by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

TRADUCTION FRANÇAISE

Often the results of one’s efforts has the result of obtaining the opposite. Never is this more true, when it pertains to a matter after your own death, beyond the time in which you can have any say in the matter.

All the more is this true in the election of Roman Pontiffs.

For anyone who has bothered to read the history of all the popes, one by one — you can do it for free via the online Catholic Encyclopedia — as I did back in 2020, during the lockdown — you can discern a perennial rule of thumb in the choices made by the College of Cardinals: that there is a pendulum like shift from papacy to papacy.

The nature of this shift could be described thus: that on certain matters in which the living pope went to an excess, on those matters the College of Cardinals decide to chose  pope with a different approach, sometimes the opposite, sometimes more conciliatory.

Popes who were holy and intransigent, like Pope St. Gregory VII were followed by popes who were more pragmatic and conciliatory.

As a cultural anthropologist (B.A. University of Florida, Gainesville, 1986), I think this is because the very dynamic of self-preservation coupled with the miniscule or tiny temporal power of the Papal States (now the Vatican City State) leads to the common sense conclusion, that the most urgent problems which arise in one pontificate, are the reason and motivation for the majority of the members of the College of Cardinals in their choice of the next Pope.

If we apply this observation to the dynamic of the next Conclave, then I think it can be said without exaggeration that Pope Francis is unwittingly preparing the way for the election of Cardinal Burke to the Supreme Pontificate, or at least someone like him. And let me explain why this is not merely a catchy theme for an editorial.

The most powerful super power on Earth is the United States. The majority of funds arriving in the coffers of the Vatican City State come from Catholics in the United States. The majority of all donations to the Vatican come from conservative Catholics. And the Vatican cannot survive without donations. Indeed, under Jorge Mario Bergoglio its resources have been dwindling and dwindling.

So the Cardinals in the next Conclave are without a doubt going to talk about how to keep their Club House, the Vatican, afloat. And that means, they have to confront the problem of how to turn the current trend in Vatican finances around 180 degrees.

Common sense will tell these men, who are experts in running large institutions, that the election of an Argentinian might have seemed the chic thing to do. But electing a candidate from an impoverished nation has proven not to be the way to increase the donations arriving at the Vatican.

Indeed, in ages past, the only solution to such a problem was to elect someone from the Kingdom or Empire which was the most powerful and richest. A strategy which worked, since a popular cleric from such a nation would naturally have an entire network of supporters who would come to the aid of the Papacy after his election.

If we apply this rule to the conditions of a Vatican City State whose supporters have fled on account of the denials of Catholic Doctrine, attacks on Catholic Tradition, and open insults of Catholics from the most powerful nations, the probity of this thesis of mine becomes even stronger.

Thus, the recent purges of Bishop Strickland and Cardinal Burke, precisely because they are having such a negative effect and will have an even more negative effect at years end, when most Catholic donors of magnitude consider making or not making donations to ecclesiastical institutions, will combine with the above observation to have a devastating effect.

If Pope Francis lives to see the New Year play out, then donations from Catholics will continue to fall dramatically putting the Vatican City state in dire crisis. This will especially be true among the Catholics of the United States of America.

But if Pope Francis is called to the judgement seat of Christ the King, then the Cardinals in the Conclave will surely be thinking the same thing: how they can solve all their financial problems and publicity problems by electing an American, someone like Cardinal Burke, whose reputation is solid, whose scholarship is known, whose stability of character is tested, and who is well traveled and widely respected throughout the world, especially in the United States.

And this future decision of the College is perhaps the reason why, even if the rest of the Cardinals say nothing about the purge of Cardinal Burke, that that silence in no way means that they agree with Pope Francis.

In the end God wins, no matter what decisions men make. But in the mean time God often also drops a victory on account of the decisions His enemies make. What a comedy is life!

And what a blessing that as Catholics we can appreciate it the best.