Behind the Scenes Minis: Pope Riot

commentary on it. But it's tricky, especially when it fell to you to read some of the more like super pro old school Catholicism stuff that he wrote, right, I more struggled with the grammatical construction than like the content. I'm like, you know, I read whatever, whatever we're quoting, I read it. That was not my personal words that are coming out of my mouth. It's a quote. But like there were multiple times that there were just the words were in an order that my brain was really

having a hard time with. Yeah, And some of that is that it's translated from Latin, right, And some of that is that it was translated a long time ago, when it was pretty customary for a lot of English language official documents to be more stilted. Anyway, Yeah, I don't know who did those translations, but I have so little familiarity with like any of the like doctrine of

the Catholic Church. Ohh, because like I grew up in an area that was overwhelmingly Protestant Christian, Right, I feel like I could count the number of like Catholic students in my school classes in single digits, being one digit being my one finger holding it up to count one person. And some of that was because there were Catholic private schools that a lot of the Catholic kids went to

that I would not have known otherwise. But just like that was overwhelmingly there were the flavors of Protestantism that were mostly what was represented in my day to day life. So it's like most of my familiarity is more the things that are widely represented in various popular culture, like the fact that the pope exists and confession and monasteries, like you sort of absorb those kinds of ideas through

media and whatever. And then when we were getting into things about his documents that he was writing, I was like, none of this is really connecting to these in my brain very well, right, Yeah, it's interesting, right, I grew up half my mother's side of the family very Roman Catholic, so definitely grew up with that. And it was very funny when Poplio the fourteenth was announced. Where was I.

I was somewhere. I think we were driving home from either the Vets office or like coffee with a friend, and Brian was reading it to me on his phone because I was driving, and he was like, oh, he's Poplio the fourteenth, and I was like, oh, this is a very interesting choice. And I was just like spouting off things I knew about Poplio the thirteenth to poor Brian, who was like, okay. And I did see a lot of news coverage of Leo the thirteenth that summated him

in ways that removed the complications of his papacy. And there is an interesting thing that has emerged in like the last twenty years where and even longer really probably more like forty to fifty years, where historians and scholars, you know, in the early half of the twentieth century, there was a lot of like I don't want to say whitewashing because that's not accurate, but there was a lot of writing about him that made him seem much more liberal than he was. Sure he was obviously in

some ways very progressive and liberal for his time. The fact that there was a pope in the early nineteen hundreds going no workers' unions was pretty groundbreaking. But he also there was a lot of writing that left out how much he was like, Nope, we're not gonna change the church ever. Yeah, you gotta straighten up and fly

right if you want to be at our party. And it was like a lot of that gets left out, right, Yeah, And I mean that doesn't necessarily detract from the progressive things he did, Yeah, but it is a partial picture, and it oversimplifies the complexity of any human being, and particularly a human being that does wield a lot of power. Even though he may not have held the political maneuverability in terms of like ruling papal states that prior press had had, he still was very influential on a huge

portion of the global population. And as we mentioned at the end, he was very good at outreach and pr and talking to other people that were not part of the Catholic Church right had power and you know, creating relationships with them that he could then exert power through. So he's really fascinating to me. Yeah, I was on vacation when the conclave happened, and was not really looking at news a lot because I was on vacation, hooray.

But I got a push a push notification on my phone from a group chat that I'm in that just said white smoke. And then like the next time I actually looked at that group chat just had an enormously long discussion and I was like, I'm not reading any of this. But a couple of people had, like in my social circle, had pointed to sort of threads of analysis of like this choice of pope and what it could mean and stuff like that, and I was reading through them and I was like, I just I don't understand.

I don't know what half of these things that you're talking about are. Like they were talking about different kind of factions within the church, different movements that had happened. Yeah, And I was like, I've never heard of any of this at all, Like it's just not within my scope in a lot of fos, right, Well, it is really interesting to watch the ways the selection of the pope has often been a hard shift from what has gone before.

That was almost one of the more unique things about the selection of Leo the fourteenth is that they actually said oh this was Pope Francis's pick. Well, then that's our guy, Like it wasn't so much. No, no, we should hard shift to a far more conservative stance than Francis had because I was getting us in trouble or picking a moderate like just so how quickly that conclave played out and that they picked his guy was really interesting. Yeah,

