Habemus … Whom? The stakes in choosing Peter’s next successor

By Fr Serafino Maria Lanzetta   |   7 May 2025

What do the cardinals want, a successor of Francis or of Peter? This is a fundamental question that must be answered with the help of theology and Church history, and not simply with personal ideas or power alliances. It is now time to begin a process of internal reconciliation within the Church, with a clear link to all tradition and not only to its latest phase, as has been the case since Vatican II. The last Council is not the year zero of the Church, when everything began. It is an ecclesial moment, an ecumenical council, one of the twenty-one councils of the Church, with a magisterial peculiarity that is easily misunderstood. Vatican II is often viewed as if it were the Council of Trent or Vatican I, and therein lies the problem. If we stick to the term “council” and the fact that a council is a solemn or extraordinary manifestation of the Church’s magisterium, then Vatican II fits perfectly with previous councils. But if we look at its actual magisterial exercise, it is a magisterium still in fieri, at its first stage and potentially open to new acquisitions or necessary improvements and, therefore, not infallible.

This magisterial atypicality gives rise to the temptation either to “canonise” Vatican II, promoting it as the only council of the Church, year zero, by virtue of a supposed conciliar spirit (of which Francis was proud), or to discard it because it breaks with the previous magisterium. A careful work of theological sifting and distinction must be done, by a pontificate capable of reconciling the present with the permanence of the faith, with its “today”, understood as kairological time: a time that does not begin with us, with Pope Francis, or with the council that we like best, but with Jesus and the Apostles, reaching us in our time and surpassing it to open the doors of eternity to us. It is not clear why, but it seems that the pope, for some time now, must be a sounding board for the Second Vatican Council and nothing else. Perhaps for the “post-conciliar” popes (except Benedict XVI, the only one who most probably will never be canonised), but not for the “pre-conciliar” ones (as the ecclesial period is usually labelled). To guarantee and show the unity of the Church, should there not be a clear link to the entire papal magisterium? Why be afraid to quote, for example, Leo XIII, St Pius X, St Pius V or St Leo the Great? Were they popes of another Church? It is this division that deeply threatens the unity of the Church. If the Church today is incapable of recognising in the Church of all times the one Body of Christ, in a magisterial continuity between yesterday and today, we will not emerge from the crisis of faith that grips the Church of our time. This continuity must be manifested in the one Traditio fidei, and the most concrete way is that enunciated by St Vincent of Lerins in the fifth century: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est — “that which is believed everywhere, always and by all”. Being part of the one Body of Christ, which does not begin with us but comes from Christ through the Apostles, with two thousand years of wisdom and doctrine, is what gives us the assurance of overcoming the challenge of polarisation between conservatives and liberals, between doctrinaires and pastoralists, which is not a theological challenge but a political one. What is really at stake is faith or its denial, even if cloaked in devotion to the poor, the humble and migrants. 

Let us not say that the Church and faith are a coincidentia oppositorum or a complexio oppositorum (a softer formula, but both tending to the reconciliation of opposites) in order to have it both ways, keeping everyone happy and ensuring that the Church goes on regardless, even if the pope is imprecise, more attentive to the ebb and flow of history than to obedience to the faith. The maximum is not the minimum and vice versa. Those at the top cannot be at the bottom. Hegel, after Niccolò Cusano, believed in the dialectical synthesis of opposites, but was more influenced by Luther, who had made God and His contradiction the manifesto of the humility of faith (or rather of incomplete thought) that resigns itself to the impotence of reason and the uncertainty of truth; an idea that ultimately reaches the negation of God, because He would not be what He is if He were not contradicted in Himself; He would not be merciful if we did not sin.

In reality, however, the Church is a symphony of truth and love, not a cacophony of discordant and contradictory sounds. There is no coincidentia or complexio between truth and error, good and evil, sin and grace. There is only opposition, which is ultimately that between God and His enemies. We must choose which side we are on.

