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Papal surprise — 29 Comments

1. J. D. Vance’s comments were based on Thomas Aquinas. So, the new pope is not an academic theologian, evidently, and he gets his news from left-wing media. Catholics are surely praying that his new responsibilities will bring different perspectives.

2. Me, from the open thread:

   Even Fox News reporters can’t get religious history straight. They say this about the new pope:

   Leo would go on to be elected twice as leader of the Augustinian religious order, a 13th century order founded by St. Augustine.

   Not even close. It was founded on the writings of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, North Africa, who died in AD 430.

   https://www.foxnews.com/world/first-american-elected-pontiff-get-know-pope-leo-xiv

3. Pope Leo:

   Tear your Vatican Wall down!

4. The progressives will be disappointed by this guy. He’s a sop.

5. He’s a Villanova alum. Nova goes undefeated next season.

6. So the talking heads are all gaga over the “American” pope. My impression is that he is as “American” as Barack Hussein Obama. And just about as full of self-righteous BS.

7. The new pope left the US at the age of thirty and has spent most of his life in Peru. He has American and Peruvian citizenship (he had to get the Peruvian papers when he became a bishop there).

   So far, progressive Catholics sound very happy about him, and conservative/traditionalists, much more guarded.

8. The Pope is a White Sox fan.

   I never thought I’d see the day.

9. New Pope, same as the old Pope…

10. Let’s just hope he doesn’t try to lead us all down the shining path(TM)…

11. If Papal Surprise were a dessert what would its recipe be?

12. Well, strictly speaking, Francis was the first “American” Pope since he came from South America. Leo is the first Pope from North America, the first US Pope.

13. Re: Papal Surprise

    OK. I’m thinking:
    _______________________

    crème brûlée — yellow
    layer of vanilla wafers — brown
    whipped cream — white
    chocolate sprinkles — black
    maraschino cherry — red
    drizzle of amaretto — Italy
    _______________________

    Roman Catholic racial harmony!

14. Vance was correct in that argument. You don’t have to go to Aquinas: quite obviously we all have a greater duty to care for those near to us, for whom we are directly and immediately responsible, than for those on the other side of the world. Francis’s spiteful, petty, and wrong public response was all too typical of his papacy.

    I am very mildly and cautiously hopeful about Leo XIV. The choice of name is encouraging. There have been some great Leos.

15. “I’m going to assume the Pope-to-be knows a great deal more about Christian concepts than I do”

    Yea, I don’t think that’s a safe assumption at all.

    At any rate, I’ve never really understood the fascination of non-Catholics with the election of a new political leader for the Catholics.

    I know, I know…they claim he’s a spiritual leader who’s hand is guided by God, but strangely, God’s guidance seems to be drifting to port over the past few decades.

    I was taught in Sunday School that God is all knowing and unchanging so how His guidance could so curiously veer to the left all the sudden is a mystery.

    It’s almost like Catholic leadership is more concerned with worldly politics than spiritual holiness…just like many of the major Protestant denominations as well…which is why I’m no longer a Presbyterian.

16. Sailorcurt: “…they claim he’s a spiritual leader who’s hand is guided by God…”

    Not really. We hope he will be, of course, but that depends on him. The only guidance guaranteed is negative–that he won’t actually deny the faith.

17. Kate – Augustine lived in the 4th and 5th centuries, but the Augustinian order was founded in the 13th.

    https://augustinian.org/about/order/

18. Talked to someone I trust completey on these matters last night – deacon in the church, Chicago metro area, and pretty dialed in with all things Catholic. He’s reasonably familiar with Prevost. He assures me he is more centrist than Francis theologically, but is very similar to him politically. When I asked if he’d be able to keep his mouth shut about politics he paused, and said, “Well, we’ll just have to see.”

    For what it’s worth.

19. Yes, Bauxite, that’s what I said.

20. his part in the betrayal of Bishop Strickland of tyler texas, because the former unlike Mcelroy is theologically sound, counts against him (Strickland doesn’t hold a grudge, however we should take that into account,) of course because he is one half creole or some such, in the genealogical department, that will count for him with the ‘right people’ in addition to his political stances,

    peru in the mid 80s, was facing an insurgency by the maoist Shining Path,
    which the military handled not too diligently, the incoming president
    Alan Garcia, who was caught up in the Car Wash scandal a generation later thought bank nationalization was the answer, to what question, this is what prompted vargas llosas public statements as well as his quixotic presidential campaign, largely premised on the question of property rights, that Peru was very deficient on, these where the circumstances which the future pontiff
    faced in his mission work,

    some of his current statements sound much like the conventional wisdom that Vargas Llosa jr and Carlos Alberto Montaner debunked in the 90s,

21. NYT is touting Leo’s possible descent from mixed-race “free people of color” in Louisiana. Curiously absent from the article is that such people frequently owned slaves.