I was. I was not expecting the Somebody had mentioned like, oh, the conclave starting, and I was like, yeah, I'll probably gone for a while. I was one hundred percent wrong in that. This is why I should not talk about things that I have a little familiarity. Well we did. I mean, the thing is, though nobody knew. I mean there were discussions going into that, Like the second Francis passed, there was a lot of like, are they gonna like rubber band back the other way? Are they gonna try

to find someone who's a little middle ground? Are they now? Granted I do feel like there will be more middle ground than people may be hoping with the new store, but yeah, it's just the whole thing is fascinating to me, and having been raised half Catholic, it's super fascinating. Like when we were in Italy, and we were walking through the Vatican Museum. I was losing my mind. Yeah, yeah, and writing down names of popes as we went for things that I wanted to cover in the future. Leo

the thirteenth was one of them. So this offered up an opportunity because he is, you know, he gets a lot of like nicknames that are very much like he was a magical unicorn gateway between Catholicism and the new era of industrialization. And I mean, I guess if you really reduce things down, you could say that, yes, but it's so much more complicated, and more recent scholars have pointed out, like, hey, those versions that we read in the nineteen teens about his life are really really adoring,

right right, Yeah, you know, any he's I'm fascinating. I'm fascinated by it all. Yeah. We talked about the Christiana incident this week. Yeah, I'm glad that you did this one because it had been lingering on my short list literally for years, just hanging out there, Christiana Riot with a question mark afterward. Yeah, not even researched enough to really think about whether riot was the correct term to

use there or not. Just there on the list. Yeah, it gets written about and as we said at the top of the show, the Christiana Riot, the Christianic Resistance, the Christiana incident. And I think part of the problem is that the actual details of what happened in those you know, ninety minutes where things were really happening, are so messy and confusing that there's almost no way to know what the right thing was except that we know that, yeah,

the first shots fired were Gorsas people. Yeah, and we like we've talked in various previous episodes about how often things that are described as quote race riots, like that term is loadfully incorrect and loaded in terms of describing what actually happened, which was often a white mob attacking a black community that then became described as a race riot. Yes, there's an interesting, weird tie in that I discovered that

doesn't really fit in the narrative. But I was like, what, So, Edward Gorsich had another son that was younger than Dickinson named Thomas. Thomas went to school with and was friends with a younger boy named John Wilkes Booth. Oh wow, Okay, it's one of those things too. This comes up a lot for me, and I imagine it does for you, and really anyone that studies history, particularly of the US's earlier years, because it's so populated now that the idea

of so many people knowing each other seems absurd. But then you'll read these things and it's like, this person was tied to this person, and I also knew this person, and I'm like, were there seven people living in the US for a long time? But it really was much smaller in terms of population than it is now. It's hard to consider. Even so, that's still a weird coincidence in my opinion. John Wilkes Booth just in case anybody doesn't remember, I remember, but just in case, is the

person who assassinated Abraham Lincoln the Wild Times. This did become for me such a fascinating look at what all was going on, And I highly recommend if people find this story interesting, that you go read William Parker's story in The Atlantic. It's listed in the show notes as one of the sources. Because he is a character in a way, not in the jovial way that you would often use that term, but like he sounds like an

intense dude that was very ready to go. If it was like, all right, great, we gotta fight these people. We gotta fight these people. There's no questions about it. And like, there's a phrasing that he used at one point where he was talking about one of the things that his group of men, and it's very interesting because even in older write ups and newer it's often described as a vigilance society, but not very specifically a vigilante society,

which is an interesting thing. But that he would basically like everybody had to like swear their intentions before they would go do a thing like, listen, we all know this guy is giving up people who are gonna get kidnapped and taken away. We have reached a point where we have to burn his house down. You guys all have to swear that you're in for this and that

nobody's gonna like turntail. And he would do that before any of these things, it sounds like, and that's right, is just a very fascinating sort of careful way to measure intention and quite thoughtful because at that point he has all of them on some sort of record, like everyone else in the group has witnessed. You said you were going to do this, We're all doing this. That just fascinated me, Yeah, he kind of abruptly left his

wife though, which makes me sad. I don't know what the relationship was, right, but I was like, oh, that's an Oh, that's a sad ending. All right. They've been through so much. Stay together, make love last. They had a lot of kids together. But you know, everybody's life takes a different path. I don't know what his personal life experience was. I was just thinking, you never know, you never know. Maybe it was miserable. I don't know.

I don't know. I started working on this kind of in a fit, and it was in the middle of the night as I am off and working in the middle of the night because myserk Katiean rhythms are weird. And then I was like, took a few hours in and I was like, I should check with Tracy because I'm not sure if you had mentioned it at one point in the past. But I was like, I feel like this was when she was thinking about doing yeah and bless you. You were like, yeah, but I haven't

done it, so go ahead. I have this list of potential topic episodes, and it's like down at the bottom of a spreadsheet that we use for planning out what we're doing. Yeah, like what we're recording when, And it's wild to me that we're still using a spreadsheet. I just I have not thought of a better way to do it to make sure that we have enough episodes recorded to account for upcoming time off. But down below it is just this like huge list of things that

