This week, the papal conclave begins in Rome. Many expect it will end this week as well, with the election of Pope Benedict’s successor. But reader John McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern and a leading expert on supermajority rules, alerts me to a recent change that may cause the meeting to last longer than expected.
The rules for the conclave are contained in a 1996 decree by Pope John Paul II. As originally written, the decree retained the traditional requirement that a new pope be elected by a vote of two thirds of the conclave–but with a slight alteration. The two-thirds requirement would hold only for the first 33 ballots, or roughly eight days. After that, the vote would be by simple majority. The purpose, obviously, was to break deadlocks and prevent conclaves from dragging on too long.
In 2007, however, Pope Benedict amended the 1996 decree to reinstate the original rule: a two-thirds requirement on all ballots. As a result, the conclave that begins this week will continue until a candidate receives a supermajority. This could result in a longer conclave, but will ensure that a consensus candidate acceptable to all “sides”–traditionalist and non-traditionalist, European and non-European, curial and non-curial–prevails. And, anyway, recent conclaves have avoided deadlocks, notwithstanding the two-thirds requirement.
In Catholic understanding, of course, the Holy Spirit ultimately guides the conclave and achieves the result the church needs. So one might think this tinkering with voting requirements is rather unnecessary. The Coptic Orthodox Church names its pope by lot. But the supermajority requirement has its value, even if it might occasionally result in a longer conclave, and the Holy Spirit can work through a supermajority as well as a bare majority. As Pope Pius II declared on his election in 1458, “We would judge ourselves entirely unworthy, did we not know that the voice of two-thirds of the Sacred College is the voice of God, which we may not disobey.”
March 10th, 2013 | 11:39 am
In Catholic understanding, of course, the Holy Spirit ultimately guides the conclave and achieves the result the church needs.
I don’t think Pope Benedict XVI himself would agree with this. See A Quick Course in “Conclave 101″ by John Allen:
If the Holy Spirit actually picks the pope, surely He could inspire the College of Cardinals to choose His candidate on the first ballot by a two-thirds majority. Why go through the charade of ballot after ballot if the outcome is predetermined?
March 10th, 2013 | 2:02 pm
Ratinzger is quite correct: the election of the Pope is no indication of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The only thing that is guided is that the elected Pope not teach error in faith and morals ex cathedra.
March 10th, 2013 | 2:29 pm
God’s perfect Providence has “picked” every Pope.
There is no such thing as chance. Nothing happens without God’s permission. God’s omniscience and perfect Providence, from all eternity, took into consideration the results of our free will – including the less than pious machinations of some conclave members over the centuries – such that He is still sovereign over all events, from the most minute to the great events of history. Of course, that means His perfect Providence has sometimes resorted to “Plan B” because the misuse of our free will disrupted His “Plan A.” ;o) The first time that happened His “Plan B” was so glorious that to this day we praise it every Easter season with “O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”
Nonetheless, we should still earnestly pray that the conclave members exercise their free wills such that the conclave ends with the election of the “Plan A” Pope. And if it doesn’t, praise God!
March 10th, 2013 | 3:05 pm
David, the post does not say that the Holy Spirit “actually picks the pope” or that the selection is “predetermined.” You just made that up. The post actually says that the Holy Spirit “guides” in the selection of the pope. The post also says that the Holy Spirit may “work through” a variety of procedural rules. That seems to be entirely consistent with the fragment that you yourself have quoted. Are you reacting to some different post?
March 10th, 2013 | 3:29 pm
Thanks, David Nickol.
Once in a while you manage to avoid being pedantic, and this is one of those cases.
March 10th, 2013 | 6:20 pm
I think that one could make a case that, in the picking of a Pope, God allows his guideance to be intermingled with human freedom. That is, God allows humans to participate in these matters, and allows humans to, perhaps, get it wrong, similar to how he allows us to make mistakes in life generally. He gave us freedom, so that we can learn, and become better, but the corollary of this, is we often get things wrong.
