Modern Advice From a 90 Year Old in 1988

Posted on | June 19, 2025 | No Comments

(Pure Text Copy HERE)

Mike Magee

These days we’re all seeking good advice, how best to manage fear and worry, to focus on the goodness in others, and believe that caring and compassion are rationale responses to those in need. But surprisingly, advice – whether free or at a price – is mostly off the mark.

But not in the case of Elodie Armstrong. At the age of 50, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Forty years later, she took the time out to share a bit of wisdom with her family and friends.

Her daughter, Marge Wisner of Longview, Washington, described her mother as “a special lady, full of fun, spirituality, and faith. She is an inspiration to all who know her.”

Olivena Elodie Smith was born in Greenwood, Wisconsin on Christmas Eve in 1897. She was one of five children. She married Arthur Armstrong on June 10, 1916, and they went on to have three children – William, Betty Mae, and Marjorie Jeanne.  Their mother died on November 9, 1994, at the age of 96.

Back in 1988, Marge decided to share the advice her mother had written down with her local paper which then printed it – twice. Encouraged by the response, she wrote a note to Ann Landers. It said, “I would like to share her personal commandments with you in the hope that you will print them.”

On September 3, 1988, Ann Landers did just that in her very popular, nationally syndicated column. That column is displayed above. And Elodie Armstrong’s advice has never been more relevant than it is today. I encourage you to read it carefully, and share it with family, friends and colleagues far and wide. Elodie may be gone, but you can help assure she is not forgotten.

 

Reflecting On Good and Evil.

Posted on | June 16, 2025 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

There’s a lot of soul-searching going on. Take a moment to read out loud – to pause and consider. The topic: Good vs. Evil.
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That there is goodness in this world is undeniable. That there is evil, capable of taking root to branch and multiply with breathtaking speed and by surprise, is equally the case.

But little candles throw great beams, and light enlightens, while sins cast long shadows.

We and our world are both evil and good. By our deeds you shall know us.

All the learning, earning and yearning can’t replace a moment’s hesitation or justice withheld in the face of evil.

Tyranny, poverty, disease – there is more than enough to battle to prove our inner worth. Though it’s useful to remind that the knowledge and power that accrues can always be turned upon ourselves.

That we possess a conscience does not assure its use. But it can be stirred by the universe and the belief that we all have a right to be here among the trees and stars.

Amid the noisy confusion people do somehow find peace inside, and dreams of a beautiful world, and a confidence (sometimes shaken but never withdrawn).

Injustice is a double-edged sword and given time justice will prevail. (In God we pray.)

Introducing Claude Elwood Shannon

Posted on | June 10, 2025 | No Comments

 

Mike Magee

Let me be the first to introduce you to Claude Elwood Shannon. If you have never heard of him but consider yourself informed and engaged, including at the interface of AI and Medicine, don’t be embarrassed. I taught a semester of “AI and Medicine” in 2024 and only recently was introduced to “Claude.”

Let’s begin with the fact that the product, Claude, is not the same as the person, Claude. The person died a quarter century ago, and except for those deep in the field of AI has largely been forgotten – until now.

Among those in the know, Claude Elwood Shannon is often referred to as the “father of information theory.” He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1936 where he majored in electrical engineering and mathematics. At 21, as a Master’s student at MIT, he wrote a Master’s Thesis titled “A Symbolic Analysis Relay and Switching Circuits” which those in the know claim was “the birth certificate of the digital revolution,” earning him the Nobel Prize in 1939.

None of this was particularly obvious in those early years. A University of Michigan biopic claims, “If you were looking for world changers in the U-M class of 1936, you probably would not have singled out Claude Shannon. The shy, stick-thin young man from Gaylord, Michigan, had a studious air and, at times, a playful smirk—but none of the obvious aspects of greatness. In the Michiganensian yearbook, Shannon is one more face in the crowd, his tie tightly knotted and his hair neatly parted for his senior photo.”

