UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
Cardinal O’Malley just said Cardinals must take whatever time they need because picking a Pope is the most important decision a Cardinal makes. He is right, of course, but taking time is not enough. Let’s be honest, please, as the Gospels mandate. You cannot hang this papal election process on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not foolish; but the current election process surely is foolish.
Many of 115 electors are barely familar with each other and are suddenly going to pick a monarch for life. Why not just pick a name out of a red biretta, at least then Cardinals cannot be manipulated by the Vatican Cardinal clique or by ill informed Vaticanisti? Life tenure may have worked for chieftains and kings appointed in the pre-modern era by small groups who knew each candidate well, but it makes little sense in a modern papal election. The antiquated procedures are the best evidence the Holy Spirit has not shown up yet at the Sistine Chapel. Perhaps he has stayed behind with Germany’s Cardinal Lehmann? Is the successor to Cardinal Frings at the German Bishops Conference planning now to emulate Frings’ bold stand against the Vatican Cardinal clique at the Second Vatican Council?
If the key voting percentage can be changed and a Pope’s term can be ended by retirement, as the ex-Pope has done, then the papal election procedure surely can now be changed quickly to elect a Pope for a fixed term, that could always be extended by a future re-election of the same Pope. The Cardinals are using procedures that may have made sense to elect a monarch for a small medieval Italian kingdom, but the procedures are really inadequate, even ludicrous, for electing the leader of a one billion plus worldwide organization in the modern era. There is no good reason, other than saving Vatican Cardinals’ jobs apparently, to continue with this medieval nonsense. If the procedures are not changed now, the next Pope will likely soon throw up his hands as Joseph Ratzinger apparently had to.
What can Cardinals do? For starters they can elect a new Pope for a fixed term, say three years, then meet thereafter with adequate preparation to address the structural management and numerous pastoral problems threatening the continued existence of the Catholic Church.
Over 2,000 Cardinals and Bishops a half century ago decided overwhelmingly at the Second Vatican Council that the Catholic Church’s governance structure desperately needed reform, in particular, power sharing mechanisms. Their will was thwarted by an entrenched Vatican Curia, or papal court, that controlled subsequent Popes and sought to protect their turf against worldwide bishops. This undercutting of the Council’s original decision, which ex-Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, had strongly endorsed in 1965, that was intended to address the desperation of 1965 has directly led to the governance crisis of 2013 that hangs on a seemingly mythical “infallible thread”. By now, Cardinals must in their hearts and heads all know this firsthand, especially if they have become aware of the contents of the secret dossier on current Vatican scandals. What can and must the Cardinals now do?
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