Francis Oakley is the Edward Dorr Griffin professor of the history of ideas at Williams College, and served as the president of Williams from 1985-1993. He is the past president of New England Medieval Conference, of the Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America, and of the American Council of Learned Societies, and is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Oakley has degrees from Oxford University, the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, and Yale University. His book “Conciliarist Tradition,” published in 2003 by Oxford University Press, was awarded the Roland Bainton Book Prize. He gave an interview to The Collegian on Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation.
Why do you think the Pope Benedict is stepping down?
I take Benedict’s own explanation of his decision to resign at face value — old age, poor health, and difficulty in meeting the demands of the office — and I think it does him credit. He, after all, he had seen his predecessor hanging on to the office disastrously when he could no longer do the job and when chaos, as a result, was beginning to set in. Benedict’s resignation serves helpfully to demystify the papal office, which is, after all, an administrative one. It is a job, and a very important one.
Are there any precedents for a pope resigning?
The precedents; the real one is that of Celestine V. He was a saintly hermit to whom the cardinals turned in desperation. He was utterly unprepared for the job and overwhelmed by it, and the papacy quickly lapsed into faction-ridden chaos. So he resigned after a few months, declaring himself incapable of discharging the heavy responsibilities of the office. Benedict XVI has visited his tomb more than once and seems to have some veneration for him. But his is the last resignation of a clearly legitimate pope.
I don’t have in front of me the 1983 Code of Canon Law and can’t reproduce the precise wording, but it does acknowledge the legitimacy of a pope’s deciding to resign, provided that his decision is freely taken and clearly announced. Pope Benedict in his announcement met those criteria.
Hasn’t the national media has been comparing this to Gregory XII’s resignation 600 years ago?
All the talk about Gregory XII is, I think, quite misleading. He was no more than the claimant of the Roman line to the papacy during a period of intractable and prolonged schism that had begun in 1378 with a genuinely disputed papal election.
There are no historical grounds for insisting that the Roman line was the legitimate one and it is only in the last couple of centuries that the Vatican began to make that claim. At the time there were also papal claimants from the Avignonese line and from the Pisan line. At the time of Gregory’s resignation, the Pisan line was viewed by most of the church and by the general council assembled at Constance as the legitimate one, and had not Gregory resigned, they would have deposed him — as, for that matter, they deposed his Avignonese rival, as also the Pisan pope, John XXIII, whom they viewed as true pope but a bad man. The Pisan line had begun when a previous general council, the Council of Pisa (1409) had, in an attempt to end the schism, deposed both Gregory and his Avignonese rival and gone on to elect a new pope.
It almost worked, but Gregory and his Avignonese rival hung on, though with much reduced support, so it was left to the Council of Constance to deal with the mess.
I should add that if you look at the list of the popes usually printed in Catholic and secular publications alike, you will find the Roman line listed as “popes” and the Avignonese and Pisan lines as “antipopes.” That reflects, not the conclusion of historians, but the rather self-serving point of view expressed in the more recent past by the Roman curia. So the whole matter is controversial. I myself view the “official” listing of popes (which, in its present form dates only from 1947) as a triumph of ideology over historical fact.
Would you venture a guess on who the next pope will be?
I really have no idea to whom the cardinals may turn for the next pope and have not found the speculations in the press particularly persuasive. Given the crisis in the church and the almost unprecedented, post-resignation situation in which the election will take place makes it likely that it will be a pretty “fraught” affair. Even more difficult than usual to call.
– Compiled by Patrick
Timmis
