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Comment by snickerbockers | Hacker News Reader

That's an interesting thought but if they're actually that concerned about it then they'd wait longer than four months. It probably has more to do with America's predominant religion being protestantism by a very wife margin for most of the country's existence. We didn't have a Catholic president until Kennedy and even then proving to the common American that Catholics aren't insane Vatican mindslaves was considered a hurdle he had to overcome.

If there's a political motive in not choosing an American pope until now it's that for most of American history it wouldn't have granted them any influence over American politics. If there's a personal motive it's that until recently they felt insulted that America went for almost 200 years before finally electing a Catholic president.

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> America's predominant religion being Protestantism

Tangent: Protestantism is not a religion. The religion is called Christianity. I have seen this trend for quite a while of Protestants (or people born in Protestant countries) of referring to Christianity branches as religions. I find it very segregational. The whole point of all the branches is the same guy whose name begins with C.

But yes, given the state of America today, having an American pope will definitely be an interesting development in the context of many lobbying groups wishing for a vaticanised America.

> the same guy whose name begins with C

Nit: "Christ" is actually a title, not a name — it's the English version of the Greek Χριστός (christos), from the Hebrew mashiach (in English, messiah, anointed one).

His name was Yehoshua (or Yeshua or Y'shua, "Yahweh is salvation" — in English, "Joshua") whose Greek version is Ἰησοῦς (Iēsous, anglicized to "Jesus", although the Spanish pronunciation hay-sooss is closer to the Greek).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus#Name

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_(title)

I don't consider myself part of any organized religion at this point, but I grew up going to this really iconoclastic presbyterian church where we only ever talked about the two testaments of the Bible and the only formal rituals we had were eucharism and the baptism (which, IIRC is because those are the only two rituals with a basis in the gospel) and from that perspective it's always seemed like whatever catholicism is, it's not the same religion as our relgion because they have all sorts of extra stories and tradition that seemed entirely foreign. We didn't even have an antagonistic relationship with them, our pastor never talked about other religions during sermons because he wanted to avoid our church getting involved in any of the negative aspects of christianity and focus only on the sort of positive community-building that jesus does in the gospels. The catholics have a massive canon of saints who they pray to instead of god, a church that claims to derive its authority from jesus himself via claiming one of the disciples to be their first pope, and a tendency to put mary the virgin at the forefront of everything (not that protestants ever had anything against her, but the catholic preoccupation with her really is bewildering from a protestant point-of-view) that seems irreconcilable from the the viewpoint that the religion begins with the old testament and ends with the new testament. I don't even consider myself a christian anymore and yet I still sometimes find myself feeling like Catholicism is no less alien than islam.

That said, looking back there were a couple problems with the protestant viewpoint: one is that there's no attempt at explaining god's apparent 2000-year vacation and another being that the bible was effectively nonexistent until the council at Nicaea and I'm not sure what legitimacy there is in them having any authority to decide what is and is not canon unless you accept the catholic church's authority.

I hear you about these being a bunch of different branches of Christianity. But the difference between branches of Protestantism and Catholicism is old and significant.

It'd be like saying "Talking about Rust is segregational. It's just all branches of programming languages starting with C". Technically true, but not a useful distinction.

> It'd be like saying "Talking about Rust is segregational. It's just all branches of programming languages starting with C". Technically true, but not a useful distinction.

That analogy is not valid. Protestants argue that catholicism does christianism in a sloppy way, whereas they do it right. If you're going with a programming language analogy, it's like a C++ programmer arguing that onboarding cppcheck and --Wall --pedantic is the only acceptable way to work with C++, and everyone else is doing it wrong.

>That analogy is not valid. Protestants argue that catholicism does christianism in a sloppy way, whereas they do it right. If you're going with a programming language analogy, it's like a C++ programmer arguing that onboarding cppcheck and --Wall --pedantic is the only acceptable way to work with C++, and everyone else is doing it wrong.

Every sect within a religion is going to argue that they are the ones doing it right and the others are either wrong or at least suboptimal depending on the state of inter-sect relations. I would peg the Protestants as C and the Catholics as C++ in this analogy, as the chief defining feature of protestantism is that they do not acknowledge the legitimacy of just about everybody who has ever claimed to speak on God's behalf past a certain point; thus, like C, their view of religion is inherently stagnant. They don't necessarily deny that God continues to interact with his creations, but they've realized that statistically speaking any given prophet or saint has an approximately 0.0 probability of actually conveying messages from God so they'll just stick with the ones that are so old that just about everybody [who calls themselves christian] already agrees on them. This is similar to the way that many C programmers are really C++ programmers who got tired of all the dumb new C++2x bullshit and just want to write computer programs.

