The Rorschach Pope

Decoding Leo XIV

Greetings, gentle readers! Many apologies for the thin posting this month, especially for those of you patiently waiting for exclusive content. I had to concentrate my writing energy on a massive article commission that derailed all other work. (I’ll be excited to share more details when the whole thing is closer to completion, but for now I can say it’s going to be a chapter in a large anthology project.) Fortunately, I’m over that hump and eager to get back to this little Stack’s regular programming. To the new subscribers who’ve come along in the meanwhile, welcome, and thank you so much for your support, at whatever level. It means a great deal.

This post will be free for all readers, but paid content is coming this week. The next exclusive piece will continue my Shepherds at War series on World War II chaplains, telling the little-known story of how American Jewish chaplains mediated between the Army and the survivors of the Nazi death camps. Very sobering, moving stuff, and I can’t wait to write about it once I’ve finished absorbing a book or two on the topic. I’m also gestating some new book reviews, finally giving my takes on the latest work from writers like Rod Dreher, Ross Douthat, and Douglas Murray. Once our schedules align, Dreher and I want to record a moderated discussion on our friendly differences over the thesis of Living in Wonder soon, hopefully constructive. Speaking of recorded discussions, I mentioned way back in my ARC posts that I’d recorded a February chat in London with former Australian Deputy PM John Anderson. We ranged all over the place, but I’m told that the editing team got something publishable out of it all and will be releasing it soon.

Meanwhile meanwhile, I mentioned back when I started the war chaplain series that I was saving my favorite Catholic chaplain story for First Things, a tribute to forgotten hero Fr. Lawrence Edward Lynch. He earned the nickname “Fr. Cyclone,” because he spent his life in perpetual motion. Lynch was a tremendous character, a quintessential New York tough guy priest. He gave his life at the very end of the war in the Battle of Okinawa, best-known as the place where pacifist Desmond Doss earned a Medal of Honor (immortalized in Mel Gibon’s Hacksaw Ridge). Like many under-rewarded heroes, Lynch probably deserved the same. As the kids say, he was unbelievably based. Anyway, if you like military history and you want a taste of my research here, but you’re not a paid reader, I’m pleased to announce that this piece is finally live, after being delayed by…recent events. But it wound up fortuitously timed, as people are now freshly moved to reflect on the rich legacy of American Catholicism.

On which note: Let’s talk about the pope. Or, should I say, DA POPE!

But first, you may ask, why do I care who’s pope, seeing that I’m a Protestant with no intent to come home to Rome? (Sorry to my Catholic readers.) Well, I think my WORLD magazine editor Andrew Walker put it pretty well in this pre-conclave piece:

Whatever my disagreements with Catholicism (and they are many), the moral firmament provided by an ancient and visible institution cannot be overlooked. In the eyes of a secular world, the pope is not just a leader of Catholics; he is a symbol of the broader Christian moral witness. Protestants may bristle at that, but it is an undeniable reality. And when that symbol is weakened or distorted, as it was under Pope Francis, it affects all of us—Protestants included.

He goes on:

I have spent my adult career laboring alongside Roman Catholics in a spirit of co-belligerence. While we will always debate theology, the morality we both strive for gives us a common cause to link arms in the broader fight against secular progressivism. But Catholics need their pope to act, well, Catholic.

Just so. Andrew and I may not be Catholic, but we both recognize that things should be what they are, including Catholic things, including and especially popes. Further, Andrew and I are about of the same young generation that is increasingly skewing traditional among Catholics as older liberals age out.

Like me and everyone else, Andrew had no idea who Cardinal Robert Prevost was until five minutes ago, but he tweeted concern when the first whispers went around that we might be looking at Francis 2.0. However, it quickly became clear that trads and progressives alike were squinting at the Rorschach pope with equal intensity, all projecting their particular self-fulfilling prophecies onto him. No word, gesture, wardrobe choice, or old tweet has gone un-dissected. His now-deleted old account retweeted a rather shallow critique of J. D. Vance’s ordo amoris comments. Hmm, sounds woke. However, we also found a video from 2012 where he unequivocally says that gay stuff is bad. It’s 2012 but still, based. And he dressed up all fancy for his first balcony greeting, unlike Francis’s first emergence in simple white. Based and trad-coded! And, and, look at this clip where he turns his back on a rainbow flag while working a handshake line. Super based! Er wait, it actually wasn’t a rainbow flag, it was an Italian peace flag. Never mind.

