In my last article, I tackled the subject of Papal Infallibility.
But today I wanted to look into the subject of Papal Fallibility.
Is a bad pope no longer a true pope?
By “true” I do not mean “having pure and good intention.” By “true,” I mean “having legitimate authority as the Successor to St. Peter.”
To be candid, I grew up under the papacy of Pope St. John Paul II. This was a great privilege. For decades our Church was shepherded by a man who was immanently wise, immanently good, and immanently holy. We could take it for granted that the flock of Jesus was in good hands.
That isn’t to say that he was without his detractors. I remember when he was named Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year,” and someone commented: “‘Man of the Year?’ Not if you’re a woman!” This comment was directed at the Holy Father’s defense of unborn life and his reassertion that the Church as no power to ordain women.
His successors also were sometimes met with harsh criticism. After Pope Benedict XVI was elected I mentioned to a fellow Catholic about my affection for him. Her response was, “It was like we were praying for bread and we got a stone!” Netflix even made a movie called The Two Popes which apparently paints Pope Benedict XVI as an angry and resentful authoritarian. Pope Francis himself has been labeled a communist by those who dislike him and his social policies.
I bring this up because I’ve noticed some people, particularly on social media, who are saying that our current Holy Father is not a true pope.
Now, criticizing the pope is not something to take lightly. That isn’t to say that popes throughout history were perfect and without the need for correction. St. Catherine of Sienna famously remonstrated Pope Benedict XI into leaving the luxurious courts of Avignon to return to Rome. St. Francis of Assisi also criticized the worldly excesses of the Holy Father and the Cardinals. And if you go all the way back to the Scriptures, St. Paul publicly criticized St. Peter at Antioch for giving scandal to the Gentiles.
So the pope is not immune to critique. But to say that the pope is not a “true pope” is wrong. As Professor Edward Feser recently wrote: “Too many are hypnotized by the false conditional ‘X is a true pope only if X is a good pope.’”
I brought up Pope St. John Paul II earlier because he was such a unique and transformative presence of Christ in the papacy. That has not always been the case throughout our history. In the past we have had many bad popes, some of which I mentioned in my previous article. Another example would be Pope John XII, who died while engaged in the middle of adultery with a married woman. You could also look at Pope Urban VI who had some of his cardinals tortured and executed. But just because they were bad popes, it does not mean that they were not true popes. I don’t want to say that Pope St. John Paul II was the exception. But Catholics throughout the centuries have had to live under popes that were not good and holy men. If that has happened before in the Catholic Church, there is no reason to think that it cannot happen again.
But the Holy Father is the head of the Church and his office is to be respected as such. In the same way, if any priest falls into sin, he is still a priest and his office must be respected as such. Or a simpler example would be this: if I cheat on my wife, I am a bad husband. There can be no question about that. But the act of cheating on my wife does automatically end my marriage. Even though I am a bad husband, I am still a true husband, not a false husband.
So what do we do if at some time we have a “bad pope?”
No comments:
Post a Comment