But that was one of the historic misreads of all time, according to his alma mater. “That unassuming senior would go on to take his place among the most influential Michigan alumni of all time—and among the towering scientific geniuses of the 20th century…It was Shannon who created the “bit,” the first objective measurement of the information content of any message—but that statement minimizes his contributions. It would be more accurate to say that Claude Shannon invented the modern concept of information. Scientific American called his groundbreaking 1948 paper, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” the “Magna Carta of the Information Age.”

I was introduced to “Claude” just 5 days ago by Washington Post Technology Columnist, Geoffrey Fowler – Claude the product, not the person. His article, titled “5 AI bots took our tough reading test. One was smartest — and it wasn’t ChatGPT,” caught my eye. As he explained, “We challenged AI helpers to decode legal contracts, simplify medical research, speed-read a novel and make sense of Trump speeches.”

Judging the results of the medical research test was Scripps Research Translational Institute luminary, Eric Topol.  The 5 AI products were asked 115 questions on the content of two scientific research papers : Three-year outcomes of post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 and Retinal Optical Coherence Tomography Features Associated With Incident and Prevalent Parkinson Disease.

Not to bury the lead, Claude – the product – won decisively, not only in science but also overall against four name brand competitors I was familiar with – Google’s Gemini, Open AI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and MetaAI. Which left me a bit embarrassed. How had I never heard of Claude the product?

For the answer, let’s retrace a bit of AI history. The New York Times headline in 2023 announced the rapid progress of generative AI  as “Exciting and Scary” after four years of tracking its’ progress. Their technology columnist wrote, “What we see emerging are machines that know how to reason, are adept at all human languages, and are able to perceive and interact with the physical environment.”

Leonid Zhukov, Ph.D, director of the Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) Global AI Institute, believed then that offerings like ChatGPT-4 and Genesis (Google’s AI competitor) “have the potential to become the brains of autonomous agents—which don’t just sense but also act on their environment—in the next 3 to 5 years. This could pave the way for fully automated workflows.”

OpenAI co-founders Elon Musk and Sam Altman in 2016 initially expressed concerns about machines that not only mastered language, but could also think and feel in super-human ways. Desires for safety and regulatory oversight linked them in those early years. But that didn’t last for long. When Musk’s attempts to gain majority control of the now successful OpenAI failed, he jumped ship and later launched his own venture called “XAI.” 

In the meantime, the Open AI Board staged a coup, throwing Sam Altman over-board claiming he was no longer into regulation but rather all in on an AI profit-seeking “arms race.” That only lasted a few days, before Microsoft, with $10 billion in hand, placed Sam back on the throne. In the meantime, Google engineers, who were credited with the original break- through algorithms in 2016, created Genesis, and the full blown arms race was on, now including Facebook with it’s MetaAI with super-powered goggles.

Altman later penned an op-ed titled “The Intelligence Age” in which he explained, “Technology brought us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age and then to the Industrial Age. From here, the path to the (AI enabled) Intelligence Age is paved with compute, energy, and human will.”

Claude was born that same year. Its’ parents were sibling co-founders of the 2021 public-benefit corporation, Anthropic, Dario Amodeo and Daniela Amodeo. They were the VP of Research and the VP of Safety & Policy at OpenAI until Sam Altman’s conversion of that non-profit into a capped for-profit entity (with Microsoft in the wings) created high levels of tension and distrust in upper ranks who felt safety and public-good had been compromised. The whole idea, after all, was for OpenAI to “build safeAI and share the benefits with the world.”

In December 2020, Dario, Daniela and 14 other OpenAI researchers jumped ship. Their new Board endorsed a dual mission to: seek profit for shareholders as part of their fiduciary responsibility,” while creating “transformative AI that helps people and society flourish” and if need be “pursue AI safety and ethics over creating profit.” Their approach to “helpful and harmless” AI assistants was anchored in a commitment to “Constitutional AI” on their 1 year anniversary in 2022. This human creation (the AI Constitution) juries the boundaries of usefulness and safety. In the image of Claude Elwood Shannon, Claude, the AI with a soul, was born.