In his recent interview with Fr. James Martin, Ross Douthat wound up playing prophet when he predicted that we might see a very quick decision converging on a candidate exactly like Prevost: someone with perfect Vatican credentials, not a firebrand, low-key and competent, known and well-liked by everyone. In other words, a bureaucrat. One might say this choice has the strengths of its weaknesses. On the plus side, everyone likes Pope Leo. On the negative side, everyone likes Pope Leo. Bishop Barron sounded happy, but so did Fr. Martin, who for Protestants not in the know has spent his career undermining Church doctrine on LGBT issues. (Like all sophists, he pretends otherwise, but people who weren’t born yesterday saw through him years ago.) Here Martin reassures a gay journalist that Leo is “committed to synodality…an open person…very smart.” And regarding those rather strident 2012 comments, “what someone says or does as a cardinal does not always predict what they say or do as the pope. We need to remember that the Holy Spirit gives them also the grace of office.” Translated: Don’t worry, I’m sure the Holy Spirit is inspiring the pope to sound more like me as we speak.

Meanwhile, the ladies on The View were a bit shocked and disturbed to find evidence that the Catholic pope had once said Catholic things about sex. Not that Francis had exactly changed the doctrine either, but he had given off more progressive vibes, getting their hopes up that maybe someday the Church would go the way of the American mainline. They’re cut from the same cloth as the creators of the movie Conclave, in which not a single conservative Catholic cardinal comes out looking uncorrupt, even if the liberals are imperfect. In one scene, the main character frets that an especially bigoted candidate would “take our Church back to an earlier era.” Naturally, the arrow of Progress always points left.

As a Protestant, I believe the Catholic Church is no less vulnerable to leftward drift than any other institution. Individual churches and priests more or less mirror the factions of Protestantism in their relative adherence or non-adherence to basic doctrine. I think it’s entirely possible that we could see a full-fledged progressive pope in my lifetime, even more so than Francis. However, I also think the View ladies will have a while to wait until then.

The current and former pope knew each other in South America before Francis was elected, and they were far from aligned on everything. At the time of Francis’s promotion, Prevost was still a priest, and he joked that now he would never be a bishop, thank goodness. But Francis apparently decided to put their differences aside and fast-track Prevost into position as his potential successor. This initially gave traditional Catholics some cause for concern, given how vindictively Francis used his platform to target them. As my Catholic readers will know well, but Protestants might not, there has been an especially bitter debate around whether traditional Catholics are allowed to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) versus the new English mass, which became standard after Vatican II. Where Pope Benedict XVI left that decision up to local bishops, Pope Francis took it out of their hands, scolding more conservative lay Catholics who cherished the old form as rigid and backwards. Parishes couldn’t even advertise the Latin Mass in their bulletins. (“Rainbow Masses” were apparently fine though.)

More evangelical Protestants might struggle to see why the fight over the TLM intrinsically matters very much. But it’s worth reflecting on what such traditions symbolize, and what larger message is sent when they are aggressively taken away from faithful Christians who care about preserving them. Here’s my friend Kale Zelden, sharing just how deeply Francis’s pettiness hurt him as a devout adult revert:

You know, it’s confusing because up until twelve and a half years ago, it was made abundantly clear to me as an educated layman who actively practiced his faith that this is… It means these things, and we want you to do these things, and we want you to…worship, and we wanted you to serve. And then all of a sudden, through having done nothing, like I didn’t throw a pitch, I didn’t make…all of a sudden, I became Bad Guy. I became Rigid Guy. I became, you know, Psychologically Disturbed Guy…I was impious. I was all of these things overnight.

And, you know, no. No. That’s not the way you do things…When I read my way back into the church after a petulant “I’m out of here” at the age of 16 or whatever it was…I read my way back into the church, and then I practiced my way back into the church, with a sense of heroism and a robustness of call and the sense that this was meaningful and significant and enduring. That this is… I’m not hitching my wagon to the latest, greatest Model T. No, I was hitching my wagon to something that had kind of withstood the ravages of modernity. And now all of a sudden, because I had withstood the ravages of modernity, I’m now suddenly being put out into the pasture. And I’m still…you can tell I’m still kind of mad about it.

