Filled the headlines have been with news of Leo XIV as across the political spectrum folks have been scrambling to “figure-out” what kind of Pope he will be. “On whose side will he be?” “Which issues will he come into conflict with those in power over?” “How will an American Pope relate to JD Vance?” “Leo XIV at one time sneezed in the direction of this or that economic policy, therefore he is going to back this social action…” the headlines whorl with increasing frenzy. Today I saw an article title that ran something like, “Scientists used computer program to predict the possibility of the election of Pope Leo XIV.” I believe this fits the description I recall from the 39 Articles of “a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty…”
Having witnessed the election, news media and pundits have begun taking the project farther still: they intend to predict action and the course of the Roman Catholic Church. So high is their estimation of their own powers of probabilistic ramification that the pitch has already reached a kind of drunkenness. Far behind us is the terminus of sanity, long have we been riding in the realm of derangement.
Leo XIV, it seems, doesn’t need to do anything for his entire papacy —he just needs to read the headlines about what journalists have already predicted he will do and perform accordingly —and woe betide if he fails to dance according to our Penthean rhythms. We believed secularism had won. We believed religion had been quietly tamed and put-away in its hutch, kept as a kind of pet for modern life. And now, the election of an American to the presiding role in the Roman Church has our cultural commentators trembling and madcap. All our algorithmic protocols for control have been thrown assunder, our oracles have betrayed us, our sibyls cannot scry-out the meaning of things.
This is, of course, a kind of mania. Ignore its claims and pity those afflicted by it. Pray for them. I’m not saying “don’t read the news” I am saying don’t read everything that purports to be news. Stuff like this is not news —it bears no tidings of events unfolding, no relation of the world, it elucidates no actual subject except contemporary neoliberal stupor at things beyond our control.
Instead I encourage you to pray for our Roman brothers and sisters who have now a new presiding minister in their Holy See. Pray with hope in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: that he would rule the heart of Leo XIV and so govern that branch of his Church that things that are good in her would be protected; that places where she is in error would be corrected; situations where it is going to need parrhesiastic boldness in making a good confession will be strengthened; and that some movement to healing those divisions in the Body of Jesus for which it is responsible would be taken. I’m not Roman Catholic, but I have 1.4 billion brothers and sisters who are, and their good and mine are held in common by Jesus Christ.
I’m not against a kind of foresight and prudent wisdom. I so completely despise, however, the kind of cunning which treats living things as dead and inert, and conscripts its predictive calculus against the need for prayer, hope, response, and Christian witness. Our living world, again and again, frustrates our attempts at algorithmic governance. The living God, however, remains ever attentive to our prayer.