Things We Can’t Replace

A new Pope was recently elected this week, Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost. This one hit home for me, as he is from the same neighborhood of Chicago I spent many years in. It was weird to see. You don’t expect someone like the Pope to come from the same neighborhood as you did. You expect places like Italy, Europe, somewhere distant and appropriately ancient. But here he was, an American Pope from a local Chicago neighborhood.

However, it is an ominous sign, as a former Cardinal once said:

The whole aesthetic surrounding the replacement of the Pope was fantastic. It looks so much different than anything else in the modern world. You can see how well it is done and how much beauty is involved in this tradition. Rich crimson against marble white, gold-threaded vestments, the levity, the art.

This whole process highlights a remarkable fact, the Catholic Church still claims an unbroken succession from Saint Peter to today’s pope. The 267th link in a chain unbroken for two millennia. Peter to Francis to Prevost, an institution claiming direct lineage from a Galilean fisherman executed under Nero to this Chicago man. Nearly 1,992 years. The Catholic Church isn’t alone. Several other historic Christian communions, such as the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches trace their leaders’ lineages back to the same time period.

Watching coverage of the newly elected pontiff, I found myself confronted by a paradox. We inhabit an age where we casually announce cancer cures over breakfast news, where glass monoliths scrape the stratosphere because we can, where people routinely live well in their 80s and 90s, where AI can now do many peoples jobs. Our capabilities border on the mythological.

But we couldn't recreate the papacy if it vanished tomorrow. No combination of Silicon Valley innovation, Ivy League expertise, and unlimited capital could rebuild what those twenty centuries of continuous existence have constructed. It had have been made in the past, and be impossible to create now.

This is the curious blind spot in our modern self-assurance, some things, once lost, remain irretrievably lost.

We Can’t Replace the Pope

Consider what the papacy actually is: a position commanding the loyalty of nearly a billion people across continents, a moral authority figure whose pronouncements can shift global politics, the leader of an organization owning countless cathedrals, universities, hospitals, and art collections worth incalculable billions. All this without armies or tax collection powers.

Imagine if the Church abolished the office tomorrow. Which sounds crazy, but it isn’t. It’s happened before. Exactly a hundred years ago, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of modern Turkey, abolished the Ottoman Caliphate on March 3, 1924 as part of his sweeping secularist reforms to transform Turkey into a modern, nationalist state. Atatürk viewed the caliphate, a religious and political institution symbolizing Islamic leadership, as incompatible with his vision of a secular republic. This religious and political institution had existed in various forms for 1,292 years, beginning with the Rashidun Caliphs after Prophet Muhammad's death in 632 CE.

Despite significant Islamic revival across the Middle East in recent decades, the Caliphate has not returned. One billion Muslims who probably have a deeper faith than any other religion in the world can’t bring it back. Once certain institutions dissolve, people cannot recreate them today.

Think about it, who would even submit to a newly invented pope? A freshly minted 'universal pastor' would face not just skepticism but immediate dissection, memes mocking his gestures, Twitter threads questioning his legitimacy, podcasters deconstructing his accent. It cannot be manufactured in a culture that fundamentally distrusts what it cannot personally verify.

This phenomenon isn’t unique to religious institutions

The Fate of Monarchies

Monarchies are the papacy’s secular cousins, equally impossible to resurrect once toppled.

History shows that once a monarchy falls, it rarely returns, no matter how powerful or ancient its legacy. The Bourbons briefly reclaimed France after Napoleon, but their divine-right mystique never fully recovered. The Romanovs, after 1917, became martyrs of history rather than rulers. The Pahlavis of Iran, the Greek royal house, the Lao monarchy, none have regained their thrones, despite lingering nostalgia among some.

Sure, modern republics can imitate monarchy, presidents may live in palaces, wear ceremonial sashes, or command vast executive powers. But these are hollow replacements. A restored monarchy today would feel like a theme park, impressive in spectacle, but devoid of the collective faith that once made crowns more than gilded props.

Should we even have monarchies? Most people today think they are outdated. Is there any defense of them? Well maybe, the core purpose of religion is not to affirm the existence of a God, but rather to serve as a mechanism to prevent humans from assuming godlike roles by fostering humility and reminding them of their limitations. Perhaps the role of a king is not merely to rule, but to act as a check against the hubris of politicians and office climbers who might otherwise behave as if they were kings themselves. Here is a thread by Nassim Taleb on Kings.

The Paradox of Modern Capability

We've lost abilities we don't even recognize as losses.

Try building another Westminster Abbey today. We have the engineering skills, sure, but not the patience or the worldview. We lack the cultural software to create things meant to outlive their creators by centuries. Our architects design for thirty-year lifespans and Instagram moments, not eternity.

We've perfected efficiency while forgetting permanence. We've distributed authority while eliminating its foundation. The same hypermodernity that lets us summon cars with our phones and edit genes has left us malnourished in ways we can't even name properly.

Can We Still Build Great Cities?

Let’s take another example. Not Popes, or Monarchs, or even individual buildings. Let’s take something practical and relevant to everyone’s lives. What can we build today and what can’t we build today.

Let's try something more immediate than popes or kings. Something you inhabit, not just observe from a distance. Something that shapes your daily existence.

We've mastered the suburb, I'll give us that. American post-war suburbia—despite the urbanist sneering—works remarkably well. Those leafy streets in Naperville or Plano or Walnut Creek deliver what most humans secretly want: safety, space, status packaged in vinyl siding and landscaped yards. Four-bedroom colonials with three-car garages where children can ride bikes in cul-de-sacs without fear. The subdivision turned out to be our most successful cultural export—now the edges of Paris, Cairo, Manila, and Bangalore strain to recreate Scottsdale, Arizona. The American Dream, mass-produced with remarkable efficiency, copied worldwide.

Are we capable of building beautiful cities anymore? Places like Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Madrid, or even Boston.

Yet when we examine what our era builds, the Dubais, the Shanghais, the Houstons, we find cities that function impressively but don't enchant. They have towering skylines of glass and steel, sprawling highways, climate-controlled malls, and every modern convenience. But something fundamental has been lost in translation.

Chinese cities seem impressive from a distance, these massive instant metropolises housing millions, springing up in single decades where farmers once worked.

@joeonthestreet

Which cities in China should I visit next? 🇨🇳 #chinese #chinatiktok #travel

These are called Microdistricts, or “xiaoqu.” You get an apartment in a gated community. But no charming cafés or neighborhood bars, just sanitized lawns and convenience stores selling the same packaged goods. 

Anything worth doing requires a grim trek across eight-lane roads to reach a mall indistinguishable from every other mall in every other Chinese city.

It’s not that these places are terrible, I’m not arguing that. They’re fine. They are definitely places that are livable. See below

But they are a certain type of city that can only be built now. There's the cold truth we can't face: Once you've built a Houston or a Dubai or endless xiaoqu, you can't evolve it into a Paris. Not in fifty years, not in five hundred. The DNA is wrong from the beginning. The initial pattern locks in a developmental trajectory that can't be reversed.

So here we are, masters of efficiency, architects of the temporary. We can summon food to our doors in minutes and code AI that mimics human thought, yet we cannot build a city that stirs the soul, nor invent a papacy that unites a billion believers. The paradox of our age is not that we lack power, but that we lack the something that stops us for building things that last centuries and millenia.