Audio only:
Lila Rose was kind enough to ask Joe Heschmeyer to appear on her podcast LIVE and discuss all things Conclave and Papacy! Here’s a clip discussing the likely Papal candidates and what we know about them. Be sure to go see the FULL interview over on Lila’s channel!
Transcript:
Lila:
Welcome back to the Lila Rose Show. So happy that you guys are here. I’m excited to have you here because this is such a special moment with the conclave. I know everyone was very excited today. Is there going to be white smoke and we didn’t get it. Did you think there was a chance we would get white smoke today
Joe:
If we had white smoke today? There would only be about two possible cardinals. It would’ve been,
Lila:
Oh,
Joe:
Okay. I got it.
Lila:
Franco, can you pull up the white smoke picture? Actually we can see it. These images are so iconic too and so gorgeous. I mean this is one of the most beautiful places on planet Earth, Italy and then the gorgeous Vatican. Let’s get up the white smoke. But Joe, you just said, sorry to interrupt you, but you just said there were only two candidates that could have possibly
Joe:
Made if it had been white smoke, I would feel like I’d have a 50 50 shot at knowing who the candidate was. Whoa.
Lila:
Crazy.
Joe:
But a small margin of it being somebody else, but it just wasn’t likely. So I mean a little bit of background for why this is the College of Cardinals is more geographically diverse than in any point in history and Pope Francis really made a point of choosing from the global peripheries and so many countries have their first cardinal ever. And so Italy has the most cardinals still but only has 17. So you don’t
Lila:
Have how many in total?
Joe:
Out of 130
Lila:
Says it’s 1 33.
Joe:
Yeah, 1 33. But as a result, so okay, Italy has the most at 17, but 17 out 133 is nowhere near a two thirds majority. So even if you’re beloved by every other cardinal in your country, most of the rest of the world probably doesn’t know you very well. There are a handful of exceptions, people who are in positions where they’re crossing paths with a lot of the world’s cardinals by virtue of the role that they were in under the prior pontificate. And so there’s only a handful of people who are even well enough known that they would’ve been like an obvious shoe in everybody knows them, they have an opinion about them, and that would be Cardinal Perin and Cardinal Zpi. And I was skeptical it was going to be, I mean it could still be one of those two. The media was treating them much more as obvious and I was a little skeptical that they were going to go that route. And so as of today, at least I feel vindicated in that I wasn’t at all surprised by the black smoke.
Lila:
Sorry, where is Cardinal Perlin and Cardinal Zue? Where are they from?
Joe:
So Cardinal Perlin was Secretary of State for Pope Francis and Cardinal, I believe he was in Rome and then he actually became the Cardinal Archbishop of Bologna and he’s been the kind of point man for Pope Francis in an informal way for major issues like Ukraine. He was the kind of papal representative. And then actually the controversial thing that I think could be of interest to Cardinals this time around both and Zui were really influential in the Vatican China deal in 2018 where they tried to improve relations. But I know it was a very controversial deal in terms of whether the church actually came out ahead on that or whether they kind of got played by the Chinese. And so as a result, but it shows those two were both very involved and because of this, ZPI has also been involved with the congregation for Bishops.
And so as a result, excuse me, the provost, but Zpi has been involved with a lot of the things that Pope Francis did. So a lot of bishops cross paths with him, whereas a lot of the cardinals from the rest of the world, they haven’t had a lot of opportunities to interact with one another. So that was the first reason I was skeptical we were going to get an obvious person. Day one Zui seems like the person Pope Francis probably wanted if he got to handpick his successor. But Zui Hass been pretty controversial. He wrote one of the essays in the Italian version of Father James Martin’s to build a bridge and so on. A lot of cultural issues, if you want to put it that way. Zui has a strong side and on a lot of controversial
Lila:
Issues. So is Cardinal, when you say if it had happened today, if we got white smoke today, meaning they elected a Pope, it would’ve been Cardinal or or Cardinal Zue. Is it your view though that because they were not chosen today, it’s unlikely that those cardinals are going to be in seriously in the running going forward?
Joe:
It’s not that they’re completely out of the running, but they aren’t just like a shoe in. It wasn’t like, because those were the two who you look at them and thought, okay, these are the two most strongly identified with Pope Francis.
Lila:
Got it.
Joe:
And Cardinal Toggle stylistically people will compare him to Pope Francis. But in terms of the actual governance, those were the two who, I’ll give you an example. Benedict the 16th was very much the right hand man of John Paul II and Pop the 12th was very much the right hand man of pop the 11th. So both of them were chosen, but that’s actually a little bit exceptional In the church’s, at least more recent history, there’s an Italian saying after a fat pope, a skinny pope, and it’s classically
Lila:
Like, wait, did that happen?
Joe:
Well, who other the way around between, well, I guess you could go John the 23rd to Paul the sixth, but Pius at 12th to John the 23rd. I
Lila:
Don’t know where one stage,
Joe:
Well John the 23rd is a little more, he had kind of my build and Pius at 12th was rail thin.
