Thus, the words, “excommunication” and “schism” are once again in the lively vocabulary of online semi-canonists and theologians. But what do these words really mean? And how can one be excommunicated?

In this article, we will shed light on these questions. However, we will not be discussing the specificity of the case of the SSPX. That merits a more detailed and spiritually mature article that I think still needs time and prayer before writing. So, if you are here for my opinion on the subject, then I am sorry to disappoint you.

You can use this Table of Contents to jump to the question you like to read first:

Penalties and sanctions in Canon law

The Catholic Church’s daily life and order is maintained by Canon law. Unlike civil law, the ultimate goal and supreme rule of ecclesiastical law is salus animarum (the salvation of souls). Thus, sanctions and penalties must be read in this light.

Book VI of the 1983 Code of Canon Law is dedicated to delicts and penalties. Can. 1312 clarifies that sanctions in the Church are either (1) medicinal penalties or censures; (2) expiatory penalties; or (3) remedies and penalties.

The immediate goal of medicinal penalties or censures is the rehabilitation of the offender, can. 1347 establishes that this is done if the offender has ceased in doing the offense, has repented of it and has repaired the damage and scandal it caused. Thus the duration depends on the offender himself.

The finality of expiatory penalties is the reparation of the damage caused to the ecclesial community while penal remedies are not really penalties in the strict sense.

Thus, it is wrong to say excommunication or any other sanction given by the Church is a vindictive act. Rather, it is an act of charity or of fraternal correction, if you will.

What excommunication is and what is it not?

An excommunication falls into the first category of sanctions. Thus, it is technically called a censure. It is the principal and severest censure that deprives the guilty Christian of all participation in the common blessings of ecclesiastical society and is thus reserved only to the gravest offenses. 

It is medicinal in nature and as such is designed to “shock” a person’s conscience, encourage them to repentance, and ultimately lead them back to full communion with the Church.

Censures cannot be imposed neither in perpetuity nor for a determined time since its duration depends on the fulfillment of the above-mentioned requirements by the offender.

The Catechism of the Council of Trent (Art. IX) describes: “excommunicated persons, because excluded by [the Church’s] sentence from the number of her children, belong not to her communion until restored by repentance. But with regard to the rest; however wicked and flagitious, it is certain that they still belong to the Church.”

Pope Leo X, in Exsurge Domine (1520), condemned Martin Luther’s twenty-third proposition that states that excommunications are merely external punishments and not spiritual. Pius VI reiterated this condemnation in Auctorem fidei (1794). 

Clement XI, in his condemnation of Pasquier Quesnel’s Jansenist theses in Unigenitus (1713), asserts the Church’s authority to excommunicate and invalidates the counterargument of a hypothetical “unjust excommunication” that does not separate the excommunicated to the Church and that “to suffer in peace an excommunication and an unjust anathema rather than betray truth, is to imitate St. Paul; far be it from rebelling against authority or of destroying unity” (thesis 92). 

In other words:

An excommunication is not:

• A vindictive act of ecclesiastical authority;
• A proclamation of eternal damnation;
• A merely external punishment with no spiritual consequences;
• An act that becomes “invalidated” because it is “unjust”, or that its spiritual effects are not applied because of this supposed “unjust” character.

An excommunication is:

• A penalty or censure reserved to grave offenses whose end is the medicinal, that is, the full restoration of the excommunicated to the Church after fulfilling the above-mentioned three requirements;
• A penalty that separates the excommunicated from the society of the Church and its effects are both in the external forum and the internal forum, thus the effects are both practical and spiritual.

Does an “unjust” excommunication make it invalid?

We have to make an excursus here since we’ve discussed the Jansenist claim that an “unjust” excommunication makes it invalid.

An excommunication is said to be null when it is invalid because of some intrinsic or essential defect, e.g. when the person inflicting it has no jurisdiction, when the motive of the excommunication is manifestly incorrect and inconsistent, or when the excommunication is essentially defective in form. 

An “unjust” excommunication is still valid, but it is wrongfully applied to a person really innocent but believed to be guilty. This, of course, means that it is not a question of excommunication latae sententiae and in foro interno, but only of one imposed or declared by judicial sentence (ferendae sententiae). 

A null excommunication produces no effect whatsoever, and may be ignored without committing sin. But a case of unjust excommunication brings out in a much more general way the possibility of conflict between the internal forum and the external forum, between legal justice and the real facts.

Pope Innocent III formally admits in De sententia excommunicationis the possibility of this conflict. Some persons, he says, may be free in the eyes of God but bound in the eyes of the Church; vice versa, some may be free in the eyes of the Church but bound in the eyes of God: for God's judgment is based on the very truth itself, whereas that of the Church is based on arguments and presumptions which are sometimes erroneous. 

The Pope concludes that the chain by which the sinner is bound in the sight of God is loosed by remission of the fault committed, whereas that which binds him in the sight of the Church is severed only by removal of the sentence. 

Therefore, a person unjustly excommunicated is in the same state as the justly excommunicated sinner who has repented and recovered the grace of God; he has not forfeited internal communion with the Church, and God can bestow upon him all necessary spiritual help. 

However, while seeking to prove his innocence, the censured person is meanwhile bound to obey legitimate authority and to behave as one under the ban of excommunication, until he is rehabilitated or absolved. Such a case seems practically impossible nowadays.

Who can excommunicate?

Excommunication is either a jure (by law) or ab homine (by judicial act of man, i.e. by a judge).

The first is provided by the law itself, which declares that whosoever shall have been guilty of a definite crime will incur the penalty of excommunication. The second is inflicted by an ecclesiastical prelate, either when he issues a serious order under pain of excommunication or imposes this penalty by judicial sentence and after a criminal trial. We will revisit this later when we discuss latae sententiae and ferende sententiae.

Excommunication is a jurisdictional matter in the Church, thus it follows that whoever has proper jurisdiction can excommunicate but only those subject to him. Subjection here means residence (or quasi-residence) on the territory under the responsibility of the proper authority and by reason of the offense committed in that territory.

For example, a Bishop can only excommunicate those who reside in his Diocese. A regular prelate can excommunicate a religious. But, a parish priest cannot exercise this to his parishioners.

It follows that both de jure and ab homine excommunications can be exercised by the Pope.

Who can be excommunicated?

Ecclesiastical censures can only be applied to those who belong to the Church, i.e. the baptized. A baptized Christian who is a delinquent (who committed the crime) and is contumacious (willfully persists in such conduct) can be excommunicated as a medicine in the hope of repentance. 

Thus, non-Christians like pagans, Jews, and Muslims cannot be excommunicated.

Furthermore, no one can be automatically excommunicated of any offense if, without any fault of his own, he was unaware that he was violating a law (cf. can. 1323 n. 2) or that a penalty is attached to the law (can. 1324 §1 n. 9). 

The same applies to minors (below 16 years old, those who have imperfect use of reason, those who lack the use of reason (drunkenness, mental disturbance, consumed by passion), those who were forced through grave or relatively grave fear, those who were forced through serious inconvenience or necessity since otherwise will constitute a greater evil, and those acting in self-defense (cf. can. 1324). However, this does not mean that the perpetrator is exempted from penalty, but the penalty prescribed in the law or precept must be diminished, or a penance substituted in its place.

Since it is a remedy, censure is only applied to the living baptized Catholic. The same can be said on its absolution since the penalty ceases at the time of death.

However, the Pope can summon an ecclesiastical tribunal for retrial and rehabilitation of a dead person who was excommunicated while living. If it is proven that the excommunication was unjust, the Church rehabilitates the good name of the person (it is not “absolving” since the person is already dead).

An example of this was St. Joan of Arc who was excommunicated and executed by an ecclesiastical court, heavily influenced by English civil power, in Rouen in 1431. Pope Calixtus III called for a retrial in 1455 to investigate the original trial and its verdicts. On 7 July 1456, the original trial was judged to be invalid due to improper procedures, deceit, and fraud, and the charges against Joan were nullified. She was canonized in 1920.

As a side note, here are other saints, aside from St. Joan of Arc, who received excommunication in their lives:

• St. Athanasius - excommunicated by Pope Liberius who was forced to do so by the Emperor who was favorable to the Arian heresy;
• Pope St. Leo I - excommunicated by Dioscorus I, Patriarch of Alexandria and ten other bishops in the “Robber” Synod of Ephesus in 449 AD (which was later condemned and anathemized by the Council of Chalcedon in 451);
• St. Columba - excommunicated in 562 by the synod of Teltown for allegedly praying for the winning side in an Irish War. The excommunication was later held to be an abuse of justice and the bishops in question removed their charge;
• St. Arialdo - excommunicated by Guido da Velate, Bishop of Milan while he was working against clerical abuses in Milan. He was immediately reinstated by Pope Stephen IX;
• St. Mary Mackillop - excommunicated by Bishop Laurence Sheil in 1871 for insubordination. Five months later, from his deathbed, Shiel rescinded the excommunication.

And, as a “fun fact”, the most excommunicated person in history is Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, who holds the record of having been excommunicated five times and by three Popes in his life.

The first person in history to be excommunicated was Simon the Magus who was excommunicated by the first Pope, St. Peter, after trying to buy apostolic powers–thus the name of the sin: simony–(cf. Acts 8:9-24).

What happens to the excommunicated?

Although the excommunicated person is excluded from the society of the Church, he or she still bears the indelible mark of baptism and thus is still subject to the jurisdiction of the Church and must still fulfill his christian obligations though he or she cannot receive the sacraments. Can. 1331 lists the prohibitions inflicted to the excommunicated:

1. Celebrating the Sacrifice of the Eucharist and the other sacraments;
2. Receiving the sacraments;
3. Administering sacramentals and celebrating the other ceremonies of liturgical worship;
4. Taking an active part in the celebrations listed above;
5. Exercising any ecclesiastical offices, duties, ministries or functions;
6. Performing acts of governance.

The excommunicated is also prohibited from the moment his ferendae sententiae excommunication has been imposed or a latae sententiae excommunication declared from benefiting from privileges already granted, acquiring any remuneration held in virtue of a merely ecclesiastical title, and acquiring offices, duties, ministries, functions, rights, privileges or honorific titles.

If the excommunicated insists on defying numbers 1-4, he is to be removed, or else the liturgical action is to be suspended, unless there is a grave reason to the contrary.

What is ferendae sententiae and latae sententiae?

Surely, you’ve heard of these terms after the events of July 1st 2026 and also because I’ve been using these throughout this article. Let us define what these terms mean.

Pope Pius IX promulgated the Apostolic Constitution Apostolicae Sedis in 1869 simplifying the categorization of excommunications and divides penalties into either ferendae or latae.

Ferendae sententiae

A ferendae sententiae is an excommunication imposed by a judge. It is foreseen by the law as a penalty, but only inflicted afterwards. Thus, there should first be a summons of the accused to appear before the tribunal and a trial to confirm if the offense has indeed been committed. If proven guilty, the accused is then invited to recant or else the judge may impose to him the pain of excommunication.

Thus, a ferendae sententiae is not binding upon the offender until it has been imposed (cf. can 1314).

