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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31065 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025

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Congratulations United States, you are Pope!

Edit: Sorry if that is too short but I am currently watching the livestream from Europe and am totally baffled.

Joel Berry, the managing editor of the Babylon Bee, wants you to know that "America has always been a protestant nation, and it must stay that way."

https://x.com/JoelWBerry/status/1920537379170877885

(Back in reality, America is down to 39% Protestant, not counting Mormons as Protestant: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/)

He also "jokes" that "We know the world is healing when Catholics and Protestants are fighting again." Ah, let's go back to the good old days when 1/3rd of the German population were killed in a horrific religiously-motivated war.

https://x.com/JoelWBerry/status/1920658687347089517

Berry isn't a marginal figure, certainly more influential at this point than, say, Jonah Goldberg.

Maybe conservative Catholics should start asking themselves whether "separation of church and state" might be a good idea after all. But I can't get my hopes up - even many "based" seculars would rather die in the mud than admit that the "libs" might have been right about something.

  • -19

This is level of feigned obliviousness I haven't seen since the last time Snopes beclowned itself.

You do know this guy is editor of a satirical magazine/website? That makes jokes and pokes fun in the religious context?

If I'm gonna have steam pouring out my ears about a humour site dissing the Church, there's bigger targets I'd go after right this minute.

You seriously think "America has always been a protestant nation, and it must stay that way" was meant as a joke?

By now? Yeah. There may be some extremist fringe set which hold that, but they tend to be more about the white supremacy rather than caring about the doctrinal content of the faith (and really want an American Civic Religion rather than Christianity).

If I'm gonna have steam pouring out my ears about a humour site dissing the Church, there's bigger targets I'd go after right this minute.

Given Parolin's pre-conclave behavior, that doesn't really seem very beyond the pale.

Guy might well have been ambitious, and I'm more "this is dumb" than truly outraged, but comparing "guy only pretended to be devout in order to get top job, now is pissed he was passed over and thinks he might as well have been a sinner because he never genuinely believed at all in the first place" to "guy makes joke that is obviously meant to be a joke about the Wars of Religion", is not comparing similar levels.

I took the opposite interpretation of that Onion article. It's obviously absurd that he would make all those efforts if his true goal were the papacy itself. Exploring how absurd it looks all spelled out like that is supposed to have the effect of humor.

Yeah, it's stupid more than offensive, and I'm not going to get outraged over it, but were I looking for "dumb jokes to get hot under the collar about" then the Onion would be first before the Bee.

He knew he had a shot at one day being pope a long time ago. He may have known this before entering seminary.

I’m kinda surprised the onion hadn’t been making fun of Pizzaballa(because of his name) or Tagle(because of his general tackiness and unpredictability giving them fodder).

Berry isn't a marginal figure, certainly more influential at this point than, say, Jonah Goldberg.

Is that a bar to be tripped over? Walked under? An insinuation of jewish nefariousness with a lastname like that? Some white nationalist thing? An epitaph of the National Review's fall from influence within the Republican party?

An epitaph of the National Review's fall from influence within the Republican party?

The latter. I was also making it clear that I wasn't "nutpicking" by highlighting Berry.

In this comment, you

  • Pretend to be ignorant of the monumental role Protestant Christianity had in the history of America

  • Express that you think religious wars are bad

  • Engage in a crazy drive-by about “church and state” in which you drop many implications that I suspect you know would get a lot of pushback if you actually bothered to articulate them.

Am I un-separating the church from the state when I simply engage in wholly secular governing mechanisms to reflect morals I hold? You know, the way literally every voter in a democracy does it? Am I agitating for theocracy when my morals are informed by the Bible, while yours are informed by NYT headlines? I can’t know, because I’ve already thought about this harder than your comment merits.

Why should Catholics suddenly be more interested in your personal, potentially ahistorical, interpretation of separation of church and state due to the Babylon Bee guy’s words? What do “based” seculars have to do with it? Do you think they might prefer religious hostilities to the race riots we’ve seen recently? If they hypothetically do, would you be able to understand why?