Lila:
You’re not fat Joe.
Joe:
Come on. John the 23rd was more by Italian standards than maybe American standards.
Lila:
He just liked his gelato.
Joe:
It’s more just like an expression. So in the same way that the president often loses seats in the midterm election for his party
Lila:
Because
Joe:
People say all, we like a lot of what he’s doing, but we want to push back on these things. Well, with every conclave, the cardinals there, they know what the Pope is, they know the strengths, but they also know the weaknesses. And that’s not like a dig on Pope Francis or any Pope. Every Pope has strengths and weaknesses. And so one of the things the Cardinals are considering are do we want to keep going in the direction we’ve been going in terms of the style and the emphasis and everything else, or do we want to maybe shore up some of the areas where the prior Pope was weak And you see this very conscious sort of deliberation happening. I would say you see it with certainly the move from Benedict the 16th to Pope Francis. One of the things that I think Benedict himself would’ve told you is he wasn’t great in terms of some of the governance stuff.
For example, the Vatican finances were a mess and they’re cracking down on internal corruption and that kind of administrative style wasn’t his style. He’s much more the style of a university professor and a theologian. And so one of the things they were interested in in choosing Pope Francis was, well, he would been bishop of Buenos Aires. He had a lot more practical experience in even the boring kind of management stuff that factors in. And maybe this is, so I guess I stress two things. One, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Cardinals choose someone who is different than Pope Francis in some obvious ways. And the media will make that out to be a huge like, oh, they reject Pope Francis, but that’s pretty normal.
Lila:
Sorry to interrupt, but when you say you wouldn’t be surprised if the Cardinals pick someone different from Pope Francis in obvious ways, I know you’re talking about the joke of fat Pope versus skinny Pope, but you’re more speaking towards what might be perceived as a strength and weaknesses of that Pope picking someone else who had the opposite strengths and weaknesses just to in their best prudence, help respond to the Holy Spirit working amongst the conclave to find someone to help augment good things that Pope Francis was doing and maybe double down on areas where maybe there was less activity that they had hoped there would be more of that kind of a thing.
Joe:
Exactly. Okay. So I mean this is a huge role and every Pope is going to fall short in some regards. And one of the questions they’re going to face are like, do we keep leaning into the areas where maybe the prior Pope was strong or do we need to take a greater attention to the areas where the prior Pope was weak? And historically they’ve tended towards that latter option. There have been a handful of exceptions, but they’ve tended towards, you can see if you look at each particular Pope and say, what were some of his weak areas? And then look at his successor and say, okay, this is what they were discerning. The second thing I’d say about it though is their analysis isn’t going to be the same as ours at home. Meaning we are often looking at this in terms of left or conservative liberal, which those labels aren’t super applicable in the church. I get what they’re expressing. But a lot of what they’re looking for also just intangibles and maybe more tangible things about leadership. How effectively will this person lead? How charismatic are they? How good are they at balancing a budget or
Lila:
Interesting
Joe:
Running any sort of organization because someone can have all the right views and maybe be a beautiful theologian or preacher or something else, but if they can’t govern, that is something that they have to take into consideration. And so I always think about it just in-house. Chris Check is the president of Catholic Answers and it makes a lot more sense with all due respect to all of my fellow apologists. It makes a lot more sense for him to be in that role than for any of us because his skillset is much more suited for it. And that’s just not, if you put it to a popular vote and said, who’s going to be the next president of Catholic Answers? I think they would choose somebody who is a good apologist, but you need someone who’s also just good at running things. And the papacy works somewhat similarly.
Lila:
Chris Wilson asks, what are the odds that we get in American Pope?
Joe:
I would say very low, but not zero.
Lila:
Okay.
Joe:
Prevost is the name that I sometimes hear thrown around as a possibility because of his work with the congregation for Bishops, he knows a lot of the Cardinals,
Lila:
Cardinal Prevost,
Joe:
And he’s from Chicago.
Lila:
We have a picture of him, Franco,
Joe:
I don’t know. Yeah, he’s not super well known actually among Americans.
Lila:
If you had a percentage, you would say Cardinal Privos is going to be the next Pope, this American Cardinal, what would you give it?
Joe:
I would put it in the low single digits.
Lila:
Okay.
Joe:
5%, I’d say probably even sub five. I don’t think it’s super like he’s not on my short list, but the names you’ll hear on the short list and then last time around Cardinal Dolan and Cardinal O’Malley, their names were both mentioned. Cardinal Dolan is still under 80. Cardinal O’Malley is not. So they’re not impossible, but I think it’s unlikely. The prevailing wisdom was while America’s kind of running the world politically, it’s probably not likely that there’s also going to be an American
Lila:
Who’s interesting.
Joe:
The Pope.
