News with Nuance: May 9, 2025

Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..

Hi Readers,

I’ve been thinking today of the Bible reading from Luke 24, where two of Jesus’ disciples are walking down the Road to Emmaus, after Jesus has been arrested and sentenced to death by crucifixion.

The Bible text says that as they walked, Jesus himself appeared and walked with them, but “their eyes were kept from noticing him.” Instead, the two are filled with grief, sadness, exhaustion, and lament. They tell this supposed “stranger” that Jesus has been crucified.

“But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” they said.

There is such a latent longing in those words that always sticks with me. It’s the sadness of we had hoped, and the acknowledgement of unrealized hopes and dreams. The flat statement that what they’d longed for had not come to pass, and the resulting sense of myopia and despair: an uncertainty about what to think or do next.

More than 100 days into Trump’s second term as President of the United States, seeing the news every day filled with stories of cruelty, hatred, anger, despair, and suffering - I have felt a sense of we had hoped and the paucity of good news in our current reality. Even as I continue to share the passion and mission of the stories of my new book out in the world, crafting new narratives around a kinder masculinity, I lately have felt a sense of uncertainty and powerlessness, a wondering about what to do that will really matter.

I have found myself longing for an external source of validation and hope - some unexpected good news that will be a sign of better times ahead. And just as I felt a powerful sense of that longing this week, this morning such a sign did seem to arrive.

After returning home from a walk, I saw a text from my husband. White smoke had risen from the Vatican, and a new Pope had been elected.

Now to be honest, as a Lutheran, I feel pretty out of my depth offering any sort of opinion around a papal conclave. After all, we are supposed to be against all this staff, aren’t we? Isn’t the whole idea of the Vatican: with its expensive cathedrals and ornate vestments, an example of the Theology of Glory that puts the church on the side of worldly power and wealth?

Maybe. But as citizens of an earthly reality, we can only inhabit the world we live in, and that world is one in which the Roman Catholic Church still holds great power and influence. As an institution, it is neither entirely sinful nor entirely good. The same can be said of its leaders. The Church is still negligent on confronting the reality of the clergy abuse crisis, delinquent on acceptance of LGBTQ people and full rights and reproductive freedom for women. The new Pope will probably not change any of this.

But traditionalist and conservative Catholics in America and globally have long wanted much more from a reactionary Church. They’ve wanted to make the witness of Christianity entirely about hatred, power, and white male supremacy. American Catholic politicians like J.D. Vance have attempted to twist Catholic doctrine to support a hierarchy of humanity, to bless policies that demonize immigrants and migrants.

I was fearful about the potential for a new pope who could usher in more of these policies on a global scale, and to continue the complete cooption of Christianity under an umbrella of anger and hatred and exclusion.

So instead, we have a pope who has chosen a name that reflects a commitment to Catholic social teaching: a commitment to continue Francis’ legacy of care for the poor and solidarity with all those in need, to prioritize love over hatred. And this Pope who has these ideas and commitments is also an American, a Chicagoan nonetheless.

I’ll take my hope where I can get it these days, thank you very much.

Let’s get to the news … with nuance …

But hey - if you have read Disciples of White Jesus, would you consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads? You don’t have to have purchased on Amazon to review there, but I’d very much appreciate it! Thanks so much.

The Headline: Prevost is new pope, an American cardinal committed to the reforms Pope Francis began

I wrote a bit above about what the selection of this new Pope meant to me personally - but for a broader perspective, I knew I wanted to share this piece with you, from the National Catholic Reporter. The NCR is one of my favorite sources for Catholic news coverage and stories, along with U.S. Catholic magazine, and personally NCR’s Heidi Schlumpf is one of my favorite religion writers.

This column, from Michael Sean Winters, helpfully explains the context around Prevost’s selection as Pope, as well as explaining why his leadership offers a distinctly different kind of Catholicism than the one often championed by prominent American conservative Catholics.

The Quote:

Pope Leo XIV, like Francis, was shaped by the reception of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council in Latin America. There, the bishops embraced the synodal style that Francis would bring to the universal church.

The Council of Episcopal Conferences in Latin America, known by its acronym CELAM, was actually formed before the Second Vatican Council, in 1955, but its post-conciliar meetings developed a degree of collegial discernment and decision-making that was unique in the world. Francis brought this more collegial style to the universal church with the twin synods on synodality held in 2023 and 2024.

