Interregnum report, March 12
Day One of the conclave began with the Mass for selecting the supreme pontiff, concelebrated by all the cardinals present, including those over eighty. Angelo Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals, gave the homily and reminded electors of the importance of “unity” as they contemplate their duty. But Elena Curti, writing in The Tablet, noted that Sodano’s homily
was largely unremarkable in its message and tone, and contrasted with that delivered at the same Mass in 2005 by the then Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The future Pope Benedict XVI then spoke of the threat posed by what he called the “dictatorship of relativism” and issued a rallying call to the Church to combat secularism.
Pat Marrin, writing at Celebrations, examines the selection of readings:
The readings assigned for the Mass are Isa 61: 1-3a, 6a, 8b-9; Ps 88; Eph 4: 11-16; John 15: 9-17. … Imagine you are in the conclave and these words from Isaiah are echoing in your mind: The spirit of the Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me, sent me to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to captives … . Or from Ephesians: We are no longer to be children tossed by waves and whirled about by every fresh gust of teaching; so let us speak the truth in love, so shall we fully grow up into Christ. Or from the Gospel of John: This is my commandment; love one another as I have loved you. There is no greater love than this, that a person should lay down his life for his friends.
Italian paper La Republicca says that while support for a reform-minded candidate from North America remains strong, Milan archbishop Angelo Scola currently has the backing of up to forty cardinals. However, The Guardian reports today that the chances of Scola, “the hot favourite to be the next pope, suffered a blow”:
Anti-mafia detectives swooped on homes, offices, clinics and hospitals in Lombardy, the region around Milan, and elsewhere. A statement said the dawn raids were part of an investigation into “corruption linked to tenders by, and supplies to, hospitals”.
Healthcare in Lombardy is the principal responsibility of the regional administration, which for the past 18 years has been run by Roberto Formigoni, a childhood friend of Scola and the leading political representative of the Communion and Liberation fellowship. Until recently, Scola was seen as the conservative group’s most distinguished ecclesiastical spokesman.
Meanwhile, Robert Royal examines the Sean O’Malley factor:
There has been a lot of last minute news, not necessarily accurate, about expected coalitions. Latin American experts say the Brazilian Odilo Scherer, often characterized as a kind of stalking-horse candidate of the curia, has little support among Latin American cardinals themselves. Surprisingly, many of them seem to look to Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, a man with a long history in South America– and who speaks Spanish and Portuguese among other languages.
The surprise lies in two facts. First, Latin America has long had a certain resentment toward North America, justified in several respects, because of the way the United States in particular has tried to control politics south of the Rio Grande. Second, Cardinal O’Malley’s press secretary, Terry Donilon, is the brother of President Obama’s National Security Adviser, Tom Donilon. In the not so distant past, Latin Americans, and not only they, would have thought that to vote for an American pope meant the Vatican and the CIA would jointly run the world.
Happily, that’s no longer the case – or at least not automatically the case. And getting past that exaggerated fear is a good thing for both the Church and the world.
Gary Wills, writing for the New York Review of Books blog, asks, “Does the pope matter?”
When Cardinal Ratzinger was asked, before he became Pope Benedict XVI, if he was disturbed that many Catholics ignored papal teaching, he said he was not, since “truth is not determined by a majority vote.” But that is precisely how the major doctrines like those on the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection were fixed in creeds: at councils like that of Nicaea, by the votes of hundreds of bishops, themselves chosen by the people, before popes had any monopoly on authority. Belief then rose up from the People of God, and was not pronounced by a single oracle. John Henry Newman, in On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine (1859), argued that there had been periods when the body of believers had been truer to the faith than had the Church hierarchy. He was silenced for saying it, but his historical arguments were not refuted. …
With the election of a new pope, the press will repeat old myths—that Christ made Peter the first pope, and that there has been an “apostolic succession” of popes from his time. Scholars, including great Catholic ones like Raymond Brown and Joseph Fitzmyer, have long known that Peter was no pope. He was not even a priest or a bishop—offices that did not exist in the first century. And there is no apostolic succession, just the twists and tangles of interrupted, multiple, and contested office holders. It is a rope of sand.
John Thavis breaks down a typical Day One of the conclave in “Praying and Politicking”:
The praying takes place in the Sistine Chapel, where the voting procedure is so formal and so solemn that the cardinals don’t even talk to each other. There’s a reason the cardinals will file into the chapel in choir dress – they are, in a sense, participating in a liturgy.
