Pope Leo XIV, whose name invokes the legacy of Leo XIII and the Catholic social justice tradition, introduced himself to the world as a “son of Augustine.” As a scholar of Augustine and Catholic social thought (and fellow Villanova Wildcat), I am excited about the possibilities this papacy holds for us in this historical moment. Augustinian leadership can offer great hope to a world in crisis—as long as we reimagine the intellectual underpinnings of a hierarchy of being that have long been associated with Augustine’s thought.
Every year, I read through Augustine’s Confessions with a class of first-year students at Georgetown University, and it is a beautiful moment when they begin to see the connections between Augustine’s wisdom and their own lives. Augustine, too, lived through tumultuous times: The fall of Rome was a massive political change, and the loss of close friends and family more intimate destabilizing events. His theology is oriented toward finding certainty and stability, and this is the context for his well-known line, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
Aren’t we all looking to belong without fear? To be wholly loved and to love passionately? To find truth that resonates within the core of our being?
For Augustine, truth is the pinnacle of being—the peak of a hierarchy that orders and maintains reality. The church reveals this order and invites communion with others grounded in the love and pursuit of truth, and we know ourselves more deeply through this communion. This can be reassuring. By conforming to an unchanging order of truth, we can be confident that we are living well and can find certainty amidst the chaos of the world.
The church, though, should not provide an escape route from the questions that arise through broader encounters with the world. It should offer communion rooted in a humble quest for truth, acknowledging the limits of such an effort in this life. Truth itself might be unchanging, but the way we order our lives in accordance with it is dependent on discernment in community. While our tradition serves as an anchor, we must be careful not to let a desire for stability turn into an inward-focused avoidance of new encounters or ways of knowing, or serve as justification for maintaining arbitrary social hierarchies.
Indeed, for Augustine, though truth is the pinnacle of being, it can only be found through community because God, truth itself, is communal, overflowing through embodied love. And embodied love is always messy and vulnerable to the uncertainties of life. When we try to limit truth to an abstract principle of reality, our efforts to find (or impose) certainty can become harmful. Understanding truth as an abstract, stagnant principle can easily be wielded to oppress those who do not have a say in discerning its meaning.
For example, the rituals surrounding the death of Pope Francis and the election of Pope Leo XIV were a source of communal strength and peace—the continuity of tradition forming a bond among the faithful, past, present and future. And yet, many members of the Catholic community are grappling with what it means to belong despite their sense of rejection—one indication of this was the pink smoke set off in Rome by the Women’s Ordination Conference during the conclave to protest the exclusion of women from the process.
As a Catholic woman, I too am deeply pained by what I see as the conflation of eternal truth, tradition and the marginalization of women. While it is true that women have always been influential in church and world history, their influence has largely been despite the structures of our church, not because of them. Indeed, studies show that Catholics who attend Mass regularly are more likely than others to object to female leadership in the public sphere, as well. Cultural norms have changed because of the increased visibility and access to power of women, people of color, L.G.B.T. individuals and other historically marginalized people, but the church has not made similar progress in including these perspectives in the development or interpretation of its teaching. Questions that arise from diverse experiences are perceived as power grabs or the result of poor catechetical instruction, rather than as legitimate opportunities for dialogue and growth.
This is not to say that a person’s gender, racial or sexual identity is itself a guarantee of good discernment. However, the richness of community is lessened when people are marginalized or excluded, instructed in what it means to know themselves by others who do not experience the world in the same way. A “correct understanding of the human person,” which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (now called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith) tells us is necessary for meaningful public witness, can only be authentic when all people are recognized as fully human and can participate in interpreting what that means.
Despite the increased participation of women and other lay people in advisory and leadership roles and through the synodal process, for example, their input is still mediated through the decision-making authority of male clerics. It is not enough to say that we will listen to suppressed voices if we continue to link access to leadership roles to one’s ordination status. Insofar as our response to the guidance of the Spirit is unique to our experiences, to the ways we inhabit the world, constricting practical authority to particular identity groups can block avenues of grace. As Augustine knew so well, the spirit moves, but we have to choose to follow.
While Augustine insists upon the hierarchy of truth, he also tells us that the truth is the eternal love of God, and the particular moral norms that express that love can and should change. “This does not mean that justice is erratic or variable, but that the times over which it presides are not always the same,” Augustine assures us in Book III of Confessions, “for it is the nature of time to change.” As I reflect in my book(R)evolutionary Hope, we read in the Gospel that Peter was given the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and Augustine reminds us that we know what it means to hold these keys: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
Augustine further tells us in one of his sermons that Peter was not the only recipient: “I make bold to say, we too have these keys. And what am I to say? That it is only we who bind, only we who loose? No, you also bind, you also loose.” Peter, Augustine thinks, stands for the whole church, in its unity.
Though tradition can be a source of stability, we, the whole church, are called to loose what needs to be loosened to promote the flourishing and participation of all in the community of being.
As Augustine movingly puts it, “Look at Lazarus’s case; he came out, all tied up.... What does the Church do, told as it has been, Whatever you loose shall be loosed? What the Lord went on at once to tell the disciples, of course: Unbind him and let him go.”
The tradition of Augustine, then, can inspire unceasing questioning and responsiveness to the cries of those who are constrained by the traditions meant to liberate. Viewed this way, it promotes stability that is not rooted in hierarchical dominance or exclusion, but in communal support, service and humility.
In his first “urbi et orbi” blessing, Leo XIV affirmed that “we must seek together how to be a missionary Church, a Church that builds bridges, dialogue, always open to receive…with open arms, everyone, everyone who needs our charity, our presence, dialogue and love.” Knowing that reality is not ordered by stagnant hierarchy but by evolutive interconnection, I hope that this pope will shepherd us toward the certainty of love, which always must be vulnerable, responsive and receptive to the emergence of new things. St. Augustine, pray for us.
[Also read: “What to expect from an Augustinian pope”]
