So I’m elected as Pope Cadwallader and I set out and
Rescind the beatification of John Paul II because the 5 year waiting period was waived and his role in child-molestation coverups.
Admit women in the priesthood, consecrate some as bishops and even make a few cardinals and of course make women eligible to be Pope.
Would #1 be legal under Canon Law?
Would a future Pope be able to defrock the women in #2 claiming I was in error giving them Holy Orders?
What would happen is that you would “suddenly take ill” and be whisked off for “private treatment”, and that either you would then be “taken from us” or “retire”.
GQ Answer: Yes, you could do all that. Supreme authority is supreme.
GQ best guess result: And then have to deal with a fractured church in revolt and schism until the day you die. And find all your monetary sources dry up.
That’s because even though supreme authority is supreme… people have limits if they believe you’re not acting faithfully. E.g., if, as Pope, you declare adultery and murder to be morally acceptable, the people won’t accept that and they’ll simply reject you. At some point, if your decrees become more and more out of line of what people expect, you’ll completely lose their endorsement of you. They’ll ignore you and wait for you to die until a rightful Pope is elected.
IMHO field:
Now, if you want to get all that done without the revolt and schism, you’ll have to move more slowly.
You can sit on JPII’s ‘cause’ indefinitely while you release documents from a study that showed lack of movement on his part to deal with the problem when it first arose. Once enough fans of JPII sour on him with that info, you can then rescind the beatification.
You can pretty much open up the priesthood to married priests and the diaconate to women rather quickly letting implementation take time.
You can also pretty much start stacking the college of bishops and cardinals with like minded reformers and put a leash on right wing orthodoxy hounds so that moderate and liberal theologians can speak and write more openly and lay down the groundwork toward women in the priesthood. This one will be the hardest to get a sizable segment to accept and will require the most preparation if you want it done without schism. But it will most likely take a generational shift. Hopefully, you were voted in young and you outlive the old guard.
Yes, (1) would be legal under canon law, and there are some precedents. Pope Paul VI removed the feast day for St Christopher from the Catholic calendar of saints.
(2) Would not be legal under canon law, but the Roman pontiff has immediate and universal legislative authority. So you, as the current Pope, can amend canon law to permit Holy Orders to be conferred on women.
(2a) Since the Pope has immediate and universal legislative authority, a future Pope could reverse your actions. However, the “how” is important. Holy Orders, once conferred, can never be erased – they leave an “indelible mark” on the soul. So while the ordained women could be defrocked, that action would not actually erase the sacrament. But as Pope, this future Pope could forbid them from exercising their office. The Orders thus conferred would be valid, but not licit.
Moderator Note:
Not a GQ answer. Stifle the urge to do this.
samclem, moderator
Sorry.
Is there a mechanism for removing a pope who loses his marbles, other than having the next incumbent murder him (and yes, I understand that method hasn’t been used in quite some time)? An emergency meeting of the college of Cardinals?
The problem with rescinding JPII on (partly) the basis of abuse/molestation scandal is that you kind of set up a double standard. In the first place, one could reasonably assume that this kind of behavior has been basically SOP for centuries or more: why would the fact that it is surfacing of late suggest that it has only begun to happen of late rather than all along? Other popes have been canonized yet have made no comment on this subject, why should JPII be held to a different standard?
I don’t think that after Ordinatio Sacerdotalis it is possible without breaking up the church.
There isn’t, he has no checks and balances.
They could convince him to resign. There is the tradition that even a sick Pope could not mess up things due to the protextion of the Holy Spirit.
Yes, but that was a question, not of Christopher’s goodness, but of his existence. JPII, by contrast, is pretty much universally accepted to have existed (and if you try to assert otherwise, Pope or not, people will just laugh at you).
If a future pope undid ordination of women, then he most certainly could declare their ordinations null and void.
But he’d then have a problem with all the sacraments those female priests performed… would all those baptisms and weddings and confessions then be voided? That was the issue which brought about the indelible nature of priestly ordination, namely, the scandal that would occur if the sacraments celebrated by a priest would become voided if they misbehaved or were defrocked. The result was to declare the priestly character permanent, even if the actual performance of priestly ministry was suppressed.
