Chicago POPE

Twelve years ago, the creator of the Postmodern Conservative blog Peter Lawler wrote posts welcoming Pope Francis to his new job. What was interesting to Peter about Pope Francis was especially the name he chose- who doesn’t love St Francis, with his love of the poor and the natural world. Jorge Bergoglio was also the first South American Pope and spoke his mind employing social media in a way no Pope had before. And unlike Benedict XVI and JPII his predecessors, Lawler pointed out that Francis was not exactly a brilliant “philosopher Pope” when it came to his thinking- which could be a good thing and a bad thing.

As a Catholic I’m loyal to whomever is Pope, but I agree with Pomocon fellow traveller Dan Mahoney that a drawback of Pope Francis was his knee-jerk anti-American statements. Dan is right that those quotes from Francis echo the propaganda of Perón- era Argentina, which is where he was from after all. It is not very “catholic” (small -c) for a Pope to be against ANY country like that- but especially not a country like the United States with its proud tradition of advancing the protection of natural rights.

Now we have a new Pope- and one thing you know for sure, he won’t be anti-American; he IS AMERICAN! Cardinal Robert (Bob?) Prevost, born in Chicago, was made Pope Leo XIV. Naturally, the very first thing we Americans wanted to find out was: what are his sports allegiances? Hs verbose and hilarious brother set the record straight- he’s a White Sox fan, not a Cubs fan. In fact he was even there at the 2005 World Series against the Biggio-Bagwell era Astros, as video evidence proves:

Now an interesting question for us Pomocons is: will Leo XIV be a “philosopher Pope”? I think the answer is yes… in fact, from the first homilies he has given, there are signs it may even be something like a POMOCON “philosophy” he ascribes to. The name he apparently chose to be a continuation of Leo XIII’s legacy in writing Rerum Novarum. Back in 1891 the “new things” were big corporations, labor unions, and industrial life; the “new thing” we are challenged with today is Artificial Intelligence. I agree with this writer for the European Conservative, Lauren Smith:

In an era where people are increasingly cynical about the worth of humanity, it’s refreshing to hear Pope Leo so willing to speak up for the soul. His focus on human dignity is a reminder that no algorithm, chatbot or language model can ever replace what makes us human.

Or as the old Pomocon James Poulos once said- it’s gotta be “Human, Forever.”

There’s another statement Pope Leo XIV made this past Sunday that strikes me as very Pomocon. In a video message broadcast as part of the White Sox baseball program (their baseball is not so good these days- a southside friend tells me that God has a sense of humor in choosing a White Sox fan right now), Pope Leo said this:

We all live with many questions in our hearts. Saint Augustine speaks so often of our “restless” hearts and says: “our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O God” (Confessions 1,1,1). That restlessness is not a bad thing, and we shouldn’t look for ways to put out the fire, to eliminate or even numb ourselves to the tensions that we feel, the difficulties that we experience. We should rather get in touch with our own hearts and recognise that God can work in our lives, through our lives, and through us reach out to other people.

As every reader of Pascal knows- the human condition is unavoidably a restless one because we have a desire for eternity that cannot be fulfilled in this life… and the readers of Tocqueville know- we AMERICANS tend to be the most restless of all. Here’s to the first American Pope- he’s “on a mission from God.”