They embraced a technique for development called “Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback” (RLHF). Definition: RLHF = “Models engage in open-ended conversations with human assistants, generating multiple responses for each input prompt. The human then chooses the response they found most helpful and/or harmless, rewarding the model for either trait over time.” This allowed Anthropic to “engage models in open-ended conversations with human assistants, generating multiple responses for each input prompt.

As the process evolved, they were able to train the AI to grade the AI on consistency to the Constitution they had established. The AI now was able to grade itself harmlessness and helpfulness. The new process, Reinforcement Learning from AI Feedback (RLAIF) was now the automated judge of RLHF. Going one step further, Dario disclosed the Constitution which reinforced Anthropic’s commitment to transparency and public service.

What can Claude do? In can generate text in tandem, summarize, search, code, and more with high accuracy since it does not rely on Internet search for content.Researchers are now fast at work training Claude to “generate responses based on character traits …like curiosity, open-mindedness, and thoughtfulness.”

Besides winning the Washington Post liberal arts test (including law, medicine, literature and politics), the Claude website (with free access) had 100 million visits in March 2025, and its iOS app had 150,000 downloads within its first week of release in May, 2024. Anthopic has raised $18.2 billion as of May, 2025, (2nd only to OpenAI) with Amazon as its top investor at $8 billion in return for naming its cloud service (AWS) its primary cloud and training partner. Google is in as well at $2 billion.

On June 5, 2025, Dario penned an opEd in the New York Times titled “Don’t Let A.I. Companies off the Hook.” In it he argues aggressively for a focus on transparency stating “This is about responding in a wise and balanced way to extraordinary times.” One can almost see Claude Elwood Shannon in the shadows, quietly smiling.

Trump Sucker Punches Catholic Conservatives – Twice.

Posted on | June 2, 2025 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

If there is one thing we Catholic kids learned in what we used to call “Parochial School” was the look and feel of  “schoolyard bullies.” They were recognizable from a distance and you gave them plenty of space because they were unpredictable. You could be standing there doing nothing, and the next thing you know they could haul off and sucker-punch you right in the face.

Trump grew up as a member of “the other team” – a mainline Protestant. In the 1959 photo above, the 13 year old in the  top row, second from the left is Donald J. Trump, at his own First Presbyterian Church Confirmation Day picture in Jamaica, NY, 11 miles away from Trump Tower on the East River.

His mother was a devout Scot who gifted him a Bible on completion of Sunday School in the 9th grade. But deep dives by investigative journalists into his formal ties to religion found a “seeming lack of deep religious orientation. He doesn’t have a hometown church…”  But not for lack of trying. Claims that he later suggested an affiliation with Norman Vincent Peale’s famous midtown Manhattan based Marble Collegiate Church were denied by the church and drew condemnation from Peale’s son.

Rev. Scott Black Johnston, pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church (whose history dates back to 1808 and had a hand in the founding of the Princeton Theological Seminary, the American Bible Society, and New York Presbyterian Hospital), was a bit more diplomatic. Following  a 2017 prayer session with the President at the White House, he remarked, “He is a Christian who’s what I would call a young Christian. He is early on this journey. He has not spent a lot of time exploring the faith.”

Trump’s current journey has carried him back to the school yard where he has sucker-punched the Catholic establishment not once, but twice in 2025.

Punch 1: Defunding USAID

On January 20, 2025, Trump by Executive Order issued a 90-day freeze on all foreign aid. In the process, he effectively gutted USAID, “the main international humanitarian arm of the U.S. government” which, in 2023, included $40 billion in combined appropriations (0.4% of the 2024 U.S. federal budget). 

Approximately 2/3 of that funding goes to the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), an organization begun “during World War II to answer the call to serve migrants and refugees.”  Since it’s beginning, CRS has been governed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Prior to Trump and Musk led defunding, it has supported  200 million people in 121 countries through thousands of projects “from emergency assistance to long-term transformational development.”