Lila:
There’s the picture. I think Franco just pulled it up. You bump it back. Cardinal Prevost right here. And then you mentioned Cardinal Dolan and Cardinal O’Malley.
Joe:
Right. And those names are probably more familiar to ordinary American Catholics.
Lila:
Well, yeah. Cardinal Dolan I think was just added to the Council on religious liberty by President Trump. So you’re saying it
Joe:
Would be very strange to have the Pope have on the president’s council. Usually the papacy is sort of a counterbalance to the secular powers of the world.
Lila:
Interesting.
Joe:
And so I mean we have a long 2000 year history of this, of times where the secular sphere had too much control in the papacy. So you have the Byzantine emperors who had too much say during one era you have the French at a later era, and then you have this longstanding, this very strange relationship between the Pope and the Holy Roman emperor where the pope would crown someone, a holy Roman emperor, and then a few years later he’d invaded Italy and try to kill the Pope. Crazy. It was this recurring thing. Wild. And so the wisdom of the church, and there’s no rule about this, but wisdom of the church is typically you don’t want someone who might even be perceived as beholden to the most powerful kind of secular forces. You want someone who can work with them but counterbalance them as needed. If you have someone who’s really divisive, let’s say hypothetically, you’ve got an extremely liberal and an extremely conservative candidate. And just for the sake this is not accurate, let’s say like 50 50, 50% of the cardinals love the left guy, 50% love the right guy, and they realize pretty quickly they’re deadlocked. They’re then going to be actively looking for someone else who is a amenable to meet to the middle.
And so one of the candidates whose name has been thrown out there for that is Cardinal Pizza. He is young, he turned 60 on the day Pope Francis died. And that’s very youthful by papal standards because it might mean for 30 years.
Lila:
Can you pull up his picture, Franco? So this is Cardinal Pizza Ball. Love the name.
Joe:
And is
Lila:
He the one who said he told Hamas that he would love to take the place of
Joe:
All the hostages? Yeah, he offered trade places with the hostages and he’s been the patriarch of Jerusalem and has been on the one hand a great advocate for Palestinian Christians and for victims of violence in Palestine. He’s also stood up to Hamas and he’s been, I think people on both sides of the conflict have looked at him as a real honest broker and someone who isn’t just a partisan but is actually navigated this very tricky situation with a tremendous amount of grace and dignity and he doesn’t have a lengthy track record on other hot button issues. So he seems like the obvious from the outside. He seems like the obvious sort of compromise candidate. If let’s say you are someone who you love the Latin mass, if you love, you’re probably going to say Cardinal Syrah or Burke or somebody like that. And if it’s like, okay, they don’t have nearly enough votes to get to two thirds pizza, Paula looks pretty amenable. He looks like he’s okay with the traditional mass and he’s able to navigate geopolitics and he’s able to do all of these things to lead the church well. But then the danger of course is this is someone young, so if you miscalculate it, if you bet wrong, the consequences of that are more long ranging.
Lila:
Another common question, well maybe not so common depending who’s asking, but can the Pope be married at all possible to have a married pope?
Joe:
It is. It might be complicated, but there’s no canonical reason it couldn’t happen. There’s a dispute as to whether Peter was married or not because there’s a reference in the Bible to mother-in-law, but there’s no reference to a wife or children. And as he’s following Jesus around, the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. This was not the kind of life that seems fit for a married man. It’s hard enough. I’m on the road one night right now. If I was on the road for three years, my wife might have some stronger words. And so they’re following Jesus for three years and then for decades after that they’re going around preaching in various places. He’s in Jerusalem, he’s getting arrested, he’s going to Antioch, he’s going to Rome. Does he have a wife and kids who are somewhere in the picture either in Rome or maybe accompanying him they’re in Galilee or accompanying him on the road? We don’t know. There’s no reason it couldn’t happen, but I don’t think the biblical case for him being married at the time he’s an apostle is actually as strongest as people think. There’s a couple passages that I see getting misused a lot. So I’m not convinced Peter wasn’t married Pope,
Lila:
Meaning if he had a mother-in-law, meaning his wife had passed away, is what you’re
Joe:
Exactly. He seems like he could have been a widower. And in fact in Matthew 19 he says to Jesus, we’ve given up everything to follow you. What then shall we have? And Jesus then speaks about those who’ve given up having a family to follow him, which if that’s responding to the question he was just asked by Peter, he seems to be implying Peter has given up marriage and children
Lila:
To maybe remarriage it sounds
Joe:
Like. Right, exactly.
Lila:
Interesting. That makes a lot of sense because when you think about the goodness of our Lord, him tearing a married man away from his wife and children, first of all, that’s not scriptural. There’s not actual an example of that. It might be just an implication that somebody might make about the scripture,
Joe:
But
Lila:
It makes sense on a certain gut level that our Lord would not have done that. Of course, I’m not going to speak for our Lord, but it just seems that unless it’s explicit in scripture, which it’s not, it makes more sense that if he had been married Peter, he had a mother-in-law, she had passed away.
