The New York Times reported (May 11) that, being his first conclave, the future Leo XIV approached Cardinal Luis Tagle for advice because the Filipino had previously participated in one. After Prevost’s election, Tagle supposedly told him: “If there’s anything you want to change about the conclave rules — it’s all in your hands now.” Ahead of this Sunday’s Mass to ask God’s blessing on the new Pope in his ministry, I have some thoughts.

Conclave Reforms

Let me revive certain reforms previously mentioned in conjunction with papal conclaves. The whole reason for the camerlengo’s actions — certifying papal death, destroying the fisherman’s ring, sealing the papal lodgings — is to ensure that a papacy closes with the final closing of a pope’s eyes. Nothing “in the name of the pope” should appear after he draws his last breath. On that principle, I found certain events after Francis’s death concerning. Cardinal Parolin suddenly had a letter (from “F”) making clear Cardinal Becciu should stay out of the conclave. Videos of the late Pope sending remarks to young people and others surfaced. It’s unclear when the fisherman’s ring was defaced, but it seemed to have been kept around until a woman could be put in front of the cameras contributing to its destruction. The potential for abuse in such practices seems evident. Letters not publicly promulgated should not come out of cardinalatial sleeves. While media outlets might release previously recorded material at will, official Vatican media should not confirm authenticity. And papal seals should be destroyed immediately after papal death.

In the denouement of the Biden Administration, we also came to ask: Who had access to the Presidential auto-pen to sign documents, pardons, and so on? It’s now a legitimate question: Is there a papal auto-pen? And how is it controlled?

I take consolation in the fact that Pope Leo XIV is a canon lawyer by education and so — in contrast to his predecessor, both in training and temperament — appears far more careful about procedure, tradition, and rule of law. I respectfully submit the foregoing ideas for consideration.

Bring Back the Devil’s Advocate

Another useful reform that could have salutary impact on the sede vacante is restoring the old office of Devil’s Advocate. A semi-facetious comment on X said that “to prevent people from being canonized five seconds after they die,” the Church should restore the advocatus diaboli in the sainthood process. I got a chuckle, but the more I think about it, the more I agree. Why? The role of the “devil’s advocate” was to muster all the “no” arguments against a candidate’s canonization: why he was not as good/holy/pure/patient/exemplary as might seem. Post-1983 canonization processes diminished that role.

Last February, a Vatican body issued a letter (here) complaining about naming dead clergy on lists of credibly accused sex abusers because the designee could not defend his “good name.” I argued that this Vatican obsession with “good name” has resulted in an almost naïve readiness to exonerate anybody. A Pollyanna mentality has grown up in certain clerical circles, practically effecting a sullying of the Church’s reputation because of arguably excessive concerns about reputations of some of the accused. Yes, people have a right to a good name, but does that entail acting like concerns about that person even exist?

Mutatis mutandis, something similar seems to be occurring with what I have called an imbalanced contemporary Catholic eschatology (see here). It’s imbalanced because the Four Last Things have shrunken to two: death and heaven. It’s “judgmental” to imagine judgment might have any other outcome than an express train to Beatitude, and hell — if it is even mentioned or recalled — is simply the empty digs of a divine landlord overheating our eschatological common home.

The rush towards “santo subito!” (especially for papal candidates; see here) is the worst though not only example of that atrophied eschatology. Aware of the reasons why St. John Paul II wanted to accelerate canonization of contemporaries — to show modern models of holiness — one nevertheless must admit that the old 50-years-before-canonization rule forces a winnowing of authentic and lasting cult from momentary popularity.

Likewise, the office of devil’s advocate could counterbalance the proclivity towards ignoring human imperfection and even sinfulness in examining potential saintly models of Christian holiness. This supernatural “hermeneutic of suspicion” would be a useful offset to the “all dogs, people, and popes go to heaven” Disney mindset besetting the Church today.

