Hey Leonardo (She Likes Me for Me)
Is Joseph Strickland about to get his job back? (no)
“A man's his job and you're fucked at yours.”
-David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross (a play set in Chicago)
I'm so sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but our friends at LifeSite News apparently have concerns about the new Pope Leo XIV, the first supreme pontiff to have ever listened to Eric And Kathy In The Morning on WTMX 101.9 FM Chicago’s The Mix. LSN ran “5 worrying things you need to know about Leo XIV” the day of his election, because they need to start sounding the alarm right away on the “anti-Trump, pro-Synod American”.
Look, if you're the kind of person who reads LSN, Leo is not the Pope you wanted. You thought Francis was a disaster and wanted someone who would reverse all of the damage; maybe you even spent a bunch of money to try and persuade Cardinals to vote for a guy that could reverse all of that damage. If you were incredibly delusional, you were hoping for Cardinal Burke and thought he could get 90 conclave votes even though no other Cardinal will publicly admit to liking or even spending time with him. And in the movie playing in your head, Burke would come out on the loggia and announce “we are free from the tyrant Francis! We are no longer a Vatican II church!” and the crowd would cheer as deacons were released into Rome swinging censors around, trying to hit gay people in the head. If you were moderately delusional, your pick was Cardinal Sarah, and if you were not really delusional but still hoping for a long shot, your pick was Cardinal Erdó or something, but the movie ended the same way each time.
But none of those are the guy, and the guy who is the guy - and, by extension, the Cardinals who elected him - has already made it clear that he intends to continue Francis’ major projects, notably the focus on synodal work in the life of the church. He clearly intends to be a voice for peace on the world stage. He also made it clear that he picked Leo as his papal name because Leo XIII started the modern tradition of Catholic social teaching with Rerum Novarum, because he built a church that chose to engage directly with contemporary problems rather than hide from them, and because he cared about the dignity of workers at the beginning of an industrial revolution. All of these, I think, are good things, and while I don’t know what Pope Leo is going to do next - I’m sure I’ll be pissed at something he does very soon! - I am still hopeful and excited to see how he chooses to lead the church.
LSN does not feel the same way; they also wrote in their piece that “Prevost is a vocal critic of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and has consistently used his X account to promote material hostile to Trump’s immigration policies.” I can’t really accept that at face value because, as it turns out, Cardinal Prevost barely posted online at all, has posted less than half a dozen times so far this year, and took all of 2024 off of posting altogether. Which is great! No prelate should post at all! They have jobs to do! However, the few times that Prevost/Leo has posted, it has often been to share criticisms of JD Vance, which is hilarious. He doesn’t like JD Vance, guys! Just like everyone else!
But the real reason LSN is upset about Leo is because of his previous job: Cardinal Prevost’s final assignment before the conclave was leading the Dicastery for Bishops. Francis’ decisions on who in the hierarchy to elevate, the composition of the College of Cardinals from the peripheries of the globe, decisions to quickly shitcan annoying 75-year-old bishops like Joseph Naumann or Thomas Tobin, all of that went through Prevost’s office. I find it interesting, I’m certainly interested to see what he does next with his choices of bishops and Cardinals, particularly in the States where dioceses like New York and Chicago are due for new bishops soon; I think that will tell us all a lot about his priorities. But all of this means that one decision that LSN especially hated from 2023 also went through Prevost’s office: “As head of the Congregation for Bishops, Prevost was instrumental in the removal of Bishop Strickland from Tyler, Texas…Meanwhile, he has placed openly heterodox bishops in sees worldwide.”
Yes, we all remember the unjust firing of Joseph Strickland, removed from his diocese by a tyrannical Pope and Dicastery for the mere infraction of “repeatedly posting publicly on the internet that the Pope was an instrument of Satan for five years, like we’re talking the kind of stuff that would get you fired from a regular job within a week”. But! LSN’s John-Henry Westen is choosing to see this crisis as an opportunity - perhaps the job will change Pope Leo XIV and he will have a chance to right this wrong. That’s the thesis of Westen’s May 9 piece “Hints of hope and THE sign to watch out for”. Here is THE sign:
“Let me give you THE sign to watch for, the MOST IMPORTANT sign I believe will indicate the direction and intent of Robert Prevost – Pope Leo XIV. Remember who this is and what he did – the history is so important to understand so you can see THE sign that will indicate who this man will be as pope.”
Yes I get it, THE sign, you’ve said it three times now, what is it?
“Because it is true that the grace of that office can change a man, can give him what he needs to change his life. The most significant thing Pope Leo did in his short tenure as head of the Dicastery for Bishops in the Vatican was the removal of Bishop Joseph Strickland and the elevation of Cardinal McElroy to the prestigious Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Strickland by most accounts was regarded as the holiest bishop in the United States-”
I’m going to interrupt the block quote again here because we’re all thinking the same thing: we’re all in awe of how much sense this makes. Yes, we measure the holiness of bishops using a numeric scale, we regularly rank them, Strickland is regularly at the top of the ranking, and is at the top “by most accounts”. Why am I telling you all of this, you already know it! Back to Westen:
“To be fair to Pope Leo, the removal was what Pope Francis wanted. To refuse or advise otherwise may have cost then-Cardinal Prevost his position. The move was, nonetheless, a severe blow to the faithful of Tyler. Over 700 families and several religious orders and many priests had moved to Tyler specifically because of this holy Bishop Joseph Strickland, a successor of the apostles who reminded his flock and onlookers who were moved by him of the original fishermen Christ chose to lead His Church. The key to restoring the faith of Catholics in the papacy would be to right this wrong in which Pope Leo was complicit while he was a cardinal. And I am hopeful for just such a gesture from the new Holy Father…We won’t have long to wait before knowing what direction this is taking. Give it three to six months and you’ll know.”
