Authors: John Stonestreet and Dr. Glenn Sunshine
Today the College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church begins the conclave to elect a new pope. While the results matter a great deal to Catholics, they also matter for Protestants and the Orthodox. Despite the significant and irreconcilable doctrinal differences—on the role of Mary, the sacraments, Scripture, salvation, and the fundamental nature of the Church—all Christians should pray for God to intervene in who replaces Francis as pope.
The brilliant theologian J.I. Packer once observed that we are justified by faith, not by believing in justification by faith. And so, Christians across faith lines can embrace what Chuck Colson called “an ecumenism of the trenches,” which takes the forms of defending life, promoting robust dialogue, and where possible, working to protect essential cultural goods such as life, marriage, and religious liberty.
Another reason why who becomes pope affects Catholics and non-Catholics alike is that, while non-Christians are aware of the divisions within the Christian world, they rarely understand them. As a result, like it or not, the pope is viewed by many as the leader of the Christian world. He is the head of the largest Christian body in the world, which numbers about a billion members. No other religious leader has a comparative stature. Only one religious leader on the planet can request and gain a state audience in nearly any nation on the planet. To outsiders, the pope is the face of the Christian world, whatever other branches of the church might think.
Though some Christians will claim that it doesn’t matter what the world thinks, the pope nonetheless shapes global perceptions about Christians, including in areas controlled by government bodies hostile to religion and people of faith. Papal pronouncements carry a great deal of weight, personally and culturally, on issues that are important to faithful Christians, including sexual morality, climate, and immigration. To the secular global forces convinced that church teaching is wrong and progressive views inevitable, moral clarity on these matters is essential, and the lack thereof is consequential.
A pope willing to take clear, consistent stands on moral issues can help bring sanity to the cultural chaos born out of postmodernity. Especially now, a progressive pope with the studied ambiguity of Pope Francis will be used by progressive forces to further the chaos—especially on those issues that dominate so much of our cultural discourse and cause so much human misery. To be as specific as possible, it matters what the next pope teaches and publicly states when it comes to identity, marriage, sexuality, and procreation.
The papacy is also important on a civilizational level. The Western world developed in the Middle Ages with the Roman Catholic Church at its center. With the Protestant Reformation, that center was broken but held together by a broader Christian consensus of morality, human dignity, and religious values. That consensus was greatly harmed by the theological drift among Protestants and the rise of secularism across the West in the wake of the French Revolution. As a result, in the last century or more, many Protestant bodies have dropped the moral ball on issues where the Catholic Church has not.
Perhaps the most important reason why all Christians should care who is elected to be the next pope is because of the importance of this “civilizational moment.” Today, there are promising signs of renewed interest in traditional forms of Christianity, both across the United States and in Europe. A return to Christian truth is the only hope of preserving what is left of the Western tradition. The next pope will either encourage or discourage that return.
Jesus’ high priestly prayer focuses on unity and love between believers as the sign to the world that Jesus was sent by the Father. We must never sacrifice truth on the altar of unity, but we should pursue unity within the bounds of truth. Otherwise, we only reflect the words of Haldir in The Lord of the Rings: “Indeed, in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.”