Some thoughts on the as-yet unfinished papal election:
The conclave’s first day has produced only black smoke. Wall-to-wall coverage will continue, and millions will watch, until white smoke announces the election of the new pope and he appears before the masses in Saint Peter’s Square and the world’s TV screens.
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| Black Smoke From Ballot #1 |
If nothing else, the Catholic Church is good theater, and the conclave’s very secrecy generates the ironic suspense that comes when the players know more than the audience.
Some alienated Catholics, especially in North America, remain immune to a spectacle that offers no choice of movement on issues like contraception, same-sex marriage, or women priests. For them, the whole papal election--indeed the papacy itself--is largely irrelevant. That cuts both ways, of course: their concerns are largely irrelevant to judging what difference the new pope might make.
Since all 115 electors were handpicked by either John-Paul II or Benedict XVI, we know in advance that on major church teachings, as well as on the most controversial minor ones (mostly about sex and gender), the next pope, no matter who he is, will bring continuity rather than change.
But within the mainstream of that continuity are several challenges facing whoever is elected, and we will measure his success based on (1) how he sets his priorities and (2) how the engages them.
CrossCurrents readers know my take on this: the new pope inherits a 50-year process that has transformed the papacy itself, and our current challenges call for further transformation. For me, this means taking action on several fronts:
Corruption and hypocrisy. The fallout of the sex-abuse scandal is a widespread (and still spreading) perception of the Catholic Church is an institution steeped in malfeasance and cover-ups. We cannot expect the next generation to invest themselves or their children in the Church unless that perception changes. This will take visible action at all levels, and could take an entire papacy—or more—to accomplish. So from the start, the new pope must bring a forthright and upright presence to his role by establishing accountability at all levels of the hierarchy.
Housecleaning. Fifty years ago John XXIII hung the renewal of Catholicism on three things: Vatican Council II (1962-1965), the revision of canon law (moderately revised in 1983), and the reform of the curia (Vatican bureaucracy). Since then, the curia is more international and has fewer minor clerics holding too much authority, but it remains an isolated bureaucracy. Too many of its bishops are too far (in place or time or both) from the experience of day-to-day church life.
At Vatican II the curia’s scheme for a quick, do-nothing rubber stamp council exploded when the world’s bishops balked at being bossed by bureaucrats and recreated a meaningful council agenda. The result: Vatican II was truly the product of the Church’s shepherds, not its bureaucrats.
But 50 years later the bureaucrats are back in charge (and often committing grievous errors of governance).
The last two popes not only allowed the world’s bishops to languish (the occasionally convened Synod of Bishops became increasingly toothless under John-Paul II and Benedict XVI), they also neglected their own responsibility to manage the curia.
The new pope will need to reassert the right order of things: his place as the leader of all bishops, with the curia under their direction.
On pilgrimage. Since Paul VI, the papacy has become a pilgrim post, no longer secluded away in the Vatican but traveling the world’s continents to make the Church’s presence and mission visible in human form. His successors followed his example, but lost control of day-to-day management.
The challenge facing the new pope: how can he continue this global presence but keep control of what goes on in Rome? It will help if he is truly a man of the world, a people’s pope, rather than a closeted cleric.
Evangelizing. Worldwide Catholicism continues to grow, but not everywhere: it is losing relative ground in Latin America, it is losing absolute numbers in North America (and only avoids shrinking thanks to millions of immigrants), and is nearly moribund in much of Europe.
Vatican II aimed to enrich the secular the world with gospel values by reaching out, by engaging in what Paul VI called “a conversation with the entire world.” But in many places that conversation has broken down even among our own members.
My view is simple: since Vatican II, secular culture has outrun Catholic renewal, and we risk falling further behind unless the new pope can preserve and rekindle the flame of renewal. If Vatican II sought to assert Catholicism as a world church, the new pope must solidify the papacy’s role in world leadership.
These four challenges are central to the new pope’s success. My own conviction is that such challenges are too big for one man to tackle solo. Upon his own election in 1958, John XXIII knew he needed help to face post-war modernity, so he called the world’s bishops to convene in council. In so doing he dispelled a century-old myth that the pope could lead the church alone. We should hope and pray that the new man thinks like John, and mobilizes his bishops to join him in leading the way ahead.
© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2013
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