When you attack USAID and CRS, you are hitting especially close to Catholics hearts. USAID was created in 1961 by the first Catholic President, John F. Kennedy. Around 1000 parishes, dioceses and schools join the USAID in fund raising that contribute to CRS programs. When Trump and Musk attacked USAID and the CRS, the response from the Catholic top brass was immediate. On February 10th, the Vatican labeled the action as “reckless and could kill millions.”

This was in part a response to the USAID website being taken down, and the USAID building in DC shuttered by Secretary of State and Catholic Marco Rubio who was now declared the Acting Administrator of USAID. It took only four days for a U.S. district court judge to issue a temporary restraining order in American Foreign Service Association v. Trump, with seven more organizations joining in on February 11, 2025, in Global Health Council v. Trump. The USCCB also took the unusual step of suing Trump directly, asking the court to declare the “suspension of aid to refugees unlawful.”

Punch 2: Attacking Conservative Catholic Mega-Donor – as  a “Sleazebag.”

Conservative Catholic leaders on May 30, 2025, woke to the news that the President had decided to label their most prominent and beloved financial and policy patron, lawyer Leonard Leo, a “sleazebag”, elaborating on social media that he is “a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions.” As if that wasn’t enough, he included the veiled threat “This is something that cannot be forgotten!” 

This was in response to the U.S. Court of International Trade’s federal judge panel ruling that the President’s tariffs were unlawful. A Trump spokesperson took a scorched earth approach, declaring on the day of the decision, “It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency. (The President will) use every lever of executive power to address this crisis.” Then things got really personal.

Leonard Leo is not used to being punched in the face. He co-chairs the Federalist Society and is the chairman of the uber-conservative PR firm, CRC Advisors, where he is credited with having a hand in the appointment of Catholic friendly Supreme Court Justices Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Coney Barrett, and Kavanaugh.

In addition to traditional corporate clients like GM, Chevron, and the Walt Disney Company, CRC Advisors has a litany of Catholic clients beginning with the USCCB, but extending deeply into a wide range of religious freedom advocacy organizations. 

Leo himself is a member of the Knights of Malta, described as “a lay religious order of the Catholic Church dating back to the 12th century, and he and his wife, Sally, were named Stewards of St. Peter, an honor given by the Papal Foundation to those who donate $1 million or more to the Vatican.” Add to that board positions at the Catholic University of America, the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, the Catholic Association and its affiliated Catholic Association Foundation,The Becket Law Fund, the Napa Legal Institute, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Trump is likely believing that a professional like Leo can take a hit in stride, and that delivering a message to Supreme Court patrons, most especially Roberts and Coney Barrett, is worth the risk. But angering a person like Leo, and those who adore him, and humiliating Supreme Court Justices could carry a hefty price. 

Like the rest of us, all these power players grew up in the same rough and tumble school yards that we did. And beyond being able to recognize a bully from a distance, we also learned to hold a grudge when bruised, and orchestrate pay-back that had been well-earned. We Catholics made a sacrament out of forgiving, but the Sacrament of Penance never required that we forget.

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By the way, when it comes to cutting Medicaid, in many Catholic hospital systems, 1/4 of revenues come from Medicaid reimbursement.

The Meaning of “Memorial Day” in 2025.

Posted on | May 25, 2025 | 2 Comments

 

 

Mike Magee

According to Veterans Administration historians, one claim on the origin of Memorial Day dates back to 1864 when three women from Boalsburg, Pennsylvania joined in grief to decorate the graves of family members who had died in the Civil War. A year later, other townspeople joined in and one year later, in 1866, women in Columbus, Mississippi, joined the event, in honor of fallen Confederate soldiers. That was 14 years after the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1952.

In that first year it was published, Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold over 300,000 copies. Author and critic Alfred Kazin called it “The most powerful and most enduring work ever written about American slavery.” It’s prominence in the American lexicon speaks for itself, and its relevance regarding goodness and governance, leadership by legislation, women’s roles in creating civil societies and the underpinnings of Christianity in the unrealized potential of the American dream all speak to the continued value of the publication.

