Thread: Pope stepping down

Cardinals are appointed for life. This means that the makeup of the college of cardinals is always lagging 40 to 50 years behind the actual geographical demographic. It will change, but take time. Institutions like the Catholic church are set up for stability, not for quick changes. In that regard it is a bit like a constitution. Change to the US constitution for example has happened, but is slow and always lagging behind. The downside is that change is very slow, but the good side is stability.


I couldn't immediately find the requirements for elevation to cardinal, but I have the impression that they are the bishop / archibishop of an important seats of Catholic congregations. This seems to mesh with what I remember of the number of cardinals in areas where Catholicism is slowly on the rise, like China. This also means that with time, there will be more cardinals outside of the EU and Americas. The change in representation will be slow, but it will come.

Stability is good for sure and I don't think anyone is asking for quick radical changes. Even seeing some positive gradual change would be a refreshing change from from the glacial pace now seen. What would be so wrong with simply increasing the number of cardinals to account for the changes in where the majority of adherents to the roman catholic church actually are geographically to make things more representative of today's reality?

Bob

There is an upper limit to the number of cardinals, set quite some time ago.
Currently the number is higher than that, but to balance it out, cardinals over age 80 are ineligible to either vote or be chosen.
So the number of cardinals currently in the effective role are 118.

Now, any pope could change this, popes being absolute rulers. But they would also be hesitant to completely throw away parts of canon law. Popes making random changes to canon law 'just because they feel like it' would make people very nervous. So thats why the age limit was introduced. The 120 limit was thus adhered to in spirit and in functional definition, even if not in actual numbers.

Cardinal positions are filled through dead man's boots.

It may all sound perfectly reasonable to you but I just can't buy it. After this thread and learning a little more about a specific organized religion I am doubly glad I do not belong to any organized religion. It has been interesting and informative though.

Bob

Originally Posted by BobH

It may all sound perfectly reasonable to you but I just can't buy it. After this thread and learning a little more about a specific organized religion I am doubly glad I do not belong to any organized religion. It has been interesting and informative though.

Bob

I am not saying that everything makes sense to outsiders, or even to me.
But cardinals electing the pope has been done for 1000 years already.
It's like an ocean liner running a certain course. It can change direction, but you don't just put it in reverse or make a sharp turn.

It's a bit like the US electoral college.
EDIT: actually, is is a LOT like the electoral college at the time when the EC still chose the president.
Or the unofficial rule that no president should serve 3 terms.
It's not that these things cannot be changed, but they have been like that for a long time and people would get very nervous if that suddenly were to change.

Btw, you can read up on the procedure in full, excruciating detail here:
Papal conclave - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The next pope will need a 2/3 supermajority.

Nay, I think I have had enough of "give me that old time religion" for awhile.

Bob

Originally Posted by BobH

Nay, I think I have had enough of "give me that old time religion" for awhile.

Bob

See these comments I just don't understand, this is history in the making, and it is happening in our time, I am not exactly a religious person mild understatement there, but I find this fascinating because it hasn't happened in 600 years.. Honestly I couldn't careless who takes over as Pope but I am very interested in the process...

From what I have gathered from this thread the actual process of selecting a new Pope has not changed in an extremely long time and is not likely too for the foreseeable future. This will be the fourth such selection process I will witness and will be the same as the last three. I can hardly work up a huge amount of interest in the actual mechanics of the selection process.

What is interesting to me is the act of abdication and the internal politics that brought that about for the first time in 600 years. That may not be known fully for generations if then even.

Bob

I would argue that it is more like 719 years since there has been anything really similar to this particular resignation. Benedict has resigned ostensibly because he feels unable to fulfill his duties as Pope. The last Pope to resign due to inability to carry out papal duties was Celestine V who called it a day after a brief but spectacularly unsuccessful papacy in 1294. He had been particularly unsuited to the job, as he was something of a reclusive ascetic with no political experience, ambition, or inclination. While undoubtedly devout he was really just the wrong guy for the job. And so even this resignation due to an inability to fulfill the duties is different than Benedict's. Celestine was ill-suited and ultimately incompetent as opposed to growing old and infirm.

As far as I know this is the first instance of a Pope resigning due to age and infirmity. There have been a wonderfully diverse array of reasons for Papal resignations ('resigned' after being deposed by an emperor, forced to resign in face of accusations of bribery, simony, or paganism) but Benedict IX really takes the cake:

- made Pope at age of around 19 in 1032 (so those who hope for a younger pope - maybe not this young...)
- accused of all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors ranging from theft to adultery to rape to murder
- given the boot in 1044 by those who opposed him, Sylvester III elected in his stead
- Benedict returned in 1045 only to be bribed by his own uncle (who became Pope Gergory VI upon his resignation) to resign in order to protect the Papacy from further scandal
- Gregory VI was in turn forced to resign in the face of accusations of simony
*then it got confusing - suffice to say there was a brief period when three individuals claimed the Papacy, secular powers got involved and when the dust settled, our man Benedict had been excommunicated and sent on his way from Rome after having kind of been pope for three terms.

The resignation that people refer to as having taken place around 600 years ago was that of Gregory XII. He did not resign due to infirmity, age, or unsuitability for the job. In the late 14th and early 15th centuries there was what we now know as the Great Schism (or more accurately the great western schism as THE great schism was the split between the eastern and western churches in 1054). In the early 14th century, the Papacy had in effect moved its headquarters from Rome to Avignon in the south of France. Gregory XI decided to end that exile and return the Papal curia to Rome in 1376. Things did not end well. When Gregory XI died in 1378, a conclave met and elected an Italian Pope Urban VI. The French Cardinals (who had over the previous 70-odd years grown used to controlling things) were not amused. They held a second conclave and elected their own Pope: Clement VII who was the Avignon pope until 1394.

And so the Church ostensibly had two heads. Naturally political allegiances were as divided as religious allegiances. France and her allies supported the Avignon popes. Her enemies (in particular England) supported the Roman popes. Others waited to see which way the wind was blowing and/or played the two popes off against each other.

To further complicate matters, a council was held in 1409 in in an effort to end the schism by electing a 'true' Pope. This succeeded only in saddling the Church with three popes, all of whom claimed to be the rightful successor of Peter, all of whom refused to back down, and all of whom set about excommunicating the others. It was not a pleasant scene.

This was the reason for Gregory XII's resignation. He did not resign because he was unable to carry out his duties. He resigned as a way of ending the schism. Before resigning, he authorized the council of Constance to elect his successor. The council then elected Pope Martin V, and while some supporters of the Avignon Pope Benedict XIII continued to support him for a short while, Gregory XII's resignation was ultimately successful in that it did precipitate the end of the schism.

Which is a very long way of saying that the resignation of the current Pope is even more unique than is generally recognized.