Should the American Pope debate the American president about good and evil? The shameless Trump, one suspects, would relish a noisy cage match with a rival American celebrity. But Leo XIV has quietly declined the invitation — a refusal that the Catholic scholar Jack Hanson insists is neither cowardice nor convenience. Rather, as Hanson argues in this month’s Harper’s cover story, “Radical Reformation,” it’s because the church has become the last global institution able to provide a coherent moral compass for our rootless times.

The great irony, Hanson notes, is that the church was the first victim of the legitimacy conflagration now engulfing every other institution. His history begins in 1870, when Rome lost the Papal States and, for the first time in a millennium, had no earthly kingdom to defend. Ever since, the church has been reorienting itself — lately, against political, economic and military power.

That opposition to worldly power was always a strand within the apostolic tradition, Hanson reminds us. Thus the Gospel’s “antinomian communists” who stayed behind in plague cities, Thomas More’s attack on private property, the 1891 Rerum Novarum, Dorothy Day, liberation theology. What’s new is that the Vatican itself has embraced this political tradition of questioning Caesar.

Then came 9/11. In the war on terror, Hanson argues, the secular West redefined its enemy not as a rival religion but as religion itself — and the church stopped being Western civilization’s moral crown jewel. John Paul II’s opposition to the Iraq War was a preview. Leo XIV’s 40,000-word encyclical on AI — Magnifica Humanitas, complete with an apology for the church’s role in slavery — is a more mature realization of this radical reformation.

No wonder, then, that Leo has no interest in a cage match with Trump. “A direct debate with a president who’s going to be out of office in a couple of years isn’t in his interest. It’s too small a task,” Hanson explains. As the latest in a very long line of God’s representatives on earth, Leo is playing the long game. He can afford to wait out a noisy Caesar or two.

Five Takeaways

• The Last Moral Voice. The church was the first institution to face the legitimacy crisis and has returned, reconfigured as a global institution against power as such.

• The Radical Tradition Was Always There. From the Gospel’s “antinomian communists” through Thomas More, Rerum Novarum, Dorothy Day, and liberation theology. What’s new: the Vatican itself has embraced it.

• 9/11 Drove the Wedge. The war on terror recast the enemy as religion itself; the secularization thesis collapsed. The church and the left hit their nadirs together — and revive together.

• Magnifica Humanitas. Leo’s 40,000-word AI encyclical argues that AI must serve humanity. Billboards say “stop hiring human beings”; the pope legitimizes dissent.

• Too Small a Task. Leo won’t debate Trump — he aims to beat him on a higher register, shaping consciences rather than winning news cycles.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Read Radical Reformation in Harper’s: harpers.org

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: a Yale kind of week
00:02:07 The crisis of institutional legitimacy
00:04:15 From conscience of the West to global institution
00:05:29 Two thousand years of sins
00:07:46 “Open the streets, you crazy bastards”
00:08:02 1870: losing the Papal States
00:08:53 Against power as such
00:10:39 Antinomian communists, Thomas More, Rerum Novarum
00:12:40 The two Thomas Mores
00:13:33 Why not drop the God stuff?
00:14:47 What Catholics bring to socialism
00:19:23 How 9/11 reshaped the church
00:21:48 The end of the secularization thesis
00:24:57 Magnifica Humanitas: why trust this pope?
00:26:52 Where does the church’s power come from?
00:28:51 Whose humanity? The church and AI
00:31:16 One in five American Catholics dislike this pope
00:32:16 American or Catholic: the hinge question
00:33:04 Red lines: the SSPX excommunications
00:35:27 An American pope for an American Caesar?
00:36:38 Are the evangelicals Christians?
00:38:20 Why Leo won’t debate Trump
00:40:08 Beating Trump on a higher register
00:40:57 Thanks and goodbye