On page 2 of the preface, Harriet Beecher Stowe comments on “memorializing” human hatred and cruelty to the ash bin of history. She writes,  “It is a comfort to hope, as so many of the world’s sorrows and wrongs have, from age to age, been lived down, so a time shall come when sketches similar to these shall be valuable only as memorials of what has long ceased to be.”

To this, we must respond today, “Not yet. There is work that remains.”

On the last page of her book, Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852 reflects (as if on our own modern day predicament), “This is an age of the world when nations are trembling and convulsed. A mighty influence is abroad, surging and heaving the world, as with an earthquake. And is America safe? Every nation that carries in its bosom great and unredressed injustice has in it the elements of this last convulsion.”

To this, we believers in human goodness and democracy must respond, “We will never be free, safe and healthy if our elected leaders promote policies – whether here or abroad – that belie our finer instincts, promote fear, and trigger predation.”

The White House, until recently, has largely been a sacred and treasured shrine. Back in 2013, our President at the time, Barack Obama, hosted our former President, George H.W. Bush and his family there to commemorate the 5000th award of a “Daily-Point-of-Light”, that the former President had launched to “honor individuals who demonstrate the transformative power of service, and who are driving significant and sustained impact through their everyday actions and words that light the path for other points of light.”

Here in part, is what President Obama said that day: “…given the humility that’s defined your life, I suspect it’s harder for you to see something that’s clear to everybody else around you, and that’s how bright a light you shine — how your vision and example have illuminated the path for so many others, how your love of service has kindled a similar love in the hearts of millions here at home and around the world.  And, frankly, just the fact that you’re such a gentleman and such a good and kind person I think helps to reinforce that spirit of service. So on behalf of us all, let me just say that we are surely a kinder and gentler nation because of you and we can’t thank you enough.”

Just a dozen years ago, just to be publicly “thanked” seemed enough. And “active citizenship” as a member of this great nation was viewed by many – by most – as a duty and an honor – even to the point of sacrificing one’s life in defense of this nation.

That, after all, is what Memorial Day commemorates. Action is required, as is goodness and virtue by example and daily behavior. 

We continue to struggle in the shadow of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. We lack perfection, but we certainly could, and should, do better. Because, to be healthy in America, to realize our full potential, to be civilized, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “to make good the cause of freedom against slavery you must be… Declaration of Independence walking.”

The “Pursuit of Blessedness” Is Running Out Of Time.

Posted on | May 19, 2025 | Comments Off on The “Pursuit of Blessedness” Is Running Out Of Time.

Mike Magee

Nine months ago, during the Presidential debate, Trump declared, when questioned directly about the Project 2025’s  “Mandate for Leadership, “I know nothing about it.” Even for Trump, this was a strikingly bald-faced lie considering that the former President’s name was mentioned over 300 times in the 887 page document. 

Described at the time by Pulitzer Prize winning economics columnist, Carlos Lozada, the work itself was an “off-the-shelf governing plan.” The carefully constructed manifesto was packed with conservative fan favorites, not simply “militarizing the southern border” and reversing what they call “climate fanaticism,” but also placing DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) efforts in the waste bin, banning abortion nationally, and pushing deregulation and tax cuts for the richest rich.

It is useful now to remind all freedom loving Americans, especially those who convinced themselves it was a good idea to vote for this guy, that we were warned – even if we were to ignore last week’s open-borders importation of white South Africans. Of course, if you have run into these characters on K street and beyond, none of this is surprising. This is who they are, and largely who they have always been. 

This is political jiu-jitsu practiced at its highest level. Rather than dismantling the “deep state,” these operators are fast at work “capturing the administrative state” for their own self-serving purposes.