May the new pope present himself to the Church as the successor of the Apostle Peter and not of Francis, of John XXIII or of Benedict XVI. The pope is not the monopoly of an idea of the papacy (and of the Church) but depends on what precedes him: the unbroken faith of the Bride of Christ. The Church precedes the pope in terms of the faith we profess, because, ultimately, it is Christ who precedes the Church and the pope. It is Christ who establishes Peter as the rock of faith and the Church on the person of Peter. The faith and person of Peter are thus in turn built up in a stable way on Christ. Only if we put Christ back at the centre will the Church come back to life, putting out into the deep of this world that is increasingly thirsty for truth and love. Ubi Petrus ibi Ecclesia, certainly, but also and always Ubi Ecclesia ibi Petrus. Peter must be where the Church is so that the Church may be where Peter is. The Church is greater than Peter, than any individual pope, because she preserves the papacy, the holy sacraments, the holy doctrine of faith and morals, and thus gives every successor of Peter his true identity, provided he obeys Christ and is docile to the Spirit of God.

It is therefore opportune that the chosen pope profess the integral faith of the Church, rejecting the errors and correcting the ambiguities that have multiplied in recent history in the light of a longer period. Here too there is no coincidentia. It is not just a question of a supposed change of moral paradigm (as some have called the opening of Amoris Laetitia) to the ethics of the situation. The visceral opposition to Bergoglio has itself given rise to a sort of paradigm shift, albeit to a very limited extent, but with damage to souls: it has fuelled a new, confused and varied sedevacantism, which is nothing more than a sort of hyper-papalism in which the pope is placed above the Church, a complement of the exaggerated conciliarism in which Vatican II was superior to the Church. Let us put things in order: first there is Christ, then the Church, with the pope obedient to the Church, and then the council at the service of the Church and never superior to the pope.

We must rediscover the true faith and unity in the faith. It seems rare in our day to ask that the pope profess the integral faith. There are those who still mock such a request, but it is the only solution for true ecclesial unity. Without a clear and solid faith, the Church cannot exist. It also seems that by asking for such a thing, one is showing oneself to be nostalgic or backward-looking. In reality, what we all need is this: a guide who makes the Good Shepherd, Christ, transparent in his person, with a personal baggage that is not only ideas from his theological and human formation, but that is the pastoral truth and love of Jesus as an offering to all men to be saved; namely the baggage of Catholic doctrine, in dia-chronical listening to the whole Traditio fidei. Only in this way does this baggage become not stones but pastus, food for life, the Holy Eucharist. And here a discourse that reappropriates the sacredness of the liturgy emanating from the uninterrupted lex orandi of the Church (obviously not beginning with the Missal of Paul VI, but with that formed from the Apostles and the Fathers with so many saints) is necessary and urgent. God is no longer seen because our liturgies are sloppy and often lacking in faith.

Finally, it would be desirable to no longer insist on a style that varies according to the pope of the moment, on the one hand, and doctrine on the other, thus causing yet another split between faith and Christian life, the most evident expression of the underlying split between the Church of today and the Church of all time. The style must be Catholic and therefore superimposable on the doctrine of faith and morals, even if it remains accidental and provisional with respect to the faith and its proclamation. Trying to save the goat and the cabbage by saying that, after all, “style is the man”, that is, the pope, and that the doctrine of faith must be adapted to the style, to the pastoral priorities of the pope, simply means subordinating faith to man, doctrine to style. In this way, it is easy to reduce faith to a “pastoral style”, which, while diluting doctrine, sets itself up as a principle of action and a new Christian mens, to the point of unacceptable exaggerations, such as justifying, almost as equivalent, believing in God and being an atheist, having faith in Jesus Christ and following other religions. The Synod at its most synodal wanted itself to be a style, a way of being for the Church today. Although it did not have much success in changing Catholic doctrine (the sacrament of Holy Orders, ecclesiastical celibacy, homosexuality, etc.), it is nonetheless inevitable that the style will eventually impose itself as doctrine and that faith will be downgraded to a mere style: an old-fashioned belief versus a more updated one, all dependent on taste, on style. 

Will the new pope want to remedy all this?