When your fidelity to Peter is conditional, it’s not fidelity.

ast month on Twit­ter, some­one pro­posed a weird papal thought exper­i­ment in the form of a weird­er prog­nos­ti­ca­tion. Mike Lewis had a screen­shot and thread. Sup­pose, the unnammed twit­ster mused, that the next pope is Car­di­nal Burke, or Car­di­nal Sarah, or “any­one sim­i­lar­ly-mind­ed.” [Okay. And?]

Left­ist extreme ultra­mon­tanes [Head. Desk.] would have a hard choice: ral­ly behind the pope with­out ques­tion (as they cur­rent­ly do), rethink their extreme [!] inter­pre­ta­tion of ultra­mon­tanism, or break in some fash­ion.

Well, Mon­ty, I’ll take door num­ber one. And it’s not at all a “hard choice.” (Doing it is hard; mak­ing it is not.) I wrote on May 22, 2020:

You must not give the pope “sup­port” or with­hold it, based on whether or not he’s “your guy” or enacts “poli­cies” you favor. My crit­ics often enter­tain the idea that, once Fran­cis is no longer pope—replaced by Car­di­nal Sarah maybe—I’ll with­draw my defens­es of Peter. I’ll devel­op Pope Pius XIII Derange­ment Syn­drome (or what­ev­er name Sarah would take in that case). But no. Even if Car­di­nal Burke were to become the pope and take the name Boni­face X, hic est Petrus. My alle­giance to the pope has no con­di­tion. Whether his name be Joseph Ratzinger, or Jorge Bergoglio, or Ray­mond Burke, or James Mar­tin, he sits in Peter’s chair. That’s the only con­di­tion that mat­ters.

But Alt! you say. It’s easy to say “Oh, I’ll still sup­port the pope no mat­ter what” when the papa­cy of Car­di­nal Burke is the­o­ret­i­cal. But once faced with Boni­face X in Peter’s chair you’d break a real sweat, drag­on-breath­ing SJW left­ist that you are!

Real­ly? Well, in the same arti­cle from 2020, I also said this:

If my real desire was that the pope be “my guy,” then I would have spent the last 7 years dis­ap­point­ed. To be (excuse the pun) frank, Pope Fran­cis has nev­er been “my guy.” I would have pre­ferred some­one much more sim­i­lar to Pope Bene­dict XVI. I want­ed Car­di­nal Sco­la to suc­ceed him. I don’t mean that Pope Fran­cis is a con­tra­dic­tion to Pope Bene­dict, only that dif­fer­ent popes have dif­fer­ent emphases, and Pope Francis’s have nev­er real­ly been my own.

But that’s the very rea­son I need­ed a Bergoglio in Peter’s chair. Pope Fran­cis has kept me from iso­lat­ing myself in some nar­row cor­ner of Church teach­ing and has remind­ed me of the impor­tance of truths that I tend­ed to neglect. The next pope will, by God’s grace, have his own emphases. And thus, many papa­cies keep the Church in bal­ance.

I’ve had to learn to think with the mind of Pope Fran­cis, and it was­n’t easy and did­n’t hap­pen overnight. In the same way, after I became Catholic, I had to learn to think with the mind of the Church; that too has been a dif­fi­cult process. It’s not a process, I sus­pect, that will end—except with my own death. Catholics are called to con­tin­u­ing con­ver­sion, and that’s a con­ver­sion of the mind too—not just the heart, not just the soul.

So if the next pope end­ed up being Burke, the prob­lem for me would­n’t be any dif­fer­ent than it already has been for the past eleven years. This does not mean exchang­ing one set of truths for anoth­er, as though the Holy Spir­it would per­mit Boni­face X to con­tra­dict Fran­cis or any oth­er pri­or pope. It might mean revis­ing my under­stand­ing of where the con­ti­nu­ity is; I may need to rethink some of my views both back­ward and for­ward. That’s what fideli­ty to a liv­ing Church requires when you’re fal­li­ble.

But truth be told, what has shocked me the most about Pope Fran­cis is how sim­i­lar he is to Bene­dict and John Paul II, not how dif­fer­ent he is. When­ev­er I set out to write an arti­cle about the lat­est “nov­el” depar­ture of the pope, I find with­out fail that Bene­dict XVI said the same thing. John Paul II said the same thing. Vat­i­can II said the same thing. The Church Fathers said the same thing. The Bible says the same thing. I’d say it’s uncan­ny, except that Christ already promised that this would be so.

So it will be with the next pope, who­ev­er the next pope is.