Understanding jiu-jitsu goes a long way toward understanding the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society’s puppet masters. The word “Jū” means “gentle, soft, supple, flexible, pliable, or yielding.” It’s companion, “jutsu” is the “art or technique.” Combine the two, and you have the ”yielding-art.” The intent in bodily (or political) combat is to harness an opponent’s power against himself, rather that confronting him directly.

Political jiu-jitsu may be deceptive and confusing in the absence of visible weaponry, but it is anything but gentle. In the physical version, you are instructed in joint locks and chokeholds, but also biting, hair pulling, and gouging. Kevin Roberts, the President of the Heritage Foundation and editor of Project 2025, is a master of the political version. While he and Trump outwardly employed a “nothing to see here” stance, demographic realities were cued up in the document. How to win the election? “Voter efficiency.”  Or in the Project’s words: “Strong political leadership is needed to increase efficiency and align the Census Bureau’s mission with conservative principles.”

Roberts’ language was soft, but its impact hard indeed. In the introduction he suggested that the Declaration of Independence’s words “pursuit of happiness” were better understood to be “the pursuit of blessedness” while at the same time providing corporations a market free hand “to flourish.” Career civil servants were recast as “holdovers” without “moral legitimacy.” And the Justice Department needed a reshaping to eliminate “a bloated bureaucracy with a critical core of personnel who are infatuated with the perpetuation of a radical liberal agenda.”

Majority rules and demographic changes being what they were, alternative facts and voter suppression were added to the tools of “political jiu-jitsu” artists.  Kelly Anne Conway  certainly did her part by launching and legitimizing the concept of “alternative facts” way back in January of 2017. Amplified throughout the first Trump term, MAGA supporters were locked and loaded when Fox News with the defeated President’s support, reeved up the insurrection four years later, and then rode the misinformation campaign back into the White House four years after that.

What was not fully revealed in the 2050 play book was the critical role of Elon Musk. And yet, in retrospect, he was there in the shadows all along. At the September 12, 2024 All-In Summit 2024 hosted by RealClear Politics he said, “We do have an opportunity to do kind of a once in a lifetime deregulation and reduction in the size of government. Because the other thing besides the regulations. America is also going bankrupt extremely quickly. And nobody seems to… everyone seems to be sort of whistling past the graveyard on this one.”

Four months into the Musk-funded technocratic dismantling of our federal government, the confusion and chaos from attacks on HHS funding, academic institutions, due process, and a FOX only cabinet has largely shielded the continued work of Kevin Roberts and his followers. Their “nothing to see here” curtains are fully drawn as they get closer and closer to their envisioned autocracy.

Is there room for hope? All signs signal, “Yes.” Here are three advanced indicators:

1. Local elections thus far have rewarded Democratic candidates primarily.
2. Trump’s Tariff Policy has few clean exit options for its’ leader who is content to persist as long as he owns the daily news cycle.
3. Professional incompetence and in-fighting are undermining Project 2025 milestones in a political  environment where opportunity to dismantle our democracy is clearly “time-limited.”

The Pope’s Algebra Lesson – Health, Politics, and Religion.

Posted on | May 12, 2025 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

Algebra came to life last week when Trump/Musk’s dismantling of our federal health services collided with the dramatic election of our first ever American Pope. As Health, Politics, and Religion collided, we saw the Transitive Property of Equality (If A=B, and B=C, then A=C) spring back to life for the first time since the early days of Algebra I.

As it applies here:

A = Health

B = Politics

C = Religion

I first argued that A = B on March 23, 2005 at the Library of Congress before leaders of the World Health Organization. Why is health political? I answered in part, “Health is a collection of resources unequally distributed in society. Health’s ‘social determinants’ such as housing, income, and employment, are critical to the accomplishment of individual, family, and community wellbeing and are themselves politically determined. Health is recognized by many throughout the world as a fundamental right, yet it is irreparably intertwined with our economic, social, and political systems. And growth in health, health care, and health systems requires political debate and political consensus.”

