Bishop of Rome
CrowdSource 4.28.2025
Welcome to CrowdSource, your weekly guided tour of the latest intellectual disputes, ideological disagreements and national debates that piqued our interest (or inflamed our passions). This week: burying a pope and picking a new one.
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RIP Jorge Bergoglio
The Catholic Church will soon choose the next successor of Saint Peter, Vicar of Christ, Supreme Pontiff, Patriarch of the West (etc.) — the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
A few reflections on the late Jorge Bergoglio, AKA the outgoing Pope Francis:
“Revolutionary.” Our own
evaluates Francis’ mercy-centered approach to the papacy: “Francis believed in a kind of grassroots theology animated by mercy. ““Papal Sublime.” Here’s Wisdom of Crowds’
describing one of Pope Francis’ most memorable public gestures: “On that dreary day, the pope brought something new to a moment otherwise ruled by fear and suffering and death.”“Trad Icon.” Author
(a Catholic convert) argues that Francis, celebrated as a liberal innovator, was actually something of a traditionalist: “Francis’s social and environmental teaching, though occasionally garbled by the NGO-ese language in which it was couched, expanded his immediate predecessor’s critique of Enlightenment reason.”“Harmonious Growth.” Novelist Phil Klay reflects on Francis’ “promise” that, “rather than tamp down discussions, the Church could be a place for harmonious growth. The fullness of time will reveal whether or not he was successful. But Pope Francis gave me hope.”
“Candid Assessment.” Theologian Nathaniel Peters with a more negative take: “… if I treated my sons the way Francis treated my fellow believers and me, I would rightly be considered a bad father.”
“The Mystery of the Moon.” A mixed review from
: “Francis hoped his leadership might augur an age of renewal for the Church. He presided instead over an era of decline.”
Outsider Perspectives
Francis was surprisingly popular among non-Catholics. Here’s sampling of what some illustrious non-Catholic minds have said about other recent popes:
Hannah Arendt on John XXIII
The German philosopher reviews the late pope’s Journal of a Soul:
This complete freedom from cares and worries was his form of humility; what set him free was that he could say without any reservation, mental or emotional: “Thy will be done.” In the Journal, it is not easy to discover, under the layers and layers of pious language which has become for us, but never for him, platitudinous, this simple basic chord to which his life was tuned. Even less would we expect from it the laughing wit he derived from it. But what else except humility did he preach when he told his friends how the new awesome responsibilities of the pontificate had at first worried him greatly and even caused him sleepless nights — until one morning he said to himself: “Giovanni, don’t take yourself that seriously!” and slept well ever after.
Tony Judt on John Paul II
The English historian on the Polish pope:
If we ask what the legacy of this man, this Pope, would be, I think it’s clearly something that perhaps he wouldn’t have expected. And that is, his legacy is the debate. His legacy is [the] angry conversation that he provoked over faith versus modernity. There will be no legacy of success in defeating modernity. And there will certainly be no sense in which he will have occupied the ground between absolute faith and modern unbelief. But he has forced upon his opponents a conversation that they would never have had with previous popes. And in terms which were his terms. And he did, to that degree, shape the conversation at the end of the millennium in a way that no one else has.
Mario Vargas Llosa on Benedict XVI
The Peruvian novelist compares the bookish Benedict XVI with his predecessor, John Paul II:
It is difficult to imagine two personalities more different than those of the two last popes. The previous one was a charismatic leader, an agitator, an extraordinary orator, a pontiff in which emotion, passion, feelings prevailed over pure reason. The current one is a man of ideas, an intellectual, someone whose natural environments are the library, the university classroom, the lecture hall. His timidity in front of crowds emerges invincibly, in a way which suggests that he is almost embarrassed — as if apologizing that has to address the masses. But this fragility is deceptive because he is probably the most cultured [pope] that the Church has had in long time, one of the rare pontiffs whose encyclicals or books an agnostic like me can read without yawning (his short autobiography is bewitching and his two volumes on Jesus are rather suggestive).
