Appreciating Papal Elections: The Jesus System

by Bud Macfarlane

We must acknowledge that it is difficult, if not impossible, for postmodern non-believers to comprehend the divine nature of the Catholic Church. The Church is not merely a divine institution. It is also a corporate body with a real in-the-world structure, so it can appear to be a merely human institution to the non-believer. Non-believers are extremely uncomfortable with the idea that one man has supreme authority over such a large and influential institution, especially one which stands athwart their various agendas.

Still, imagine if you were starting a church destined to span the globe in any historical age. It would help if you were fully human and fully divine. It would be a boon if you were a member of the Holy Trinity and you could guarantee that your Holy Spirit would vouchsafe your Church against evil, especially when it came to protecting timeless moral teaching and truths revealed by God about God. You would surely create the best possible system for the selection of leaders for your Church. And this is what Jesus of Nazareth did. It seems to fall by the wayside that Jesus was perfectly intelligent. His selection "system" would therefore be supremely intelligent and unclouded by sin (in terms of design).

There have now been 265 popes. Every pope since Saint Peter (who was selected by Jesus Himself) was selected by a small group of men who were themselves appointed by a previous pontiff (or, in the case of the original apostles, by Jesus) to share the responsibility of electing the next pope. Perhaps ones needs to be a pope to viscerally "feel" this direct historical connection with Jesus himself. It is perhaps similar to the connection felt by a boy who is named after his father, his grandfather, and also his great grandfather–and he and his forebears were also the kings of a nation. In this sense, Pope Benedict XIV could also be known as Saint Peter the Two-Hundred and Sixty-Fifth. Every pope lives with an awareness of the reality of the direct connection to the divine founder, Jesus Christ.

Regarding the selection of popes, the Church often uses the term "elevation" instead of "election," though both apply, as popes are, indeed, "voted" into being. The term elevation better expresses the fact that he is raised above the others to lead. A pope is therefore not the first among equals, but first above them, and therefore no longer equal in terms of authority at the moment of his appointment. The Fathers of Church defined his authority clearly: "Above Peter, there is no other." As there is only one pope at a time, there can be no other "next" to him either. He is supreme. His authority, in this sense, is delegated to his bishops, not shared with them (in modern connotations of the term).

He is a ruler, a king, elevated through a particularly elegant means of a restricted democracy. Every cardinal within the college might be holier than the man they select. Every cardinal might be smarter. Every cardinal might have greater administrative ability and more political savvy than the one they elect. We are fortunate to live in an age where cardinals have shown they will vote for the one they believe is the holiest, smartest, and most able man for the job. Institutions--"fast track" seminaries and postings–have developed over two millennia to the point whereby most men who become bishops are the best and the brightest. These men come from a "pool" consisting of an estimated 500,500,000 available males. Of this pool, hundreds of thousands become priests. Furthermore, with a few exceptions in the smaller Eastern rites, individual priests are so committed to the mission (as was Jesus), that he is willing to forsake the natural joys and responsibilities of marriage. Through vows of obedience, they additionally forsake the liberty to have maximal control over their lives. In short, celibate priests make a total gift of self to the cause. Imagine if a modern multi-national corporation–an auto company or a software company–had the option of selecting its leaders from such a group. And finally, from these priests come thousands of bishops who are individually selected by the pope, and this group is further winnowed to five score cardinals with papal-voting privileges.

Now consider the modern cardinals who vote for the pope. They are all older men, with virtually no exception. Unjust discrimination against the elderly aside, older men are the ones with the most experience, and in this case, each cardinal usually has decades of experience in the local governance of the Church. He has had many years to get to meet and get to know his brother bishops and cardinals, read their writings, or a least consult with other cardinals who personally know or have worked closely with candidates for the papacy. In our modern age, it is also highly unlikely that a cardinal-candidate could have kept secretly-held heresies, questionable beliefs, or administrative ineptitudes hidden from his voting brethren. In the particular case of Pope Benedict XVI, the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the cardinals voted for a man whose work, personality, and writings were on display for decades as Pope John Paul II's most trusted administrator. Decades earlier, Ratzinger gained respect as one of the key contributing theologians of Vatican II. Although many popes have been in their late sixties or seventies when elected, the cardinals still have the freedom to select a particularly talented younger man, which was the case with Pope John Paul II, who was only 58 when elected in 1978.