As for B = C, New York Times religion columnist, David French says, when it comes to Evangelical Christians, politics is their new religion. Trump won the white evangelical vote by a 65 point margin. More on that in a moment. French’s commentary was triggered by our “Entertainer-in-Chief” deciding to undercut the passing of Pope Francis and the serious process of selecting his new successor, by placing a dress-up of himself as a Gold Laden Pope on his Truth Social site.

Why did Trump lash out this way. By all accounts he was disgruntled over having to share the limelight with Pope Francis, and then his successor – the Chicago born, Villanova trained, devotee to the works of Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, the former Cardinal Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV. 

The new Pope was a long shot. Nonetheless, the Conclave, on its fourth round of voting, chose this 69-year old product of Liberation Theology as the 267th occupant of the throne of St. Peter. This first-ever American Pope easily knocked Trump out of the news cycle – a fact neither the President nor his deeply conservative religious supporters could tolerate.

When it comes to Politics and Religion in America, Catholic numbers are problematic. Even after devastating abuse scandals left pews in most parishes empty on Sundays, roughly 1/5 to 1/4 of all U.S. adults (some 50 to 60 million) identify as Catholic. And some notable Catholic voices expect those numbers to rise significantly under this first American Pope who showed little hesitation in slapping down recent Catholic convert JD Vance 3 months ago for invading the religious doctrine air space with this direct statement: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

In Pew’s latest research, 54% of US Catholics are White, 36% Hispanic, 4% Asian, and 2% Black. More than four-in-ten are immigrants or children of immigrants. These congregants tend to be younger in a Church that had been aging fast with nearly 6 in 10 age 50 or older. Contrary to public opinion, Catholics are everywhere geographically now – 17% live in the Northeast, 21% in the Midwest, 38% in the South, and 24% in the West.

When it comes to B = C,  time’s have changed, says French. In his piece last week titled “Trump Is No Longer the Most Important American.” He wrote, “I’m not Catholic. I’m an evangelical from the rural South who grew up so isolated from Catholicism that I didn’t even know any Catholics until I went to law school. But I’m deeply influenced by Catholicism, in both its ancient and its modern forms.” 

French was a fan of Pope Francis, joining 3/4 of Catholics who also viewed him favorably. Before French’s well-publicized outing by his small (1/2 million) Calvinist conservative denomination, Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), French’s free-thinking riled his own congregants.He responded by turning to the enemy for guidance. “No book has influenced my approach to abortion and human life more than Pope John Paul II’s encyclical ‘Evangelium Vitae.’ It was in this study and reflection that I understood the true importance of the historical stream of Christian thought.”

Both French and the new Pope are Pro-Life, which places them at odds with most US Catholics, 59% of whom say abortion should be legal, including 42% of Republican Catholics. 61% believe Roe V. Wade should not have been overturned based on women’s bodily autonomy and access to reproductive health services.

What saves Catholics from devolving into a food fight? French says Catholicism is “an ancient faith, one that has endured through rulers and regimes far more ignorant and brutal than anything we’ve ever confronted in the United States.”

Not so his own former sect,  Presbyterian Church in America, whose origin story dates to a 1973 split from a slightly larger (1.1 million) Presbyterian Church of the United States over their “theological liberalism which denied the deity of Jesus Christ and the inerrancy and authority of Scripture…and the traditional position on the role of women in church offices.”

Summing up his experience French writes, “We belong to churches that measure their existence in months or years, not centuries or millenniums. Our oldest denominations have existed for only the tiniest fraction of time compared with the Catholic Church. That lack of perspective ends up exaggerating the importance of politics. It narrows our frame of reference and elevates the temporal over the eternal.”

The table appears to have been set for an epic battle over who represents the values Americans hold most dear. The battle sees Health, Politics and Religion on collision course. The winner may be the leader who is best able to integrate A, B and C. 

David French is betting on the newcomer. As he wrote last week, “In the case of Leo, the church’s witness to the world also becomes part of America’s witness to the world. Millions of Americans have been lamenting that the most prominent American in the world is a person who embodies cruelty and spite.”

I’m betting on Pope Leo XIV’s algebra skills.

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