Concerning the Validity of the Coming Conclave
Or: the Sacrament of the Present Moment allows us to become holy today by means of abandonment to divine Providence.
God Wills or Permits All Things
Last year I made a resolution on Byzantine New Year to try to work on the spirituality of the “sacrament of the moment.” My predominant fault is pride, and my problem is that I become too abstract in my intellect. This abstraction divorces me from reality so that I make an idol out of my ideas. This prevents me from focusing on God’s will in the present moment, especially concerning the Second Greatest Commandment.
To this end, last fall I began re-reading the spiritual classic from Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence. This appears to be the first work which coins the concept of the “sacrament of the present moment”:
What was the bread which nourished the faith of Mary and Joseph? It was the sacrament of the moment. But what did they experience beneath? An existence apparently filled with nothing but hum drum happenings? On the surface it was similar to that of everyone around them, but faith piercing the superficialities, disclose that God was accomplishing very great things.[1]
In the next chapter the good SJ explains the fundamental reality of the sacrament of the moment:
If the business of becoming holy seems to present insufferable difficulties, it is merely because we have a wrong idea about it. In reality, holiness consists of one thing only: complete loyalty to God’s will. Now everyone can practice this loyalty, whether actively or passively.
To be actively loyal means obeying the laws of God and the church and fulfilling all the duties imposed on us by our way of life. Passive loyalty means that we lovingly accept all that God sends us at each moment of the day.[2]
It seems to me that this spiritual wisdom is a great boon for us as we face a new conclave after the trauma of the Francis pontificate. We must wake up on May 7 and first abandon ourselves to the will of God 1.) in the present moment and 2.) for the conclave. Perhaps we can pray part of the prayer of our lay sodality from Bishop Schneider to this end:
The more violently the gates of hell storm against your Church and the rock of Peter in Rome, the more we believe in the indestructibility of your Church, O Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, source of all consolation, who do not abandon your church and the rock of Peter even in the heaviest storms!
I’m going to try, with God’s help, to wake up, abandon myself to this present moment in my Father’s arms, and then – and only then – look at the news from the conclave. I hope this will help me have a Catholic attitude towards the conclave and the new Holy Father. Pray for me and I’ll pray for you! We’re in the this together, my dear reader.
Concerning the Validity of the Present Conclave
A few voices have raised concerns about the validity of this conclave. They piously reason: if Francis was indeed a heretic, does this not make all his cardinal appointments invalid, and thus not electors, and thus – the election will be invalid?
From there, we get all of the many human institutions surrounding the papacy:
- Some Popes have been elected by the people of Rome.
- Some Pope have been deposed by emperors and then “appointed” by an army.
- Some Popes have been elected by the college of Cardinals.
- Some Popes were barely valid until the whole Church recognised them as such.
- Some Popes were not accepted as the true Pope during their entire lifetime – by a large swath of the Church, perhaps half of all the faithful!
- At least one Pope may have lost his office due to heresy – and was anathematized as a heretic post mortem.
This is the beauty of Catholicism: in the darkest of times, when the Papacy itself is obscured, the Rock of Peter and His Confession remains. This is not to concede anything to Eastern Orthodox apologists, who seek to divorce Peter as a person from his confession or – worse yet – make Our Lord contradict Himself (see Vladimir Solovyov, “Peter & Satan”).
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