The quick election of a pope born and raised in the United States was a shock to almost everyone outside the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Conclaves begin with secular and Catholic experts making a list of possible front-runners, and no one had Robert Prevost on their bingo card.
For Americans, it was shocking and a bit exhilarating. We were always told that a global church would not want a leader from the planet's biggest superpower. But Cardinal Prevost had served so long in Peru and in Rome that he didn't seem as American as others might be.
Our secular news media only seem to view the church as a political force and consider how it affects their world. Right now, popes are considered good when they oppose (and hopefully shame) President Donald Trump on poverty and immigration, and popes are bad when they oppose abortion and the invention of 57 genders.
It's become obvious that our media deeply desire for Pope Leo to function as a staunch opponent of this president, when everyone knows a pope making any objection to "devout Catholic" President Joe Biden would have been considered rude and unnecessary.
But this Holy Father is the patriarch of a global church, not a speaker of the House. The most important matters to Catholics are the church matters, spreading the gospel of Jesus in the modern world while protecting an ancient deposit of faith. What seems irrelevant to outsiders, like the rumblings over the Traditional Latin Mass, are more internally important than unbelievers pushing the church on whether priests can be women or married men.
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The secular scolds never seem to accept the argument that anyone who wants a married priest or a female priest can join the Episcopalians. There are 31 flavors of Protestantism, but the scolds want to force every church into their "progressive" mold.
Secular liberals also confuse the Christian obligation to care for the poor and the marginalized -- like migrants -- with their policy positions. Caring for the poor with private charity isn't satisfactory. You prove your love of the poor by voting for socialists. You prove your respect for the migrant by opening the border like the Democrats.
Maybe secular journalists could fear the prospect that an American-born pope could invigorate the American church, inspiring young people and bringing in the sheep that have strayed. The media often fear growing religiosity as a threat and caricature it as a theocratic "Christian nationalism" whenever the libertine left loses, like the repeal of Roe v. Wade.
In his opening remarks to journalists, the pope had a request: "Let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred; let us free it from aggression. We do not need loud, forceful communication but rather communication that is capable of listening."
This is unsurprising from a religious leader, but many of us function in a media environment that is aggressively ideological and dismissive of listening to an opposing view. This is not just a test for the media but for the media's audience.
Entering the church on Sundays requires the faithful to reflect on even the smallest of sins, which can easily include being uncharitable (most easily on the internet) to political adversaries. It's so easy -- and rewarding in attracting attention -- to spike the ball on a political point. That old song "They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love" can get lost during the week. The media can be so hostile to faithful Christians that it can be hard not to respond in kind.
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