An example of a ferendae sententiae excommunication in recent memory is in 2008 when then Archbishop of St. Louis (USA), Raymond Burke (now Cardinal) excommunicated a woman for simulating the sacrament of Holy Orders.

Latae sententiae

Sadly, latae sententiae is not a type of coffee you can buy in your local coffee shop.

Latae sententiae excommunication is incurred as soon as the act is committed and by reason of the act itself (eo ipso). Thus the offender is excommunicated by the fact itself (ipso facto). The ecclesiastical authority afterwards only declares (not imposes) the excommunication.

Therefore, most headlines are wrong in saying that the “Vatican excommunicates…” Technically, it should rather be: “The Vatican declares the excommunication of…”

Thus, while a ferendae sententiae excommunication is always public, a latae sententiae can be public or occult. For example, a person who committed or assisted in abortion is automatically excommunicated ipso facto even if no one knows. Thus, all the penalties are already applied at the very moment of the act.

When the competent ecclesiastical authorities become aware of the act, they have to make it public by declaring that it has taken place.

Can. 1364-1398 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law (amended by special laws like Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutelam and Vox estis lux mundi) lists the crimes that inflict latae sententiae excommunication as follows:

• Offenses against the Faith and the unity of the Church (apostasy, heresy, or schism);
• Sacrilege against the Holy Eucharist;
• Physical attack against the Roman Pontiff (attacking the Bishop incurs latae sententiae interdict, another type of sanction; attacking a priest or religious or any other lay faithful a just sanction must be imposed);
• Attempting to confer Holy Orders to a woman (both the one who attempts and the woman who simulates receiving the Orders are excommunicated);
• Absolving an accomplice in a sin against the Sixth Commandment;
• Violating the sacramental seal of confession;
• Ordaining without a papal mandate (both the one who confers and the one who receives the Orders are excommunicated);
• Procuring or assisting in abortion;
• Being an accomplice without whose assistance a violation of a law prescribing latae sententiae excommunication would not have been committed.

Other crimes not listed in the Code, but included by other documents and thus inflict latae sententiae excommunication:

• Violation of the secrecy of Papal Conclave;
• Simony and other intents of interfering with the Conclave;
• Communicating the veto of a civil authority in a Conclave;
• Being a member of a Masonic association.

What about other crimes?

You might be asking how about crimes like murder or calumny or sexual abuse. These are also punished by the law, but have their own sanctions not necessarily excommunication. Because of that, we will not discuss them here. 

But, suffice it to say that the rule in Canon law is that if civil law can already enforce a punishment, it is not convenient that a person be punished twice for the same crime.

Why are some of those who hold on to Catholic orthodoxy excommunicated while some modernists not?

Can. 1330 states: “An offence which consists in a declaration or in some other manifestation of will or of doctrine or of knowledge is not to be regarded as effected if no one actually perceives the declaration or manifestation.”

There are people who like to walk around the margins of orthodoxy without formally endorsing heres. That is why excommunication cannot be imposed upon them (much less if they do not commit a crime with latae sententiae excommunication).

The competent authority who has jurisdiction, however, can make use of other sanctions to call the attention of these people like suspension or expiatory penalties.

What is the difference between an excommunication and an anathema?

In the dogmatic canons of the Ecumenical Councils of the Church, the word “anathema” signifies exclusion from the society of the faithful because of heresy. It might be said that it is the gravest and harshest condemnation.

Already in the 9th and 10th century, canonists began distinguishing anathema from excommunication, speaking of “major” and “minor” excommunications. The 1917 Code of Canon Law already abandoned the use of these terms (it still exists in the Code for Eastern Churches).

The 1983 Code of Canon Law no longer contains the word anathema so as not to confuse this solemn condemnation of heresy with that of the medicinal nature of excommunication.

What does excommunication “reserved to the Apostolic See” mean?

An excommunication is either reserved or non-reserved. This refers to the one who can absolve the censure. A non-reserved censure can be lifted by any confessor in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

When the excommunication is “reserved to the Apostolic See”, then it is only the Pope who can lift the censure. When it is “reserved to the Bishop or Ordinary”, then only the Bishop or Ordinary can lift the censure.

In cases of excommunications ab homine (that is, imposed by a judge), the censure can be lifted by the judge who imposed it.

An example of an excommunication reserved to the Bishop was abortion, but in 2016, Pope Francis, in Misericodia et misera, gave all priests, “by reason of their ministry”, the faculty to absolve those who have procured the sin of abortion.”

As always, in the case of danger of death, any priest can remit validly and licitly virtually all penalties (can. 976).

Excommunications reserved to the Apostolic See

The 1983 Code of Canon Law, as amended by Pascite gregem Dei (2021), reserves to the Apostolic See the excommunication of the following:

1. "A person who uses physical force against the Roman Pontiff incurs a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; if the offender is a cleric, another penalty, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state, may be added according to the gravity of the crime." (can. 1370)
2. "Both a person who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive the sacred order, incur a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; a cleric, moreover, may be punished by dismissal from the clerical state." (can. 1379)
3. "One who throws away the consecrated species or, for a sacrilegious purpose, takes them away or keeps them, incurs a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; a cleric, moreover, may be punished with some other penalty, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state." (can. 1382)
4. "A priest who acts against the prescription of can. 977 (absolution of an accomplice against the Sixth Commandment) incurs a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See." (can. 1384)
5. "A confessor who directly violates the sacramental seal incurs a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; he who does so only indirectly is to be punished according to the gravity of the offence." (can. 1386)
6. "Both the Bishop who, without a pontifical mandate, consecrates a person a Bishop, and the one who receives the consecration from him, incur a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See." (can. 1387)

By Tradition, excommunication of sovereigns is also reserved to the Apostolic See.

Absolution from excommunication

Again, we have to reiterate: excommunication is medicinal. Its end goal is the restoration of justice and of the guilty to full communion with the Church.

The excommunicated individual is asked to reflect upon the injustice of the act he has committed and to repent truly. The proper ecclesiastical authority can lift the penalties once the offender stops his contumacious act, repents, and restores damages and scandal caused by the action.

Conclusion: is it a badge of honor or an eternal damnation?

No one should be happy when an excommunication is imposed or declared since it means that a great wound has opened in the Mystical Body of Christ. 

For the excommunicated, the penalty is not a badge of honor just like how the Jansenists saw it to be. Rather, it is a call by the Church as Mother and Teacher to repent and repair the communion.

On the other hand, it should not be a cause for joy for those who are against the excommunicated or those who remain “Catholics in good standing”. The imposition or declaration of excommunication is not a vindication of one’s own ideology and position. It is not a decree of eternal damnation.

Rejoicing in excommunication of the other constitutes a neo-Donatist attitude, very similar to that of the elder brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

So, in these times of great tribulations against the barque of Peter: the best reaction is to pray. Pray the priestly prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane: “that they may be one.”

In the next article, we will discuss what schism is and what it is not. So stay tuned for that!

The post What is an excommunication? appeared first on Tamang Usapan Podcast.

One year on, the Supreme Pontiff is quietly repairing divisions and wounds–a move that media outlets do not like since they are accustomed to being pampered with headlines and misquotable quotes, but is also not liked by some loud traditionalists who can only sit quiet if the Pope kisses their feet.

So, in honor of these 12 months of the Pope’s reign, let us reflect upon the quiet changes and careful steps of the 266th Successor of Saint Peter (267th Pope).

Genuine humility

A few days before the Conclave, a Peruvian archbishop stayed with us in the community for a few days. We asked him who he thinks will be elected. Like a prophecy, he said, “I am confident that it will be Prevost. He’s American, but he served many years in Peru”. The same archbishop was co-consecrator in the episcopal consecration of then Bishop Robert Prevost.

For many traditional Catholics such as myself (as opposed to “traditionalists” who view Tradition akin to an ideology), the moment when the Pope goes out in the loggia for the very first time was a pivotal moment. Some might think of it as insignificant, but the question of whether he will follow the “new tradition” of Pope Francis of not wearing the mozzetta or will he follow in humility centuries of tradition is a big question.

I have to be honest, just like one priest said in private, “The moment I saw him with the mozzetta, I loved him already.”

The question at hand here is not just the “fashion sense” of the Popes, rather the way humility is being presented and practiced. The media had obsessed itself with the comparison of Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI because of their choice of dress, accusing the latter of pomp and without saying it directly, insinuates that the great theologian of the modern world is anti-poor or “backward” while Pope Francis was the “people’s Pope” just because he did not wear the mozzetta.

But, that is not the point.

Pope Francis’ choice of how he presented himself (the way he dressed, the way spoke, the way he governed) reflects his own understanding of the Petrine ministry as a personal ministry characterized by his witty language and popular charisma.

On the other hand, Pope Leo XIV’s choice of wearing the mozzetta, reviving the coat of arms in the fascia, and other small acts of “returning” to normal also reflects his understanding of the Petrine ministry as a ministry of the Church not characterized by his own personality but rather enriched by it.

Both are humble acts. The “revival” of these small traditions is not a “betrayal” of Francis' pontificate as some disenfranchised journalists and pseudo-theologians would say. Rather, it is a testament to Pope Leo XIV’s consciousness of his Office as something he received from the Church in the service of the Lord rather than a personal style.

Quiet strides, giant leaps

While some traditional Catholics were joyful of these actions, some more radical, or at least the more skeptical ones, traditionalists are saying that the Pope is not doing enough. I can understand some who are genuinely just traumatized by years of apparent disgust and marginalization shown to them by the “new Roman establishment”. But, one should also take care not to fall into the temptation of cryptosedevacantism, that is, when you say you are in communion with the Pope because you acknowledge him, but treat him as the anti-Christ. 

We are still in the first year of this pontificate, so expecting things to just magically change overnight is actually problematic. The Church is not democratic state where the politician must enact his policies immediately just so he does not disenfranchise his voters. No. The Church is Mater et Magistra, Mother and Teacher who contemplates and discerns first every action and decision.

This is best seen in how the Pope is dealing with things. He discerns and then acts quietly, little by little.

Maybe we have been too accustomed to Pope Francis’ spontaneity or maybe some  “traditionalists” may unconsciously have become modernists in the sense that they want things immediately, but that is not how Pope Leo XIV works.

Yes, it would be good if tomorrow morning Traditiones custodes is lifted since it caused, and is still causing, deep wounds in the Church. Yes, it would be good and courageous if next week the entire German episcopacy is excommunicated because of their obstinacy in forcing their own political agenda in the doctrine of the Church. Yes, it would be ideal if all the “Old guards” are dismissed tomorrow and replaced by competent and orthodox bishops.

But, that will not be Catholic. That is Marxist, almost dictatorial “reform.” We've already seen it already how changing things without discernment and doing things rapidly has damaged the Church. In fact, we are still suffering from its after-shocks.

The Catholic way is a reform of the reform that is organic, pedagogical, systematic, discerned. We can already see it in the Pope’s small actions mostly not reported in the news.

