As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day on November 23, my Catholic fellow-citizens might take a moment to give thanks for a 120-year old apostolic constitution that virtually no one remembers — but that is re-asserting its relevance in this troubled Catholic moment.
For centuries, the popes exercised sovereignty over a large swath of central Italy known as the Papal States. Among the many ways in which this arrangement impeded the Catholic Church’s evangelical mission, the fact that the pope was a temporal sovereign with lands to defend inevitably enmeshed the Church in European power politics. This untoward entanglement led to the ius exclusivae (right of exclusion), by which the Catholic monarchs of Spain, France and Austria claimed the right to veto a candidate for the papacy that this, that, or the other one disliked.
The ius exclusivae was never formally acknowledged by the Church, but Euro-politics were such that, on several occasions in modern times, the conclave electing a pope felt that it had to take heed of a monarchical black ball. Thus in the conclave of 1823, called to elect a successor to Pope Pius VII, Emperor Francis I of Austria scotched the candidacy of Cardinal Antonio Severoli, leading to the election of Cardinal Annibale della Genga as Leo XII. Seven years later, during the month-and-a-half long conclave of 1830-31, King Ferdinand VII of Spain vetoed the candidacy of Cardinal Giacomo Giustiniani (a former nuncio to Spain who had gotten into bad odor with Ferdinand’s queen), resulting in the eventual election of the Camaldolese monk and prefect of Propaganda Fide, Cardinal Mauro Cappellari, as Pope Gregory XVI.
Then, in 1903, Cardinal Jan Puzyna of Cracow pronounced the veto of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph on the leading candidate, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, whose accommodating approach to the French Third Republic the Habsburg emperor didn’t appreciate, France being on the other side of the European alliance system at that time. The cardinal-electors were unhappy, but the exercise of the ius exclusivae finished Rampolla as papabile and the electors eventually turned to Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto of Venice. In January 1904, the new Pope Pius X abolished the ius exclusivae in the constitution Commissum Nobis, which decreed automatic excommunication for anyone interfering in a future conclave and warned that doing so would incur “the indignation of God Almighty and his Apostles, Sts. Peter and Paul.”
Commissum Nobis may seem an anachronism today. But perhaps not. It has been recently suggested — and not just in the woolier regions of the Catholic commentariat — that the present papal administration is considering a “reform” of conclave procedure. Such a “reform,” it is speculated, would eliminate non-voting cardinals over 80 years old from any role in a papal interregnum, barring them from the General Congregations in which they currently have a voice. In their place would be substituted a mixture of lay men and women, clergy, and religious. Small groups, including both cardinal-electors and these others, would then meet, using Synod-2023’s facilitated “Conversation in the Spirit” methodology to “discern” what the Church needs in a new pope.
Several grave problems come immediately to mind. For while there may not be, these days, Catholic monarchs interested in influencing a conclave by a veto, other worldly powers surely would try to exercise other forms of “veto.”
Opening the pre-election discussions beyond the College of Cardinals would inevitably bring pressures to bear from the world media and social media, and those pressures would, just as inevitably, be agenda-driven. Governments hostile to the Church would doubtless want to get their oars into the conclave waters; China, Russia, Cuba and Venezuela come readily to mind, and there could well be others.
Then there are the billionaire philanthropists who understand that the Catholic Church is the last major global institution standing in the way of the rainbow agenda of world social transformation they have promoted for decades; these men and women have already seen fit to pour millions of dollars into abortion referenda in historically Catholic countries, and there is no reason to think they would cavil at trying to use their wealth to influence the pre-voting discussions during a papal interregnum, on the theory that shaping those discussions would have a decisive influence on the voting when the cardinal-electors are locked into conclave.
These pressures would be present if the current conclave rules were not changed. But opening the pre-voting discussions to non-cardinals while muzzling the voices of some of the Church’s wisest elders makes it far more likely that those pressures would have a real effect.
And that really should not happen.
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Well written. Thank you. Some slopes become slippery quite gradually over time with the erosive effects of wind, rain, snow and ice until, suddenly, the slope is unsustainable and anyone on it just slips off the edge. That is how I feel right now about our western society, and its effects on our ability to follow Jesus in our Church. I agree with you, this Conclave Reform proposal is one more erosive event on the path.
