Keeping The Faith
Tradition, the need to carry on, to ensure that the Roman Catholic Church remains on its conservative track mitigates against surprises, the curious are informed. The ideal candidate for pope would be another Pope John Paul II, the genial Pole who connected so beneficently with the popular Catholic imagination. Who, despite his bonhomie and obvious reciprocal enjoyment of the faithful, led the church carefully away from its flirtation with liberalism.
His successor, Pope Benedict, merely consolidated the reaffirmation of the church as a deeply conservative institution. The ordination of women, the need to smother the reality of deeply entrenched gays in the priesthood, while convincing them that they are beloved of God so long as they remain celibate, the very issue of celibacy and its assumed connection to the catastrophe of priestly molestation of boys all issues to be locked safely away from scrutiny.
More worldly issues of financial skulduggery, though inconvenient, and particularly so, given the death of a prominent Vatican banker, and questions swirling about the ethical legitimacy of holy banking practices, another matter altogether. Pope Benedict, the dearly abdicated emeritus held to have been the greatest of the papacy's biblical theologians did not sufficiently cherish the throne he sat upon to sacrifice his agedness to it any longer.
He was most certainly an erudite and a holy man, a good enough communicator, respected and institutionally feted, but incapable of tamping down the daemons that infested the Holy See from within. Under his tutelage the faithful lapsed in Europe, North and Latin America, growing lustily in Asia and Africa where the heritage of church conservatism appealed most fervently.
"The first requirement of the Holy Father is that he be holy", said one of the 115 cardinals who will take his seat at tomorrow's conclave. It will represent, that elite churchly gathering of electors, a gathering of familiars and unfamiliars. Many who have never before met, as opposed to those cardinals who live and function at the Vatican. And the 24 cardinals appointed in the last year.
Unseemly as it is in such a piously august gathering, there was discreet lobbying taking place, as those who feel entitled to believe they represent papal material, do their utmost to convince the others that they are worthy of the nomination as papabiles. That they are fluent in Italian--as necessary as Arabic is to the Koran--prayerful, theologically exemplary, a leader of the faith, must be conveyed.
The outstanding candidate must demonstrate his capability as a preacher to be Bishop of Rome. Familiarity of long standing with the Curia will not suffice; the candidate must appear as capable of being a diocese bishop, to guide the faithful to Godly affairs and Christ's sacrifice. Youth, relatively speaking, would be useful, and enthusiasm for office and sacrifice.
The world sits on tenterhooks; Italians are manically engaged, and soon white smoke will rise, and a man will assume the tasks incumbent upon the shepherd of the Holy See. The first of which may very well be how to respond discreetly to documents revealing the immoral and criminal excesses of intrigues within Vatican City.
Labels: Human Fallibility, Human Relations, Religion, Vatican
posted by Pieface @ Monday, March 11, 2013
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