Again, I can’t know. Good job pasting three different links, though, and nice flair I guess. It’s excusable as long as it’s self-aware, right? Except this kind of humor is falling out of style in favor of sincerity, as the discussion about the Minecraft Movie notes.

Pretend to be ignorant of the monumental role Protestant Christianity had in the history of America

Nice job rebutting that strawman argument I didn't make.

Why should Catholics suddenly be more interested in your personal, potentially ahistorical, interpretation of separation of church and state due to the Babylon Bee guy’s words?

I really have to spell it out for you people, I guess. Encourage Protestants to use the power of the state to enforce their religious morality and they may well decide to come after Catholicism, which they have traditionally seen at best as a corrupt and degraded form of Christianity. Like communists, you guys are always assuring us that this time it will be different from all those previous times.

Do you think they might prefer religious hostilities to the race riots we’ve seen recently? If they hypothetically do, would you be able to understand why?

The good old days when whites were slaughtering each other over religion and burning witches, but at least everyone was white.

https://www.takimag.com/article/the-third-worlding-of-the-american-mind/

(You might get the witch burnings but won't get the whiteness. The populist coalition is growing increasingly non-white itself - which should hardly surprise anyone - who do you think conspiracism and superstition appeals to?)

Again, I can’t know. Good job pasting three different links, though, and nice flair I guess. It’s excusable as long as it’s self-aware, right? Except this kind of humor is falling out of style in favor of sincerity, as the discussion about the Minecraft Movie notes.

There was nothing non-sincere in my comment.

Encourage Protestants to use the power of the state to enforce their religious morality and they may well decide to come after Catholicism, which they have traditionally seen at best as a corrupt and degraded form of Christianity.

The dominant strain of Protestantism in the USA does not care about non-moral theological differences within nicene Christianity and is also unable to do much of anything without assistance from conservative Catholics. This is a reasonable worry from a Mormon perspective; and Mormons know this. It is not a reasonable worry from a Catholic perspective.

Catholics, BTW, were mostly not burning witches. Witch burnings by country is basically a Protestant heat map.

I really have to spell it out for you people, I guess. Encourage Protestants to use the power of the state to enforce their religious morality and they may well decide to come after Catholicism, which they have traditionally seen at best as a corrupt and degraded form of Christianity.

I, for one, appreciate having this spelled out. I might have anticipated that objection during the George W. Bush administration, but I don’t anticipate it now.

I think you are writing in good faith, but I don’t think you understand how Protestant social dynamics have evolved. When Berry says “a Protestant nation,” he has a different idea what that means than a turn-of-the-twentieth-century counterpart might have had. While on a theological level Catholic vs. Protestant theological differences mean as much as they ever did, on a social level differences between theological liberalism and theological conservatism are much more salient. (This is strongly related to social progressivism vs. social conservatism and weakly related to economic leftism vs. economic rightism.)

If Berry got his dream, would he shutter Roman Catholic schools? No, I don’t think so. Would he shutter Jesuit schools? Maybe. But not because of Jesuits’ oaths of loyalty to the pope – because they are, in fact, liberal as heck.

Berry isn't a marginal figure, certainly more influential at this point than, say, Jonah Goldberg.

This seems like a reasonable statement.

Maybe conservative Catholics should start asking themselves whether "separation of church and state" might be a good idea after all.

Why? I get your general thrust here: Reasonably-influential Protestant reminds us all of the conflict between Protestants and Catholics. You appear to be basing this on the idea that inter-tribal conflict is a problem that is or should be taken seriously, and appear to be suggesting that the Catholic/Protestant split is one that deserves attention, and particularly that this fault and its consequences are significant enough that based whoevers should admit that the "libs" might have been right about something. Your framing of his statement about protestant and catholic conflict in terms of the worst possible example of that conflict seems notably disingenuous to me, but let's leave it be.

What sort of response are you hoping for here? As someone who disagrees with most of this, would you be interested my presenting some examples of what actual serious tribal splits with serious real-world consequences look like in our present context? If not that, then what's the proper way to continue this conversation, in your view?

Your framing of his statement about protestant and catholic conflict in terms of the worst possible example of that conflict seems notably disingenuous to me, but let's leave it be.

