The Papabile

Gentlemen,

Welcome back to the Monday Morning Post.

The Conclave begins this week and is likely that we’ll have a new Pope before the next Monday Morning Post. If you haven’t been praying, PLEASE START!

There is a lot of discussion in the news media and online and pretty much anywhere you might look about who the Papabile might be – the men in the College of Cardinals who might be contenders to become the next Pope. And while it is extremely unlikely, practically speaking, for someone other than a Cardinal to be elected, it is not strictly necessary that the next Pope be selected from one of the Cardinals. Under Canon Law, any baptized man can be elected Pope – even a layman like you or me.

The Cardinals are to vote for whomever they feel would best serve the Church in this role. Both the laws and the tradition of the Church do not place limits on the movement of the Holy Spirit by artificially narrowing the field of potential candidates.

That should give us ordinary, regular, “Joe in the pew” Catholic men some pause. In some sense, the law and the tradition of the Church treats us all as at least potentially Papabile.

We like to think, and I think it is right to believe, that the Holy Spirit chooses the Pope. And I think we all hope and should ardently pray that the Cardinal Electors will listen to the promptings of the Spirit and follow God’s Will in their choosing rather than merely pursue their own personal agendas. But selecting a good Pope doesn’t depend only on the docility to the Spirit of the Cardinal Electors at the time of their voting. They, after all, have to select an actual man – someone who really exists at this particular moment in history and who is really capable of doing the job.

We would all hope, I think, that this man would be a man of genuine prayer, of deep love for Christ and the Church, and fully matured and prepared with a whole host of well-developed skills, experience, knowledge and competences to fulfil such a difficult and critically important role. Once we begin to appreciate that it may take not only a particular set of natural talents, but the exercise of those talents over most of a lifetime in cooperation and docility with the Sprit, to gradually build up the necessary competencies to be able, eventually, to fulfill a responsibility like this one, the idea that the Holy Spirit chooses the Pope takes on new light.

To get a Good Pope, the Holy Spirit can’t only be at work at the time of the election, but in the entire history of the man who is elected, a history that has a start and continues to build long before the possibility of becoming Pope ever dawns on him as a possibility. Its not enough that the Electors are willing to pick the right person, but someone has to actually be the right person.

And that ANY CATHOLIC MAN is technically eligible to be elected says something about what the Church believes the vocation of the Catholic man, Every Catholic Man, really is.

We are all called, each in our own way, to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the particular circumstances of our lives, exercising our natural talents, to gradually grow our capacity to bear responsibility in the life of the Church – not just to fulfill the responsibilities we have now, but in preparation for whatever responsibilities we might be called upon to fulfill in the future.

In that sense, we all are called to be among the “Papabile”. Not that we have to become the kind of man who can actually be Pope, but the path that we all want and need the Good Pope to have walked in his life leading up to his papacy, the life of authentic cooperation with the Holy Spirit in the particular circumstances of his life, is the same path that the Church needs us to walk leading up to God only knows what responsibility.

The Church needs, and will in the future need us to have already been men of genuine prayer, of deep love for Christ and the Church, and prepared with a whole host of well-developed skills, experience, knowledge and competences to fulfil a difficult and critically important role. That role may not be Pope, or Cardinal, or Bishop, or even president of the parish council. But it will be something – every man is called to live a life of responsible service, and it may be a level of responsibility far higher and of greater import than you might have thought possible. The Pope, after all, is just a Catholic Man who carries a great responsibility.

It is more important for the life of the Church than we know that we be the right person - that we become the right person. God qualifies the called – but we have to be willing to allow ourselves to become qualified.

Let’s pray for the Cardinals’ discernment in these coming days, and for the man who will soon become Pope, and for the man who in turn will eventually succeed him who may only just be starting on his way, and for every one of us, that we all will have the courage and fortitude to follow the Spirit with integrity and become the men the Church needs us to be.

See you next week!