For example, the Curia and the College of Cardinals are once again entrusted with the assistance of the Pope in matters of governance of the Church. The cartel of the “C9” cardinals is now a forgotten mafia. There are changes in the different Roman Dicasteries, albeit only in the plantilla level and not yet in the prefectural level, and in the Pontifical Household.

For my traditional friends, give the Holy Father time and remember that in the Catholic world time is precious and as such moves solemnly unlike in the modern world.

The challenge of AI for humanity

As we celebrate the First Anniversary of the Pontificate of Pope Leo XIV, we are also waiting for the publication of his first encyclical rumored to be titled Magnifica humanitas (Magnificent humanity) and to be published this coming 15th of May 2026.

This will be very important since the first encyclical of a Pope can be said to be a sort of “pontifical agenda” of the pontificate. The Pope had already published Apostolic exhortations and other juridical and pastoral letters, but this Encyclical Letter is important as we can see here Pope Leo XIV’s “project for the Church.”

It is said to focus on theological anthropology, that is the place of man as Imago Dei, via-à-vis the challenges that Artificial Intelligence pose and will continue to pose to humanity. In this regard, commentators are comparing it already to how monumental Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum was as the Church’s response to the social challenge of the time which is the threat of Communism and Capitalism.

In preparation to this Encyclical, the Roman Dicasteries of the Doctrine of the Faith and of Culture and Education published in 2025, under the pontificate of Pope Francis, the Doctrinal note Antiqua et nova (Note about  the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence). More recently, the International Theological Commission published on 4 March 2026, the document Quo vadis, humanitas? (Christian anthropology vis-à-vis the future challenges to humanity).

We are all aware of the philosophical and ethical challenges of AI and also its supposed benefits to humanity. We’ve even recorded an episode and published our own “AI responsibility” article here.

It is, therefore, important to see how the Church, shepherded by the Pope, will lead us in this new page in human history’s book.

A Shepherd, not a Politician

As the world saw a very public spat between the Pope and the US President (mostly attacks from the President) after the US/Israel-Iran War of 2026, the Pope said a fundamental reality that reflects the understanding of the Petrine ministry: “I am not a politician, I speak of the Gospel.”

"I am not a politician, I speak of the Gospel"

The sad reality is that without wanting to himself, Pope Francis was used by political and mediatic forces for their own agenda. That is not something new. Since becoming politically independent as the Western Roman Empire fell and the barbaric kingdoms of Europe emerged, the Holy See has become both the spiritual seat of Christianity and another political player in the chessboard of Europe.

However, this changed when the Kingdom of Italy invaded Rome in 1870 and the Lateran Treaty was signed between the Holy See and the Kingdom in 1929. The Pope, while still technically a Sovereign Prince who exercises temporal power, is now free of the shackles of temporal politics.

This, however, should not be interpreted as if the Church should no longer comment on socio-political affairs. In fact, it makes her comments more potent as she now stands not as a player with vested interest, but a Mother that guides her children.

We remember here the theory of the Two Swords. Now that the Pope is no longer another politician in the chessboard, the Spiritual Sword of the Church can now be wielded better to guide the conscience of those who wield the Temporal Sword of Kings. 

This is why we should be on guard from ideological appropriation of the Pope and the Church. Both the Left and the Right know that “having the Pope on their side” is a political plus. That is why Pope Leo’s affirmation that he is not a politician is important. He is neither conservative nor liberal, he is a successor of the Apostles whose mission is simply to proclaim the Gospel to all nations (cf. Mk 16:15).

A hope for the future

We are still in the first year of this pontificate. Many things will happen. The Pope will have to face many challenges along the way.

The wounds of division and politicization in the Church are still fresh and hurting. Some Catholics are still drinking the manna of hatred of the Other (the “traditionalist”, the “liberal-modernist”, the “conservative” and other such simple categorizations). 

We may be tempted by the modern desire for instant changes and as such criticize Pope Leo XIV’s apparent “slowness”.

The World will be facing more and more challenges from wars, political greed, ideological machinations, technological dilemmas.

As Catholics, we have to pray steadfastly for the Pope so he may guide us in these trying times. And, very important: we must not lose hope that even if times are bleak, the Holy Spirit guides and protects the Church and will never fail us.

The post On the First Anniversary of the Pontificate appeared first on Tamang Usapan Podcast.

In this article, I will try to contribute to this topic that has been populating tweets, web searches and pages, etc.

Our limitation: just the Just War Doctrine, nothing else

For this, we have to put a limitation. We are not trying to answer here if the “preemptive strike” of the 26th of February of 2026 by the allied forces against the Islamic Republic of Iran is strategically (whether militarily or politically) justified.

In fact, one can argue that the nuclear threat and the state sponsoring of regional and global terrorism by one of what Former US President George W. Bush called the “Axis of Evil” is enough to justify an attack when the once-in-a-lifetime conditions were met.

Rather, we will only concern ourselves with the question in the light of the Just War Doctrine as was ideated by Augustine and Aquinas and later adopted by the Catechism. We will try to answer the question, therefore, by putting its justifications side by side with the requirements for a Just War put forward by the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

What Just War is

The first thing to clarify is what Just War is. We have already recorded a two episode podcast about this topic immediately after the outbreak of this war. There, we discussed the topic in general terms, without trying to evaluate this specific war as we are doing now. If you want to learn more about Just War Theory/Doctrine, I would like to recommend to you to listen here and here.

But, if you do not understand Filipino, or you don’t have time to listen to us rant, then let me give you the gist. Just War Doctrine is not a license to wage war. Rather, it is a product of the realization of the Church that the Christian ruler will have to face wars even if he does not really want it. Such is the pitiful state of this valley of tears.

St. Augustine reminds us that war is always the result of sin and is therefore always morally bad. But, the Church is not a blind idealist, she knows that there are times that Christian rulers cannot but use violence in order to protect a greater good. This is the origin of Just War Theory.

Aquinas’ requirements

St. Thomas Aquinas further systematized it in the Summa Theologiae, when he gave the pre-requisites for a Just War:

“In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged... And as the care of the common weal is committed to those who are in authority, it is their business to watch over the common weal of the city, kingdom or province subject to them. And just as it is lawful for them to have recourse to the sword in defending that common weal against internal disturbances, when they punish evil-doers, according to the words of the Apostle (Romans 13:4): "He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil"; so too, it is their business to have recourse to the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies. Hence it is said to those who are in authority (Psalm 81:4): "Rescue the poor: and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner"; and for this reason Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 75): "The natural order conducive to peace among mortals demands that the power to declare and counsel war should be in the hands of those who hold the supreme authority."

Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil… For it may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention. Hence Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 74): "The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war." (ST II, Q40, A1)

The Catechism’s Four Requirements

The Catechism of the Catholic Church adopts this tradition, especially Aquinas’ three requirements and adds a new one that concerns modern weapons. CCC 2309 requires a strict conditions that must be met at one and the same time in order to justify a war:

1. The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain.
2. All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.
3. There must be serious prospects of success.
4. The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

The War in Iran in the light of the Catechism’s requirements

Let us now put under the light of the Catechism the question of whether or not this war can be morally justified.

Objective evil

The first requirement supposes an objective evil to have been committed. Historical examples for this are the Blitzkrieg invasions of Nazi Germany in World War II, Iraq’s unprovoked attack on Kuwait in the Gulf War, or the 9/11 attack that provoked the attack on Afghanistan (and later on, Iraq, although that is questionable if it is justified). 

The question, therefore, is if there is or was an objective lasting, grave, and certain damage Iran did against the allies. The US invokes the threat of nuclear armament of Iran to justify the attack. Israel, on the other hand, can invoke Iran’s continued sponsorship of regional terror groups that wage proxy wars against them.

Thus, the Israeli justification can be said to be objective. Grave damage has indeed been done. US justification, however, is another story. Presupposed evil cannot morally justify war, thus preemptive strikes are always outside the bounds of Just War.

War as the last resort

War should always be the last resort. The classical dictum is that war is Ultima Ratio Regum, that is, war is the last argument of kings (a phrase attributed to Louis XIV of France). Thus, war should only be declared when all other diplomatic avenues failed.

One can argue that the allies have already used all diplomatic cards they have over the almost 40 years of the Islamic regime. Things like economic sanctions, negotiations, etc. And all of these have not stopped the regime in their quest to refine uranium or in sponsoring terrorism.

Serious prospect of success

At the outbreak of the war, the messaging of the allies was the hope for the people of Iran to take the reins of their freedom and topple the regime. The allies have already facilitated it by decapitating the regime, but since then it seems that the regime was more prepared for this doomsday scenario than was expected.

The question now lingers in the minds of observers if there is indeed a serious prospect of success in this war or will this just continue to be a war of attrition that will only hurt more countries economically and the countries involved in terms of life and infrastructure. 

However, the ones who should answer this question are those who are at the helm of command. For all we know, they might indeed be convinced at the time of the prospect of success, and indeed they might still be, though cognizant of the fact that it may take a while. 

Therefore, in this third requirement we cannot have a definitive answer. 

Moderation in the use of arms

We will not know to what extent the use of arms has been employed in this war until its conclusion. However, the recent threats by the US President to attack civilian infrastructure like bridges and power plants may be skirting the limits of this requirement. And, of course, the worst of all was the threat to “end an entire civilization”. 

Thank God that it has not come into fruition but if it has it would have been a clear violation of this requirement of moderation of arms use.

Is it justified?

With these, we go back to the question: Is the war in Iran just?

At first glance, the result is inconclusive. There was no objective damage done. It seems to indeed be the last resort. The prospect of success and the use of arms can only be answered by the authorities.

But, remember, the requirement is that these must be met one and the same time. Thus, the failure to establish an objective lasting grave damage by the supposed aggressor renders the whole argument for its moral justification null and void.

Again, what we are concerned here is the moral justification of the war in light of the Just War Theory, not its strategic justification or whether it complies to the UN Charter’s Jus ad bellum (right to wage war) and jus in bello (law in war).

Further, as it is only a contribution of another internet sleuth, this should not be taken as a definitive answer. The fact that I am a priest does not mean that this is magisterial. The Church’s mission is to always advocate for peace, thus she must always raise the question. The duty to answer and justify their actions lies on the political and military leaders that oversee this war.

But, with that disclaimer out of the way, is the war in Iran just? At least for me, I can say that it is not.

Do you agree? No? Let us engage in healthy discussion.

The post Is the War in Iran Just? appeared first on Tamang Usapan Podcast.

I agree with Russel on this. However, I also think that it is still necessary to help modern man to clarify the Pope's position, especially when even Catholics of good faith are now questioning him and warning the Supreme Pontiff that he should “take care of doing theology”.

So, yeah you got it. This will be a piece to tell you why the Pope is right and why this might be Trump’s greatest blunder.

How it all started

Telling you the whole US-Vatican relations, especially the current one, is a job for other pundits and sites. So let us just focus on the immediate cause of this very public spat.

On the 26th of February 2026, the United States of America and the State of Israel attacked the Islamic Republic of Iran. Public communications by the White House stated various justifications: a deterrence from possible Iranian nuclear aggression, a support for the people of Iran who rose up against the tyrannic regime and was put down violently earlier in the year, to secure the region of the Middle East by changing the regime that sponsors terrorism in the area, etc.