This makes invalidating a female priesthood, once begun, very difficult to do. And if it’s not invalidated, then what good reason could there be to keep the prohibition?
This is definitely a case of toothpaste once out of the tube.
Indeed. The Roman Catholic Church is careful to say that beatification and canonization is not the same as approving all the actions and teachings of the Blessed or the Saint in question. E.g., there are particular teachings of St. Augustine and St. Thomas which are officially rejected by the Church. St. Jerome was a notorious jerk. Some canonized saints were ‘visionaries’ whose visions never received official approval. If people were held up to the standard of perfection in order to be canonized, no one would be.
“Valid, but not licit.”
Intriguing phrase.
Nice work, counselor.
I’m answering this question as factually as possible. The “good reason” would simply be the then-existing discipline – as opposed to dogma – of the Church.
The incoming Pope could declare that henceforth, priests celebrate Mass in a tuxedo, complete with top hat and tails. That would be (IMO) unwise, but change nothing about the universal truths claimed by the Church.
It’s very unclear to me on what grounds a Pope could find that a previous Pope’s instructions that allowed ordination of women was absolutely invalid, in essence annulling the ordination. But it’s crystal clear that a future Pope could simply forbid additional ordination of women and forbid the women already ordained from exercise of their office. My solution, in other words, is true to the dogma of the Church – which, I would argue, is the correct factual basis for answering such a question.
I thought it might be something like that. Thanks.
This explains too why the church is slow to change… not just because it’s run by octogenarians, but also because they muck with tradition very slowly and carefully. Even switching from latin to local language - something you would think is a given - they had serious objections, people who wanted to splinter, etc. Big changes will come slowly.
As one of the local church types from the (Catholic) college mentioned - if women priests or married priests is an idea whose time has come, not a passing fad, then they’ll do it in 50 or 100 years. By then, almost everyone will say “what took you so long?” rather than “What?? I’m switching churches” and the next pope won’t try to undo it.
Could a subsequent Pope suppress a female priesthood instituted by a previous Pope and still declare the ordinations valid and the sacraments they celebrated valid? Sure.
But then he’d be ridiculed the entirety of his papacy. One of the reasons there is no female priests is that it hasn’t been done before. Precedence is very important to tradition bound institutions. Once the precedent is established, it’s hard to argue it can’t be continued or revived. And by not declaring those ordinations invalid, that Pope would be tacitly agreeing that women can indeed by priests.
The other choice is to declare the ordinations invalid. Which he most certainly can do. Just like a church decree can declare marriages annulled, so can priestly ordinations be declared annulled. It happens very, very rarely, precisely because of the implications of the status of all the sacraments that the annulled priest celebrated. But it can happen. The ordination status of Anglican priests falls into the category of not recognizing an ordination because the theology of the ordination was deemed to defective (heresy-wise). Additionally, history is full of acts of Pope being rather purposefully rescinded and reversed. Of course, doing so would weaken his own authority as people would think, “fine, we’ll just wait til you die and let a new Pope reverse your decision!”
Since you’re so certain, perhaps you can give us an example.
The Pope is not the supreme authority nor is he Superman.
“Infallibility” is a very strictly defined action. it doesn’t apply to say, lottery numbers or even weather forecasting. The Pope cannot decree that the Sun will now rise in the West and set in the East.
His authority exists as far as interpretation of what already exists in the original Deposit of Faith. This consists of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.
It is true that the Church moves with glacial slowness. The beatification of JPII was at light speed compared to “business as usual.”
ANYTHING that is said “ex cathedra” (meaning “from the chair of St Peter”) has been researched by many over the years from this Deposit of Faith, and has been discussed and codified behind the scenes.
~VOW
You seem confused, especially with regard to your first statement.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P2A.HTM
He is the supreme authority in the church. End statement (unless you feel like adding full, universal, and unhindered, although it seems superfluous to me).