Don't think it would have been seen as disingenuous had I illustrated communism by its worst possible example. But I can give a less terrible one. In the Based Protestant Netherlands, Catholics, after initial persecution, were grudgingly tolerated. They were allowed churches, so long as they were built to look like ordinary apartment buildings, anything more was an unbearable provocation. And of course it was unthinkable that anyone from the Catholic community, 35% of the Dutch population, could serve in high levels of the Dutch government, the way the Catholic ~20% does in America today.

That Trump photo? We should have paid more attention, he was telling us "Next pope is going to be from the USA" 🤣

I'm amazed. This was a fast result and I don't think Prevost was on the list of top contenders. Well, shows what I know with my "after the run of non-Italians, an Italian is likely next"!

Rumor has it Dolan was the kingmaker in the conclave and Burke also swung behind Prevost early. Maybe he did get the American cardinals to elect an American.

Seriously not literally strikes again.

He's also a Peruvian citizen who spent most of his career in Peru and gave a portion of his speech in Spanish.

He's an Augustinian, who are not (last that I knew) one of the crazily liberal orders. Not saying he doesn't have liberal notions, but I'm guessing he'll be a centrist: some of his decisions will be decried as too liberal, some as too conservative. I don't think we're going to get gay trans poly married clergypersons just yet, but he might or might not stick with some of Francis' pastoral moves on divorce etc.

He had a reputation prior to this as ‘somewhat of an empty cassock, company man through and through, tends to be a lib but is always always the most moderate of them, truly atrociously poor record of handling abuse cases’.

‘Centrist who lets the church float’ is probably about right.

truly atrociously poor record of handling abuse cases

Which seems, by the first media reports, to be a whopping two cases, one of which wasn't on him and another of which may be tied up with a dodgy society which was dissolved by Francis.

The dossier against Prevost — released by some unreliable digital outlets — claims that in April 2022, three sisters met with the bishop to report that two priests from his diocese had abused them in 2004 when they were between the ages of nine and 14. According to the accusers, Prevost told them that the Church had no means to investigate the matter, although he encouraged them to report it to civil authorities, assuring them that an investigation would be initiated within the Church once the case was reported.

The sisters claimed that Prevost referred them to the Listening Center, an institution created by the bishop just weeks earlier to help abuse victims. According to the dossier, the sisters then approached the police to file a report but were told that the case had already expired due to the statute of limitations.

The 18-page report also accuses Prevost of covering up another sexual abuse case involving a priest in Chicago, when the now Pontiff was the provincial superior of the Augustinians. The Vatican states that it has investigated these allegations as well and found no evidence to support them.

So he told the alleged victims to go to the police who then failed to prosecute on a technicality. That does not sound like "cover-up" to me.

I do wish my fellow conservative brethren in the church would stop swallowing down at a gulp media reports, do we not remember that the media wants a pliant, Zeitgeist-compatible, church and so any sniff of scandal is grist to their mill? And that people with agendas will rush to put their story forward the second any new major appointment happens?

More information on Prevost available here: https://collegeofcardinalsreport.com/cardinals/robert-francis-prevost/

Dude wasn't even a cardinal 2 years ago and is now Pope...

If this is the stuff we know of, he's got enough skeletons in the closet to be very reliable indeed.

Primer on how it works in the church for those who aren't catholic. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/mccarrick-catholic-church-how-the-lavender-mafia-works/

The few Italian catholics who I'm following on twitter are seething.

Italians seethe and cope

Gosh, somebody piped up to accuse him of mishandling sexual abuse allegations. I'm so surprised - not. There's a lot of people making a tidy living from being professional agitators about this, usually with an accompanying laundry list of "we demand zillions in payouts/also the Church must totally change every single bit of doctrine so the stuff we like isn't a sin and it becomes just like a mainline liberal Protestant denomination".

When there's real grievances, I'll listen. When it's "fifteen or so years ago, somebody said that there was something happened" not so much, because while there has been genuine horrific abuse, there has also been ambulance chasing lawyers and people looking to make hay out of it. "Oh did you know X is bad because whisper whisper?" Funny how these allegations all immediately popped up after the announcement but not in the days beforehand?

