The New Guy

By Gordon Hopkins Christopher Hitchens, famed atheist, or anti-theist as he put it, once pointed out that, when a Pope dies, up until the white smoke appears over the Vatican indicating a new Pope has been elected, there is a brief period of time when no one in the world is considered infallible.As a young Catholic boy attending Catholic school, one of the first things I was taught was that the Pope was, indeed, infallible. I asked Sister Prudence what infallible meant. She explained it meant the Pope was always right. Even then, as a naive young Catholic boy, I thought it odd that a guy who was always right should get so much criticism. For the record, the Pope at that time was Paul VI, who lead the Second Vatican Council (aka Vatican II), which led to a lot of changes the more traditionalists in the Catholic Church weren't too keen on. Understanding how a guy could be infallible but still wrong requires a nuance my young mind wasn't yet mature enough to deal with. That was all grown-up stuff, anyway, so I didn't worry about it.Well, I'm a grown-up now. I'm not happy about it, but, there we are. Anyway, I've now lived long enough to see the fifth Pope elected in my lifetime. The new guy is Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV. I was confused as a kid about why you had to change your name when you became Pope. One of the nuns, who clearly understood her audience, explained it was like becoming a superhero. You couldn’t go around fighting the villains of Gotham calling yourself Bruce. Likewise, you can't very well be infallible and have the faithful address you as Bob. This the first American Pope, not just in my lifetime but in the entire history of the church. There have been 266 Popes prior to Leo XIV, yet not one American. And he's not just American, but from Chicago.Oh, how I wish late Chicago columnist Mike Royko was still around. I would love to read his take on the new guy.

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