With an American pope, analogies to the Supreme Court feel apt. Progressives love to insist that the overturning of any terrible SCOTUS decision is equivalent to overturning the “rule of law,” even when the decision itself was unlawful. It remains to be seen whether Leo proves more of a Scalia or a Roberts.

But there are reasons to be cautiously hopeful. The new pope doesn’t come across as a petty, shallow man. He conveys stability, intellectual seriousness, and genuine warmth. He’s been moved to tears more than once on camera as he feels the weight of his office. By all accounts from family, friends, and colleagues, he is humble, disciplined, and secure in his own skin. (His personal trainer was shocked at the announcement, saying he never even knew Prevost was a clergyman, much less a papal candidate.) I find this Pillar report about his work with conservative priests in Peru especially encouraging. At first, they worried about how a Francis-appointed bishop would deal with them, but they report that he respected tradition, had their backs at all times, and trusted them to administer as they saw fit. This is some tangible evidence that his message of welcome is genuinely universal, unlike Francis’s “Todos, todos” for thee but not for thee. As Kale poignantly puts it, “It feels like maybe Dad doesn’t hate me anymore.”

For American Catholics in particular, it is naturally moving to see an American son in Peter’s chair. It’s purely wholesome to think about his sheer Midwesternness, his Chicagoness, the fact that he has a favorite baseball team (the Sox, originally misreported as the Cubs). It’s hilarious to see him calling one of his brothers on air and irritatedly asking why he hasn’t been answering his phone. Then there’s his other brother, Louis, who’s turned out to be the Platonic ideal of the Trumpy Florida Man. Someone found Louis’s spicy Facebook posts and sent them viral, which the poor man then had to answer questions about in major interviews. (Someone apparently thought it was a New York Times-worthy headline that he promised to “tone it down.”) But the interviews have been gentle, and Louis’s charm is infectious. It would be easy for many people to take one glance at his cruder posts and dismiss him as a “deplorable.” Perhaps when they see the lovable, soft-spoken man on camera, in childlike awe that “my baby brother is the pope,” it will do their souls good. “I’m gonna call him Rob,” Louis says in one interview, thinking about how he’ll greet his brother now. “Maybe I’ll try to accost him and hug him, maybe they’ll frown on that too, I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of nonsense they do.” (They later shared a brotherly embrace after Leo’s inaugural Mass. Nobody stopped them.)

Louis shares that “Rob” always had a special aura about him, even as a little kid playing priest. He also had some steel in his spine, which comes out in a story Louis tells about their boyhood bike-riding around dodgy Chicago neighborhoods. One day, they were accosted by a gang of rough lads with switchblade knives. Louis, ever the pugilist, was ready to rumble, but Rob’s cooler head prevailed. Somehow, at only 5 or 6 years old, he knew how to negotiate with the hoodlums, and the brothers were allowed to go biking on their way. The story is so classic, it feels like the sort of spice a writer would shake into a biopic. All the more so since it foreshadows Prevost’s dangerous work as a young priest in Peru, at a time when there was a real chance he might be murdered. His New York Times profile opens with a vignette in which young Prevost faces down a group of soldiers trying to impress him and his brother priests into the military. Prevost managed to make it through his ministry without being shot, but one colleague who shares his memories with the Times survived a gun wound to the head. In such fires, true shepherds are forged.

Like my traditional Catholic brothers, I would prefer to see a pope who’s rather less cryptic, rather more fierce. Thinking about the classic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, I would prefer a pope in temperament more like the fiery Abbot Zerchi, the sort of man who casts aside bureaucratic niceties and leaps into the fray with fists flying. I would love to see blatantly corrupt priests like James Martin excommunicated for good, where they can no longer lead the sheep astray. I believe it will ultimately require a firebrand pope to not merely stall but reverse the Church’s leftward drift.

At the same time, quietness is not in itself a sign of weakness. In Leo, I think Catholics and Protestants alike will be glad to have an example of true holiness, humility, and paternal care. To quote Lutheran pastor John Snider, recalling the man as Snider knew him 15 years ago, “He was grounded. He was mature. He knew how to move among people, to say his piece, to be aware of others. If you know how to love, you’ve come a long way. And I think Bob knew how to love; that has not changed.”