Your Italians are seething because an Italian didn't get selected.

Your Italians are seething because an Italian didn't get selected.

Said Italians were hoping for Erdo.

Unfortunately, their Erdo’s number wasn’t sufficient

This is what necropapers are for.

Italy was Erdo’s weakest point in Europe, though.

His mishandling abuse cases were known to Vatican watchers well ahead of time and probably the reason he didn’t make many lists of papabile. You’re suddenly hearing about them because he suddenly became pope.

Apparently well known to the Vatican which investigated them and found nothing there. As to "Vatican watchers", I wish my fellow conservatives would stop looking for "the smoke of Satan, he's a liberal! he'll ban the Latin Mass for good and all! he'll force us all to allow married women priests and excommunicate us and burn us at the stake!" every time anyone who is not Archbishop Lefebvre is in the news. Some of them seem to yearn to be persecuted, as though the challenges of living the faith in the modern world were not enough. No, I'm not just cosplaying the old rites as part of a miniscule element of the universal Church, I'm so important that the College of Cardinals needs to oppress me specifically by who they elect as the new pope!

Do you think I liked the sweeping changes that threw the baby out with the bathwater? Do I approve of the lack of catechesis which means the vast majority of modern Catholics are more ignorant than the unchurched of their own faith? Was I happy with everything Francis did?

No, but he was the pope. And now Leo XIV is the pope, and I am not going to waste time and energy hoping for a "ah yes, the lavender mafia, he's secretly a flaming gay being blackmailed by them to cover up abuse scandals" Real True Truth revelation to blacken his name (particularly when one of those scandals seem to be heterosexual not homosexual).

A surprisingly large percentage of the population lives within shouting distance of an elementary school. Is the Catholic Church supposed to lock people in jail?

The local prior, not the prior provincial (Prevost), accepted the request of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

I would say the stuff that happened in the Diocese of Chiclayo is stronger evidence of poor responses to sexual abuse.

Yeah. Often what happened with accused priests was that before they were officially defrocked, they were sent to live in a religious community where they could be monitored. This particular one happened to be in range of a school. Not the best choice, but choices are going to be limited about "we need to send this guy somewhere and there aren't a lot of places we can do that".

If I'm getting it right, the accused priest wasn't an Augustinian, so probably one of the secular clergy in the diocese. Doubtless the facts will come out in time, but the damage has already been done.

It is in times of change like these that I remember how important it is for the Catholic Church to reach out towards each and every human, no matter how different their tastes may be. After all, it is the catholic church, and so what better way to do this than give the people for mass something with a bit more oomph to it. May I present to you The Vatican Rag.

(All credits to Tom Lehrer)

Seems like genuinely a cool guy from the little I’ve read, though it’s been a little interesting to see Wikipedia editors, in real time, slip in small whitewashing edits of his page of some negative stuff along with the benign edits. Dunno how much to read into that, but I guess it’s whatever. I hope he makes us Americans look good!

Apparently a progressive in general terms, albeit not a radical one by the standards of the church.

More or less a centrist. He was considered to have dragged the Pope Francis admin in a meaningfully centrist direction and the stats nerds who predicted his election put him smack dab in the middle of the cardinals by viewpoint. Center-left maybe, but the most centrist center left winger to have been technically center left, and probably more likely to govern by machine politics and procedure than with any ideological influence. There's a reason that the rumor of the ultraconservative faction swinging behind him early is being seriously entertained by the more informed observers.

He's against women being in the clergy, against homosexuality, and against nonbinary genders. Doesn't sound very progressive to me, actually a big step back from Francis.

There is, literally, a single cardinal who isn't against homosexuality and nonbinary genders. There are a slightly larger but still very small minority number that supports women clergy.

He also had universalist views on salvation from what I’ve read of him. His belief, AFAIK was that sincere Jews and Muslims didn’t need to become believers in Christianity to be saved. That’s pretty darn progressive/liberal thinking from a Christian perspective.

