And now Pope Francis says “think” there. Will all the popes that follow Benoît XVI will stop doing the Pope when they decide? Has Benoît XVI opened a breach, revolutionized the papacy with his own renunciation, which the current language translates into abdication or in resignation? Has this renunciation transformed the very status of the Pope? A symbol, have a taboo fell? What is it said again on the papacy?
Let us try a somewhat offbeat thesis which undoubtedly lacks sensationalism: the renunciation of the Pope does not swell the Church in a good or in a bad direction. The possible one of Pope Francis, just like that, who preceded it, of Benoît XVI, does not constitute a revolutionary break with the Catholic tradition. We can even consider the voluntary renunciation of the Pope as a particularly strong sign of pontifical sovereignty.
We have the idea that a pope who renounces is an oxymoron. The prejudice behind this concern is that the pope is, at least since the 13th e century, elected for life by the cardinals in conclave and that he ceases to be pope by dying to the task. But the obligation to die on the task is an implicit tradition, which has never been written anywhere. Above all, it means the ban on anyone to interrupt a pontificate. Because, in history, the Roman pontiffs have often been deprived of their throne before completing their lives.
violence of power
All the theology of pontifical inerance attempted to protect the popes from repetitive depositions and replacements by the patrices, emperors of the East and West, very Christian kings, in addition to the electoral intrigue of powerful families whose we have many examples.
Pope’s depositions have even multiplied during the long theological quarrel of conciliarism, between the 14th e century and the XV e
é> century, advocating the superiority of the Authority of the ecumenical council on the Pope. It was the council that served a short time to elect but also to deposit the popes, with two, or even three popes prevailing at the same time, because the deposited refused to leave their seat (1414-1418).
The popes have finally undergone kidnappings and violence of power. Boniface VIII died after being abused by the legate of the King of France (1303). By jumping the centuries, the tomorrows of the French Revolution, the Directory, after having crushed the pontifical troops, proclaims the Roman Republic (1798). Pope Pius VI was taken prisoner and died at the Citadel of Valencia, March 14, 1800. His successor was arrested, in 1809, by Napoleon, moved to several places and spent two years “in captivity” in Fontainebleau.
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