The Pope, as Pontifex Maximus, the builder of bridges, called for dialogue rather than arms. 

The early days of the war was a tactical victory for the US-Israeli coalition after the death of the Supreme Leader of Iran. However, as the war dragged on and Israel opened another front in Lebanon, tensions began to rise.

The pivotal moment is when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps began blockading the Strait of Hormuz, a vital sea route where most of the Gulf States’ oil trade passes through. 

This puts pressure on the global economy and even if the US itself is not so much affected by it as it is also an oil producer, the mounting pressure might have prompted the Trump Administration to force either a faster complete victory or an agreement. 

A series of statements

On Palm Sunday, 29th of March 2026, the Holy Father asserted in his homily that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war”. 

A few days later, some media outlet reported a supposed meeting in the White House with the Apostolic Nuncio to the US in which, allegedly, an official threatened the Nuncio of a situation “just like when France’s military might have obliged the Pope to reside in Avignon”. This report was refuted both by the White House and Cardinal Pierre, the Nuncio.

As negotiations failed, on the 5th of April 2026, Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord, while the Pope’s message was: “Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace!”, US President Donald Trump threatened to attack Iranian bridges and power plants and on the next day he warned that “a whole civilization will die”. 

On the 7th of April, the Pope, without naming the US President, said that threatening the end of an entire people is “unacceptable”. "There are certainly issues ⁠here of international law, but even more than that, it is a ​moral question for the good of the people," Pope Leo XIV said.

This seem to have irritated Mr. Trump that he lashed out in his Truth Social platform that Pope Leo XIV is “weak on crime” and “terrible on foreign policy” and doubling down on it the next few days saying that the Pope condones Iranian nuclear threat and he could not have been elected Pope if not for Mr. Trump being the President. 

The Pope, when asked by the Press about this statement, said that he is not a politician so he is not interested in debate, but he will continue to proclaim the Gospel. Later the same week, he condemned “tyrants who use the Christian message to justify wars”.

Why the Successor of Saint Peter is right

At the heart of this debate is the Just War Doctrine. I will be writing about this topic in more detail in a separate article next week, but if you want to, I highly recommend our two episodes about this topic which you can find here and here.

With that said, the questions, therefore, are as follows: (1) whether or not the Pope is justified in his criticism of the war; (2) whether or not the Pope has the right to condemn those who wage war; and, (3) is the War in Iran justified?

The third one I think should be discussed in detail in the next article that I’ve said above, so let us just focus on the first two.

Is the Pope justified in his criticism of the war?

The evangelical section of the Republican Party was quick to criticize the Pope’s remark that God rejects the prayers of those who wage war as contrary to biblical truth. The traditional catholic section of the same party criticized the Vicar of Christ for not knowing the Just War Doctrine. Therefore, let us ask: is it indeed biblical? And, what about Just Wars?

For the first one, the typical biblical example used is that of the wars that God ordained in the Old Testament like that of Joshua or of David. What this misses is that Old Testament wars cannot be equated with wars done in Anno Domini, that is, in a world after the Paschal Mystery of Christ. 

While it is true that God has “commanded” wars in Ancient Israel, we should not interpret it in itself. For the Christian, the OT can only be interpreted in light of Christ. Just as it is not right to use Moses and the Exodus to justify marxist/liberation theology, it is also not right to justify wars with OT wars.

The Church teaches progressive revelation, that is, that God reveals himself to us since the beginning in the Garden of Eden but using a divine pedagogy in which he gradually reveals himself to us meeting us within our historical context until revealing himself fully in Jesus Christ. Therefore, OT wars should be viewed through the lens of divine pedagogy: it was the only way people could understand God’s message in their time. 

In fact, if one reviews these “Holy Wars”, the insistence is not on the justification of violence, but rather on the need to trust in God’s might that he himself will resolve the conflict even if everything seems to say the contrary (that is why David was punished after counting his soldiers and Isaiah warned against allying with Egypt or Assyria but rather to only trust God).

In most cases, God’s intervention means that arms were not even lifted just like when Joshua conquered Jericho with its famous walls with only shouts and horns (cf. Jos 6).

Furthermore, the People cannot enjoy the “fruits” of these wars that is why there is almost always an insistence on burning and destroying everything.

Therefore, OT “Holy Wars” insist on obedience to the Divine command rather than a justification of violence. Origen insists that what we see here is a spiritual allegory in which the physical violence that seems to be prescribed in the OT is actually a “shadow” of the spiritual battle against evil and sin.

God, therefore, never prescribed a war. God is the “Lord, the Giver of Life” and even in the OT, he is recognized to be the only one who can give life and take it back. By affirming that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war”, the Pope is affirming this biblical truth and condemns those who wage war for their own profit.

What about Just Wars? 

The Just War Tradition comes from the biblical reflection of the Church Fathers like, notably, Saint Augustine, on the reality of war and the times that it seems to be inevitable. 

As I’ve said before, we will discuss this in more detail in the next article. But for now suffice it to say that a Christian ruler can and should wage war when it is the last thing he could do to protect the Good. 

Saint Augustine affirms in the City of God:

“They who have waged war in obedience to the divine command, or in conformity with His laws, have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”

For Augustine, war is justified when it is done in defense of the Good just like a judge does not commit crime when he sends a criminal to prison. This, however, should not be taken as a justification for all State-sponsored violence. Again, it is the last resort.

Saint Thomas Aquinas further develops this by essentially tying Just War with defensive war.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church requires restraint on the use of excessive violence (i.e. things that could end an entire civilization) and that there should exist an objective evil that has caused great harm already.

Therefore, a war waged preemptively because of a perceived threat that has yet to happen cannot be justified.

What about the Crusades?

The rad-trad will now ask: how about the Crusades? Surely, they were wars of aggression, right? Well, to oversimplify it: no, they are not. The Crusades are Just Wars because they are essentially defensive in origin. 

Most of the lands the crusaders fought for were Christian lands before the Arab conquest. In fact, during the Crusades most people living in those lands, especially in the rural areas while also maintaining a significant minority in the cities, were Christians. 

Türkiye, for example, had a very sizable Orthodox Christian population until the beginning of the 20th century. It was only after World War I and the subsequent nationalist surge when most Orthodox population (mostly of Greek descent) emigrated thus leaving the country with a very tiny Christian population.

Furthermore, the express desire of Pope Urban II (the first Pope to call a Crusade) is the protection of the pilgrims and the Holy Sites in Jerusalem.

Therefore, it is wrong to say that Pope Leo XIV is not considering Just War Theory and its historical precedents. Rather, just like Saint Augustine to whose Order the Holy Father pertains as a priest, Pope Leo XIV is prudent in his understanding of this doctrine not as a free license to kill, but as a very rare card given to a very rare situation of justice.

And so, it is consistent with both the Gospel and the Tradition of the Church to condemn those who wage war and use the Christian message to justify it because wars are not something a Christian ruler actively seeks for, but a begrudging reality he has to assume to protect the Good.

Bonus: The Vice President’s Warning to the Pope 

As I’ve said before, we will delve deeper on whether or not the War in Iran is justified or not will be discussed in the next article. So let me end this reflection with what I find as a funny remark by US Vice President JD Vance given on the 15th of April 2026.

The Vice President, a Catholic (and I am sure a very convinced Catholic as his conversion was recent), was asked about the very public spat of Mr. Trump and the Pope. His response can be somewhat summarized as: the Pope should concern himself on moral matters and just as politicians should be careful on their political takes, the Pope also should be careful of his theological takes.

Again, we should not make light of the VP’s faith. He has expressed it so many times before in a very sincere manner. And being a convert does not make him less Catholic as some liberal beige cradle Catholic would like to assume. No. But, his answer is also oblivious to Catholic theology.

First, wars are always a moral matter even if it crosses paths with political affairs. The same is true with other political matters like abortion, divorce, euthanasia, etc. They are still moral matters.

Second, the mission of the Church goes beyond morality. In fact, we only comment on morality not because it is our primary concern but because the truth of Christ demands coherence in life.

Third, the Pope is not a politician. Though papal infallibility does not cover interviews, homilies, or remarks, a Catholic should always take to mind that when the Holy Father speaks on morality and theology, he speaks not as a political demagogue, but as the Vicar of Christ.

Trump’s Greatest Miscalculation

I agree with Bishop Robert Barron’s comment on this matter. While we should be thankful to the Trump Administration because they were very approachable to Catholics (unlike Biden, who was Catholic himself, yet his Administration and partymates were hell-bent in attacking religious communities, spying on TLM faithful, and imposing anti-Catholic and immoral agenda like abortion), we should also admit that Mr. Trump is wrong here.

The danger of our time is the worship of idols. Just like when the Philippines had its tatay, MAGA Catholics in the US run the danger of falling into idolatry because of extreme loyalty to a political figure. One can be a supporter but still awake enough to criticize the one he supports when he objectively commits an error. 

Blind loyalty is idolatry. So those who say, “I am Catholic but Leo is not my Pope” should be reminded that they are not. What they are essentially saying is schism bordering idolatry.

Lastly, I think Mr. Trump would be remiss to continue this debacle. It might not be in his character to admit error, but persisting in attacking the Holy Father only alienates the goodwill Catholics have with him. 

Analysts have said that it might be because of the anti-Catholic tradition of the US, especially that of the Old Guard of the Republican Party, who sees that attacking the Pope is electorally beneficial or that bewilderment that an American can be more loyal to his faith than to his country (or at least its leaders) that Mr. Trump and his allies continue to attack the Vicar of Christ. 

But, this is suicidal. The US is already seeing a quiet revival of the Catholic faith among the young. There is a strong Catholic support to Mr. Trump especially when he went against the anti-Catholic candidates of the Democratic Party (the traditional Catholic preferred party of the US). Alienating this base only weakens his position.

The Caesars had threatened and imprisoned popes. Napoleon threatened the end of the Church. Cromwell hunted down “papists”. Stalin tried to kill Christianity. They are all dead and their empires now a memory. The Barque of Peter still sails.

The post Trump’s Pope Leo Problem appeared first on Tamang Usapan Podcast.

In the very same report, there were defenders of brutalism calling it “democratic” and that classical architecture is favored by tyrants and dictators. Well, in a sense, brutalism is indeed a homage to the “demos”, the people, at least immediately after the war. If you want to know more about brutalism’s philosophy, I recommend you watch Dami Lee’s YouTube video about it. But, still, brutalism is objectively ugly, it is devoid of life just like most of modernity.

A short history of Modernism

Before we answer the question, let us first define what modernism is. In the arts, it refers to the movement or the style that departs from any traditional form. In the Church, it refers to the movement that calls for modifying traditional beliefs, practices, liturgies, and adapting it to modern sensibilities, particularly to the sensibilities of the 20th century (especially the 60’s and 70’s).

To be clear, modernism is not a single movement, rather it is a culture that permeates many parts of society. What we are concerned with here is modernism as we know it today, that is, the product of the post war period. But, it did not just spring out of life just out of nothing. There was already a thirst to reinvent, to “return to the roots”, in the arts, in sciences, in the liturgy as early as the late 19th century.