Both the protestant religion and the C programming language have viewpoints that make sense given the histories of their respective subjects, but the major drawback of these viewpoints is that they have chosen to limit themselves to only iterating through new interpretations of old ideas; both of them are fundamentally incapable of innovation because being incapable of innovation is the fundamental core of their belief systems. Thus, if God ever really does try to leave the protestants a voicemail or if bjarne stroustrup ever does come up with an idea that isn't terrible and needlessly complicated, both the protestants and the C programmers will miss out on it.

I will not even attempt to speculate as to which programming languages should represent islam and judaism in this analogy because i do not want to die or have my account banned.

That's really not fair because the different sects and denominations of Christianity have different apocrypha and different translations (or lack of translations) of the source texts.

And of course they vary widely in rites, practices, and liturgy.

People think they are closer than they are. The difference between the protestant denominations, catholic denominations, mormans, jehovah's witnesses, etc are quite major and in a very real sense the separation between these different sects of Christianity are essentially only a few steps removed from the separation Islam has from Christianity.

Protestantism is more like C++ than Rust on this analogy.

It's mostly compatible and people keep confusing them.

> Tangent: Protestantism is not a religion. The religion is called Christianity. I have seen this trend for quite a while of Protestants (or people born in Protestant countries) of referring to Christianity branches as religions.

Deciding what is a “branch” of a religion versus whats is an independent “religion” is more subjective than objective. This might become clearer if we move away from Christianity for a moment, and look at the same question for some non-Christian religions

Consider the southern Indian religious movement of Ayyavazhi - most people, both in India and outside it, consider it a branch/denomination/sect of Hinduism, including even many followers of Ayyavazhi - but some of its followers and leaders insist it is a separate Dharmic religion [0]. The question is (in part) political - Dravidian nationalists and Tamil nationalists are more likely to call it a separate religion, Indian nationalists (Congress) and Hindu nationalists (BJP) want to view it as part of Hinduism

Meanwhile, most people consider Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism to be separate religions from Hinduism - but the British courts in India decided they were branches of Hinduism, a classification still followed by the Indian legal system to this day. Many Hindu nationalists promote the idea that these traditions are branches of Hinduism, even though most of the Indian followers of those religions reject the idea.

It is standard to classify the Alevis in Turkey as an Islamic sect - yet the Turkish government wants to insist on the idea they aren’t even a sect, just a “cultural movement”, to promote the fiction of a homogeneous Turkish Islam - but while some Alevis are fighting for government recognition as a separate sect of Islam, there is a movement among Alevis (Ishikism) which claims it is a separate pre-Islamic religion, and its Islamic content is just a superficial distraction (dissimulation) to prevent persecution. Meanwhile, many hardline Sunnis around the world agree that Alevis are a non-Islamic religion - and some of the most hardline Sunnis will even say that of mainstream Twelver Shi’a.

So, the boundary between “branch of a religion” and “separate independent religion” is more subjective (theological and political) than objective.

[0] https://m.economictimes.com/news/elections/lok-sabha/tamil-n...

In the end Christianity is just a branch of Judaism ;)

It's unlikely that Protestants (including all the weird splinter groups/cults/sects in the US), Catholics and Orthodox will ever reunite into the same church again, so calling them separate religions is fair I think.

But the numerous reunions effected by the Catholic Church have been nothing short of miraculous.

For starters, there is a Catholic Church corresponding to every Eastern/Oriental Orthodox Church in existence. Belarussian Orthodox Church/Belarussian Catholic Church. Including some unique outliers: Melkites, Maronites, Chaldean Catholic.

These Catholic Churches "returned" to communion when their head bishops decided to rejoin after centuries of schism. Thereafter, these churches are open to new individual converts, as well as entire parishes or eparchies coming into communion anew.

Furthermore, the Personal Ordinariates were erected quite recently to accommodate conversions from the Anglican church. It began long before that: the Catholic Church has received Anglican priests, with their families, ordained them as Catholic priests, and set them to parish ministry. Yes, even the married ones. Some Anglican priests or bishops became prelates, and entire parishes converted to the Catholic faith. They even retain their own liturgy, "Divine Worship", which is based on the Book of Common Prayer. If you're a fan of the old Tridentine liturgy, just imagine if that were presented in English instead!