Weigel writes that open-bar, amnesiac (excluding cardinals over 80), pre-conclave discussions would subject papal elections to the influence of the media and mass media, hostile governments and billionaire philanthropists…
Or, at least, the influence of the “non-synod” Synodale Weg within a polyhedral Church, and which already incoherently found its way into the “welcoming” Synod on Synodality. Of course, the vanguard German schism would no longer be a problem to the “universal” Church, since now it would be back in step with whatever a welcoming conclave/Church does to itself.
Good time to bring this possibility up as we are , no doubt, approaching the end of this pontificate. We must remember that the Church is a kingdom, not a democracy and should not be subjected to private interest lobbyists etc.. Clericism must be kept in check but not eliminated . It is time to recognize the fact that one legitimate function of the clerics is the Papal succession. There is enough political intrigue within without bring in more from without. Just a thought. 🥲
Thank you, Mr. Weigel, for waving yet another red flag. (The news from the Vatican lately has been reminding me of a May Day parade in Red Square.)
You’re right. Bergoglio must not be allowed to wield his diabolical wrecking ball from beyond the grave.
Call me a backwardist, but I say a pope ought not to be selected the way an Atlantic City beauty pageant chooses the next Miss Universe.
Here’s one papal enclave reform I wouldn’t mind seeing:
No more Jesuiticals. Ever.
Period.
Papal preeminence as the world’s most venerable influential authority is a mystery attached to Christ. From its nascence in Rome, the world dominant power, Rome’s conversion, perhaps the fortuitous, perhaps providential engine for transmission of Christianity to the accruement of temporal power, a semblance of the Roman identity.
We can debate forever the benefit or detriment of a spiritual authority adopting temporal authority. For Italy a perceived curse by Italian nationalists including Machiavelli and his advice to the Prince, to the wars of the warrior pope Julius II, patron of the arts, battle commander. Papal wars that were engaged with the German Hohenstaufens in central and southern Italy, the emergence of Frederick II, Holy Roman emperor seated in Palermo, considered by Nietzsche the first European. The Roman pontiff, the perceived culprit and detriment to progress culminating in Pio Nono’s opposition to Italian unity, which until today remains an issue regarding his beatification.
From this writer’s perspective the best gift to Catholic Christianity was the destruction of its temporal power during the tumultuous 19th century. As George Weigel alludes, its power today is more evidently moral power. The bulwark against the rainbow global agenda. Although, as Weigel’s commentary suggests, its future as a moral bulwark is obviously compromised by the machinations of Pope Francis. Francis’ power politic of a Synodal selectivity that subdues the more faithful cardinals and bishops. A pope who imposes a power conclave to countermand its own moral authority.
I agree, but I would add, “no more progressives, ever.”
Six of one…
Since Francis and this Vatican is in high-octane listening mode perhaps we might begin to offer the names of prelates (and not just cardinals) who would insure a continuity with the 2,000 years of Tradition that has been the patrimony of the Church.
Lay participation in papal selections (or events leading to them) is not unknown to Catholic tradition. It would not be surprising if Pope Francis revives the old practice. If so, it should also include the requirement that such lay participants be celibate.
(The celibacy requirement I found in the Wikipedia article on papal conclaves, but provides no references. Still, wouldn’t such a provision exclude practicing homosexuals?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_conclave
Why would anyone use the airheaded anti-Catholic bigots of Wikipedia as an authoritative source on anything at all?
One of the most fundamental distinctions that exists in the church and highlighted in any number of ways is that which exists between the Sacred and the Profane. Here, and since V2, there seems to be some great desire to blur this reality so that the holy are made “common”. In the end, what results is chaos and we know who is the father of chaos. V2, by emphasizing the “priesthood of the faithful” has become a means by which the lofty role of the priest has descended into banality. What a shame. At the hands of our priests our souls are made clean and our bodies have the nourishment necessary for eternal salvation. Far from committing the grave sin of “clericalism”, PF and his ilk have desacralized the priesthood to the ruin of salvation.
I thank you Jesus that the Church is yous!