In the arts, expressionism and impressionism championed by the likes of Monet, Van Gogh, Sargent, etc. are reinventing how we express the world by focusing more on the dance of lights, the fleetingness of the everyday. In architecture, Art Nouveau integrated nature in architecture and later, Art Deco expressed the optimism of technology and the future. In the liturgy, the Liturgical Movement was born in the Monastery of Solesmes intending to revitalize the liturgical life of the Church coinciding with the renewed interest in the Gothic Style. In the sciences, there was a renewed interest in history (you even have St. John Henry Newman being converted after immersing himself in early Church History).

All of these do not really intend to “destroy” or “replace” traditional forms. Rather, they seek to revitalize the traditional forms in their fields.

However, there are also movements that really want to destroy the traditional form. Most obvious is in politics, Karl Marx proposed the idea of socialism, later radicalized by Lenin as communism that, following Hegel’s dialectics, but now in material form, seeks to end all traditional forms of governance (i.e. monarchies).

In biblical sciences, the historico-critical method and liberal christianity arose first in Protestant churches that sought to “demythologize” the Bible, some even coming to the conclusion that most of what is written in the New Testament is just an invention of the apostles.

In religion, there was a movement by the theological elite to reinvent the liturgy and dogma to make the Church more “democratic”, to shy away from traditional forms seen as remnants of a glorious past incongruent with the signs of the times. Thus the language of sacrifice, a regal language was shunned, or at least lessened; the flexibility of the vernacular was preferred than the stability of Latin, and symbols that speak not of the 60’s and 70’s milieu were tucked away in shelves and museums.

Some, even without official sanction, went further: you have beige Catholicism that reduces the faith to spiritual dopamine “God is love, love wins”, clown Masses, priests preaching about telenovelas or using the pulpit as their concert stage. The Mass is no longer the Holy Sacrifice of Christ the Savior, but the stage upon which the Church seeks to remain relevant to the world.

Post-WWII and the Cold War

This second category of Modernism’s precursors is what triumphed culturally after the two World Wars, especially the second. Most monarchies fell becoming republics either capitalist, socialist/fascist. Regardless of ideology, they regard themselves as “democracies”, the demos rule (that maybe the people who only work for themselves, or some of the people who pretend to work for the “people”, or the people who are the only ones who can call themselves “people”). 

The two World War, especially World War II, was the most devastation the Earth saw in its history. So, reconstruction efforts were sorely needed. Brutalism was the ideal solution: fast, cheap, duplicable. The classical architectural arithmetic of firmness + beauty + function has been replaced by firmness + function + low price.

The arts have been reduced to either a propaganda machine by the Soviets or a commodity by the US hegemonic order of the West. Beauty is the least of the concerns. Abstract art which started as just an expression of the artist’s interiority became a commodity that only elites can buy and appreciate.

When you marry the age, you become widowed in the next

But why do we see all of this as fundamentally ugly? Especially the young, my age and those that came after us, the majority of us find these things ugly. Why? I think there are at least two reasons.

The first is that Modernism speaks of a language that we, in our generation, no longer speak. The needs and hopes of the 60’s and 70’s are no longer ours. The beauty of traditional forms of art, education, etc. is that they are “classical” because they are proven and tested throughout the centuries.

Just ask yourself this: why do we still think about the Roman Empire and not about the USSR? The USSR is comparatively a greater world power than the Roman Empire. Even if you answer that it is because of US propaganda highlighting their evil deeds, the Roman Empire too was full of evil actions and was blighted by propaganda by most of their enemies.

Our grandparents embraced Modernism because it was the need of their time. They needed to reconstruct quickly so Brutalism it is. There is no time for art, so abstract it is. There is a fear of what cannot be controlled, so vernacular it is. But, this is no longer our need.

Modernism: a plaything of the elite

The second reason that I see is that Modernism, in all its expression, even if it pretends to be “democratic”, is at heart an elitist endeavor. 

Only the “learned” can appreciate abstract art. It takes one’s “artistic eyes” to discern why a banana taped to a canvas cost millions of dollars. Only an architecture student or professional can understand why brutalist architecture is “democratic” and innovative, or why minimalism is a luxury that the rich can have.

Only the theological and ecclesiastical elite can appreciate clown masses and party masses as “pastoral approach” to “bring the Church closer to the people”. Only them can understand why a priest must only wear the “chasu-alb” and the stole when celebrating the Mass in a barrio chapel but can stroll Bonifacio High Street in his Lacoste polo shirt and Levi’s jeans.

“The people will not understand Latin so do not chant in Latin.” How come people we expect to learn algebra and calculus in High School cannot be expected to learn Latin? Well, they will not understand, yes, only if you will not teach them to.

On the political sphere, we are already seeing the ugly face of Modernism. We have trusted the political elite so much to “represent” us that we find it hard to disengage from them. And if we do, the tendency is to look for a “Messiah” figure, a strongman, a tatay who will solve everything, only to turn out the worse of the lot, a demagogue and populist but still as corrupt as the others.

The One, the True, and the Beautiful

Why do we need to make things beautiful again? Why is there a thirst for it, especially among the younger generations? I remember a middle aged priest that visited us once commented, “Why do young priests like to wear those silly vestments and celebrate the Mass facing away from the people? It does not make sense!” Indeed, why?

Hans Urs von Balthasar said that it is Beauty, not the Truth nor the Good, that will first capture our attention. You begin to fall in love with someone because you see something beautiful in them, may it be their physical appearance or some quality that they have. You are attracted to it.

In religion, that will be the liturgy. You become attracted to its symbols and rituals. But, it does not end there, Beauty will lead you to the Good, i.e., the moral life. If you are really attracted to what is going on in the altar, it will slowly but surely mold you to live a life consistent with it. And the Good will ultimately lead you to the Truth, to dogma.

Going back to the allegory of falling in love with someone: after being attracted to his/her physical appearance, you learn to treat the other person as a person. And love enters when you come to the conclusion that that person is the only one TRUE person for you.

Why do we thirst for beauty in this ugly world? Because without it we cannot really know the good, and that is why our moral code in Modernity has always been utilitarian/pragmatic. Without the Beautiful and the Good, we cannot arrive at the Truth, and that is why our society is drunk with relativism, fake news, and ideologies.

Without the Beautiful, the Good, and the True we cannot arrive at the One, God himself, and that is why ours is a “fatherless generation”. Nietzsche's fool is indeed right, we have killed God, not because he is metaphysically dead, but because we killed Beauty that ultimately leads to him.

The post Why modernism suck? appeared first on Tamang Usapan Podcast.

First of all, Merriam-Webster announced that 2025’s Word of the Year is “slop”, that is, AI slop or that low quality AI generated content that now plagues our social media (and maybe, academic papers and podcast blogs too?). Second, I’ve just finished watching a video from one of my favorite artist-youtuber, Jazza, on his views on AI (especially, AI generated “art”), and that inspired me to write this as a transparency stuff to make it clear how do we use and integrate Artificial Intelligence in your favorite background noise.

Of course, we've also had an episode on AI ethics already, so you might want to listen to it here.

AI who and AI what?

But first, let us clarify what we mean by AI. We can classify AI into two categories (this is how I categorize them, so there really are no academic or technical papers that support it. Suffice it to say that this is my own invention): auxiliary AI and generative AI.

Auxiliary AI are stuff our computers and smartphones do for us to assist us on “menial” tasks. These have been with us since the Turing Machine. Stuff like autocorrect or that squiggly red line that appears when you type the wrong spelling (or at least what the computer olympic deities think are wrong) of a word.

Generative AI is indeed a term used by the industry. It refers to AI capable of “producing” a desired result fed through prompts, usually textual. You have ChatGPT and Gemini for texts, Sora and Nano Banana for video, Dall-e or Midjourney for images, etc. However, the use of the term “generative” is misleading because it does not generate in the sense that it creates things. It only appears to do so since it takes from databases that it has learned from.

If you have read the light novel and watched the anime, Sword Art Online, especially the Alicization arc, you might be familiar with the term “bottom-up” AI or "artificial fluctlights”, AI that develops consciousness like Alice herself. If you are also a nerd and an otaku like me then you will understand that this has always been the dream of both a fantasy writer and an AI technician: an AI capable of being human (if humanity can only be reduced to consciousness, but I digress).

This is one of the reasons why (although not the main one, since in this world we live in, of course, it is money) there is so much push for generative AI, even if nobody asked for it.

Anyways, so long for an introduction, let us now go to the meat of the potato. And just to be safe, I will not be using any AI, not even auxiliary (except the autocorrect and suggestions stuff), so as not to “contaminate” this text.

Where and how do we use AI in our content

The straight answer is that we DO NOT use generative AI in any of our contents. We do use generative AI platforms like ChatGPT at times, but we treat it as auxiliary rather than generative.

ChatGPT

If you’ve been following us since the first season, you know that we tend to be very spontaneous in our recordings. That is why we have had 2 hour or so episodes. Seeing that it may not be suitable for the majority of our listeners, Russel and yours truly decided that we should be giving ourselves restraint through a “script”, a kind of discussion guide, for most episodes starting season three.

So, we have been asking our little “secretary” to “generate” for us these guides, mostly just a flow guide and talking points, but what you hear is still our own words and reasoning. We do also fight the urge of laziness not to double check the AI guide, because we’ve had experience when it gave us some weird statements that clearly favor a “tendency”.

Blog articles

All kuro-kuro articles you read on TUUMT website are man-made. We write them ourselves. Some are old assignments in school, some are originally written because of sudden inspiration (like this one), some we do ask from our friends. 

In the case of the first, especially the very long ones, we’ve put some through ChatGPT to “lightly edit it, careful not to change the tone and humor of the author, preserving most of the original words, and optimizing it for SEO”. Then a human editor, aka me, reads it again and edits it again (since the AI tends not to respect my wish of preserving the original wit and argument).

Our website also uses plug-ins like YoastSEO and Jetpack that tells you if a paragraph is too long or you might be using too much passive voice, generally not good for blog posts, etc. So, we use it to “trim” our sentences manually.

Episode editing

Since season three, we’ve moved on from using Zencastr (we still use it occasionally, though not now that we do record video too) and we are now recording our episodes in Riverside.fm. This platform does have many cool auxiliary AI features that is a boon for a pichi-pichi production like ours who do this not as a career but as a passion: like auto mute for non speakers, auto erase of ahmms and ahhhs (it is more of a hit and miss at the moment), my favorite one is the auto generation of clips ideal for social media, and many more.

Again, just as an auxiliary.

Art

Let me say it once and for all: AI “ART” IS NOT ART. To label someone who gave the prompt as an artist because he used the correct prompt words is just like saying that I am a chef because I ordered the food correctly as I would like it. 

Art is not just the perfection of the technique or the “amazing quality”. Art is the expression of the human heart, it covers not only the end result and the technique, but also the time spent, the effort of honing it, and the emotions within expressed through the medium. 

