FINALLY, an area where I disagree with my very dear friend James, at least in part.
I would frame the 3 main factions of cardinals as quasi-Lefebvrists (or right-wing cafeteria Catholics, Cardinal Raymond Burke being an example), orthodox Catholics (Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Cardinal Peter Turkson being examples of this faction), and modernist/“left-wing cafeteria Catholic” faction.
The traditionalist and modernist factions are flip sides of the same spirit of discontinuity heresy that emerged after the Second Vatican Council and still hasn’t been exorcised from the Church.
I pray every day for us to be delivered from that unholy demon plaguing the Church (and from other unholy demons plaguing the Church as well, of course, that need not be named).
I wrote my own reflection on the 3 popes of my lifetime so far and what I appreciated about each of them. The pope I’ve connected with most will be no surprise to anyone who knows me well. The pope I’ve connected with least well might surprise people who know me well.
I think it’s spiritually dangerous for most people to get caught up in Vatican/Conclave palace intrigue, so I plan to stay out of it. I’ll pray, fast, and hope the cardinal electors choose the pope the Church needs, and I haven’t the foggiest idea who that man is. The Holy Spirit, however, does.
The best thing we can do is to strive for holiness in our own lives, live our vocations well that we are called to, and become the great saints that Jesus called us to be. The world needs the love of Jesus, and the world needs saints right now, more than anything else.
Those are my thoughts. Do with them what you will. I’m a sinner in need of Jesus’ mercy and a fallible human being, just like everyone else walking this earth.
With deepest and heartfelt respect and affection, I respectfully, heartily, and affectionately dissent.
But more seriously, it does strike me that this procedure could actually work with the College of Cardinals and might work to tamp down some of the factionalism within that body (since at each step of choosing the next set of electors, supermajority consensus is required, and even then nobody knows who will actually advance because it's drawn by lot).
The only catch I can think of is that at the final step, any baptised Catholic male could be nominated (Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau could be pope!), which, if the part of the procedure where the randomly chosen nominee is questioned by the electors is retained, could involve flying the person out to Rome quickly so as not to prolong the conclave, but given that nobody from outside the cardinalate has become Pope in over six hundred years this is probably not a serious concern.
We already have this problem with the election of a non-cardinal, because the elected must accept the election before the election is announced to the world.
Really, it is unclear, canonically, how this election procedure is even really compatible with the election of a non-cardinal. Apparently there's something about it in Ordo Rituum Conclavis, but I didn't find a copy on a very brief search. UDG #87-91 are relevant here.
Oh fun! An article with a soundtrack… my only note is that the link should have opened Spotify instead of YouTube so I could keep listening while popping back here… OK! Off to read more that just the first image subtext
For some reason the footnotes have been opening a new tab lately which has been annoying but more to your point I read 99% of your articles on my phone where the YT app doesn’t like playing songs in the background
Aggggh the footnotes on mobile are killing me, too. I thought it was just me. I'll need to make a complaint, if it's still even possible to get a Substack person on support these days.
So it’s not just me?! I get around it by just holding the link to ‘preview’ the new tab and that seems to work but then leaves the footnote text number selected, which is annoying but harmless.
In any case… I’m on vacation right now and have been listening to the Conclave Soundtrack nonstop all day long (only halfway through the article though… sorry!). It’s a good song but it sure feels like the same song on repeat for 44 minutes! I’ve now checked thrice to make sure I didn’t accidentally have ‘repeat’ on. I switched an hour ago to the GOAT of movie soundtracks: “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”
More of a "canon law" tangent than anything, but FWIW for those interested, there is a very new (as in posted yesterday) and long (as in 1 hour) video lecture by CUA canon law professor Dr. Kurt Martens, on papal funerals and elections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYa74Elm_LM
FINALLY, an area where I disagree with my very dear friend James, at least in part.
