Quote of the Day: Gary Wills on The Hopelessness of Hoping for a Reformer Pope

As a ruling model, the Roman Catholic Church is based on the governing structure of the Roman Empire or a feudal monarchy with the king/emperor at the top, the cardinals and bishops as the equivalents of the feudal lords sworn by fealty to the king/emperor and the laity the equivalent of the serfs. Serf who are to obey their lords and financially support the entire structure that caters to the whims and conceits of the rulers.  And under the last two Popes, the system seems to have become even more disdainful of the laity/serfs.  Gary Wills has a piece in the New York Times that looks at the futility of hoping that somehow a reformer Pope could be elected by the coming conclave of cardinals who earned their positions by obsequiousness and sycophancy.  Here an on point excerpt:

[A] new pope will be elected by cardinals who were elevated to office by the very popes who reaffirmed “eternal truths” like the teaching on contraception. They were appointed for their loyalty, as were the American bishops who stubbornly upheld the contraception nonsense in our elections. 

Will the new conclave vote for a man who goes against the teachings of his predecessors? Even if they do, can the man chosen buck the structure through which he rose without kicking the structure down? These considerations have given the election of new popes the air of watching Charlie Brown keep trying to kick the football, hoping that Lucy will cooperate. 

As this election approaches, some hope that the shortage of priests, and their damaged reputation and morale, can be remedied by adding married priests, or women priests, or gay priests. But that misses the point. Whatever their sexual status, they will still be priests. They will not be chosen by their congregations (as was the practice in the early church). They will be appointed from above, by bishops approved for their loyalty to Rome, which will police their doctrinal views as it has with priests heretofore. The power structure will not be changed by giving it new faces. Monarchies die hard. 

In 1859, John Henry Newman published an article that led to his denunciation in Rome as “the most dangerous man in England.” It was called “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine” and it showed that in history the laity had been more true to the Gospel than the hierarchy. That was an unacceptable position to Rome. It still is. 

The claim of priests and popes to be the sole conduits of grace is a remnant of the era of papal monarchy. We are watching that era fade. But some refuse to recognize its senescence. Such people will run peppily up, like Charlie Brown, to the coming of a new pope. But Lucy, as usual, still holds the football.  

Like the GOP which it parallels in many ways (e.g., denying scientific realities), the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy will cling to power and refuse all meaningful change until the church structure literally begins to collapse around them.  My prediction is that in the not too distant future the Catholic Church will become a black African denomination.  As it advances economically and socially, Latin America will follow the path of Europe, not Africa wher it will take many more generations to escape the ignorance and simple mindedness that are now prerequisites for the Church to thrive.