Jimmy Akin

Scott Hahn reflects on Pope John Paul II’s "superior command of [S]cripture" and how that influenced many Protestant Evangelicals — including Dr. Hahn, who converted to the Church in 1986:

"Though I was then a Protestant minister–Calvinist in training, evangelical in approach, and instinctively anti-Catholic–I was first drawn to Pope John Paul II in the early 1980s. I was not alone among his hesitant admirers. He captured our attention because of his effective combat in the culture wars. But he kept our attention because of something else.

"Gradually and grudgingly, many of us, Protestants and Catholics alike, came to admit that he was effective in the culture wars, not because of his bully pulpit or his media savvy or his philosophical suavity, but because of his superior command of scripture."

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Karen Hall of Some Have Hats for the link.)

Scott Hahn reflects on Pope John Paul II’s "superior command of [S]cripture" and how that influenced many Protestant Evangelicals — including Dr. Hahn, who converted to the Church in 1986:

"Though I was then a Protestant minister–Calvinist in training, evangelical in approach, and instinctively anti-Catholic–I was first drawn to Pope John Paul II in the early 1980s. I was not alone among his hesitant admirers. He captured our attention because of his effective combat in the culture wars. But he kept our attention because of something else.

"Gradually and grudgingly, many of us, Protestants and Catholics alike, came to admit that he was effective in the culture wars, not because of his bully pulpit or his media savvy or his philosophical suavity, but because of his superior command of scripture."

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Karen Hall of Some Have Hats for the link.)

Columnist Maggie Gallagher writes (excerpts):

Pope John Paul the Great is not yet buried, but the divisions among American Catholics have already taken center stage on cable television: Will the next pope be Catholic?

Of course, JP II’s critics don’t put it that way. But the long-deferred hopes of this group (call them sexual liberals) — that the Catholic Church is about to abandon its ancient teachings on premarital sex, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and, above all, birth control — have burst out anew in the 24-hour coverage of the pope’s death.

Sexual liberalism has a lot of powerful things going for it in terms of attracting adherents: passion, for instance, the difficulty of self-restraint, the attractiveness of choice as the highest moral good. But sexual liberalism’s most powerful ally is the myth of progress. Sexual liberals, like Marxists of old, see themselves as the inevitable wave of the future. The Catholic Church is "out of step" with the future, they believe, and must eventually get in line with the poll numbers, or fade into irrelevance.

Puncture this myth, and see how quickly the power of this set of ideas drizzles away.

Like Marxists of old, sexual liberals are going to be shocked and disappointed to find how irrelevant and outmoded their ideas seem. In 1968, the advice of sexual liberals — accommodate the sexual revolution or die — may have seemed tempting, even to the College of Cardinals. By 2004, it has become clear that Christian denominations that accepted this advice have not experienced religious revivals. Instead, such mainline Protestant sects are rapidly dwindling in numbers.

Sexual liberalism has a lot going for it, but it does have this one little drawback: Religions or societies that adopt it appear to die out.

GET THE STORY.

(Cowboy hat tip to the reader who e-mailed!)

A reader wites:

In the document of the Conclave of Cardinals, it states that any cardinal who bribes or commits simony is exommunicated by that act itself. It also says that thie does NOT change the votes at all.

True. Universi Dominici Gregis states:

78. If — God forbid — in the election of the Roman Pontiff the crime of simony were to be perpetrated, I decree and declare that all those guilty thereof shall incur excommunication latae sententiae. At the same time I remove the nullity or invalidity of the same simoniacal provision, in order that — as was already established by my Predecessors — the validity of the election of the Roman Pontiff may not for this reason be challenged.

The reader continues:

We (those at our High School Religion class) assume that this is to promote Church unity and such.

True again. JPII specifically set that aside so that "the election of the Roman Pontiff may not for this reason be challaneged."

And people can only be de-excommunicated by the pope.

A quibble: Excommunications can be lifted by folks other than the pope, but this excommunication, even though the pontiff doesn’t say so, would almost certainly be reserved to the Holy See under normal circumstances.

So what’s to stop a cardinal from bribing 2/3 of the people, getting in office, and un-excommunicating them? Are we to merely assume that no cardinal would ever do such a thing? In view of actions in the Middle Ages? And the increasing moral corruption of our day and age?

Hypothetically speaking, the possibility you mention could happen, which is why John Paul II provided that a simoniacal election would still be valid.

Practically speaking, it strikes me as quite unlikely for several reasons:

1. The Holy Spirit’s action to the contrary.
2. These days you don’t generally rise to being papabile if you are tempted by sins as blatant as committing simony to gain the papacy. Your temptations are likely to be much more subtle.
3. It’s not possible to bribe 2/3rds of the cardinal electors. That’s almost eighty folks. What are you going to offer them? Money? Most don’t want it and papabile usually aren’t rich. Power? There are only so many high-level positions to go around, and these guys are already occupying most of them. They’re cardinals: They already have the top slots.
4. While it might be possible to bribe a few electors (e.g., enough to swing things in a close election), is that something you really want to do? If you can trust them to keep the bribe a secret, they’re likely already your friends or think highly enough of you that they’re voting for you anyway.
5. Further, if you can’t trust them to keep the secret then you’d better not try bribing them, because there is no faster way to lose a papal election than for it to be publicly known that you tried to bribe somebody. That’s the one thing that’s certain to unify your opponents and alienate your supporters! The anti-simony ethic of the college of cardinals thus itself serves as a barrier to this happening.

