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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22977 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.

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

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.

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