Paolo Sorrentino on the Next Pope
The Italian director of The Great Beauty and The Young Pope speculates:
It’s possible that after a very liberal pope, there is someone that might have very different ideas. I think it’s an illusion that the church has a long-term idea towards modernity.
Who Picks the Pope?
There’s more than one answer.
The College of Cardinals Picks the Pope. The cardinal-electors vote for the pope. Here’s useful background about the College of Cardinals by journalist
.The Holy Spirit Accompanies the Electors. Does God have a hand in the cardinals’ choice for pope? Here’s the traditional answer, as put in 1997 by Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI):
I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope … I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.
From the Crowd
Souls Shaped by Liberalism. A challenge response from
to and ’s debate about how to handle a midlife crisis:
I really enjoyed this discussion, and would love to hear a podcast episode where you think through your agreements and disagreements out loud together. By most metrics, I myself am a leftist or liberal: I am a writer who works in philanthropy and was shaped by “elite” academic spaces during the rise of the DEI / social justice regimes. More and more, however (and I sense I am not alone in this), I am drawn to those external structures like religion, family and community that impose boundaries on my individual freedom and require that I take responsibility for some collective and higher good.
Why? I have simply found in adulthood that the default modern liberal pathways of orienting my life around my own pleasures — and even my own pursuit of higher meaning — were staircases to nowhere, and that the deeper sense of freedom and fulfillment I was after comes not through removing constraints, but by choosing the right ones.
The ultimate emptiness of life under late stage liberal capitalism explains, I think, why so many young men were captivated by pseudo-philosophers like Jordan Peterson (is he still popular? no idea ... ) who say, “No, actually, there are some hard, unchangeable truths about the world, and the good life starts by imposing some boundaries and discipline upon yourself.” What is at stake is not just your happiness, but your soul (if you believe in such a thing).
I am finally reading Patrick Deneen’s book, Why Liberalism Failed, and I would love to hear you take on some of his claims about liberalism and human nature. I.e. “as an ideology, it pretends to neutrality, claiming no preference and denying any intention of shaping the souls under its rule.” How do you think each of your views (and your souls, if you don’t mind?) have been shaped by liberalism? And to what extent do you consciously push against it?
And to
, you use the term “existential” a few times, but I’m not sure what you mean. I adore Camus and often quote him, “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” ... do you see yourself as a descendant of some particular strand of existentialism? If so, do you find that it affords you some kind of useful map for the terrain you’re navigating now at midlife with so much change around you?
See you next week!
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Pope Francis to me symbolised the de-Europeanisation of Catholicism. In sharp contrast to previous popes (especially John Paul II), Francis' lack of 'European consciousness' was obvious in a lot of his expressions. Not all for the worse, although I definitely fault him for his lack of a firm stance on Ukraine (which is home to over four millions deeply rooted Catholics), but this personal change also represents a change in the Church at large. Europe's secularisation has meant that European Catholicism is no longer central to the religion; over half of the Catholic faithful live in the Americas, and Africa (where the Church is still growing) is soon to overtake Europe as well.
This is even visibile in the Church itself; if you visit Rome most of the nuns you'll see walking around are Indian, Indian women currently being the largest single group of new novices. In mayor European cities as well, churches are mostly keeping their attendance high because of immigrants.
I wonder what effects this will have on the Church in general. 'Cultural catholicism' is still a force in Europe, so I doubt European respect for the Papacy will ever completely fade away, even as the average Europea will heed the Church' teachings less and less, although the Church becoming 'immigrant-coded' might change that eventually. I do wonder if this will ultimately result in the Church becoming more conservative in the long term, going by the relative conservatism of its adherents in other continents.
As a side note, the attitudes of some American converts to Catholicism (JD Vance first and foremost) is particularly interesting. Vance seems to detest Europe out of a sincere conviction that Europe has rejected 'based' tradition in favour of the exact same liberalism he hates domestically, which is wrong on many levels (but not all). I wonder which belief came first, the Catholicism or the hatred of the 'libs' at home and abroad, and how they inform eachother.