Joe:
Yeah. I mean one of the reasons we don’t think Jesus is married is there’s no reference to a wife and kids for Jesus. And this is if you say to a Protestant say, I don’t think Jesus was married. It’s like, well, of course not. There’s no mention. Then you’re like, and by the way, there’s also no mention of any of the apostles having wives or kids and a lot of the same reasons it would be weird for Jesus to be married and have kids are also reasons would be weird for the apostles. Not all of the same reasons. I mean imagine your dad being God himself, but nevertheless it does seem to speak in terms of if you want to say fittingness to maybe one of the reasons why it’s unlikely we’re going to get a married pope. And also the tradition in both the east and the west is not to have married bishops. Even though the east will have married priests, they don’t draw their bishops from the married priest population. They draw them usually from the monks.
Lila:
And that’s like a matter of justice because you have so much to offer a family and your wife and your kids and the priesthood asks a lot of you, and even more so the bishop position, the position of bishop even asks more of you. So
Joe:
That’s kind of, it’s hard to envision someone doing both of those things. Well,
Lila:
It’s a lot. We got a question here from of the sea backtracking just a moment here about St. Peter, you were sharing about him. So here’s a question she says, or they say a question about Peter not having a wife. What about one Corinthians nine, five? Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and CFAs?
Joe:
I’m so happy someone asked this because I really wanted to do the deep dive there and thought, oh, this isn’t a whole segment on Peter.
Lila:
The people want it,
Joe:
Don’t it. Lemme tell you,
If you read one Corinthians nine, two things you should know. Number one, the Greek doesn’t say wife there it says woman and number two, wife makes no sense in that context, beginning in verse two, St. Paul is talking about how the other apostles are financially remunerated, they’re given financial benefits and he and Barnabas aren’t and do they not have the right to receive payment? And he hits this over and over again. So you might say, well, in the context, what is this believing woman context? Well, look at Luke eight. Jesus and the apostles were accompanied by wealthy women who would care for them out of their means. Mary Magdalene being the most famous. And so Paul is saying, I could have this. I have a wealthy donor who takes care of all my needs because women weren’t called to be apostles and one of the ways they would serve the apostolic ministry was supporting it financially. And that’s what Paul’s taught. It makes no sense to read that line as about marriage because the preceding four verses and the two verses after it are all about money.
Lila:
That is fascinating and it’s fascinating too that you’re saying there were these wealthy patrons, they were women who were supporting the apostles in those early days of our Lord’s ministry. Very, very interesting. Who would you say in your view is the top? Who are the top five candidates? Now we’re on day two going to day two of the conclave. So you said earlier there were these two candidates that you thought might be, if it happened today, one of them would get picked.
Joe:
Yeah.
Lila:
What do you think for tomorrow? Who would you say are your top five? I’m going to actually ask you who’s your ultimate bet if you had to bet on a pope tomorrow?
Joe:
That’s a great question and I’ve gone back and forth on this because I also don’t want to just do the blatant wish fulfillment of who would I like.
Lila:
Who would you like?
Joe:
I mean, Cardinal Rah would be great.
Lila:
Why do you love Cardinals? It’s called Cardinal Rah up here too,
Joe:
Or Sarah. I’ve heard it both Sarah and Rah. Every time I pronounce it one way somebody tells me it’s the other way.
Lila:
He’s is a extremely pro-life pro-family. Obviously they’re all pro-life and pro family. It’s so dumb to even say this about our cardinals. They’re all pro-life and pro-family, but he’s written a bunch of beautiful books.
Joe:
So his book on the Power of Silence is
Lila:
Really
Joe:
Well known. I’m working on his book Catechism in the Spiritual of the Spiritual Life right now. And so he’s got this tremendous reservoir of wisdom and just seems like a really saintly man. He seems to have been encouraged by Pope Francis to be less vocal. He obeyed that. He retreated from the public scene for a while.
Lila:
How did that happen? When you say Pope Francis encouraged Cardinals to be a little less vocal?
Joe:
I think he had a private conversation with, I can’t speak to that anymore.
Lila:
He wasn’t on X, right? Was Cardinals on X?
Joe:
I don’t know if he was, I didn’t follow on. I don’t really use a lot of,
Lila:
But he would just make a lot of strong statements
Joe:
On moral
Lila:
Issues
Joe:
And he would make controversial points. He described a lot of western bishops as functional atheists and so that sort of stuff,
Lila:
He’s a little harsh.
Joe:
He comes on a little, which is practically speaking why I don’t think he’s likely to become, I think he’s probably burnt a lot of bridges saying things that sound really good on X and maybe are less good if you’re a bishop in the west to say
Lila:
That’s why X loves Cardinal S and I love Cardinal Sera. I mean his book, what is the name again? Of silence?
