THE LATE Cardinal Francis Eugene George of Chicago, who died in 2015, said there would never be an American Pope until the United States went into political decline. He reasoned, wrongly as it has turned out, that the worldwide Catholic Church would not elevate an American to its highest office while the United States remained so dominant in the affairs of the world. Taking their cue from Cardinal George, a majority of American Catholics, both lay and clerical, saw the prospect of an American Pope as extremely improbable, if not impossible.
On May 8, VE Day, marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the bloodiest and costliest war in human history, we learned that the impossible was indeed possible. On that day, an American, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, was chosen by his peers to represent Christ here on earth. Thus far, I know of no one who predicted it would happen. Some may say they did, but I doubt if they are telling the truth. I was certainly taken completely unawares, as were those of my acquaintance who, like me, are Catholic, let alone the vast majority of my fellow Americans.
Because so little is known about the new Pope, the usual suspects are working overtime to fill the void. It is said that he was active on social media, so many are going there to get a clearer picture of this self-effacing Augustinian friar who has spent much of his pastoral life in Peru, working tirelessly and sometimes heroically among some of the poorest people in the world. Due to his indefatigable efforts on behalf of the people in northern Peru, he is known there as the ‘Saint of the North’.
As his pontifical name, he has chosen Leo XIV, suggesting an affinity to Leo XIII, whose 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum (‘Of New Things’) laid the foundations of what is now capitalised as Catholic Social Teaching. In it, Leo XIII directly addressed the seismic changes that were occurring in the world due to industrialisation and the rise of capitalism. The encyclical highlighted the appalling conditions and suffering in which working-class people found themselves at the end of the 19th century.
One need not be a progressive Catholic or progressive of any kind to admire Rerum Novarum. I admire it and I’m as far away from being a progressive as it is possible to be. However many of those on the left who express their admiration for it (and there will be many more of those in the days and weeks to come) and praise its championing of the industrial proletariat and critique of capitalism, invariably overlook or deliberately ignore those sections that unequivocally condemn socialism and its evil genocidal fraternal twin communism. To his credit, the president of the private Catholic university where I work did not ignore those aspects in a recent group email; still, he studiously avoided Leo’s bold criticism of feminism, where Leo writes the following: ‘Women, again, are not suited for certain occupations; a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty and to promote the good bringing up of children and the well-being of the family.’
Papal encyclicals are usually rather long and easy to cherry-pick. A team of Catholic academics managed to write about Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, in which the late Pope condemned the excesses of consumerism and environmental degradation, without referring to the following passage, which, due to its beauty and centrality to the encyclical’s argument, I quote here in full:
‘Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away”.’
Because the new Pope was close to Francis, who had appointed him prefect for the Dicastery for Bishops, a department of the Roman Curia responsible for overseeing the selection of bishops, and gifted him a cardinal’s hat, many expect him, especially in the remarkably uninformed legacy media, to continue his predecessor’s progressive footsteps.
Liberally minded Catholics applaud this, hoping that Leo will take the Catholic Church to places where even the radical Francis feared to tread; traditionally minded Catholics, however, are understandably worried for the same reasons, that Leo will be like Francis on steroids, making changes to the fundamentals of Catholic social teaching and liturgical practice that could lead to schism.
I say, wait and see. It is still early days. No one is really sure in which direction he will take the Church founded by Christ and Saint Peter, whose direct successor he is.
Yes, I know, MAGA is hopping mad and complaining that Leo XIV is a woke Trump-hating Marxist, at least according to a hysterical piece in the Independent. I voted for Trump and would vote for him again, and was gratified by his gracious congratulatory to this first American pope.
Popes can be highly unpredictable. Pius IX was placed on the throne of Saint Peter as a result of a liberal coup in 1846, but went on, after he was forced to flee Rome during the revolutions of 1848, to become arguably the most reactionary in papal history, responsible for, among other things, the notorious Syllabus of Errors, a document that essentially condemned all aspects of the modern world and led to a wave of anti-Catholicism, especially, but not exclusively, in the Protestant world, and remains a bone of contention even today.
No one can really be sure about Leo XIV. What we do know for sure, because we’re already seeing it, is that the MSM and liberal pundits in academia will continue cherry-picking him, as they did with Francis, highlighting what suits their ideological narrative, his criticisms of Trump and his pro-migration stance, while ignoring the parts they don’t like, his belief in the sanctity of life, opposition to same-sex relationships and same-sex child adoptions, and his criticism of transgenderism.
The Catholic Church is entering a very interesting period in its long history.