•••

I’m going to return to all that, but at this junc­ture I want to quote Mike Lewis’s response to the thought exper­i­ment:

Inter­est­ing ques­tion. Lousy the­o­ry. While I seri­ous­ly doubt that either will ever be pope, Burke and Sarah are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. I don’t see a Pope Sarah ruin­ing my under­stand­ing of the papa­cy. I doubt he’d open­ly declare Fran­cis to have been hereti­cal, for exam­ple. I would prob­a­bly find him inter­minably frus­trat­ing and obtuse on pru­den­tial mat­ters, I’m not going to lie.

Car­di­nal Burke, how­ev­er, holds a view of papal pri­ma­cy that is fun­da­men­tal­ly in con­tra­dic­tion with Tra­di­tion. Obvi­ous­ly if he becomes Pope, my under­stand­ing of pri­ma­cy, eccle­si­ol­o­gy, and ortho­doxy will have been com­plete­ly wrong. He believes that Popes must be cor­rect­ed and dis­obeyed when they are deemed to be in con­tra­dic­tion of the truths of the faith. That com­pli­cates things. But it’s real­ly noth­ing but a thought exer­cise. It won’t hap­pen.

That’s fair enough, I think, although I don’t sus­pect I would find a Pope Pius XIII (Sarah) “inter­minably frus­trat­ing” or “obtuse.” Truth be told, I find Pope Fran­cis’s off-the-cuff impre­ci­sions “inter­minably frus­trat­ing.” (The good news is that they’re mere­ly frus­trat­ing and noth­ing more.)

I do agree with Lewis whole­heart­ed­ly about Burke. Burke does “hold a view of papal pri­ma­cy that is fun­da­men­tal­ly in con­tra­dic­tion with tra­di­tion.” That could hypo­thet­i­cal­ly make a Burke papa­cy (Pope Boni­face X) prob­lem­at­ic, except for the fact that a pope can not for­mal­ly teach error. A pope could enter­tain an error as a pri­vate opin­ion, but he could­n’t teach it. [I’ve already gone into all the his­tor­i­cal exam­ples that sup­pos­ed­ly prove this view false, and I’m not going to rehash them here. Here are my arti­cles on Hon­o­rius / Liberius / and John XXII.] For that rea­son, one of two things are pos­si­ble:

• Pope Boni­face X’s view of papal pri­ma­cy is a non-issue, because he refrains from issu­ing any for­mal teach­ing on the sub­ject and leaves his pre­de­ces­sor’s teach­ings untouched;
• Car­di­nal Burke nev­er gets elect­ed to the papa­cy

If you want to spec­u­late any­thing else, you might as well ask: “But what if the pope denied the divin­i­ty of Christ?”

It’s not going to hap­pen. Let’s get out of our minds once and for all the idea that the pope, any pope, is going to deny some essen­tial dog­ma of the faith and require Catholics to have to choose between set­tled rev­e­la­tion and the cur­rent occu­pant of Peter’s chair. It’s not going to hap­pen.

In my view, there’s absolute­ly zero chance that Car­di­nal Burke is elect­ed to the papa­cy. Not only is he too much of a light­ning rod and par­ti­san to get any­thing close to suf­fi­cient sup­port among the car­di­nal elec­tors, but he has the added strike against him of being an Amer­i­can. Ain’t gonna hap­pen. No way. No how.

•••

But con­sid­er the oppo­site thought exper­i­ment. Leave Burke out of this one. Let’s just assume that Car­di­nal Sarah is elect­ed in the next con­clave and takes the papal name Pius XIII. Let’s not trou­ble our­selves for the moment with who does or who does not devel­op Pope Pius XIII Derange­ment Syn­drome in this state of affairs.

What do you sup­pose would hap­pen at EWTN?

My guess is that Ray­mond Arroyo and the papal posse would do cart­wheels of joy. (Although Mr. Arroyo needs to be care­ful not to fall out of his chair and injure his neck again.) The Holy Spir­it has vin­di­cat­ed them and end­ed their long-suf­fer­ing and their per­se­cu­tion. They would tell us that good Catholics, Faith­ful­Catholics™, sup­port the suc­ces­sor of Peter.

Don’t fall for this sham if it hap­pens. EWTN would sup­port Pius XIII, not because he’s the suc­ces­sor of Peter, but because he said what they want­ed to hear and affirmed their dear­est opin­ions. If EWTN sup­port­ed the pope because he’s the pope, they’d sup­port Pope Fran­cis.

(And those who try to get out of this jam by say­ing that Fran­cis is not real­ly the pope at all are too far gone into mad­ness to take seri­ous­ly.)

When your fideli­ty to Peter is con­di­tion­al, it’s not fideli­ty.