Joe:
The
Lila:
Power of Silence. The Power of Silence. I mean an incredible book, but to your point, I think they’re looking for someone of great measure. Measure virtue can be in the mean right in the middle. So it’s someone of great prudence of wisdom, maybe a temperament that is strong but very judicious in its statements and decisions. And
Joe:
So another African candidate who, I’m blanking on his name right now, the Cardinal Archbishop of Kin Hasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Lila:
I’ll ask the chat. Who is this Cardinal?
Joe:
Yes,
Lila:
We have stumped
Joe:
The shame, not Turkson.
Lila:
We have stumped shameless popery.
Joe:
The
Lila:
Only time it’s ever happened.
Joe:
It’s not
Lila:
Asking him about the 130 second cardinal.
Joe:
Yeah, let me, I’m going to,
Lila:
So he’s and bongo?
Joe:
Yeah, beum Gu Beum
Lila:
Gu,
Joe:
B-E-S-U-N-G-U.
Lila:
Okay.
Joe:
He has done a very masterful job of leading the bishops in Africa, which is cross continent. This is not an easy task.
Lila:
Do we have his quick picture Franco Franco’s pulling him up, perio.
Joe:
Yeah. And so in response to the whole blessing of same-sex couples thing, he put out a basic like this doesn’t work for us as African bishop’s statement. That was nevertheless very respectful. And the Vatican’s like, okay, fine, we get it, don’t worry about it. It was a master stroke. I mean in terms of being able to get everyone on board basically continent wide and then to say something that was a respectful but strong to the Pope, we don’t think what you’re doing here works. And then to have the Pope back down is it was quite telling. But he did that without being a provocateur, without burning bridges, still expressing his love for the successor of Peter. Those kind of moments show a caliber of leadership. I think he’s still an unlikely
Lila:
Diplomacy really mean it sounds like right diplomacy. He’s morally straight and narrow and then he has a diplomacy because I think that was the criticism of blessed our lovely Pope Francis, God rest his soul and let’s pray for the pros of his soul. But the criticism often was a lack of precision in his statements. It was confusing for people, some of the statements out of the Vatican, they did not violate church teaching, but they seemed edgy. This idea of blessing same sex couples, it wasn’t blessing the union, it was blessing the individual, but the context seemed off. So I think there’s a lot confusion, understandably. And so you’re saying this cardinal from the Democratic Republic of Congo responded really beautifully in explaining why the approach that the Vatican was recommending, he would not disobey church teaching or anything like this or the Vatican, but he would maybe pick a different pastoral approach. Is
Joe:
That fair? That’s exactly right. And the Vatican basically said, okay, it was received and we respect that and we’re not going to press it.
And it was a very remarkable watching this from the outside of like, okay, how is this going to go? How are they going to receive this? And then they received it well, and the whole intervention of what could have been a very tense situation resolved I think very nicely actually. And was also a reminder of another dimension that a lot of the talk is dominated. As I said, the country at the most Cardinals is Italy and that’s always been the case, but they only have 17 now the US is number two with 10, but the church in Europe is not thriving. It’s largely dying. Whereas the church in Africa is growing quite a bit. And so you might have Cardinals who say, we want to pay attention to what you guys are doing, what you’re doing well, where we’re really struggling here and the moral issues facing different cultures and contexts aren’t always going to be the same.
So as the church becomes more globally southern, as you have more Catholics who are from Africa, from South America, from South Asia, then the issues that you’re dealing with might be different. So to give one example, actually a friend of mine who’s from the Democratic Republic of the Congo told me he was raised by his aunt and uncle and that his uncle was a good Catholic except that he had four wives, not like consecutively like we do, but concurrently. And it was like, oh, I am just not used to hearing about even in a Catholic context, having to deal with polygamy, whereas we have much more of a divorce culture, which they don’t. So my point there is just the challenges the next Pope is going to face and that the church is going face during the next pontificate. They’re not always going to be the challenges we are thinking of in the US or people are thinking of in Europe. And so as a result, someone from somewhere else may be bringing a different set of priorities to the table or a different set of concerns of things that they’re maybe keyed into.
Lila:
Who are the other folks? The other folks, the other cardinals that you would say are top five.
Joe:
Top five, okay. And they’re
Lila:
Running for the Pope.
Joe:
I think at top five, the names that I’ve heard thrown out a lot, Tagle as more of the sort of liberalish candidates. Ado and Syrah was the two more conservative and the compromised one, I know I’m cheating by anyone, a six pizza ball. All of them have obvious strengths and obvious weaknesses and so it’s difficult to know how all of that will play out, especially because the Cardinals, as I said, they don’t know each other very well and a lot of them are coming from very different parts of the world where our read of conservative liberal may not make sense. So Cardinal Turks in is a great example in Ghana on some issues. He sounds we would say more liberal on some issues. He sounds extremely conservative and trying to put him in a left right sort of box already, it’s a stretch to do that even when we’re talking about an American or a European cardinal, but it’s much more the case when we’re talking about someone from a different culture.
