Abby and Patrick welcome writer, critic, and religion scholar Jack Hanson for an in-depth and wide-ranging conversation about the politics and social significance of the contemporary Catholic Church. With Jack’s new piece in Harper’s, “Radical Reformation: The Catholic Church’s Progressive Revival,” as a guide, the three put the accession of the Chicago-born Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV into the context of the Church’s complicated relationship with modern geopolitics, economic pressures, and technological change. From papal critiques of nineteenth century industrialization to the emergence of liberation theology in the Global South to the impact of Vatican II and beyond, Jack walks Abby and Patrick through the intellectual traditions and internal tensions that have shaped the Church’s attitudes towards the state, the market, and secular political ideologies. Going beyond headlines and reductive soundbites, Jack helps Abby and Patrick situate the contradictions of American Catholicism – embodied most visibly in the reactionary politics of figures like J.D. Vance – within a broader narrative of US imperial decline and crises of institutional legitimacy and moral authority. As a case in point, the three turn to the Pope’s recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, its provocative assessment of AI specifically, and its account of conditions of contemporary anomie more generally. What ensues is a conversation about desire, fantasy, technology, solidarity, and what it means to be human.

Jack Hanson, “Radical Reformation: The Catholic Church’s Progressive Revival”: https://harpers.org/archive/2026/08/radical-reformation-jack-hanson-catholic-church-progressive/

Jack’s Substack, Phantom Heresy: https://phantomheresy.substack.com/

Jack on Magnifica Humanitas on the Know Your Enemy podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4OZialymsdMglvaEdujzx2

More by Jack on the Catholic Church:

“The Text That May Be Key to How the New Pope Thinks,” https://www.thenation.com/article/society/pope-leo-xiv-rerum-novarum-socialism/

“Last Rites,” https://www.nybooks.com/online/2024/10/20/last-rites-death-penalty-catholic-church/

“Mamdani’s Newest Ally: The Catholic Church?”: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/mamdanis-newest-ally-the-catholic-church.html

“The Heresy of Americanism,” https://newsletter.thedriftmag.com/p/the-heresy-of-americanism

“The Post-Francis Church,” https://yalereview.org/article/pope-francis-death-future-catholocism

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