St. John Hen­ry New­man wrote about this prob­lem in A Gram­mar of Assent, specif­i­cal­ly as it applied to con­verts who lat­er returned to their old faith. Why would they return? New­man asked. “The rea­son,” he wrote, “if we may con­jec­ture,”

may some­times be this: he has nev­er believed in the Church’s infal­li­bil­i­ty; in her doc­tri­nal truth he has believed, but in her infal­li­bil­i­ty, no. He was asked, before he was received, whether he held all that the Church taught, he replied he did; but he under­stood the ques­tion to mean, whether he held those par­tic­u­lar doc­trines “which at that time the Church in mat­ter of fact for­mal­ly taught,” where­as it real­ly meant “what­ev­er the Church then or at any future time should teach.”

And sim­i­lar­ly, fideli­ty to Peter means not just fideli­ty to the man who sits in Peter’s chair now, but to every­one who will sit in Peter’s chair at any future time. When I became Catholic in 2011, Bene­dict XVI sat in Peter’s chair. I nev­er imag­ined then that my fideli­ty to his suc­ces­sor depend­ed upon any con­di­tions, and I don’t imag­ine now that my fideli­ty to Fran­cis’s suc­ces­sor depends upon any.

If it were oth­er­wise, then my fideli­ty would be to my opin­ions, and not to Peter or to the Catholic Church.

I don’t say that this is easy; it can be trau­mat­ic to have to decon­struct your views and recon­struct them. I’ve lost friend­ships over this. But I do say that it is required of me as a Catholic. I do say that I’m sup­posed, faith­ful­ly, to try. Even if I often fail.

That is why it does­n’t trou­ble me at all when Mike Lewis floats the pos­si­bil­i­ty that, were Car­di­nal Burke to be elect­ed pope, he would have to rethink his “under­stand­ing of pri­ma­cy, eccle­si­ol­o­gy, and ortho­doxy.” (He’s being crit­i­cized for this, by peo­ple it’s bet­ter not to name because they mat­ter far less than they think they do. It’s as though Lewis con­ced­ed some­thing very dam­ag­ing to his cred­i­bil­i­ty, as though his will­ing­ness to change his mind is a black mark against his integri­ty. Just the oppo­site is the case; it’s a sign of Mike’s integri­ty.)

That is what Catholics are sup­posed to do, giv­en the cer­tain­ty that the Holy Spir­it pro­tects the pope from teach­ing error. Mike Lewis is not infal­li­ble. Scott Eric Alt is not infal­li­ble. That means that, some­times, we’re going to have to allow the Church to cor­rect us.

I’ll allow myself to be cor­rect­ed by a future Pope Boni­face X, if nec­es­sary; I only wish that oth­er Catholics would allow them­selves to be cor­rect­ed by Pope Fran­cis. Their unwill­ing­ness to enter­tain the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they are the ones who are wrong betray not just peo­ple who are intel­lec­tu­al­ly arro­gant but peo­ple who are intel­lec­tu­al­ly cal­ci­fied.

Unless the dog­ma of papal infal­li­bil­i­ty is wrong, unless the Catholic Church is a false Church, no future Pope Boni­face X could pos­si­bly con­tra­dict Pope Fran­cis (in his for­mal teach­ing). If I think that he has, but still hold that the Catholic Church is is the true Church, then only one con­clu­sion is pos­si­ble: I am mis­tak­en. I am wrong. I need to fig­ure out where my error is and cor­rect it, rather than demand that the pope be the one to make cor­rec­tions.

For Pope Fran­cis’s crit­ics, it’s not enough that Church teach­ing be infal­li­ble, but the way they under­stand it must also be infal­li­ble. To think with the mind of the Church, how­ev­er, means that chang­ing your opin­ions is inevitable. No one ever gets to a point where they’ve fig­ured it all out about what the Church teach­es and can sit back and bask in the full­ness of truth. New popes don’t change any­thing about the truth, they draw us deep­er into it.

I live my life most faith­ful­ly as a Catholic by allow­ing myself to be drawn.

Peo­ple who don’t change their opin­ions wor­ry me far more than peo­ple who do. My fideli­ty is not to my opin­ions; my fideli­ty is to Peter. My fideli­ty to Peter is not con­di­tioned upon retain­ing my opin­ions. If fideli­ty to Peter means chang­ing my opin­ions, so be it. I’ll say it again:

When your fideli­ty to Peter is con­di­tion­al, it’s not fideli­ty.

•••

Update. Mike Lewis adds:

Just one point of clar­i­fi­ca­tion regard­ing my posi­tion:

After wit­ness­ing so many peo­ple I thought were “sol­id” Catholics aban­don their prin­ci­ples dur­ing this papa­cy, I can’t take my own future fideli­ty for grant­ed.

What I hope NOT to do, if I ever do become a dis­senter, is claim to speak for the pope. If I ever come to a point where I can­not accept a mag­is­te­r­i­al teach­ing, I will not be dis­hon­est with myself and claim that I hold the “true” Catholic posi­tion.

I hope and pray that it nev­er hap­pens.