Even in the 14th century such questions were live, and it's still open as to how to interpret the virtuous non-Christian and their ultimate fate. What we are to be concerned about is (1) preach the Gospel so that all will have the chance for salvation and (2) worry about the state of your own soul, not the non-believer:

For you would say: ‘A man is born along
the shoreline of the Indus River; none
is there to speak or teach or write of Christ.

And he, as far as human reason sees,
in all he seeks and all he does is good:
there is no sin within his life or speech.

And that man dies unbaptized, without faith.
Where is this justice then that would condemn him?
Where is his sin if he does not believe?’

...After the Holy Ghost’s bright flames fell silent
while still within the sign that made the Romans
revered throughout the world, again the Eagle

began: “No one without belief in Christ
has ever risen to this kingdom—either
before or after He was crucified.

But there are many who now cry ‘Christ! Christ!’
who at the Final Judgment shall be far
less close to Him than one who knows not Christ;

the Ethiopian will shame such Christians
when the two companies are separated,
the one forever rich, the other poor.

Francis also believed all those things.

Francis' critics and fans outside the Church both seem to have a wildly exaggerated idea of how progressive he was. He was more tolerant (and I use the word advisedly) on certain social issues and was a vocal proponent of the religious humanitarianism* that is pretty standard for the Catholic Church, but he was still fairly socially conservative. He might have be liberal for the pope, but that isn't saying much.

*which, granted, puts him at odds with the... lifeboat capitalism of the contemporary American conservative movement

He has an X account which, unfortunately, seems to be aimed at dunking on the US republican party.

That twitter post mostly links to a longer article on the National Catholic Reporter.

It starts by quoting JD Vance:

"There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that."

Now, JD Vance is is a Catholic, and he is making a claim about a "Christian concept" which is vaguely reminiscent of Subsidiarity.

Now, I am not a fan of non-political organizations meddling in day-to-day political affairs, be it the American Mathematical Society or the RCC. But that does not mean that these organizations should keep quiet when they feel that their teachings are misrepresented. If Trump claims that 15 is a prime number, then I will not consider it undue meddling if the AMS releases a press statement which says that he is wrong. If JD Vance had called it a common-sense, Protestant, Jewish or Hindu concept, then I would consider the NCR reaction undue, like most cases of "my religion says what you do is bad". But a bishop disagreeing with a Catholic who explicitly invoked Christianity does not seem undue to me, never mind "dunking"

Because pope Francis famously didn’t like American conservatives and Prevost was known as a brown noser.

Oh yeah, the universal teaching of the historic Church has been all about anti-the Republican Party of the United States.

I'm being forcefully reminded why Americanism was declared a heresy.

What are you on about? Pope Francis was known for disliking and distrusting conservative Americans regardless of other factors even as the USCCB became more close to the Republican Party, not less.

I don’t doubt that pope Leo XIV’s criticisms of the Trump admin are genuine, but his decision to emphasize them rather than issues with democrats(abortion, some stuff with religious freedom/antidiscrimination and education policy, LGBT+, etc) was probably contingent. He’s literally a registered republican.

I am generally skeptical of “he was only pretending to be [x]” arguments.

He was also a registered Republican.

That just means he's a US bishop, they (and indeed the hierarchy in general) tend to be seen as "quasi-Communist" on economic matters and "rabid sexists/homophobes" on sexual liberation matters.

Well, yes, because Christianity is quasi- or proto- Communist.

Luke 12:48 has "from each according to his abilities", Acts 4:32-45 has "to each according to his needs".

Interestingly, the previous Leo was not exactly pro-Socialist...

To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.

His Bachelor's was also in Mathematics. I am liking this new pope more and more by the minute!

I find the lack of info a bit strange. Presumably, he was in the top ten candidates, so I would have expected newspapers to have a full dossier on him. Just because the Catholics might not care much for his politics in this moment, it does not mean that the rest of the world should adopt the same standards.

The Guardian has mostly his biographic data. BBC has a bit of commentary:

As 80% of the cardinals who took part in the conclave were appointed by Francis, it is not all that surprising that someone like Prevost was elected, even if he was only recently appointed.

He will be seen as a figure who favoured the continuity of Francis' reforms in the Catholic Church.

