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Next Pope, The - Revised & Updated: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at How the Successor to John Paul II Will be Elected and Where He Will Lead The Church

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Margaret Hebblethwaite supplements her husband's (the late Peter Hebblethwaite, an English ex-Jesuit) 1995 edition of the book. Throughout this book, these avatars of the Catholic Left easily succumb to partisan catcalls. "Conservative" cardinals - i.e., those who wish to preserve the Deposit of Faith against the enervating forces of our age - are referred to as "stupid," "unenlightened" or "sinister." This is not a disinterested look at "electors as runners." Still, the 2000 edition is more informative than the 1995 edition and contains a wonderful surprise.

Several themes run through the two editions. We have heard them in the worldwide media and their repetition will become louder and more insistent as the next conclave approaches.

First, "[In this] pontificate . . . [t]he conservative option has been tried. It has failed." That this is inconsonant the facts - i.e., Pope John Paul's signal contribution to the reunification of Europe, the defeat of Soviet Marxism, the universal respect and reverence that are his worldwide, the new catechism and code of canon law - seems not to matter. It is a "failure" because the authors would have preferred a radical alteration of the Roman Church, its beliefs and administration.

Second, "It is time for something different." Why the cardinals would want as John Paul's successor someone who does not have his charisma, strength, articulateness and indefatigable evangelization is not explained. It is assumed. The chapter that reviews recent conclaves does not support the authors' argument that each pontificate is followed by one sharply different. The lessons they draw are explained only by reference to their partisan program.

Third, it's time for another Italian pope. The reasoning is brittle. The next pope should be Italian because: (1) a non-Italian pope might mistake the indulgence of the Roman populace for decadence; and (2) Rome is located in Italy. Even Father Thomas J. Reese, S.J., no friend of this pontificate, has pointed out that the Slav Wojtyla has been a better pastor to the Romans than many Italian popes have. No better reasons are given for confining the Universal Church's supreme office to a single nationality.

There's more at work here than is immediately apparent. If the Italian cardinals, as a national block, join liberal cardinals - i.e., those who want to give the Roman Church over to the zeitgeist and thereby become more "relevant" to the world - in the next conclave, something important for each would be achieved. The national ambitions of the Italians would be gratified. The next pope might be another Italian -- which at times seems to be the single objective of the Italians.

Also, another Italian papacy would imply that John Paul's pontificate was a failure. This will aid the liberals in their program of reducing the Supreme Pontiff's primacy of jurisdiction to a mere primacy of honor. Why should an office confined to a single nationality, they will ask after the conclave, be allowed to continue its jurisdiction over the Universal Church? This potential entente is the least remarked in the fevered, yet utterly repetitive, reporting on the forthcoming conclave.

Although partisan in tone and outlook, Mrs. Hebblethwaite's discussion of the cardinals as candidates is much broader in scope and much more informative than her husband's. She even shows signs of periodic detachment.

The difference can be seen in the way each treats Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and one of the most important figures of the current pontificate.

Of Cardinal Ratzinger, Mr. Hebblethwaite wrote:

"Despite his Bavarian smile and love of Mozart, he retains the aura of the Grand Inquisitor. Every September he meets his former doctrinal students somewhere in the Alps [and] . . . [n]one of them think he is papabile."

That's the substance of his discussion of Cardinal Ratzinger: glib, dismissive and uninformative.

Margaret Hebblethwaite does not like Cardinal Ratzinger either, but intellectual integrity moves her to give his potential papacy serious consideration - and writes an excellent brief for his election. She writes:

"Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (seventy-two) is so well known that people tend to overlook him as a papal candidate. They have become so used to his as the big bad wolf of the new inquisition . . . that they cannot imagine him in any other job. . . . To have him as pope would be inconceivably divisive, runs the common wisdom. Besides, people say, clutching at straws, he is too old.

"He probably is too old, but if he is too old then so too is Martini, who is two months his senior. . . . But apart from that, the case that can be made for him becoming pope is very strong indeed. . . .

"In favor of Ratzinger is that he is a man of outstanding ability and intelligence. . . . [H]e was one of the most creative, brilliant, and respected theologians of Germany, which has long enjoyed a theological preeminence among the nations . . . and [he] was one of Paul VI's choices both as bishop and as cardinal.

