What outcome should we want from the papal election?

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | May 02, 2025

It is surprisingly hard to know what to wish for in a new pope. Mostly, I suppose, we tend to wish for a successor to St. Peter who shares our own spiritual priorities. But in view of our own weaknesses, it is fair for others to ask how well that is likely to work out. One of the larger and more important problems we face is our inability to project whether the Church is on the verge of a fresh and powerful renewal or is likely to experience many additional years of erosion—increasing restrictions on Catholic expression coupled with widespread infidelity, resulting in decreasing numbers wherever that combination holds sway.

The main thing I am convinced of is that we need a pope who does not confuse effective action with constant activity (such as constant discussion or increased turmoil). One of the great peculiarities of the last pontificate was its deliberate emphasis on what Pope Francis himself described from the first as his preference for making a mess—as if shaking things up in bizarre ways always leads to improvement. We have just lived through twelve years of this approach to governance, and the record is not positive. Consequently, I favor a pope who will understand the wisdom of the Sermon on the Mount: “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from the Evil One” (Mt 5:37).

In the context, this appears to be a testimony against the taking of oaths, but it can easily be applied in a broader administrative sense. A pope ought to place a high value on clarity. Part of affirming something is stating precisely what you are affirming and why. The rejection of anything demands the same clarity. This is not only a matter of sound judgment and exact teaching; it is also a matter of not letting words undermine actions—or actions undermine words. So my first piece of very basic advice for the next pope is this: Abandon the “mess” paradigm.

Impossible to govern?

Speaking of messes, the question inescapably arises at this juncture of whether the Church has become so large, and so widespread through a variety of regions and peoples, that it is impossible to govern. To some extent this problem has been increased by modern indigenization; things may have been somewhat simpler when the Church was the bearer of a very high Greco-Roman culture to typically more barbaric peoples. But surely this potential problem has been both exaggerated and exacerbated by Pope Francis’ peculiarly democratic implementation of synodality.

The current practice of synodality-as-democratized-input (which is not at all its traditional episcopal form) has become a demonstration of its own absurdity. There is a reason that Christ established the governance of the Church as a hierarchy. Any competent leader will know how to get the input he needs to govern well; but to turn the process of “inputting” into a central mechanism of governance is to completely misunderstand the fundamental nature of competent rule. As such, synodality has become a mechanism for ecclesiastical paralysis or worse—a magnificent waste of resources, a constant source of confusion, and a consequent triumph of input over output.

Actually, this bears a striking similarity to the rising use of artificial intelligence. AI systems are fed astronomically large amounts of data in order to “train” them through programming tweaks to synthesize with sufficient effectiveness to answer basic questions. The need for training input for newer and ever-more complex AI systems is now exceeding the availability of the entire Internet. Yet in terms of intelligent responses to real questions, the quality of the output is extraordinarily unreliable (as anyone who has been forced to engage with AI chat bots is well aware).

The Church’s governance should not be characterized by anything resembling artificial intelligence. It should be no surprise, then, that my second bit of advice for the next pope is to abandon the current synodal paradigm of input paralysis. The next pope should reestablish the Church’s constitutional emphasis on active and highly disciplined hierarchical rule by the committed, experienced and administratively effective priests who have deserved to be made bishops.

Salvation

My first priority, abandoning the “mess” paradigm, obviously goes hand in hand with the second, returning to the model of efficient hierarchical rule. But good results depend very strongly on the ends sought. If the purpose of the Church is to directly promote human fraternity (which is obviously not in itself a bad purpose), then my first two points are actually pointless. It ought to be self-evident that one cannot attempt to build universal good will among all persons while at the same time making the teachings of Christ and the need to accept them unmistakably clear. It is equally impossible to constantly emphasize democratic input while insisting on the necessary guidance and efficiency of hierarchical rule.

But of course the purpose of the Catholic Church, like the purpose of Christ’s coming, is not to directly promote human fraternity but to directly promote a life-giving relationship with our Father who is in Heaven. If we are all sons and daughters of the same Father, then we are all one family with Christ our brother. But that adoption as sons and daughters depends, as we increase in maturity and knowledge, on our own acceptance of God’s decision to redeem us from sin and death through the sacrifice of His only begotten Son.

Consequently, my third piece of advice to the next pope is to recognize that even avoiding a mess and insisting on the Church’s Divine constitution is utterly pointless unless the mission of the whole Church is revitalized by a renewed focus on its fundamental impulse. This impulse is most succinctly articulated in the first chapter of St. Mark’s gospel: “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mk 1:14-15).

Without this, there is no need for a new pope at all.