Catholics must remember that it is the holiness of the papal office that matters most, not the man who happens to fill St. Peter’s shoes today or tomorrow.
(LifeSiteNews) — To say it up front: I was also somewhat relieved after this papal election. Like many others, I am cautiously optimistic and certainly have sympathy for the new Pope.
That sounds like a “but,” and so it is; however, this “but” has nothing to do with Leo XIV but with the pontificate that preceded his and lies upon us like a dark shadow.
During this pontificate, I observed in myself that we Catholics tend to make a fetish of the Pope: astonishingly, “conservatives” and “progressives” alike leer at him and act precisely as if he were the “master” of the faith and could dispose of it as he pleases.
In the case of Leo XIV, this now goes so far that every detail is interpreted in one direction or the other. For many, he is – at last – once again considered a “papal” pope, i.e., one who wears the correct papal vestments and who – unlike his predecessor – appears to be subordinate to the papal office.
Other popes have also done all this. Nevertheless, not all of them were spared from making wrong decisions, from distorting the faith of the Church or – to put it more kindly – at least from wounding it. Didn't Paul VI also wear the red mozetta, and wasn't he also a “papal” pope? And yet, during his pontificate, a rift opened up that later frightened him, but which he himself caused.
We can twist and turn it however we like: we can glorify Paul VI, we can sugar-coat him and the Second Vatican Council with holiness and justify his “spirit” with theological acrobatics, but none of this can hide the fact that the Church was different after Paul VI than it was before. The fracture that emerged during his pontificate burst in the most recent one, and that brings us back to the dark shadow that has lingered over us ever since.
Nothing will change under Leo XIV. On the contrary Leo can, at best, succeed in lightening this shadow and smoothing out the internal distortions; he certainly cannot heal them. On the contrary, we must be grateful if the heresies that his unfortunate predecessor conjured up and, in some cases, advocated himself do not become established under Leo.
But what does all this mean for our relationship with the Pope and the papacy as a whole? During the time of the “disaster” under the last pope, I myself learned not to become dependent, or to put it another way: I have attached my faith to the Church and not to the present time with its respective popes. As a Catholic, I can insist that only what has always been Catholic and what connects me to Catholics of all times is Catholic. This essence of Catholicism begins with the Creed and ends with the traditional Mass. I am not committed to anything else, no theological fashions, and certainly not to any errors of one pontificate or another.
As far as the Pope is concerned, I may say: I see the holiness of his office today more than the importance of the man who holds it; it is Peter's office that matters, but not the man who fills his shoes today or tomorrow. Of course, there is another “but” here, and one that is hard to avoid as a Catholic, because of course I would like Leo XIV to go down in history as a good pope, even if only as a better one than his predecessor was. If things turn out differently, that doesn't bother me either, because it couldn't change the essence of Catholicism and what makes the papacy what it is.
