Pope and Change

Usually I wait until morning to propose topics to my editors but sometimes the takes are too hot to sleep on. On Thursday night I pinged them excitedly with ideas for a column about Robert Prevost, native son of Illinois, and as of yesterday the most famous American on Earth.

The fact that the man now known as Pope Leo XIV has voted in Republican primaries yet appears “uneasy” with the president’s immigration policies raises the tantalizing possibility that a Never Trumper now leads the Catholic Church. Some on Twitter have even dubbed him the “Bulwark pope,” although I dunno about that. Leo’s reportedly pretty socially conservative by the standards of American politics. He sounds more like a Dispatch pope to me.

We should send him a gift subscription, assuming he doesn’t subscribe already. (Congratulations, Your Holiness!) 

The hot take I proposed was welcoming Leo to “the Resistance,” maybe even analogizing his ascendancy during a period of Trumpist menace to a Polish pope’s role in ending communism. But one editor cautioned me that a 2,000-year-old faith probably isn’t basing its leadership decisions on something as worldly, stupid, and disgusting as modern American politics. 

And that’s true. There are more compelling explanations for how a White Sox fan ended up as the Vicar of Christ.

For one thing, he had the numbers. The late Pope Francis, whose more progressive-ish views Leo seems to share, appointed 108 of the 133 cardinals who voted in this week’s conclave. Go figure that they preferred someone in their patron’s mold to a more conservative alternative. Pro-life American Catholics should understand better than anyone that if you want an institution to deliver certain results, having the numbers means everything.

Leo was also well positioned by experience. Two years ago Francis made him prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, which meant he had to build relationships with many of his colleagues in the College of Cardinals. The church is a singular organization, but it is an organization, and in any organization those who have made friends within the hierarchy tend to get promoted.

As for any baggage Leo might have carried by dint of being an American, that was apparently mitigated by the years he spent in Peru as a missionary and later as a bishop. (He was eventually naturalized, making him a dual citizen of that country and the United States.) He came to be known at the Vatican as the “least American” of the American cardinals and went out of his way to demonstrate it in his first remarks as pope to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, speaking in Italian and Spanish—but not English.

One U.S. theology professor interpreted the eschewing of the pope’s native tongue this way for Time magazine: “He was saying, ‘I’m an American, but I’m a different kind of American. I’m not a nationalist; I’m a person that cares about the entire world.’”

A different, less nationalist kind of American?

Hmmm. That does sound a bit political.

A political choice.

The last thing Leo wants for his papacy, I’m sure, is to see it sucked into the sleazy reality show that is Trump-era American politics, a black hole of shame and nihilism from which no dignity can escape.

In fact, my guess is that he’s less likely to comment on policy in the United States than the other candidates to succeed Francis would have been. Doing so might tempt Catholics here to choose between their loyalty to an American-led church and their loyalty to Trumpism, and not all would choose the church. It would also demean the pontificate, as surely the Holy Father has more exalted business to attend to than serving as the president’s latest foil in America’s degenerate “politics as pro wrestling” populist spectacle.

Most of all, it would show a world that’s been dominated by the United States for 80 years that even the papacy can’t prevent an American from parochially and narcissistically prioritizing his own country’s affairs. In an age of “America First,” where Uncle Sam unapologetically cares only about himself, the so-called Ugly American has never looked uglier. If Leo really does mean to prove that he “cares about the entire world,” the easiest way to do it is to reject that narcissism by ignoring the United States as completely as possible.

The pope is not interested in politics, I’d guess. But, to paraphrase Trotsky, politics is interested in him.

It took no time at all after his selection was announced for MAGA influencers to lose their minds over some of his more liberal—i.e. mundanely Catholic—views. Although less delightful than the jokes flying around about Leo’s near-Chicago roots (I’m partial to “Malort and savior”), watching a bunch of lowbrow Maoists cry “Marxism” because the pontiff appears to sympathize with immigrants made for hours of schadenfreudean fun.

“We need to see from the jump, from the absolute jump, whether or not Pope Leo is interested in working with President Trump or … working against him,” populist influencer Jack Posobiec sternly warned. Or what, Jack? Are you going to primary him? Storm the Vatican and start beating the Swiss Guard with flagpoles?

It was amusing, but it was also early notice that Leo will be demagogued by the postliberal grassroots right perhaps more aggressively than even Francis was. They’ve been deprived by Democrats’ momentary political irrelevance of a domestic villain to rally against. Now, in the person of the first American pope, they have one.

Still, it’s not fair to lay the insta-politicization of Leo XIV entirely in the laps of MAGA. The church may claim otherwise, but there are obvious political undertones to the ascension of Robert Prevost. The languages he did and didn’t use in introducing himself to the faithful are the least of it. 

To begin with, Cardinal Prevost (or someone impersonating him for some reason) commented recently, publicly, and critically on several Trump administration controversies. In February a Twitter account using his name posted an article scolding J.D. Vance for his anti-immigrant interpretation of ordo amoris; a few weeks ago the same account promoted a tweet complaining about the president’s exile of migrants to El Salvador. Either the cardinals who chose Prevost knew of his views on Trump and were fine with it, or the Vatican really needs to do more vetting of candidates for the most important religious office in the world.

Consider his name too. Practically every Catholic who’s commented in print about his selection today has noted that the last man to bear the pontifical “Leo” wrote Rerum Novarum, a foundational statement of Catholic social teaching that advocated for “workers’ rights to a fair wage, safe working conditions, and the rights of workers to belong to trade unions.” By adopting the same name as Leo XIII, the new pope presumably intends to take up that very political cause. “If Pope Francis was the People’s Pope,” Catherine Pepinster predicted for the Guardian, “then Leo XIV is all set to be the Workers’ Pope.”

