Cardinals celebrate mass before entering the conclave to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI.
Matt Taylor | Opinion editor
“You can’t conceive, nor can I or anyone the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.” So writes Graham Greene, a universal and incontrovertible truth, that the human mind is not designed to understand the ways of the almighty. I don’t have a particularly strong belief in God; I don’t know that I have any belief at all for that matter. What I do know is that attempting to map reason and logic onto religious events is not realistic or helpful. It is for this reason that I have practically ground my teeth to stubs while watching news coverage of the Pope’s resignation. The media punditry seems to regard the election of a pope as akin to the selection of a new Bond. “Will he be black?”, “Will he update the franchise?” etc. This is the outsider’s view, assumptions based from experiences of our terrestrial lives, not recognition of unique internal workings of the Catholic hierarchy.
As something of a news nerd, I sit daily in front of CNN, BBC or Sky watching some saccharin hack waffling endlessly about the need for the next Pope to be a better ‘PR man’, or more ‘politically savvy’. These are legitimate concerns from an outsider’s perspective, but they offer zero insight into the actuality of a papal conclave. For one thing, why would one want someone ‘media savvy’, adept at misleading and manipulating the press and public consciousness when that is precisely one of the problems behind the cover up of abuse scandals. I am particularly struck by the unsurprisingly hysterical coverage of CNN, who have done everything from profiling potential successors to offering a lengthy article on what type of shoes the Pope-Emeritus will wear. My out-and-out favourite was a piece rather wittily entitled ‘The Throne of the Peter Principle’ (I think its headline may have been something else but that’s the jist), wherein the author explains that the economic theory of the Peter Principle may be applied to the Benedict Papacy. The Peter Principle supposes that in employment, an individual will be promoted higher and higher based on their skills and expertise until eventually they reach a job they aren’t good at, where they stay. This, the author argues, is the case for Benedict. The problems with the use of this theory are manifold. Firstly, being elected Pope is not precisely a promotion as we understand it. While you are ‘moving up a pay grade’, it is not an act of promotion but the miraculous act of the Holy Spirit reaching out through the minds of Cardinals to express the will of God as to who should be Pope. Secondly, it doesn’t get much higher than Pope, unless you are recognised as the second coming of Christ, so in that position it is difficult to reach you ‘level of incompetence’. Thirdly, our attempt to humanise and ground the machinations of the church is utterly pointless as they are grounded in an internally logical and impervious dogma.
Christiane Amanpour, the serious looking woman that CNN always depicts on the phone or yelling at someone in their promotional videos recently interviewed Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Archbishop Emeritus of Washington D.C. She consistently attempts to get him to talk about the usual buzz words that she and her colleagues have invented; “Image reinvention”, “new direction”, “Transparency”. The wizened and wily cardinal repeatedly reminds her that these are not the concerns of a cardinal. There is only one thing on your mind as you stand before Michelangelo’s “Last Judgement”, ballot in hand and reciting “ I call as my witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected”. It is precisely that; the will of God. The concern does not rest with media scrutinisation, or even the best interests of the flock. The commitment to God runs the other way. It is the modern misconception which informs so much of what we believe about religion, that is to say the idea that we are owed something by God, or that we in some way impact upon Him. Whether you believe in God or not is irrelevant, but your dialogue on the subject must be informed with a knowledge of the working mind of those with whom you seek this dialogue. How are we to extract any value or understanding from the papal election if we make no effort to understand it or its ways and purposes, rather seek to spout our circumventory beliefs on how it ought to be? This is a widespread problem, brought about by the instantaneous nature of modern media which has unfortunately and increasingly cast aside introspection or debate, replacing it rather with the buzzword and the irrelevant gripe. The papal resignation is merely emblematic. There are very serious concerns about the church, to put it mildly. Imagining that any of them will be different because the Pope is Canadian or Brazilian or Ghanaian is verging on obscene, a refusal to examine the crisis within the church and how that will be addressed. I realize that the assertion that the selection of a new Pope is not like the selection of a new Bond is not entirely true. While each new man brings something to the table, a subtle change of appearance, continuity is tirelessly maintained. In the same way that the franchise is bigger than the actor, so too is the church, with its intricate, arachnoid hierarchy, bigger than the man. Where the election of a new Pope offers us the opportunity for the examination of contemporary faith and internal crisis, we have latched ourselves onto issues of no import; shoes, rings, titles, skin colour, birthplace.
My point is this; oftentimes if you wish to have a useful discussion with someone, you must attempt to understand ‘where they are coming from’. We cannot begin to understand history, faith or change unless we try to examine their internal contexts. What we have at the moment, in dialectical terms, is noise. Everyone has an opinion on religion, not many of them are informed. The need to be heard, and the technological ability to fulfill that need has trumped the ability and importance of listening. We have begun to bypass matters of significance, terrified at the concept that we may be asked to explain ourselves beyond 140 characters. We must strive as best we can to appreciate even those with whom we have the most visceral disagreement, for only then will we ever be able to achieve any kind of meaningful truth.
