In honor of the deadness of John Paul II, I promise that, for the next 48 hours, I will refraining from accusing anyone of being "papist swine" or "a puppet of the Vatican". I will read neither "The Da Vinci Code" nor "Hadrian VII" by Fr. Rolfe, although I whole-heartedly recommend the latter for anyone else . I will not mock any Catholics I know for having lost God's representative on earth, mostly because that's tacky, and the only Catholic I know anymore is my father, and he's several decades past giving a shit.
I have to wonder if maybe it's not wholly positive to have a pope that served so long. He's the only pope that I can remember, and while I'm not Catholic and didn't care much anyways, I'm pretty certain that that is the case for most people younger than me. If he's the only pope you've ever known, will the transferance of allegiances be smooth and easy? It seems to me that the Church would want the allegiance to be for the office, not for the man in the office. Or at least, that's what the Machiavelli in me is saying. Perhaps they should elect someone slightly older next time? After all, with longer life-spans, increased security in the Pope-mobile, and a (presumed and unfortunate) lack of the sort of covert plots and palace coups that have beset the Papacy in past times, reigns will just be getting longer and longer.
It's still getting less coverage than when Princess Diana died.
4 comments:
Fun fact: John Paul II had the 3rd longest tenure of the 265 popes.
St. Peter, 32-67 (35 years)
Blessed Pius IX, 1846-1878 (32)
John Paul II, 1978-2005 (27)
Looking over the list, I find myself wondering what the average tenure of a pope is. There were four popes in the year 1045, the reign of Sylvester III apparently being so brief as to not merit a link to further information, and four popes more within the five years that followed. Eight popes in five years! Granted, lack of any communications technology meant most of the peasantry probably had no idea that the Church was going through popes like toilet paper, if the peasants had used toilet paper. One of the popes (Pius III) died from the strain of the ceremony of the position. There are a lot of reigns that last less than one year, although there have been none since early in the Seventeenth Century.
Thanks for the link, Nichole! I find the history of the papacy enormously interesting, for the same reason I'm interested in the history of the British monarchy: it's sordid, exotic, and it affects me not at all.
Hee hee! Would you believe I did the math when I was "researching" for my first comment, and found the average to be 7.4 years (2717.5 days)?
Hm, now I'm curious about the mode and median too.
(Recently rotated my desk to optimize safer "multitasking" at work. And this is what happens.)
See, the cynical Protestant in me thinks that 7.4 years would be a perfect standard length of papacy. Long enough to get stuff done, but not long enough to get too ensconced in the role, or to be corrupted by it. I guess I just see the pope as another sort of politician, and think term limits would probably be a good idea.
I found another pope on the list (Celestine IV) who lasted only 15 days, putting the presidency of William Henry Harrison in perspective.
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