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.

Comments

2 Responses to “The Pope’s Algebra Lesson – Health, Politics, and Religion.”

ARTHUR ULENE
May 13th, 2025 @ 10:18 am

Actually, Mike, I think this is simple mathematics, not algebra. Here’s my take on this:

HEALTH + POLITICS = POLITICS.

I know this is not the kind of math we learned in school, but it’s also not algebra. It’s reality.
Mike Magee
May 13th, 2025 @ 10:50 am

Thanks, Art. What we call all agree on now is that Reality is front and center as denialism has just about run out of gas. Best, Mike