Dom Bettinelli posts about the wishful thinkers who keep suggesting that the Pope should retire and get out of the way for them.
But they don’t get it: the papacy is not a mere elective office defined by some functionalistic description: it’s an iconic role and a divine vocation. To resign would be to diminish that aspect of divine calling, and treat the papacy as a humanly-conferred role that can be laid aside on grounds of human prudence and convenience. To reinforce the convenience culture is not a message this Pope will ever want to send.
Some of the people who wish the Pope would retire seem to have forgotten that the Church has dealt with ailing and infirm popes before, and has survived quite well, thank you.
An age limit, even as a matter of “voluntary” custom, has political implications, in the Church where custom is a powerful force. Making the papacy subject to an arbitrary age restriction moves the Pope away from his rightful position of being the supreme legislator in the church, and closer to being a functionary subject to legal process, check and balance. It will be no surprise to recall that the canonist quoted in the article is an advisor to VOTF, which certainly favors notions of making the papacy part of a “constitutional government”.
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What exactly is the difference between the Pope as Bishop of Rome, resigning due to frailty or old age vs. the Vatican’s requirement for 75-year old bishops resigning due to an arbitrary age limit?
The Bible has no mention of bishoprics being subject to resignation, however it’s understood that should a bishop become unfit for office by becoming steeped in sin and rebellion that he must in fact step down (see Cardinal Law vis-a-vis covering up sexual abuse). It also seems to me that it is prudent for any bishop (including and especially the Pope) to similarly have strong grounds to step aside (albeit retaining a strong role in inspiring and shepherding the Church) when he is too frail to vigorously execute the duties to which he is called.
For the pontiff at this point, to live is Christ, to die is gain. I understand and respect not abdicating the papacy with that in mind, however, I don’t think the Pope’s ministry need be curtailed in toto should he abdicate the papacy and allow for a younger successor to take the reins.
But then again, what do I know, I’m just a Protestant with a strong penchant for sola scriptura.
I think an argument can be made against a fixed age limit for bishops for some of the reasons I’ve suggested w.r.t. the Pope.
A quick inspection of the Code of Canon Law reminds me that a 75-year-old bishop is “requested” to resign, not required; yet even the “request” for a resignation is treated de facto as a requirement!
Thanks for clearing that up about the request vs. requirement.
But as to cardinals who exceed voting age, is that similarly a request or a requirement.
I believe it’s age 80 at which a cardinal losing privileges of voting for the next Pope. That seems a bit odd to me. It’s not like at age 80 they lose all appropriate spiritual and mental faculties to prayerfully vote for the next Pope. And if they somehow lose said faculties vis-a-vis selection for a new Pope at age 80, I wonder how well they can function and govern the Church in other matters over age 80, or for that matter how the Pope, under this logic, can govern the Church exceeding the age of 80.
Just seems like a double standard that isn’t rooted in Scripture.
I am somewhat dismayed that the pope is not allowed to retire. He’s in bad shape and could barely handle his duties. I hope compassion and reason wins out against strict observances to outdated concepts. For his sake, and for the sake of future pontiffs.
Ken, Danny —
the Church is all about “strict observance of outdated concepts.” That’s one of the many things separating the Church from other institutions. We don’t adapt to fashion or to trends — we take the Long View.
…strict observances to outdated concepts.
Huh?
On devotion to outmoded practices:
The Church should not be slavishly chained to outdated humanly instituted customs with little or no sound backing in Scripture. Human traditions become stale and inconsequential over time being grounded as they are in fallible human ritualism.
Scripture itself, however, is the incorruptible, imperishable, immutable Word of God, which shall not return to God void. It is never outmoded or outdated but always reliable, trustworthy, and life transforming.
The Church needs to examine itself to rightly determine what is based on human tradition and what is based on Scripture and thereby govern itself.
Traditions are fine and good if they are based solidly on Scripture and are in accordance with the move of the Spirit in the Church. But the Lord often calls audibles in the game play often, as any cursory read of Scripture, particularly Jesus’s ministry and the ministry of the early Church, will show (I sincerely doubt the early Church had, nor desired to codify, a very ritualistic liturgy which allowed for no deviation).
Traditionalists who incessantly gripe about the vernacular Mass must realize that they are idolatrizing Latin Mass as a form of worship which Scripture doesn’t mandate. By making an idol of Latin Mass, they obstruct an object of true worship and devotion to God. They who worship God must worship Him in Spirit and in truth, says the Scripture. If you freely choose to worship in Latin Mass and your heart is in the right place and you UNDERSTAND what’s going on, alright then. But demonizing the vernacular because it is post-Vatican II would be idolatrizing tradition as supreme to simple, beautiful vernacular worship that comes both from the heart AND is intelligible to the UNDERSTANDING.
Ditto with celibate priesthood. Nowhere in the Gospels or in the New Testament are clergy mandated to be celibate. Many chose to be celibate, but not all were. And in fact the Apostle Paul wrote that he retained the rights and privileges of the apostles, including being paid from offerings collected in the churches and taking unto himself a Christian wife, however, he chose to forego those things in order to not be a financial burden to the church and in order to solely devote himself to the Lord’s work respectively.
The Church is free to mandate celibacy as a church policy, but it shouldn’t conflate it with Scriptural mandate. The early church found no such Scriptural mandate.
Manmade mandates or God-breathed Scripture? The latter should be maintained and the former discarded.
Otherwise you have an idolatry of traditional and ritualism empty of the transformative power of the Gospel.
Please see my new post on the blog, which forks off from this discussion.
Hi, Ken.
On priestly celibacy, it’s hard for me to understand exactly what you’re opposing. Would you give me an example of the sort of Church teaching on celibacy that treats it as a scriptural mandate? I can’t think of any offhand, but I’m not an expert on the subject, so I wouldn’t rule out the possibility.
There are some passages in Scripture that indicate celibacy as an ideal, so it’s conceivable that some teaching document takes it as a mandate. Let us know.
I don’t think the Church has ever claimed that priestly celebacy was mandated by God. It teaches that priests can’t get married once they’re ordained, but married men can be ordained. Lutheran and Anglican ministers have been permitted to take orders when they converted.
The Church teaches that celebate life is ontologically superior to the married state, which is entirely scriptural (see 1 Cor 7, passim).
It is my earnest prayer, as someone who is an evangelical, that the next pope will be as holy and Godly and kindly as the present one. JPII has been a strength and inspiration to us all.
I see this as another extension of the perspective held by many US Catholics that the Church is really just “the community” and that is the entire focus. I think that one unfortunate effect of post-VII reforms is that the emphasis came off the Church as a sacred institution with a salvific mission given by Christ and onto the Church as a community of people who support each other in hard times, yadda yadda yadda.
And with that comes these notions of making the Papacy more like a constitutional government. It’s unfortunate to see people take the Church, which stands both in time and outside of time, and put it within this kind of temporal, terrential framework.