The Next Pope: Let's Stop Speculating

This column originally appeared on Beliefnet in May 2001.

Because of the role they will play in selecting John Paul II's successor, the recent additions to the College of Cardinals have turned many minds to thoughts of the next pope. (Of course, only youngsters under 80 will be eligible to vote, and that rule excludes several of the recent recipients of the red hat, including the American Jesuit Avery Dulles, who is 82.) The secular media understandably see the choice of a new pope in political terms and trot out the old liberal/conservative dichotomy. John Paul II is labeled a conservative, and speculation turns on a possible liberal successor.

Journalists pick up such cues from those inside the walls, at least in part, and there has been a very vocal opposition to John Paul II on the part of theological dissidents who regard this papacy as the negation of Vatican II. Given the pope's constant affirmation of the importance of Vatican II, given the definition of the Jubilee Year in terms of the council, given the implicit and explicit implementations of the wishes of the council in the papal magisterium, this charge is difficult to understand. But not impossible. Such dissidents have a view of the council that is the opposite of that held by the teaching church. They thought the council abandoned the hierarchical view of the church and generally repudiated the past.

Though their views were officially characterized by the Second Extraordinary Synod in 1985 as the "false spirit" of the council, these dissidents still hope their vision of the church will become a reality when a new pope is chosen.

The hope that a new pope will, however subtly, jettison the magisterium of John Paul II would seem to be precluded by the fact that he has created 125 of the 135 cardinals who will choose his successor. Are they clones of the pope?

Popes have a way of making surprising appointments to the College of Cardinals. Paul VI named two French Jesuits, Jean Danielou and Henri De Lubac, who had not seemed among his stalwart defenders. Subsequently, Cardinal De Lubac regularly came to the defense of Paul VI, seeming to appear almost weekly in Osservatore Romano. And among those just given red hats are the German Lehman and the American Avery Dulles. Lehman seemed to waffle on abortion, and Dulles, in his earlier books, sometimes took positions that pained many who would be called conservative. But then Cardinal Ratzinger was counted among the liberals immediately after Vatican II.

Continued on page 2: »