Lila:
Do you think it’s wrong for American Catholics or for any Catholics to be putting these cardinals in left right boxes?
Joe:
I think it is. It is like this. It’s helpful to have some way of describing people who have certain tendencies and unfortunately the vernacular we have is traditional conservative and liberal or traditional conservative and progressive, but it’s terminology that I think is bad in two ways. Number one, we risk making everything into politics, go online, look at a funny video and then open the comments and see how long it takes people to mention Donald Trump positively or negatively. We want everything to be through the lens of politics and that speaks to an idolatry of our age and a really unhealthy obsession of our age. The American political system doesn’t matter as much as we think it does and as we act like it does, and we need to remember that. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t mean those things matter, but not to the extent that we’ve given them authority over our lives. So I don’t like that we are using political labels. And second, the labels are also not super clear.
Lila:
That’s a great point.
Joe:
When you say someone’s like a liberal Catholic, do you mean they love the poor or they think women should be ordained priests
Lila:
Or they think we should give dignity to immigrants? Right, exactly. So what does that mean? Yes, it’s a great point.
Joe:
Where does Jesus fall in this spectrum? What label we’re going to put on him? Is he a conservative, a liberal, a traditionalist? I mean he’s all of those things depending on the context, but that’s why I think that the labels fall short. I get it. I sometimes use the labels for kind of an easy shorthand, but you have to be very clear about what it is you mean by that. Lin was like I said, secretary of state, so we know he has the diplomatic experience and all of that. I think that’s one of the strengths. The world is in a state of crisis right now, so the next Pope needs to be someone who can be a steady hand and he’s not particularly flashy. This is both a pro and a con con because he maybe lacks some charisma, but maybe a pro because I think there are probably cardinals who’d be quietly relieved to not be constantly like, oh, the Pope was on an airplane and he gave an interview and now we’re going to deal with that for the next week. And so having someone who keeps a low profile can be attractive. Again, if you think about John Paul II and Benedict the 16th Benedict had the same vision of the church. JP two had but a much more subdued profile. Carolyn might be that sort of the version of that for Pope Francis, someone who’s less likely to throw a statement out the cuff, a little more precise, a little more they get in the background in diplomacy. The cons one
Lila:
Is this Perlin by the way that we’ve got up here with Holy Father Francis.
Joe:
It looks like it. Yes.
Lila:
Okay, there’s
Joe:
- There’s some concerns with his age. I think he recently had a heart attack and his health as well, so he seemed to be something of a front runner before the conclave and then there were a number of concerns raised about maybe a lack of charisma and a troubling kind of health signs, so those might be causing people who would’ve supported him to reconsider next zpi. He, as I said, he was in bologna. Bologna. Let’s pull
Lila:
Up Zpi here. We’ve got our pictures.
Joe:
Bologna is a famously liberal city in Italy and the Bologna School of Theology was the one associated with viewing Vatican two as a rupture rather than through a hermeneutic of continuity or reform. And so Bologna is a little bit, it is an important city, but it’s also a little bit was like San Francisco is maybe in the US and Zui seems to sort of fit that in certain ways. He is charismatic I think, but he is a little bit doctrinaire. I would say Liberal is a name normally label attached to him a lot. He was allowing same sex couples to get a blessing in church even before fiduciary Suan. And so all the things that made Pope Francis controversial within Catholic circles, he would probably be more of that. Additionally, as I said before, both peril and Zui were involved with the China relationship that I think to many Catholics minds has sort of backfired and so that is going to be another area maybe in the category. Pietro Pizza, Ballah, as I mentioned
Lila:
Really quick before you get to pizza ball in the chat, people are saying Zpi would be a disaster. So there’s a lot of people not liking Zpi Cardinal Zui in the chat. Again, we love all of our cardinals. God bless them all. We’re grateful for all of them. But you’re kind of saying some of the things that Pope Francis was the most criticized for are even more
Joe:
Probably a lot of the right. I’m not sure you’re going to get all of the things that Pope Francis was beloved for. I think you’re going to get a lot of the things that Pope Francis was controversial for.
Lila:
How likely do you think it is that Cardinal Zube will make? It’ll be elected.
Joe:
If we’d had an election today or if we’d had white smoking, excuse me, today, he was one of the two who I would’ve thought would be likely because he’s well known. So at least at this point we can say the Cardinals know what they’re getting with him and they haven’t so far said yes, this is what we want, at least not two thirds of them.
Lila:
So you think it’s less likely that it’s going to be Cardinal Zui
Joe:
Because it wasn’t today. The longer we go, the less likely it is to be zui. Now that’s not impossible. As I said before, you get figures like Benedict who it might still take four or five rounds of voting, even though they knew who Ratzinger was without knowing what the momentum is like it is very hard to give anything other than a largely uneducated guess. I think everyone saying here’s who’s going to be is grasping at the thinnest of evidence. I mean we don’t have a ton, but he is one of the ones who’s better known and haven’t two thirds of ’em haven’t suggest to him. That’s what we can say so far.
