Decline of the West: Part 72

Does the Pope Matter? by Garry Wills | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

The really fascinating aspect of the Papal election lies in the degree to which there appears to be an expectation that the world--Roman Catholic and non-Roman Catholic--should care about an office that is increasingly irrelevant (as Garry Wills points out) to its own constituents. One wonders what is behind the desire to make this transition matter. There is a quiet desperation at work here--and it has something to do with the loss of meaning in the modern world. Not just the loss of religious meaning, but cultural and even civilizational meaning. The popularity of the Lewis-Huntington "clash of civilizations" thesis is part and parcel of this sense of loss. Having constructed an entity called "The West," and vaunted it above "the rest," it is difficult--indeed traumatic--for those who have organized their identities around this fiction to catch sight of their beloved Emperor naked as the day he was born. But such is the situation in Europe and North America at the present time. An Argentinian Pope (it would be interesting, though equally irrelevant, if he were a liberation theologian) is yet another attempt to extend the "Western" reach--to assert its dominance. However, no Pope will be able to counter-act the steady entropic decline of a superannuated institution. Nor will a Reformation (that has been tried).

Good luck Pope Francis. Wear the red shoes. Don't forget to read your Spengler.