The Conclave Is a Crossroads in History

Last week, the nave of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome was filled with transparent acrylic chairs, tightly packed, neatly lined up in rows to accommodate the crowd that attended Pope Francis’s funeral. Outdoors, in St. Peter’s Square, hundreds of identical chairs also filled up an enormous amount of space, shimmering like translucent headstones. Each of those ghostly plastic chairs, whether huddled under Michelangelo’s dome or hemmed in under a blue sky by Bernini’s colonnade, was a memento mori, a reminder of mortality and the brevity of life. So much evanescent seating, so seemingly insubstantial, so ephemeral, all of it set up for a funeral. The scene was at once poignant and unsettling. 

Indoors, in the nave of the basilica, statues of notable saints stood guard over the acrylic seats, silently—including the one representing St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, Pope Francis’s own religious order. That statue of St. Ignatius is among the most dramatic images that line the nave and transept of the great basilica. Sculpted by the brothers Camillo and Giuseppe Rusconi in 1773, it depicts Ignatius Loyola crushing a writhing wild-haired figure that represents heresy and error with his left foot. 

It’s hard for me to discern exactly why those mass-produced seats seemed out of place—especially beneath the feet of St. Ignatius’s image—but they struck some dissonant chord, filling me with an odd mixture of befuddlement, annoyance, and apprehension. 

One thing seems sure. This discomfort of mine was not caused by mere aesthetics or the fact that those chairs might not be recyclable and could therefore be antithetical to the principles outlined by the late Pope Francis in Laudato Si, his environmentalist encyclical. No, not at all. The discomfort I felt there, at St. Peter’s, had much more to do with incongruities of a more vital sort, which those chairs seemed to reify.

These incongruities have to do with the way in which Pope Francis often blurred the line between tradition and progressivism, with an unsubtle Jesuit affinity for the kind of blurring that would camouflage his progressivism while promoting and ensuring its eventual dominance. One of his signature moves was to make statements that made him seem progressive, which he would then retract, clarify, amend, or reinterpret in traditional terms. Consequently, lines that seemed to have been moved leftward were moved back to the right, but not all the way back to where they had been before. The space that Francis had just opened up with such statements did not erase traditional lines, but rather made them softer, blurrier, less definite, potentially easier to erase in the near future. Frequently, in such instances, Pope Francis made it seem as if his phrasing had been imprecise and he had been misunderstood. Nonetheless, he gave many Catholics the impression that the imprecision was deliberate. 

And all of his blurring and moving of lines is now up for renewal, perhaps also for intensification. Chances are that it is not up for revision, much less for rejection. He has, after all, appointed 108 of the 133 cardinals who will elect his successor. Very few of these cardinals lean toward traditionalist values. Pope Francis made sure of that. 

So, here we are, at a crossroads in history, sacred as well as secular. The suspense is intense because papal elections are fraught with historical significance. They can bring about turning points and paradigm shifts for the Church and the world. Or they can ensure continuities and prevent change. Sometimes, unfortunately, despite all prayers to the Holy Spirit, political infighting eclipses piety and conclaves turn disastrous, as was the case after the death of Pope Clement IV in 1271, when it took nearly three years for the cardinals to agree on a successor. 

Among all of the instances when a papal election plunged the Church into some wretched crisis, none stands out in higher relief than that of 1378, which led to the Great Schism, with one pope, Urban VI, claiming legitimacy in Rome and another, Clement VII, making the same claim in Avignon, in southern France, both of them elected by the same eleven French cardinals who made up the majority of the electoral conclave that fateful year. This happened because those eleven cardinals nullified their own initial votes, claiming they were cast under duress, in fear of angry Roman mobs who were clamoring for an Italian to be elected. 