That is why a ten year old boy’s drawing of a priest celebrating the Mass on the last pages of his maths notebook is art, but an AI “generated” image of the same is not. Because in the first one what is expressed is the boy’s desire to serve God and when he, as a priest already, looks back on it, he can see it as part of his journey of following the voice that calls within. AI generated images do not have this story.

So, do we use AI art? No. But there is one. In my review of the book, Dominion, I’ve put an AI generated image of monks and Luther and the cross and the imperial eagle in the body of the text (you may want to read it here). That is my fault. At that time, I was still quite “excited” about the AI era and its possibilities, and of course, the idea that I can “shortcut” my way up artist lane. As I post this article, I will be removing that image from the website to stay true to our AI ethical standards.

The banners in this website and creative images we use on our social media and the cover art of our episodes are done either in Canva or in Photoshop, so auxiliary AI is used from time to time like auto select of the subject and deletion of background, filters, etc. But the creative process is still 100% human.

Human, all too human

So, why write this kuro-kuro if you already know how pichi-pichi we are? Precisely because of that. In TUUMT, we are not content creators and community, rather we are just Lennon and Russel talking about anything that comes to mind and sharing it with you if you care. 

So, what we are saying is that TUUMT is a human podcast made for humans by human beings like us. We are imperfect, most of the time dragging and ranting. But, unlike AI, we are created in the image and likeness of God.

Cheers and Merry Christmas!

The post Where do we stand on AI? appeared first on Tamang Usapan Podcast.

Coincidentally or not, today, as I am writing this (25 November), is the memorial of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, who–together with St. Justin Martyr–is honored as the patron saint of philosophers. So, just like modern academics who offer a festschrift to a great thinker, allow me to share this small tribute to the great Alexandrian philosopher-saint.

Catherine: a life disputed

The historicity of Saint Catherine’s life is disputed in modern scholarship. Some argue that she never existed in the way her hagiographies describe. This modern preference for strict historical verifiability is what led the post–Vatican II liturgical engineers to remove her feast from the General Roman Calendar—not a “demotion,” but a cautious adjustment. Later, in 2002, Pope St. John Paul II reinstated her as an optional memorial.

What can be said with certainty is that establishing historical accuracy (using modern methods) for saints from the 4th century is incredibly difficult. Hagiographies evolve over time, and classical writers cared less about micrometric precision than about the impact and meaning of a story.

As Beatie notes: 

“There seems every likelihood, …, that a real woman connected with Alexandria, whose name may have been Katharine, made some gesture during the period of the martyrdoms which caught the folk imagination and lived orally among Greek-speaking Christian congregations in the Near East and Southern Italy, her story taking on more and more the "einfache Form" of Legende toward the eighth century”

(B. Beatie. “Saint Katherine of Alexandria: Traditional Themes and the Development of a Medieval German Hagiographic Narrative” in Speculum, vol. 52, n. 4, Oct. 1977)

Perhaps there was indeed an Alexandrian woman martyred under Diocletian whose story inspired generations. Maybe her name wasn’t Catherine. But that is beside the point. Some modern “historical purists” were more concerned with academic neatness than spiritual enrichment, but I digress.

Now, let us turn to what the hagiographers actually tell us.

The young philosopher

According to tradition, Catherine (or Katherina) was a “princess”, a daughter of a “king” in Alexandria (Egypt). This might be a medieval adaptation, because Egypt by this time was directly under the Roman Empire as such we can surmise that she is indeed of noble birth, patrician, and may be the daughter of the Roman governor of the imperial province of Aegyptus.

Alexandria—home of the Great Library—had long been a city of scholars. Unlike many other Roman provinces, Alexandrian society did not bar women from intellectual pursuits. A century after Catherine, another Alexandrian woman, Hypatia, would become famous for her learning.

Thus, imagining young Catherine arranging her hair while reading Plato’s Republic is not far-fetched. Beautiful, eloquent, intelligent, she was a rising star in Alexandria’s elite. 

However, when she was around 14 years old, she met a hermit named Adrian who guided her to the faith leading to her conversion and eventual baptism.

The young mystic

Shortly afterwards, the young philosopher became a young mystic. She had a vision in which the Virgin Mary offered her a choice of male saints to become his spouse. Having rejected all of them, the Infant Jesus himself appeared and placed a ring to her finger thus making her his own.

This is a typical experience of mystics: the mystical union or wedding. St. Teresa of Ávila had it. Her tocayo, Catherine of Sienna had it. 

This is another problem for the scientific purist of religion, because mystical experience cannot be proven to be merely a hagiographer's coloring of the story since it is a very intimate religious experience. 

The young evangelizer

Strengthened by both philosophical training and mystical union with Christ, Catherine began converting those she met. By this time, there are already many Christians in the Empire, but most of them are from the plebeians and slaves. Just like St. Justin, Catherine’s “targets” were the rich and famous, the elites.

Charmed by Catherine’s beauty and eloquence, the co-emperor Maximian (co-emperor with Diocletian and father of Constantine the Great’s archrival, Maxentius) sought to make her his concubine (in some versions, he wanted her for his son, Maxentius). However, Catherine, already married to the Son of God, refused the Emperor who styles himself “son of the gods.” Fuming, Maximian ordered her arrested. But the cold prison bars cannot prevent the flame of Catherine’s wisdom and faith.

There, she converted to Christianity everyone who visited her: soldiers, imperial officials, the captain of the imperial guards, and even the empress herself, the wife of Maximian.

The debate 50 v. 1

This really angered the Emperor. So, he sent 50 pagan philosophers to engage Catherine in debate and so persuade her to leave Christ and this foolishness called Christianity and offer sacrifices to the gods. 

We don’t know how long the debate went on, but we can just imagine. I mean, have you seen a philosopher easily capitulating to his opponent in a debate? And there are 51 philosophers here! Anyways, Catherine stood her ground, breaking arguments and counterarguments with cold logic and her ever-burning faith. According to the hagiographers, the result was 1-0 in favor of Catherine. At the end all 50 philosophers converted to Christianity which really really angered Maximian.

The young martyr and the Catherine Wheel

The Emperor then ordered that everyone who converted–even his own wife–be tortured and killed. For Catherine, he reserved an original and cruel torture: the “Catherine wheel,” a contraption made of wheels into which knives or spikes had been driven. The idea was to roll this over her over and over again, thus inflicting excruciating pain and prolonging it until death comes.

Here, the hagiographers may have really colored the story, but who knows? Well, according to them, the angels assisted Catherine by sending a storm that showered rocks and lightning on the wheels and killed some of the soldiers. What we can be sure of is that the wheel might not really be effective or it might have taken too long for the patience of a man as patient as Maximian that in the end, he ordered her decapitated (the only death sentence for a Roman).

Crusader and helper

Her remains were then transported (either by angels, as the Orthodox tell us, or by other Christians of her time) and buried near Mt. Sinai later to be found by monks of the Monastery of the Theotokos that Justinian founded. Being so much associated with St. Catherine, the monastery changed its name to the Monastery of St. Catherine, the oldest continuously inhabited monastery in the world (although latest reports have said that Egyptian authorities are now evicting the monks from this famous site). 

St. Catherine, as one can easily imagine, was greatly venerated in the East. Her cult spread to the West when the crusaders reached the Holy Land and as far as the Sinai peninsula. By the High Medieval Age, it was common to see images of her in parish churches and she was considered one of the “Fourteen Holy Helpers,” a group of saints invoked in daily necessities and petitions (e.g. St. Christopher for those who will travel, etc.). 

A girl in Sienna was born in 1347 was named after her and she will live her life identifying herself with our Alexandrian philosopher. She would also in her own turn become a saint: St. Catherine of Sienna.

A victim of modernity

Catherine was so widely venerated that even after the Reformation, many protestant (High Church) denominations continued their veneration of her such as the Anglicans and the Swedish. Sadly, in the Roman tradition, despite her popularity, St. Catherine became a casualty of the 20th-century obsession with historical-critical methods.

As we have already discussed in our Vatican II miniseries, the 20th century was dominated by the desire to “return to the sources,” a ressourcement in theology, liturgy, etc. That is why the earlier gothic style vestments went back in fashion (and is still today) and the roman style fiddleback chasuble became rarer as the time went by. This ressourcement coupled with St. John XXIII’s aggiornamento inspired the Conciliar years to review everything in christianity, as in EVERYTHING. This includes martyrology, or the list of saints.

Some theologians and liturgists by this time were so impacted by the historico-critical method that originated in protestant biblical scholarship that they also wanted to apply it to their field. So began the dismissing of everything “mythical” or “carolingian, medieval additions.” When the Consilium reformed the General Roman Calendar, they took off the feasts of many saints who are no longer in their favor because their wisdom does not allow it. One of them was St. Catherine of Alexandria.

This, however, does not mean that Catherine suddenly became a “not-saint.” Even the modern liberal theologian knows that he cannot do it. But by striking her out of the General Calendar, a statement was made.

But, veneration to this great woman continued in the East and in our Protestant brothers and sisters. It also persisted in France, Russia, Germany, and even in the Philippines there are old parishes dedicated to her. So, when St. John Paul II revised the Paul VI’s Missal in 2002, he restored St. Catherine in the General Calendar, albeit only as an optional memorial.

Catherine: a woman of valor; a woman that is our model

Because of this “roman snub,” I did not have any idea before who Catherine of Alexandria was until this morning when I celebrated Mass. Whenever I can, I choose to celebrate the optional memorials because: a) they are just once a year so just give them to that saint; and b) repeating the whole week the propers of Sunday is just too lazy for my preference. That is how I came across Catherine of Alexandria.

What struck me about Catherine was not merely her philosophical skill but her movement from intellectual curiosity to mystical depth.

Karl Rahner famously said:

“The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.”

We do not believe because we grasp dogma perfectly. We believe because we have encountered a Person—Jesus Christ. We accept the dogma and doctrines of the Church even if we do not understand them fully because of him. We accept the Church’s social and moral teaching because we have encountered Jesus Christ. Doctrine becomes intelligible only through relationship.

As Hans Urs von Balthasar teaches: we first encounter Beauty, not abstract Truth. Beauty draws us in—through liturgy, art, holiness—and only then do we grasp the Good, and finally the True. 

We come across this mystical experience of Beauty that tells us that there is something beyond what we see. That is why, there are so many converts coming from churches that celebrate the liturgy well. Then from Beauty we go and engage our life’s moral choices in accordance with this Beauty. Only in having immersed ourselves in this divine Beauty and Good can we accept the Truth behind it, that is doctrine.

Christ is the One, the Beautiful, the Good, and the True—the Way, Truth, and Life.

Anyways, I digress. St. Catherine, patroness of philosophy, please intercede for us.

The post Saint Catherine of Alexandria: Philosopher, Mystic, and Martyr appeared first on Tamang Usapan Podcast.

Anyways, this time I decided to ask my AI secretary to translate my original Spanish work to share it with you now. So, here it comes.

The “Blockages” on Erri de Luca’s Path

In the Premise to his work, Erri de Luca reveals a striking personal practice: he reads the Sacred Scriptures every day. In Hebrew, no less! Here we find a man deeply immersed not only in secular literature but in sacred literature as well. Yet de Luca identifies two fundamental “blockages” that prevent him from crossing the threshold into faith: prayer and forgiveness.