The focus, as well as the style of governance, of Latin American bishops also has been clear in the post-conciliar era: They never stopped asking what it means to exercise a preferential option for the poor. In the face of widespread and acute poverty, they refined the Gospel's implications for a just society into a more or less coherent theology. They abandoned some of the coarser theories once grouped under the heading "liberation theology" for a more homegrown theology of the people that eschewed the faulty anthropology, materialist assumptions and Hegelian dialectical theory that characterized too much of liberation theology.

By the time Prevost became a bishop the fights over liberation theology had receded, but the question persisted: What does it mean to exercise a preferential option for the poor?

As the cardinals discussed the future of the church last week, the happy shadow of Francis loomed large. They wanted someone who shared his commitment to synodality and focus on the world's poor. With Prevost, a mild-mannered man, they also voted for fewer surprises and a steadier hand at the wheel of governance, someone with experience of the Vatican Curia but not a creature of that Curia.

The wealthy and well-organized conservative critics of Francis will be disappointed. Good. The new pope is not someone who will be seduced by their financial power. U.S. conservatives who disagreed with Francis would often cite the parochialism of his Argentine background and, especially, what they considered his Peronist streak. They said he misunderstood the U.S. That dog will no longer hunt.

Column by Michael Sean Winters, National Catholic Reporter

The Headline: Moldy food, used underwear: inside the US prisons where Trump is jailing immigrants

From a hopefulness of a new Pope who will carry on the legacy of his predecessor in advocacy for the world’s poor, and for immigrants and migrants - to this appalling story of the grim reality of suffering and cruelty for immigrants and migrants to America.

I know stories like this one are hard to read. It’s hard to conceive sometimes that this is really reality in 2025 America: that immigrants are being imprisoned and subjected to such horrifying and inhumane conditions.

But I believe we must not shut our eyes to these truths and realities, and I am grateful for the Guardian’s all-too-rare journalistic courage to tell these stories.

The Quote:

With increasingly overcrowded housing, some women were now housed in areas with broken toilets and leaks, she said; her bed became soaked when it rained. “Everything was wet and the officer just said, that’s how it is,” she said.

After Ice detainees moved in, the women in BoP custody started getting smaller portions of food and had reduced access to toilet paper, she said: “Everything is worse. There’s more scarcity.” The residents had already struggled with hunger, as they were sometimes given expired or moldy food, she said.

During lockdowns, staff slide their food trays to them on the ground under their cells: “It’s as if we’re animals. This prison already wasn’t livable and now they’re adding more people into a place that’s so unsafe and inhumane.”

She said she had struggled for a year to access healthcare at the facility and had never seen an eye doctor, dentist or psychiatrist. The medical challenges have become worse as the population has swelled, she said: “There are some good officials who are more humane and try to help us but they’re overwhelmed. When they call medical [staff] for help, they’re told it’s not an emergency, so we don’t have time.”

Story by Sam Levin, The Guardian

A few more must-read stories since our last News with Nuance …

American birds are in rapid decline

Police found a missing woman 60 years after she disappeared. She wants to stay hidden

My Brain Finally Broke

In Booming Central Texas, Wastewater Is Polluting Rivers and Streams

She tried to expose Russia’s brutal detention system — and ended up dead

The Memphis church pivotal in Martin Luther King Jr.'s final days suffers a devastating fire

How much is Minnesota paying for undocumented people accessing MinnesotaCare?

New charging policy taking race into consideration is necessary, constitutional

Minneapolis violence prevention contracts riddled with red flags as city tries to clamp down

Disciples of White Jesus: Tracking down those who are weaponizing radicalization and a masculine identity that’s dangerous for men and boys

Every edition in this section of the newsletter, we’ll look at stories from around the U.S. and the world that lift up the ways in which this trend of hawking radicalization and violence to young white men and boys (often in the guise of Christianity and conservative politics - with dog whistles of white supremacy) is leading to anger, chaos, disenfranchisement, and fear for everyone. You’ll notice that many of the storylines and main characters here overlap with my previous research (and this newsletter’s previous focus) on Christian Nationalism. You’ll also read stories of the impacts of this kind of messaging on ordinary men and boys who can’t measure up to this fabricated ideal: especially financially, in a global economy that’s emphasizing massive inequality and greed.

But don’t worry - because after this section - we’ll focus on stories of hope, ways masculine identity for young men and boys is being found in compassion, care, diversity, and - when it comes to Christianity - a story closer to the gospel of Jesus himself, rooted in truth, kindness, justice, and love.

This Edition: