I think we can relax a little. I think the Church’s “East Germany” is going to diminish.
My people, some know the new Pope, affirm that he prays and that he believes.
This counts for a lot.
I don’t want to give up personal information, but what I know and what I have understood in the last couple days, leads me to think that the Church is no longer going to be “East Germany”.
I post this knowing that when Bergoglio was elected (whom I know before) I truly tried hard to read him in continuity with his predecessors. That didn’t happen. I tried. What Catholic would not try to give a new Pope some breathing room?
Pray for Leo XIV.
His schedule has been posted. He will do all the big things of his pontificate rapidly, before I leave Rome. Whew.
Can you imagine what the work load must be in these first days?
Pray for Leo XIV.
I want to write a Latin prayer for the beginning of this pontificate, but concepts are swirling.
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Nos lectores te absolvimus per “Reading Francis Through Benedict.” Your heart was in the right place, Father. My gut, on the other hand, never bought it. This time is different, though, I think. My gut has a good feeling about Leo XIV. Ad multos felices annos.
I trust your reassurance.
It does seem his life has been marked by obvious belief in the Catholic faith since he was a child.
I note with pleasure that there were NO lightning strikes on St. Peter’s dome nor were there any black crows attacking the white doves in St. Peter’s square at the Habemus Papam announcement. That’s a favorable omen.
For what it’s worth:
Let’s not put any labels on Pope Leo XIV. Please give him a chance and the benefit of the doubt.
My personal opinion is I was glad some other Cardinals (no names) did not receive the 89 minimum votes (or didn’t wish to be nominated if that’s how the vote works during a conclave.)
In short, let’s give Robert Cardinal Prevost a chance.
acardnal: Haha.
C’mon, Father, you’re giving the DDR a bad name. And funny how now all of the former DDR except Berlin, the Hauptstadt, voted for the AfD. That says something.
Thanks, Father!
No lightning or Crebain from Dunland is good, too.
I’m fighting loving him until a bit more time goes by. Watching for appointments, replacing, and hopefully some restorations. We’ve been pummeled for 12 years, takes a while to trust. Looks like we have Cdl Burke and Cdl Dolan to thank. Mostly God.
Personally I thought his reaction before he stepped onto the loggia spoke volumes. He gets it. A boy that played priest while others play cops and robbers, and knows the Latin prayers as a small boy, its got to be a good thing. I certainly hope this isnt get Trump, pummel the administration on our southern border and the invasion, or to restore USAID in any capacity. We would be opposed. God be with him.
“By their fruits you shall know them.” I am comforted by your reassurances, Father. I shall await his fruits and continue to pray for him and the Church.
Of all the things I have heard the most heartening is “He believes”. To me that means almost everything. I guess because it is everything. We need priests and bishops who put the salvation of souls first!
The popes surely receive special graces and help from the Holy Ghost. But also special attacks from the enemy.
If His Holiness is a man of faith and open enough to receive and cooperate with the graces, then he may yet be a great pope. In any case, it’s Jesus’ Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail.
I really hope he dumps that synodal stuff, though.
Oh yes, now that summorumpontificum777 has brought it up, I still fondly remember to this day when this blog’s name was temporarily changed to “Reading Francis Through Benedict”. The title sounds very catchy so to this day I still sometimes mumble it randomly when talking to myself except that I always add in the end the words: “….but that didn’t work”. Hey, at least you tried giving Francis the benefit of the doubt, Father, no shame in that. The way I see it, from the start of this year’s pre-Lent with Septuagesima Sunday and the burying of the Alleluia, not only were we preparing ourselves for Easter, but unbeknownst
to us all, also for the joy of ending what had become a 12 year torture and for the ushering in of a true Catholic pope. Indeed it was fitting that this would all be ushered in right at the beginning of Easter.
Woody –
That East German woman’s Olympic swim team was tough to beat.
I hope they recovered from all the hormone injections.
I digress.
After watching this “short”, videotaped 9 months ago, I wonder if Pope Leo doesn’t think that everything Pope Francis said and did was inspired. He seems to say here that Pope Francis, and each of the popes, are chosen by the Holy Spirit for the needs of the Church at the time.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9e25AuNTTLg
I too remember the Reading Francis Through Benedict era. Yes, that was a very difficult square to circle……
I know of one person who won’t get to relax anytime soon: Leo XIV. The stories and commentary from his brothers are very endearing.
The fact that so many good Catholics are hesitant to give the Holy Father the benefit of the doubt simply shows how much Francis hurt the faithful.
The problem isn’t with Leo XIV, it’s still with Francis. Sadly it will be for a long time.
I just hope and pray that Pontifex Robertus, Bob the Bridge Builder as it were, really can fix it,
and that this Leo will be an Aslan and not a Puzzle.
And please Holy Father, it’s time to kick Traditionis Custodes into touch, as we would say in New Zealand. (Don’t know the equivalent idiom for American football.)
I read that he is returning to using the papal apartments. That is a good sign.
A better sign would be the dismissal of Rupnik and “Tucho” Fernandez.
It is now evident that the name “Francis” does not give him hives as does me, and so that increases the wariness that stems from the support that he received from Cardinals who wanted a Francis II. Also, from the little fragments that exist of his writings it also seems that he is a company man: When Pope Benedict was pope he sounded like Pope Benedict (his “good” statements are all from before 2013) and when Francis was pope he sounded like Francis.
Still, I like him. He seems sincere and honest, and seems to sincerely and honestly love Christ and His Church. It is clear that he is fond of Latin and to some degree of the outer trappings of tradition. At a minimum that bodes will for the future of the TLM. I also am hopeful that it reflects a love of the Church’s tradition and that that love will produce solidly orthodox fruit. However, whether that is true remains to be seen.
Posters here have drawn my attention to Reading Francis through Benedict. So I had a look at the archives. Almost the first thing I saw was: Francis has made a public endorsement of Summorum Pontificum. Good to know that Francis supported Summorum Pontificum. Except he didn’t.
The lesson is: be VERY cautious. I don’t think that Leo is a Peronist, who will tell each side what it wants to hear, but actions speak louder than words. I don’t care what he says about the TLM: I’m waiting for him to legislate on the TLM. Then, whether it’s “TLM in every parish by next Sunday”, or “TLM delenda est”, or anything in between, then at least I’ll know what Leo thinks of the TLM.
Like Leo I’m a boomer, and before the conclave, I was listening to “We won’t get fooled again” , and then getting on my knees to pray that when we met the new boss, he would NOT be the same as the old boss. I pray for Leo every evening. Besides that, I’ll wait and see.
I am grateful for the election of Pope Leo XIV. At his Regina Cœli address he directly quoted St. JPII’s message to the young people, “Be not afraid.”
I just watched what could have been. Cardinal Czerny, “There is no Global Church. There’s a Church in America, a Church in Korea…” He somehow turn “synod” into a verb. Blegh!
https://youtu.be/vfaSJG-qURU?si=daYQffvOZfqmvQhW
There’s an excellent interview with the then Fr. Prevost from 2012 on the media and the New Evangelization that he was to present to the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization. He’s quite patristic and Church Fathers oriented. He reminds me of Pope Benedict XVI. Listening to him speak, he’s like the Cliff Notes of Pope Benedict. He spoke of the need to give priests better formation, as well as the need to give formation to the laity so that they can correctly discern what they’re seeing on Social media as well as the faith. He also spoke of the need for people to have an authentic personal encounter with God that isn’t just based on how something makes them feel good. That it needs to be something that moves them to take action towards helping their neighbours (ie: the works of mercy), and if it doesn’t, then perhaps it isn’t an authentic personal encounter with God. With that he also, discussed the mistakes of using “theatrics” to try to create that feel good encounter. It’s all very positive. If you have 35 minutes to spare, I would listen to it.
https://youtu.be/QXVkJ5TQi1s?si=JOlnrn9eMhb5pd_X
I just hope and pray that Pontifex Robertus, Bob the Bridge Builder as it were, really can fix it
Can we please just stop with this lack of charity towards the Pope? This is precisely why after 10+ years of attending the Traditional Latin Mass at my parish I, as well as many other younger members of our Latin Mass Community, stopped attending as soon as we got a new pastor who had beautiful liturgies and was traditionally minded.
