as individual moral failure but as embedded in social, economic, and political systems that produce and perpetuate exclusion.
He does not hesitate to borrow analytic tools from social theory—even Marxist critique—to diagnose and name structural injustice.
Francis likewise condemned systemic forms of dehumanization—consumerism, economic models that create “throwaway” people, financial speculation—but his diagnosis is framed within a moral-theological idiom intended to reach a plural global audience.
Laudato Si’ and Evangelii Gaudium name “structures” and “systems” as morally culpable, but Francis tempers polemical analysis with appeals to dialogue, reform, and the common good. The convergence is evident in vocabulary; the divergence lies in method and prescription: radical structural transformation features more readily in Boff’s polemical repertoire, while Francis pursues reform through ethical exhortation and institutional practice.
Ecclesiology is a third strand where the two authors meet and part company. Boff celebrates base communities—small, popular Christian groups—as loci of theological insight, lay initiative, and social transformation.
His ecclesiology, sometimes described in terms of “ecclesiogenesis,” emphasizes the Church as a historical, dynamic process shaped from below. Francis, too, champions lay participation, the sensus fidei of the People of God, and synodality—listening, subsidiarity, and decentralization are recurring themes in his teaching.
Yet Francis articulates these commitments within the framework of a global, sacramental Church that retains hierarchical structures.
Where Boff’s proposals at times challenge central authority, Francis adopts a reforming posture that seeks to democratize pastoral practice while preserving magisterial unity.
The result is a participatory ecclesiology filtered through papal responsibility.
The ecological convergence between Boff and Francis is especially striking.
Boff’s later writings weave ecological care and social justice into a single moral fabric, portraying the Earth’s degradation and human poverty as interconnected wounds.
Francis’s Laudato Si’ develops an “integral ecology” that explicitly links environmental crises to poverty, migration, and economic inequality. Laudato Si’ universalizes and systematizes what Boff and others had been saying in Latin America: creation care is inseparable from the fight for social justice.
Still, Francis’s encyclical broadens the argument with scientific engagement, juridical reflection, and policy-oriented appeals aimed at a global constituency, whereas Boff’s ecological critique often arises from theological and pastoral provocations within local and regional contexts.
Tone and genre further shape how each author advances similar concerns.
Boff can be polemical, daring, and theologically experimental; his method blends scripture, social analysis, and political categories with an urgency that sometimes provoked Vatican censure in the 1980s.
Francis writes from the office of the papacy and therefore chooses a pastoral, dialogical tone intended to persuade diverse audiences—believers and nonbelievers, clergy and laity, political leaders and ordinary people.
This difference in posture explains why shared phrases—“the cry of the poor,” “the cry of the earth,” “structures of sin”—appear across their works without the papal texts adopting the full political or methodological boldness of early liberation theology.
Textual echoes reveal the nature of the influence.
Francis seldom cites Boff directly in his major documents; instead he credits Latin American episcopal conferences, magisterial tradition, and a broad theological inheritance.
Yet thematic motifs recur: Boff’s insistence on poverty as theological locus, his structural analysis of sin, his promotion of grassroots ecclesial life, and his integration of ecological concerns form part of the intellectual soil from which many Latin American and global Catholic reforms have grown.
In that sense, Boff’s contribution is less a discrete set of doctrines implanted into papal teaching than a pervasive shaping of questions and priorities that Francis reformulates in a papal, universal language.
Ultimately, the relationship between Boff’s theology and Francis’s magisterium was one of deep convergence coupled with significant adaptation. Boff supplied probing critiques and conceptual tools that highlighted the moral urgency of poverty, systemic injustice, ecclesial participation, and ecological ruin.
Francis took those concerns and translated them into a papal agenda that universalizes the critique, insists on pastoral conversion, and seeks institutional reform compatible with global Church governance.
The result was a papacy that carried liberationist priorities into the center of Catholic discourse—poverty, structural critique, lay participation, and integral ecology—while reworking their method and tone to serve the aims of pastoral leadership and global moral persuasion.
Thank you, David, for introducing me to Boff. I downloaded his introduction to liberation theology, at 4 AM EST no less and I will be reading it with interest.
To me, Vance is the antithesis of the Church’s social doctrine. In the Spring, I mailed him a copy of my recent book on CST, Choices. As he never acknowledged its receipt, I do not know if he read it.
I would love to witness any discussion between Hale and the ghost of Kirk.
You said a lot of interesting and well thought through things but the two words I want particularly to highlight, are ‘Baby Catholic’ - your words, my capitals. Yes, he’s got a long way to go before he pontificates as he does. He should put in the time and get on his knees and do a whole lot more novenas, pilgrimages, Lenten observances and much more! Have his own Catholic experience and stop pressuring his wife into joining the church. She’s probably a very good Hindu!
I applaud your invite which recognizes above all the common ground on which you stand by your faith in Christ. If you can meet in this unityyou will be following the synodal path which Pope Francis opened and Pope Leo pursues. This way of dialogue and holy listening is the way forward. Be assured of my prayers for the door to open.
Ridiculous religious repression is foisted on Americans by Christian fanatics trying to impose laws requiring all Americans to practice the fanatics’ own personal religious beliefs. These proselytizers are working to destroy the guarantees in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . “
Chris, once again, THANK YOU!
Your faith journey is our journey. You are helping us follow the Light of Truth.
I feel your pain, your sadness and your disappointment. Unfortunately in our country today, “us will be wrong and they are right!” In the meantime, “we” stand with you!
a one hour youtube debate moderated by Bishop Barron and Fr. James would be solid.
Vance will walk all over you. He'll talk over you and then make fun of you for not knowing about extra-catholic sources like Curtis Yarven.
This is a fantastic approach. I hope the 'baby Catholic' Vance agrees, not the opportunist fake MAGA Vance. Seeing a dialogue between 2 educated, pious men about our shared faith would be an amazing thing.
I’d even welcome a good-faith debate between two educated people with a desire to live in our faith but sometimes falling short of piety. What a wonderful opportunity Chris. Imagine if indeed our hearts were opened by this conversation.
This is a good invitation, and the graciousness is important. One question though: do you have a source for Vance being “enraged”? His tweet sounds straightforward, with no emotional subtext. (But yes, with an implied threat.)
My only source is the Daily Beast article making that claim. My White House connections aren't really privy to the particular 'moods' of the vice president.
Hm, except that the Daily Beast says “According to Hale, the alleged remark ‘enraged’ Vance…”
You are the source for them! I do remember that in the first substack you wrote about this, you said Vance was “enraged” and then shared his tweet. I remember being struck by that characterization because the tweet didn’t sound “enraged” to me at all. I think this word originates with you, and you might consider revising that characterization of Vance’s mood/frame of mind since you don’t have a source for it and since you are seeking a more substantive conversation with him. I say this as a person with no love for Vance!
You called JD the 50th VP. Isn’t he the 47th VP. TACO is the 47th President. Just saying.
No, he's the fiftieth! Some presidents have had multiple vice presidents, most notably Nixon and FDR.
Charitable dialog is a great idea! I hope it happens.
The one thing many of us are wondering: While I don't expect you to do it here, can you actually name the White House source who told you that "the pope doesn't know what he's talking about"? Or would you choose not to do that now that the vice-president has implicitly threatened that person's job? Just curious.
The person told me with the expectation that they wouldn’t quoted by named, so I want to honor that promise I made to them.
I find it interesting that Tricia McLaughlin’s comments on Wednesday more or less are a longer version of “the pope doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
It's 100% what this White House thinks. They said it on background and on the record within a period of 24 hours.
No surprise there!
Love vs Evil!!!