If God did everything, then we couldn’t possibly learn through experience. Our experiences are gifts from God. What could be a greater gift than participating in his holy work?
March 10th, 2013 | 7:20 pm
Are you reacting to some different post?
Marc,
Good to see you here on First Things!
I am reacting to the title, which is, “The Voice of Two-Thirds is the Voice of God.” I am also reacting to the closing of the post, which says,
Perhaps I am over-interpreting Mark Movsesian’s position, but he seems—to me—to be saying that God (the Holy Spirit) picks the pope, or successfully guides the College of Cardinals to pick the pope. I don’t know how else to interpret an assertion that the College of Cardinals speaks with the voice of God when they reach a two-thirds majority. I don’t know how to reconcile the “voice of God” claim with then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s comment, “There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!”
March 10th, 2013 | 8:47 pm
Once in a while you manage to avoid being pedantic, and this is one of those cases.
P.C.,
What a nice compliment! :-J
March 11th, 2013 | 12:33 pm
@harry
“God’s perfect Providence has ‘picked’ every Pope. There is no such thing as chance.”
If God’s foreknowledge *is* Providence, you may as well say that his perfect Providence also picked Stalin, while it simultaneously picked Churchill to fight Stalin, and it picked pacifists to complain about both, and it picked…
In this view, the idea of God providentially guiding the selection of a pope is inseparable from His equally providential guiding of my choice of breakfast cereal.
I think David Nickol (via Cardinal Ratzinger) hits nearer the mark.
March 11th, 2013 | 3:24 pm
In the Mass for the Election of a Pope, we (and the Cardinal Electors at the Missa pro eligendo summo pontifice which immediately precedes the Conclave) pray to the Almighty:-
“grant in your boundless fatherly love a pastor for your Church who will please you by his holiness and to us show watchful care” (Collect).
The kings of Israel were as much a mixed bag as the popes – including Saul, the Lord’s anointed whom He later rejected. But the Roman Missal draws a priestly, not a royal analogy – the entrance verse for that Mass is 1Sam.2:35:-
“I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to my heart and mind; I will establish a lasting house for him and he shall walk before me all his days”
So that is our hope – that the electors, docile to the action of the Holy Spirit, will be able to discern the will of Providence. And even if they can’t (or don’t) we remain confident that the Almight can write straight with crooked lines, or, as Pope Benedict himself said, with sublime humility, in his Urbi et Orbi message immediately after his election:-
“After the great Pope John Paul II, the Cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble labourer in the vineyard of the Lord. The fact that the Lord knows how to work and to act even with inadequate instruments comforts me.”
March 11th, 2013 | 4:02 pm
Perhaps, as well, it is time to balance Ratzinger of 1997 (speaking on Bavarian TV) with Pope Benedict XVI speaking to the College of Cardinals on 22 April 2005, three days after his election:-
“I feel it my duty, in the first place, to thank God who wanted me, despite my human frailty, as the Successor of the Apostle Peter, and has entrusted to me the task of governing and guiding the Church”
Equivalent expressions referring to papal election as a direct expression of God’s will can be noted in the early speeches and writings of every pope back to Leo XIII, and (no doubt) beyond.
March 11th, 2013 | 5:44 pm
I would be interested to hear if people think Benedict was contradicting himself by having said (as Cardinal Ratzinger) that there were too many popes the Holy Spirit obviously wouldn’t have picked, and then by saying, upon being elected, “I feel it my duty, in the first place, to thank God who wanted me, despite my human frailty, as the Successor of the Apostle Peter, and has entrusted to me the task of governing and guiding the Church”?
harry suggests that everything that happens is God’s will. Suppose we take another electoral event, the American presidency, and ask if it would be presumptuous of a newly elected president to thank God for his or her victory. If not, would this imply that God selected the president or that the Holy Spirit inspired the American voters to vote for the candidate who won? Is accepting everything (good and bad) that happens to you as God’s will the same as claiming that God engineered it?
