IIRC, voting for a new pope is considered Plan B. Before they start casting votes, the Cardinals all sit quietly for a few minutes to give God an opportunity to inspire them, the theory being that God might want some unlikely individual to be Pope who mere mortals like the Cardinals would be unaware of. So if all of them are sitting there and suddenly hear an inner voice saying “Pick Sarah Silverman” then it must be divine instruction and she’s the one.
Upon further investigation I see that choosing a Pope by acclamation is no longer a possibility. Pope John Paul II abolished the practice in 1996. Presumedly he was concerned God might choose the wrong candidate.
Also, if the man chosen to be Pope is a layman, he must be free of any impediment to becoming a priest. The most obvious impediment is marriage, so he has to be a bachelor or a widower.
Slight hijack, but I heard a rather touching quotation from Pope John Paul II the other day.
It was words to the effect that he would sometimes lie in bed wrestling with a moral or theological issue, and think "oh dear, I don’t know what to do about this…
“I know! Tomorrow I’ll go and discuss it with the Pope, and that will make it better.”
Then with a start, he would remember that he was the Pope, and feel very alone.
I’m still vehemently anti his and his church’s stance on many issues, but the man certainly had humility.
This is gonna be an awkward statement. First, let me note that yes, I am Episcopalian (=Anglican in America), but I’ve always been fascinated by the organized complexus of minutiae that goes to make up Catholic doctrine and praxis.
That said, what follows is, TTBOMK, what the Catholic Church teaches-- not represented as my own beliefs, nor some objectively true definition of the world, but their own belief system, so far as I understand it.
That said, per ecclesiam catholicam it is not possible to ordain a woman priest or bishop. That is, you can go through the motions of doing so (illicitly, of course) but it will not be a valid action. On that metaphysical plane where priests are indelibly marked with the sign of their priesthood, the woman would remain unmarked. Even more so would this be true for the episcopacy and the higher levels of Catholic hierarchy. (The diaconate is specifically excluded from this discussion – the majority view of theologians is that the same thing applies as in an attempted ordination to the priesthood: not a valid action, while a minority of theologians think that Scriptural references to deaconesses mean that it’s possible, just not done. Present teaching of the Magisterium is that women may not be ordained deacons – as opposed to saying that they cannot, on which it has not as yet ruled AFAIK.)
Hence no woman can ever become Pope – because the Pope is first and foremost the chief bishop of the Church, and a woman cannot become a bishop.
Now, having gone through all that gyration to answer the “potential woman pope” question and in so doing to illustrate something Catholic doctrine considers an impossibility, turn to the married clergy question.
Clerical celibacy is a Law of the Church – and specifically of the Latin Rite. Eastern Rite married men can be and are regularly ordained; the Pope can dispense from the rule in the Latin Rite and on occasion does. The rule could be changed today if the Holy Spirit led the Pope to decide to do so, or if the bishops in General Council so voted. There have been married popes, starting with Peter (whose wife is never mentioned in the Bible, but whose mother-in-law is). There is even a case or two of legitimate father-and-son papacies, where both were elected pope at different times.
So being a married man would not be a bar to becoming Pope; the College of Cardinals would simply have to be led to the conclusion that this person is the right candidate for Pope anyway.
Well, Simon bar Jonah was (a) possessed of a mother-in-law, which implies a wife as well, and (b) first Patriarch of Antioch prior to becoming Bishop of Rome. I think St. Peter would definitely qualify!
Actually, I suspect strongly that you’re wrong here. There are one or two Eastern Rite Catholic Dopers; they may be able to give a definite answer on this.
But presuming that Eastern Catholic prelates follow the same rules as Eastern Orthodox, a married bishop would not be against canon law but rather deep-seated custom. Like this: clergy may be married or celibate; the majority of the celibate live under monastic vows, and are regarded as somewhat more holy and scholarly than their non-monastic counterparts.
Nearly always, a bishop is chosen from among the monastic priests, who are of course celibate by their monastic vows. But the only thing requiring this is longstanding custom. There is a cite somewhere of a widower Orthodox priest chosen to be a new bishop, whose son attended his enthronement as a bishop, during the 20th century.
I believe the canons governing Eastern Rite Catholic bishops would be much the same as what are used in the Eastern Orthodox Churches; hence, a married bishop is not impossible, just highly unlikely.
I think that, durring a papal interregnum, the College of Cardinals is considered to hold the Earthly authority of the Apostolic See. But don’t quote me on that.