I've been thinking about doing. And Christiana was up near the top of that list. So it's totally possible that looking at that calendar repeatedly, it's I probably remembered it. Yeah, yeah, because I keep my list on my phone because sometimes I'll do stuff like if I am traveling and I haven't started a show yet, I'll be like, what am I thinking of? I have time on this flight I could maybe start. And I don't always have my computer

with me on those on trips, right. I make notes If I'm out about, out and about in the world and I see something that seems interesting, a lot of times I will put it into a notes app. The other day, I'm not going to spoil what it was, But the other day I was I was doing a thing that made me think of something to maybe do as an episode, and so I just emailed myself from my phone. Oh, yeah, I did, with just that one word in the subject line, like, I'll remember what this

means on Tuesday when I returned to the office. How often do you not remember what that means? I am more likely to lose track of things that are in the notes app, especially if like a really long time has passed between putting something in a note and then like if I kind of go I am running short of ideas? Do I have anything that I didn't transfer over to the list from the notes app? And occasionally I will run into stuff that I will think at first was a topic idea for the show, and it

will turn out to be something absolutely unrelated to the podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've done that. You know. Sometimes you'll be like, I say you, I mean that in the general not you. Tracy will say sure, you know. You'll be like, oh, yeah, I'll remember, of course. I remember. This is very important. It's made an impact on me. Sally made an impression on me. I'll never forget what was that. I don't

even know this name means. Yes, when I emailed myself this one word subject line of an email with nothing else, I was like, I'm am I going to remember what this means? When I get back to work, we'll see yeah, sometimes I do and other times no. But I have to write everything down because otherwise some other shiny object will supplant it and then I want to game here, or I'll be like a kiddie. Look listen. Unrelated to history, unrelated to anything. I'm gonna tell you an amazing thing

that happened to me at the airport. Great. So we are coming off of the weekend when I had a lot of people that came into town to spend time with us, which was wonderful. And while I was waiting for one of my friends at the arrival's lobby, I had seen this woman walk by a couple times holding a puppy, and then she looped around a third time and she looked at me and said, will you hold this puppy while I set up a little playpen for him? And I was like, are you also going to offer

me a million dollars and a cake? Like? What, of course, give me the puppy. It was the cutest little thing. And it turned out she was meeting the puppies new people and they had not gotten in yet and the puppy needed to stretch. It's like like, I can't carry him around and I don't want to leave him in the carrier. He's very young, and I'm worried he needs a potty pad, and so I want to set up his thing, but I can't hold him and do it. Can you hold him? Right? It's just like the bliss

the sweetest puppy. The puppy licked my face and I almost there was a flash in my brain of if you just run out the door right now, this is your puppy. I don't need a puppy. I'm not equipped for a puppy. But it was so sweet. It was a great moment. Yeah, sometimes the universe gives you puppy kisses. Yeah, just cuz. Yeah. We some friends and I went on a hike over the weekend and we were going to hike and then we were going to get in the car and drive approximately two and a half hours to

get back to where we all live. And as we were in the in the car setting off, we all kind of realized we were more tired than we thought we were gonna be u And so my friend who was driving, was like, Okay, if I see a place to buy coffee, we're stopping. Yeah, said great, and so we stopped at this like little locally owned coffee Roasterree. We went and we just got something to drink. We came out and there was somebody with the cutest little corgi outside of the coffee shop, and so we all

got to have surprise corgi time. It's the best surprise puppy time. It's pretty magical. Now you're making me want to go and buy a coffee at a cute new place. They're probably not, but you never know. But there's a place near us that has a really yummy banana latte that I'm obsessed with, and now I have to go get another one. Okay, delicious. They also have a lavender latte with is it Holapano sugar on it? Oh it

sounds wild, but it's so perfect and delicious. I love it. Anyway, I'm glad we got to take a look at this topic this week. I'll loop it back to history because we always talk in broad strokes, not we people in general. You know, there's a presumption that we I know, how the Civil War like ratcheted up to the point that

it became a declaration of war. But there are a lot of moments like this that are important steps on the way to it, and I think it's important to look at them because we're all experiencing a lot of moments that are important and could potentially be steps to bigger things that are scary, and I just think it's important to look at history. Thank you. Yeah. If this is your weekend coming up, I hope it kicks butt.

I hope you have a great time. I hope you have a lot of fun and that surprise puppies land in your world. Who know on that maybe the delicious coffee if that's your thing, Even if it's not your weekend, maybe you could have surprise puppy time. I hope that everybody is kind to one another. And if you don't have time off this weekend, I really hope that you at least sneak a little bit of time away for yourself in whatever way recharges you best, whether that is

alone or with people you love. We will be right back here tomorrow, last episode, and then on Monday we will have something brand new. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,