Lila:
So we’re doing top six actually, right? I think top six. Top six, so, so far. Oh, and then
Joe:
Tagle is the other more again using liberal and heavy quotation marks. He is very charismatic. I think he’s something very likable about him and he seems to have the kind of pastoral heart that Pope Francis is kind of famous for. So there’s stories about Tagle getting up to celebrate the 4:30 AM mass to help workers who were on their way to go work. It wasn’t his normal mass, but the priest didn’t show up and so he got on his bike and he rode over to the church and he celebrated mass.
Lila:
Where is tole from? Here’s a picture of Toley
Joe:
The Philippines, and he is beloved by Filipino Catholics on the whole
Lila:
Cardinal toggle. So you would put him top six.
Joe:
I mean I think the media’s putting him top six. They put him in the top five or six last time around and I don’t think he actually had that much of a shot. So if someone wants the kind of stylistic, if they are saying we want someone who is going to remind us of Pope Francis in that way, Tagle seems like an easy choice in one regard. He also occasionally will say things that are off the cuff and you kind of grit your teeth a little bit and say, oh, I don’t know if you meant to say it like that. So he can be Pope Francis in both the ways that are really inviting and the ways that are maybe more frustrating. So those would be the three sort of continuity candidates. Maybe that’s a good way to say it. If people want continuity with what they just got with Pope Francis, then they’re likely to gravitate towards one of those three people and maybe some others we just don’t even have on our radar if they want something that they felt like was lacking last time around, there’s a handful of candidates.
Cardinal Syrah would be a good example of that. I don’t think he has the numbers, I don’t think he has the support, but it’s easy to see what the appeal is with him. I think one maybe telling indication, I would say this, the man’s not a politician, I think is actually very good in terms of whether he’s likely to marshal the votes of 89 Cardinals. I’m dubious, but he showed up at the conclave with Cardinal Burke who is easily the most controversial cardinal in terms of more conservative or traditional cardinals. So that’s not who you would show up with if you were being really strategic, you’d find someone else who was like a well beloved figure and not a lightning erotic
Lila:
Controversy. You hold his hand and walk in.
Joe:
Right.
Lila:
That is funny. Well, I’m sure, I mean in his virtue, I’m sure he’s not gaming the system to try to be Pope. Exactly.
Joe:
Well actually I’m so glad you said this. I just did an episode about this on shameless popery that the way we’re even speaking about it and thinking about it sounds like the way you choose a political candidate and in the reality of it, from everything we see in here, it seems much more like the opposite of that, that some of the greatest popes in history desperately did not want to become Pope Pope Gregory the Great after he was elected, Pope wrote to the Roman emperor to see if he could get the election annulled somehow.
Lila:
Wow.
Joe:
Actively tried to not be the Pope. And you have those kind of things. And actually there’s a beautiful letter, I believe it’s letter five of Gregory the Great in his book of letters in which he writes through the other patriarchs just about what a burden it is to be Pope and how his world seems very dark now it sounds depress. He talks about, and he gives two reasons and it is worth mentioning them. Number one, as James reminds us in his epistle, the one who assumes the office of teacher assumes a harder duty of judgment. The more God has given you, the more he’s going to judge you for. And so the one he’s given, the papacy is going to be judged for that. This is one of the reasons Hebrews 1317 tells us to obey our leaders because they’re men who are going to have to give account, and Gregory was deeply and keenly aware of that.
Any cardinal with a halfway decent spiritual life realizes if I’m going to become Pope, my spiritual life just got harder, not easier. I’m more likely to be under demonic attack. I’m more likely to be faced with temptations and I’m going to be judged more harshly by our Lord. That’s the first reason. The second reason Gregory offered is that he wanted to basically live the life of simple prayer. He’d actually wanted to retire to a monastery and instead he feared he was going to have to live more like a secular prince than a spiritual father. That the papacy has always been such an important role that you have to deal with all these worldly affairs. You have to keep the light on, you have to manage geopolitical things that come down the pipe, and so it isn’t just like being a preacher, it is so much more than that and there’s a burden with that.
And so as a result, I think only a foolish person would look at that and be like, oh yeah, I’m ready for that. I think this would be a great duty to take on. So a lot of popes have pretty actively resisted becoming Pope until it was clear that the Holy Spirit was inviting them into it. If anyone wants good spiritual reading, Pope Pius ii, his document e Supreme, S-U-P-R-E-M-I, which is on the restoration of all things in Christ, begins with him talking about how he cried about becoming Pope and didn’t want to be Pope and explains why it’s pretty remarkable. And then he explains all the situations facing the church and the church 120 years ago, and you look at the world today and you’re like, oh yeah, those would also be reasons why this would be a heavy spiritual burden. So I give that, I know it’s a long kind of aside, but just to say if you’re imagining there are a bunch of politicians glad handing to try to become Pope, nobody who’s been in a conclave describes it that way. Cardinal O’Malley said it was like a very intense retreat that it’s not about like, okay, you do this and I’ll do that for you. It is a much different process.