While on the Topic of Reputations and Truth

I keep returning to the objection of the Dicastery for Interpretation of Legislative Texts concerning publishing the names of deceased clergy “credibly accused” of sexual abuse (for more, see here). Its objection is that false accusations would be calumny denying one the right to a good name which, post-mortem, the accused cannot defend. Because the accused is dead, reasons the Dicastery, the exception for public accusation of wrongdoing to deter further offenses does not apply; as they are dead, they cannot further offend and, so, “there can be neither a legitimate or proportionate reason for the harm of the reputation.”

My previous criticism of this stance is that it does not take account of the ongoing harm to the reputation of the Church as protector of abusers (the webpage carrying this document includes a picture with the captions, “Church against the Culture of Child Abuse” and “Protection of Vulnerable People.” One might argue the “vulnerable people” being protected are credibly accused dead clergy rather than their possibly still living vulnerable victims). The Church, whose notes include “holiness,” also has a right to a good reputation, and clergy acting in her name acquire a public visibility that renders them more than “private individuals.”

As I think of it, however, I have a further question about the Dicastery’s concerns: history. Applying the Dicastery’s norms, how could anybody morally be an investigative historian (as opposed to a legendary hagiographer)? Reports of JFK’s womanizing, for example, mostly surfaced after his death. Was it detraction to report them? One could argue his infidelities were between him and Jackie and so not a matter of public concern. Or one could argue that a President who put himself in such compromising situations could have been subject to manipulation, maybe even assassination. Is the historian supposed to keep silence about such matters until he unearths definitive “proof?” Remember that parts of the federal JFK files were only declassified months ago. When historians unearth the double lives of dead people, do they violate the latter’s “right to a good name” by surfacing them? Should the advocatus diaboli disclose only what is proven, not what is suspected? Or does the Church’s interest now allow the disclosure because authorizing someone’s cult has present and future consequences? In other words, if the Church is going to endorse somebody, the whole truth should come out, but if not and only local memories will persist, let dead sleeping dogs lie?

“Ageism” and “Ableism”

Scrivener Jake Tapper, who spent much of the past four years covering up questions of Joe Biden’s decline, is now publishing a book in which he claims unnamed Biden “staffers” discussed whether Biden might have needed a wheelchair during a second term. The very revelation of that claim elicited a major bile dump from Biden votaries. Apart from the usual “sharp-as-a-tack” claims, envisioning Joe declaiming on quantum theory to impressed Cabinet members as he performed one-handed pushups on the Resolute Desk, there was the inevitable comparison to FDR.

Two comments. First, it was a different age (including a different media age) but, even then, the press that supposedly shines light lest “democracy die in darkness” bears responsibility for covering up FDR’s disability and decline. That was especially despicable in 1944, given that FDR died 81 days into his fourth administration. But, second, medicine was different. FDR died at age 63, in the middle of a world war of which he was commander-in-chief of one of its major belligerents. Biden would have been 82-86 during a second term and, “disability rights” aside, it is a legitimate question to ask whether the ineluctable vicissitudes of age would have made it a wise choice to tap a declining octogenarian to fulfill that role.

The willful refusal to acknowledge that age has its consequences and disability means that, sometimes even with accommodations, one can’t do the job is another aspect of the American obsession with a mythological rugged and isolated individualism pretending that what we all know happens as we grow older doesn’t. Those consequences are not erased by yelling “ageism” and “ableism.” Maybe it actually requires us to think and debate a little more deeply about what “anti-discrimination” in those areas means.

It also renews the question, raised earlier in these pages (here), about Paul VI’s 80-and-out rule for bishops (and its implications for the Holy See). We’ve just buried a pope in a wheelchair. We’ve just elected a pope who could potentially have a long reign. We experienced a rare papal resignation occasioned because the incumbent felt he was not up to the calling. The papacy is not the presidency: A spiritual father is not a temporary, term-limited leader. But, perhaps without the immediate question of papal health in front of us, the Church should also discuss how we handle these questions when we have a record of at least 29 popes chosen in their 70s or older, including three of the last seven.

Judicial Paternity

Linda Greenhouse took to the New York Times to ask whether newspapers should name the President who appointed a federal judge to the bench when reporting on a decision (see here). This trend (“the 2-1 decision was written by judges appointed by Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the dissent by a Trump nominee) has grown and been criticized by some. Greenhouse’s view has evolved: Back in the day when the federal judiciary was reliably the last resort for liberals, she opposed it but now, “when only the federal courts stand between democracy and autocracy, it provides essential reassurance that the rule of law is not a partisan project.”

