- Feb 5, 2002
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As the cardinals assemble next week to choose a new pope, I hope they have an awareness of the crisis at hand, understanding that this crisis has taken on the form of an “anti-crisis crisis.”
One thing keeps rattling around in my head as I travel around Rome and chat with various folks: the sense that there is a “business as usual” air about the election of the next pope. There is, of course, an air of excitement and expectation, as is always the case when the drama of a papal election looms on the horizon. But, overall, the mood is calm, with little in the way of alarmist histrionics. I was talking in a bookstore yesterday with a charming elderly religious sister who has lived in Rome for 40 years. She summed up her attitude toward the conclave, and that of her fellow sisters, as marked by a simple curiosity rather than any sense of apocalyptic dread should the wrong person be elected.
I know that this encounter provides only anecdotal evidence for my claim and is a one-case induction to a rather sweeping generality. But it did confirm for me that my impressions of a “business as usual” mentality as the conclave approaches are largely accurate. The cardinals are in town doing the same pre-conclave cardinal-type things that they have always done, and the Sistine Chapel is being prepared for the big event. And the usual pre-conclave media speculation about the leading candidates is predictably following the same boilerplate narrative of ecclesial factions in the argot of secular political analysis.
Business as usual. And perhaps that is as it should be. After all, the ecclesial status quo is to be preferred over revolutionary chaos, and we have the words of our Lord who promised that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church. So why worry? There is also the principle of ex opere operato, which assures us that no matter our sins or the sins of priests, the sacraments will always be valid because their integrity is vouchsafed by Christ. Popes come and popes go, our sins will wax and wane will-nilly in various ways, but the sacraments guarantee that the Church will remain in its essence One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.
So I repeat, why worry?
Beware of a cultivated mediocrity
Continued below.
www.catholicworldreport.com
One thing keeps rattling around in my head as I travel around Rome and chat with various folks: the sense that there is a “business as usual” air about the election of the next pope. There is, of course, an air of excitement and expectation, as is always the case when the drama of a papal election looms on the horizon. But, overall, the mood is calm, with little in the way of alarmist histrionics. I was talking in a bookstore yesterday with a charming elderly religious sister who has lived in Rome for 40 years. She summed up her attitude toward the conclave, and that of her fellow sisters, as marked by a simple curiosity rather than any sense of apocalyptic dread should the wrong person be elected.
I know that this encounter provides only anecdotal evidence for my claim and is a one-case induction to a rather sweeping generality. But it did confirm for me that my impressions of a “business as usual” mentality as the conclave approaches are largely accurate. The cardinals are in town doing the same pre-conclave cardinal-type things that they have always done, and the Sistine Chapel is being prepared for the big event. And the usual pre-conclave media speculation about the leading candidates is predictably following the same boilerplate narrative of ecclesial factions in the argot of secular political analysis.
Business as usual. And perhaps that is as it should be. After all, the ecclesial status quo is to be preferred over revolutionary chaos, and we have the words of our Lord who promised that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church. So why worry? There is also the principle of ex opere operato, which assures us that no matter our sins or the sins of priests, the sacraments will always be valid because their integrity is vouchsafed by Christ. Popes come and popes go, our sins will wax and wane will-nilly in various ways, but the sacraments guarantee that the Church will remain in its essence One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.
So I repeat, why worry?
Beware of a cultivated mediocrity
Continued below.
Business as usual is untenable
www.catholicworldreport.com