I can thus think of five factors (off the top of my head) that make a simoniacal election unlikely: the action of the Holy Spirit, the usual character of papabile, the lack of resources for making effective bribes, the lack of good candidates for accepting bribes, and the reaction the college would have if attempted bribery became known.

Back centuries ago, when matters were very different, it may have been possible to obtain the papacy by simony, thus simulaneously becoming the successor of Simon Peter and Simon Magus, but it seems very unlikely to me to happen today.

In a recent column, Andrew M. Greeley writes regarding the upcoming conclave:

What is there to hide? Should not the world know how the electors vote, just as in most other elections? Should not the cardinals be responsible for their votes? In the words of Pius XI, what does the Catholic Church have to fear from the truth? [SOURCE.]

I’m not sure whether Greeley is advocating that the final vote totals for particular individuals be announced (e.g., "Cardinal X got this many votes; Cardinal Y got that many votes") or whether the votes of individual cardinal electors be announced (e.g., "On the third ballot, Cardinal Y voted for Cardinal Z").

We will refer to the first interpretation (announcing vote totals) as "the less-stupid proposal" and the second interpretation as "the blithering idiot proposal."

That Greeley might be advocating the less-stupid proposal might be suggested by his appeal to how things are done in most other elections. In most other elections, the final vote totals do get announced.

And look at the results: The intensification of the political process and post-election grumbling and punditing over whether a particular candidate has a "mandate" or not and how that may affect his ability to govern.

Do we really want that for the papacy?

In order to win, an individual must have a two-thirds majority of the votes (rounding up in case the number of cardinals can’t be divided evenly by three). Now, that is already a supermajority that in secular politics (here in America, anyway) would be regarded as carrying a "mandate."

But imagine the case of a cardinal who gets a bare two-thirds vote after several ballots. Can you imagine what the pundits would say?

MEDIA IDIOT: Well, Cardinal X only got 78 of the 117 electors, Bob, and that was on the tenth ballot. It doesn’t sound to me like the conclave was really enthusiastic about him.

What’s more, his name didn’t even emerge until the sixth ballot. Prior to that it was a three-way competition between Cardinals Q, S, and W. Only after it became clear that none of them would be elected did the conclave turn ot Cardinal X, meaning that he’s a "compromise candidate" from the get go, and one that was only lukewarmly supported by 78 votes. I think that’s going to make it difficult for Cardinal X to take any really dramatic steps as the faithful will always look at him as a man who was only tepidly supported and who only got into office by the skin of his teeth.

Furthermore, the popular Cardinal Q got 76 votes on the very first ballot. He only missed the papacy by two votes! I’m sure his supporters among the faithful will be very disappointed and bitter by that and it will affect how they regard Cardinal X, who many may regard as having "stole" the papacy from the much-beloved Cardinal Q. No matter how much Cardinal Q tries to put a positive face on his defeat, there will always be many who think he had the papacy stolen from him by recalcitrant forces on the other wing of the conclave. What bitter fruit will be born from this stinging and unpopular defeat, only time will tell.

So you see, the less-stupid proposal is still stupid.

The Church is not a political organization. However much humans may have to struggle against politicizing their relationships, the Church is not about politics and only a buffoon (or an outright malefactor) would suggest that we should further politicize matters.

A person taking a jaundiced interpretation of Greeley’s proposal might suggest that he wants the politicization of the papacy precisely because it would serve to hamstring popes and hinder them from effectively wielding their authority.

A more charitable intretation would say that he’s sufficiently woolen-headed that he doesn’t understand that politics is not the paradigm for everything and that it doesn’t and shouldn’t apply to the Church.

That’s all assuming that we’re talking about the less-stupid proposal.

But Greeley’s remark "Should not the cardinals be responsible for their votes?" suggests that we might be talking about the blithering idiot proposal.

If Greeley is suggesting that the cardinals not even have a secret ballot and thus be forced to "be responsible for their votes" by having them publicly known then he opens himself to charges of blithering idiocy.

These guys have to work toghter. Few things will serve to poison relationships faster than a sure and certain knowledge of who did and didn’t vote for you (whether you won or lost). For that reason when religious orders elect new officers the ballot is secret. Universi Dominici Gregis even directs the cardinal electors to disguise their handwriting as much as possible so that even others in the conclave (much less the public) won’t know how they voted.

In a world filled with fallen human beings, secret ballots are essential to eliciting the true views of electors, as well as preventing favoritism and retribution after the election–which is why they are using in every free society in the world.

Knowing this, one suspects Greeley was merely advocating the less-stupid proposal, despite the poor writing skills he displayed in suggesting that he might be advocating the blithering idiot proposal.

That being said, he is extremely wrapped up in trying to get politicizing democracy principles imposed on the Church–so much so that he misreports historical facts.

SEE HERE, FOR EXAMPLE.

(Cowboy hat tip to the readers who sent the links!)