Today there are no fewer than 24 Catholic Churches in communion with Rome, including a brand-new Eritrean Catholic Church, corresponding to the split in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

So I disagree with your pessimism because we have plenty of examples, in the distant past as well as quite recent history, where Protestants and Orthodox alike have come back into communion with the Catholic Church. Thanks for bringing it up!

The great schism between the orthodox and catholic churches isn't like the schism between the protestants and Catholics. The protestant and catholic split is rooted in a fundamental disagreement on what the religion is; historically there has been conflict intertwined with politics too, but (Ireland notwithstanding) that isn't relevant to the Catholic/Protestant divide.

It is true that certain protestant sects are effectively "the catholicism we have at home [in england]" and you are right that those probably can be convinced to rejoin the catholic church but the majority of protestant sects have a firmly-rooted belief that the church is an organization created by humans to worship god and there is nothing inherently sacred about it. They also tend to reject anything outside of the old and new testaments compiled at nicea as being canon.

There's a fascinating bit of cognitive dissonance wherein they believe that God is still actively involved in the world and has been for the past 2000 years yet they haven't made any attempts at recording them; I think the logic is that they'd need the church to have some sort of divine authority to add to the bible and they've already ruled out the church having that authority so the bible is effectively set in stone forever. But that's irrelevant, I'm getting off-topic here.

Anyways, as far as unification goes it doesn't really matter that nobody knows or cares about ancient wars between catholic and protestant kingdoms and it doesn't matter that they can all get along and be neighbors and even have their churches work together on charity projects because the schism between the catholics and protestants is rooted in ideology not animosity. There's no compromise between the pope being a direct line of succession from peter and the pope being "just a guy in rome who makes great sermons" and I can't imagine they're going to want to take 1700 years of catholic lore and add it into their canon like its no big deal either.

Another roadblock is that the protestants themselves are highly fractured, often due to minor disagreements over pedantic minutiae that at least 99% of their members don't care about (IIRC one of the disagreements was over whether Jesus meant it literally when he said the bread and wine are his flesh and blood or rather that was a figure of speech, i think the calvinists and the lutherans are on opposite sides of that disagreement) but they've all had a long history of peaceful cooperation and they've never let that turn into an actual conflict yet still they never even try to unite. They don't see any point as long as they can coexist peacefully as separate churches because the only thing that would grant them is consolidation of power, which they are largely disinterested in. So even putting the ideological debates and factionalism aside, they'd need to be convinced that there is even a point in unifying with the catholic church when they can continue to peacefully coexist as separate organizations.

>In the end Christianity is just a branch of Judaism ;)

hoo boy, be careful who you say that around, some of the jewish denominations have some very strong opinions about Christians calling themselves jews lmao.

anyways, I think beyond there being a major disagreement on whether there's any legitimacy to jesus being worshipped as a messiah or the new testament as a whole, the primary reason why they're considered separate religions is that judaism is ultimately centered around the fathers of the jewish/Israelite ethnic identity making a sacred covenant with God that cements them as his chosen people, whereas christianity's basis lies in Jesus' sacrifice forging a new covenant between God and all peoples (jewish and gentile alike). The reason why there's so much undying support for israel among modern evangelicals is that they believe judaism is still a legitimate religion because in their view there's no reason why the old covenant shouldn't still be valid for Jewish people who never partook in the new covenant.

Yes, protestantism is a sect, with a history of conflict with catholicism. Catholics have a huge body of literature and claim stories about tens of thousands of saints and holy/blessed people (you could get lost in those stories for years and never see the end of it, quite beautiful.) whereas the default protestant position is to be skeptical due to the self serving nature of the catholic church.

Pope Leo is obviously not going to represent any american interests, just like the earlier popes not representing german and argentinian interests as that would be blatant and absurd.

Anything is a religion if enough people agree to it. If Scientology can call itself a religion than "Protestantism" is legit.

It seems that the baptist subsection of Christianity already have a bunch of different interpretations of Christian scripture. Historically it's only a matter of time before the inevitable schism, and then they also get to claim to be a different religion.

> Anything is a religion if enough people agree to it. If Scientology can call itself a religion than "Protestantism" is legit.

Protestantism, by definition, is Christianity. The very nature of protestantism is that the Catholic church needed to fix errors and discrepancies. If anything, protestantism advocate that they do christianism right, whereas the Catholic church is a tad sloppy.

I am an Orthodox Christian and I can tell you that to us, Protestantism definitely looks like a completely different religion.

Despite claiming that they follow Christ, our and their definition of "following" is so different that what they do and believe often looks unrecognizable.

The same can be said about the difference between Catholics and Protestants. Despite our disagreements, the Orthodox and Catholic churches still share a lot theologically. The same cannot be said about Protestants (although, that also depends on what denominations you consider).

It's not to say that we don't share any values. We actually do and there are many individual Protestants that behave in a more Christian way than some members of the Orthodox Church.

However, that is not a highly relevant factor. For one reason or another, there are many atheists and members of other religions that do as well. But those still remain clearly separate and would never be classified as Christians.

I agree on your sentiment and it’s also in the Bible: 1 Cor 3:3-6. It bothers me when people switch denomination and say they have “converted.”

If that is how we wanna logic through this, all of these religions are Judaism; Jesus-branches and Torah-branches and Mohammed branches and on and on…

Eh. While the correct term is denomination, in practice the separate arms of Christianity have fought each other and function separately. Like Sunni vs Shia vs other muslims.

Anti-Catholicism runs deep in America, but the particularly weird issue is the converts. People who convert into Catholicism tend to be much more conservative than those born into it, often much more so than actual Church doctrine. Hence the Vance controversy.

OTOH, 6 of the 9 supreme court justices are catholic so there might be some influence there although I think the influence is probably more from the somewhat uniquely American brand of conservative Catholicism.

More like 6.5 out of 9.

Gorsuch was raised Catholic, and thus the Catholic Church still considers him a member. Gorsuch hasn't publicly stated whether he considers himself Catholic or not. In 2017, one of his friends said:

>Trent, Gorsuch’s close friend, said he believes Gorsuch would consider himself “a Catholic who happens to worship at an Episcopal church.”

https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/18/politics/neil-gorsuch-religio...

‘The next Pope is from Chicago’ sounds like the kind of thing 1800s American nativists would panic about

Give Twitter another 24 hours to stew over his past ministry and his Peruvian citizenship, and one will find our modern Know Nothings making similar hullabaloo.

Is it even viable to run for pope as a priest who spent his whole life in a first-world country? I can't imagine somebody who has spent a significant portion of his life doing charity work or spreading the church to some new population losing out to some guy who spends his whole career preaching to a crowd of predominantly-white bourgeois Americans in a boring midwestern suburb where the biggest problem is either too many DEI programs in local schools or not enough DEI programs in local schools.

There is no shortage of the downtrodden and dispossessed in the USA, if you seek them. The problem in this hypothetical would rather be that acknowledging and prioritizing such people in America is likely to be, for many fellow first worlders (to include parts of the American Catholic hierarchy) an inherently radical, polarizing, and political act. I doubt such a priest would be so rapidly promoted as was Leo XIV.

Acknowledging and prioritizing similarly marginalized people in poor countries, or at least in countries less tetchy about their failings and political pieties, carries less political risk. (Which is not to claim Prevost cynically avoided American ministry to the poor.)

That said, that such ministry is qualification at all seems to me more a product of Francis’s remaking of the college of cardinals with a notably Franciscan philosophy. The majority of post-WW2 popes have been European, of the first or second world. Benedict was German and John Paul Polish.

For whatever reason, and I guess this is mostly based on my experience with my Catholic friends and family, even if they are not lawyers the Catholics just love arguing about rules. Perhaps that's because Catholic Dogma and Tradition is complicated. In any case, I suppose that means it should be unsurprising that a lot of Catholics end up studying Law and as a result provide a wide pool to draw from when it's time to nominate Justices to the Supreme Court.

> That's an interesting thought but if they're actually that concerned about it then they'd wait longer than four months.

I don't think they had much control over when Francis died.

The concern is that America would be too powerful if they had this power over Catholicism as well. There's no concern about waiting until it's time to appoint the next one.

Sure, but there clearly wasn't much concern if an American got 2/3rds of the vote on day 2. They didn't have to elect a new pope this quickly.

130+ cardinals aren't going to be stuck in Sistine Chapel for months just to assuage some hypothetical concerns about America.

At one point they took the roof off of a building because they were taking too long. Another, they changed their diet to bread and water. In one instance they stopped their pay until they decided.