Let me say: I concur — regrettably — in Greenhouse’s conclusion about publishing who appointed a judge, but not for the reasons she voices. She justifies her change of opinion by appealing to civics. According to her, when the courts were reliable bastions for the Left’s preferred policy outcomes (abortion-on-demand, a Berlin Wall of church/state separation, expansive deference to federal bureaucrats) that was “civics.” Today, with reversal of Roe, recognition that the First Amendment protects freedom of, not from, religion, and a narrowed deference to bureaucratic legislating, it’s “politics.” Perhaps we can admit that the courts have always involved politics, at least to some degree. Will Rogers is said to have quipped, “A judge is a lawyer who knew a President.” That adage reminds us of the very common material from which judges are made.

I’ll admit a certain doubt about “civics.” The Right has called for more “civics” education. The Left takes “civics” education to mean not theoretical functioning of government but internship in agitation and left-wing activist groups. “Civics” is an equivocal term. There’s the civics of high school, where everything neatly functions perfectly according to the enlightened, nonpartisan wisdom of the Founding Fathers. And there’s the civics by which Washington really works. I’ve criticized the former because it gives people an illusory understanding of the ways of Washington, with disillusionment stemming from the clash between image and reality. The Senate does not work like “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” And judges are not neutral solons raised above and immune to the fray of politics, current events, and legal philosophies, Olympians in the black robes of a secular clerisy divining the essence of the law. They are not the heirs of a secular legal infallibility, handing down ex cathedra pronouncements. If that was true, there wouldn’t be 5-4 or 6-3 splits in Supreme Court decisions.

I spent the past year closely observing the Senate. The former Democratic majority transacted very little legislative business but put the confirmation process for Biden judicial radicals into overdrive, intent on showing he could outdo Trump-45 in single term judicial appointments. To pretend, then, that politics does not affect judges is something believed only by the naïve and maybe on off days John Roberts when he talks about “balls and strikes.” Yes, it would be good if we could believe and practice that, but that day has passed in our judicial history. (I’d even argue that responsibility in large measure lies with Joe Biden and fellow Democrats who politicized the Supreme Court confirmation process because of their absolute fealty to abortion-on-demand, inventing a new verb — “borking” — to discuss the politicization of a highly qualified judicial choice). Given where we have come, the least we should be able to say, especially when single judges decide to impose their views of the law on the country as a whole, is their presidential paternity.

An earlier version of these remarks published in American Thinker elicited the comment: “Why is it that Democratic appointees tend to stay faithful to their presidential nominators but Republicans not?” One can pretty much assume that Kagan-Jackson Brown-Sotomayor are a lock on most issues, as was Ginsburg and Breyer before them. Earl Warren, Warren Burger, Harry Blackmun, Anthony Kennedy, and the just-deceased David Souter were hardly, however, the incarnations of what Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, or George H.W. Bush said they were looking for in judges. One school of thought would be that those GOP judges represented the kinds of “independent thinking” jurists who called “balls and strikes” as they saw them. I think that explanation is naïve. What I really think is that Democrats long ago recognized that judges are not Platonic philosopher-kings facing a univocal “essence” of law. (The closest candidate to that would be “natural law,” and we should not forget the jeering Clarence Thomas received as an “extremist” when he invoked it approvingly in 1991). They recognized that there are competing theories of judicial philosophy and reject the idea one is a priori true. Republicans still clung to that idea for a long time, discovering their nominees didn’t (especially given the desires for “acceptance” in the once even more closed legal community). Today, they recognize you need judges having the convictions of their judicial philosophy, even in a hostile world. Doubt it? Michael Fragoso, writing in National Review, notes that the First Circuit Court of Appeals (the federal appellate circuit covering New England) is now so Democrat-dominated as to lack a single conservative-nominated judge. He described whomever President Trump picks for a vacancy there as taking on a “combat assignment.” Well, if you’re going into combat, you’d better know what you’re fighting for.