This difficulty, in my view, is not exclusive to de Luca. Many people in our contemporary society share these same hesitations. Moreover, these two realities—prayer and forgiveness—stand at the very center of the Christian (and Jewish) message. De Luca articulates with great clarity why these issues hinder him from becoming a believer.

He perceives it as an attitude of arrogance, almost an impossibility, to address God as a “you.” God is beyond me, He surpasses me; therefore, addressing the Transcendent as though He were my friend, a simple “you” with all its banality and connotations of closeness, as if He were my neighbor, appears bold if not disrespectful. Moreover, de Luca sees in the language of the one who prays in the psalm not only an I–Thou communication but an imperative.

Concerning forgiveness, de Luca looks with reluctance at both the act of forgiving and the fact of being forgiven. He considers his actions something so intimate to him that he cannot rid himself of them, especially his mistakes. If he sets them aside, it is not because of repentance but because of lack of time, aging, etc. For this reason, he cannot accept being forgiven nor can he forgive.

My Responses

On Prayer

Let us begin with prayer, a reality central to the life of the believer. Nearly every religion has some form of prayer. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, prayer has a privileged role: it is the moment in which I communicate with my God.

Communication presupposes relationship. In mythical religions, the relationship between gods and humans is more like that of patron and client. In Judeo-Christianity, the relationship is instead a personal one: filiation. 

This is astonishing, even disruptive, to human thought, both in the time of the prophets and in our own. Yet since de Luca already possesses knowledge of the Old Testament—in its original language—our reflection can move more smoothly.

De Luca approaches the divine–human relationship through a distinctly Jewish lens. When he quotes Psalm 16:1, he is unsettled by the boldness of David, who addresses God with an imperative: “Protect me!” He sees a king commanding God, who should be far above him. In response, I would offer de Luca what Christian faith offers the world: the image of Jesus Christ.

We can understand the dynamic between believer and God through Jesus’ own manner of praying. Jesus, a faithful Jew, made prayer a constant part of His earthly life. What do we see in Jesus’ prayer? The relationship between Jesus and God is one of filiation, a Son trusting in His Father. Jesus’ prayer reveals God as a Father, and through Jesus Christ Himself, we have the grace to address God as our Father.

This, of course, is very distinctly Christian. So let us pursue another route, even though for me the first is already sufficient.

Hinneni and Levinas

De Luca notes that the first word preceding every prayer is Hinneni: “Here I am.” I agree. He sees this reality clearly. But hinneni cannot exist on its own; it is not an independent statement but a response. It is not a pure Dasein without alterity. Someone calls me first, and I answer: “Here I am!” Again, prayer presupposes communication, relation, and call.

Here I recall the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, a Jewish thinker deeply formed both in the wisdom of Athens and in the faith of Jerusalem. Levinas teaches that when the I encounters the Other, the epiphany of the Other produces a tremor in the world of the I. The I is accustomed to “consuming” everything around it—assimilating everything into itself, that is, totality—but the Other resists this. The Other surpasses me. In the face of the Other, I encounter an ethical imperative: “You shall not kill,” or expressed positively: “Protect me!” Levinas describes the relationship between the I and the trans-cendent Other not as totality but as alterity, characterized by responsibility and expressed in the phrase “Here I am!”—hinneni.

The "trace" of God

I do not intend to offer a full study of Levinas in this small dialogue with Erri de Luca. Instead, I want to highlight one essential insight: the alterity of the Other does not make relationship between him and me impossible. Levinas claims that in the face of the human other we perceive the “trace” of the ultimate Other: God. Thus, the relationship of alterity that I experience with the human other, whom I may still address as “you” even though she surpasses me, reveals—analogically—the possibility of addressing God as You.

The alterity of God does not prevent relationship; it requires it. Hinneni is a response to that invitation. I did not take the first step; God did. He called me by name, as Scripture says. I address Him as “You” not because I deserve to, but because He wills it. Psalm 8 expresses this beautifully: “What is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him?”

On Forgiveness

Forgiveness occupies a central place in the Christian message: through His cross and resurrection, Christ brings humanity into reconciliation with the Father. Thus, de Luca’s reluctance about being forgiven and forgiving seems to me very symptomatic of our present time. All of this points to the sense of sin we have today.

With the influence of modern psychology, which seeks to explain human behavior, and various anthropological philosophies, there is a certain reluctance when someone speaks of sin and sinning. We are told to accept our faults as part of our personality. This, to an extent, is healthy. But there is a risk of remaining stuck in acceptance and forgetting the next step: conversion. We justify ourselves by saying that these sins are simply part of who we are and sometimes even define us.

Thus, the possibility of repentance fades. But is forgiveness only about repentance? No. Forgiveness is a gift. A free and undeserved gift from God to humanity. It is not through our effort—though effort is good—but God’s initiative to reconcile us to Himself.

Once more, we return to alterity and relationship. God is a Father offering a gift to His children. What ultimately matters is not the gift itself but the relationship the gift signifies.

Conclusion

I deeply enjoyed this exercise. Erri de Luca pushed me to think and to confront his hesitations—hesitations shared by many people, and yes, at times, even by me. There is a part of me that asks: “How can I be certain He heard me? Can I really address my Creator in such a familiar way? With all the sins I have committed and continue to commit, do I truly deserve His forgiveness?”

I am not sure whether I have expressed myself clearly in this attempt. Perhaps these lines remain the chaos of an unorganized mind. I, too, must clarify within myself the questions raised by de Luca. 

The post A Theological Dialogue with Erri de Luca: Prayer, Alterity, and Forgiveness appeared first on Tamang Usapan Podcast.

The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han is perhaps one of today’s most widely read contemporary thinkers—or is beginning to be read by many—especially in the English-speaking world after dozens of his works were translated from German. His philosophy critiques our current situation in continuity with the long tradition of social criticism. For this reflection, I chose his book The Transparency Society as the text through which to approach the topic of communication in the digital era.It is a rather short book for its genre. Only 95 pages, more typical of popular nonfiction or even poetry than of philosophy or sociology. But its content is dense, filled with sharp reflections on contemporary society, especially the culture produced by the paradigmatic shift in social communication. We could sum up the text with a few key words: transparency, information, acceleration, positive society, control.

Main Ideas in The Transparency Society

In the epigraph of the book, Han cites Peter Handke:

“I live from what others do not know about me.”

This line aptly summarizes the entire treatise: the central argument is the disappearance of secrecy in the face of advances in modern social communication.

Han writes:

“The positive society avoids every form of the play of negativity, for it hinders communication … the negativity of refusal cannot be economically valorized.”

He describes our world as a positive society where the negative is hidden, because the sensation of positivity—the affirmation we receive from others—is what draws us to social media. Studies show that what keeps users engaged is the platforms’ ability to trigger serotonin release in the body, and the time we spend online translates into profit for Big Tech. Hence the proliferation of the “like” button and the algorithm that learns our tastes to show us more of what we enjoy while the “dislike” button is often hidden or disappearing (as in YouTube’s case).

Han observes:

“In the positive society, in which things—now turned into commodities—must be displayed in order to be, their cultural value disappears in favor of their exhibition value.”

He condemns the violence of exposure: the culture bred by the positive society. Everything must be displayed online, to the point that some will say, “One cannot truly exist without a Facebook or Instagram profile.”Behind this lies the idea of transparency: nothing remains intimate; everything is exposed. Yet transparency does not necessarily mean truth. We present ourselves online, but we can edit our image before displaying it. Thus, the human face is reduced to a façade dissolved into its exhibition value—turned into a commodity, the opposite of Levinas’ “Face of the Other,” which opens onto transcendence. Han therefore claims that transparency opposes transcendence. Moreover, each subject becomes his or her own advertising object.

The Pornographic Society and the Loss of Mystery

This transparency society is marked by an obsession with evidence. Nothing is left in the “black hole” around which desire condenses. Paradoxically, Han argues, the transparency of our digital social space is not an ally of pleasure. He defines pleasure as that which enjoys secrecy, the veil and concealment that heighten delight. Transparency, by contrast, eliminates pleasure because it is incompatible with secrecy.

Han therefore characterizes the transparency society as a “pornographic society” in the sense that everything is exposed and nothing is left to the imagination. Beauty is degraded by unnecessary exhibition:

“The sublime, which [Walter] Benjamin opposes to beautiful appearance, lacks all exhibition value. In fact, exhibition destroys the sublimity of the creature.”

Following Roland Barthes, Han sees here what Barthes saw in photography: the element of studium—belonging to the realm of “liking” rather than “loving.” He goes further:“Today all media images are more or less pornographic. By virtue of their complacency, they lack all punctum, all semiotic intensity. They have nothing that could wound or pierce. They are, at most, the object of a like.”

Acceleration and the Erosion of Ritual

This pornographic society of transparency is further propelled by the acceleration driven by modern media. What is celebrated is hyperactivity, hyper-production, and hyper-communication. To save time and fuel this acceleration, rituals are despised:

“The transparency society eliminates all rituals and ceremonies insofar as these cannot be made operational, for they impede the acceleration of the cycles of information, communication, and production.”

Han laments the loss of the theatrical in favor of the intimate in communication. The theatrical entails distance and thus carries signs and ritual forms, whereas the intimacy he refers to is the kind of exposure that dispenses with the need for meaning:

“The world today is no longer a theater in which actions and feelings are performed and interpreted, but a market in which intimacies are displayed, sold, and consumed.”

This is evident on social media, where the algorithm learns our tastes and feeds them back to us, so that we encounter only ourselves and the like-minded thus creating an echo chamber, a bubble where we see only what we want to see.

The Digital Panopticon and the Masked Society

The rise of information and the acceleration of communication are indispensable to modern life, yet not unambiguously good. Alongside more information and faster communication, appearances abound—“simulacra that no longer represent any being.” The great paradox of the transparency society is that it is also a society of masks.

“The digital wind of communication and information penetrates everything and makes it transparent … Yet the digital network as a medium of transparency is subject to no moral imperative.”

Today Big Tech has become a supranational power with control over our innermost selves yet the danger is that it is subject to no higher authority; even the individuals who run these companies do not have full control over what the digital world dictates.

Following Jeremy Bentham, Han sees in digital communication a new panopticon—but unlike Bentham’s prison panopticon, the digital panopticon functions without any perspectival optics. In Bentham’s model, prisoners were aware of the guard’s gaze and were isolated from one another; in the digital panopticon of the transparency society, we believe we are free and remain intensely connected and communicative with one another. Each becomes the other’s guard. As Han puts it:

“The achievement-subject exploits itself. The exploiter is at the same time the exploited.”

All this brings us to the heart of Han’s argument: modern communication has produced today’s situation—the transparency society—where the secret is despised in favor of the public, while the intimate becomes a commodity in a marketplace where we ourselves are both seller and buyer. A panoptic reality without awareness of itself.