". . . Ratzinger is the only conservative in the college of electors who can stand shoulder to shoulder with Wojtyla in terms of natural ability. He would exercise continuity of policy, but without being a pale reflection of his predecessor. He would establish his own style and has the experience and confidence to be able to carry off what is one of the most demanding jobs in the world. . . . He would be in charge of the Curia, rather than the Curia in charge of him.

"Second, Ratzinger makes a very good impression on those who meet him. . . . [W]ith his Bavarian smile . . . [h]e would overcome his terrible imagine within the first ten minutes of appearing on television as the new pope. . . . One progressive cardinal said privately, 'I would rather have Ratzinger than many other conservatives I could mention.'"

May the Holy Spirit whisper to the Sacred College and bring it to pass.

"The Next Pope" by Peter Hebblethwaite, and revised and update by Margaret Hebblethwaite.

The latest consistory, March 2001, has made this book obsolete before the book is even a year old! In March, Pope John Paul II, the old nemesis of the Hebblethwaites, appointed 37 new cardinals to the College of Cardinals. The College is now the most diverse in the almost 2000 years history of the Church. In adding these new members, John Paul has broken down the careful foundations for the analyses of the book, "The Next Pope" and made much of that analysis obsolete. For example, the addition of 37 new members increased the number of cardinals eligible to vote for the next pope to 128, eight more than the maximum of 120. When questioned about this higher number, John Paul II replied, laconically, "Yes, I know."

The 37 new members change much of the background for chapter 7 in the book. The Pope appointed many cardinals from Spanish-speaking countries that were once evangelized by Old Spain. This Spanish-speaking Bloc is larger than the Italian Bloc. In the next conclave (after John Paul dies), if the Spanish-speaking Bloc and the Italian Bloc work together, we may see the election of a Spanish-speaker to pope. Further, that pope may be the first from the New World. If, however, these two blocs cannot agree, the conclave may be long and weary. This might present an opportunity for the 12 cardinals from the United States and the eight from Germany to propose their own candidate, and that might be Cardinal Ratzinger, who is even more conservative than John Paul II. Or, they may settle on the new Cardinal Avery Dulles, a liberal theology teacher at Fordham University, NYC, who is too old to vote in the conclave. What a difference the new members make!

There are new cardinals from Asia, who might unite with other cardinals from Asia and Oceania to form an Asia/Oceania bloc to draw attention to that remote corner of the world. And, there are now two (!) cardinals from Ireland, doubling the chances of electing the first Irish pope, next time. In Chapter 7, Hebblethwaite attempted to identify the "Not-Yet Cardinals", as he called them. Of the eight possibles, he was right on four and the other four did not make it. That is only 50%, and I believe a competent reporter at the New York Times or the Washington Post could do as well with background research available at those papers. So much for the "insight ` of Hebblethwaite.

Although the book was made obsolete and redundant by the latest appointment of cardinals, the book IS, however, a concise history of recent conclaves. Further, in the paper back format, it is easy to carry on an airplane and just about the right size for a cross-continent flight. The book is well written: there was only one error I could discover, on page 80, where "Poland was carved up between three powerful neighbors..."; in English, things are carved up between two neighbors or "among three neighbors". Among & Between.

In these days and weeks when the papacy and the future of the Roman Catholic Church are atop the headlines and much in people's minds, people looking for resources to help bring them up to speed on it all have a lot of options before them. If you're trying to make up your mind about where to begin, I would not recommend starting with this book.

"The Next Pope" can be said to face in two directions. Looking backward, Hebblethwaite provides us with a decent capsule summary of the last two centuries or so of papal conclaves, with special emphasis on the elections of Paul VI and John Paul II. He also traces the mechanics of conclave. This is all good as far as it goes -- but if you find yourself with the first 1995 printing of this book, as I did initially, it doesn't go nearly far enough, since John Paul II's 1996 "Universi Dominici Gregis" made some notable changes to the process. The later edition, updated by Hebblethwaite's widow, is more useful here.

Still looking backward (though the author wasn't at the time), I found most interesting the attempt to derive how John Paul II's Polishness shaped and defined his view of the Church, of Europe, and of the world. This is an aspect of John Paul II that I haven't seen as fully explored elsewhere, though I admit to not being familiar with all the literature.