Part of getting TC reversed and bringing the SSPX back into full communion with the Church will require bridge building regardless of how anyone feels about the term.
Furthermore, no one should be shocked and scandalized by the Pope saying we need to reach out to help the poor and marginalized in a tangible way. It’s what the Saints did that made them become Saints.
I am liking this new holy father more and more!
Permit me to be a bit of a wet blanket.
— Giving “the benefit of the doubt” does not mean engaging in the transferance / projection of one’s own beliefs onto another person. It also doesn’t entail shoe-horning someone’s words/writings/actions into some other philosophy/theology/belief system. It actually entails not doing that and rather letting the other’s words/actions speak for themselves, and when one has doubt, not reading into / projecting onto / shoehorning negatively (or positively!) meaning to clarify the doubt. Rather, it simply lets the doubt stand, asks for clarification, and assumes good will WITHOUT ascribing meaning.
— It is a bit weird to see people talking about “well the grace of the office will…” as if Pope Leo wasn’t catholic but the office will make him catholic. Those are not givens. Generally speaking, (and not denying the movement of grace), positions of absolute power tend to just make people more of who they already are because the position frees them from chains of subordination. The graces involved in the petrine office are not graces that cause ontological change (like baptism). Pope Leo doesn’t take on a new nature by becoming Pope — he is still who he was. Elevation to the papacy isn’t a necessarily conversion experience — he doesn’t magically become “on our side” or magically “on the other side”.
— Be mindful of the warning of High Church Smells and Bells Anglicanism. Looks great; completely rotten underneath the hood. Be mindful that one of the beliefs of those that support TC is that the “trads just like TLM for how it looks — they are just LARPers.” It is the faith that counts. Don’t be swayed by how things look, but instead discern the heart and spirit. The great “humility” of Pope Francis tricked a lot of people who were only interested in externals. If you are not interested in externals, you saw right through Pope Francis’ “humility.”
— I am a convert with a background in Comparative Religion. It gets on my nerves when you pick up a translation of the Bhagavad Gita and the translator has Christianised the thing. Pope Francis never confused me (his writings and words were confusion in the technical sense because they contained a mixture of truth and falsehood) because I didn’t read his writing through this or that lens. Rather, let’s instead, to pull from VII, “read them in the spirit in which they were written.” Please, lets not spend several years trying to conform Pope Leo to this or that (already I see people trying to read tea leaves by using the writing of St. Augustine as a hermeneutical lens to provide guess work even while stating as a given that the formation of modern Augustinians has strayed from Augustine.) only to be left confused and disappointed because he doesn’t match the fiction in our heads) . Just let Pope Leo speak/write/teach for himself. It will save a lot of potential heartache.
— The Faith isn’t sportsball. This cardinal or that pope is on our side / is on the other side sort of game isn’t healthy. We are all in the process of trying to be conformed to Christ. The Pope isn’t the one that we conform ourselves to in order to be Christ. Mary is the mould that that we should be poured into, not the Pope, if we follow this analogy. Sometimes we will be more Christ (or Catholic) than the pope. Sometimes he will be more so than we are. And that is ok. You are not going to be a bad catholic if you are more catholic than the pope. Nor is he a bad catholic if he is less catholic than you are.
– Relax. Be vigilant. Keep your eyes on Christ. Live your life according to the Roman and Catholic Apostolic Faith. Let Pope Leo be himself.
The way in which things might have turned out much worse was brought home to me when I saw a woman interviewed by an EWTN man-in-the-street interview. The woman from Washington, DC and was in St. Peter’s Square when the Pope’s election was announced. She said (as well as I can remember), “I heard the first name ‘Robertus’ and thought it might have been our Cardinal who was elected!”
Folks, the combox form, I urge you to preview and THINK before posting.
I want to renew that here.
I would like to keep the combox open.
Is it me, or has Chicago decided that the Pope is their new Archbishop too?
I just get that feeling. Maybe it’s not fair, but I think a lot of people over there have felt unhelped by their actual archbishop.
I think that +Cupich needs to start being kinder and more generous. He doesn’t even have to apologize; he just has to start looking after people more gently.