Beyond that, what else but politics can explain why the unstated taboo against choosing an American pontiff has suddenly been lifted?

“Until today, nearly every Vatican insider agreed on one thing: The United States would never produce a pope, at least not while the country remains a superpower,” Francis X. Rocca wrote for The Atlantic. “A citizen of the world’s dominant nation could not become the leader of the world’s largest religious organization without dramatically upsetting the global balance of geopolitical and cultural power.” American Bishop Robert Barron stated the point more bluntly in a recent interview with CBS News: “Look, until America goes into political decline, there won’t be an American pope.”

We now have an American pope.

What should we deduce from that fact about how the curia views the state of our country?

A counterweight.

In a piece today for The Bulwark, Jonathan Last drew the obvious conclusion: We have an American pope because America is, in fact, in political decline and the cardinals know it. The Pax Americana is over, dead by national suicide last November, and everyone from Ottawa to Berlin to Canberra to Beijing is making arrangements to respond to the new reality. Why wouldn’t Vatican City?

If we’re going to have a world ruled not by an American-led liberal order but divided into regional spheres of influence among authoritarian bullies—like the United States—then there’s no reason not to have an American pope. On the contrary: Between his trade policies, his menacing of traditional allies, and the brain drain he’s causing, Donald Trump is accelerating Chinese global hegemony. In choosing Leo, the Vatican is simply recognizing that. “No Chinese popes” will be the unstated rule going forward.

That’s one theory for his selection, that it’s a sort of last rites for a terminally decadent United States as it slumps further into irrelevance. But here’s another, which isn’t inconsistent with that: America is poised to do a lot of damage to the world in its death throes as a liberal society and global power, and not just material damage. Trumpism will have a malign moral influence on the world as liberalism’s discontents abroad look to it for political inspiration. The president loves American exports, and ideology is no exception.

Shouldn’t the Catholic Church, of all institutions, be proactive in trying to limit that malign influence?

Trumpism has always been best understood as a moral project, not as an ideology. It’s too dependent on the president’s daily whims to be a coherent political program, but its moral vision is clear and consistent: “Strength” is the cardinal virtue and unapologetic ruthlessness in advancing one’s interests is the way in which that virtue is practiced. I wouldn’t equate it with “might makes right” because it expresses no interest in the concept of “right,” only in what might be gained in any situation.

We could summarize it as “Do unto others whatever you think you can get away with doing.” It’s a genuinely Nietzschean, will-to-power rebuttal to conventional Christianity, a bona fide anti-morality that regards empathy as weakness. It resembles a religious cult in its authoritarian demands for absolute loyalty and obedience more so than a political movement. And it’s taken over the most powerful country in the world and is threatening to spread abroad.

Is it that surprising that the Vatican might hope to defeat it by elevating one of Donald Trump’s own constituents to the papacy, underlining the contrast between Christian morality and Trumpist malevolence? If nothing else, having an American as the face of Catholicism will make it harder for nationalists to argue that compassion for one’s enemies is incompatible with “true” American identity. Which probably explains all the screeching from MAGA chuds after the news about Leo broke.

“We are watching authoritarianism swell in all parts of the globe, but [it] is fueled most visibly by the Trump administration in Washington, D.C.,” an American professor of Catholic theology told RNS. “The election of an American pope, the first American pope … there’s a signal here that the Church is taking a side.” The church should take sides morally, always and everywhere. It took sides against the moral degradation wrought by communism. Why wouldn’t it do the same against postliberalism?

The new pope might not be interested in politics, but he’s certainly interested in morality. And his interest in the latter will inevitably drag him into disputes over the former.

Take the rebuke that he (or whoever’s running that Twitter account) issued to Vance for his explanation of ordo amoris earlier this year. The vice president’s understanding of the concept was vintage “America First” insofar as it approached love as zero-sum and strained to find an excuse for ruthlessness toward foreigners: We’re commanded to love those who are in closest proximity to us first, Vance argued, and only later those further away from us. That’s not how Christian love works, Pope Francis felt obliged to say in response. Pope Leo will probably also feel obliged to respond the next time the veep attempts a bit of Catholic exegesis in service to authoritarianism.

Or maybe Leo will enter the fray if and when Trump gets aggressive about extending America’s “sphere of influence” in the Western Hemisphere. The pope’s experience in Peru “will have given him an entirely different perspective on the Americas, and the U.S.’ role in the world—an understanding of how Latin America can view its giant neighbor with suspicion,” Pepinster speculated. One would assume he is unlikely to sit by quietly if the Marines deploy in Panama or we end up bombing Mexico to try to stop drug trafficking.

But even if the pope shows saintly patience by refusing to involve himself in American politics, sooner or later the president will insist on involving him. “I’d put even money that Trump picks a fight with him, because he can’t help himself,” Jonathan Last predicted. “To Trump, an American pope who is not openly on the side of MAGA is a provocation.”

Precisely right. Any influential American who’s not openly on the side of MAGA is a provocation to the president, but until now he’s always had options to neutralize the threat. If you make trouble for him he can revoke any federal privileges you might enjoy, shrink your customer base by blackballing your company from government work, or whip up his fans to threaten your life.

There’s not much he can do to silence a pope, though, and that will eat at him. The mere fact that he now has an immigrant-loving rival for the title of Most Influential Living American will irritate his tender ego and eventually trigger his impulse to try to dominate those who threaten him. He will pick a fight with the pope, as totally moronic as the idea of such a thing is, because that’s who he is. The church provoked him by offering a different model of moral leadership to Americans and tacitly inviting them to pledge their allegiance to it. They’re coming after Trump’s people. He’ll take it personally.

But this is what happens sometimes between rival religions, right? Because they worship different gods, they fight. I hope Bob Prevost, White Sox fan, is up to it.