It's when we turn from looking back to looking toward the next pope that "The Next Pope" becomes more problematic. Reading Hebblethwaite here was like reading many American newspapers. "Conservatives" are intransigent, extreme (John Paul II is described as occupying "the extreme right"), authoritarian, out of touch, blinkered, blinded... you get the idea. "Reformers" get much better adjectives. Hebblethwaite's view is decidedly on the "reform" side, which is fair enough, and he believed strongly that his Church -- and The Next Pope -- needed to move in a new direction. His arguments have since been made by others, of course, and much of his "handicapping" material is now out of date. That makes both the 1995 and 2000 versions of this title somewhat interesting historical documents, but I found them not nearly as interesting, or as useful, as a broad range of more recent, and more balanced, books.

The conclave (con clave: "with a key") process for electing popes has changed enormously in the last 40 years. THE NEXT POPE gives an overview of these changes, from how "eighty-something" cardinals no longer vote, to how the spartan conclave life has changed. The authors give: several concise but informative overviews of conclaves of the last 150 years, drawing some tongue-in-cheek but pertinent unwritten rules about the process; an overview of Pope John Paul II and his successful pontificate; the reasons that another non-Italian, or conservative, or reforming pope might or might not be chosen; and suggests likely candidates to be his successor. Among the trivia one picks up is why, though anyone who may be ordained a priest can be a pope, only cardinals are liable to be chosen; but the book's balance is toward the weightier issues of the modern papacy, considerations the college of cardinals will have to face, and examinations of likely candidates from Europe, the Americas, and the Third World. The book's writing is succinct, clear, and anecdotal. The only difficult part to follow where the authors go over the college of cardinals with a handicapper's eye, mentioning too many names possibly unfamiliar to the typical reader. Nevertheless this book is a gem for anyone who would like a brief crash-course in modern papal elections, and for political junkies who want to understand how the sovereign of the Vatican state is chosen -- both by the movement of the Holy Spirit and behind-the-scenes politics. The only reason I would refrain from giving a fifth star is its paucity of conclave history prior to Gregory XVI.

This volume, an update of an earlier work by the late Peter Bebblewaite, is little more than an obsolete exercise in wishful thinking by the Catholic radical left. For the book to be at all relevant, it needs to be updated again, to reflect the changes in the College of Cardinals (fairly significant in the last few years). Even such an update would do little to further recommend it, as there are other, more recent and less biased works on the same subject.

Give this one a miss.

The most interesting part of the book for me was the first half where past conclaves in history are discussed. Some of the history is really fascinating. Although the tone of the book optimistically predicts a less severe papacy next time around, there is little evidence presented to back this up. The criticisms of John Paul II, while quite accurate, do little to help us understand who we might expect as the next pope. It is a well written book and very readable, but as time continues to go by and the current pope continues to live, the latter section on potential popes becomes less and less relevant due to the age restriction and deaths. Still, there is enough here to recommend a read.

Reading this book carried me back to Catholic high school days when we were (supposed to be) breathlessly awaiting health news of Pope Pius XII. How little things have changed! And yet..this book could be greeted with a large shrug of indifference. It presents a good study of the state of the Papacy in the current Catholic Church, but who really cares .. at least in the world at large. Had the Church (particularly the current pontiff) not committed itself to the maintenance of the rigid hierarchical, top-down, ultra-montane management style (and be sure it's a chosen style, not a revealed imperative), more people -- more Catholics -- might be more concerned. But since the Pope "rules" with little reference to his "subjects" lives, the subjects pay little attention to the Pope. In 1964, at Vatican II, Archbp Helder Cammera of Brazil suggested that the bishops all sell their pectoral crosses to raise money for the poor. His idea was met with thunderous silence; so should the subject matter of this book. This is a new century. The book is certainly sympathetic to, but not uncritical of, the Papacy. But the whole subject is pretty irrelevant.

Pius VI, the Lyndon Johnson of the prelacy once observed, "pope's aren't elected - they're made." In "Next Pope," acclaimed papal handicapper Peter Hebblethwaite provides an insider's guide to contesting - and winning - the ultimate ecclesiastical election. If your sights are set on the papal suite, where should you study (surprise - not the Ivy league!)? Where should you socialize, and what interests should you cultivate? Hebblewaite lays out the path -from first mass to white smoke. The final chapter - "Life in the Key of See," is written for those who make the grade. It includes a detailed map of Vatican City, a handy list of common Latin phrases and greetings, and a trove of hat balancing tips that you?ll wish you?d read before even becoming a Cardinal.