It would be difficult to imagine a better voting body to represent an organization charged with the spiritual care of 1.1 billion souls in every corner of the world. Jesus did imagine what was needed, and even if the world grew to twenty billion souls and every one were Catholic, the system would still work quite well; it would likely continue to improve as modern transportation and communication "connects" the College of Cardinals ever more closely.

Not that a pope can't be a rat fink, too. There have been some sickeningly decrepit men in the office, primarily during an era, five centuries ago, wherein greedy, secular, and depraved forces centered in the prosperous city-states in Italy conspired and succeeded in gaining control of the appointments to what we know today as the College of Cardinals. Ironically, it became the duty of the virtuous (if not holy) Catholic kings of European nations beyond Italy who succeeded in pressing for reforms which gradually led to the rather reliable elections of the generally good and competent men who have ruled the Church for so many "recent" generations. Good and competent popes appoint good and competent cardinals. The current four-century-old streak of good popes is unlikely to end before Christ's return, especially since the Church has completely forsaken the nation-running business which gave it unneeded temptations in the chambers of worldly power.

Thus the Jesus System has proven to be self-correcting over time. The aberrations of a handful of bad popes compared to the now hundreds of good popes serves to illustrate the hardiness of our Lord's system.

There exists not one other modern institution of any sort on this planet aside from the Catholic Church which also existed two thousand years ago. Furthermore, the Catholic Church has grown in membership in all eras over time. Additionally, it is in fact the largest institution, much less religion, on earth, in terms of population. (The nation of China, with one billion souls, with a forced, plummeting population growth rate, competed recently for top "size" honors, but cannot keep up for twenty years, much less two thousand. In any rate, China has a reported 100,000,000 Christians, an unknown percentage of whom are Catholic. China may also someday convert altogether, as did ancient Rome, through the faith and sacrifices of their potent, persecuted minority.) If these plain and astounding historical truths do not convince the skeptic of the divine nature of the Church, they must surely convince a reasonable person of the Church's formidability as a well-designed social institution.

In recent years, liberals within the Catholic Church have lobbied for another system–a system whereby bishops are elected democratically by laymen. The elegance of the system Jesus put in place merely illustrates how silly liberals appear to everyone except themselves and their non-believing comrades in secular society. They must either be ignorant of history, too lazy or fearful to review history, or in denial of the historical success of the Jesus System. Our sense is that they lack the gift of authentic supernatural faith. Who but a faithless person would have the arrogance to replace what Christ designed? We also sense that their historically-stunted opinions regarding Church government obscure their true agenda. They don't like being told there are eternal punishments for crossing borders designed by God into the universe itself in the area of human sexuality. They want to be assured of the rewards of heaven and illusory orgasmic thrills outside of family life.

Believers are wise to close their ears to such nonsense. History illustrates another truth: such people, slaves to their lower desires, are never satisfied. They will be miserable inside or outside of the Body of Believers, and at worst, they undermine and eventually destroy the order of society, hurting real individual persons in real and often permanent ways along their vain path of self-gratification.

Catholics believe Jesus made the Church the way it is. He did so by design. He put in place an intelligent selection system. Through the work of his Holy Spirit and good men, He refines the system by his chosen means: through the crucible of history populated with imperfect, limited, and fallen yet redeemable beings.

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Bud Macfarlane, founder of CatholiCity.com and the Mary Foundation, is the author of three bestselling Catholic novels, available free of charge from Saint Jude Media. You can comment on his articles here.