Pope Francis has died. Two things lept to mind.
First, JD Vance was one of the last people to see him alive.
Second, while the rule is to wait a decent interval before speaking ill of the dead, his leaving of this world had been expected for a long time, and it seems many observers already had obituaries in the can regarding his legacy. So I will add my thoughts.
I’ll start off by stating up front that I am not a Catholic. I have a number of Catholics in my immediate family and circle, so the Church is not alien to me and I have a great deal of both familiarity and sympathy for it.
The next thought is that institutions work best when they remain “tethered” to their founding principles. A balloon that is connected by a tether to the ground may rise or fall, but it isn’t going to go floating off into the wild blue yonder.
One of the problems we have in this country is that our political institutions and culture, while superficially remaining the same, have become untethered from the founding principles of natural rights and social contract.