March 11th, 2013 | 7:37 pm
I don’t myself want to get into a discussion here about God’s will in general, but on the question of “contradiction”, we have an off-the-cuff remark in a TV interview versus several expressions of the shattering impact of election. When a man is asked if he accepts election as pope, a new and terrifying consciousness dawns on him. He recognises his election as a sign of God’s will. This can easily be traced through the words used by successive popes since Leo XIII (as I indicated above).
Ratzinger was stunned it should be so. Pope Luciani similarly spoke of “The load which the Lord, in the inscrutable designs of his providence, has willed to place on our weak shoulders” (30 August, 1978).
Pope Benedict described (to German pilgrims on 25 April 2005) his feelings as the balloting showed the growing strength of his candidature:- “With profound conviction I said to the Lord: Do not do this to me! You have younger and better people at your disposal, who can face this great responsibility with greater dynamism and greater strength.” Once his modest reserves of dynamism and strength were exhausted, he renounced.
Without question, Ratzinger, at the moment of election, felt it was a vocation to which he was called. If he (and Luciani and others before him) had not experienced it in that way, he (and they) would have refused.
Of course, just because the Lord has chosen someone for His service, it does not follow that that person loses free will to betray his calling (think of King Saul). That, surely, is the explanation of “bad” (and bad) popes.
March 12th, 2013 | 10:14 am
Of course, just because the Lord has chosen someone for His service, it does not follow that that person loses free will to betray his calling (think of King Saul). That, surely, is the explanation of “bad” (and bad) popes.
Bain Wellington,
You are saying that God always picks the right candidate for pope, but some of those candidates misuse their free will and do a bad job in office? If so, it doesn’t seem that omniscience is all that it’s cracked up to be!
It would seem to me that God, being both omniscient and outside of time, can’t be imagined to pick a candidate for pope who, once in office, disappoints God and doesn’t do the job God thought he would.
Why must it be the case (as some seem to assume in this discussion) that there is one and only one candidate who God wishes to be the next pope? Isn’t it quite possible that God finds most or all of the Cardinals suitable candidates and is willing to let the College choose? “Technically, any Roman Catholic male can be elected pope. But since 1379, every pope has been selected from the College of Cardinals, the group casting the votes at the conclave.” Is it plausible that in over 600 years, the best possible candidate known to God, out of all the Catholic men in the world, has just happened to be a member of the College of Cardinals?
March 12th, 2013 | 3:44 pm
David Nickol:- “It would seem to me that God, being both omniscient and outside of time, can’t be imagined to pick [Saul] for [king of Israel] who, once in office, disappoints God and doesn’t do the job God thought he would.”
I don’t see that a divinely appointed candidate who goes bad impacts adversely on divine omniscience. As for your follow-up, I’m not taking that bait either :-)
Leo XIII, “God’s unsearchable design”
St Pius X, “God’s inscrutable disposition”
Benedict XV, “the inscrutable counsel of Divine Providence”
Pius XI, “God’s mysterious decision”
Pius XII, “the inscrutable design of [God's] Providence”
We can’t begin to imagine how it works. But consider this comment by Papa Ratzinger (to add to others quoted above – which show he certainly thought God had better candidates to choose from) made in his homily at his inaugural Mass as Supreme Pontiff:-
“We were also consoled as we made our solemn entrance into Conclave, to elect the one whom the Lord had chosen. How would we be able to discern his name? How could 115 Bishops . . discover the one on whom the Lord wished to confer the mission of binding and loosing? . . And now, at this moment, weak servant of God that I am, I must assume this enormous task, which truly exceeds all human capacity. How can I do this? How will I be able to do it?”
From this it is beyond doubt that he thought God has a unique candidate (not necessarily the “best”) whom He calls to the Petrine Office.
But then, that’s God’s way (1Co.1:26-29)
***
In conclusion allow me to apologise for a rude and antagonistic approach to argumentation of yours under a previous post – for which I sincerely ask your forgiveness.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact