There’s a new pope—and the tradcaths are furious

Tradcaths, a super-vocal, super-conservative branch of Catholicism, have been extra weird since Pope Francis died. I can see why, too: Most of them converted into Catholicism from extremely conservative hardliner evangelical groups, so they expect Catholicism to work like their old faith—just with extra incense and chanting. Nor do they understand the most basic elements of Catholicism. But with the election of Pope Leo XIV, they’re big mad. Today, let’s check out the news and see what’s upsetting them so much.

(This post first went live on Patreon on 5/9/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now! From Introduction: Wake up, sheeple! Wyoming doesn’t actually exist.)

SITUATION REPORT: Tradcaths, say hi to your new boss—he’s the same as your old boss

My Baptist friend just asked me who I’m going to vote for… in the Pope Election. He was dead serious. I am not a Cardinal. That is all. [Source: Reddit, May 2, 2025]

On May 7, a bunch of cardinals began their conclave. A conclave occurs after a Pope dies. During this meeting, cardinals elect the next one. These meetings have no limits for duration, but in the modern day the cardinals tend to move quickly. At the end of each day’s deliberation, they signal the results to the awaiting crowd outside by sending either black smoke (no decision lol sorrynotsorry) or white smoke (yay, a decision!) up a specific chimney in their meeting location. That first day ended with black smoke.

So yes, it’s just like Groundhog Day, except instead of a groundhog not seeing his shadow, it’s color-coded smoke. (When I saw the black smoke yesterday, I said, “I guess we’re gonna have six more weeks of conclave.”)

But on the second, they arrived at a winner: Cardinal Robert Prevost. He’s already taken the name Leo XIV. According to CNN, he is the first American pope ever to hold the office. They add off-handedly: “He is expected to build on Pope Francis’ reforms.”

In addition to being the first American, Prevost is also the first Augustinian to be pope. That means he formally affiliates with the Order of Saint Augustine (OSA) and has did much of his schooling under Augustinian teachers. The OSA is what Catholics call a “mendicant” order. That means the men in the group must devote themselves to a life of poverty, travel, city living, service to the poor, and evangelism. His predecessor, Francis, was a Jesuit. (Benedict, the pope before Francis, didn’t seem to belong to any orders.)

The tradcaths are furious about Prevost’s win. But who are these loudmouthed critics?

Everyone, meet the tradcaths

I first began hearing about tradcaths about five years ago. They’re mostly converts from Calvinist/Reformed evangelicalism. If anything, they tend to be even more hardline in their conservative politics than their original groups were! A surprising number of tradcaths are Zoomer men—for example, the “groypers” or “catboys” orbiting alt-right figurehead and oft-alleged federal asset Nicholas “Nick” Fuentes. The groypers don’t seem fazed in the least by the condemnation of the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops.

As a group, tradcaths idolize Pope Benedict (resigned 2013, died 2022). Accordingly, they despise every single thing about his successor, Francis—who I nicknamed “Darth Cuddlebug.” He is their Pope Eatin’ Crackers.

Also accordingly, they reject the much-welcomed reforms of Vatican II, particularly the bits about celebrating Sunday Services, or Mass, in the congregation’s own language. Somehow, “Traditional Latin Mass” (TLM) became the rallying cry of tradcaths. (Its opposite is Novus Ordo, which tradcaths always say with a sneer.)

You can always tell a tradcath by their insistence on TLM. It is their tribal marker belief. In a 2021 Reddit thread about TLM, you can see a very clear line between those who want it back and those who recognize reality about its disappearance. Cradle Catholics—like my mom’s entire side of the family—don’t seem to miss TLM, though. When I was a little kid, I dimly remember threats of Latin Mass on Sunday mornings if I didn’t get my butt out of bed in time for my family to make the English one!

During his reign, Pope Francis largely ignored tradcaths’ demands. If one of his higher-ranking clerics got too vocally supportive of TLM, he’d thwap their nose and return to his cracker-eatin’ day without a second thought.

Now that Pope Francis has passed away, the tradcaths have amped up their weirdness. This might be the first papal death they’ve experienced. That made this the first conclave for them as well. At its conclusion, they hoped for a Raymond Burke or a Peter Erdő. You know—someone more like themselves! But what they got was possibly their worst nightmare: a Francis 2.0 from America who held a STEM degree—and who is even less likely to support TLM than his predecessor was.

A 2009 prediction about tradcaths that even I didn’t recognize at the time

Tradcaths, or traditional Catholics, may seem like a fairly recent development, and in many ways they are. But at least one person predicted their arrival on the cultural scene years before it happened.

Back in 2009, Michael Spencer, a right-wing evangelical blogger called Internet Monk, wrote an opinion post for The Christian Science Monitor. It soon went viral in the Christ-o-sphere. (Archives of page 1, page 2, page 3.) In it, Spencer predicted a near-future “collapse” of evangelicalism—due mostly, in his opinion, to softening on the culture wars and losing focus on evangelism. None of his suggested solutions were ever implemented, which is fine since none of his diagnoses were correct either.

I’ve mentioned this post off and on a few times. But there’s one part of it that even I mentally glossed over until very recently: His prediction about two groups he felt would benefit from evangelicalism’s collapse:

Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the “conversion” of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. [. . .]

Will the evangelicalizing of Catholic and Orthodox communions be a good development? One can hope for greater unity and appreciation, but the history of these developments seems to be much more about a renewed vigor to “evangelize” Protestantism in the name of unity.

And yes: Evangelicals have been converting to both groups lately, though it seems like Catholicism is the more popular of the two faiths. Evangelical leaders have begun to notice this trend, and they’re obviously deeply concerned. Of great interest, the Orthodox converts don’t seem to cause too much trouble—while the Catholic ones have completely lost the plot in their heedless—and hilarious—rebellion to Rome.

With the rise of American tradcaths on social media, Spencer’s words have taken on all-new significance. It might be the best prediction Spencer made in his entire three-page-long post.

The pre-election tradcath meltdown

What is taking so long with the smoke? [Source: Twitter, 6:14pm, May 7, 2025]

Tradcaths could hardly contain themselves as the conclave began.

One of the tradcaths’ favorite panderers, Cardinal Raymond Burke, stirred up trouble for days ahead of it. At 76, he was a voting cardinal. An April 30 article at America, a Jesuit news site, reveals that Burke has been speaking “in a negative tone” about Francis’ rule, particularly regarding how he handled canon law. (Canon law is the rulebook for Catholic leaders.) The writer of that article hints at what must have been an embarrassing faux pas to witness!

Thanks to a National Catholic Reporter article, we know exactly what Burke’s cat-butt face looks like, and I bet he wore it after the shocked reception his words earned him. That same article called tradcaths’ hopes for a Burke papacy “a fantasy,” then for good measure pissed on Burke’s canon-law chops from a great height.

A tradcath writing for a blog called Tradition and Sanity goes further in a reply to questions from “Newbie Trad.” In that post, Peter Kwasniewski accuses “many bishops” of not pushing back hard enough against “Francis’s false teachings.” He rejected the notion that the conclave would be led by “the Holy Spirit” in its voting.

A Catholic priest, Richard Cipolla, expressed similar sentiments on a TLM-idolizing blog called Rorate Caeli. (Latin for “drop down, ye heavens,” this phrase shows up in TLM rites.) Cipolla openly yearned for a new pope without “the baggage of the ‘spirit’ of Vatican II.” He claimed Francis’ death had vanquished that “spirit.” Another writer for the same site, Kevin Cusick, lamented the end of TLM and the “illegitimate breach” of Vatican II—and accused unsympathetic cardinals of “occult heresy.”

The Federalist sniffed at Prevost’s lengthy past record of suspiciously-progressive tweets. (I don’t know why they’re so worried. Despite the pearl-clutching from rabidly-conservative Lifesite, it seems that Prevost still opposes human rights for women.)

And then there are the tradcaths on social media. Oh my.

Yes, then there are the tradcaths on social media.

The sheer tradcath firestorm on social media

On social media, tradcaths know exactly how big an L this new pope is for them and their cause.

An active tradcath subreddit, r/TraditionalCatholics, has been spewing nonstop conspiracy theories and gossip. One post from Thursday morning concerned which cardinals were likely to be in favor of returning to TLM. Another complained about Prevost’s political stances and dislike of TLM. The chaos and hypocrisy on display definitely surprised a new member, who felt “bombarded” by it.

But it’s Twitter that saw the biggest fireworks. (Sorrynotsorry, but I am not calling it X.) Prevost himself has been an active user of the site since 2011 under the handle @drprevost. There in February, he linked an article he wrote for America criticizing J.D. Vance.

A number of Catholics responded to Prevost’s February tweet today to yell at him for sounding “woke.” An even greater number of replies complained that he wasn’t their personal pick. One person even asked Grok, the AI platform on Twitter, if @drprevost was even the actual verified account of the new pope. (Someone replied to it with a gif of a baby throwing a tantrum.)

Nick Fuentes made a fairly benign tweet thread claiming Catholicism is “the center of the universe.” It quickly devolved into an antisemitic conspiracy theory thread. (Archived screenshot.) That’s not an uncommon accusation, either. The founder of Federalist, @seanmdav, echoed that antisemitism. (The dogwhistle in both cases is “globalist.” Any time conservatives bark about “globalism,” they’re complaining that Jews totally run the world.)

One tweeter, @PartTickles, asked the Vatican to please clarify the new pope’s position on canon law so tradcaths on Twitter would stop acting like “the Magisterium on puberty blockers and meth.”

One Orthodox Christian, @orthodoxluigi, suggested tradcaths switch to his faith tradition. Another guy accused tradcaths of “already talking about getting their own Cope Pope.” (Likely true, since at least some of them belong to unapproved splinter offshoots of Catholicism like SSPX. Most of them are sedevacantist, meaning they think every Pope since 1958 has been invalid. Whoops, there goes Apostolic succession!)

What tradcaths completely miss about Catholicism: It’s not about them

One Catholic, @MargoCatholic, perfectly sums up tradcath delusions about their religion:

Trads being condemned for failing to be overly joyous about our new pope Leo XIV. Apparently it’s wrong to have any concerns at all about him. Enough virtue signaling. It’s not wrong to have concerns and be cautious about the new pope. [Source: Twitter]

Well yes, actually, it is wrong for tradcaths to “have any concerns at all.” Likewise, it is wrong for tradcaths to “be cautious” about the newly-minted Pope Leo XIV.

That’s what I find so fascinating about these sanctimonious wingnuts: They have such an evangelical approach to their leaders. In their rush to evangelicalize Catholicism, they’ve somehow have missed the entire point of it. It’s supposed to be a straight line linking Jesus and the first shepherd of his church, Peter, to the modern day. It has nothing to do with them on any level.

Their job, as laypeople, is not to question or have concerns or be cautious. If they want to do that, they need to become Catholic cardinals. Otherwise, their job is to sit down, STFU, and let daddy drive. They need to understand that nobody in upper Catholic leadership cares about their opinions, welcomes their opinions, or will ever make any decisions based solely upon their opinions.

If tradcaths can’t obey their new rulers with joy, then their job is to pipe down and disobey in private like all the other Catholics in the world. If they can’t do that, then they need to leave—making sure the door doesn’t hit ’em where their divine god split ’em.

NEXT UP: A Southern Baptist dares to lecture people about sexual impurity. See you soon! <3

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