For that reason, there’s no chit-chat among the cardinal electors, and certainly no chance to ruminate on vote tallies.
But that changes as soon as the cardinals exit the Sistine and get on the mini-buses to the Domus Sanctae Marthae, their residence inside Vatican City. They begin to talk, to reflect on the balloting and, yes, even to promote their candidates to brother cardinals.
There’s a reason the conclave generally begins with a single ballot in an evening session. The first ballot, which may find 15 or more cardinals receiving votes, gives the lay of the land, and the cardinals have some numbers to work with as they head off to dinner.
Here’s an actual minute-by-minute schedule for the next couple of days. By the time you read this, the electors should be finishing up vespers and getting ready for that first dinner, if a “conclave cardinal’s life by the clock” proves accurate.
It is amazing that Gary Wills has it so right on the papacy while no theologian is in the forefront with this. Those who have been have been censored. So we have the charism of pastors and theologians totally silenced by the Vatican in our time. There is not one bishop with the courage of Newman today although some have given opinions in a veiled way. Theologians are a cowed group today also if truth be told. Even when a theologian uses his or her charism to plead for truth in the church s/he is usually blasted by the orthodox theologians who cater to the magisterium.
Best comment of the day, from Christopher Howse’s Presswatch in the London Tablet, reviewing press coverage of the papal resignation:
Here’s a schedule for when to watch for the smoke courtesy of the National Catholic Register. There won’t be 4 burnings each day. The article explains why.
Eastern Time: (6:00 a.m.) — 7:00 a.m. — (1:00 p.m.) — 2:00 p.m.
Central Time: (5:00 a.m.) — 6:00 a.m. — (12:00 p.m.) — 1:00 p.m.
Mountain Time: (4:00 a.m.) — 5:00 a.m. — (11:00 a.m.) — 12:00 p.m.
Pacific Time: (3:00 a.m.) — 4:00 a.m. — (10:00 a.m.) — 11:00 a.m.
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/when-to-watch-for-the-white-smoke
Interesting that Robert Royal sounds so sane, and provides us with some actual information, while Gary Wills just sounds sour.
While I agree with Ms. Steinfels that Wills tone is “sour” and that this article (as well as “Why Priests?” which I am currently reading) are very argumentative, it is likewise disturbing to see the procession of George Weigel (!), John Allen (admired), Thiomas Reese (immensely admired) and assorted other periti respond to minutiae of questions without addressing this big picture of the history and role and jusrt more or less accepting the journalistic framework for this glimpse of the medieval process. Maybe a sourball is needed with all the breathlessness of the politics and process.
Re: Robert Royal / Garry Wills:
Part of the difference seems to be that Mr.Royalis engaged in a focused bit of interpretative reporting, whereas Mr. Wills is advancing a generalized critique. The tone of each must be different, I would have thought.
What Ms. Steinfels and Mr. Pasinski read as “sour”, seems to me to be heart-sick. As I have grown older, I have increasingly taken critical analysis or conclusions with which I diagree as an invitation to wonder how it comes to be that a smart, well trained person would hold such a view or speak in such a way. What does that mean for my a priori beliefs?
Mark
Poor Garry Wills.
At America magazine’s blog, the editor says, “Now it should be obvious to even the most casual Roman Catholic that Mr. Wills’s views are definitely heterodox and probably heretical.”
http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/questioning-garry-wills
At NCR, he was told to “Just Go Away.”
At Commonweal’s blog, a former editor says Wills “just sounds sour.”
And in the magazine, a reviewer of his book said, “. . Why Priests? exudes the same angry and bitter tone as his 2001 Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit. Once again he has taken a sledgehammer to an issue that requires a much more delicate instrument.”
Some of Wills’s readers have posted Customer Reviews at Amazon agreeing with his detractors, while others appreciate the great scholar’s work.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Priests-Tradition-Garry-Wills/dp/0670024872/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363116779&sr=1-1&keywords=garry+wills
I didn’t find the article in the New York Review of Books at all sour. Quite the contrary. Benign and informative, imho.
I wonder if it hurts Garry Wills’s feeling to read the harsh (and sour) criticism.
Von der Vaterland:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/catholic-bishops-in-rome-air-grievances-ahead-of-conclave-a-888357.html
How seriously should we take Gary Wills’s history?
