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First American pope elected and will be known as Pope Leo XIV

(www.cnn.com)
606 points saikatsg | 2 comments | 08 May 25 16:30 UTC | HN request time: 1.388s | source
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afavour ◴[08 May 25 17:54 UTC] No.43929124[source]▶
> "Cardinal George of Chicago, of happy memory, was one of my great mentors, and he said: 'Look, until America goes into political decline, there won't be an American pope.' And his point was, if America is kind of running the world politically, culturally, economically, they don't want America running the world religiously. So, I think there's some truth to that, that we're such a superpower and so dominant, they don't wanna give us, also, control over the church."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-pope-could-it-be-american-c...

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snickerbockers ◴[08 May 25 23:52 UTC] No.43932503[source]▶
That's an interesting thought but if they're actually that concerned about it then they'd wait longer than four months. It probably has more to do with America's predominant religion being protestantism by a very wife margin for most of the country's existence. We didn't have a Catholic president until Kennedy and even then proving to the common American that Catholics aren't insane Vatican mindslaves was considered a hurdle he had to overcome.

If there's a political motive in not choosing an American pope until now it's that for most of American history it wouldn't have granted them any influence over American politics. If there's a personal motive it's that until recently they felt insulted that America went for almost 200 years before finally electing a Catholic president.

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1. tmnvix ◴[09 May 25 08:23 UTC] No.43934811[source]▶
> That's an interesting thought but if they're actually that concerned about it then they'd wait longer than four months.

Are you suggesting that the decline has only been apparent since Trump's re-election? For some (myself included), America has been in obvious political decline for some time - highlighted and spurred along by some significant events (Trump's first election and the nature of US involvement in Gaza to name a couple).

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2. snickerbockers ◴[09 May 25 19:31 UTC] No.43940217[source]▶
I personally don't think it makes any sense to claim America's in a decline on a short-term basis; my point is that a decline is inherently something that would only be visible over a longer scale of time.

The reason I said "four months" is because America's media establishment has been pushing this narrative that the tariffs and the argument with zelensky have somehow ended american hegemony overnight; I personally believe it's impossible for these events to cause a noticeable decline on such a short basis because there's far more to america than merely not taxing imports and giving limitless amounts of free stuff to ukraine with no strings attached, but I have developed a pavlovian response to the phrase "America's in decline" because it really is all about Donald Trump with these people.

I would personally put the origin of "America's Decline" at 9/11 because that was the beginning of America's self-doubt about what their place in the world is and what it should be. Everything since then has been the five stages of grief on a nationwide scale. Currently we're somewhere between Depression (stage 4) and Acceptance (stage 5) which is why we gave up on Afghanistan, and also why so many people are opposed to funding Ukraine; there's a legitimate fear that arming the Ukrainians will in some way come back to bite us in the ass 20 years later just like arming the mujahideen did.