Putting aside the practical reality that if you move to a diocese because of a specific bishop, you are an idiot - bishops change assignments all of the time - Westen is saying that Leo could do this as a meaningful gesture to right the wrongs of the distant past. The distant past, of course, was less than 18 months ago. And also Strickland had been strongly warned by his Nuncio that this was coming if he didn’t stop posting. And also Strickland had been strongly warned by the Vatican officials who did an apostolic visitation in his diocese. And also it’s possible the visitation turned up diocesan financial mismanagement issues beyond “he’s bad at posting”. And also Strickland had explicitly said in a 2020 interview that he would be fine with the Pope removing him from his diocese. Almost as if he had been given every possible off-ramp before eventually being told “you can either stay in your diocese or keep posting” and responding “I wish to keep posting”. And also, in order for Strickland to ever get his job back, he would probably have to demonstrate some level of contrition for his past conduct, as well as demonstrate that he had weaned himself off of far-right media would anyone like to guess what the next part of the essay is about
I’m going to preface this next piece by saying: look, Joseph Strickland has never exactly distinguished himself as an intellectual luminary among bishops. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the Texas accent just makes him sound like an idiot and he's actually brilliant. I don’t think I’m wrong.
Anyways, I know exactly where Joseph Strickland was when the Vatican announced the election of Pope Leo, because he was doing a podcast, with Glenn Beck, and I’m going to save you all a migraine by just cueing the video up to the actual part where they make the announcement (which my friend was kind enough to do for me when he sent me the video):
Ok, there are a couple things going on here. First of all, Beck, who is not Catholic, clearly has no idea what is happening on the balcony. It's not until halfway through the “habemus papam” announcement by the Cardinal, who is dressed in red YOU KNOW LIKE A CARDINAL WOULD BE, that Beck realizes that the person speaking is not actually the new Pope. In expressing this realization out loud, Beck talks over the actual part of the announcement where they say who was elected Pope. It’s a clown show over here.
Beck asks Strickland if he knows anything about Leo XIII, Strickland recalls that Leo XIII wrote the Saint Michael prayer but nothing else. The two of them eventually get a hold of the name Robert Prevost, Strickland recognizes that he was a relatively new Cardinal and the head of the Dicastery for Bishops, and then says that beyond that he knows “not much”. He adds “as head of the Congregation for Bishops, frankly, in my opinion, he made some really bad choices there - I mean, of course, it was Pope Francis - but he was involved in naming bishops that I find very troubling. So…we’ll have to keep praying.”
Strickland kind of fumbles through that sentence, possibly because he realizes halfway through that he shouldn’t be saying on air, two minutes into the new papacy, that he strongly disagrees with decisions the Pope has made, as this may be a career-limiting move. Or, he’s fumbling, possibly, because he was preoccupied: he can definitely name one other choice Prevost made that he considers “bad”. Strickland - a guy who regularly reads and contributes to LSN, the exact kind of guy delusional enough to have hoped that an ultraconservative bishop was about to emerge and undo the nightmare of the Francis papacy - is now watching the guy that signed the “you’re fired from being Bishop of Tyler” paperwork wave to the throngs in St. Peter’s square. Strickland is visibly off balance for the remaining two minutes of the interview: at one point, presumably to fill dead air, Strickland says “Leo is an interesting choice for a name, though,” and Beck asks “why is that?” and it's very clear that Strickland did not think far enough ahead to have a response ready, so he fumbles through the fun fact about the Saint Michael prayer again, says he was “strong”, and concludes with “I am not a Leo scholar.” My point is, this is the face of a man who is excited to get his job back and thinks that it’s definitely going to happen now:
Folks, keep an eye out for THE sign: Westen hopes that Pope Leo will restore Strickland’s ministry, and that we’ll get a read on that within three to six months. Actually, I don’t really think Westen hopes that, I think Westen wanted to write a bunch of words so he could convince more old people to give his website donations and email addresses. I do not expect him to revisit this thought in three to six months, I expect him to pretend to be mad about something else Pope Leo did.
But hey! I've been wrong before! Going into the conclave, I was absolutely sure we weren't getting an American Pope - certainly not a Chicago Pope! Certainly not a fellow southsider Pope! - and look at us now! Perhaps Pope Leo will indeed admit that he only acted out of fear of Pope Francis, restore Strickland's public ministry, place him at the head of a prominent American archdiocese, and prioritize this so highly that it will all be done in the next six months. That is absolutely something that “could” happen. Another thing that “could” happen is that some time in the next, I don't know, week and a half, Strickland will post something so egregious that he forever forecloses the possibility of his being restored to public ministry. All that I can do is review everything I've ever observed from both men and decide which of these scenarios is far more likely to happen.