Personal Reflection

All of this, in my view, is very important, and Han is certainly right in many of his arguments. We have already witnessed the worst that our hyper-connected world can produce: fake news, pro-CCP vloggers, the rise of ISIS and other terrorist groups, and so forth.

Artificial intelligence’s capacity to learn our preferences is convenient for finding what we want to see or buy, yet it also risks reinforcing our most extreme opinions—turning them into dogmatic “truths” for many.

However, what Han seems to overlook is that today’s digital social communication does not only generate these negatives; it has also produced many positive developments that our ancestors could only dream of.

Social communication itself is neutral. It is a human tool, like a pencil or a sword: both can serve to work and to build life, but both can also wound or kill. This is what perhaps any critical philosopher of today’s society, like Han, may forget—not that they reject it, but that by focusing so much on the negative, the positive remains in the shadows.

Thus, I find Han’s argument valid, truly thought-provoking, and deserving of our reflection on our present reality—yet it lacks the balance of recognizing what is good.

The post Postmodern Communication: Byung-Chul Han’s Critique of the “Transparency Society” appeared first on Tamang Usapan Podcast.

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.”
— G.K. Chesterton

On September 3, 2025, Cardinal Blase Cupich published an essay in the Chicago Catholic (read here) attempting to distinguish between Tradition and traditionalism. He began with Jaroslav Pelikan’s well-worn aphorism: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Allow me, then, to begin with Chesterton’s.

The Cardinal is a bishop of the Church, with the fullness of the priesthood. I know his formation at the Università Pontificia Gregoriana and the Catholic University of America is impeccable. I, on the other hand, am but a neophyte priest, without his breadth of pastoral experience or theological depth. Yet the philosopher in me (or, perhaps the pretentious part of me) cannot resist responding to his pastoral “clarification.” (Note: my editor told me to take this paragraph down as it risks a “reverse appeal to authority,” but this is my style so please allow me some break with this).

Let us then break down the Archbishop’s essay into its theses, expressed syllogistically, and evaluate them.

Thesis 1: Tradition is Dynamic Development, Not Static Preservation

Major Premise: True tradition preserves identity while allowing authentic growth and maturation.

Minor Premise: Doctrines such as the Trinity and Christology developed organically without losing their original essence, while St. Vincent of Lérins compared doctrine’s growth to the natural development of the human body.

Conclusion: Therefore, Catholic tradition must be understood as a living, developing reality, not static repetition.

Response

Cupich’s syllogism here is valid and, on the surface, sound. But throughout the essay he employs “Tradition” equivocally—sometimes meaning doctrinal development (Newman’s sense), sometimes liturgy, other times fidelity to the Gospel. This shifting usage risks the fallacy of equivocation. Can the average Catholic easily parse these nuances?

And this equivocation matters. If “Tradition” is always “living, developing reality,” then doctrinal contents themselves could be relativized. If liturgical customs may be superseded, why not moral norms—or even Christ’s divinity? The liberal Catholic may answer, “yes.” But this was not Newman’s intent. For Newman, development meant continuity, not rupture. Growth like that of a body: always the same identity, never mutation into another species.

As the great composer Gustav Mahler said: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.” Faith is alive and develops, but it builds upon what came before; it does not negate it. This crucial nuance is missing in the Cardinal’s framing.

Thesis 2: Vatican II’s Teaching on Development Builds on Newman

Major Premise: The Church’s magisterium recognizes growth in understanding revelation through contemplation, study, experience, and preaching.

Minor Premise: Vatican II (Dei Verbum §8) explicitly articulated this principle, influenced by Newman.

Conclusion: Therefore, Vatican II’s teaching continues the Church’s authentic tradition by formally affirming development.

Response

This thesis, taken alone, is strong. Dei Verbum does indeed affirm Newman’s insight. The difficulty arises when it is yoked to the next thesis.

Thesis 3: The Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II Exemplify Authentic Development

Major Premise: Authentic reform restores the original essence of tradition when it has been obscured by distortions.

Minor Premise: Historical influences (Carolingian and Baroque) transformed the liturgy into clerical spectacle, obscuring its communal essence.

Conclusion: Therefore, Vatican II’s liturgical reform (Sacrosanctum Concilium) was authentic, restoring noble simplicity and participation.

Response

Here, several problems emerge.

First, Cupich risks a hasty generalization. To portray Carolingian and Baroque developments as mere distortions is an oversimplification. These eras certainly brought cultural influences, but also theological richness, chant, hymnody, and profound expressions of transcendence. Were all adaptations corrupt? Hardly. By the same logic, ultratraditionalists could accuse Vatican II reforms of being corrupted by secular or Protestant influences.

Second, a strawman fallacy creeps in. By caricaturing the pre-conciliar liturgy as universally clerical and grotesque, he misrepresents traditionalist claims. Many loved the old rite precisely for its reverence and theocentricity, not as “spectacle.”

Third, there is historical cherry-picking. One cannot isolate distortions while ignoring genuine fruits. Again, Cupich claims wholesale that the pre-Vatican II liturgy is plagued by corruption from Carolingian and baroque influences. These eras span several decades, and even centuries, are we to assume that all of them corrupted the liturgy? 

Furthermore, to claim Vatican II reforms as mere “restorations” ignores that many changes (the almost exclusive use of the vernacular, Eucharistic prayers, versus populum orientation) were not mandated by SC and in fact went beyond it.

Finally, and most seriously, there is circular reasoning. Cupich argues that the reforms were authentic because they recovered the true tradition. But this assumes what must be proved: that they are the true tradition. Independent criteria, such as Newman’s notes of authentic development, must be applied.

Thesis 4: To Reject Authentic Liturgical Reform is to Misunderstand Tradition

Major Premise: Refusal to allow the Church to develop is regression into traditionalism, not fidelity.

Minor Premise: Pope Francis warns that resisting reform by clinging to the past is “going backward.”

Conclusion: Therefore, rejecting Vatican II’s reforms is misunderstanding tradition.

Response

Here, Cupich introduces a false dilemma: either embrace reform or regress. But history shows a third option—faithful preservation alongside reform. The Roman Rite has long coexisted with others (Ambrosian, Mozarabic, Dominican, etc.). Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum recognized precisely this possibility: one can affirm Vatican II and yet worship in the older rite.

There is also an appeal to authority. Pelikan, Sts. Newman and Lérins, Vatican II, Pope Francis are invoked. These are weighty voices, but their authority often substitutes for demonstration. Pope Francis’ claim that traditionalists are “backward” is rhetoric, not proof. And Cupich’s essay leans heavily on rhetorical terms like “spectacle,” “grotesque,” “dead faith” which generate emotional bias rather than rational demonstration.

The pastoral implication is also problematic: equating attraction to the traditional liturgy with rejection of Vatican II unfairly homogenizes a diverse group. Traditional Catholics range from sedevacantists to ordinary lay faithful who simply find spiritual nourishment in the old rite. To reduce them all to “backward” is another strawman.

Furthermore, what about Eastern Rite Catholics? Do we hold them to a different standard? Are they “backward” because they maintain their liturgical patrimony rather than adopting versus populum and vernacular exclusivity? If not, then why treat Roman Rite Catholics who love the older form as retrograde?

Thesis 5: True Reform Means Moving Forward by Going Deeper into Tradition

Major Premise: Authentic tradition allows the Gospel to be proclaimed anew by rediscovering its essence.

Minor Premise: Tradition is the “living faith of the dead,” traditionalism the “dead faith of the living.”

Conclusion: Therefore, true reform requires going deeper into tradition so the Church can move forward.

Response

Here I agree with the Cardinal in principle. True reform is rediscovery of essence so that the Church may proclaim Christ anew in each age. Yet two problems arise:

• The Pelikan quote, while striking, does not prove the meanings Cupich ascribes to Tradition and traditionalism. What is “living faith”? What is “dead faith”? For many, the preservation of the older liturgy is precisely the fire, not ashes.
  
• A hidden assumption underlies his reasoning: that Vatican II’s reforms represent a pure return to the “sources.” Yet it is impossible to reconstruct the primitive liturgy with certainty. Moreover, if the liturgy must necessarily develop (as Newman teaches), then “going back” to a hypothetical archaic form risks contradicting the very principle of development.
  

The Grand (Unstated) Conclusion

All of Cupich’s theses lean toward an implicit conclusion: Catholics attached to the older rite misunderstand tradition and are trapped in traditionalism. But this conclusion oversimplifies. Traditionalist Catholics are not a monolith:

• Some indeed reject Vatican II outright (sedevacantists and schismatics). These are often the loudest ones online.
  
• Others question aspects of the reform but remain within the Church (what I call, “softie-sedes”). The danger with them is that they may say that they reject the sedevacantists, but, in principle, they coincide with some, if not most, of their talking points. They are also the loudest voices online.
  
• Still others see no contradiction between Vatican II and the old rite, and even hope the older form can enrich the newer one. (You might want to listen to our Sacrosanctum concilium episode with Doc Luke Brofar here).
  
• And many are simply Catholics who find themselves spiritually nourished by the Extraordinary Form without rejecting the Ordinary (most of the “traditionalists”). (You might want to listen to our TLM episode with Doc Luke Brofar here).
  

What's the problem?

By categorizing all of these under “traditionalism,” the Cardinal misrepresents the heterogeneity of the faithful. Thus, this conclusion rests on equivocation, hasty generalizations, false dilemmas, appeals to authority, and circular reasoning.

Worse, his reasoning risks begging the question. He asserts: “The reforms are authentic because they recovered true tradition.” But this presumes what is in dispute: that Vatican II reforms are the authentic tradition. To prove this, one would need independent evidence of continuity, not the mere assertion of it.

Conclusion: Tradition as Continuity, Not Rupture

Cardinal Cupich is right to warn against sterile repetition. Tradition is not a museum. Yet, in conflating tradition with adaptability, his essay risks collapsing continuity into rupture.

The real task is not to choose between the “dead faith of the living” and a “living faith of the dead,” but to preserve the fire across the centuries. That fire is preserved not by abandoning what came before, but by building upon it in continuity. 

Should we, then, affirm that “what earlier generations held sacred” is no longer sacred today? Should we say that we are better than most saints spiritually because our Mass today is “purer” than the Mass where their souls were nourished? 

Perhaps the Cardinal should revisit Newman, who insisted that the sensus fidelium—the lived faith of the whole Church—guides authentic development. Why, then, do so many Catholics, especially the young, continue to be drawn to the old Mass decades after the Council? (Read Ann Mare’s experience here). Why did Summorum Pontificum bring peace, while Traditionis custodes reopened wounds?

History warns against declaring one’s own moment the “end of history.” Hegel did it; Fukuyama did it. If we apply Cupich’s reasoning, Vatican II would be the final liturgical synthesis, never to be reformed again. But by Newman’s principle, development continues. Perhaps the older liturgy still has a role in that future development—just as the “archaic sources” inspired the reforms of Vatican II.

Tradition is not ashes or spectacle, nor is it regression or novelty. It is continuity in the faith once delivered, living and growing, yet always the same flame.

The post Tradition, Traditionalism, and the Question of Continuity: A Response to Cardinal Cupich appeared first on Tamang Usapan Podcast.