Commentators were quick to assess the political fallout of Robert Francis Prevost’s election to become the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. Does Pope Leo XIV’s public criticism of Vice President JD Vance’s views on immigration indicate a hostile stance toward MAGA? Were his ornate vestments a nod to traditional American Catholics alienated by the Francis papacy? Will he be a climate change crusader like his predecessor, as his past comments indicate?
All of this will be answered in time. What can be said following the papal funeral and the conclave is that reports of religion’s demise were greatly exaggerated. Indeed, the Catholic Church, Christianity, and religion in general remain vitally relevant in human affairs in our supposedly secular age. The world’s eyes became fixed on Rome following Pope Francis’s death. The white smoke billowing from the roof of St. Peter’s on Thursday caused the globe to catch its breath. Once Leo emerged on the balcony, tributes from secular powers of all political persuasions came pouring in.
This global focus on Catholicism underscores the extent to which religious faith continues to shape cultures the world over, inspire billions of believers to hope and pray, and offer moral and ethical guidelines to a world beset by rapidly shifting notions about what it means to be a human person and what the pathway forward for humanity should entail.
For those who predicted a decline in religious influence, a cohort stretching back to the Enlightenment, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Eighteenth-century French philosopher Voltaire, a fierce critic of Christianity who believed it would wane in accordance with the rise of science and reason, famously quipped that, “A hundred years from my death the Bible will be a museum piece.” Nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche pronounced nearly a century later that science and rationalism had replaced Christianity, saying famously that “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
The social and political changes of the 1960s further reinforced the narrative of supposed secular triumph. The advance of the sciences, which seemed to have eliminated the need for religion to explain the world, was suddenly accompanied by a casting off of traditional morals and values, especially in the realm of human sexuality. Further, ideologies such as humanism and existentialism provided alternative frameworks that rivaled religion’s role in public life.
An iconic Time magazine cover from 1966 echoed Nietzsche, with the question “Is God Dead?” written in blood red against a black backdrop. The article probed the relevance of God in an increasingly secular world. The discoveries of Isaac Newton and René Descartes, the article hypothesized, marginalized religion because they “explained much of nature that previously seemed godly mysteries.” The theologians it interviewed appealed to the need for a more personal and individual approach to religion as a result.
A few decades later, the New Atheists, led by biologist Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, endeavored to put the final nail in religion’s coffin. They argued that the idea of God, particularly the Christian God, was not only untrue but harmful. Their brand of “antitheism,” espoused in books with titles such as God is Not Great and The God Delusion, sought to capitalize on antireligious sentiment following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
And all the while, public mockery of religion, and of the Catholic Church in particular, became normalized in Western cultures.
POPE LEO HOLDS FIRST MASS AS SUPREME PONTIFF
But the worldwide focus on Rome reveals that biblical religion, far from a museum piece, remains a vibrant force. Meanwhile, the movements and thinkers that sought its demise have all passed into history. The home in which Voltaire wrote his anti-Christian missives became the headquarters for the French Bible Society. The New Atheists, largely blamed for the rise in “woke” culture, have seen interest in their critique rise and fall away into irrelevance. But the Catholic Church maintains its hold on the collective imagination.
The first thing a new pope sees when he emerges before the crowd of St. Peter’s Square is the Vatican Obelisk. Originally built in ancient Egypt around the 13th century B.C., it was brought to Rome by Emperor Caligula. Pope Sixtus V relocated it in 1586 to the center of St. Peter’s near the site where the first pope was crucified upside down. It stands today as a reminder of humanity’s enduring desire for transcendence and the folly of predicting the demise of Christianity.