Man for the Moment
“The Lord works in mysterious ways.” Whether or not one subscribes to the faith from which this phrase originates, one can’t help but curiously consider its applicability to the events of the past week.
An American Pope is a timely happenstance.
At a time when the world is hastily retreating to atavistic corners, led there be an American president bent on bringing the world to heel at the foot of his throne, at whatever the cost.
There has not been a more historically pregnant moment in eighty years. An erstwhile period in which humanity made staggering progress, and when it seemed the arc of the moral universe was accelerating along its bend towards justice.
The sudden screeching of the brakes has been loud and jarring, and a sense that the off-ramp towards which we have now veered, leads down a dark foreboding path.
Who or what stands any chance of stemming the tide? Can a political party do it? I don’t see it.
The people are exhausted with the cartoonish charade that professionalized politics has become, which is in fact what has led us here. The emperors were found to have no clothes and the people are desperate for authentic leadership, even if it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It is difficult to imagine a time when Kings rode into battle amongst their soldiers. Politics today has devolved to a game of perception management, style trumps substance all day. Pardon the pun.
Where today is leadership forged in authentic sacrifice?
I submit to you Robert Francis Prevost—Pope Leo XIV.
I am not Catholic and I am not a ‘believer’ per se. I am what can best be described as an agnostic, but one possessed with a deep desire that the spiritual truths hold some sway in the human experience because the alternative is too bleak to broker.
A world barren of spiritual truths amounts to nothing more than an academic exercise in moral relativism. In such a world, might makes right and the meek have no chance of inheriting the earth, as promised from the same book.
And yet, this Pope, from this country, at this time. Why him, why now?
Only an American Pope has a chance at speaking into the conscience of an American public. From what other corner of the planet could a Pope stand a chance of influencing American views? Not from South America. Not from Europe. Certainly not from Asia. An African—LOL!
I never imagined I would look to the church to come to our rescue in the corporeal sense, but here we are.
Two Americans, possessed of opposing values, meet on the high road of history. The Conclave appears to have understood the moment.
Godspeed, Pope Francis. Heaven knows the world needs you right now.