Gary Wills: “With the election of a new pope, the press will repeat old myths—that Christ made Peter the first pope, and that there has been an “apostolic succession” of popes from his time. Scholars, including great Catholic ones like Raymond Brown and Joseph Fitzmyer, have long known that Peter was no pope. He was not even a priest or a bishop—offices that did not exist in the first century. And there is no apostolic succession, just the twists and tangles of interrupted, multiple, and contested office holders. It is a rope of sand.”
Whatever the press may repeat (what do they know!?), we can agree that Jesus did not make Peter pope, because there was no such office, no place for said office to hold forth, and no institution for said office to organize and inspire. But Jesus did make Peter something, and the Gospels remember it as his being a rock upon which to build a church. Presumably that “rock” could have taken many forms; over time it took the form we now have. Were there priests or bishops? Not exactly as we know them, but there was something and someones doing things that we might recognize as liturgical and pastoral…
What seems sour in Wills’s account is that “it is a rope of sand.” Don’t think so.
The church and the pope and everything to do with them have a history; they are not Platonic forms set down by Jesus 2 millennia ago. Gary Wills knows that. He is a smart man. Even good reasons to be in despair over today’s pope and today’s church, etc., is no justification for rewriting history.
I received an alert at 1:50 CT / 2:50 ET: black smoke today.
Maybe, after all the revelations of all the lying by the bishops and the Vatican, Wills has simply turned cynical about the reliability of Church fathers. But I’m surprised that he thinks that the doctrines of papal and apostolic succession are still taken so literally as he seems to take them. Or am I wrong? Does even the CDF still insist that there popes and apostles instituted in our senses of the terms?
As for no “institution” of the papacy and the apostolic offices, what meaning does that term have in theology these days?
Margaret O’Brien Steinfels is exactly right about Garry Wills.
Very black smoke, thick and billowing. They got the chemicals right.
Jim:
I learned about the black smoke from MSNBC at 2:40 EDT. Tamaron Hall interrupted her interview with a young HuffPost journalist on the latest Hacking scandals.
I’m hoping whoever the new pope is that he abolishes the smoke signals…Stewardship for God’s Creation doesn’t include intentionally adding more particulate matter to an already fragile atmosphere. ;)
“How seriously should we take Gary Wills’s history?”
I’m not denying anyone the room to talk about his tone or motivations in writing, but what he says about the Papacy and its supposed NT roots is so elementary that I don’t really see any reason to get bent up about it.
Ms. Steinfels – don’t agree with Wills caricatures or tone but he does reflect, at the core, basic historical evidence and, from above, this evidence has roots in scholars from Fitzmeyer to Raymond Brown.
But history is also part interpretation and community tradition. Wills had decided to highlight the skeleton and leave out the heart and soul, the emotion, etc. So, from 2000 years later, we know that how we define pope, bishop, even priests today had no equivalent in apostolic times. Yet, we also know that over the patristic period the church’s understanding of itself and its office – papal, episcopal, priest- found their explanation, theology, and expression via connections back to apostolic times.
So, if I may borrow from Vatican II – when looking at those offices, would suggest that our understanding is both/and – from a technical backwards look, there are no direct links or step by step stories; but if you read and understand the evolving theology and place of ministry/office through the centuries, then we would speak about a church tradition. The same could be said of most of our seven recognized sacraments and yet – doubt most of us would throw out the sacraments.
“Very black smoke, thick and billowing.”
Through the chimney? Or is the Chapel burning?
Let’s hope there wasn’t a downdraft. They use a mixture of potassium perchlorate, anthracene, and SULPHUR to produce the black smoke and potassium chlorate, lactose, and rosin for white.
I doubt Mr. Wills would get bent very upset if suddenly women were allowed to become priests, even though he says we don’t need priests. But he would be surprised. (So would I.)
If, however, it were to happen, it would not be officially explained by reference to a now centuries-long women’s movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gloria Steinem, marches, burning bras and all that. It would be explained officially by reference to the long, uninterrupted tradition in holy mother church from Priscilla and the others in St. Paul’s entourage through Columba and Doctor Hildegarde of Bingen and so down to the present. If a contemporary pope and his advisers and the Holy Spirit decided we need women priests, that is how they would go about it. And if 400 years from now some Gary Wills said the explanation was bunk he wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. But he wouldn’t be 100 percent right, either.
That is how some of the traditions that bend his writing hand out of joint began.
