Let Us Dream
Pope Francis's 2020 'Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future' — pandemic-era reflection (with Austen Ivereigh)
Tradition: Roman Catholic teaching / Jesuit social thought / post-pandemic political theology
Pope Francis's 2020 'Let Us Dream' — pandemic-era reflection on a better post-pandemic future
Published by Simon & Schuster in December 2020 from extended conversations conducted from June to October 2020 with Pope Francis's authorised biographer Austen Ivereigh, 'Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future' is Pope Francis's pandemic-era book-length reflection on the COVID-19 moment as a possible turning-point. The book is structured around three movements that Francis identifies as the discernment-pattern of crisis-response: (I) A Time to See — the diagnostic phase, recognising what the pandemic has revealed about the failures of contemporary global order (climate degradation, inequality, the precarity of much human work, the fragility of supply chains); (II) A Time to Choose — the discernment phase, deciding what kind of future to work for; (III) A Time to Act — the practical phase, the specific actions individuals, communities, churches, and political-economic actors can take. The book develops in more popular form the themes of 'Laudato Si'' (2015) and 'Fratelli Tutti' (October 2020). Distinctive emphases include: the rejection of 'isolationist populism' alongside the rejection of consumerist neoliberalism (Francis positions his programme between the two contemporary alternatives); the centrality of solidarity at neighborhood, national, and planetary scales; the option for the poor as the principal Catholic-social-teaching commitment; the call to 'overflow' rather than 'overcome' — to integrate marginal-experiential wisdom (from the poor, the immigrant, the indigenous, the imprisoned) into the central institutional life of societies. The book is the most accessible single statement of Francis's mature social teaching and was widely read during the 2020-21 pandemic phase.
Editions cited
- Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future (Simon & Schuster, New York, December 2020; in conversation with Austen Ivereigh)
- Spanish edition: Soñemos juntos: El camino a un futuro mejor (Plaza & Janés, 2020)
- Companion teachings: Laudato Si' (2015); Fratelli Tutti (2020); Gaudete et Exsultate (2018)
- Critical context: Austen Ivereigh, Wounded Shepherd (Henry Holt, 2019); Massimo Borghesi, The Mind of Pope Francis (Liturgical Press, 2018)
School Embodiments
Francis-papacy pandemic-era teaching.
"A time to see, a time to choose, a time to act." (Let Us Dream, structure)
Ecological-philosophical continuation of Laudato Si'.
"Integral ecology in a pandemic world." (Let Us Dream)
Humanist register on the possibility of a better future.
"The pandemic as a kairos." (Let Us Dream)
Latin-American liberation-theological background.
"The preferential option for the poor." (Let Us Dream)
Strong Christian-pastoral framework.
"The gospel as foundation of the dream." (Let Us Dream)
Roman Catholic tradition.
Internal Tensions
Francis's pandemic-era book; most accessible of his major teachings. The book's combination of theological reflection, social-political analysis, and Ignatian discernment-pattern was widely received during the 2020-21 pandemic phase; it shaped contemporary Catholic-social-teaching responses to the global health crisis.
I. Time
June-October 2020 conversations; December 2020 publication. The book was composed during the first nine months of the global pandemic; the conversations took place largely by video-call between Ivereigh in Britain and Francis at the Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican.
Attributes
II. Space
Vatican / global pandemic. The book's space is at once intimate (the conversations with Ivereigh) and global (the pandemic as the planet-spanning crisis the book addresses).
Attributes
III. Matter
Single book-length reflection (~150 pages). Form is conversational-essayistic, with Ivereigh providing structural framework and Francis providing the substantive content.
Attributes
IV. Observer
Late-middle Francis papacy. The observer is the Pope who had been elected in 2013 and was now seven years into his pontificate.
Attributes
V. Energy
Pandemic-era reflective energies. The book combines the urgency of crisis-response with the more reflective register of Francis's mature social teaching.
Attributes
VI. Information
Single accessible book. The three-movement structure (see / choose / act) reflects the Ignatian discernment-pattern Francis had been using throughout his pontificate.
Attributes
Personas that cite this work
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How Let Us Dream resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 3 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.