Prevost is believed to have shared Francis' views on migrants, the poor and the environment.

Although he is an American, and will be fully aware of the divisions within the Catholic Church, his Latin American background also represents continuity after a Pope who came from Argentina.

During his time as archbishop in Peru he has not escaped the sexual abuse scandals that have clouded the Church, however his diocese fervently denied he had been involved in any attempted cover-up.

So he might be American, but probably is not MAGA-adjacent.

Presumably, he was in the top ten candidates

As the saying goes, those who go into the conclave as papabile come out still cardinals. I didn't see his name on those lists in the media about Top Sixteen Picks For Pope, which doesn't surprise me. I'm genuinely surprised by this election. I would never have bet on the First North American Pope. And it happened during Trump's administration too - Making America Even Greater by the day! 😁

Most of those lists were dumb agglomerations of candidates secular journalists thought they could write an interesting thinkpiece about. We'll have a better idea of how the rounds of voting went and who was a runner up as more cardinals leak over the next few days, but initial impressions are that the church specific journalists had a reasonably accurate idea of the frontrunners for the first few rounds, they just didn't know who Dolan would whip for, and didn't expect the uberconservatives to break for a known pragmatic centrist instead of throwing all in on a more ideologically acceptable longshot. That those happened to be the same person enabled Prevost's victory.

I didn't see his name on those lists in the media about Top Sixteen Picks For Pope, which doesn't surprise me.

Were Francis or Benedict on those lists? I may not be recalling well now, but I seem to recall "wait, who now?" as the response to some of the papal announcements in my lifetime despite lots of commentary on likely candidates.

Ratzinger was the overwhelming consensus in 2005. Bergoglio was genuinely surprising to secular media but informed watchers would have had him as papabile.

I think Benedict had 3:1 odds at one point. Francis was a bit less likely, but he had been noted in the previous election as having some support, so it wasn't out of the blue.

He was chosen by the previous pope to oversee selection of new bishops. So he is almost certainly very reliable and that it took only 3 days to elect the pope means the progressive faction has things well in hand.

Prevost had actually been frustrating to the progressives for his unwillingness to put a political thumb on the scale in selecting bishops; the largely meritocratic process continued essentially unchanged through the Francis pontificate despite the progressive clamor to ‘select candidates who share pope Francis’ vision’.

Yeah, after initially freaking out people who care a lot are saying he might not be that bad. He's also allegedly not opposed to TLM which was (inexplicably) contentious.

TLM which was (inexplicably) contentious.

I think there were several reasons at work:

(1) We've got the Novus Ordo now, we have changed the liturgy, stop trying to hold back time and work within the new framework in your local parish (the majority moderate set)
(2) Are these guys more of those crazy schismatics? Because they're sounding an awful lot like those crazy schismatics (due to some of the commentary around/by the trads being very similar to the Rad-Trads who were a bit too adjacent to the "we defied the Pope way back when for not being sufficiently orthodox, now funnily enough we're ordaining lesbian priestesses ourselves" splinters)
(3) Will we never have progress? Just when we thought we were finally going to catch up to the Protestants and get with the times and dump all those dusty old doctrines, these hold-outs are making us look bad! (the very liberal/Spirit of Vatican II crowd)

The typical bishop who has the Latin mass as a live issue likes the Latin mass because he never has to worry about it and gets at least something from fairly low investments. There are exceptions but TLM restriction was not popular with the world's bishops or with the junior clergy. Many were upset at orders to be the bad guy, just didn't understand why they were supposed to be cracking down, resented Vatican micromanagement on the issue, and thought that the benefits of a permissive attitude towards the Latin mass outweighed the completely negligible costs. Summorum Pontificum was the majority moderate opinion.

Thé latin mass went from a minor issue to a big one when cardinal roche started stepping on toes trying to restrict it. Many, many centrist or even liberal bishops saw the Latin mass as a fringe group which paid its rent for very little in return and resented the Vatican attempting to crack down on it. Especially in the rust belt American bishops felt mistreated by the Francis pontificate over the issue- putting a Latin mass in the parish with surrounds too dangerous for people to live in was a common trick for keeping these often historic parishes open and paying their tithe.