It’s interesting and also quite enlightening to someone relatively new here and still getting to know the cast of regulars to read some of the comments about Garry Wills. A lot of defensiveness. Many attack him and his “tone” rather than refute what he has said, which is quite interesting to many. Why so much bitterness (sourness?) towards Mr. Wills?
I don’t think Wills sounds sour, just sad/angry that so many people support a created mythology instead of treating the papacy in more realistic terms. Me too.
Margaret Steinfels finds Wills’ tone “sour” and history lesson tendentious. But he asks it seems to me a very simple and provocative question — does the pope really matter? Wills thinks not and I have to agree — he really does not matter at all. Perhaps that explains why to my mind the most noteworthy act of Benedict’s unimpressive reign was to resign. Imagine for a moment if the good cardinals can’t agree — total deadlock and no pope. Why would that be such a terrible thing? I think it would be a blessing. Surely no pope is better than a pope no one pays attention to (except when he dies or every six hundred years of so, resigns). Does the pope matter? I’m with Wills on this one. He doesn’t.
The pope mattered because he’s responsible for the new missal that we now have to suffer every Sunday in anglophone countries.
Like Claire says, I do think the pope matters in a practical sense in that he can cause a lot of damage (like not allowing Catholic relief agencies to distribute condoms to people with AIDS). But the person chosen pope doesn’t make any difference to my own spiritual life.
Whatever the press may repeat (what do they know!?), we can agree that Jesus did not make Peter pope, because there was no such office, no place for said office to hold forth, and no institution for said office to organize and inspire. But Jesus did make Peter something, and the Gospels remember it as his being a rock upon which to build a church.
Matthew 16:18 does not necessarily tell us that Jesus made Peter “something.” I would prefer to say that Matthew made Peter “something” since the saying appears in none of the other Gospels. Matthew privileges the Petrine tradition for some reason unknown to us. Only one Gospel remembers this tradition not the Gospels. And on that fact it should be noted that it is a local tradition for the Matthean Church, and not a universal one in the first century CE. It is likely the misunderstanding of this fact that led later Church tradition to evolve to the point where it is commonly and erroneously stated that Peter was the first Pope.
Does anyone really believe that if Garry Wills and others would just cease their criticisms, whether sour or not, the Church’s manifest difficulties would disappear? It didn’t look as if the cardinals thought so this morning. Filing into the Sistine Chapel, they looked like schoolboys going to detention.
Yes, my favorite bit of actual information from Robert Royal’s post was the suggestion that hey, oh, maybe the Chinese are going to hack the conclave.
To put perspective on the Will’s comments we should see them as sensible but incomplete. While the need for an absolute papacy and strict apostolic succession is a bit much. We have to understand how Jesus’ promise to stay with his church, his people, remains true. Throughout the centuries Jesus has stayed with his church in all the good works and praise for God and neighbor. The problem is that the Vatican has wanted to coop this and act like it is the complete church. One thing the RCC has done is to preserve the practice of the Eucharist which too many of the Separated Brethen neglected. Peter was never called “Holy Father” and pastors were never called “Father.” The leaders too often became dominators rather than servants. The Vatican is too gilded and unnecessary. Vatican II showed us how we can bring back discernment in the church. There was a reaction to this because people felt things got too messy. But look at the mess they created. Much worse than any of the reforms.
If we can learn to become a servant Church again it will be a lot better. It may be messy but it will be a better church.
” It is likely the misunderstanding of this fact that led later Church tradition to evolve to the point where it is commonly and erroneously stated that Peter was the first Pope.”
In the late fourth century when Pope Damasus overtook rival Ursinus Matthew 16 started to be cited more authoritatively as giving dominance to the bishop of Rome. At this time it was started to be unprofitable not to become a Christian. So to claim to be head of an organization which was now the “in” place made the power grab so much more desirable.
When following up on Margaret O’Brien Steinfels post introducing me to Robert Royal, I learned about a young blogger in Philadelphia, Rocco Palmo. His post today includes a video of a conversation by Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto with a reporter, while Collins is trying to slip out of his lodging and hail a cab to the Conclave. The conversation is very interesting to me in several aspects — the intelligence, shrewdness, and humility of this cardinal easily fending off the efforts of the British reporter to get him to give odds on the political prospects of the candidates. Palmo says that Collins was the first English speaking cardinal that Benedict XVI appointed.
http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/
Palmo is a good source of Roman Catholic Church hierarchy information and this video could make Collins very popular to those who have not heard of him.
CE?
Mark: CE = Common Era.
I’m pretty sure that CE stands for Cerebellum Eater.