I get the sense that Leo XIV is what the cardinals thought they were getting when they elected Francis. Humble, of the people, but with a head for reforming the governance of the Church.
It really is massive that Leo loves the Church, it is so poisonous when the pope gives the opposite vibes.
Everyone is focused on his choice of name Leo. Everyone is focused on Leo XIII. I also think and hope he has Leo I in mind.
@APX: Sorry, I did not mean to sound uncharitable towards the Holy Father. A Ponti-fex is literally a bridge builder, and of course the term is a positive one, even if some have abused it. The reference to Bob the Builder (can we fix it-yes we can) was perhaps flippant, but was meant to be friendly and cautiously optimistic.
In some ways I’m already a big fan of Leo: last night I was watching a video of him singing the Regina Caeli, and singing along.
Taylor Marshall and Michael Matt have each posted videos urging us to be charitable towards the Holy Father, and to give him the benefit of the doubt. Neither of them can be accused of Papolotry, so if they can do it, so can I.
Is anyone else struck by how easy, almost natural, it would have been for Cdl Prevost to take the name, Francis II? It wouldn’t be the first time, after all, John Paul II took his predecessor’s name. Plus, it would seem fitting, since his given name is Robert Francis (Prevost.) Seems to me that taking the name Leo XIV is sending an important message to the faithful: “This will not be Francis 2.0.”
Obviously I thought Pope Leo should recind Traditiones Custodies….. but then I thought a better way of doing things which wouldn’t involve dissing Francis so much, would be to reissue Quo Primum.
As an aide memoire.
Just quietly remind all priests including Cardinals and Bishops that they have the right to say the traditional mass…. forever
It might jog the memory of the laity as well.
Well, this is funny. If what I’ve read is correct, my great grand parents are related to the Pope Leo’s grand father. Shrug.
Anyway, that doesn’t really give me ease. Admittedly, I feel much less worry about Pope Leo than Francis. When Francis was elected I felt dread from day one. Francis happened to be elected on my birthday and I was marking it as a special birthday because it was Friday the 13th and if a new pontiff was elected on my birthday, wouldn’t that be great. But then Francis was elected and somehow I just knew from day one. I even went to confession about it because I felt like I was being unfair and almost bordering on making false accusations, though I hadn’t said anything about Francis out loud.
For the first years of Francis I felt like I was in the twilight zone. Could no one see what I saw? And then it was thing after thing. Attack after attack. It was like Francis was trying to force people like me out of the church. He divided people and excluded people. I did not feel welcome. And no, I actually didn’t disagree with Francis about 100% of everything but the huge errors were just stumbling blocks too big to ignore. And eventually everyone started to see what I saw, not that it did any good.
So now we have a new sovereign in the Vatican. I do feel less dread. Almost like I’m in wait and see mode. But I think for myself I will be giving him far less of the benefit of the doubt after Francis than I would have if he had followed Benedict directly. I’m not going to say that he will demand that the church give the sacrament of matrimony to sodomites but I’m not going to put it past him either.
I suppose for a lot of people they might have a three strikes rule. This might be a common idea for a man and a woman in a relationship to not cancel the wedding over a single human mistake. Three strikes before you walk out. However, if one of them previously was in an abusive relationship then those three strikes becomes ONE. One mistake and we walk. We have been abused enough and we’re not taking it anymore.
So let this new pope try something. Let him try to lie to us or steal from us or hide a pedophile. Let him try to be sneaky and give the sacrament of matrimony to divorcees. Or participate in a pagan ritual. We’ll take note. Once he does that then we’ll know how to treat him. He can talk and talk but we won’t hear him anymore. Nor will we fund him.
Now excuse me while I continue my crusade to pump as much CO2 into the atmosphere as I can just to spite Francis. I’ll stop when the new bishop in this diocese allows the Latin Mass.
God bless the new pope.
I feel that there is no need to try to decide now whether he is going to be a good pope or not: he isn’t yet a good or bad pope, he gets to work that out by what he does over time, his decisions, his intentions, his works and his charity. Give him time, pray for him, hope for the best. And…be vigilant. Is there need of more at this time?