Months turned into years and years into decades without a break in the impasse. This unholy mess was finally solved by another council, which met at Constance in 1415, by which time the number of competing claimants to the papal throne had risen to three. With the backing of the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, and the eventual cooperation of the Roman pope Gregory XII—who abdicated after the council tacitly confirmed the continuous legitimacy of the Roman line—the Council of Constance succeeded at healing the schism and electing a new pope who took up residence in Rome under the name of Martin V. 

The conclave meeting in Rome this week is not likely to be as disastrous as that of 1378, but what is at stake at this moment in time is arguably more momentous than the political squabbles that led to the Great Schism. 

The Catholic Church has been in crisis since its birth. Its entire history is nothing but a continuous series of crises, piled atop other crises, century after century. And few other crises can compete with the Great Schism for top billing. But the current crisis faced by the Catholic Church is arguably among the most challenging in its long history. 

The speed at which our world is being transformed far outstrips the pace of change in any other age. This transformative tsunami we are all experiencing is not only technological in nature. It is multidimensional. Every aspect of life is being affected, including its epistemological, moral, political, and spiritual spheres. 

Dogmatic materialism and secularism have edged out Christianity in the Western world, and in many of its former strongholds Christianity is being challenged more aggressively than ever. Within the Catholic Church, divisions between the faithful widen as secular values inevitably seep in and disagreements over a growing list of theological, liturgical, and ethical hot-button issues intensify. Every Catholic knows how long that list is, and exactly which issues are on it, all too painfully.

Meanwhile, vocations to the priesthood keep dwindling at alarming rates, and despite increased conversions in the so-called Third World, the number of Catholics continues to shrink in its traditional heartlands. Most worrisome of all, the specter of nuclear and biological warfare hovers over all of humanity more intensely than ever. Given the pace of change that we are experiencing at the moment, and the challenges faced by the faithful everywhere, one can only hope that the cardinals at the conclave keep in mind the true meaning of what it means for the Church to be “Catholic” as they pray for inspiration from the Holy Spirit.

The word “catholic” comes from the Greek “katholikos,” which means “throughout the whole” or “universal.” This signifies that the Church’s reach is not limited to a particular region or time, but extends to the entire world and includes all people who have belonged to it. In essence, then, this universality encompasses not only the Church’s reach in terms of space and geography, that is, of its global expanse on earth at the moment, but also its continuity through time and generations, that is, its linking of the past and present, the living and the dead.

Two thousand years of evangelization have created an ever-expanding spiritual genealogy for the Catholic Church. Our spiritual ancestors are as much a part of the Church as those of us who live in the here and now. These ancestors are not linked to us by physical DNA but a spiritual equivalent. G. K. Chesterton spoke of this truism as the “democracy of the dead.”

Those who came before us get a vote too, along with the cardinals, because they are full members of the communion of saints. The cardinals at the conclave should keep this essential belief of the Catholic faith in mind as they vote. They are not alone at all in the Sistine Chapel. The dead hover over them, pleading for continuity, and the banishment of all voguish novelties, such as those reified by clear acrylic chairs in hallowed sacred spaces. 

To be Catholic is to remain in harmony with those who have come before us, to let their voices shape the present as well as the future, ensuring evolution within an essential continuity. Ultimately, this also means that the cardinals at the conclave are not the only ones who need to pray to the Holy Spirit for guidance. All of us Catholics who still tread the earth at this moment in time are obliged to pray too, alongside them and for them, to ensure divine guidance in their deliberations. 

Being pope is a tough job. No doubt about it. One might argue that it is the toughest job on earth. Pope Francis knew this, which is why one of his first public statements was to say to the cardinals who had just elected him: “May God forgive you for what you’ve done.” One might also argue, then, that electing a pope is the second hardest job on earth, not in terms of the hours or days spent in conclave, but in terms of its responsibilities. 

Given how much is at stake at this juncture in the history of our Church and our planet, all Catholics need to pray with uncommon fervor for the cardinals assembled in the Sistine Chapel, as well as for the man they eventually choose to lead the Church as Vicar of Christ.