Maybe Chinese Eggplant.
Maybe Cocaine Earthworm.
So… we continue our fascination with black and white smoke (by the way, I loved “Pink Smoke Over the Vatican”) and will not spend a lot of media time on the more essential questions that perhaps Wills and other so inaptly or ineptly raise…
“How quaint some of those Catholic customs are… and why exactly will this be the ‘right choice’ that all the cardinals will applaud…”
Give ‘em the ol’ razzle dazzle…
I don’t remember other conclaves getting half the attention in the media that this one is getting. Is there just not much else to talk about at the moment or what?
All creatures great and small love malicious gossip, Ann. What a pity that the new pope will at least have to be informed of it all. So much noise; so little silence.
Thomas Reese has an excellent post at National Cathollic Reporter dealing with the voting process and the changes of JP II overturned by B16 and the problems of each and the theoretical lacunae of some scenarios. The evolution and lack of apparent review by any other body of the processes continues in the style of monarchies. Sour ol’ Gary Wills definely has a valid point of view in my mind… though his sharp edges are very off-putting and I hope his history is corrrect – if seen through dark lenses.
So much for the Vicar of…Peter? Or whoever was the first “rock”/pope… as my kids say, “whatever…”
Do anyone know if the bishops have access to the internet at Casa Santa Marta?
If so, the news about the anti-Mafia raids on healthcare companies linked to Cardinal Scola’s Milan friend and Cardinal Ouelett’s brother’s sex abuse convictions with two under-age girls might change some minds about these two front-runners.
Don’t mean to go into the weeds here over Peter/Rock/Pope, but John O’Malley has a summary of scriptural, non-scriptural, and archeological testimonies to Peter’s place in the first days of what would become the Catholic Church. The chapter title is: Peter: Bishop of Rome?
Here is O’Malley’s last para of the case: (From A History of the Popes) “If a bishop is an overseer who leads all the Christian communities within a city, then it seems Peter was not the bishop of Rome. But that is a narrow and unimaginative approach. Peter being Peter, who had eaten and drunk with Jesus and was a witness to his resurrection, surely must have exercised a leadership role in Rome that was greater than that of any single elder/presbyter. It is inconceivable that Peter an apostle, came to Rome, the capital of the empire, and did not have a determining role in that community whenever decisions were made. If that is true, then it follows that Peter can, with qualification but justly, be called the first bishop of Rome. And if he is the first bishop of Rome, then he is the first pope.”
Scripture afficianados: O’Malley also cites the last chapter of John of Jesus’ words to Peter: “Feed my sheep.” ETC.
I sometimes hear “CE” on TV documentaries; it seems shallow, sophomoric and tedious.
I guess after 2,000 years of using the notation “A.D.”, some folks can no longer tolerate “The year of our Lord”.
Que chic!
http://www.amazon.com/Saints-Sinners-A-History-Popes/dp/0300073321/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0
Eamon Duffy is less tentative. In Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, he says:
“The popes trace their commission from Christ through Peter, yet for Irenaeus the authority of the Church at Rome came from its foundation by two Apostles, not by one, Peter and Paul, not Peter alone. . . . Neither Peter nor Paul founded the Church at Rome, for there were Christians in the city before either of the Apostles set foot there. Nor can we assume, as Irenaeus did, that the Apostles established there a succession of bishops to carry on their work in the city, for all the indications are that there was no single bishop at Rome for almost a century after the deaths of the Apostles. In fact, wherever we turn, the solid outlines of the Petrine succession at Rome seem to blur and dissolve.” Pages 1 – 2.
Into a rope of sand.
Helen,
No Internet at Casa Santa Marta. All communication with the outside world is supposed to be blocked — no TV or radio or newspapers, cellphones and Internet jammed, etc.
Any person or organization hoping to influence/interfere with the election process by dropping news bombs, springing scandals, etc. needs to strike before the conclave begins. Any cardinal raising such an issue that hadn’t broken before the conclave began (unless he had prior knowledge going in), would stand self-convicted of breaking the oath they had all so clearly sworn. I believe that’s an excommunication offense …
Ann,
The news media always fuss about conclaves — it’s the one time (other than juicy scandals they love) that most of them pay any real attention to Catholicism.
This time does not feel all that different, to me, from the last one, if anything maybe a bit less intense (remember the focus on the huge crowds for John Paul II’s funeral, etc.?). At earlier ones, the types and 24/7 news cycle intensity of the media were different.