Lila:
Is there anyone you have not mentioned yet that you think people should be paying attention to at this point as a potential candidate?
Joe:
It’s a good question. Cardinal Ado from Hungary is another one where he seems to just have a good head on his shoulders, seems to be smart and savvy and a good conservative diplomatic candidate. He hasn’t made a ton of waves, but he seems to be a good solid candidate. I think being honest, it seems to me more likely than not that the person being chosen is going to be a surprising pick to the world.
Lila:
Wow. And any guesses who that is
Joe:
A surprising pick. I think it’ll be a surprising pick to me too. It’s not like me and the Cardinals have a good sense of who it’ll be. I just think, and I could very, very well be wrong here, but every time around the media has an idea of who they think it’s going to be and they’re almost always wrong, and the way the process works out under lock and key, which is what conclave means, is just often very different where God can put someone forward who was a very unexpected pick, even the betting odds, I want to say Jorge Boggo before he became Pope Francis was 14th or 15th of most common, and Colonel Toley was above him by quite a bit and what it looks like from the outside world versus what it looks like inside the conclave, they’re two very different worlds.
Lila:
What do you think, Joe? We should people who are Catholics and then also people who just care. Our friend here in the chat who says, I’m not Catholic, but this matters posture. Should we have, should we be praying? What do you recommend?
Joe:
Yeah, we should be praying and I would say don’t pray for your guy. Pray for God’s guy
That’s pray for all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and this is, I’m taking this advice pretty explicitly from Pope Clement the 14th. The one thing we know that the Pope is going to need is all of the fruits of the spirit, and that’s true in every generation and every Pope, and so we want someone who possesses those traits who is very in tune with the Holy Spirit, who is very prayerful and will lead out of that docility to the Holy Spirit. If that happens, and even if it’s not the person I would choose, that is the person God has chosen and I really want that
Lila:
Whoever is elected Pope, whether it’s tomorrow we get white smoke or Friday or unusually, it might even extend beyond this week, what posture should we have, especially those of us who are Catholics towards the Holy Father who regardless of who it is, let’s say it’s that candidate that certain news groups are like they’re liberal or they’re conservative or whatever it is. What should be the posture of people of faith, of Catholic faith? How should they respond to whoever is elected Pope?
Joe:
The technical term is filial piety. This is your father, and so you wouldn’t choose your biological dad and say, oh, I think everyone watching this can say, I love my dad. There’s some things that maybe he does really well and some things that maybe he struggles with. My kids would be happy to go on your show and give a few hour long Jesus or Excursus on that, but you still are called to love and obey, and it doesn’t mean things can’t be hard, but if you’re immediately like, I reject this person. They weren’t my preferred candidate. You were spending way too much time online and you probably need to take a break from including Catholic media for a while for your own spiritual good.
If you have that reaction of distrust and a refusal to submit, you are not making the church better and you are making your spiritual life worse again. Hebrews 1317 says, we should obey our leaders because there are men who are called to give account and we should make their lives easier rather than harder. As a result, that’s what we’re called to do. How can I be docile to any moral elicit promptings that I’m getting from the Pope or from my bishop or from my priest? Obviously if someone’s telling you to do something sinful, don’t do it, but I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about that. It’s much more likely that some part of each one of us wants to run things, wants to lead things, and if you read Genesis, you know where that’s coming from, and that’s not coming from God that I want to be God impulse or I want to be the Pope impulse. Don’t remember the thing about how the one who takes on that authority is judge more harshly. If you live your life trying to be Pope in your head about here’s what they think the church needs to do, X, y, Z, you’re taking on a spiritual accountability you don’t want and can’t do anything with, so don’t do that for your own sake and it’s going to make your life more miserable and it’s going to make your judgment more heart more difficult.
Lila:
Very well said, Joe. Very, very well said. Can you close us with prayer, Joe?
Joe:
Yeah.
Lila:
This is a jubilee year. Obviously the papal colla is happening and the world’s kind of crazy. It always has been, but
Joe:
I’d be happy to. Of Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God the Father, we thank you first and foremost for the gift of your son, Jesus Christ. In this season of Easter. We remember that in all the uncertainty of life you’ve triumphed over death. We remember that in John 21, you sent the risen Christ to invite Peter to feed his flock, and we ask that you send your Holy Spirit to help the College of Cardinals, to choose someone else, to be a successor of Peter, to feed and nourish the flock of Christ, all the ways that we’re hungry, all the ways that we’re wounded, our need for a good shepherd. We know about the good shepherd of your son and those shepherds that he promises to call in Jeremiah three 15 so that we can be one flock with one shepherd. I just ask this through the intercession of St. Peter and all the saints. Amen.
Lila:
Amen. Thank you, Joe.