22. Mike Plaiss @12:46, I count that as a moderately positive report. It was too much to ask for the cardinals to select Burke. Sources I have read say that the new pope considers his words carefully, so we can hope there will not be repeat performances of Francis’s off-the-cuff comments which caused so much fuss.

    If he will confine his efforts to preaching the Gospel to all people and to trying to clean up the Vatican, he’ll be an excellent pope.

23. well this is a good sign,

    https://www.lifenews.com/2025/05/08/radical-pro-abortion-group-catholics-for-choice-blasts-new-pope-leo-xiv/

24. The comments to the 2016 post Neo linked (back when she was neo-neocon) had very good observations, and the usual thoughtful remarks in the comments.
    I want to draw attention to a comment from “mf” that links to a post in American Thinker by Rabbi Aryeh Spero.
    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/02/trump_the_pope_and_the_bible.html

    In response to Donald Trump’s call for constructing a wall at our southern border so as to stem the illegal migrations into our country, Pope Francis indicated that Mr. Trump is “not a Christian,” since, as the pope says, “Christians build bridges, not walls.”

    As a rabbi, it is not for me to decide what is Christian; however, I can speak to what the Bible says about such matters.

    With regard to then-Cardinal Prevost’s response to VP Vance, IMO they are talking about two necessary, but not identical, facets of love: the Cardinal of the unselfish feelings respecting the infinite value of all human beings in the sight of God, which indeed cannot be ranked; and Mr. Vance of the practical application of that love in service to others, which must be prioritized in order to be effectual.

    I think most of the ginned-up controversy is actually over Vance’s remark that, “A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.”
    Which seems to be true.

    My own feeling is that anyone who dictates what someone else should do to serve others (even if calling it love and charity), regardless of the sacrifices required by that someone, while not themselves experiencing the same level of effort and sacrifice, is engaged in neither love nor service.

25. @AesopFan:IMO they are talking about two necessary, but not identical, facets of love: the Cardinal of the unselfish feelings respecting the infinite value of all human beings in the sight of God, which indeed cannot be ranked; and Mr. Vance of the practical application of that love in service to others, which must be prioritized in order to be effectual.

    I think what Vance was alluding to was something more sinister. Screwtape observed:

    Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don’t, of course, mean what the patient mistakes for his will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy calls the Heart.) All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from our Father’s house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there…

    And Dickens had the character of Mrs Jellyby, who practiced “telescopic philanthropy” on the natives of Borrioboola-Gha but neglected her own family:

    “You find me, my dears,” said Mrs. Jellyby, snuffing the two great
    office candles in tin candlesticks, which made the room taste
    strongly of hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was nothing
    in the grate but ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker), “you find me,
    my dears, as usual, very busy; but that you will excuse. The African
    project at present employs my whole time. It involves me in
    correspondence with public bodies and with private individuals
    anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country. I am
    happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time next year to have
    from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating
    coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank
    of the Niger.”…

    …It struck me that if Mrs. Jellyby had discharged her own natural
    duties and obligations before she swept the horizon with a telescope
    in search of others, she would have taken the best precautions
    against becoming absurd, but I need scarcely observe that I kept this
    to myself.

    There is a species of progressive that loves abstract humanity but hates actual humans. And I think this is what Vance was really getting at. We are commanded to love our neighbors. Our specific, actual, neighbors, who since they are not abstractions are often absurd, irritating, stupid, rude, or low-class. But real humans who deserve our real love as shown by real and specific actions of love; not by writing checks or letters to the editor and whatnot on behalf of categories of people.

26. A couple of people demonstrate true charity, and a lot of people show love by putting their money to work instead of just their mouths.

    https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2025/05/09/feel-good-friday-homeless-vet-gives-away-his-last-dollar-what-happens-next-transforms-his-life-n2188897

27. 1Timothy 5:8, “If anyone doesn’t provide for his relatives and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

28. i’ll hold my fire for now

    https://www.theblaze.com/shows/glenn-beck-podcast/bishop-removed-by-pope-francis-reacts-live-to-announcement-of-leo-xiv

29. Niketas: I agree-something more sinister. Thank you for posting those excerpts. Spot on.

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