I would frame the 3 main factions of cardinals as quasi-Lefebvrists (or right-wing cafeteria Catholics, Cardinal Raymond Burke being an example), orthodox Catholics (Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Cardinal Peter Turkson being examples of this faction), and modernist/“left-wing cafeteria Catholic” faction.
The traditionalist and modernist factions are flip sides of the same spirit of discontinuity heresy that emerged after the Second Vatican Council and still hasn’t been exorcised from the Church.
I pray every day for us to be delivered from that unholy demon plaguing the Church (and from other unholy demons plaguing the Church as well, of course, that need not be named).
I wrote my own reflection on the 3 popes of my lifetime so far and what I appreciated about each of them. The pope I’ve connected with most will be no surprise to anyone who knows me well. The pope I’ve connected with least well might surprise people who know me well.
I think it’s spiritually dangerous for most people to get caught up in Vatican/Conclave palace intrigue, so I plan to stay out of it. I’ll pray, fast, and hope the cardinal electors choose the pope the Church needs, and I haven’t the foggiest idea who that man is. The Holy Spirit, however, does.
The best thing we can do is to strive for holiness in our own lives, live our vocations well that we are called to, and become the great saints that Jesus called us to be. The world needs the love of Jesus, and the world needs saints right now, more than anything else.
Those are my thoughts. Do with them what you will. I’m a sinner in need of Jesus’ mercy and a fallible human being, just like everyone else walking this earth.
With deepest and heartfelt respect and affection, I respectfully, heartily, and affectionately dissent.
I think my new (only half-joking here) position on electoral reform is that Venice got it right and we've failed to learn the lessons ever since.
https://www.venetoinside.com/en/news-and-curiosities/the-election-of-the-doge-of-the-republic-of-venice
But more seriously, it does strike me that this procedure could actually work with the College of Cardinals and might work to tamp down some of the factionalism within that body (since at each step of choosing the next set of electors, supermajority consensus is required, and even then nobody knows who will actually advance because it's drawn by lot).
The only catch I can think of is that at the final step, any baptised Catholic male could be nominated (Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau could be pope!), which, if the part of the procedure where the randomly chosen nominee is questioned by the electors is retained, could involve flying the person out to Rome quickly so as not to prolong the conclave, but given that nobody from outside the cardinalate has become Pope in over six hundred years this is probably not a serious concern.
We already have this problem with the election of a non-cardinal, because the elected must accept the election before the election is announced to the world.
Really, it is unclear, canonically, how this election procedure is even really compatible with the election of a non-cardinal. Apparently there's something about it in Ordo Rituum Conclavis, but I didn't find a copy on a very brief search. UDG #87-91 are relevant here.
Oh fun! An article with a soundtrack… my only note is that the link should have opened Spotify instead of YouTube so I could keep listening while popping back here… OK! Off to read more that just the first image subtext
You don't just automatically open all links in a new tab?!
For some reason the footnotes have been opening a new tab lately which has been annoying but more to your point I read 99% of your articles on my phone where the YT app doesn’t like playing songs in the background
Aggggh the footnotes on mobile are killing me, too. I thought it was just me. I'll need to make a complaint, if it's still even possible to get a Substack person on support these days.
So it’s not just me?! I get around it by just holding the link to ‘preview’ the new tab and that seems to work but then leaves the footnote text number selected, which is annoying but harmless.
In any case… I’m on vacation right now and have been listening to the Conclave Soundtrack nonstop all day long (only halfway through the article though… sorry!). It’s a good song but it sure feels like the same song on repeat for 44 minutes! I’ve now checked thrice to make sure I didn’t accidentally have ‘repeat’ on. I switched an hour ago to the GOAT of movie soundtracks: “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”
Yeah, it's very much a "mood" soundtrack rather than a "melodies" soundtrack. Bear McCreary's Galactica tracks it ain't. But I still loved it.
More of a "canon law" tangent than anything, but FWIW for those interested, there is a very new (as in posted yesterday) and long (as in 1 hour) video lecture by CUA canon law professor Dr. Kurt Martens, on papal funerals and elections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYa74Elm_LM