Prevost is believed to have shared Francis' views on migrants, the poor and the environment

Real snoozefest issues in this profile. I want to know if he has ever celebrated mass ad orientem. How does he feel about Latin and gregorian chant?

There are photos of him in a fiddleback chasuble, and what we’ve seen this far indicates he likes at least some Latin and chant.

He's an Augustinian, they don't have the kind of radical reputation that the Jesuits do. So he could be more tolerant on that than you'd expect.

https://x.com/tradcathdixie/status/1920542560436605010

"Former rector of the Major sem here says he saw Prevost in Rome privately saying the TLM in his private chapel at the congregation of Bishops, 3 or 4 yrs ago." He wouldn't lie. He has been around quite some time. He had the only indult to say the TLM at the USCCB office in Baltimore back in the 90s.

Big W for the iron law of bureaucracy. Nobody outside the clergy had ever heard of this guy, but he was in charge of the diacastry for bishops, basically the church’s HR department.

"Why in Lenin's name is the General Secretary suddenly running the Politburo?!"

Kek. Yeah everyone remembers Stalin’s cold command and rule by fear, but he never would have been able to do that if he hadn’t spent most of the twenties rules-lawyering the Communist Party bylaws.

He also served 30 years in Peru and is not a WASP (well, obviously):

Wiki:
Robert Prevost was born in Chicago on September 14, 1955, the son of Louis Marius Prevost and Mildred Martinez. His father, who was a United States Navy veteran of World War II and school administrator, was of French and Italian descent, and his mother of Spanish descent. Prevost speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese, and can read Latin and German.

Yeah I have no idea what to infer from any of this. I haven’t listened but read something noting that he wasn’t using English in his address, opting for Spanish and Italian. Is that to mitigate the crime of being an American?

He spoke of “building bridges,” apparently, which of course means nothing. I’m not Catholic so I have no idea how to interpret the facts as they are.

"building bridges"

One of the Pope's formal titles is Pontifex Maximus, which literally translates as "supreme bridge builder," and along with the Keys of St. Peter bridges feature heavily as motifs in papal proclamations, bulls, teachings, etc. So generally very on-theme for a new Pope.

Cool, I'm happy for Catholics that the pope is committed to being pope-like, but anyone unfamiliar with the faith could be forgiven for only being able to take away a fully generic message of "We in the church should do our best to be decent people" from his address.

The whole purpose of the church is to show us what that means and how to do it, which of course comes with perilous controversies because we have many other philosophies trying to do the same and coming to different conclusions.

I get it, this is his first address, and the pope is severely constrained by millennia of history that he can't really riff on. But that's what I meant by it of course meaning nothing.

It's Rome, he's gonna have to speak Italian because there would be riots in the street if the new pope spoke anything else, no matter where he comes from 😀 Spanish is probably a nod to his missionary work and to continuity with Francis. Wait for his first Urbi et Orbi for Christmas to hear him go through all the languages he does speak, or if he will continue Francis' break with giving the blessing in different languages.

He spoke of “building bridges,”

'Pontiff' derives from 'pontifex', Latin for 'bridge-builder'.

I love this post. No extraneous text, just a direct injection of educational information. Obvious in hindsight, but I'd never have thought about it if you hadn't spelled it out. I am better off for this post, in some minuscule way.

He's lived in Peru most of his recent years.

The pope predictor was right.

Sort of. He was the front runner on the "Papability Index" but dropped to the fourth place just before the conclave due to the "bad press" factor in his model. Still, this guy was better than anybody else in predictions. Prevost had about 1% chance on betting markets.

Has the guy published his model somewhere, or do you have to piece it together from a twitter feed?

Described here: https://x.com/pope_predictor/status/1892995523340058889

Oh, what the hell.

No Pope Pizzaballa. The meme dream is dead.

But the new pope is from Chicago, home of the deep dish?

Pope Deep Dish Pizza instead.

The Onion already has the culinary angles covered.

True! Although I am worried that as a Packers fan I'll find myself excommunicated soon.

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