Essays in Idleness

I am told that I will probably dislike Pope Leo XIV, by a person who generally knows what I will dislike, and that I try to be predictable. My preference doesn’t matter, however, because even if I did not approve, the world’s couple billion Catholics would have to live with the conclave’s selection. Pope Benedict XVI usefully explained that God does not choose the pope. This is a superstition, and I think not a very nice one, for were it true, man would not be free. (Think it through: the pope is not the Christ.) To contradict the late Pope Francis, God — and thank Him — is not in the habit of surprising us, and does not make a mess, yet He allows men to sink into disorder. But God may choose to be more or less active in the guidance of this and every other man, and we, for our part, are guided to bless and to love All Souls.

Pope Leo’s appearance with traditional name and vestments suggests he will return to where Pope Francis instinctively departed. That Leo XIV chose his name after Leo XIII, the author of that novel treatise, Rerum Novarum, is “interesting.” His promotion of the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and of Thomist scholasticism as the starch holding Catholic philosophy, theology, and schools together, in full integration, was signal. It is not “a system,” as every clever philosopher proposes one, but a Catholic system; his encyclical Aeterni Patris ought to be revived and refreshed. For not everything from 1879 is dated; faith and reason are still linked.

Nevertheless, his dress gives promise that we may rely on him to be more stable than his predecessor, thus more papistical, even though certainly with progressive swish. Like too many others, he was recently elevated to “the highest pay grade” — to the cardinalate, alas. May we at least hope to hear less about “Vatican II,” and more about the immortal Catholic doctrine? For this is what we need.