The office and officeholder

Friends and readers have asked me who I want to be the next guy, and I’ve responded—artlessly and without any guile—that I have no ’druthers. I don’t know who will get the nod. There is a very real sense in which, as a Catholic and a journalist, I do not care.

With a self-referentiality of which the late pontiff almost certainly would have disapproved, I can say by way of explanation nearly what I said in a little book some four years ago (in what the Italians call tempi non sospetti, literally: “non-suspect times”): The institution of the papacy is more important than who wields its power.

Through most of the last two millennia, indeed until fairly well into the last century, most people couldn’t have told you what the pope’s name was. Among those who could have told you his name, few cared beyond their official capacities, either civil or spiritual.

All the way down to the present, the office of the papacy has seen crafty fellows and clumsy, capable fellows and perfect incompetents, go-getting reformers and shiftless ciphers. There have been brilliant men of refined learning and there have been fellows barely able to use—let alone understand—table cutlery.

There have been good popes and bad.

The office, however, has always been more important than the officeholder.

I expect the cardinal electors to look for someone—anyone—who remembers that and appears resolved to conduct himself accordingly in office. I suspect, however, that the red hats may already be confusing healthy institutionalism with a disastrous penchant for business as usual.

There is an idea—a pious belief among some devout Catholics and a misconception among many outside the fold (or on the margins of the faith)—according to which Catholics would or should or do believe the Holy Spirit picks the pope.

It is true that major events are subject to more definite direction by God, and a papal election surely qualifies as a major event, so there is a special providence at work in any conclave.

Still, God doesn’t pick the pope—not in anything like the sense too many folks appear to hold—not exactly.

A quote from Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 and was the first pope in more than seven hundred years (the first outside the Western schism anyway) to resign the office, is helpful. It is a statement Ratzinger made to Bavarian television in 1997—the year this scribbler moved to Rome, by the way—and I’m glad to see it has been making the rounds:

I would say that the [Holy] Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus, the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense; not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.

In a very real, practical, nuts-and-bolts way: Catholics pray for the cardinal electors precisely because the Holy Spirit doesn’t make the choice for them. The cardinal electors’ part is attunement to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, but in this they are no different from any baptized Christian on any day of the week or indeed from any human—baptized or no—in any minute of any hour of any day.

The task the cardinal electors have is quite specific and indeed peculiar, but it is part and parcel of the workaday prophecy to which all the baptized in every state of life are called, and that requires the exercise of wit. As I put it in a piece for another outfit not too terribly long ago:

Prophets are not the guys who can predict the future, so much as they are the guys who see clearly and speak trenchantly about what’s happening right now.

I recall a turn I did on John Allen’s radio show many years ago and talking, among other things, about the practice of thinking out loud about the papal succession while the office is still occupied.

With apologies to my friend and colleague, whose series of profiles on top-flight papabili I heartily recommend (look here for the most recent and treasure them all, since these are fellows who will play a major role in the conclave and in whatever is coming, win or lose), I recall how we agreed that talking about the succession is necessary but thinking one can pick a winner is silly.

I can’t precisely recall when the conversation took place, but it must have been when Marc Ouellet was still cardinal prefect of what was then styled the Congregation for Bishops. Ouellet came up, and something must have occasioned the conversation topic.

So, I’ll guess it was around December 2020, when Francis skipped the New Year’s Eve Te Deum and Mass of New Year’s Day, 2021, due to a flare-up of his chronic sciatica.

I offered the sort of answer that runs, “Well, if the season ended today …,” and picked Ouellet as the guy the red hats would choose. Only, I couched the pick in a comically copious qualification. “If you’d like,” I sheepishly offered at the end of my answer (ipsissima voce), “I can maybe tack on a couple more caveats.”

I’ve no other caveats to offer here, though I will go out on a limb to say Ouellet is not a likely candidate this time around. He aged out of the conclave, for one thing, seriously diminishing his chances, though not disqualifying him.

Basically, the best advice to anyone and everyone who isn’t in the room this time or any time a pope is to be chosen comes from St. Teresa of Avila, roughly: Pray and don’t worry. Come to think of it, that’s sound counsel any day of the week. It’s also easier said than done, though God makes allowance for that, too.