A prolific Catholic commentator on Twitter says that people should pray for the Cardinals to choose “the man that God wants.” In truth, this tweet incited curiosity of a fiery sort amongst his followers-ranging anywhere from questionably devout affirmations to outright defiant scoffing at the notion of any form of divine involvement in the procedure.
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One user, named Jenny Song, responded with man-in-the-thread-cryptic notions that somehow the election would usher in ‘the last one’ before ‘the end’ and were thus an apocalyptic event that some on the fringes tend to associate with papal transitions. On the opposite side, matthew schlosser, taking a more theologized stance, asserts that the Holy Spirit does guide the Cardinals but that this does not guarantee the existence of a perfect pope; rather, it guarantees that the Church will never go astray in teaching matters of faith and morals.
Many were against the divine participation. 6xism said, “We should stop pretending that god has anything to do with this,” which then prompted a back-and-forth with another commenter querying who he thought he was in arrogantly dismissing faith-based decisions. Some just had minimalist perspectives, while Grumpy Old Man says, “God’s not involved. His Son was sufficient,” which from a Protestant viewpoint outright rejects papal authority.
There were snarky ones, and there were also satirical remarks. One set a joke in motion of somehow putting Donald Trump in the vote for pope, while another mocked the Church for its vanity, wondering aloud if Jesus would approve of such papal garb in the first place. Duke George delivered the sharpest put-down of the whole election as merely selecting “the next political head of state of this micro nation,” a rather scathing interpretation of any spiritual end of the Vatican as politicking.
Amid that chaos, a sparse few voices made serious comments. Chica Tomorrow simply said a prayer that the Cardinals might choose “a man that believes in God,” and Stefano called them with the Latin cry of “Veni Sancte Spiritus,” calling on the Spirit to guide them.
Other threads spiraled into wider attacks on the Church, some accusing it of past scandals and others questioning if a pope is needed at all, citing scripture to declare Christ alone as Head of the Church. One user even pushed further, daring Dr. Marshall to give a biblical reference to justify the papacy, demands that have separated Catholics from other Christian branches for almost two millennia.
What, then, can be distilled from all this? These tweets highlight the deep divergions-and this is not limited to Catholicism, for there are indeed some to be found across Christianity-regarding how much divine will is left to human institutions. Some see what goes on in a papal election as God-sanctioned hallowed ground, whereas others see it as a farce, pawed into realms of human intrapolitics, bargaining, power games, and so forth. Then, of course, there are those who simply want to make fun of Trump for pope.
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Ultimately, irrespective of their views on divine intervention, the one thing everyone agrees upon is that the next pope indeed has a ton of work ahead of him from the spiritual perspective and the public-facing one. Pope Francis laid to rest in historic basilica ceremony.
This story originally appeared on Celebrityinsider