Helen:
The cardinals have no access to any means of communication, passive or active, during the Conclave. And I don’t think that either of those stories would have any effect on their attitudes towards the two cardinals.
Sorry for the repetition.
Katherine:
Thanks but, as a former teacher, I wonder if have they taken the same precautions as they have taken for the Sistine Chapel. I thought that they took an oath of secrecy concerning events within the conclave.
John Page:
I should think that any hint of scandal could scare the cardinals from picking a particular candidate.
However, it would be a shame if the story about Oulette’s brother would have influenced his chances; the same for the comments by Shoenborn’s (my pick’s) mother.
“Any cardinal raising such an issue that hadn’t broken before the conclave began (unless he had prior knowledge going in), would stand self-convicted of breaking the oath they had all so clearly sworn. I believe that’s an excommunication offense …”
Amidst all the calls for transparency there is this secrecy oath. More of the same. The other laughable item is the automatic excommunication: “latae sententiae.” Which is taken seriously by lower clergy and faithful. The cardinals’ only problem with breaking the secrecy is if someone catches them doing it.
“I believe that’s an excommunication offense …”
or at least a communication offense…
Do they swear not to vote for themselves?
They say, “I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who, before God, I think should be elected.”
But what if the voter thinks HE is the one who should be elected? Isn’t he bound to vote for himself?
Helen:
The cardinals whether in the Sistine Chapel or the Domus Sanctae Marthae are in the Conclave. Electronic transmission to and from the Domus SM is blocked.
Gerelyn:
According to Wikipedia, most of the time a good source:
A simple majority vote sufficed for election until 1179, when the Third Council of the Lateran increased the required majority to two-thirds. As cardinals were not allowed to vote for themselves (after 1621), an elaborate procedure was adopted to ensure secrecy while at the same time preventing self voting. In 1945, Pope Pius XII removed the prohibition on a cardinal voting for himself by increasing the requisite majority to two-thirds plus one at all times.
Now, supposing the results are exactly 77 for one elector and he voted for himself?
How about waiters and maids talking to them at the Domus? Are those people kept in a cocoon as well, or do they serve with duct tape over their mouths?
But lack of communication is not likely to be difficult. A number of the cardinals are known to be quite comfortable avoiding information.
Bill Mazzella is not the only one who has criticized the secrecy surrounding the voting at the conclave. (“Amidst all the calls for transparency there is this secrecy oath.”) Journalists have said the same.
I see this differently, however. A secret ballot is important in elections generally, to avoid tactics of intimidation and paybacks after elections are over. Whatever safeguards the act of voting from pressures that reduce the freedom of the person voting is, I believe, a sound and prudent one. Transparency in governance does not require the Church to give up the secret ballot. In fact, I think it would be a bad idea.
Thanks, Helen.
I still don’t get it, but there are lots of things about the election I don’t get. For one thing, I don’t see why a Prince of the Church should have to swear an oath about anything. Surely a cardinal is scrupulously truthful about everything all the time. If he’s not, what does swearing an oath change?
(The biggest problem, imho, is the secret dossier. The binders full of filth seem to have been forgotten. If the new pope is in the binders, he can just burn them and move on.)
—–
With all the talk of the “Petrine Ministry” and how Peter was the first pope, etc., why ignore his method of filling a vacancy? “And they drew lots between them, and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.” –Acts 1:26
There is a dubious tradition that Peter, somehow, chose several of his successors, apparently not from beyond the grave but presumably by singling them out as potential leaders.
More documented is an effort, I think in the 5th century (I’m writing without recourse to books and can count on swift correction) to establish the principle that the pope should choose his successor. This didn’t fly.
But given the modern elevation of the papacy to something like Oracle of God, I find it interesting that no one has ever floated this fairly obvious idea. One major reason is an intuitive recognition that choosing a pope requires input from a diversity of interests and visions and experiences, without which it would suffer from inbreeding and lack of legitimacy and probably even more corruption than it has endured. In sum, while all those cardinals might very well repeat the chestnut that “the church is not a democracy,” 5000 journalists are in Rome and the world is watching precisely because at a moment of transition the church turns to some mix of deliberation and voting by representatives of the larger church, i.e., a species of representative democracy.
To be sure, this democracy is limited in ways that can be listed extensively — something like the U.S. Senate, I’m tempted to say — but a revealing human alternative to the very logical idea that a quasi-infallible leader should name his successor.