You should look into the history of choosing a pope, it’s wild.

Well, they used to take quite a bit longer in the past.

They had to. They are locked there, isolated, until they elect. That is how catholic pope elections work. Their job is to elect and then move on their normal duties and interactions.

Then they appoint somebody else and wait until he dies and then appoint Pope Americus the First. The hypothesis is that they didn't want an American pope until America is in decline and that America is in decline due to the re-election of Donald Trump. I will admit the part about Donald Trump is something i assumed with no basis and it is possible that the OP did not mean to say that America is in decline solely as a result of this, but whenever i read about America losing its international influence it's always somebody complaining about the tariffs or insulting Canada or whatever.

Anyways, nothing can end America on such a short timescale. Even if Donald Trump's recent decisions will cause the downfall of America's global pseudo-empire we are not anywhere near a point of no return and he could give up on playing "5D chess" and fix this all within a month; some opportunities would be lost which leads to some unrecoverable economic damage but we'd still be largely in the same position as we were six months ago; consequentially, any fears they may have had about appointing an American pope during a period of global American hegemony are still valid.

> they’d wait longer than four months.

Why? Is there any reason for anyone in the world to think this behavior will change suddenly? Is there a reason the church wouldn’t think the US has a crisis of faith if those in power and their followers are so willing to commit sin against their fellow man? Clearly we all know how Jesus proclaimed, “Gather ye the masses of immigrants and send them to another country, lest they not be tortured for their grave sins of migration.”

Very late to this discussion, but you should read the Vatican's laws on migration and citizen-only residency, before talking about "sin against fellow man". I am not even Christian, but I find the Popes very hypocritical.

Are you referring to the laws of the Vatican City State, which is a microstate-sized enclave with barely enough infrastructure to support the Roman Curia? The Vatican City State, where the vast majority of its male populace are celibate, unmarried, no wife and no children? The Vatican City State, where tourists abound and comprise a giant revenue stream by their presence? The Vatican City State, which is surrounded by an ancient and cosmopolitan city which plays host and home to thousands of refugees and immigrants?

Or are you referring to some other type of hypocrisy?

What the actual hell?

Yes, I am referring to that Vatican city. Immigration is extraordinarily harsh and strict - your cherished principles of Christianity do not apply. Hence the hypocrisy.

If you believe the city too small, then please consider Italy - which require asylum applications to be submitted while in a third country, the "Cutro Decree", limits on number of non-EU citizens who can enter, non-EU citizens need work permits, nothing given for "family reunification" - laws that are strictly applied or you are kicked out with little fanfare and 1000% less drama than in the USA.

Yes, the hypocrisy is mindbogglingly astonishing. I can say even more firmly: What the actual hell ?

Italy? You mean where it is illegal to immediately deport someone to their own country if they can show they would be in danger due to EU and International law, and if safe, will be sent to a third country or back to their own country and allowed to apply? Or were you just trying to throw out an example hoping no one would know better about the difference between this, and sending people to third-world torture camps?

> That's an interesting thought but if they're actually that concerned about it then they'd wait longer than four months.

Are you suggesting that the decline has only been apparent since Trump's re-election? For some (myself included), America has been in obvious political decline for some time - highlighted and spurred along by some significant events (Trump's first election and the nature of US involvement in Gaza to name a couple).

I personally don't think it makes any sense to claim America's in a decline on a short-term basis; my point is that a decline is inherently something that would only be visible over a longer scale of time.

The reason I said "four months" is because America's media establishment has been pushing this narrative that the tariffs and the argument with zelensky have somehow ended american hegemony overnight; I personally believe it's impossible for these events to cause a noticeable decline on such a short basis because there's far more to america than merely not taxing imports and giving limitless amounts of free stuff to ukraine with no strings attached, but I have developed a pavlovian response to the phrase "America's in decline" because it really is all about Donald Trump with these people.

I would personally put the origin of "America's Decline" at 9/11 because that was the beginning of America's self-doubt about what their place in the world is and what it should be. Everything since then has been the five stages of grief on a nationwide scale. Currently we're somewhere between Depression (stage 4) and Acceptance (stage 5) which is why we gave up on Afghanistan, and also why so many people are opposed to funding Ukraine; there's a legitimate fear that arming the Ukrainians will in some way come back to bite us in the ass 20 years later just like arming the mujahideen did.

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