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Comment by Boogie_Man | Hacker News Reader

The prevailing wisdom has been proven wrong on this occasion. He is very much a continuation of Francis's school of thought in spite of the "fat Pope thin Pope" wisdom, and he is an American who has been elected Pope, which was almost unthinkable because of America's economic, political, and mass media domination of the western world. Very unexpected

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This (continuing Francis' school of thought) should be rather predictable - Pope Francis appointed the majority of voting cardinals, so it's not a stretch to think this is generally his intended outcome.

Not just a majority, but I read 80% of Cardinals that voted in the conclave.

Francis was a smart man, and he knew that in order for his policies to continue he would need to ensure a like-minded successor would be elected.

Isn't that true of most moderately long-serving popes? How does it ever result in major differences between popes?

1. If the pope were of median age for a Cardinal when selected, then about half the popes would still be around when he died. I don't have numbers, but my instinct would be that more senior Cardinals are more likely to be selected pope, which would mean a minority would be appointed by the previous pope at the time of the Conclave.

2. It was only in 1970 that an age-cap was put on Cardinals in the conclave, which significantly increases the power of the previous pope has on his successor; this disqualifies 117 out of 251 Cardinals today.

3. There are certain positions that customarily come along with a cardinality; following this custom diluted the pope's power a bit. Francis did not follow this custom[1]

If you want a discussion of the papal selection, you could do worse than this substack post[2] from a week ago.

1: https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/no-more-princes-c...

2: https://decivitate.substack.com/p/de-civitates-very-traditio...

It's not as straightforward. Francis was voted by cardinals who were appointed by the much more conservative JPII and Benedict XVI, so it's not that easy to control or direct the outcome of a conclave.

> The prevailing wisdom

I'm so sick of prevailing wisdom with people just making shit up just to fill time on 24/7 news coverage and people can have their talking head shows with diverse "views".

This is basically 99% of it, based on two or three datapoints until suddenly it doesn't matter anymore.

See: "Can't select an American pope until America is not powerful anymore."

I've seen people state that America isn't powerful anymore and this is proof of that.

If he's on the same positions as Pope Francis but he's American, then this is a great move by the Catholic Church. Many Americans will naturally root for "their" Pope, and this will lead them away from the positions of Trump and the Evangelicals.

Seems that the new pope has strongly criticized Trump and Vance in the past. This is going to get interesting...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-pope-r...

I mean Trump's own VP has strongly criticized him in the past, it's the herpes of political positions.

I doubt so, Christian Republicans conveniently ignore the parts of the Bible that directly contradict their ideology. How else could J.D. Vance consider himself a Catholic when his actions so directly go against the teachings of Christ?

More generally, I think religion doesn't really inform your political views. It can certainly reinforce them post-hoc, but it certainly isn't the basis of one's morality.

Well then, if organised religion has no sway on people's beliefs and actions, we can as well close the whole show and send home all those priests, bishops and cardinals, imams and mullahs, rabbis and brahmins, etc. etc.

The Pope, like most leaders, is not someone who has absolute power on what others should think and do; but is someone who can exercise a force of attraction in a specific direction. And he is very likely to have a stronger ability to attract and influence Americans because of his origins.

As a practicing Southern Baptist, I don’t find Vance’s political ideology contradicts Christ’s teachings.

Could you provide some good exemplar backed by scripture please? Preferably not cherry picked lines that tacitly support your earthly ideology, please.

https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/guest-voices/jd-vance-wron...

https://christiansforsocialaction.org/resource/false-god-con...

You can find many more online easily, but I won't waste more of my time providing them to you, as I doubt your enquiry was completely honest.

I absolutely don't mean this against you personally - but I don't find Southern Baptists to be following Christ's teachings either.

This would be a good place for you to start: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205-7&v...

I agree that your statement about religion not informing political views is true of many people. I would argue that the "standard" positions of both major parties in America have components which seriously contradict standard Christian teachings. If one wanted to find a party that more accurately reflected Christian positions they'd have to do something like vote for the American Solidary Party, which is arguably completely ineffective (I still did it).

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