The Two Popes

Next time someone tells you that women can’t be ordained because the church moves very slowly, put on your most mysterious face and whisper “pope emeritus.” Wiggle your eyebrows.

As Massimo Faggioli says, “The ‘emeritus’ as an institution was created on the fly in those hectic weeks right before the conclave that elected Benedict’s successor, Pope Francis. It was created without the usually and frustratingly slow, partly visible and partly invisible process of making structural changes in the Vatican. The new institution was largely improvised, with no recent tradition to count on, and entirely left to the ‘pope emeritus’ to regulate himself.”

Who gets to regulate themselves in the Catholic church? Women don’t. In fact, the regulation of women threads through most thinking about us; check out the theology of the body. Ratzinger had a lot to do with John Paul II’s creating that corpus, and also with his forbidding discussion of women’s ordination, by the way.

Richard Gaillardetz presents the relationship between the two Popes as Francis “loath to cast Benedict in a negative light in any way” and Benedict making “deeply problematic” interventions. Gaillardetz wants to see a wholesale revision of Canon Law, including policies about the resignation or incapacity of the pope. “New policies might draw in part (but only in part) from the precedent of the last two popes to resign their office: the onetime hermit, Pope Celestine V, who, upon abdication, dramatically removed his papal regalia and sought a return to his hermitage (a desire thwarted by his successor, Boniface VIII, who instead placed him under house arrest), and Gregory XII, who, having been forced to resign at the conclusion of the Western Schism, was given an entirely different ecclesiastical title as the cardinal bishop of Porto and legate of Ancona, where he would reside until his death.”

Natalia Imperatori-Lee said much the same thing about policies to Joshua McElwee, who also summarized well the initial frenzy around this story in the NCR FORWARD member newsletter, if you get that. Austin Ivereigh in Commonweal is more detailed and less fun, in case you aren’t following the many news reports and need the basics And if you want the politics in depth, Robert Mickens’ “Letter from Rome” goes beyond the two Popes to examine the roles of Cardinal Sarah and Archbishop Ganswein, Benedict’s personal secretary. Bad actors.

I much prefer the imaginary version of a pristine, private relationship in the movie, The Two Popes. I want to believe! I read the review in The Tablet last Sunday, before hearing the news on the BBC Monday morning. Now my favorite quote is from John Anderson in America: “the film addresses, however fleetingly, the weightiest questions confronting the church—not just about financial crimes and sexual abuse but dogma, ritual and the Christian mission. The movie does not really know how to end, it must be said.” If this ending had been tacked on, the theater would have exploded, which may explain the news blitz. Too many people saw the film.

The worst thing for women about this kerfuffle is underplaying the appointment of Francesca Di Giovanni as Undersecretary of State to manage the relationships of the Vatican with international institutions. It’s “the first such appointment of a woman to a managerial role in what is traditionally considered the city-state’s most important office,” according to the article in NCR, which also has the most complete list of high-level women working in the Vatican. I wonder if Di Giovanni is interested international institutions like our coalitions of reform organizations.

If you see her in Rome, whisper “pope emeritus.” Who knows what might happen.