Fr dear Fr: Can we legitimately say that in the past there have been bad and corrupt popes, especially as they are meant to be chosen by the Holy Spirit, I mean is it possible for bad cardinals to ignore the voice of the Holy Spirit when voting?

It was often said in the aulas and auditorias of a university in Rome when Prof Peter was talking that he knew more about the popes than he often let on, but he used to say sometimes that when the word “corruption” comes up in debate especially about authority figures above the enquirer, then a potted philosopher is needed to clear the mind and focus thoughts - not always an apologist, like the enquirer, a cleaning girl from Transylvania, was expecting maybe perforce. So this responsory will be a philosopher’s response rather than that of a theologian or a moralist or an apologist for the institution. Anyway, our alarm bells should ring on the assumptions of such questions, since they often assume the lay questioner is an innocent, and free of sin and free of corruption especially, but as we are finding out even in Glorious Londinium we are not here to deny a doctrine as fundamental as Original Sin, since all have sinned and all have fallen short of God's designs for human nature, except for Jesu and Marie - allez haut. Most virtue signalling around the subject of corruption, especially when applied to governments or popes or cardinals, is often involved in a large scale denial of the doctrine of Original Sin for the majority of human beings. Besides, as we often used to hear in the Fleet Street printing presses of St Gilbert, would we, would I be any different if I were wearing those white slippers and buckle shoes above me? Chesterton moved mountains in human thought even as a young impassable schoolboy when he answered his early essay question, "What is wrong with the world?", with the devastatingly disarming answer, "I am." The early schoolboy Chesterton, he knew his doctrines, as an anglican, but he was a Philosophe primarily. So says a girl called Martina back home in London GB who has just defended a doctorate on Chesterton the Philosophe.

The word "corruption" is not heard all over again very often in our own times, until the Owen debate, but since Luther it is sometimes, though rarely in this modern era of spiritual popes, referred to popes in the past. Some books examine the issue dispassionately, Michael Collins's book The Fisherman's Net is a good read as he expatiates amusingly on the history of the popes, and Eamon Duffy's book, A History of the Popes, is also a good read. Both are somewhat sceptical of the historical institution and both answer the question above with a qualified "Yes ... but." They consisted of both Saints and Sinners - that is their judgement as two historians. Then there is another booklet called New Horizons on an Early Christian Style of Papacy put out and printed as a parishioners booklet, which goes through the first few popes and then compares them favourably to the new pope Francisco, identifying the key influencers on the new pope from those early popes, this too has been found useful, though obviously it takes a more optimistic approach to the various papacies. And then there is the factual presentation in a small booklet of the first 45 popes called A Potted History of the Papacy of the Early Christians at Rome which details their principal and many achievements and their trials and tribulations - this too is optimistic, again another parish booklet. So - Basically, much like Jeremy the Actor explaining that what is one man's meat in one era is often another man's poison in a different era - and what passes for corruption in a modern lexicon of faults was often in its day not seen as corruption, merely often survival for sovereigns and popes hemmed in from all sides by wicked rumours from cynical kings sending their daughters to Borgia popes for example, and so on, much like the very slow process of rehabilitation of Henry VIII that might now take place, if only people could step back from too much puritannica, too much judging as if personally free of original sin. That is how the acting world sometimes puts it, both Jeremy the Actor and Jude the Actor sometimes fielded this relativist position on corruption when filming The Borgias and Pius XIII. Relativist. But what about the cool objective witness of history?

Several popes are sometimes aligned with “corruption” - simony being a favourite preoccupation of an age of QE cash printing. The first to bear the brunt of this sort of rumour was Marcellinus in the early centuries, 308-309, chiefly about finance, but these rumours were put out about him and his deacons by the Roman pagan secret service often because they could not get their mits on the Church's monies and properties and finances, so they accused in order to flush them out of hiding. So Marcellinus is the first to be accused of a David Yallop kind of conspiracy. Formosus too in the 891-896 bracket of years was accused of corruption, especially for the practice of excommunicating other popes before him like Stephen V, and so on. Eventually, later in 896 another pope, Stephen VI of 896-897, had the body of Formosus exhumed and put on trial in a mock judicial ceremony and then thrown into the Tiber but it did not end well for Stephen VI since the people of the SPQR imprisoned him too and had him gingerly poisoned. Excommunications of other popes were deemed for a long time by historians as evidence of a contradiction and a probable sign of hidden corruption somewhere. Alexander VI the Borgia pope of 1492-1503 is regarded also as a corrupt administrator of a difficult city, and his famous parties and his friendships with young and beautiful women were a source of scandal to many kings around Europe. Urban VIII of 1623-1644 was sometimes regarded as corrupt chiefly for reneging and betraying on his friend Galileo Galilei and abandoning the poor science icon to the grinding machinery of the Biblical Inquisition when like Sir Isaac he stepped out of science and published on the Book of Joshua in the Bible. In a Facebook age the betrayal of a friend is regarded as an evident sign of corruption. And then finally in our own time, Pius XII of 1939-1958 was regarded as a corrupt pope because of his excessive prudence in not condemning Germany and Italy and the Fascisti of the time. All these popes are often compared with more spiritual types that came before them and they disappointed many of the foreign commentators that visit Rome. Only in recent times has a new mood of understanding prevailed, and this chiefly from the noble actors playing those roles in the Netflix world.

There are a number of points that should be made at this juncture:

1. The Holy Spirit is indeed invoked and hearkened to during the consistorial votings;

2. Cardinals were encouraged to respond to the inner promptings by prayer and penance;

3. But cardinals in the Renaissance era tended to dither and dawdle over the votes;

4. For this reason sometimes the SPQR of the Roman people would stop their food and drink until they came to their senses and voted for one candidate;

5. This starving of the cardinals had the net effect of making the cardinals see sense, so voting would follow quickly enough;

6. It was designed to make them see solid realities and to glimpse the future of the Church which should be the chief priority of the voting sermons and services and masses during the conclave.

All in all nowadays, it is sometimes said by future popes that the people get the leaders they deserve, so a philosophy age gets a philosopher pope (John Paul II), a theology age gets a theology pope (Benedict XVI), and a science age gets a scientist pope (Francesco I), and so too an empirical flesh obsessed age would get an empirical pope (Alexander VI), since God has to lead the human race into self-awareness with friendly secular icons of its own, but always each according to his own, a secular pope sometimes being a sign of blessing - thuswise the human race does not fall away through seeing too many saints far above them nor be scandalised and disappointed by too high a teaching and example of simple gospel values - secularism can be a good thing, hence the clergy are seculars and not poverty loving religious. So correspondingly, it is reasoned by modern apologists in the western media, because the cardinals and popes think a century in advance, that sometimes their priorities and their language and decisions seem to contradict the temporary or passing canons of moral outrage of the modern world, one thinks here of the secular sins of booze or smoking or fatness - John XXIII though a gentle sign scandalised many because of his huge girth, but for the cardinals and the popes, the world is not enough, indeed they see the world as permanently out of date with the priorities of the Holy Spirit for the future of humanity and the Church on this planet exists to walk with humanity but also to lead it into a more exciting future of different priorities and different sins too - if this is corruption then so be it, but it is a case of a capsized world view in a world that is primitive without knowing its own weaknesses, or maybe knowing them but judging others too quickly on the standards of its own comportment while all the while trying to get ahead of the Church's princes. We live in interesting times. We need to sit down though and analyse our assumptions about such concepts as “corruption.” Maybe we are the lazy thinkers that a forgotten chaplain to the prime minister used to complain about once upon a time in the back roads and green lanes of the old forgotten green diocese.